Shooting, Writing and Directing

My goodness, these past few weeks have been so hectic I can’t even begin to explain it. Among all the problems I’ve come across, I don’t think anything could be a bigger obstacle than my constant role interactions and crossovers. I’ll explain.

I find myself to be primarily a cinematographer, someone who uses a camera to paint a certain portrait to evoke a certain emotion from a certain audience. Unfortunately, as everyone knows by now I’m sure, you can only go so far with simple photographic appeal. I wish I could say that my skills as a writer and director have flourished this quarter, but I find myself making stupid decisions as both. I’m not thinking as carefully about it as I would about the shots. I keep having to change my story because I didn’t anticipate how much time a certain aspect would take, or a specific part of the story conflicts with another… it’s been a struggle to keep everything in line. It’s completely my fault, too, because when I was developing the idea for this film I should have been looking at the entire work as a whole and not focus on specific sections. I used the Freytag pyramid to create a general story arch and creatively locked myself inside it. After I had accomplished this, I proceeded to think about the shots I wanted to make and how I could feasibly pull them off.

Unfortunately, this meant two things. One, I was no longer putting any more time into my story, dialogue nor characters. Two, I spent way too much of my shooting time trying to perfect certain movements — and in the end I barely used any of them due to general shoddiness. I never wanted to show something that looked unnecessarily shaky or blurry, and I’m sticking to that.

I’ve also been struggling as a director, as I find myself constantly forgetting to direct along with my other jobs as the writer, cinematographer, and audio man. This became too much early on in the project and I decided to ditch most of my dialogue. Unfortunately, it’s been the same way in all my videos. Definitely an improvement this time, but since I’ll be using voiceovers for pretty much every piece of footage with talking… it makes me cringe to think about the hours I have spent/am still spending on audio imperfections. It’s sad and it made me sacrifice my love for cinematography for those scenes as well. After a while and a few days of trying, I needed to get the shot no matter what I needed to do to make it work.

This film has taken a much different direction than when I first started out the quarter. I kinda wish I had stuck with a documentary-style movie as that really would have fit better/been easier to shoot and conceptualize. This project definitely has strained my creative veins in a way I have not experienced before. It has been worthwhile just for the fact that I’ve been doing something completely new and something I am not used to dealing with all myself. It’s an interesting burden and it has been a frustrating quarter, but I’m excited to show everyone the final product.

Shooting, Writing and Directing

My goodness, these past few weeks have been so hectic I can’t even begin to explain it. Among all the problems I’ve come across, I don’t think anything could be a bigger obstacle than my constant role interactions and crossovers. I’ll explain.

I find myself to be primarily a cinematographer, someone who uses a camera to paint a certain portrait to evoke a certain emotion from a certain audience. Unfortunately, as everyone knows by now I’m sure, you can only go so far with simple photographic appeal. I wish I could say that my skills as a writer and director have flourished this quarter, but I find myself making stupid decisions as both. I’m not thinking as carefully about it as I would about the shots. I keep having to change my story because I didn’t anticipate how much time a certain aspect would take, or a specific part of the story conflicts with another… it’s been a struggle to keep everything in line. It’s completely my fault, too, because when I was developing the idea for this film I should have been looking at the entire work as a whole and not focus on specific sections. I used the Freytag pyramid to create a general story arch and creatively locked myself inside it. After I had accomplished this, I proceeded to think about the shots I wanted to make and how I could feasibly pull them off.

Unfortunately, this meant two things. One, I was no longer putting any more time into my story, dialogue nor characters. Two, I spent way too much of my shooting time trying to perfect certain movements — and in the end I barely used any of them due to general shoddiness. I never wanted to show something that looked unnecessarily shaky or blurry, and I’m sticking to that.

I’ve also been struggling as a director, as I find myself constantly forgetting to direct along with my other jobs as the writer, cinematographer, and audio man. This became too much early on in the project and I decided to ditch most of my dialogue. Unfortunately, it’s been the same way in all my videos. Definitely an improvement this time, but since I’ll be using voiceovers for pretty much every piece of footage with talking… it makes me cringe to think about the hours I have spent/am still spending on audio imperfections. It’s sad and it made me sacrifice my love for cinematography for those scenes as well. After a while and a few days of trying, I needed to get the shot no matter what I needed to do to make it work.

