#now to take a walk or to continue alt timeline musings

[lavenoon]

How would all boys react to s/o complimenting them and being really happy about/enjoying something he cooked for them? Or bought them something that he knows they would like or like to try?

Same spiel as before, "you" will be used as general "beloved person they care about" in however interpretation tickles your fancy!

All three of them will be happy proud idiots with some varying attempts of being cool about it.

Sun tries very hard to be cool and suave, except. He preens. He always, always preens when you're happy with something he did, he's a sucker for praise and validation, and if you go hard enough he might just slightly sway back and forth on his heels or outright spin his rays! Will be very analytical if you let him - what bits did you like? Taste, texture, ingredients, what spices were good? Anything you'd like him to change? Should he gets more of it, keep a steady supply? It's also another way of getting his excitement out without outright going "I did such a good job", while also making sure next time will be even better!

Moon is a little quieter about it, but that just means you'll get to observe his fluster more easily. May giggle a bit and try to look away, but his stupid wide grin is obvious and he's really happy that you enjoy whatever offering he had! Tying into the other ask - if it's a while into cooking with you, so him actually cooking, maybe trying something on his own for the first time? Please give him the chance for a hug and hiding his face somehow because he'll melt at the slightest indication that you like it and would like more of it. Won't be quite as obvious about it as Sun, but certain snacks will definitely find their way into your pantry more often!

Eclipse in this case is a healthy mix of his brothers, except he can handle his fluster a bit better (i.e. channels it into more excitement and affection rather than feeling the need to hide). So his initial reaction will just be elated! You like it!! He was right in his assumption!! He made something good!! (And didn't burn down the kitchen!!) Prepare for nuzzles and or hugs and or any available holding during all of that. Then follows the analysis - do you want it more often? How often? What's the best part about it, the core he shouldn't change in his experiments? Would you like to cook/ get it with him some time? Please say yes, it'll make his day!

[bladekindeyewear]

HS^2 bloggin’ Patreon Commentary Catchup 2020-03-29

I know I’ve been sitting on half-a-dozen asks, but I’m gonna sit on those a little longer because after I’m done catching up on ALL the commentary I’ve missed I’ll probably be a little exhausted.

First the commentary on Chapter 5: YOUR 3Y3S H4V3 B33N CLOS3D.  I skimmed this before, just so I could leave a comment about what I’d been told about the suicide feeling / Jaspers funeral when she was “eight” being way too late on the timeline.  They still haven’t made any corrections to that HS^2 page.  Hm.  Are they just feeling the general vibe and tags to help the fandom guide things?  I’m wondering if anyone came to any of them specifically with that, since Patreon commentary doesn’t seem to cut it.  (Which I might be grateful for, from another point of view, because why would they favor paid methods.)

Sketches and Commentary: Chapter 5, "YOUR 3Y3S H4V3 B33N CLOS3D"

Starting commentary on why they played with the medium by opting for a Longpage with that update.  Unsurprising and understandable~

Ooh, they included the commission/sketch instructions for the image they asked from Xam.

I don't know what we did to deserve Xamag.

Yeah few people dispute Xamag’s awesomeness.~

Much of this conversation was written before they launched HS^2′s first chapter, huh?

With the "primary" version of its original protagonist dead in a wallet,

Did... did Terezi or someone else put John’s body in his wallet after he died?  I forget.  *checks back*

(Meat 35) That’s definitely a fair question. But I have one that’s much more important for her to answer. Terezi, are you seriously just going to leave the body here? “TEREZI: HUH?” Of course not. Terezi’s a practical girl, after all. She digs the wallet out of her blood-stained pants, and captchas the corpse. She holds it close to her heart, like a secret. Like John’s stupid last words: a confession whispered for her and no one else.And then she starts walking home.

(Meat 36) Terezi’s jaw tightens. She’s not ready to hear any words that remind her of those few hours with John. Her hand goes to her pocket, where she’s keeping the wallet. She traces the contours of it with her thumb and forces a smile.

[...] Here we both are. It’s a beautiful day. You’ve got your dead boyfriend in your wallet. And we’ve already managed to strike such a nice metatextual rapport. So hear me out. [...]  I ease the throttle back a bit, just enough so that I’m not whispering directly into her ear when she slips the wallet out of her pocket. She clutches it so hard in her palm that she’s digging dents into the leather, and bites her lip.

