new work

as things seem to happen in my life, a seachange is in process. my architecture work is coming to a close while my film work is starting to bustle. this feels very very good to me. i sometimes wonder if i haven't approached architecture in the same way the george bush seems to have approached the white house: as a response to a difficult past event...a poor reason to approach anything. architecture school was extremely challenging for me and i suppose, in retrospect, i've always wanted to prove to myself that i could "do it" because in school i got the definite impression that i couldn't do it. in general, school seemed to communicate that message to me. what i find curious is that whenever i've tried to "do" architecture, i find myself in film. it happened as a kid, in high school, in college and in grad school. i would endeavor to create architectural projects and find myself dreaming in pictures. a common criticism of my architectural work was that it dealt in pictures, not architecture. i came away from those crits often wondering if i understood what architecture was at all. i do tend to think of buildings sequentially... you enter here, you go there, you see that, you do this... and i tend to like architecture that presents sequences of spaces, processions and especially cities (i liked urban planning a lot). the aspect of architecture that i dislike, viscerally, is all the regulation around it, the bureaucracy that attends most building projects, which, though i may be applying my own neurosis to this, seem to say, "you are bad for even thinking of this." it feels very much like my experience of church, actually, which involved a lot of rules that made no sense to me.

i can't claim that filmmaking is any better, especially in a studio format, where there are terrible pressures to make money, be successful, be glamorous, and climb the ladder. but, my sense is that as an independent, there is much more freedom (in architecture too, but the places you can practice without oversight are dwindling). i've been watching a lot of john waters films and i am heartened by the outrageousness and compassion his films present, despite their surface vulgarity, which i find hilarious and shocking, still! and, now, a teenage fantasy of mine is coming true: i will get to visit the starship enterprise and participate in the making of a star trek episode. this trumps all architectural possibilities! it turns out that not far from where i live there is a full-scale copy of the original star trek sets that are being used to create new original series episodes. it's astonishing to see how well the sets are reproduced, and i can't wait to see what a completely community driven production is like.

oh, and if you need a cinematographer, i've got a swanky new camera that takes gorgeous movies. ask me for references!