This film has taken a much different direction than when I first started out the quarter. I kinda wish I had stuck with a documentary-style movie as that really would have fit better/been easier to shoot and conceptualize. This project definitely has strained my creative veins in a way I have not experienced before. It has been worthwhile just for the fact that I’ve been doing something completely new and something I am not used to dealing with all myself. It’s an interesting burden and it has been a frustrating quarter, but I’m excited to show everyone the final product.

Shooting, Writing and Directing

My goodness, these past few weeks have been so hectic I can’t even begin to explain it. Among all the problems I’ve come across, I don’t think anything could be a bigger obstacle than my constant role interactions and crossovers. I’ll explain.

I find myself to be primarily a cinematographer, someone who uses a camera to paint a certain portrait to evoke a certain emotion from a certain audience. Unfortunately, as everyone knows by now I’m sure, you can only go so far with simple photographic appeal. I wish I could say that my skills as a writer and director have flourished this quarter, but I find myself making stupid decisions as both. I’m not thinking as carefully about it as I would about the shots. I keep having to change my story because I didn’t anticipate how much time a certain aspect would take, or a specific part of the story conflicts with another… it’s been a struggle to keep everything in line. It’s completely my fault, too, because when I was developing the idea for this film I should have been looking at the entire work as a whole and not focus on specific sections. I used the Freytag pyramid to create a general story arch and creatively locked myself inside it. After I had accomplished this, I proceeded to think about the shots I wanted to make and how I could feasibly pull them off.

Unfortunately, this meant two things. One, I was no longer putting any more time into my story, dialogue nor characters. Two, I spent way too much of my shooting time trying to perfect certain movements — and in the end I barely used any of them due to general shoddiness. I never wanted to show something that looked unnecessarily shaky or blurry, and I’m sticking to that.

I’ve also been struggling as a director, as I find myself constantly forgetting to direct along with my other jobs as the writer, cinematographer, and audio man. This became too much early on in the project and I decided to ditch most of my dialogue. Unfortunately, it’s been the same way in all my videos. Definitely an improvement this time, but since I’ll be using voiceovers for pretty much every piece of footage with talking… it makes me cringe to think about the hours I have spent/am still spending on audio imperfections. It’s sad and it made me sacrifice my love for cinematography for those scenes as well. After a while and a few days of trying, I needed to get the shot no matter what I needed to do to make it work.

This film has taken a much different direction than when I first started out the quarter. I kinda wish I had stuck with a documentary-style movie as that really would have fit better/been easier to shoot and conceptualize. This project definitely has strained my creative veins in a way I have not experienced before. It has been worthwhile just for the fact that I’ve been doing something completely new and something I am not used to dealing with all myself. It’s an interesting burden and it has been a frustrating quarter, but I’m excited to show everyone the final product.

Shooting, Writing and Directing

My goodness, these past few weeks have been so hectic I can’t even begin to explain it. Among all the problems I’ve come across, I don’t think anything could be a bigger obstacle than my constant role interactions and crossovers. I’ll explain.

I find myself to be primarily a cinematographer, someone who uses a camera to paint a certain portrait to evoke a certain emotion from a certain audience. Unfortunately, as everyone knows by now I’m sure, you can only go so far with simple photographic appeal. I wish I could say that my skills as a writer and director have flourished this quarter, but I find myself making stupid decisions as both. I’m not thinking as carefully about it as I would about the shots. I keep having to change my story because I didn’t anticipate how much time a certain aspect would take, or a specific part of the story conflicts with another… it’s been a struggle to keep everything in line. It’s completely my fault, too, because when I was developing the idea for this film I should have been looking at the entire work as a whole and not focus on specific sections. I used the Freytag pyramid to create a general story arch and creatively locked myself inside it. After I had accomplished this, I proceeded to think about the shots I wanted to make and how I could feasibly pull them off.

Unfortunately, this meant two things. One, I was no longer putting any more time into my story, dialogue nor characters. Two, I spent way too much of my shooting time trying to perfect certain movements — and in the end I barely used any of them due to general shoddiness. I never wanted to show something that looked unnecessarily shaky or blurry, and I’m sticking to that.

I’ve also been struggling as a director, as I find myself constantly forgetting to direct along with my other jobs as the writer, cinematographer, and audio man. This became too much early on in the project and I decided to ditch most of my dialogue. Unfortunately, it’s been the same way in all my videos. Definitely an improvement this time, but since I’ll be using voiceovers for pretty much every piece of footage with talking… it makes me cringe to think about the hours I have spent/am still spending on audio imperfections. It’s sad and it made me sacrifice my love for cinematography for those scenes as well. After a while and a few days of trying, I needed to get the shot no matter what I needed to do to make it work.

