Grandfather, the Craftsman

I would love to introduce to the audience a dear friend of mine – a grandfather. This kind and sometimes – on the surface – cold man has made waves and left marks in the world of woodwork. His first work was a clean cut but cubic model of a turtle. Some of his most recent and notable works include those below – a 13 foot tandem canoe and a lithe statue of The Lift. The decades that have visited and left him in the meantime are extended moment of formation – sometimes extreme. Whether it be war and more intimate death or love and lakeside rest – he is able to use timber for a number of ends in various means. These ends can be decks and kitchen cabinets in the form of function or models and works of art in the function of form. His favorite kind of work however are the items that are blend the two notions with his own fascination with the world as he understands it. The boat above – and below – is functional because he wanted to build one. It is not fashioned in a character much his own alone but also decorated with his love for the chemical bases of life. This kind of work also includes love chests and instruments made for members and friends of our households. He considers timber in each of these cases as an extension of a fluid mind into concrete time and dimension – actualization – for whatever the cause because he loves to do so.

The nature of this extension however entails an intricate creative track that is both wild and sane. It could involve the identification of a lack – whether it be artistic or a set of stairs – and then an extensive amount of time in the mental acrobatics of abstract invention drawn out in metrics. These two kinds of ends – form or function or some kind of combination – both include a series of material and construction tests before the decision about how to move on is made. These tests inform what he can or can’t achieve – but he notes these failures as sources for new ideas such as a new form of timber. The ends are sometimes not what he had set out for – but each one was considered for hundreds of hours. I love him a lot for it.

Here's a video of him –

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=jerry+spady&&view=detail&mid=E2B9FFEF1F4D1D217C44E2B9FFEF1F4D1D217C44&&FORM=VRDGAR&ru=%2Fvideos%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Djerry%2Bspady%26FORM%3DHDRSC3

Ai Yazawa and the Realistic Depiction of Love

Ai Yazawa is the pen name of the manga author of iconic series such as Nana and Paradise Kiss. She is known for her realistic art style that beautifully captures the emotions of her characters unlike any other and female-centered storylines, which has changed the manga genre forever and cemented her as an icon in girls’ manga.

Ai Yazawa was born on March 7, 1967, in Japan. She originally went to school to become a fashion designer, but later dropped out. Her time at art school still greatly affected her work, with all of her characters sporting trendy, elaborate outfits, which makes her work extremely popular with fashion enthusiasts. While Ai is her given name, the name Yazawa comes from singer Eikichi Yazawa, whom she is a fan of. She claims that musicians and designers inspire her work just as much as other manga authors, and her ability to take inspiration from other art mediums is prevalent in the details of her stories. She started writing in 1985, and since has released over 10 series. Her most famous works include Nana, Paradise Kiss, Tenshi Nanka Ja Nai, and Gokinjo Monogatari, with Nana and Paradise Kiss receiving anime adaptations, and even a live-action film adaptation of Nana with a sequel.

Arguably her most popular work (and my personal favorite), is Nana, which tells the story of two girls who are the same age, with the same name, who are both moving to Tokyo, and happen to sit next to each other on the train. Nana Komatsu is traveling to Tokyo to live with her boyfriend and her friends while trying to find a job, while Nana Osaki is traveling to Tokyo to begin her career as a singer. Later on, they run into each other again while looking for an apartment and decide to live together. The story follows their friendship while they navigate the troubles of independence and young love. 

Ai Yazawa is known for her female-centered stories that realistically depict relationships and the hardships of growing up. While other shojo, or romance, manga may depict love through rose-colored glasses, Yazawa’s storylines never shy away from depicting the ugly sides of romance, with relationships often serving as a tool of character development for her characters. Her characters are relatable and full of dimension and depth, not afraid to show their flaws, and constantly learning from mistakes. Yazawa uses a three-dimensional art style to embody the multi-dimensional characters. With trendy clothing and hairstyles and attention to small details in the face, Ai Yazawa is able to perfectly capture the emotional rollercoaster of her characters, proving her mastery of the down-to-earth storytelling that has cemented her as an icon in manga.

While she had to go on hiatus in 2009 due to illness, she said in an interview that she intends to finish Nana, the tragically incomplete masterpiece which is arguably one of the best girls’ manga of all time. I patiently await the day that she (fingers crossed) releases more of Nana. Ai Yazawa is a Pro-C, with an extensive career and published works unlike any other before that produced commercial success and changed the genre of romance manga forever. 

https://womenincomics.fandom.com/wiki/Ai_Yazawa

https://www.otaquest.com/introducing-ai-yazawa/

Tina Fey: Unbreakable Comedic Genius

Tina Fey

    Elizabeth Stamatina Fey, known publicly as Tina Fey, is a writer and actress who has received a plethora of awards and authored a wide range of creative works. From 1999 to 2006, she wrote for Saturday Night Live, during which she also appeared in the film Mean Girls, then transitioned to writing her own 7-season show 30 Rock. She continued to work in the film and television industry, notably co-creating the Netflix series Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. She also wrote the script for Broadway’s musical Mean Girls based on the original movie and went on to write her memoir Bossypants. From these works, Fey has won nine Emmy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, five Screen Actors Guild Awards, seven Writers Guild Awards, three Producers Guild Awards, the AP Entertainer of the Year award, and the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.

