Rest In Peace, Steve Jobs

Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on.

I remember January 6, 1984 like it was yesterday: My dad and sister went to an electronics store and brought home our first VCR. My mom and I went to one of Knoxville's only computer stores and brought home our first computer, an Apple IIe.

Like so many filmmakers, my life been shaped by the fusion, the intermingling, and the collision of the motion picture with the personal computer. That I was introduced to both of these on the same day -- on Epiphany, no less -- is so "poetic" that it'd be a cliche if you read it in a story or saw it in a movie. But that's the way it happened, honest.

More than any other person that I can think of, Steve Jobs is responsible for bringing together motion pictures and the computer. Jobs' influence on both fields would be hard to overstate.

For me personally, Jobs' life work -- that is, the things he made or had a hand in making -- directly led to me pursuing my life's work, work that is, for me, the kind he spoke of in his commencement address at Stanford, quoted above.

So it seems appropriate at this moment -- on the day of his passing -- to say, "Thank you, Mr. Jobs, and rest in peace."

Here's one more quote from that 2005 commencement speech:

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

July 4

The Fourth of July is not only America’s birthday, but also the anniversary of one of the boldest experiments in American letters. On July 4, 1845, Henry David Thoreau moved into a small cabin near Walden Pond in Massachusetts and began writing “Walden,” the autobiographical book that would define his legacy.

Thoreau was many things – naturalist, political dissident, professional crank – but he was also one of our earliest and most memorable media critics....

Read more here.

 

 

Self-Reliant Film v3.0

As a way to mark some changes at Self-Reliant Film, I've done a site redesign. I recently mentioned that Ashley would be making some posts on SRF to discuss her documentary, For Memories' Sake. This marks something of a shift in Self-Reliant Film. Though I'll still be the main voice of the site, I will no longer be the sole blogger here.

In addition to Ashley's posts, my hope is to invite a couple more filmmakers into the mix in the coming months. The aim in doing this is to cover more of the things happening in cinema today while providing a voice to some interesting filmmakers -- especially regional filmmakers -- working today.

Anyway, it seemed appropriate to clean up the website design to mark the changes.

While it's on my mind, here are some notes on the new look:

Though its aim was to tie-in to the imagery of the letterpress chipboard posters that I use for my films, I was never fully satisfied with the "chipboard" version of the site. So I've decided to go with a new, cleaner look that will (I hope) allow users to find information more easily.

The top SRF menu consists of static pages, and their "child" pages.

The lower menu features categories of "mega"-tags. Hovering over each one will bring up a category of tags used on the blog. And clicking on one of those will give you all the posts in that area. In some cases (like Films & Filmmakers -> Genres) there is a third layer of categories (in this case, "Experimental" and "Documentary").

The main idea is to make the content you want more easily findable. Let me know if you like it, or if you don't.

Oh, and in case you're interested, this site uses a WordPress template called "Thematic Power Blog" by Ian Stewart.

Inauguration Day

Watching televised coverage of the inauguration, instead of being there, is probably like watching Dick Clark on New Year's Eve instead of standing in Times Square. The difference, of course, is that today's party is so historic that you might actually want to tune in. With just a few hours until the main event, here's Lifehacker's Guide to Catching the Inauguration from Anywhere. After reading this, you'll be able to tell your grandkids, "I remember the day President Obama was elected... I watched it on something called an iPhone."

Election Day +4

Just wanted to drop this as a follow-up to my last post, which concerned Video The Vote. For me, the day began at 6am, when I walked to my polling place in Roanoke and stood in a 40 minute line to vote. The line was the result of an electronic voting machine that didn't work and some poll workers who were getting on the job training about how to use the machines. Needless to say, it wasn't reassuring. I had a Flip video camera and took some very rough footage from my spot in line of the problematic machine. Needless to say, this was an inauspicious start to the day.

Thankfully, things did improve. The lines to that polling place shrunk by 8am, and I remained "on call" for Video The Vote for most of the day. I did drive out to Cloverdale, Virginia to document a woman whose voter registration address change had been lost; she had to vote provisionally.

The real story of the day, though, was in Blacksburg, where students from Virginia Tech were having to wait for several hours at one polling place. I heard about this late in the day, and a few minutes after reading the story (oddly, on Huffington Post instead of via The Roanoke Times website or from friends), Video The Vote called me from NYC, asking me to document the situation. Ashley was already in Blacksburg, so she went to capture footage. She got some great stuff with her Flip camera (videos 1, 2, 3).