God damnit, that was an important fucking thing for me to forget.  I hope she preserved his corpse in a better way than just “wallet”.  And why the FUCK did Dirk think it was so important to bring him???? That’s not good, is it.

Back to the commentary, going to how the Dirk crew’s conversations especially cover the meta question of why continue the story at all...

This is actually a similar question to one explored by a series that shares a lot of Homestuck's creative DNA, Steven Universe.

Oh god damnit, what timing, huh?  And then they go on about what constitutes a happy ending and what’s supposed to happen after, how work might not be done, et cetera.  Hopefully these authors take a page from how SU:F finished, because Steven Universe managed to pull it back to uplifting pretty well.

These are two dangerous women, confined together long enough to learn all of each others' weaknesses, and sharp-edged enough to exploit them.

True enough.

Dirk, unfortunately, cucks the audience from seeing the scene's "true resolution." What an asshole. I've never been madder at this guy than I am right now. I bet he didn't even provide a warranty.

Pff.

On to the next commentary:

Sketches and Commentary: Catnapped, Part Three

Catnapped is some of the most fun I’ve had while writing, because Jasprose is just so goddamn fun. Cats don’t plan, they live in the moment. She’s always existing in that moment of pushing a glass off the table.

We can all agree with that I think.

Plenty they talk about here, but I’ll just quote part of anything about characterization... 

First, I actually really appreciate getting a lot at Jane's genuine sympathy for Dirk here. There was quite a bit of mutual fondness and care between the two of them – but, at the same time, they enabled each others' worst tendencies.

Hm!

Swifer remains the closest thing to a "straight man" this story has. (Not in the sexuality way. In the comedy way.)

Yep.

There was no universe where we left this story without Jasprose saying "owo what's this". You know it, I know it.

Jesus Christ, I didn’t catch that.

God, Problem Sleuth just has the worst commuting luck. He should put some of his rug money into a permanent locksmith. Checking back in with these scenes is always a delight. It probably took PS like two hundred off-screen panels to get to this point. Miserable.

Wait, that’s right, Catnapped 28 is shown before DDD 12, but AFTER Dad is shown marching up handcuffed in Catnapped 26.  And yet in DDD 12, Dad and DD come fetch PS from out of his office, when the handcuffed thing hasn’t happened yet in DDD.  You can’t DO that, authors!  It only makes RELEASE ORDER sense, not any sort of OTHER sense?  What about when people come to catch up or read this later!  Come on, that’s sloppy.  Unless they’re going to leave PS behind to stay trapped in his office MORE, which I wouldn’t put past them.  (But, wouldn’t make sense since the bullethole from C28 is already there in DDD12.)  Andrew knew more of how to be responsible telling an out-of-time-sync story, believe it or not.

Commentary ends with a few sketches, like Jasprose doing a The Mask impression, appropriately.

Sketches and Commentary: Chapter 6, "A Conversation Regarding Relevance"

Oh, it’s Jade time.

On alt!Callie’s starting Space rant:

I wanted to impress on everyone just how vast it is, and also to remind the audience that alt!callie has them at the same mercy that Dirk does. She can force us to listen to her pontificate endlessly if she so chooses. She’s slightly less insufferable than Dirk, if only perhaps because her text isn’t orange. 

Yep, mostly.

So here she is. Jade. We find out that not only is she conscious inside her own head, she is also incredibly chatty. And not too thrilled with her current situation. I know most of the audience isn’t either, considering the fact that Jade having no agency has basically become a meme at this point. 

NEVER. AGAIN. PLZ.

As Callie told us in the beginning of the chapter, it isn’t natural for people to behave like narrative devices. Even within her own thematic framework, Callie has a habit of defaulting to behaving like a person after all. 

Even alt!Callie still became a story nerd, not just original Callie -- she just became a different, more insufferable type of story nerd.

Plenty more discussion I don’t need to touch on...  keep in mind I’m omitting large parts of this in most cases, again, to respect the paywall.

A remark on Dave and Karkat being two emotionally-constipated early-twenties Bernie Bros, which... I mean.  Fair.

She definitely does love them, and she wanted to be with them, but also...Jade has a lot of other prospects. She’s actually the one character who seems to be enjoying her time on Earth c. Hitting up interspecies raves and getting around. We just haven’t seen any of that because none of those other people she boned are main characters. 