Tina Fey at the 2009 Emmy Awards

    To reach this level of success, Fey spent years mastering her craft. As a prodigal middle school student, she completed an independent study on comedy after finishing all of her regular course material, encouraged by an eighth-grade teacher to become a writer. She served as editor of her high school’s newspaper and participated in both choir and musical theater. She later went on to study drama at the University of Virginia, then moved to Chicago to take classes with and eventually join the cast of Second City. Throughout these years of work, Fey was intrinsically motivated by her love of writing and performing, noting that she really realized she liked it during high school and college. Although she has said that her high school musical theater performances were a "mistake", Fey also said, “kind of like the way a lot of people love sports but can’t actually play the sport they’re a fan of — that’s always been me with musical theater.” Although she has not always succeeded in all of her pursuits, her personal enjoyment has motivated her to continue working and writing.

Tina Fey and Rachel Dratch perform at Second City.

    Considering her creative process, Fey creates through flexibility. When asked how to succeed in writing and comedy, she recommends that writers “let things be malleable,” emphasizing the importance of patience and letting go. She has also said that writing can be very difficult, but that it is important to work hard and put work out for people to see and hear without fear, taking feedback insofar as it is valuable to progress. Also playing into her process, Fey uses personal experience and life events in her work. When writing the script for the Mean Girls musical, Fey shared that she “revisited high school behaviors of [her] own” and named characters after people she knew from college.

"Tina Fey's full speech at Variety's Power of Women event blasts comedy rooms and creators who treat women like cappuccino machines." (0:00 - 4:10)

    Another motivating factor for Fey is her feminism. During her time at SNL, she became the show’s first female head writer and often notes during interviews that she refuses to pit herself or other women against one another. Writing about women is also one of her passions. When asked about her process of writing female characters and stories, she has said, “I like to write about women, not so much about the way they relate to men, but about the way they relate to each other.” Fey is an inspirational creative, both for her range of accomplishments and her determination.

Works Cited:

List of awards and nominations received by Tina Fey

Tina Fey

15 Quotes by Tina Fey that’ll make you think

10 Things You May Not Know About Tina Fey

Tina Fey chats about branding, writing and coaching women during her Content Marketing World 2018 speech

5 Inspiring Quotes by Tina Fey on Writing

Tina Fey On Life, Motherhood, Writing And Comedy

What Tina Fey Says About Thriving in a Male-Dominated Creative Career

X Ambassador's Casey Harris: Experiences Become Music

Music was always going to be a part of Casey Harris’ life; but making a career out of it was a combination of both luck and hard work. Founding member of the alt-rock group X-Ambassadors, Harris works with his brother, Sam as lead vocalist, as well as drummer Adam Levin. Together, they’ve released three albums since 2015, as well as a number of individual releases.

For five or six years before the band began, Harris worked as a piano tuner in Ithaca, New York. When his brother needed a pianist for his band, Harris joined, and X Ambassadors was formed.

Their latest album, “The Beautiful Liar,” was released in September 2021, and was inspired largely by the audio dramas the brothers listened to when they were younger. Harris took a memory of a genre he loved and used it as an analogy for an album structure, intercutting songs with short, dramatized audio segments. The album also has a companion podcast, which tells the coming-of-age story of a blind girl becoming a superhero.

Harris himself is blind, and his experiences growing up had an impact on his songwriting. The band’s most well-known hit, “Renegades,” (which currently has more than 500 million streams on Spotify) was written as a love letter to those who feel like outsiders, as Harris did for much of his life.

“The Beautiful Liar” also wrestles with one’s shadow self, a concept pioneered by Carl Jung. Sam Harris also admits that the motif is likely a reflection of how he feels in regard to his blind older brother – a presence that constantly hovers nearby and is potentially overbearing.

Incubation and taking time away from creation is an integral part of Harris, and the rest of the band’s, songwriting process. “Especially when it comes to music, I think spending some time with your nose not to the grindstone somehow results in more creative, more inspired material.”