NOTE: My name, not Ashley's, is on the footage because I was the one that registered for Video the Vote.

When Ashley returned home, we spent the evening uploading her footage. Video The Vote's website was SLAMMED, so uploads took forever. The fact that we were hitting the "refresh" button on our browsers to see election results wasn't helping.

Pennsylvania was called for Obama around the time that we were close to done uploading all of our videos from the day. We knew what was coming, so we headed over to an Election Day party.

And the rest, as they say, is history. Literally.

The Election: How Filmmakers Can Help

If you're reading this, you're probably a filmmaker with access to a video camera. Video The Vote needs people like you and me on Election Day. What's Video the Vote? From their website:

Video the Vote is a national initiative to protect voting rights by monitoring the electoral process. We organize citizen journalists—ordinary folks like you and me—to document election problems as they occur. And then we distribute their footage to the mainstream media and online to make sure the full story of Election Day gets told. Watch our 2006 highlights and join us as we Video the Vote this November.

If, like me, you find yourself in a swing state this year, you might feel like it's especially important to be a part of this.

It takes less than a minute to sign up, and you can volunteer for just part or all of Election Day. So get involved. And spread the word to your filmmaker friends.

Finally, if you're not sure why such an organization even exists, check out this interview between Bill Moyers and NYU professor Mark Crispin Miller. Warning: Viewing this will keep you up at night.

UFVA 2008: Those Who Teach, Make

As you probably guessed, I've taken a little break from SRF. I wish I could say that it was a planned vacation, but a combination of travel, work on my own projects, the beginning of the school year and some crazy good life stuff meant the blogging got pushed aside. One thing I did mean to write about was my experience at the University Film and Video Association Conference in August. For those of you that don't know, UFVA is the professional association for professors of filmmaking, screenwriting, and film studies. This was my first time attending the conference, and it was a lot of fun. I had the chance to meet up with some old film school friends who, like me, are now teachers, and I met lots of new folks who encounter the same sorts of challenges to filmmaking that I do (among them, living in so-called flyover territory).

The conference features a mix of screenings and panels. Among my favorite panel presentations: Jennifer Proctor (Grand Valley State) who talked about teaching creativity; John O'Leary (Villanova), who discussed the practicalities of running a university-supported film lecture series; JJ Murphy, who discussed non-traditional screenwriting approaches (drawing on films like Ronnie Bronstein's Frownland); and Seth Mulliken, who gave an awesome talk on film sound.

Of the screenings, probably my favorite film was Irinia Patkanian's Second Egyptian, a story of two immigrants in New York that has an amazing sense of poetic realism. For my part, I screened Quick Feet, Soft Hands, which was honored with the Jury Prize in Narrative Film. Needless to say, getting this award from my peers was a great honor.

Note: The title to this blog post is cribbed from a Scribe Video Center screening. I'll discuss Scribe in a future post.

A New Coat of Paint

To overstate the obvious, there's a new look here at SRF. As I prepare for the premiere of my new film, Quick Feet, Soft Hands, I have been doing some re-tooling of the Lovell Films website. Since I was already spending hours digging around in web design apps it seemed like a logical time to revamp this site as well. SRF has looked the same for nearly two and a half years, which is ages in cyber-time. I, for one, am happy to see a change.

As for the content, nothing's changed. Self-Reliant Film is the same ol' website you know and love.

The only difference of any significance is that I've tried to create more of a bridge between this site and the Lovell Films site, which promotes my own film work. There was a kind of design schizophrenia going on between the two sites -- they didn't look like they represented the same person, and the links between the two were virtually hidden. The links certainly not hidden in real life -- the blogger and the filmmaker are one and the same -- so I've tried to address that a little with the nav bar at the top.

So, that's the main difference. If you're compelled to explore the Lovell Films site, go for it. And if not, I hope you continue to enjoy what you find here.

Ok, enough about the re-design.

Coming soon: The remainder of my long-delayed reviews of Apple Color training tutorials.

ADDENDUM: Oh yeah, one more change: You may notice that the banner of the site has been shortened from "self-reliant filmmaking" to "self-reliant film." That's what I call this blog, that's what most other people call this blog, and that's the URL of the blog. So it was time to have the banner actually use the proper name.

