Torben Tumbls

I am happy to announce “Boomtown,” the second film...

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 13:42:52 -0500

I am happy to announce “Boomtown,” the second film in the Lost and Found Series, has been accepted into the 9th Annual Big Sky Documentary Film Festival! The film will screen in competition for the Big Sky Award and premiere at the historic Wilma Theater on February 20th, opening weekend of the festival.

Yesterday, the Salt Lake City-based blog “Selective Echo” published an excellent article on “Boomtown” and the entire series. Read it below!

“At its peak in the early 1880s, the Horn Silver Mine in Frisco, Utah was cited in the U.S. Annual Mining Review and Stock Ledger as ‘unquestionably the richest silver mine in the world now being worked.’ Miriam B. Murphy, who has written frequently about Utah’s early history, described the town’s story as the perfect setting for pulp fiction:

‘Two prospectors casually discover a rich ore body, a bankrupt financier promotes the venture, the boomtown of Frisco becomes one of the wildest mining camps in the West with a murder or two every evening, a tough lawman who shoots on sight begins to clean up the town, after producing millions the huge mine collapses, and Frisco becomes another ghost town.’

Nearly 125 years after a mine collapse essentially sealed Frisco’s inevitable doom, Utah filmmakers Torben Bernhard and Travis Low scouting the Beaver County area some 15 miles west of Milford completely missed the town’s location on their first pass. As Bernhard recalls, ‘the former boomtown was once home to thousands of people, but is now mostly sagebrush, building foundations, old mining equipment, and scraps of metal. The old charcoal kilns are listed on the National Register of Historic Places [as of 1982] but they are beginning to fall apart as well.’

In their short film ‘Boomtown,’ which premieres next month at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Missoula, Montana, Bernhard and Low reconstruct Frisco for a contemporary audience through excerpts from rare recordings of oral histories taken from individuals who had lived in a town that disappeared from the map by the end of the 1920s.

As much as this 12-minute film, which also was produced by Bernhard’s wife Marissa, reflects countless hours of historical and scholarly research, the visual imagery and tape excerpts in ‘Boomtown’ underscore the primal challenge we all face in the lifelong predicament of preserving identity. Like the other four films in their forthcoming Lost and Found Series, ‘Boomtown’ suggests, ‘nobody or very few people know our history but this will change.’

[Read more]

In 1875, the Horn Silver Mine was discovered in the red rock...

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 15:28:39 -0500

In 1875, the Horn Silver Mine was discovered in the red rock cliffs of southwestern Utah and the town of Frisco was born. Within ten years, over sixty million dollars worth of gold, silver and other precious metals were exported from its rich mines. Rumors quickly spread about the new boomtown’s six thousand inhabitants, its numerous saloons and its grizzly murders. Frisco gained a reputation for being one of the wildest towns in the Wild West. When the town’s main silver mine collapsed at the turn of the century, the tremors were so intense that, according to legend, it shook the structures in the town so intensely that windows shattered. In 1929, the population of Frisco dipped below one hundred. As suddenly as it shot up, the boomtown became a ghost town. Abandoned homes and shops, rusted mining equipment and a small graveyard were left behind as the only evidence of its existence.

Five years ago we were driving on I-80 towards Seattle, Washington, listening to a radio spot by Scott Carrier on This American Life. He vividly described the Western landscape. The ambient noise surrounding his voice felt mysterious. Looking out the car windows at the barren Idaho environment, we began to perceive a beauty previously unseen. The vastness of the land urged us to explore its possibilities. The western landscape, Idaho and Wyoming in particular, always felt boring and uninspiring. Suddenly, we found ourselves subject to the beauty of perceived freedom – the beckoning of open spaces. A sublime space which allowed for infinite possibilities and adventures, but also threatened to expose and erase you. That’s when we began to fall in love with the West. The seemingly limitless unexplored narratives available in the desert were laid out before us — past, present and future.

It was this moment that ultimately led us to Frisco. We initially went there to begin exploring ghost towns in the Great Basin. The first time we visited the old mining town, we passed by it on the road and later realized that we needed to circle back to it. This is significant because it is the main idea that compelled us to make the film as a part of this series in the first place. The idea that you could easily pass by a former boomtown, replete with life and memory, without even knowing it, was fascinating and disturbing. The place must be full of stories and mysteries, right? What was left behind to hint at them and to help us piece the narratives back together? How could we relay the feeling and appearance of desolation, but lead to the recognition of a significant loss? We ended up camping in Frisco that night and sleeping on old rusted sheets of metal underneath our sleeping bags.