This film has taken a much different direction than when I first started out the quarter. I kinda wish I had stuck with a documentary-style movie as that really would have fit better/been easier to shoot and conceptualize. This project definitely has strained my creative veins in a way I have not experienced before. It has been worthwhile just for the fact that I’ve been doing something completely new and something I am not used to dealing with all myself. It’s an interesting burden and it has been a frustrating quarter, but I’m excited to show everyone the final product.

Shooting, Writing and Directing

My goodness, these past few weeks have been so hectic I can’t even begin to explain it. Among all the problems I’ve come across, I don’t think anything could be a bigger obstacle than my constant role interactions and crossovers. I’ll explain.

I find myself to be primarily a cinematographer, someone who uses a camera to paint a certain portrait to evoke a certain emotion from a certain audience. Unfortunately, as everyone knows by now I’m sure, you can only go so far with simple photographic appeal. I wish I could say that my skills as a writer and director have flourished this quarter, but I find myself making stupid decisions as both. I’m not thinking as carefully about it as I would about the shots. I keep having to change my story because I didn’t anticipate how much time a certain aspect would take, or a specific part of the story conflicts with another… it’s been a struggle to keep everything in line. It’s completely my fault, too, because when I was developing the idea for this film I should have been looking at the entire work as a whole and not focus on specific sections. I used the Freytag pyramid to create a general story arch and creatively locked myself inside it. After I had accomplished this, I proceeded to think about the shots I wanted to make and how I could feasibly pull them off.

Unfortunately, this meant two things. One, I was no longer putting any more time into my story, dialogue nor characters. Two, I spent way too much of my shooting time trying to perfect certain movements — and in the end I barely used any of them due to general shoddiness. I never wanted to show something that looked unnecessarily shaky or blurry, and I’m sticking to that.

I’ve also been struggling as a director, as I find myself constantly forgetting to direct along with my other jobs as the writer, cinematographer, and audio man. This became too much early on in the project and I decided to ditch most of my dialogue. Unfortunately, it’s been the same way in all my videos. Definitely an improvement this time, but since I’ll be using voiceovers for pretty much every piece of footage with talking… it makes me cringe to think about the hours I have spent/am still spending on audio imperfections. It’s sad and it made me sacrifice my love for cinematography for those scenes as well. After a while and a few days of trying, I needed to get the shot no matter what I needed to do to make it work.

This film has taken a much different direction than when I first started out the quarter. I kinda wish I had stuck with a documentary-style movie as that really would have fit better/been easier to shoot and conceptualize. This project definitely has strained my creative veins in a way I have not experienced before. It has been worthwhile just for the fact that I’ve been doing something completely new and something I am not used to dealing with all myself. It’s an interesting burden and it has been a frustrating quarter, but I’m excited to show everyone the final product.

Shooting, Writing and Directing

My goodness, these past few weeks have been so hectic I can’t even begin to explain it. Among all the problems I’ve come across, I don’t think anything could be a bigger obstacle than my constant role interactions and crossovers. I’ll explain.

I find myself to be primarily a cinematographer, someone who uses a camera to paint a certain portrait to evoke a certain emotion from a certain audience. Unfortunately, as everyone knows by now I’m sure, you can only go so far with simple photographic appeal. I wish I could say that my skills as a writer and director have flourished this quarter, but I find myself making stupid decisions as both. I’m not thinking as carefully about it as I would about the shots. I keep having to change my story because I didn’t anticipate how much time a certain aspect would take, or a specific part of the story conflicts with another… it’s been a struggle to keep everything in line. It’s completely my fault, too, because when I was developing the idea for this film I should have been looking at the entire work as a whole and not focus on specific sections. I used the Freytag pyramid to create a general story arch and creatively locked myself inside it. After I had accomplished this, I proceeded to think about the shots I wanted to make and how I could feasibly pull them off.

Unfortunately, this meant two things. One, I was no longer putting any more time into my story, dialogue nor characters. Two, I spent way too much of my shooting time trying to perfect certain movements — and in the end I barely used any of them due to general shoddiness. I never wanted to show something that looked unnecessarily shaky or blurry, and I’m sticking to that.