Take A News Break Day

As many of you readers know, I was teaching at Virginia Tech on April 16 last year. The devastation we all felt losing people dear to us was deeply exacerbated by an invasion of a press corps whose satellite vehicles alone filled a football stadium parking lot. To say that these folks were insensitive would be an understatement. I never had any respect for the kind of journalism, especially TV journalism, that chases ambulances. But even my cynicism did not prepare me for what I saw those days. So, in light of the Northern Illinois University shootings, I will be taking a news break today. I encourage you to consider doing the same. The NIU shootings will, no doubt, be the top headline on most news networks and websites and every click or minute spent watching gives more encouragement to these (mostly) commercial enterprises to exploit others' pain for profit. My thoughts will be with the NIU community for today and for the days to come. But I'm not going to kid myself that viewing news reports on CNN or MTV is going to help these folks heal. But I'll stop, because I've written about "pornography of the real" before.

If you must read about the shootings, I encourage you to visit Northern Illinois University's website, or to read the Dekalb Daily-Chronicle. In my experience last year the news sources that were most valuable were the Virginia Tech website and our local newspaper, the Roanoke Times, whose coverage was sensitive, even-handed, and comprehensive. Their coverage only (re)confirmed for me that when it comes to telling stories, place -- where you come from, where you live, the people you call neighbors -- matters.

Happy New Year Wishes (recipe included)

Best wishes for a creative, productive, happy, and peaceful 2008. Where I come from (East Tennessee) it is tradition to eat black-eyed peas for good luck in celebration of the New Year. Sometimes that means beans out of a can, sometimes it means more: Today Ashley treated me to a plate full of not only Hoppin' John, but also greens and macaroni and cheese. Yes, 2008, we're off to a good start.

Follow along at home:

If you have the Joy of Cooking, and you should, there's a good recipe for Hoppin' John in there.

Of course, there are variations. Here's one. Vegan? I haven't forgotten you.

Happy New Year to all!

Filmmaking and the Environment

As you probably heard yesterday, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Al Gore. I've not always been a big supporter of Al's, but I was definitely feeling some pride for the local boy done good (the second native Tennesseean to be awarded the Peace Prize, actually.).

Though the press reports usually got it wrong, as AJ Schnack reminded everyone yesterday, Gore did not win an Oscar for An Inconvenient Truth (because he didn't direct it), but I have little doubt that the film -- because of how it drew attention to the cause of global warming, and because it drew attention to Gore's advocacy in the process -- was a factor in Gore sharing this year's Peace Prize. Looking over the list of previous Peace Prize winners, I couldn't think of another instance in which cinema played such a central role in the awardee's recognition.

Anyway, in the spirit of the announcement, I thought I would share some links and notes on environmentally-friendly filmmaking for those folks out there that, whether or not they like Al Gore, accept the findings of hundreds and hundreds of scientists from around the world that shared the Peace Prize for their work on man-made climate change research...

First, you might check out the Environmental Media Association's website, particularly their EMA Green Production Checklist (PDF download on the linked page). Most of their tips are basic "reduce, reuse, recycle" guidelines within a filmmaking context, but they're worth a look.

On a related note, in my searching online for other green filmmaking resources, I came across New Mexico's "Green Production Best Practices", which were outlined by Gov. (and Presidential candidate) Bill Richardson. No surprises here - this is a very similar list to the EMA guidelines above -- but it does have New Mexico-related resources to help you "go green." It would be great if all the other state film offices would draw up similar resource pages. If you agree, contact your local film office and make the suggestion. Or go a step further -- do the research yourself and provide it to them!

If you consider yourself deeply committed to these principles, you might want to track down a copy of Larry Fessenden's Low Impact Filmmaking. The book was originally published in 1992, so some of the information is dated. Still, this is the most extensive green-guide to filmmaking I've ever seen, and it's written with a true spirit of self-reliance. I only wish Fessenden would make it available as a PDF -- that would help disseminate the book more widely AND it'd be that much more environmentally friendly.

Finally, one of the most -- if not THE most -- significant things we filmmakers can do to help (or at least not hurt) the environment is to "work small." As I looked over the EMA Production Checklist I couldn't help but think about how the EMA's and the New Mexico film office's guidelines are geared toward Hollywood productions that feature hundreds of crew and dozens of vehicles and trailers. Without even considering the extensive things that happen in front of the camera on some of these sets (stunt car chases, explosions, etc), the fact remains that Hollywood filmmaking practices leave a big environmental footprint, no matter how much re-using and recycling they do. "Reduce" is the first step -- and it's one that the producers of so-called "Major Motion Pictures" would do well to remember.