When discussing his feelings on getting back to music after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Harris hints towards an intrinsic motivation for his art, saying that, “it's really, really been nice to rehearse and play music together again. I've forgotten how much I love doing that.” He also views music as a form of escapism, saying, “When you're feeling trapped, claustrophobic, like the world is a dangerous, threatening place, at least you can go write music, go play music, and it makes you feel at least somewhat better.”

https://www.grammy.com/news/x-ambassadors-keyboardist-casey-harris-new-album-the-beautiful-liar-accessibility-interview

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/casey-harris-blind-x-ambassadors-keyboard-player-on-wanting-to-be-an-ambassador-for-disabled-musicians-a6887901.html

https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2021-09-24/x-ambassadors-push-boundaries-with-new-multimedia-project

Massive, Massive Talent

        Prior to the past two days, I never could have called myself a Nic Cage fan. I respect legends, and I love National Treasure and really enjoyed Adaptation, but my enjoyment of the average Nic Cage movie is unpredictable. In some ways, my mixed reactions to Cage’s performances mirror the unpredictability of how Cage’s movies will be received by the rest of the public. Cage is weird. Not all of his performances work for me. But my perception of his ability to craft characters was transformed after seeing his movie, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.

  

     In the movie, Cage plays himself as he navigates a complicated kidnapping plot and tries to define himself. The movie is weird as hell but is worth a watch, because it offers real insight into an actor who struggles to define himself in a world that has mythologized and (potentially) misrepresented him. Cage seems oddly conscious of his status as both an acting legend and a complete meme, but seems to care very little about either of these labels. To me, this is the heart of his creative process; he is incredibly open to doing whatever it takes to improving his performances in his own eyes, regardless of how other people view them. 

That is not to say that Cage is wholly intrinsically motivated. In a 2019 interview with The New York Times, Cage noted that he is inspired by his love of acting and working, but that there have also been times when he has taken roles simply to get a paycheck. It was also noteworthy how much Cage referenced other actors and other movies in his interview. It is clear that he is inspired by his peers, but the extent to which he discusses them seems indicative of the “collecting” creative process. Cage goes as far as to reference a time when he was so inspired by a commercial that John Stamos did that he emulated Stamos’ speaking inflections in one of his movies. Cage also clearly uses analogies as a means of sorting out where he stands in the film industry. When discussing why he stopped being an avid reader of philosophy, Cage states, “I thought people would rather see me as an orangutan than as an eagle meditating on the mountaintop anyway.” 

Again, Cage’s acting style is bizarre and I have absolutely no idea why he makes some of the acting choices that he does. But, as Cage points out in the interview, people with massive talent often aren’t understood in the public sphere. Cage’s talent comes from his ability to drop all conceptions about how he is perceived by others and channel his style in a unique way. I’m genuinely excited to see where his career will go next.

Sources: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/07/magazine/nicolas-cage-interview.html

Rob McElhenny: creator of It's Always Sunny and Mythic Quest

 

    Releasing its 15^th season over the pandemic, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia has become one of the most popular US television sitcoms on air. The show’s characters each bring their unique, backwards personalities to current culture, masterfully written to be appalling but not hated. Rob McElhenny has helped to create some of the most well-known neighborhood psychopaths and put those characters into the hearts of thousands of viewers.

 

    It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia started on a budget of almost nothing. Shot with friends Charlie Day, Glenn Howerton, Rob McElhenny, and Kaitlin Olson, the crew threw together two episodes and presented it before various studios, finally landing on FX who gave them the most freedom to work. While McElhenny is a heavy proponent of collaboration in the writing room, talking about how the American cult of personality doesn’t do justice to the teamwork it takes to create these projects, he was worried that bringing in Danny DeVito for the second season to up ratings might also upset the chemistry of the group. Now, about 15 years later, DeVito holds the same position in the gang as the rest and is a beloved part of the series.

 

    Its Always Sunny is based on a short written by McElhenny while living in a garage in West Hollywood. McElhenny talks about trying to flip a dramatic scene around to draw comedy from it. What it turned out to be was Its Always Sunny’s inverse of the classic sitcom group. It’s McElhenny’s self-awareness that makes these characters so well-loved and simultaneously hated. The views of the characters are so distorted and inherently flawed that it’s made obvious that the actions performed, and views held by these characters are not those of the producers and actors. In a podcast with Marc Maron, McElhenny talks about how the original skit was his passion project. He wanted to be involved in the whole process of what was then a short film, up until he has the disk in his hand. This would later be echoed in his desire to keep the show under their control when getting it signed with a studio. This short film, and another the group made soon after, would constitute the first two episodes of the show under production. McElhenny and the show went on to completely reimagine what the protagonists of a sitcom group could be.

 

    With Its Always Sunny renewed for its 18^th season, McElhenny has not slowed down with a passion to also do something new. Another product of this passion is McElhenny’s Mythic Quest. Again, Rob Mcelhenny shows his self-awareness in writing about the gaming industry in a comedic but honest way. It’s this self-awareness that lets him personify such truly flawed characters and in a comedic way to boot.

