Hi friend!
As public spaces start opening up and social life placidly resumes, we’ve started venturing out in something called “public dining”. It’s a thing.
Getting back to sharing quality meals with quality people is an absolute privilege. It took 1+ years of suspension to put co-eating and co-existing in sharp relief. It’s now clear to me how relevant this is in my life, and how easy it was to make it into a banal thing, like “so, where’s dinner tonight?”.
During one of those meals, one commensal was curious about what I did. While explaining that other than building for the web I also make videos, I found myself telling the story about the time I just made a music video for my good friends TrYangle using nothing but borrowed footage from the Canadian zombie movie “Les Affamés”, directed by Robin Aubert. When describing how I felt the music and the footage would be a perfect match and that I simply felt compelled to mash the two up — regardless of whether the director, band or production company would be OK with it — I felt the hair on my arms stand up. Proper goose-bumps. It was exciting, it was passionate and it was risky. It felt right, and I felt proud of doing it.
Fortunately, everyone involved was extremely kind, and when I (cold) pitched the final result to the director on Twitter, he was excited and managed to get the production team on board. They simply asked me to add a disclaimer to the video stating the footage was taken from their movie.
I get that question of Intellectual Property Rights™ a lot when I tell this story, but rights, especially on a small artistic scale like ours, are simply a mental construct. Robin and the production team have only to gain from this (small) exposure. But when you re-mash someone's work you're in essence shining a new light on it. Those hundreds of people who have now watched the video were exposed to “Les Affamés” in a way that, most likely, they wouldn't have been otherwise. Same for the band, whose song has now gained a new visual dimension. One of the band members told me that listening to “All” now conveyed images of the chair totem for him. See what he meant:
(Check out more of TrYangle’s music and go watch Rob’s gorgeous movie. If you’re brave enough.)
And this is the beauty / magic of creativity; something springs to life where before there was something else. Hopefully this new something is powerful and meaningful enough to make us shed a tear or reframe the way we think about things.
When you want to create this powerful thing it’s important to have the right setup in place.
“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” - Abraham Lincoln
Uses This is a great source of ideas for better tools to perform your trade.
Diverse profiles cohabit this web space. You get the nerdy linguist but also the organic, whole grain LA baker. Currently, I’m exploring my writer's vein, so I naturally gravitated toward the “writer” category. The hardware nerd in you will always take something away from such a trip.
Remember to keep your tools sharp,
Fred
PS: The Three Things to Know family is now 200 folks big. Wooowzah! 🎉 Thanks for being there and for sharing your most precious commodity; your attention.