After our initial ideas and questions had settled into our minds, we began researching Frisco in search of materials to help us build a perspective and scope through which to tell the story. After digging through everything that we could find, we tentatively settled on the idea to start interviewing some people. Maybe we could use their interviews in the film, or maybe they would help us with further research. The first person we contacted said that he could tell us some things about Frisco, but that it really wasn’t worth interviewing him. He said that he had a tape that we needed to listen to, and he was certain we’d rather have that.

When he insisted on showing us the tape, we discovered the voices of the last generation of people that lived in Frisco. Recorded at some point in the Sixties, there were townsfolk, miners, outlaws and lawmen all telling their stories on this serendipitous tape. They were all in their later ages at the time of the recording, and they are all long gone now. They recalled their earliest memories, giving voice to the disappeared town of Frisco. We got to know the story of Sy Perkins, who “drifted in with a circus,” ran makeshift whiskey distilleries illegally, and may have killed his own wife. We heard about Sheriff Pearson, who’s “quick-triggered fingers” laid down the law “with the simple philosophy: the dead man gives no trouble.” We heard a sharp-witted old woman telling us about her coming of age in a bustling boomtown. The power of their voices began shaping the stories that we were to relay…and we quickly began capturing all the sounds and images left for us in Frisco to accompany them.

Once in a while, you find someone who is lost and they change...

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 13:12:00 -0500

Once in a while, you find someone who is lost and they change you. This happened to me when, after following an artistic whim, I got off at a hectic bus terminal in Nakhorn Ratchasima, Thailand and asked a motorcycle taxi to help me locate someone who collects trash for a living. I wanted to follow them for a while and get a sense of what their life was like.

I jumped on the back of the motorcycle taxi and we drove through town, trying to spot the familiar site of a person with a cart. We didn’t quite know where we were going and I had absolutely no idea where to direct the driver. Finally, a bit defeated, we stopped in front of a market to make a plan and get some direction. As we were sitting in a huddle discussing where to go, a man stopped by on a motorcycle and cart and, after a brief conversation, invited me to hop on.

I’m still trying to understand the world Chaan introduced me to. He and his family live in a slum along the train tracks that snake through northeast Thailand, with no running water, no address, and no official representation or assistance. Living off the grid, he supports his children and adopted family, seven in total, by collecting recyclables from public trash bins each day. His children attend school for free at the local Buddhist temple and help their dad sort trash when they return home. Even though the slum is near a large city center, the slum and the people in it, are invisible to the broader community.

Despite his hardships, Chaan is still optimistic and dedicated. He told me that he believes that he could find a lump of gold in a trash bin. He dreams of a day where he will own a truck so that he can collect trash from greater distances, or maybe even own a shop. He is wise and insightful and is able to break through the inevitable judgments he faces each day with remarkable resilience. Shot from his side cart, I hope this film reflects what I found in Chaan — I hope it reveals his quiet courage and wisdom.

lostandfoundseries.com

The Lost and Found Series is featured this week in SLC City...

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 13:03:00 -0500

The Lost and Found Series is featured this week in SLC City Weekly. Check it out below!

How did the lost & found theme come about?
Each documentary in the series started as a separate project. One day, in an “aha!” moment, we realized that the five projects we had all been working on individually and collectively were actually tied together by the theme of losing and finding. Some deal with literal loss; others with the idea of being overlooked. All of them, directly or indirectly, question the role of film, and particularly documentary [film], in preserving stories.

Also, my experience has been that sometimes subjects present themselves to you as short pieces. When the idea for Tarkio Balloon came to me, for example, I always thought of it as being under five minutes. I wanted to “get in and get out” and leave the impression of loss instead of explaining it.

What was it like visiting Frisco, a ghost town near Beaver, Utah?
The first time we visited Frisco, we drove past it and had to circle back. The former boomtown was once home to thousands of people, but is now mostly sagebrush, building foundations, old mining equipment and scraps of metal. This was the impetus for the documentary Boomtown—the idea that a town that once exported $60 million worth of precious metals and carried so much life could now easily be driven past.

It was when we started our research of Beaver County families with relatives who lived and worked in Frisco that we met Dick Davis. He was kind enough to grant us an interview for use in the film, but kept telling us that he didn’t have much to say and that we should really listen to these tapes he had. He brought out a tape player, cued up the cassette and pushed play. Our jaws dropped. Instead of scholars or family members talking about Frisco, it was the people who actually lived there! They spoke vividly about their time in the old mining town. He couldn’t remember how he came by the tape, but knew that one of the interviewees was a family member of his.

