The Direction

I'm a full-time graduate student, part-time musician, part-time producer, part-time writer, part-time director, and full-time imaginist. Yeah, it gets to be a lot to fill one head with, but what I really hope to become full-time is a director/writer/producer. I dabbled a bit in this towards the end of high school and throughout college, but never to the extent I would have liked for multiple reasons: a thesis, actors, equipment, and money. I don't pretend to know everything, or even enough about making movies to compare to Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Peter Jackson, or Christopher Nolan, but I intend to learn. Not through classes, or books, but by watching and studying and most importantly doing.

Inception is rapidly becoming one of my favorite movies of all time. Not just for the excellent story, superb cast, incredible score, or sheer intensity, but of the cinematography. Christopher Nolan did something that I have always wanted to do, create a world where everything is nearly seamless, from one point to the next, it feels real. The story is captivating, the scenery is gorgeous, and the acting doesn't miss a beat. So how does a guy like me, with an Astrophysics degree in one hand, and no cameras, microphones, actors, lights or sophisticated editing equipment pull that off? Well simply put, I can't, not yet anyway. You need money, which I simply don't have being a graduate student. Still, there's something that I neglected on that list that I don't have (yet) that doesn't cost any money. An idea.

Just as in Inception and in real life, an idea is infectious. If you come up with the right idea, something strong and pervasive, to the point that it can exist on its own, then the rest just becomes fulfilling that idea. My direction, underneath being a student, an employee, or any of the other hats I wear is to find this one idea to inspire me. I've written a pilot to a TV show, the beginnings of a dozen novels, but nothing holds. My biggest problem is inspiration, I get it everywhere. Every TV show, every movie, every piece of music, and every day something will influence me, but I absorb it too much and those things influence the next, but none of it feels like my own.

Meanwhile, for years I've had this constant movie running in the back of my mind. The ultimate story, told across universes. But I can't write it down.

I need to start smaller, with a much simpler idea. From there, put together the story. All the while, developing ways to shoot it, make it a reality. My biggest regret in life would be not seeing something I have wanted to dream about become a reality and be able to share it. Unfortunately, in today's world, the biggest hurdle to all of that is money. Here's the good thing, I'm only reaching my mid-20s. If I play my cars right, by the time I'm 30, I'll have everything I need to start something amazing, something you'll read about some day in someone else's blog. But I'm not doing this for you, for them, or for anyone but myself.

To keep you entertained for the next few minutes (let alone the next few years) before my big idea invades your mind so deeply you'd think you had thought of it yourself, you can watch this. While it may seem like a finished product on the surface, it's far from it. Prometheus Unbound was a video project I did for an art class my senior year in college. No tripods, no real script, one camera (well one decent one, and a crappy one for some minor shots), and 90% of the shooting took place in one day. I did all the editing, all the shooting, and you can see where that gets you. There was a much larger theme at play here that I never got to expand on, that if given the time, and the equipment (not to mention people willing to participate in both being in the film and helping make it) I could make this what I wanted it to be. But first, check it out for yourself.

Also, as you can hear, none of the music is original. I would love to be able to have originally created music for this movie, but that requires some skills beyond my expertise. So, if any of you out there would be willing to help me create an original soundtrack to this short film, I would most appreciate it and find some way to compensate you. Feel free to check out my previous works at the YouTube link on the bar above. You can easily see the evolution of my work.

Dream on

Arc

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