Some Things Never Change

When I was a kid I used to spend hours, sometimes half of a day, building lego armies or castles made of cups—creating worlds for the eminent battles that the afternoon would bring. I, of course, was always the main character. A character I had given personality to in my mind. Day after day, I would construct elaborate scenarios, meticulously minding the details, and then drop my character into the midst to respond to my surroundings and follow my imagination until the entire world had been obliterated, it was too dark to see, or it was time for supper.

I was telling my wife all about my imaginary worlds the other night when it occurred to me that I never really grew out of it. We had just spent the better part of two weeks tracking down costumes, gathering supplies, finding actors, building props and storyboarding scenes for what will ultimately be a three minute promotional video for my production company.

Here are a few still shots from the day. Welcome to one of my many crazy worlds.

Jazz

I’m learning a lot about jazz. A friend of mine, Sean Dietrich, asked me if I would shoot his jazz trio at a house party. I thought it would be like any other live band video I had shot before--right up until the second take. On the first take, they had nailed it. And judging by the musicianship I had just witnessed, I was expecting a perfect replication of what I just heard. What I didn’t realize was that for a musician like Sean, perfection has nothing to do with replication. A song’s worth has more to do with the conversation between the musicians at any given moment, which means that I ended up with four individually perfect and completely unique takes of the same song. For the record, this is incredible to experience live, but a potential nightmare at the editing desk. I can honestly say that I walked away from that night having no clue how I was going to pull off the video.