[MORE]

I have been hard at work recently working on a documentary...

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 13:00:00 -0500

I have been hard at work recently working on a documentary series called the “Lost and Found Series.” The series comprises five short documentary films exploring loss and recovery through wildly diverse topics. You can learn more about the series at www.lostandfoundseries.com or click any of the links below to watch previews of the each film. I am lucky to be working on the series with the talented Marissa Bernhard and Travis Low.

The ‘Lost and Found Series’ includes five documentary films, each under fifteen minutes, by a collective of filmmakers exploring what it means to lose something and what can gain from finding it again. Among the films are stories about the vanishing of and entire town in Southern Utah, the daily life of a trash collector who lives in a train yard slum, a misplaced Thai cowboy attempting to live the American dream, and a man constructing an elaborate art installation of heave, earth, and hell, from steel, concrete, glass, and painted violins, in a gutted warehouse.

The first film in the series, ‘Tarkio Balloon,’ was an Official Selection at the 8th Annual Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, featured in their ‘American Spectrum: Films of the American Experience’ program.

mentalelastic: I would get this tatted on me -@TheMicSmith

Fri, 03 Jun 2011 11:22:26 -0400

mentalelastic:

I would get this tatted on me

-@TheMicSmith

You now have all the resources to do your own production,...

Wed, 18 May 2011 14:13:24 -0400

You now have all the resources to do your own production, writing, directing. What’s the biggest barrier to being an artist?

Self-confidence always. The artist always battles his own/her own feeling of inadequacy.

via the99percent.com

The Story Behind 'Tarkio Balloon'

Thu, 10 Mar 2011 20:46:00 -0500

A few days before going to Cinequest International Film Festival for my first documentary ‘The Sonosopher: Alex Caldiero in Life…in Sound,’ I was sitting at a local café, resting from a long flight from Bangkok, when I suddenly felt the intense urge to get in my car and drive to Tarkio, Missouri, where my little brother Dane Morgan Bernhard is buried and died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome in 1985. My body pulled me towards the door, while my mind scrambled to assemble the logistics involved. With ‘The Sonosopher’ world premiere approaching, I reluctantly put the idea to rest.

The next day, Travis, the co-director of ‘The Sonosopher,’ and I had a wonderful conversation while driving down I-80 West through Nevada en route to San Jose, California. We were discussing travel writing, hobos, and Werner Herzog’s trek, on foot, from Munich to Paris to save his close friend and film historian, Lotte Eisner. As we talked, the previously vague impression began to take form. I was supposed to go to Tarkio and make a short documentary, five minutes maximum. I was to use an audio recording I did with my mom for the sound underlying the images. I could hear her voice – the clip from the candid, five hour conversation I recorded with her a year earlier for oral history. I was to shoot the film on super 8mm.

When the conversation lulled into a brief pause, I shared my experience from the previous day with everyone in the car. I told them I knew I had to go. As soon as I finished my sentence, Travis told me that I had to do it. Marissa, my wife and co-producer, in the back seat, hearing this for the first time, also responded. I asked her if it was reasonable. She responded “no, it’s definitely not reasonable, but we have to do it.” We agreed to make it my birthday present.

Throughout Cinequest, I escaped the pressure of the festival by fantasizing about the upcoming trip. One day, while everyone else napped, I sat awake, ideas pouring. It would be called “Tarkio Balloon.” I would spend a lot of time shooting in the cemetery. I would shoot a balloon floating in the air, juxtaposed with the audio of my mom telling me that, as a kid, I would try to make her feel happy, after the loss of Dane, by telling her that I would get a balloon and go get him for her. While at Cinequest, we ordered fifteen rolls of 8mm film.

When we got back from the festival we went to visit my parents, who now live in Wyoming. While everyone was gone one day, I scanned Dane’s entire, small, but lovingly constructed, photo album. When the day came, we left their house, telling them that we were headed home to Utah, and instead drove from Wyoming to Missouri. Months later I presented the film to my parents as a surprise gift.

The following is an excerpt from my journal, while in Tarkio:

There is something significant about driving down the hilly roads my parents drove down at my same age. Here I am, 27, still a child. My mother, at 27, was driving unexpectedly to the sudden death of her fourth child.

