James Kanka

I love this, reminds me of climbing around and crawling through sewers as a kid.

http://www.undercity.org/

I’m at the in the process of creating something and I feel like author Don Miller’s most recent posts on creators speak directly to what I’ve been thinking about this year, most notably that “A Creator Must Believe He Has the Authority to Create.”

A Creator Doesn’t Just Talk About Their Work, They Work

A guy I met once ran into Norman Mailer at an airport and asked him what he was working on. Mailer politely declined to answer the question, saying that when he talks about a book too much, it steals his motivation to write it.

A Creator Must Believe He Has the Authority to Create

Made in the image of God, able to speak something into nothing, able to create solutions to the worlds problems, we stammer about in disbelief, waiting for somebody else to take responsibility for our lives and for the lives we have been given to care for. We are all creators, but too many reject the God-given right to create and instead become consumers, hiding in the safety of some government, some corporation, some self-help philosophy to take care of us. And so why should we be surprised when we turn around and somebody is sitting in our chair, dictating how our marriage will go, how our career will go, whether or not we can have peace with our neighbors? We shouldn’t be surprised. We handed them our authority.

A Creator is Ready When Luck Strikes

Every successful creator has friends who think he or she is lucky. They met that one curator at a coffee shop, or Oprah’s housekeeper accidentally left that book behind in the kitchen. And the truth is their friends are right. They did get lucky. Everybody gets lucky. Luck is like the weather, it comes and goes, it makes crazy things happen randomly. But unless you actually spend the hours painting those paintings, meeting the curator amounts to nothing. And unless you put in the year to write the book, it can’t get left behind on Oprah’s counter.

Here we have the man who invented the personal computer, then the laptop. He’s now destroying them. That is an amazing life.

via Daring Fireball

Excellent! If you haven’t seen these yet, watch them. Reminds me of Ecclesiastes 1:9

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.

It doesn’t mean that we cannot be creative though.

This is my beautiful wife Danielle. We’ve been married almost five years, and she has been an incredible blessing to my life. This last year she gave birth to our first son, Elijah, and started her own wedding photography business. I get incredible joy watching her pursue her dreams as a mother and artist.

Subscribing to Danielle’s blog is a good way to keep up with our family and see the great photos she takes, as well of some of mine, so check it out. I took the above photo last night down in our little studio with a beauty light, Danielle will post more shots from last night on her blog when we finish editing them.

UPDATE: Danielle’s Post

My friend Jose while we were out to coffee. (taken w/ my iphone)

This is my friend Jose, he’s a hair stylist and a christian in the film industry.   Jose is extremely talented and has worked on some great films and television shows.  We met on “Christmas in Beverly Hills” and then I caught up to him again one day on “Parenthood.”  We’ve been trying to get together since then but with traveling, long hours, and Eli coming along we never got the chance until this past Saturday.  Jose is extremely kind, humble, thoughtful and giving.  He’s cut my hair twice–the only times in Los Angeles someone other than me has cut my hair, and he does a much better job.  It’s always a pleasure to find and meet other christians who are making a living and an impact in the entertainment industry, so I thought I’d share it with you.

As a hairstylist Jose has a unique relationship with the actors onset, spending time with them getting camera ready and then throughout the day making sure they look the part.  The next project he’s waiting to hear if he gets called on his the new Batman movie, so if you get the chance, pray for that opportunity and many more to come.  And if your not one to pray, just look for him on set and say hi for me… he’s a great guy.

This is Bill Palmer’s original “Blood from a Stone” short, shot in 2009. First, Bill got a lot of our friends from “Clean House” together to make this short, and then bought the awesomely 80′s yellow Camaro to co-star with the “Go-To Guy” Matt Iseman.  My good friend Jeremy Hayward DP’d the short and I assisted him, taking some photos when I wasn’t needed.  The short picked up “Best Comedy Short” at LA Comedy Film Fest, and screened at Slam Dance, getting some great reviews.  Check out its facebook page. Since then Bill shot another short, “The Living Want Me Dead,” which has been even more successful and it’s a full 20+ mins long. It’s not up online yet, but I’ll post it when it is. Pretty much the same crew as “Blood from a Stone,” and I took some photos on set there too.

Just recently, has you may have seen in my last post, Bill shot a teaser video for a future feature length “Blood from a Stone.”  It was all shot in one day and all on a Go-Pro camera… pretty excited to see how that turns out. Here are the photos from that day.

Director Bill Palmer and Actor Matt Iseman

This is how you make dust fly on a low budget shoot.