Maybe that’s why alt!Callie was so blind and dismissive of it?  Offscreen experience being less in the Light, therefore less relevant to her, even though that’s the exact attitude she’s ostensibly at war with?

Anyway Jade’s consciousness is huge.

Yep.

It’s been a while since we’ve had any sort of serious meta talk about classpects. Mostly because there’s really no use for classpects outside of the game, unless, for instance, you go around referring to everyone as the Prince or the Witch because you are a dramatic alien in a hood. It does make sense that a Witch’s powers would be more useful than a Sylph’s to a Muse. 

Aaaand that’s all the classpect mention we’re gonna get isn’t it? ;P

(Yes I know, the author told us to dial it back.  They ARE going ahead and prepping to answer some outstanding questions, though.)

Honestly, the Jade Situation is a tough one. To be sure, she has been sacrificed to the plot again and again, something that probably began as a coincidence and then later grew into a theme. Space players are destined to be huge, cosmic forces in the universe. Big movers. [...] But usually when we hear the story of big, god-like beings, we don’t think about the personalities behind them. What was it like for god to create the universe? Was he lonely? Did he regret it? Did he wish he could live in it instead? 

And Jade WAS too powerful not to sideline, by a certain point in the plot.  And before that, maybe trapped in a bit of a character arc where she had to get over some notions to step into the action.

I actually think Jade could have been okay with this. With being A Force For The Narrative. [...] But then Callie makes it personal.

Agreed.  If alt!Callie hadn’t been so shitty about it in general, they could have worked things out more meaningfully; but the immense resolve and effort it took to dominate Caliborn in her origin timeline has tainted her perception ALMOST as bad as Dirk’s.  Much of HS^2 is probably going to involve her gradually learning how to get over that in the background, the balance she needs to take ala the Ultimate Riddle’s lesson.

(Tangentially... it was said that it would have been nearly impossible to make alt!Callie dominate, even across ALL timelines.  What if alt!Callie had her timeline’s origin explained in HS^2 by a Third Scratch at this late date with the likes of Davebot running around to do it???  That would probably make me fucking mad.)

Back to the commentary.

Admittedly these last few chapters have definitely been “girls beating the crap out of each other” heavy, and I hope that’s okay.

PFFFFF

Callie and Jade aren’t really sure who makes a decision on what is considered “just” or “heroic”. Plot twist, it’s us. We do. But also the alpha timeline does.

Hmm.

More gorgeous Xam art. Initially we were going to make it more ambiguous whether or not she actually ate the peanut butter, but we decided to have it be a decisive moment of triumph.

Really?  Well, you could have made it visually clearer that the candy dropped.  A lot of people visually missed that.  This is a consequence of the back-and-forth artist-isnt-the-author art-commissioning going on, in part... Andrew was MUCH better at conveying what he wanted to convey BETWEEN panels than this crew, like comic book panels and their composition together; you can see that when comparing Homestuck proper’s sprite animation to that of fan adventures that used sprites, for instance.  These guys are at something of a disadvantage due to their disconnect.

Commentary on the Commentary

This commentary uses "she/her" to talk about the alternate Calliope possessing Jade, while the "other" Callie (remember them?) uses they/them. This other Calliope, presumably, has a much different relationship with her gender – and her brother – than the Callie we saw discussing the subject with Roxy and John. One of my favorite things about this update (I can say that, because I'm a second person who didn't write it) was that subtle hint about how different her Caliborn must have been to allow her to predominate in the first place. I'd be really interested in fan works exploring more about her (and his) past.

Hhhhmmmmmmm.

Not sure what else to say to that, but it does make me hmmm.

Sketches and Commentary: Diamonds, Dames, and Dads, Part 1

Probably not much plot-relevant here...

Oh pff.

They had full drawings of them going in for the kiss on standby.  They couldn’t resist making them.

Real talk, I have been looking forward to writing this story the most out of any other part of HS^2. Finally I get to combine my passions. Cheesy noir bullshit and old men making eyes at each other. 

Pfffffff.  Yes.

...the next three or four pages of this writing go on to describe how sexy this is and these characters and setting are.  I can’t fault a word of any of it.

The dream team is assembled. Nothing can possibly go wrong. 