I’ve also been struggling as a director, as I find myself constantly forgetting to direct along with my other jobs as the writer, cinematographer, and audio man. This became too much early on in the project and I decided to ditch most of my dialogue. Unfortunately, it’s been the same way in all my videos. Definitely an improvement this time, but since I’ll be using voiceovers for pretty much every piece of footage with talking… it makes me cringe to think about the hours I have spent/am still spending on audio imperfections. It’s sad and it made me sacrifice my love for cinematography for those scenes as well. After a while and a few days of trying, I needed to get the shot no matter what I needed to do to make it work.

This film has taken a much different direction than when I first started out the quarter. I kinda wish I had stuck with a documentary-style movie as that really would have fit better/been easier to shoot and conceptualize. This project definitely has strained my creative veins in a way I have not experienced before. It has been worthwhile just for the fact that I’ve been doing something completely new and something I am not used to dealing with all myself. It’s an interesting burden and it has been a frustrating quarter, but I’m excited to show everyone the final product.

Shooting, Writing and Directing

My goodness, these past few weeks have been so hectic I can’t even begin to explain it. Among all the problems I’ve come across, I don’t think anything could be a bigger obstacle than my constant role interactions and crossovers. I’ll explain.

I find myself to be primarily a cinematographer, someone who uses a camera to paint a certain portrait to evoke a certain emotion from a certain audience. Unfortunately, as everyone knows by now I’m sure, you can only go so far with simple photographic appeal. I wish I could say that my skills as a writer and director have flourished this quarter, but I find myself making stupid decisions as both. I’m not thinking as carefully about it as I would about the shots. I keep having to change my story because I didn’t anticipate how much time a certain aspect would take, or a specific part of the story conflicts with another… it’s been a struggle to keep everything in line. It’s completely my fault, too, because when I was developing the idea for this film I should have been looking at the entire work as a whole and not focus on specific sections. I used the Freytag pyramid to create a general story arch and creatively locked myself inside it. After I had accomplished this, I proceeded to think about the shots I wanted to make and how I could feasibly pull them off.

Unfortunately, this meant two things. One, I was no longer putting any more time into my story, dialogue nor characters. Two, I spent way too much of my shooting time trying to perfect certain movements — and in the end I barely used any of them due to general shoddiness. I never wanted to show something that looked unnecessarily shaky or blurry, and I’m sticking to that.

I’ve also been struggling as a director, as I find myself constantly forgetting to direct along with my other jobs as the writer, cinematographer, and audio man. This became too much early on in the project and I decided to ditch most of my dialogue. Unfortunately, it’s been the same way in all my videos. Definitely an improvement this time, but since I’ll be using voiceovers for pretty much every piece of footage with talking… it makes me cringe to think about the hours I have spent/am still spending on audio imperfections. It’s sad and it made me sacrifice my love for cinematography for those scenes as well. After a while and a few days of trying, I needed to get the shot no matter what I needed to do to make it work.

This film has taken a much different direction than when I first started out the quarter. I kinda wish I had stuck with a documentary-style movie as that really would have fit better/been easier to shoot and conceptualize. This project definitely has strained my creative veins in a way I have not experienced before. It has been worthwhile just for the fact that I’ve been doing something completely new and something I am not used to dealing with all myself. It’s an interesting burden and it has been a frustrating quarter, but I’m excited to show everyone the final product.

Shooting, Writing and Directing

My goodness, these past few weeks have been so hectic I can’t even begin to explain it. Among all the problems I’ve come across, I don’t think anything could be a bigger obstacle than my constant role interactions and crossovers. I’ll explain.

I find myself to be primarily a cinematographer, someone who uses a camera to paint a certain portrait to evoke a certain emotion from a certain audience. Unfortunately, as everyone knows by now I’m sure, you can only go so far with simple photographic appeal. I wish I could say that my skills as a writer and director have flourished this quarter, but I find myself making stupid decisions as both. I’m not thinking as carefully about it as I would about the shots. I keep having to change my story because I didn’t anticipate how much time a certain aspect would take, or a specific part of the story conflicts with another… it’s been a struggle to keep everything in line. It’s completely my fault, too, because when I was developing the idea for this film I should have been looking at the entire work as a whole and not focus on specific sections. I used the Freytag pyramid to create a general story arch and creatively locked myself inside it. After I had accomplished this, I proceeded to think about the shots I wanted to make and how I could feasibly pull them off.

Unfortunately, this meant two things. One, I was no longer putting any more time into my story, dialogue nor characters. Two, I spent way too much of my shooting time trying to perfect certain movements — and in the end I barely used any of them due to general shoddiness. I never wanted to show something that looked unnecessarily shaky or blurry, and I’m sticking to that.

