AT MIKES

LIKE, LIKE.

I really like the short films of Everynone (I put up 'Words' a while back) The films have such a nice tone to them. Warm and affirming but still very human and understated.

UP NORTH

Tamworth and Nambucca (and a single cloud below from Morewell)

Amazing Story, Amazing Photos

Very little is know about the photography of Vivian Maier, a street photographer who took photos from 1950 through to the early 90's. She was a Nanny but took a camera out on her days off. It wasn't until she died and her things were sold at auction that thousands of medium format negatives and undeveloped rolls of film were discovered.

Observed, playful and with an unique eye for unusual characters and details. It's hard to believe if her whork had not been discovered by accident this incredible catalogue of photographs may have remained unseen.

The story below reveals some details of her life, but essentially she remains a mystery.

Alot more info and photographs at this blog.

She and her photographs remind a little of what Chuck Close is saying in the post below. I don't think she was bundled up waiting for inspiration to strike. She was out there 'doing it'.

Thanks Chuck

"The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and somthing else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case." Chuck Close

(via JMc's FB status update)

Best Writing Software. Ever.

Like most of you, I procrastinate. Otherwise, why am I writing this and why are you reading this? No doubt, a part of my motivation to have a blog is to somehow legitimise the amount of time I spend fucking around on the internet, and not doing the things I actually want and need to do. While I love the internet and all the great things it has brought us, I hate the way my already gnat like concentration span can be even further reduced by the constant and nagging promise of something awesome that might be just a few simple clicks away. But... I have found some heavy duty artillery in the war against time wasting. A little bit of 'free' software called Self Control.

It essentially does what I can not. It cuts me off from the endless stream of distraction that the interwebs provides. Sure you could unplug yourself, or switch off your wi-fi. But as I have found there will always be a valid reason (best cat youtube clip ever) for you to 're-connect'.

The genius of Self Control is that once you start it up and you bar yourself from the internet for the allotted time you have set, there is NO WAY of unblocking it. You will get no email, no web, no nothing, not even if you quit the software, not even of you restart your computer!!! Once you are offline, you stay offline until your time is up. So be really careful before you start off with setting the time limit to the maximum of 24 hours!

It works!

There's a story on every corner

This clip has been doing the rounds a bit, but I think it's a great reminder that stories (and characters for those stories) are found in the most unexpected places at the most unexpected times. I wonder if this guys '15 minutes' will help him get off the street and into a recording booth somewhere. I hope so.

THIS WEEK

Finished the offline with Pete at The Butchery for the commercial we shot last week...

Then jumped in the car for a two day solo road trip through country Victoria and New South Wales to my home town of Tamworth...

More photos after the break...

Arrived to find my father in-law Keith, waiting patiently for Santa.

And Super Natalie and the kids who flew up a few days before.

Three weeks holidays! yipeee!

LAST WEEK

SUMMER MOVIE GUIDE

THE QUEEN OF COOL

I think I have contributed to a hundred or so hits to the you tube clip below over the past few days. It's one of the coolest live performance clips I've seen. I saw Blondie last week on tour with the Pretenders and my friend Adalita supporting (who by the way is releasing her debut solo album early next year and it's amazing! More on that later though...)

Blondie may look a little different these days, but man she is still the Queen of Cool!

I want this song in Cherry Bomb!

THANKS JJ

"Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic."- Jim Jarmusch

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ROSEBUD

4 years old today!

Above with her best buddy Tilly.

MORE HAIL

Some more photographs I took on the set of Amiel Courtin-Wilson's Hail. A bunch more over at the Hail website.

THE CAMERA IS DEAD. LONG LIVE THE CAMERA.

I find it interesting that Alex Roman who directed the short film The Third And The Seventh below decided to portray the cameras you see in the film as antique and definitely antiquated. The 'prop' cameras are in the frame perhaps only as an a novel and aesthetic reminder of a device that once was the best and perhaps only way to capture 'reality'.

It's interesting because the film is entirely created in CGI. Nothing new about that I guess, but I dont think I have ever seen entire 3D environments look and 'feel' quite as real as this. Nothing has been photographed traditionally in the film. It's all created via computer and Roman's amazing aesthetic, lighting, modelling, textures and no doubt, obsessive attentional to detail. The film has no narrative and is more a formal exploration of architecture that doesn't exist (in the real world) and the second half drifts off in a more surreal and less 'realistic' direction, but there are some sequences in the first half that are really impressive and make me think that the way we make films really is changing forever.

I guess this 'shooting live action' thing was fun while it lasted...

A short 'making of' can be found here.

Thanks for the link Collin!