Indeed, some of the most basic elements of low-budget, DIY regional filmmaking -- working with a small crew, shooting films in your own city with local crew, and using a modest amount of equipment (lights and vehicles, especially) -- also happen to be great practices for environmentally-sound filmmaking. Most filmmakers that "work small" (including a lot of people reading this right now) may not do so out of a commitment to the environment, but you know what? That doesn't diminish the effect. We can all do more, but working small is a big first step.

Apple Mail: 8 Tips

Like a lot of folks, I receive and send a lot of email. Lately, I've been digging myself out from the avalanche of email that fell upon my Inbox while I was in Knoxville for a month of prep and production. Surprisingly, the "dig-out" hasn't been that bad, and I think I can attribute it to some email productivity tips and plug-ins I've picked up over the last year. These tips mainly work with Apple Mail. For years I used Eudora, and then Thunderbird. But after Apple's 2.0 version of Mail was released (2005?) I switched to it and haven't regretted it. If you use something other than Mail, some of these may work and some are Mail-specific. Sorry.

Secondly, as a word of background, aside from spam, I keep virtually every email I receive. Email takes up very little memory and it serves as an effective history of work done, contacts, and so on. And everytime I think I don't need to save it all, I end up going back and searching for an email from 1999. Seriously.

Tip 1: Eliminate Spam Well, sure. No one actually wants spam. The trick is figuring out how to eliminate it.

One reason I switched to Apple Mail a few years ago was because its junk mail filter seemed to work pretty well. I don't know if just I started getting more spam, the Junk filter reached it's limitation for how much it could "learn", or if the spam started getting smarter (and by smarter I mean "dumber")... but regardless, my Inbox over the last year started seeing more and more of the stuff.

The solution is SpamSieve. For $30 (and a few minutes of set-up time) you get a clean Inbox. I get maybe one or two spam messages in my Inbox a week these days. I didn't believe the testimonials, but I downloaded the trial and used it for a few days. Now I'm a convert.

Tip 2: Process faster. Now that I'm not having to spend my time sorting out the spam, I can spend my energy processing the real emails sent to me. Though in some ways I'm a skeptic of David Allen's Getting Things Done, I appreciate his theory about tasks like email: If you can reply in 2 minutes or less, do it. If not, figure out what needs to happen next so you can act on it. Approaching my Inbox this way really does increase my efficiency.

Tip 3: Stop manually sorting emails. After replying to an email, I used to file it away. To do this I maintained between a dozen and twenty folders based on various contexts or friends -- my latest project, for example, or "Virginia Tech", or "parents", etc.

No longer. Yes, I still keep almost all my emails, but here's how I do it, inspired by Merlin Mann's sage email advice:

Beyond my "Inbox" (email to which I need to reply) and "Sent", I only maintain three or four folders now:

- The current mission critical project gets its own folder.

- If something catches my attention but there's NO urgency to it (say, an email with a link to an article that I might write about for SRF), I put it in a folder called "Someday?"

- I also maintain a "Waiting On" folder, primarily for email receipts of items I've purchased online. It's my reminder box to make sure something I've purchased actually gets sent to me. I don't check the Waiting folder often enough to put anything of great (ie., work-related) importance in it.

- Everything else goes in a folder I've created called "Archive".

Other folders: If I still want to maintain folders related to people (say, my accountant), all I have to do is set up a smart folder in Mail using my accountant's email address as the filter. All mail stil gets filed to my "Archive", but relevant emails will show up in the smart folder. Voila -- no more time spent manually sorting!

Tip 4: Use MailActOn Probably the thing that I miss the most about Eurdora and Thunderbird is the ease with which you can color-code emails. It's a great way to visually sort the emails in your Inbox -- either by priority or context or whatever.

Mail, unfortunately, still lags in this area: To color-code emails one has to open the color palette (Shift-Apple-C) then use the mouse to click on a color, all the while keeping Apple's rather large color-wheel window open. Clumsy, to say the least.

MailActOn, a donation-ware plug-in for Apple Mail, solves this problem -- and more. Aside from allowing you to assign keystrokes for color-coding, MailActOn also lets you to use keystrokes to sort your mail. Now, when I want to send an email to a specific folder (say, "Archive") all hit is is the keystroke I've defined (in my case, Ctrl-A).