I contemplated their hopes. I thought about my own. I intuited the darkness that lies beyond bends or in the lowland obscured by hills.

It felt like stepping into a myth. My mind sought to contrive the experience. It wanted me to make “sense” of the experience, structure it like an aimless road trip movie, where I leave my journey, resurrected by exhaled breath making ashes dance again in scattered procession. I knew that worshipping the moment meant having reverence for the ephemeral — letting it slip away was the only way to be with it.

We drove the final hill and entered Tarkio, Missouri. The sign, still in tact since we left it over twenty years ago, felt inviting. The cemetery stood a few yards before the sign, the brick wall forming its entry aged and decaying. The cemetery that I had once visited in a nine year old’s dream, surprised me now. In my blurry memory, the cemetery was tiny and unkempt. This time, with the light of concrete experience extending its borders, the cemetery was large and labyrinthian. We got out of the car, camera in hand, determined to find Dane’s grave as the sun slowly set.

Marissa, with meticulous precision, swept through the cemetery, row by row, looking for the marker. I, fighting my mind and the compulsion to contrive the whole experience, argued with myself, walking erratically through the rows, hoping for a chance encounter. As the minutes dragged on, and the grave lay hidden, it all began to feel like a dream. Maybe none of it happened. It was a nightmare, illusory, but haunting, in the recesses of my family’s collective identity. That day in September, my sister Heidi slowly walked up the stairs, dutiful as ever, to retrieve a healthy, cooing, infant. The tale of Dane simply served as a boogyman story — a folktale told to instill gratitude and compassion in young parents. My mother never performed CPR on her two month year old son. Mom never ran out of the apartment into the snow, feet numb, child in arms, to alert the volunteer ambulance drivers in town to bring Dane to the nearest hospital.

After forty minutes, we decided to split up and systematically look for the headstone. Using the picture of two devastated individuals and a naive two year old as a guide, I looked especially close around trees and combed two rows at a time. Fifteen minutes into our new approach, I found it.

It was strange to see my last name on a grave. I was looking at my own marker. The headstone was humble, bought with scraped-together funds. Dane was surrounded by strangers, a war veteran and other miscellaneous people, randomly placed anomalies in an otherwise small town gathering of family members who lived and died together. The grave should have been bigger. The miniature stature of it, hidden in the shadow of the large space left in our family as a result of it, seemed incongruent. Something that takes up so much mental and emotional real estate should tower physically. I can picture Tarkio, eclipsed by a grave the size of our loss.

I placed my index finger on the camera trigger and made attempts to catch the essence of a moment from the inside out.

We left the cemetery and drove through town. Main Street was full of abandoned buildings and century-old architecture. The city mourned with Dane. This is not an odd relationship in Tarkio. The dead seem to mingle seamlessly with the living. The dying buildings are filled with kind people, knowingly caring for their sick economy. The college died in the early nineties, ashamed and bankrupt. The famous “Mule Barn Theatre” my father ran during his stint at the college, burned down in the early nineties. Tarkio is replete with buildings that collectively tell a story of loss.

After a long day, we settled down in the Big T Motel and tried to sleep in preparation for the next day. I awoke, sometime in the middle of the night, to a vivid 8 mm shot of the dramatic hills leading into Tarkio. The image was hypnotizing. I knew this was how the short film was to begin.

The next morning was bitter, Missouri cold. We set out to complete the actual documentation of the film, in heavy winter coats. We covered the small town for hours, shooting thirteen rolls of film, our faces stinging with the gusts of sharp wind. We purchased two red roses and put them on Dane’s grave. His grave looked beautiful for the first time in many years. Around three PM, as snow began to fall, we drove away from the city, this time the hills an exit. Images of Tarkio slipped in and out of my rear view mirror.

The trip has changed me in a way I still do not quite understand. I was altered by the pilgrimage. It is inside me. The actual moments may have evaporated, only evidenced by crude film, but they accrued in my body like an organism. I imagine I will carry this new being with me for the rest of my life. There is so much I have left out. My only desire is that I have somehow left bread crumbs for a future self to find his way back to Tarkio.

The Lost and Found Series

Every film in ‘The Lost and Found Series’ has a similar tale. Each story spoke to us, in one way or another, and we tried to listen. I hope that you will continue this journey with us, as we explore the theme of losing and finding through five remarkably diverse subjects. Our plan is to release three of the films (including ‘Tarkio Balloon’) online for free and include the last two in a DVD set with essays and meditations on each documentary. ‘Tarkio Balloon’ recently premiered at the 8th Annual Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. I encourage all of you to contact me and let me know ways that you are finding what has been lost in your own lives. Here’s to your personal quests.

