1:20am
in between writing this thing i have been reading a lot and especially reading brakhage said, an unconfirmed account of stan brakhage's musings during a colorado lecture. i hope he said these things because i like them a lot. here are a few interesting ones:
“The brain does not think through in full story fragments.”
“It is not enough to take a picture of something and present it as evidence so that one doesn’t need to reflect on where this came from.”
“The strength of documentary is to tell the facts in an artistic way.”
he also apparently had some choice words for truffaut,
“I think Fahrenheit 451 is one of his best films because so much of the rest was a bunch of French bullshit.”
and said this too apparently:
“…the male penis…is there any other?”
which i hope is true
BY tom ON 01.08.26
1:34am
hi i didn't really do anything today, but i did recently see the 400 blows and i thought the camerawork was pretty nifty. my friend told my other friend that he only ever has bad ideas and it is quite upsetting. okay bye
tom
BY tom ON 01.05.26
hello from the pointed hour of 3:29am. i have come back from my art desk finishing two held shots for this little thing that aren't very exciting on their own but will hopefully be fun in context. i try to slog through these kinds of shots because they're not as fun to animate as the peppy ones. just as important though! after pencil testing everything stuff looks okay though. that's three shots down for this film out of... who knows how many, becuase i haven't even finished writing it yet. don't you just love me?
i don't think i actually had anything substantial to say. ummm... happy new year! oh dear i'm late. uhhh sorry i'm sorry
tom
BY tom ON 01.04.26
i dont really know how but i poured out a draft of the entire first act of the thing yesterday. a new draft. there's a fair amount of emotion in it... PLEASE CRY AT MY MOVIE. no but i'm staring at it now dissecting what's wrong with it, and hoping that today i suddenly get the idea to polish off the accompanying acts, or at least get to the third..
i just bought the by brakhage criterion and am practically quivering with excitement. please tell me you've heard of him before. a beautiful, artsy mind.. i think every picture of his is a drug. the first one i'd ever seen was a shitty 480p youtube video of stellar, and i remember both falling in love with it and realizing that i need to see this film in hi-def. if you've not heard of him before, maybe go watch dog star man. to do this satisfactorily i think you have to temporarily forget a lot about what you know about movies. trust me!
~tom
BY tom ON 12.29.25
every so often i'll become absolutely enamored with a director. now it is orson welles. i've just watched his f for fake and wow, what a treat it is to listen to him go. have you ever heard the audio of him doing the frozen peas commercial?
welles on being asked to emphasize the "in" of in july: get me a jury and show me how you can say "in july" and i'll go down on you.
what a guy! show them tenacious bastards in the sound room what fer!
the opening shot of this thing is taking many different forms. i did a rough "animatic" of the opening yesterday with a bunch of scratch narration, and boy, oh boy, was it slow... not in the sense of a long take, which i really don't have a problem with, but the pacing of the shots themselves. i can't say too much without giving the entire story away. i've come up with a shot that is 500x better but also going to be 500x harder to pull off. it's a crane shot. on a 2d background. yippee... but hopefully it'll come out all majestic-like.
it's probably also going to be digital. unfortunately animation paper is getting very expensive. that's NOT to say i don't have 16mm projects in the oven... but something as long as this story would just burn money i don't have. thankfully i have a few tricks up my sleeve to (hopefully) make it look not pixelly and dull.
i go back to drawing now. have a good holiday. hugs n love
~tom
BY tom ON 12.22.25