Land your brandâ„¢
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Kennemer Dunes, today (1/3). Break it [ make it ]
Min/max temperature: 4°C/7°C; humidity: 99%; precipitation: 0 mm, sea level pressure: 1026 hPa; wind from SSE 8.0 km/h; Clouds: Few 152 m, Scattered Clouds 213 m, Mostly Cloudy 274 m; visibility: 5.0 kilometres
"The point in which content leaves off and technique begins is blurred, and yet they are so interdependent that one is impossible without the other. Above all, then, the filmmaker must not only be fully aware of both art and technique, but of technology as well. Film-making is a twentieth-centrury art born of science. [...] Consider ultra sensitive high-speed [ film ] that allows picture-taking under seemingly impossible light conditions, or transistors that make feasible vest-pocket synchronous units that record actual sound and speech anywhere. Such developments, which make possible so much more, may at times be an obstacle, because the temptation is so great, and so subtle, to concentrate on mastery of the technique. In the heady excitement of achieving effect or of bringing off a difficult tour de force, it is easy to find a pseudo artistic satisfaction that blinds one to the demands of a fully artistic piece of work. [...] Discipline is what is sorely needed. Often, the so-called depth and insight are in reality lots of smoke and little fire, emotionalism without substance. The […] filmmaker must clarify his substance by analysis and structure development, with close scrutiny of the causal relationships. […] In the making of a film, aside from creative effort, much is required of the film-maker in the way of technical knowledge and organisational know-how. Unfortunately, his mastery of these areas can lead to such sense of accomplishment and satisfaction that he may be trapped into forgetting why he initially set out to make a film. It is not unusual, for example, for him to become so absorbed in the technical aspects [ of lip synchronisation ] he overlooks what is being said. […] The film-maker needs, therefore, in addition to a solid technical foundation, an insight into those things involving ideas and values. He needs to know where his talents shape up best, whith what kind of material he functions most effectively, in what way he can set up a frame of reference within which to explore his material, and how to clarify his point of view. How he wants to say anything, let alone decide the most effective way to say it? To seek conscious and direct answers to these problems is next to impossible because they cannot be arrived at in the manner of mathematical equation. Rather, the answers will emerge to one degree or another, trough the actual making of the films. [...] The filmmaker has to constantly make films. The questions should be left to the critics, the scholars, and the analysts."
Haig P. Manoogian in 'The Film-makers Art', page 1, 2, 159, 247, first published in 1966 by Basic Books, Inc. New York, London
"Art comes out of craft. That's where the art comes from. Movies are craft, they're not art. Art comes out of craft. [You] may have a great idea for a painting. But can you paint? If you say "No," than your idea isn't worth a shit. […] Pretty photography is easy; it really is the easiest thing in the world. But photography that rounds a picture off, top to bottom, and holds the content together, is really the most beautiful. […] You try not to put the photography in front of the story; you try to make it part of the story."
Gordon Willis in 'Masters of Light', page 294, 302, by Dennis Scheafer and Larry Salvato, first published in 1984 by University of California Press, USA
"I want to always be free to not have to do something. I want to not have to take a picture for any other reason than because I want to […] I don't want to take a picture because I have to. That's how despair begins; when you don't have the freedom to say no to something that you don't want to do. Suddenly you get locked into not being free."
Conrad Hall in 'Masters of Light' , page 173 by Dennis Scheafer and Larry Salvato, first published in 1984 by University of California Press, USA
"Despair is the only unforgivable sin, and it's always reaching for us."
Sam Peckinpah in 'Peckinpah, the Western Films, A Reconsideration', introduction, by Paul Seydor, first published in 1980 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois, USA
"Aesthetic and ethical decisions are seldom made from a position of cool intellectual neutrality; more often they are forged in discomfort and anxiety over conflicting moral obligations -- to actual people who know and trust you, on the one hand, or to truths whose importance may transcend any individual's passing discomfort, on the other. [...] Only with maturity can you identify the surrogates to your own values and temperament, and allow them to achieve a life of their own in a film. The discipline of such a process has its own rewards. Your work alters the way you see the fundamentals of your own life -- the very source from which your documentary process sprang. In this way, each film lays the foundations for the next."
Michael Rabiger in 'Directing the documentary (third edition)', page 364, published in 1998 by Butterworth-Heinemann, USA
"The best people know more."
David Ogilvy in 'Ogilvy on Advertising', page 21, first published in 1983 by Multimedia Publications (UK) Ltd.
"I" am as good as my team
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My Moroccan crew in the Sahara-desert. Picking the right people is essential. It may be "you" or "me" or "I" who got the call; without a unified team behind that to clear it, the results will turn out flat, pale, uninteresting and disappointing. A symptom of the "look what a clever filmmaker I am" syndrome. This probably counts for other professions as well; even leading to endangering other people's health and other people's lives.
Conclusion: Like a brand, which may be the vision of one person -- "I" --, its strength is determined by the team behind it. "I" is "I Care" ; characterized by the ability to switch and unite, flexibilty. From the inside to the outside, on the battlefield of the (not so) free market, doing the job that needs to be done; for the sake of the team really... Outside the team, there is nothing.