Wow, I caught up on all this commentary quick.  See you next time.

[lilacskyent-blog]

Breakfast with Smiling Eyes Media

Before it was an advertising tool, before it was selfies, a photograph was a moment in time, captured forever, a still display of the universe in a state of existence it would never be in again. Family photos, historical records, a photograph has the ability to take a moment in time, and make it iconic, inspiring, and unforgettable. This is especially true in concert photography. We love seeing photos of legends in their prime when the world was at their fingertips, they remind us that anything is possible. But these photos aren’t taken by random fans with a smartphone, they’re taken by professionals, photographers who are legends themselves. Stephanie Heath, of Smiling Eyes Media, is a legend in the making.

What got you into photography, and what led you to take up concert photography as a specialty?

I actually wasn’t into photography until I started going to concerts. I went to a lot of shows and couldn’t get very good photos with my phone back then. I thought it was fun and decided I would just do it as a hobby, I didn’t know it could be more back then. So, I went and got a basic camera and starter kit and went out to multiple shows a week. Eventually, I got pretty good and started meeting the bands.

What was your first concert?

My Chemical Romance and Muse

Festivals or singular shows?

It depends on the lineup. Festivals give me an excuse to travel and there’s more time to connect with people but local shows are great. Both are opportunities to discover new music, which I love.

Favorite concert experience?

That’s difficult cause I’ve seen so many amazing artists, but when I first moved up here I saw Third Eye Blind and it was amazing. There were lots of technical difficulties, the sound was off, and they kept going. When the sound just kept failing they did a very intimate acoustic show and told us the backstory behind some of the songs. It was incredible.

Number one band you wish you could’ve seen live?

Janis Joplin, I have her lyrics tattooed on my arm. Second would be Spice Girls, I love Scary Spice.

Top songs on your playlist right now?

Angel Haze- Battlecry

Without Me- Halsey

Explain the meaning behind Smiling Eyes?

I was just thinking of the word smize and the fact that it means smiling eyes, and I was already looking to change my business name. Luckily when I looked it up no one had it. It was the first step to becoming a real business.

When did you realize you wanted to make a career out of this?

When I moved to Atlanta. I just got tired of obstacles blocking me from what I wanted to do.

When Stephanie first came across my timeline, she seemed very nomadic, almost like a wanderer, searching for something. There was passion and adventure, but now there’s somehow peace, as well as focus. In my opinion, a working artist is born twice. The first time is when they discover their passion, the second is when they discover that passion could become a career. It’s truly remarkable to witness that growth in a person, to see the way they change when they find the true power of their passion. Stephanie isn’t wandering anymore, her road is clear.

Walk me through your first gig as a concert photographer.

This band from my hometown Spread the Dove was playing. My photos were terrible, but the band was really nice to me.

3 Breakfast must haves?

Biscuits

Bacon

Avocado

You’ve just been given all the power in the world to create the tour of your dreams. Pick 2 living and 2 dead to perform

Dead: Janis Joplin & Jimi Hendrix

Alive: Cage The Elephant and to be honest there are so many bands I love I can’t pick a fourth.

ALT Press? Rolling Stone? Kerrang? Or Rocksound?

Rolling Stone for sure

Shaky Knees, Coachella, AfroPunk, or Warped Tour?

Warped Tour is dead for now, and I feel like Shaky Knees has the strongest lineup I’ve seen this year.

You have a very unique style. I love concert photography and whenever I’m scrolling through Instagram I can always tell your work from others. For you, what makes a perfect photo?

I’m extra when I edit, cause I’m super critical and like to outdo myself. I like to capture life, and it can be pretty sporadic

Mosh pits or crowd surfing?

Crowd surfing

I’ve seen you travel with a few bands here and there, what’s tour life like?

Definitely not glamorous, but lots of laughs, priceless moments, and there’s a great bond formed through the experience. I love that I’ve been able to build that sense of trust and friendship with some of the bands I’ve traveled with, it gives us a chance to collaborate and experiment more to make things more unique.

1 band you’d pack up everything and go on a world tour with if you could?

Medicine For The People or Cage The Elephant.

Do you realize how dope you are?