I’ve also been struggling as a director, as I find myself constantly forgetting to direct along with my other jobs as the writer, cinematographer, and audio man. This became too much early on in the project and I decided to ditch most of my dialogue. Unfortunately, it’s been the same way in all my videos. Definitely an improvement this time, but since I’ll be using voiceovers for pretty much every piece of footage with talking… it makes me cringe to think about the hours I have spent/am still spending on audio imperfections. It’s sad and it made me sacrifice my love for cinematography for those scenes as well. After a while and a few days of trying, I needed to get the shot no matter what I needed to do to make it work.

This film has taken a much different direction than when I first started out the quarter. I kinda wish I had stuck with a documentary-style movie as that really would have fit better/been easier to shoot and conceptualize. This project definitely has strained my creative veins in a way I have not experienced before. It has been worthwhile just for the fact that I’ve been doing something completely new and something I am not used to dealing with all myself. It’s an interesting burden and it has been a frustrating quarter, but I’m excited to show everyone the final product.

How Parents Encourage Children’s Development

In my article on Imagination & Creation, I talked about the importance of the imagination in children and it’s crucial role our ability to be a force for change.  I then talked about the role of toys in this development.  In this article I want to focus on the important role that parents play.

Imagination is a child’s way of practicing what they see and learn around them.  We are constantly picking up on individual behavior patterns, social structures, etc. And as the child is piecing all of these complex things together the imagination gives them a place to put themselves in different situations and guess how the world would respond accordingly.  Children are also getting a feel for the meaning of an hour, a day, week day, weekend, year, and so on.

Parents are often the child’s first example of human behavior, an example of routine in life and a source of security.  Dancy puts great emphasis on the importance of parents being active in the home, for the child to see, and also setting rhythms which I will talk about further.

Movement & Security

Have you ever seen a child run to get their toy vacuum with the desire to “vacuum” alongside Mom or Dad? Or the toy lawn mower? (or something that they pretend is a vacuum or lawn mower?).  This is a perfect example of a child imitating life.  Rahima Dancy expresses the following concern in You Are Your Child’s First Teacher:

“A second factor in the difficulty of being home with young children is our focus on the child instead of on the ‘work’ of homemaking, hich has largely disappeared through prepackaged foods and all our labor-saving devices.  Modern life simply doesn’t support what young children need, which is to see us doing work that involves movement.  What they actually see us doing isn’t satisfying to them.  As a result, they seem to demand more attention, when in fact they are asking to ovserve us doing ‘real work’ that involves movement and transformation of materials – something they can both share in and then imitate in their play.” (Dancy pg. 29)

According to Dancy, it is best to focus on movement and “work”, allowing the child to play while being present for the child when needed.  This creates a sense of security and trust without being overbearing and being too controlling on the parents or caretakers side.  Dancy gives the following advice:

“The first is that we’re doing these activities with awareness and with love.  I am reminded of Mother Teresa’s suggestion that we do little things with great love.  So, when we put a vase with flowers on the table or sweep the kitchen floor, we can try to do it with an awareness of the quality of our movements, with an awareness of their beneficial effect on the young child, and with care.” (Dancy, pg. 31)

Establishing Routine & Rhythm

Having a routine established not only helps children understand the concept of time (days, years, hours, seasons), but also let’s them know what to expect which results in less opposition.  There are many ways to establish routine and rhythm, and each home will have to decide which is best for their family.  Having a schedule takes persistence and discipline on the side of the parents, but can be great for children – consider having dinner at a certain time, or bedtime, etc.  Holidays are also a great way to introduce the seasons, and many traditions.  But incorporating small traditions in everyday life can be fun.  Dancy gives some fun ideas in her book such as lighting a candle while reading a bedtime story, then blowing it out.  You could also establish days of the week for household chores/projects such as doing the laundry every Monday, etc.  There is no right answer when it comes to establishing rhythm in your home, but finding what works for your individual family can create more peace and understanding for the children in it.

I Won’t Rehang It

The words hit me hot,

like Aunt Pam’s old iron.

Heated up by white coals,

in the old wood stove.


Kissing my stupid lips with news,

I fell back, deaf and dumb, through the bathroom door.

Reaching out, flailing arms, back going diagonal I searched for something stable.

My numb fingers curled around the shower curtain.

With each pop of the rings snapping I descended deeper into chilled, darkness.


Four months later and I’m still there.

Ice cold water splashing out from the shower, it’s repelled by my body and it drops to the floor.

Maybe I’ll slip and join him when I get out.