This post was also featured on The Good Men Project. Check it out here!

Yesterday, as part of the Reinvention Summit, I participated in...

Tue, 16 Nov 2010 10:46:27 -0500

Yesterday, as part of the Reinvention Summit, I participated in a panel discussion with Mandy Leith, a documentary filmmaker with thirty years of experience from British Columbia, Canada. We talked about a number of issues and had a wonderful conversation. One topic, in particular, that has stuck with me is the relationship between artist and audience — a relationship that is progressively collapsing in a transmedia/social media world. I questioned whether or not a Bergman, Fellini, or the Maysles could come out of such a world.

As fate would have it, my good friend posted a response of Bergman speaking about the relationship of artist and audience. This interview, with one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, is a humbling reminder to not lose sight of your craft amidst myriad distractions.

"True progress consists not in being progressive but in progressing. True progress is what enables or..."

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 01:45:53 -0500

“True progress consists not in being progressive but in progressing. True progress is what enables or compels us to progress. And on a broad front, at that, so that neighbouring spheres are set in motion too. True progress has its cause in the impossibility of an actual situation, and its result is that situation’s change.”

-

Bertolt Brecht

Alex Caldiero performs his poem “Poetry is Wanted...

Mon, 01 Nov 2010 10:44:00 -0400

Alex Caldiero performs his poem “Poetry is Wanted Here” on the occasion of the release of his new book of the same title at Ken Sanders Rare Books on October 2nd, 2010.

"Storytelling is essential to human life. Telling stories — arranging the events of our lives..."

Sat, 30 Oct 2010 20:01:00 -0400

“Storytelling is essential to human life. Telling stories — arranging the events of our lives into units with beginning, middle, and end so that we can understand them — is the primary way people create meaning for themselves, teach, and learn how to behave, understand their history. Conversation is itself a performance. We manipulate facial expression, gesture, voice tones, body language. We enact different characters. So our ordinary lives empower us “all” to be storytellers, to make that first step toward public performance of self and other characters.”

- Jo Radner

“The Sonosopher” screens this coming Saturday at...

Mon, 18 Oct 2010 20:03:22 -0400

“The Sonosopher” screens this coming Saturday at 7:00 PM at the SLC Library as part of the Thirteenth Annual Utah Humanities Book Festival! Stay after for a Q & A with Alex and the filmmakers. Please share this and spread this poster everywhere you can!

Ushering in a Renaissance

Thu, 14 Oct 2010 14:08:21 -0400

Tradition says the story starts in the 1200s with a shepherd boy drawing pictures of his sheep on a rock. Cimabue, the master Florentine painter, sees the boy, recognizes his talent, and invites him to apprentice under him in his work shop. The boy, Giotto di Bondone, would come to be recognized as the first great contributor in what we now refer to as the “Italian Renaissance.”

What Cimabue saw in Giotto were the seeds of reinvention. For hundreds of years, the traditional Byzantine style reigned. Giotto changed the story. Maybe it started with the simple rock drawing. As Giorgio Vasari once said, “[H]e made a decisive break with the crude traditional Byzantine style, and brought to life the great art of painting as we know it today, introducing the technique of drawing accurately from life, which had been neglected for more than two hundred years.”

He breathed new life into figures. With a subtle, but influential shift, Giotto produced facial expressions and depicted scenes in a way that made his pieces feel more alive — more human.

Reinvention is about bringing our evolving stories to life. It is about conquering the crude and expressionless narratives that confine us and prevent our stories from provoking understanding and reaching audiences.

Giotto changed the way we respond to art by changing the story. His story felt more real — more accurate. And, because it did, his art ushered in a movement that changed the world. How can we, in this critical time of reinvention, tell authentic stories that will resonate with our audiences and birth new beginnings?

"We live in story like a fish lives in water. We swim through words and images siphoning story..."

Thu, 16 Sep 2010 17:27:32 -0400

“

We live in story like a fish lives in water. We swim through words and images siphoning story through our minds the way a fish siphons water through its gills.

We cannot think without language, we cannot process experience without story.

”

- Christina Baldwin, Author, StoryCatcher: Making Sense of our Lives Through the Power and Practice of Story. (via storytellingquotes)

"Hence I have no mercy or compassion in me for a society that will crush people, and then penalize..."