Man stop

Stephanie may be too humble to say it, but she’s definitely a legend in the making. Her work has already showcased defining moments for the artists she’s worked with, and she’ll continue to capture them as she moves forward. No doubt about it, Stephanie is going to be just as iconic as the artists she photographs. 

[miamacdonald-uxui-research-703]

Beyond Talks - Day 2

Speaker 1 

Clem Devine - Jasmax

Brand Design Lead - leads a multidisciplinary team of designers, across all media including the built environment. 

39 years old, been a designer for 17 years. Times are changing, designers are good at responding to changes, ambiguity.

Creative Director / Design Director / Senior Designer / Part-Time Accountant / Stakeholder Manager - as a Brand Design Lead

“Design is persistently not knowing and finding out by learning with others.”

Les Mason influence - Graphic Designer did some work for Epicurean Magazine in the 1960’s, a wild “mad-man” character. “Father of Australian Graphic Design.”

What he learnt - work with the best people that you can (above and beside you, people you hire and employ). 

Make international work (blogs, instagram, awards programs)

Allan Derrick influence - used to run a Graphic Design studio in Invercargill. 

Southern Institute of Technology - did the logo design.

What he learnt - treat your staff the same.

Neil Pardington - Artist / Photographer - Eyeworks Design studio in Wellington.

Design can be art (Fiona Pardington is his sister).

Shane Cotton - worked on identity of his business card.

What he learnt - find your mentors. Look at the marketplace and think about the people you love and admire, who you think do interesting work.

Remain calm at all times. 

Dean Poole - Alt Group - 2 or 3 steps ahead of where you’d expect Design companies to be. 

What he learnt - Design is an idea. (not just craft/stylisation)

Buy shares in your clients businesses.

Ben Corban - Managing Director of Alt Group, part of the Corban winery family.

Take a long term view, design for 30 years. Build a practice over time.

Create a safe space for design to thrive.

Over time you become a mentor yourself, forget some of the things your mentors told you, no longer relevant.

Sam Trustrum / Zoe Ikin - Judge at Best Awards, Studio Magazine | Designer’s Journal.

Be friends with designers you admire.

Work with your friends before they have kids.

Brian Richards - Richards Partners 

Design is business $ needs to have a value attached to it that clients will pay for - design will have a valuable impact on the client.

Manage up and manage yourself - empathetic, continue to work on your social and emotional intelligence.

Helena Charleson - Marketing Director at Colliers (property development space).

Work for clients you like and that like you.

Jasmax - Architecture studio - you have to carve your own path and create value for their business, create great work. 

Nick Moyes - what a brand design team might look like, 4 people now.

Pick your team carefully, you have to like working with them.

Stay relevant. Design is moving so quickly, stay engaged and interested. Stay optimistic.

Working with different disciplines is hard, but you become a better designer.

Design is politics, play it fair. 

Design Assembly and AUT - fairness in how you engage with community.

Influence is better than control. (over a process, people, company or client).

The only thing you can control is yourself. 

Pick the best lessons from everyone you’ve worked with and forget the rest.

Keep regular hours. Maintain a regular discipline, hobbies, friends and family, have other interests, don’t let Design become an all consuming thing. Be curious about business and technology.

Make things that last a long time - projects that have a value. e.g. friends, connections, processes we might learn. Go deep on something quite interesting, as a topic.

Drips installation at Studio One in Ponsonby - meant to be temporary but it’s still there, stays as permanent in Auckland.

Running a profitable business gives you more flexibility to work on other projects.

Research & Development - varies project to project, depending on estimates of project and resources. How you quote a job is quite secretive in the industry.

Advice to approach designers or design businesses that you like, ask to spend 30 minutes talking with a designer - to take the pressure off trying to approach it as applying for a job.

Remote working at this time, have a discipline or a routine to follow.

Speaker 2 

Eden Short & Guy Hohmann - Maynard

Guy - born in Canada, left Whangarei and moved to Auckland at 18, went to Design school at Unitec.

Worked at Maynard in London for 5 years before relocating back to Auckland.

Layering of materiality in the built environment, interested in how cities evolve, temporary states (construction), nature and how natural systems and ecologies can act as template for built environment.

Wayfinding, architecture signs at train stations.

Eden - B- graphic design, cartography and maps, photography. In her honours project, produced a fake world.

Wayfinding, where maps sit.