Sources:

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/may/06/rob-mcelhenney-mythic-quest-always-sunny-interview

WTF podcast with Marc Maron ep. 582

https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-features/its-always-sunny-philadelphia-creator-rob-mcelhenney-interview-882687/

Robert Eggers: A Brilliant New Voice in Horror Films

Robert Eggers is an American filmmaker who has made three films thus far in his career. Directing and writing his own films, Eggers most recent film is The Northman, a Viking epic which was released on April 22, 2022. With his first film The Witch premiering in 2015, Eggers has specialized in making films in the genre of psychological horror. His work is incredibly meticulous and jarring as it focuses on subjects from the past such as “witches” in 1630s New England and 19^th century lighthouse workers while containing scenes of graphic violence and disturbing imagery. In crafting each of his films, Eggers researches the subjects of each of his films deeply. For example, in writing the screenplay for his 2019 film The Lighthouse, Eggers took inspiration from a Welsh folktale about two lighthouse keepers who shared the same name and became stranded on their lighthouse station. In the tale, the two men eventually go mad and one of them dies. In seeking to perfectly recreate the aesthetics of the 19^th century lighthouse and the men who worked on such stations, Eggers delved deeply into historical records of the time, blueprints of lighthouses, symbolic art from the period, and classic literature from authors such as Herman Melville to capture the essence of the environment he was seeking to recreate. He states: “There are some things that we stretch, but my entire process is research-based. With the creation of the physical world, the material world, I’m trying for it to be as accurate as possible…There are so many choices to be made that it’s nice to have choices being made for you by research.” In this statement, Eggers describes the process of collecting as informing how his creative process operates. For Eggers, collecting this wealth of information for each film allows him to better control how he can construct the visual world of the film, providing his work with an element of realism that is able to draw the audience in to the work and keep them grounded and invested amidst the chaos of the horror surrounding the characters. It also enables him to devote more time to crafting the thematic and emotional elements of his work that truly make his films so impactful.

Collaboration is also a major aspect of Eggers’ creative process. As a film director, collaboration is a necessity, but Eggers seems to make special note of how important of an element it is to his work when discussing his creative process. In writing The Lighthouse, Robert worked alongside his brother Max in researching and crafting the narrative for film. Additionally, Eggers has also worked with actress Anya Taylor-Joy on two of his three films. In discussing their recent collaboration for The Northman, he states: “I mean it was so great because we’ve both grown a lot since we worked together on The Witch. I love repeat collaborations…But also as far as her work in the film when you’re working with someone who you already trust, like we can push each further and get to better results quicker.” Eggers frequently notes how collaboration is able to spur such an intense variety of ideas that can elevate the films he makes. Even when working with repeat collaborators on different projects, he discusses how those creatives can grow and change between projects and how that development over time that can spark new ideas that he could not have imagined himself for the film. For a writer-director such as Eggers, working with others may seem counterintuitive to the more individual type of filmmaking that he is embarking on. Yet, Eggers is able to recognize the tremendous value of collaboration and how working alongside others and utilizing their ideas on top of his own is able to elevate his work further. While Eggers is young and still has yet to truly make his mark in the film mainstream despite working with some of this generation’s most prominent actors, his incredible creativity leaps from the screen. His brand of psychological horror is incredibly unique, and I hope to see his work gain a greater following as he continues to make films, influencing and impacting audiences and other creatives alike.

Sources:

https://www.gq.com/story/robert-eggers-the-northman-interview

https://www.joblo.com/interview-the-northman-director-robert-eggers-on-his-viking-epic/

https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/10/15/20914097/robert-eggers-lighthouse-interview-witch

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/04/robert-eggerss-historical-visions-go-mainstream

To Boldly Go: Gene Roddenberry and Revolutionizing a Genre

"Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before." -Captain James T. Kirk, played by William Shatner, Star Trek's opening lines

(left to right) Montgomery "Scotty" Scott, Pavel Chekov, Leonard "Bones" McCoy,
Nurse Chapel, James T. Kirk, Uhura, Spock, Hikaru Sulu

It is no surprise that sci-fi (science fiction) became the genre of the decade in the turn of the 1960s. Riding high off of the Allied victory in World War II, America experienced incredible financial prosperity—the scale of which has never been seen before or since. New, shocking inventions were being made every day to revolutionize the average American's life, including the microchip, internal pacemaker, the laser, and the first video game console. President Kennedy had made the bold declaration that man would make it to the moon by the end of the decade, and America collectively looked up to the stars with hope and idealism. 

Gene Roddenberry

Gene Roddenberry inherited a world of Westerns in the 1960s when he began to pitch his new television series, Star Trek. The words for a television show like this did not exist, yet, and he had to pitch the adventure-based show as a "wagon train to the stars." Star Trek was launched on September 8, 1966, and ran until June 3, 1969, after only three seasons. It focused on a crew of spacefarers on the U.S.S. Enterprise, led by the dashing Captain James T. Kirk, First Officer S'chn T'gai Spock, and Chief Medical Officer Leonard "Bones" McCoy. The show was cancelled on NBC due to low ratings, that today in a modern cable world, would be considered a smash success. The show, although no one knew it yet, would become one of the most enduring pop-culture phenomena that the world would ever see. (This is seen most plainly in the proliferation of the show's most popular misquoted line ("Beam me up, Scotty") which is never quoted in the show's run.) However, Roddenberry would use Star Trek as a way of critiquing the culture of the 1960s including the Vietnam War, sexism, and racism.

