Building The Ravinini Box

Early preproduction on short film number two, The Ravinini Box, is officially underway. I’ll be heading down to LA again at the end of the month to wrap up discussions and I’ll be using all that I learned on The Kinjiku. Some of the most important things? Back to those parallels that make things easy to get a grip on. In many ways, this is like opening a restaurant. A really fuckin’ good one. To that end-

The importance of interviews. Producers hire and coordinate crew, but my early instincts proved to be true. I need to be more closely involved and this time I will be. Casting as well, right down to the extras. I wasn’t exactly sure what level of control I’d have the first time but now that I’m clear on it I’ll act very differently. Some good advice I got- in every project you’ll find a handful of people who went above and beyond, a handful that dialed it in and did a competent job, and one or two people you should avoid working with again. Keep the best and bring them with you, again and again, and by the time the budget lands you at the high stakes table you’ll have a crew you work well with who also work well with each other. This is just like a restaurant! Holy shit!

Understanding the scope of effects and the possibilities in editing. No class or book can accurately describe a field that is advancing by the day. You have to get in there and see it for yourself and then dream out loud with the masters of these Kung Fu schools. This is super important for The Ravinini Box. Totally exciting. There’s so much more, but I’m about to go off on a tangent here. It’s strange what you learn when you make just about anything. Seems like all of it can be used in some ways for just about anything. When I think about it, I sort of did this kind of thing in my personal life. Part of the reason I’m where I am in spacetime.

It’s hard to imagine making anything without learning at the same time. In fact, I don’t think it’s possible. The observable spectrum here is immense. I know an artist, for instance, who though while not especially good when compared to the great artist of any age learns, or undergoes, with every act a kind of refinement. Joy becomes clearer. The simple pleasure of making becomes cleaner and clearer. I have seen in this guy’s face this thrilling, soaring joy and I recognize it with the muscles in my own face, just as you would. In some ways, this might be the highest achievable end. On the other end of this spectrum, I also know a few people who have real problems making anything but feel as though they have to, and the result is a form of shy torture with predictable results. This is quite obviously not good. It both cases the momentum is unstoppable. We should probably applaud both and hope for the best.

For many other creatives and I, the middle ground is the providence of self-discovery. There is so much I don’t know. It appears, for instance, that the universe we live in may be infinite.  Our universe. For all anyone presently knows, this universe could extend forever in every direction, or it could also be a single neutrino in a much, much larger universe. And in the opposite direction, small and getting smaller, heading to ‘smallest’? There may be no such thing in that direction either, as in there is no smallest. Shit man. So much of everything makes no sense, and this is just the beginning. So, self-discovery through making it is. Look at what I made for clues as to the nature of the ‘self’ construct I’ve been building.

Intriguing idea, right? Maybe it’s impossible to be good at such a thing, and plasticity being what it is, maybe all the clues are out of date by the time of examination. Maybe change, the change that comes from learning and growing from making anything, shit, maybe I’d just be examining the design ancestry of a stranger.

It rained today. There were bulbs of moss on a cherry tree I passed on the way to work. Work, where I draw and think about the luxurious black hair of moon faced Chinese women, the wings of birds I don’t know the names of, the leaves of trees that exist nowhere in nature. I like so much of the questions-without-answers reality, so progress, or momentum, maybe even the leading edge of a wave front collapsing into a sweet Hendrix tune… Maybe none of it will ever make any sense, in the best possible way. Everyone loves a good mystery.