Collaborations with friends - Print Error, AUT Zine Club, Dryden St Distro, final_final (creative space in Grey Lynn for personal projects, design market).

Zine - self-published artefact done fully by the Designer.

100 days, 1 yellow dot.

Maynard - People, Place, Product - way finding on all levels, how people occupy spaces. 

User Experience is at the heart of our process, ensuring highly bespoke design.

Multidisciplinary practice - 4 offices - London, Melbourne, Auckland, Sydney.

A furniture collection - spaces needed to be canvases for urban life, not locking them into a certain way of being. Marshalls TENPLO - mini-model.

Gateless Gatelines - research project using new technology to transform the gateline user experience (rail) and improve station efficiency.

Gates are a bottleneck, becomes a safety issue.

M.I.N.D.S.P.A.C.E. model - how people adopt to new technology (Google)

Biometric data, e.g. Apple Pay, Snapchat.

Passenger journey, looked into it in a lot of detail, with different personas. Challenges, how does it work, will people try to run through? Will security have to intervene? Photos are taken, to track down people who are abusing the gate system.

Technology timeline, at what point will people be able to do this on their own phones?

Started with small scale models to illustrate the idea.

Empathic and human centred is preferable to autonomous and hi-tech.

Systems must integrate with user habits to become the default.

Connect Me - Reimagining the future train interior to respond to changing travel behaviours, expectations.

The 4 C’s - Cost Reduction, Carbon Reduction, Capacity Improvement, Customer Experience. 

End to end journey - from door to destination - mapping out needs and motivations. 

Our vision for the future of rail travel is to have the passenger experience at its core. Digital and physical solutions.

Modular train - designed to increase capacity.- how to reconfigure seats, bike racks etc?

Flexibility to fold seats up and down depending on peak travel times.

End to end journey is key. Passengers expect more, personalisation is the norm. Trains are more than a transport mode, places to work, rest, interact. 

Aotea Centre - A bespoke bilingual way finding system. Brutalism was part of the buildings heritage. They wanted to understand how the building worked, and what it was used for - theatres, conference centres, accessible wayfinding and signage. All signs had to include bilingual Te Reo and English.

Worked with staff to assist with concept developments.

Hospitality is a core design principle, also incorporate braille and tactile type.

Concerns of legibility and sign standing out in the environment.

Stacking of Maori, English and braille.

Softening curve in the signs, with native timber. In the product family, e.g. wall mounted signs, unified sign family.

Full signage family in a foyer space.

Local team within a small international company.

Connecting Downtown Auckland - along the waterfront, connecting 6 different infrastructure projects. Unify 5 different transport modes across the precinct. Ensure designs are future-proofed.

Needs to speak to the local context of Tamaki Makaurau.

Multi-modal analysis of transport, walking, cycling, buses, trains, ferries.

When way finding doesn’t work, that’s when you really notice it.

Broad but specific - identify tangible opportunities. 

Created a robust design brief.

Research is holistic - research informs practice and practice informs research.

Lots of photos of bricks and walls, mark-making in the urban environment. Became the basis for ceramic works, called “the bricks’.

Ensure design outcomes are user focused, inform aesthetic and create coherent design narrative, contributing to culture and context, build knowledge around sustainability. 

User testing was predominantly done on the existing system, to understand what was broken and what needed fixing for people. 

Speaker 3 

Mike Felix - DDB - Creative Director

Every creative endeavour must start with research. 

Find the insight, the idea is the guiding star, followed by the execution.

The sharper the idea articulation is, the better the outcome.

Design: create, fashion, execute or construct according to plan.

There is always something guiding you or informing your design.

Concepts leading design. 

Base your talk on the size of the room. 

What makes a good brand? Fernando Machado (Burger King) a good client is what makes a good brand. The client who is brave enough to say yes. 

Where do you start? Research. 

e.g. campaign to stop people from walking in-front of trains. To a train driver, it was like a near-death. 

Bernbach - joined a creative team: writer and art director.

Seperate research, thought starters, looking for tidbits and insights, then they cross-pollinate and sit down with what they’ve done - which instantly starts the process. Creative check-in is an important meeting, when ideas get shut down, it’s important to kill your ideas, internal reviews with strategists / suits - idea articulation.

Your muse is a rogue alcoholic, but if you always show up on time, so will it. 

The better you are at selling an idea, the more likely you are to make an idea. Get into acting.