Left, right, appetite
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Kennemer Dunes, today. Fast in [ fast out ]
Min/max temperature: 0°C/5 °C; humidity: 87%; precipitation: 0 mm, sea level pressure: 1016.14 hPa; wind from N/NW 9.7 km/h; visibility: 8 kilometers.
"It’s widely acknowledged that postmodernism as a philosophy is now dead; and books are everywhere starting to appear that are written about “What comes next?” [I]n academia and the universities, it is a long, slow death, and most teachers still teach some version of postmodernism and its aperspectival madness even if they have many deep doubts themselves. [W]hen there are no binding guidelines for individual behavior, the individual has only his or her own self-promoting wants and desires to answer to—in short, narcissism. And that is why the most influential postmodern elites ended up embracing, explicitly or implicitly, that tag-team from postmodern hell: nihilism and narcissism—in short, aperspectival madness. The culture of post-truth. […] Nihilism and narcissism are not traits that any leading-edge can actually operate with. [A] well-known pollster [...] said, “This [Trump win] is a wake-up call for everyone at every level of government. Governors, Senators, mayors—all of them need to have a retreat where they can work together to bring about peace in the populace. Importantly, this isn’t about government officials reconciling with one another—which in itself is needed. Rather, it is about their facilitating their constituencies to reconcile with one another. It’s about bringing people together, bridging our divides, and binding our wounds. That’s what real leadership is about.” […] Conversely, feeling nothing but despair at Trump’s victory is to fail to see the larger currents at work in this situation. Understanding this election—as well as similar events now occurring all over the world—as a manifestation of a self-correcting drive of evolution itself, as it routes around a broken leading-edge [...] and attempts to restore the capacity of its leading-edge to actually lead (while also seriously starting to give birth to the next higher leading-edge of integral itself)—this gives us a glimmer of real hope in an otherwise desperately gloomy situation. In the deepest parts of our own being, each of us is directly one with this evolutionary current, this Eros, this Spirit-in-action, radiant to infinity and luminous to eternity, radically full in its overflowing overabundance and excessive in its good graces, wildly crashing off the heavens and irrupting from the underworlds, and embracing each and all in its limitless love and care. And the only ones who should be allowed to work politically for a greater tomorrow—and who should thus work—and those who truly understand that it is not necessary to do so; who see the utter fullness of the Great Perfection in each and every moment of existence, and who nonetheless work to trim-tab (or adjust through leadership) the manifestation of more and more and more of the Good and the True and the Beautiful, right here and right now in this gloriously manifest universe, moment to moment to ever-present moment, knowing full well that this entire world is nothing but the dream of an infinite Spirit, yet each and every one of us is directly this very Spirit itself, dreaming the world of our own amazement. And we can try endlessly and tirelessly to fix this dream…. or we can simply wake up."
Ken Wilber in 'Trump and a Post-Truth World, An Evolutionary Self-Correction', first published last Sunday by Integral Life as an Ebook, available as Pdf at the Intergral Iife website
Code of conduct
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Kennemer Dunes national park, today. Reflection [ unity of form and content ]
Min/max temperature: -1°C/1.4°C; humidity: 100%; precipitation: 0 mm, sea level pressure: 1026 hPa; wind from SSE 29.0 km/h; visibility: 6.0 kilometres; mostly cloudy 1402 m.; snow depth: 30 mm
"To follow a moral code would amount to the same as an intellectual judgment about an individual, viewed from the standpoint of anthropological statistics. Moreover, making a moral code the supreme arbiter of your ethical conduct would be a substitute for the will of a living God, since the moral code is made by man and declared to be a law given by God himself. The great difficulty of course is the "Will of God." Psychologically the "Will of God" appears in your inner experience in the form of a superior deciding power, to which you may give various names like instinct, fate, unconscious, faith, etc. The psychological criterion of the "Will of God" is forever the dynamic superiority. It is the factor that finally decides when all is said and done. It is essentially something you cannot know beforehand. You only know it after the fact. […] In applying a moral code (which in itself is a commendable thing), you can prevent even the divine decision, and then you go astray. So try to live as consciously, as conscientiously, and as completely as possible and learn who you are and who or what it is that ultimately decides."
C.G. Jung, 'Collective Work, Letters 1951 - 1961', page 300, 301, first published in 1973 as 'Briefe III 1956 - 1961', 'To William Kinney, 26.V.1956', page 27, Walter Verlag, Olten, Switzerland
"I do not try to bent the plot to fit technique; I adapt technique to the plot. […] A particular angle may give a cameraman -- or even a director -- a particular sattisfying effect. The question is, dramatically, is it the best way of telling whatever part of the story it's trying to tell? If not, out it goes. […] The mark of good technique is that it is unnoticed. […] The important thing is that the director makes his decisions when the need for them arises, and operates with as few rules as possible. The fewer rules you have, the fewer times you'll have to experience the unhappiness of breaking them."
Alfred Hitchcock in 'Hitchcock on Hitchcock, Production Methods Compared', page 208, 209, originally published in Cine-Technician 14, no. 75, November - December 1948, reprinted in American Cinematographer 30, no. 5, May 1949. (Book) first published in the USA in 1995 by University of California Press
Training/today/after_footprint/fresh/sunny/wide_tide/30K
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Todays training: warm after cold week...