And, of course, Merlin at 43Folders has figured out the way to squeeze every bit of functionality out of the thing by remapping the Caps Lock key. Brilliant!

Tip 5: Speed up Mail Saving a lot of email (as I do) can impact Apple Mail's performance. Mail gets bloated, as it were, and slows down. If you're not careful, the database that stores information about your emails can even get corrupted.

Luckily, there's a simple solution. The Hawk Wings website has links to two different scripts (one, AppleScript, and the other an Automator script) that will "vacuum" the bloat out of Mail.app.

The Applescript version worked like a charm for me without incident, but you should ALWAYS backup your Mail.app files before trying something like this. (See below.)

Tip 6: Back-up Mail Files This is the most basic tip of all, and I know I say it again and again on this site, but ask yourself these two questions:

How much of my life is somehow stored in the emails I have sent and received?

When was the last time I backed up my email files?

So, though you should probably be using something like ChronoSync or whatever to backup ALL your files, if you need to backup just your Mail files they can be found in your system here:

users/[home directory]/Library/Mail users/[home directory]/Library/Mail Downloads

Tip 7: If you use multiple computers, consider using Portable Mail

I have two computers -- a tower and a laptop. All other things being equal, I prefer working on the tower, but the laptop obviously has its advantages. Mail is one application I want to access no matter which computer I'm on, and I've found syncing the application to be a bit of a pain at times. As a solution, I sometimes use a portable version of Mail, which I can run off of a flash drive.

The premise of Portable Mail is this: Instead of trying to sync your Mail from one computer to the next, you instead keep Mail -- your preferences, mailboxes, and downloads -- on a flash drive. Launching Portable Mail launches the Mail.app application of the host computer, but uses all of your preferences, which are on the flash drive.

If your email accounts have better than adequate webmail interfaces that you can access you might not need this, but I have a few accounts that have lousy webmail, so I've found it to be quite handy during days when I know I'm going back and forth between computers a lot.

You'll probably want a 1GB flash drive or larger if you have a lot of email.

Tip 8: Use Plug-ins (if you need 'em)

I'm obviously a fan of MailActOn and SpamSieve. They're two plug-ins that help me customize Apple's Mail to be the application I need. But I draw the line there -- adding on too many plug-ins increases clutter, decreases productivity, and invites conflicts that cause applications to crash.

But maybe you need something more, or something different. If so, the Hawk Wings website has made an excellent catalog of Plug-ins for Apple Mail.

Use 'em if you need 'em. And if you don't, don't.

Rest in Peace, Edward Yang

Via the Filmmaker Magazine blog, I've just learned that writer-director Edward Yang has died of complications from colon cancer. He was 59 years old. In 2006 I started to catch up with Yang's films. The first one I saw was 1991's A Brighter Summer Day. The film is not available commercially anywhere in the world, but I had managed to secure a 2-DVD bootleg of the 237 minute epic. I was laid up in bed, sick, with nothing else to do, so I figured a four-hour movie would be a good way to pass the time.

It's a stunning film, but when it was over -- well before it was over, actually -- the devastating impact the film had on me was buoyed by my thrill at discovering a filmmaker so in control of the medium.

Still, even that film did not prepare me for Yi Yi, which I caught up with late last year after Criterion released it on DVD. As I mentioned in my year-end posting, the experience of watching Yi Yi at home last winter was the best moviegoing experience I had all last year.

One of the reasons I would never want to be a full-time movie reviewer or critic is my inability to put into words experiences like seeing Yi Yi. Peter Bowen's post over at Filmmaker quotes A.O. Scott's review of it in the Times, and that gives a hint of what I myself felt:

As I watched the final credits of Yi Yi through bleary eyes, I struggled to identify the overpowering feeling that was making me tear up. Was it grief? Joy? Mirth? Yes, I decided, it was all of these. But mostly, it was gratitude.

There's something so exciting about discovering the work of a new artist whose work you hold close to your heart: There's the thrill of going through the back-catalog, hoping that there are more treasures to discover. And, if that artist is still alive, still working, there's the eager anticipation of looking forward to their new work, which is a kind of joy in its own right.

Today, when I heard the news of Yang's death on June 29th, I -- and all of his fans -- lost the chance to feel that latter kind of joy. All that's left for us is the chance to appreciate the work Yang created while he was here.

