Zacuto Critics Videos...

One of my favorite items on the web is Zacuto's "Critics" series...

Getting the opportunity to watch two industry veterans really critique Vimeo content is worth the price of admission alone.

I personally find it challenging get a) real, truthful opinions from friends, (more on this here), b) good critical ideas that go beyond 'the sound is messed up' and more deeply into ideas of composition and concept... I think that online video is kind of cheap, there is so much of it that unless you're really dialed in with other content producers, it's hard to get eyes and minds on what you're up to... then again, I'm not great at networking...! and finally c) advice from people who are higher up on the foodchain! This is really the thing I like the most about Critics- it's an opportunity to watch two smart people talk through ideas, concepts, and technique without a lot of BS...

Listmaking...

I had been making lists for some time.

Perhaps last year I stopped.

It felt a bit like I was kicking off the training wheels- that I was done with making lists, that I was in process of finishing many projects, without needing to worry about the little tricks that I'd been using to get myself to actually DO many of them in the first place.

Now, I think that instead of training wheels, listmaking is more like a bicycle helmet- a little bit of extra insurance that's useful in a "just in case" situation where something might, or does, fall through the cracks... When you're a one-man band, you can't really expect to get it ALL correct- and I think that I'm feeling that from trying to write/shoot/edit EVERYTHING myself...

It's just not possible for me to have a "perfect" product without input from other people- and usually their input is "the sound is weird" or "there's a blue screen/shake/blip in that one part" or "that part jumped to quick" and so on... Most are comments that, had I taken a few days to let my work SIT before showing it, I could PROBABLY have corrected. Instead, I release to a few (20) sets of eyes, and see what they think- slapping my forehead and saying "ahhh shucks" with every comment that makes me think "I know that!"