The show prominently featured people of color, in a time and place when it was taboo. Notably, Lieutenant Uhura was the first Black woman on network TV that was not a maid or secretary. Nichelle Nichols, her actress, who would roll her eyes at the nerdy script material every week, intended to leave the show until Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. (who wanted to get on set as her "biggest fan") approached her and told her it was the only TV show he allowed his children to stay up late to watch. 

In 1968, Gene Roddenberry wrote, "Intolerance in the 23rd Century? Improbable! If man survives that long, he will have learned to take a delight in the essential differences between men and between cultures. He will learn that differences in ideas and attitudes are a delight, part of life's exciting variety, not something to fear. It's a manifestation of the greatness that God, or whatever it is, gave us."

Kirk in a Very Shiny Shirt in "Mirror, Mirror"

The show was by no means perfect and leaned into sexist stereotypes and misogyny weekly. The writers would often try to minimize the strides that the show was taking, and William Shatner (Kirk) was a Grade-A bully who despised his co-stars. However, it became one of the first accessible mediums of Black, Asian, female, and Jewish representation in American media, where their identity is not their character. It does not seem like much to a modern audience, but this was revolutionary for the insulated and conservative world of the 1960s.

Roddenberry's creativity in making the show cannot be understated. As a science fiction fan since middle school, Roddenberry used the concept of integration that we discussed in class. Specifically, Gene Roddenberry easily fits some of Sternberg's (1984) personality traits linked to creativity: integration and intellectuality, lack of conventionality, aesthetic taste and imagination, and perspicacity. Not only did Roddenberry use Star Trek as a way to challenge norms, but he also created a lush and inspiring world by integrating science fiction ideas and imagery into one cohesive unit.

The show delighted in its nerdiness and even predicted incredible inventions that had no fundamental basis in the '60s. It predicted cellphones, video chat, medical scanners, and most notably, the year of the moon landing.

(left to right) Leonard Nimoy, director Robert Wise, (back) Gene Roddenberry
DeForest Kelley, William Shatner on set of The Original Series

Roddenberry's creativity was a method of expressing himself and his beliefs. His process of creative integration to create new ideas demonstrates his devotion and admiration for the genre of science fiction. This way of using creativity to assert individuality and admiration for a genre is essential to understanding both Roddenberry and Star Trek.

At the core of it, the show is about humanity—how emotion and logic rule us, and how we are expected to treat others. The show has a respect for the "other," but dreams of a world where there are no "others." In Gene Roddenberry’s words, it’s about hope. 

“I believe in humanity. We are an incredible species. We’re still just a child creature, we’re still being nasty to each other. And all children go through those phases. We’re growing up, we’re moving into adolescence now. When we grow up — man, we’re going to be something!”

Star Trek: The Original Series Cast (left to right) 
Nichelle Nichols (Uhura), Leonard Nimoy (Spock),
William Shatner (Kirk), DeForest Kelley (Bones),
Walter Koenig (Chekov), James Doohan (Scotty)

(My favorite fact about this show is this: Often in the show, doors "swoosh" open when people leave or enter a room on the Enterprise. Obviously, the technology for this to happen automatically did not exist in the '60s, so two stagehands had to sit in the wall and pull the two halves of the door apart manually. The cast had to walk at these doors at full speed, as if they had confidence that the doors would open, but because the stagehands were in the wall, they would often miss their cues. This meant that the cast would throw themselves at closed doors and absolutely wipe out quite frequently. There is a smash cut of Kirk specifically ramming into doors that gets played at conventions, in which he curses his brains out and bounces off of doors into Spock. It's hilarious, but I could only find this one: https://youtu.be/FMX9ZAD_h3g. This is a problem that lasts throughout the adaptions, including the 2008-2016 Star Trek: Alternate Original Series, and it makes me very happy.)

Bees Making Art: Ren Ri's biomimicry sculptures

    Biomimicry is the "imitation of natural biological designs or processes." Chinese sculptor, Ren Ri is a research-based artist focusing on the fields of biology, science, mechanics, engineering, and art. When I first saw Ren Ri's work, the sculptures seemed pretty but not until I learned of his process did I truly understand how impressive and unorthodox his work is.  Ren Ri has studied eusocial insects but specifically his work centers around human and bee interactions. With assistance from his studies of bee psychology and collaboration with insects, he creates mesmerizing sculptures out of beeswax. Ren Ri's inspiration for his sculptures comes from the beauty of humans interacting with nature. These interactions could be full of destruction or harmony and the results can be wondrous. 

