You know when you’re going over a waterfall and there’s no way to avoid it? Life throws challenges at you.
That’s why this tutorial on diving from a waterfall — a real one, not the metaphor for life’s hurdles — will come handy.
Oddly enough, the figure in the how-to image looks exactly like Harrison Ford and this epic dive from The Fugitive.
Below is the classic scene I’m referencing. PS. If you’re curious about how to treat a black eye, check out this diagram.
Photographer Ray Collins captures the magic that happens at the intersection of water and light. Each shot in this film was created from a single one of Ray’s original photos. The stills are transformed into cinemagraphs – a hybrid between photo and video – an infinite loop that makes a single moment last forever. The original soundtrack was created by two very talented musicians, André Heuvelman on trumpet and Jeroen van Vliet on piano.
You can see the individual cinemagraphs here. Amazing.
“I live in the now so the past is something you’ll have to dig up.”
— David Hockney, the British artist who’s become known as the ‘the painter of Southern California’
“Artists aren’t hedonists. They’re workers.” Hockey’s persistence echoes Japan’s Hokusai who also believed the best work was yet to come.
You can take breaks but real artists never stop noticing. “Remember,” says Hockney. “Our eyes never stay still. If your eyes are still, you’re dead.”
“Don’t wait for the system to accept you. You create your own system, create your own [budget] and make your own first feature film or your first own documentary.”
Werner Herzog talks filmmaking, Pokemon Go, and how to manage our online life
The film critic Roger Ebert originally published this piece in 1992 after celebrating his 25th year as a movie critic for the Chicago-Sun Times. He passed away in April 2013.
The job of a movie critic is unusual. Instead of spending your time at the office or even at home penning away your novel in ample lighting, you watch 2-3 movies a day. You get “up in the morning and in two hours it is dark again, and the passage of time is fractured by editing and dissolves and flashbacks and jump cuts.”
While the job of movie reviews may be lonely, the purpose of a film and for those critiquing it is quite the opposite. Ebert writes that “the single most important factor in learning to be literate about movies is to be part of an audience that is sophisticated about them.”
Perhaps the most interesting part of Ebert’s reflections though are his assessment of watching film in color versus black and white, the latter which he says “creates a mysterious dream state, a simpler world of form and gesture.” Color is too “realistic, distracting.” I think the same can be said of photographs. Strip away the filters, and all the focus is on the texture.
“Most people do not agree with me. They like color and think a black-and-white film is missing something. Try this. If you have wedding photographs of your parents and grandparents, chances are your parents are in color and your grandparents are in black and white. Put the two photographs side by side and consider them honestly. Your grandparents look timeless. Your parents look goofy.”
A month after legendary director Werner Herzog inquired about Pokemon GO, he is back with a new movie that questions the entire ethos of the Internet.
Is the Internet helping or hurting human relationships? Are we creative as we think we are or will robots think and act superior?
The Internet claims to be the modern-day railroad, connecting ideas, business, and communication. However, it increasingly removes us from present reality.
“Have the monks stopped meditating? They all seem to be tweeting.”
The Internet is the most important piece of technology in our lifetime. But what happens if it becomes less of a gift and more of a curse?
“Do you know what moviemaking is? Eight hours of hard work each day to get three minutes of film.”
Step outside your viewing zone, your reading zone. It’s all fodder but if you only take from one thing then it’ll show.
Sometimes it’s the stuff that we’re not interested that ends up sparking the missing piece. You can even take a passive interest and make an important connection.