Thu, 16 Sep 2010 14:41:01 -0400

““Hence I have no mercy or compassion in me for a society that will crush people, and then penalize them for not being able to stand up under the weight.””

-

Watch FREE documentaries on Hulu! They have some great...

Thu, 16 Sep 2010 13:26:00 -0400

Watch FREE documentaries on Hulu! They have some great selections, including: Salesman, Summercamp, and OT: Our Town. Hulu - Documentaries Home

Independent Filmmaker Project: Ask-an-Expert: Basil Tsiokos on What NOT to do for Film Festivals

Thu, 16 Sep 2010 13:10:05 -0400

Independent Filmmaker Project: Ask-an-Expert: Basil Tsiokos on What NOT to do for Film Festivals:

Another great article from Basil Tsiokos. I have some films to submit soon and am trying to take all of the advice I can.

The unique propaganda of Utah. Propaganda in two mediums.

Wed, 15 Sep 2010 13:39:20 -0400

The unique propaganda of Utah. Propaganda in two mediums.

What Cameron, From Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Can Teach Us About Creative Lulls

Sun, 12 Sep 2010 19:57:00 -0400

As a creative person, it’s easy to fall into Cameron Fry mode. You sit in your office/car/room, paralyzed, trying to get the engine started. The nagging voice of inspiration (in this case, Ferris) keeps calling you, but you’re in “Egypt land” and want to be left alone. You constantly tell yourself “I’ll go, I’ll go, I’ll go…” You are busy doing what most of us do and do well: make excuses.

During the making of my first large endeavor (a student film), it took my advisor screaming at me and slamming the door on me to realize that I was making excuses for myself. You see, there was technical issue A and issue B, not to mention school work and my part-time job. How could I move forward on the project?

Well, first off: stop making excuses. As soon as I stopped making excuses and started working, the looming issues that acted as road blocks previously began to fade. I was excited to be working on the projects again and creativity was flowing because I was not ignoring its voice. There are so many reasons not to be working on a project (fear, confidence, time, etc.), but I have found a few things helpful in producing work instead of excuses.

1.) Maintain the longview

It is easy to become discouraged when all you can judge your progress by is the micro day-to-day progress on any given project. Some things take time. I don’t have a great deal of faith in my ability to churn out something perfect and riveting in the first draft. What I am slowly learning is to have faith in the process. I am not Mozart. I have accepted that. That does not mean that I cannot produce great stuff through patience and good ol’ fashioned hard work. In this sense, working on something becomes less about genius and more about sticktoitiveness. It is about having faith that time, patience, honest critique, staying open to inspiration, and hopefully, good sensibilities, will help you ultimately see out your vision.

2.) Work through discouragement

We all feel discouraged when we are working on something. I am not sure how other people view artists, but I see them as mostly brave and courageous people who are willing to risk constantly by exhibiting their work and opening themselves up to scrutiny. I personally think it sucks when people hate something I’ve done. I try to remind myself that I cannot please everyone, but it still is difficult to deal with the inevitable criticism that attends publishing. One key to coping with discouragement and blows to your ego is to continue working. It feels good to produce. Working on projects reminds you what you love about creating in the first place. If you allow discouragement to turn you into Cameron Fry, you will feel worse and produce less. Fall in love with the process of creation and turn to it for shelter when you lack confidence. You can be a perfectionist about the final product, but remember that there is a world of difference between experimentation and implementation. Remain flexible during the process. You are the one who eventually decides what makes it out of the editing room. Alex, the subject of my first documentary film, passed on this quote to me from New York City-based sculptor, Michael Lekakis: “Do your work. The rest is in the lap of the Gods.”

3.) Choose your critics wisely

I do not feel obligated, in the least, to open projects I am working on to the public while they are still in progress. I am lucky to have some close friends and family members who are always willing to give me tough news and critiques. When I finally finish a project that I am happy with, it is largely due to the many waves of critiques I have received over time from close associates. As much as it pains me to hear that my first draft isn’t perfect, I am very thankful that I have people around me that constantly provide the necessary criticism and encouragement to make my work better. There are plenty of people out there who are more than willing to volunteer for the position of critic. Choose your critics wisely. Once you have chosen people you trust, listen to them, swallow your pride, and get to work making improvements.

So, there you have it. Don’t be like Cameron. Stop making excuses and remember to maintain the longview, work through discouragement, and choose your critics wisely. I promise you that as you work and keep working you will be happier. You will break out of your funk and start producing again.