Ren Ri's creative process is built on his experience with bee interactions, from his work as a beekeeper, and his understanding of nature. To fulfill his artistic goals, Ren Ri's creative process starts with the ability to manipulate natural processes and cooperate with nature. A fascinating example of analogy, Ren Ri is using bees' ability to produce honeycomb and create sculptures out of their natural instincts. In 2015, Ren Ri was the first Asian artist to receive the Goslarer Kaiserring Stipendium, an award recognizing promising young artists, since 1975. His work has been displayed in galleries all around the world from Milan to Venice, to Hong Kong, to London. 

    Yuansu, his most famous and first series, has three distinct parts. Yuansu can be translated as "a comprehension of the gestalt of life." Yuansu I was a series of beeswax maps. Yuansu II Ren Ri placed the queen in the middle of a box and let the worker bees build around her, rotating the box occasionally to create a beautiful design. Yuansu III is a performance series where Ren Ri offered his own face as the canvas, pushing bees into his face resulting in multiple stings. 

http://www.pearllam.com/artist/ren-ri/

http://lovebeeswax.com/category/artists/r/ri-ren

The Most Terrifying Chord - The Genius of Michael Giacchino

If you ask a Star Wars fan to name their favorite scene from any Star Wars media, chances are they will mention the Darth Vader hallway scene from Rogue One. When I saw this movie in theaters, and I heard the ominous and iconic mechanical breathing of the Dark Lord, I could barely contain my excitement, and neither could the rest of the theater. As Vader mercilessly cut through the helpless rebel troops, the giddy audience reveled in the first time that they had seen the Sith in live action in this century, and at the peak of his power. But what was it about this scene that made it so fantastically amazing? In my mind, that answer to that question lies in its music and the sound design. 

The music of Star Wars is perhaps the single most significant factor that contributed to its success, cementing it firmly into pop culture for nearly 50 years. There isn't a single person on this planet who isn't able to recognize the heroic and bombastic trumpet fanfare that introduces the main theme. Everyone knows the imperial march and its heavy and imposing melody featuring the power of the low brass. All of these songs are a credit to John Williams' genius, and enough cannot be said to thank him. However, the music of Rogue One was conducted by a different composer, Michael Giacchino. 

Giacchino, an Oscar winning composer, has also created some incredible and magnificent themes and scores during his career (Incredibles, Ratatouille, Up, and most recently The Batman). He has often collaborated closely with Disney, making him the natural choice to score their newest Star Wars Film. His score payed significant homage to Williams' original pieces, but introduced several new elements and emotions, reflecting the darker and more grounded tone of the film. it features several beautiful themes, such as that which accompanied the final sacrifice of the heroes to get the Death Star plans up into space. However, in my mind, no moment can even begin to compare to the brilliance of the score during the above hallway scene. 

The scene begins with a rising score in Gm, building tension, putting on full display the desperation of the Rebels as they attempt to flee the might of the Empire. As we enter the ship, the trumpets blast out a Eb, turning the chord into a Gm#5, which further serves to put the audience on edge. But as the fleeing rebels reach the door, they find it locked, and slowly, the music fades out, the Gm slowly fading from the low strings. The environmental sounds come in, followed by heavy bootfalls, and the dreaded mechanical breathing. And then Darth Vader ignites his Lightsaber.

It is this precise moment that makes the music in this scene so incredible. When Vader is revealed, the orchestra blasts out a powerful Gm chord, accompanied by the vocals. But additionally, there is the sound of the lightsaber. That low hum comes in at around an E, which turns the tragic Gm chord into a brutal Em7b5 chord. This chord adds even more tension, cacophony, and impending doom to the scene, creating a disastrous sound that shakes the audience to its very core. 

As Vader continues down the hallway massacring the Rebels, the score changes to Ebm, but again, Giacchino incorporates the sound of the lightsaber into his chords. With each swing, the blade hums at around an F#, which is the 3rd of  Em, once again creating dissonance and instilling a feeling of chaos into the scene. 

This brilliant incorporation of the film's sound effects into the score is just one of many things that distinguishes Giacchino as one of the greatest composers of our time. He treats every single score as dedicated passion project, closely collaborating with the directors to make sure that he can truly capture the spirit of the scenes or characters he's writing for. Additionally, he insists on recording all of his pieces live. He needs to be able to connect directly with the music, feel it in his body, to make sure that it is right. 

In terms of his motivation, he appears to be largely intrinsically motivated. Each project he takes on, he does his utmost to make his scores an expression of the passion that he feels for it. Ever since he was little, he has loved listening to and making music, spending hours in his dad's basement listening to vinyl records, especially of classical or big band composers. He wants to produce music of that quality, and he wants to add more power, depth, and meaning to every project, character, and scene that he touches, bringing out the feelings and music that he has inside his head. 