Director Bill Palmer and the Hero Shotgun

Fellow photographer Ryan Mcalary

Crammed in the back as Matt checks the Hero Mullet.

It’s been 9 years since I last wrote a program in C++, but with all the exciting things happening in mobile computing I decided I’d like to relearn what little I knew and expand it to something useful. So far it’s pretty easy to pick back up–I remember strategies, but not necessarily how to implement them. Last night I started following the tutorials at learncpp.com, great site, and stayed up til 1am reading and then writing this little calculator program. I had all the basics worked out pretty quick but spent some time trying to remember how to do if and logic statements, finally I went to bed still figuring out the right way to implement recursion in the GetMathmaticalOperation()–I remember recursion being so cool when I learned it. Today it took me 1 min to fix, by returning the function instead of calling it. It’s a good feeling. There are still some improvements I could make but I don’t know how to yet.

It’s way easier for me to learn a programing language than a foreign language. Learning to program makes me feel smart, learning to speak another language makes me feel dumb and inept.

Here’s my first program in 9 years and it’s output:

#include <iostream>
#include <string>
using namespace std;

int GetUserInput()
{
using namespace std;
int x = 0;
cout << “Enter a number: “;
cin >> x;
cout << endl;
return x;
}

char GetMathmaticalOperation()
{
cout << “Which operation would you like to preform? (* / + -): “;
char operation;
cin >> operation;
cout << endl;

//Check to see if the user entered a proper operation
if(operation == ‘*’ || operation == ‘/’ || operation == ‘+’ || operation == ‘-’)
{
return operation;
}

//Call the functunction again if the user didn’t enter an acceptable operation
else
return GetMathmaticalOperation();
}

int CalculateResult(int x, char operation, int y)
{
if(operation == ‘*’)
return x * y;
if(operation == ‘/’)
return x / y;
if(operation == ‘+’)
return x + y;
if(operation == ‘-’)
return x – y;
else
{
cout << “Error calculating” << endl;
return NULL;
}
}

void PrintResult(int x)
{
cout << “The solution is: ” << x << endl;
}
int main()
{
int firstInput = 0; //first input variable
firstInput = GetUserInput();
char userOperation;
userOperation = GetMathmaticalOperation();
int secondInput = 0;
secondInput = GetUserInput();
int result = 0;
result = CalculateResult(firstInput,userOperation,secondInput);
PrintResult(result);
return 0;
}

Found this via ticklebooth.com.  I loved it.  Many shorts I find online have some sort of payoff that you have to wait and hope for, but this short had me the whole time.  I even had to stop it for a second in amazement at the genius of it, and it had only just begun. Creative story and unique animation, which reminded me of Ponyo.  The story reminded me of something Pixar would do, very cute and endearing.  I’d say it’s better than some of Pixar’s shorts–that’s a high complement in my book.

If you’re not reading this on my blog, follow this link to see “Out of Sight.”  I can’t tell you who did it because the credits are in Japanese.

Also check out this great short, “Bottle,” I found a few months ago on Vimeo… really good as well.

Update: Found this “making of” site for “Out of Sight.” It’s in Chinese so you’ll have to translate it and then translate that yourself, but it’s got cool sketches of the planing process.

Over a year ago I was the Second Assistant Director on this movie which is now available to buy.  I never got a chance to see this movie because Danielle was getting induced for labor the morning after the screening party–she didn’t feel like attending and I knew better than leaving her home.  Interestingly enough Eli was conceived the day after finishing this movie.  TMI?  We also had friends visiting.  So… this movie and I have a strange connection.  The movie, and the beginning of the trailer also feature my other baby, my 280Z!  She’s a movie star.

The movie also happens to be a christian movie which I didn’t really know until I’d already agreed to do it.  My connection to the movie was a non-christian friend who was the AD.  The writer/director had apparently been in the movie business for awhile as the assistant to a big producer and became a born again christian.  The film is his story, which is autobiographical, about rejecting his father as a kid because he discovered his father was gay and then later in life reconciling their relationship.  Probably worth checking out. Here is the trailer.

This past week I volunteered at the AFI FEST.  It was a great time with lots of friendly volunteers.  I only “worked” 10 hours but I got to see two movies in that time, Made In Dagenham and Black Swan.  Before each movie the director and principle actors came up to the front to introduce the movie. I’ve got to say… that’s a great way to watch a movie, especially one with Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis and Winona Ryder.  I’m pretty impressed with the movies AFI lined up and the hard work they put into creating a free festival.  I definitely recommend volunteering next year if you get the chance.