Client feedback, process of briefing directors, and doing directors treatments - their case for what they think, what have they added? Award the job to 1 director, answering client feedback. PPM - pre-production meeting, plan. Shoot is a world in itself. 

Offline - fancy word for edit. Watching someone else make your idea. Client offline, Grade, Online, Client Offline, Sound Mix, then Dispatch. 

When you put an idea out there, you have to keep track of it, document it.

How do you approach a challenge? From a safe distance.

When you’re researching, you’re gathering trees. The solution to a challenge can be obvious once you understand the problem really well.

Lotto ticket ad - when the ad contained the numbers.

How do you get over a creative block? 

The conscious mind is like the secretary, the subconscious mind comes up with the ideas, CEO/Director - the door is always shut. Wait for the CEO to write an idea on a piece of paper and slide it under the door. 

Lower stress levels and pressure levels, sleep well, meditate. 

YOU don’t come up with all the ideas, idea supercharges conscious.

Idea is in the brief somewhere, sleep, salmon and avocado are good for the brain,  idea generation, sleep, 2 hours to concept, picked 1 idea. 

What was your life like after you graduated? 

Speaker 4 

Professor Welby Ings - AUT

True intelligence can become invisible, if it doesn’t fit into the education system.

Thinks in images, writes articles. Our best nature is our disobedient nature. ‘Disobedient Teaching’ book.

Painted people, more interested in the piece that is inside of people. Trying to understand the realm that images can work in. 

Protest movements, protest and arrest. When things aren’t right, you either have the choice to stand back or stand up. 

Storytelling, telling a story of a better society.

Set up alternative campaigns, and get stories across in a world that didn’t give funding to it. 

Consequences of being silent, pandemic of AIDS in the 80’s and 90’s.

The mind and the heart get tangled up together, we don’t just communicate cognitively. 

You realise how precious life is, when your friends die around you. 

5 films - short films won’t make a lot of money, but it’s a maverick move.

Meaty research involves within the process of the work, not just beforehand.

The Coopers ‘Sometimes Love Can Kill’

Over time work builds reputation.

“I draw to think” to get outside of the obedient mind. 

Arapuni drawings as research, materials at hand. Drawing to think inside the possibility of something, becomes dialogic, talks to you, not in the open world.

The colour palette moved into the colour palette in the grading of the film.

He draws characters at every age. 

“Boy” 2004 - wasn’t going to be funded as a short film, he had to self-fund it.

The power of the idea and your commitment to drive it.

Material thinking, in doing, as a process.

Extraordinary - extra-ordinary - find a passion that brings something into the world that others can’t.

Trying to find the dimensions of the character.

In research, there are levels of discovery.

“Munted” short film - takes him about 5 years to do. A worthy investment if you think extraordinarily about the world.

The metanarrative - heroic sacrifice - ANZAC day every year. National pride, 

When We Go To War - 6 episode TV story - opening credits

Year after year we can recycle the same narratives.

NZ - WWI - problems - PTSD - shell shock

Failed masculinity, maladjustment, malingering, cowardice etc.

Shell shock condition (not yet diagnosed) - clip from London

Suicide and desertion in the war - records were erased.

Erasure in the world war, not talking about something.

Sparrow - the story of a kid who thought he could fly and the story of his grandfather.

Films are talking pictures. 

“the stories we never tell”

Physical making of things, to get inside the film, from where he directs.

We can become a service provider, if we’re not careful. We can lose that essence.

Disobedience can be constructive, go out into the world and become extraordinary.

What is the spirit of the sound / idea - typography

“We have gifts inside of ourselves, some we recognise, some we turn a blind eye to.”

Hothouse of extraordinary minds - PHD students

Early childhood and PHD have no marks, but everything in between is constructed. 

If a job is such a terrible thing that we have to separate ourselves from it (work, life balance) then we’re in the wrong job.

Creativity - ask the questions others don’t

Fiction having the power to reach where truth doesn’t

Sensitivity that makes us creative, we carry more around with us. “I run to let go, I garden” I don’t find a balance, I find a retreat in things.

Carries a clock around with him, no cellphone, no social media presence. 

I groom my world back, light my fire, draw, write something.

As a teacher, my job is to understand how you think. I listen carefully, we show more than we can tell.