Giacchino has created the soundtracks to some of the greatest movies of my childhood, and has further refined or contributed to the sounds and to the very life of some of my favorite series. For that, and for his incredible creativity and brilliance, he will always be one of my favorite composers of all time. 

Jeff Vandermeer and the Creative Nature of Nature

Nature is Jeff Vandermeer’s best friend. That doesn’t mean it can’t also be his main inspiration for some seriously creepy stuff. The setting of his hit novel Annihilation is based on St. Mark’s Wildlife Refuge, practically in his backyard of Tallahassee. It has everything—eagles, deer, alligators, dolphins that may or may not have human eyes. And most importantly, people interacting with them. Seeing an eagle might not be inherently scary, but if you’re unused to the outdoors and get startled, you will be getting the fright of your life!

St. Mark's

        Vandermeer loves to play off the connection between humans and nature—we need to our environment nice and healthy to make it through climate change. It also needs us to not mess it up. As we have very much NOT been doing. Even that aside, though, we need nature because nature is cool. Sure, it may tear your face off whether you take a wrong step or do everything right, but that spontaneity is part of its magnetism. And in the Southern Reach series (of which Annihilation is the first book), there is a whole agency dedicated to unravelling the mysteries of this contradiction—it certainly doesn’t help that the plot of land in question is augmented by some weird supernatural-who-knows-what. In the end, though there are no neat answers: the remaining characters, through experiencing its perils, have to learn to accept it for what it is at face-value (hence the title of the third book, Acceptance).

Taking it as it comes is another facet of Vandermeer’s creative process: he often has storms of prolific writing, then not at all. He’s just learned to deal with that, and make do in the meantime. Those periods often provide plenty of fuel, though: the iconic wall writing from Annihilation literally appeared to him in a fever dream and spawned the entire novel from there. Coincidentally, that’s what reading his books feel like—being on cold medicine whilst stranded in a ditch. In a good way!

He hallucinated almost ALL of this text

            

        You'll notice that I haven’t shown an author photo yet. That is because I needed this to be the first and last picture of Jeff Vandermeer you see. This isn’t an author photo or anything, but he just posts things like this sometimes. It cries out to be seen.

Evil.

 

John Lasseter: Pixar and the Collaborative Team

You may have been living under a rock for the past two decades if you have not heard of Pixar.

Pixar, now owned by Disney, released its first film toy story in 1995. This film was significant not only in its storytelling but for pushing the creative innovation behind movie making and introducing ever computer animation in films. John Lasseter was the main creative mind behind computer animation. Before Pixar’s founding, John graduated from the California Institute of the arts to become an animator at Disney.

He was fired five years later. Why? He was a major proponent of computer animation and wanted to push the craft further. As it turns out, this might have been the best thing to happen.

John would join Pixar, which he described as a “studio of pioneers” that worked together to create amazing and original stories in (at the time) a unique way, computer animation. At Pixar, “management’s job is not to prevent risk but to build the capability to recover when failures occur,” allowing John and his colleagues to continue to push computer animation and storytelling further.

 A distinctive feature of Pixar at the time was its creativity in the process as well as animation. All of Pixar’s original films before the Disney acquisition were stories created by artists at the studio, not adaptations. John talked about the process of coming up with these stories in an interview with Forbes:

“We have an informal collective brain trust, we called it a story trust, where they are peers, and we show our movies internally every three months. We are always looking at our story with this group and this group is very honest.”

Even though John Lasseter as head of Pixar helped innovate the field, Pixar is a community that works together to create ideas. Pixar is the vehicle through which John was able to realize his goals and push himself in innovative techniques, but he was not alone in this process. In fact, he has only been as successful as he is, is due to the creative community at Pixar.

A quote that I think highlights this point is:

“The view that good ideas are rarer and more valuable than good people is rooted in a misconception of creativity”

John Lasseter certainly is a creative individual who challenged ways of making movies and even the creative process behind the story, but without the collaborative culture of Pixar, he might not have succeeded.

Sources:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/csylt/2017/08/07/john-lasseters-magic-formula-for-creativity/?sh=e2000b75cbf3

https://hbr.org/2008/09/how-pixar-fosters-collective-creativity

Rita Moreno is still a Star

 Rita Moreno is a theater legend. The 90 year old EGOT winner is still making headlines today, most recently for starring in and executive producing West Side Story (2021). 

Moreno’s first major film appearance was in the original West Side Story in 1961, for which she won the Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. Rita Moreno attributes her success to hard work and dedication. Moreno spoke about her work ethic on the set of West Side Story: “‘I never stopped rehearsing. … That's what you have to do to become a star.’” Part of the reason Moreno worked so hard is because the film industry underestimated her talent and worth as a Puerto Rican woman. Moreno says she grew up “filled with self loathing” because of her heritage and had to work to build self-respect and confidence. She was fueled by a desire to both be loved by the public and to find self-love. Moreno’s motivation to succeed in the film industry was largely extrinsic, as she wanted audiences to see her as a woman with self-respect and dignity. She also wanted to represent the Puerto Rican community well, as starring roles for Latinx women in major movies was rare in the 1960’s. Moreno talked about the importance of her role: “What was important about Anita to me — and still is — is that Anita, believe it or not, was the only part I ever remember where I represented Hispanics in a dignified and positive way.” She even requested the creator of West Side Story, Stephen Sondheim, change one of the lyrics that referred to Puerto Rico as an ugly island, because she refused to have her community portrayed in a negative light. 

As an actress who has been working for almost 7 decades, Rita Moreno also needs intrinsic motivation to stay active creatively. Shortly after West Side Story (1961) premiered, Moreno starred in the play I Am A Camera. Moreno wanted to challenge herself. Moreno explained the play made her “tap her creative processes,” and allowed her to develop her acting skills. She also credits her drama coach with helping her tackle the role. When Moreno was 85, an interviewer mentioned that it would be ok if she decided to take it easy and stop working so hard. Moreno immediately pushed back: “No way!! … If somebody took this away from me now I would be heartbroken. I love what I do.” After numerous awards and decades of beloved movies and TV shows, Moreno no longer needs to worry about external validation. Moreno is a dignified artist with a deep love for her craft that will fuel her work for years to come.

The Mindy Project: Mindy Kaling and her creative process

You may know her as the chatty, lively, bright-colored Kelly Kapoor from The Office, but Mindy Kaling has grown her career to be much more than an actress. This year Time Magazine recognized Kaling’s imprint on the field of media by listing her company, Kaling International, in the top 100 most influential companies of 2022. 

Mindy Kaling has stated that the goal of her media company is to tell the stories about the inner lives of women of color which have been absent from the television screen for too long. As a daughter of Indian immigrants, Kaling has always dedicated her work to represent all people. She has an ability to appeal to a broad audience even if her content is unconventional or outside of the norm. Audiences are able to connect to the characters that she’s written for on The Office, The Mindy Project, Never Have I Ever, and most recently The Sex Lives of College Girls. 

“I’m a dark skinned Indian woman, and I always had friend groups that were diverse, and I had just never seen that done on TV.” 

Kaling’s most recent series, Never Have I Ever, and The Sex Lives of College Girls are her biggest hits to date. Never Have I Ever focuses on an Indian-American teenage girl who struggles her way through high school and The Sex Lives of College Girls follows four college roommates who come from entirely different backgrounds. The undeniable worldwide success of these series proves her theory that although she shows underrepresented people, audiences are still able to find universality in their situations. Kaling’s innate talent and incredible work ethic combined allow her to create these characters and storylines that transcend historical media boundaries. 

“She can outline an entire season of television on the back of an envelope in the time it takes someone else to come up with one joke” - BJ Novak, former Office co-writer 

Kaling International is currently working on two dozen projects, yet employs a total of four people. If that doesn’t speak for her attitude toward hard work, I don’t know what does. Mindy is always working and like most creatives, finds it hard to stop thinking of new plot lines or discovering new characters. In an interview Mindy discusses passion for her career, “I’ll say, I’ve got to take time off. I’ve got to retire, then I take a one-hour nap and have 10 new show ideas.” Kaling does not follow a strict creative process, rather she goes with the flow of wherever her inspiration takes her. When she does happen to encounter writer’s block, however, she sits down and watches a new show. Mindy notes that she is driven by competition, so in checking out what other writers are up to, she typically has one of two reactions. She either thinks to herself that it's amazing and is prompted to get up and work or thinks that the idea for the show is overrated and she could’ve come up with it herself. Both reactions she believes to be “helpful to [her] creative spirit.” 

“One of the great things about writing comedies with the characters that I have, who are largely women of color, is that the characters are not oppressors. They’re largely people who have been oppressed. So they can say much more.” 

Mindy Kaling has made incredible strides in the field of media by incorporating underrepresented peoples in her scripts. She constantly writes stories about the underdog, not only connecting with that theme herself but knowing that all audiences can in some way identify with the underdog. Mindy is a hard worker, but as she notes “hard work is great, but when you are creative, there’s not a huge link between working hard and the muse that helps you create.” For her, writing, producing, and waking early to head into the studio is not always work, it's her life and passion. Her creativity and success in the industry is truly inspiring.

If you have not experienced any of Mindy’s work, I highly recommend binging some tonight!

Resources:

https://time.com/collection/time100-companies-2022/6159385/mindy-kaling-production-company-interview/

https://www.cleveland.com/metro/2019/09/mindy-kaling-on-her-superpower-and-what-drives-her-creativity-at-content-marketing-world.html