It may take years before I can see all of his films -- none besides Yi Yi are available on DVD -- but however long it takes, I'll be thankful they remain to be seen. Yes, "gratitude" is the right word.

Thank you, Edward Yang. Rest in peace.

***

If, like me, you're coming late to Edward Yang's work here are some ways to learn more:

Online Resources:

    Edward Yang: IMDB entry

    Edward Yang: Senses of Cinema biography -- this includes several links to interviews, essays, etc.

    Edward Yang: Wikipedia entry

    Edward Yang: AP Obituary

    Added 7.3.07:

    Edward Yang: NYT Obituary [Manohla Dargis]

    Edward Yang reflections on GreenCine

    Jonathan Rosenbaum reviews of Edward Yang films

Books:

    Edward Yang

DVD:

    Yi Yi is the only film of Yang's to be commercially released on DVD, either in the USA or (to the best of my knowledge) abroad. Bootleg DVDs for at least some of Yang's other films are known to be available on the internet.

Flyover

I just learned about an interesting new blog called FlyOver. From the site:

FlyOver is a blog about art in the American Outback -- the people and places usually given less attention by those hopping from coast to coast. It's a way for arts journalists and artists outside the major American urban areas to celebrate, discuss, critique and share what they do. While it was established to continue a conversation begun at USC Annenberg's 2007 NEA Arts Journalism Institute in Theater and Musical Theater, we hope it will ultimately grow to serve a larger community of journalists, artists and institutions involved in the arts in America.

No, it may not cover issues related to filmmaking (at least not yet), but its attention to art and artmaking outside of the traditional hubs of the so-called "art world" is welcome.

Open Thread: Superstitions

I'm back from Knoxville, where I just spent the last month prepping and then shooting a new project. I'm way too close to things to say much about it -- what it is, how it went, and so on -- right now. As it gets closer to completion I will talk more about it, no doubt. Aside from not having any distance on the thing, the fact is that I'm just generally reluctant to talk about works-in-progress. This probably seems like an odd trait for a "film blogger" to have. If so, hey, guilty as charged. That fact remains that the only thing I like less than talking about a film I've just shot (but not edited) is a film I'm in the process of writing. I don't have a problem talking about the project with collaborators -- that would be counter-productive (and very frustrating for others, I'm sure). Mainly, it's just a reluctance for me to attempt to define a creative project for others before it has defined itself to me.

The reluctance is also based in superstition. It seems like every time I say something semi-definitively about a film I'm making (especially during production) I'm eating my words within minutes. (A recent example: "I'm glad we've now decided which camera we're renting and we can move onto other things!")

On the flip side, I have certain rituals that I need to do before writing a project. And there are lucky objects: a brand of pens, old t-shirts, baseball caps.

I know I'm not alone. A lot of artists (filmmakers, writers, choreographers, etc.) that I've known are superstitious people -- practically as superstitious as baseball players. The cinematographer of a couple of films I made always wore the same t-shirt on the first day of filming. It was a promotional film from a successfuly 90s indie comedy (which shall remain nameless). He loathed the film, actually, but he wore the t-shirt because he figured it would remind him that no matter what, we could make something better.

But enough about me. What about you? Drop a comment if you have superstitions when writing, prepping, filming, or finishing a project -- or if you know a good story about someone that does.

We Now Resume Our Regularly Scheduled Programming

This is, I think, the longest delay between posts at Self-Reliant Film. Between the events at Virgina Tech and the preparation for a project of mine, well, what can I say? My attention has been elsewhere. Anyway, it's good to get back to the blog. Thanks, again, to all of you that privately emailed or publicly commented with words of support. On an unrelated(?) note, I just remembered that today marks the 15th anniversary of the "premiere" of my first film, a film called "Pure", which I made with a Super-8 film camera graciously loaned by Chris Cagle. The film screened for about twenty people in the living room of my friend Wade Guyton, who lived in the house next door to Chris.

I remember that the evening ended with various people singing along to the Xanadu soundtrack. Yesterday, my friend Alan sent me a link to this. Plus ça change, plus c'est la méme chose.

Tragedy at Virginia Tech: What You Can Do, How You Can Help

A number of you have emailed me privately to ask how, if at all, you can be of help regarding the tragic events of the past week. Thanks for asking. Here are some ideas:

* If you are as concerned and offended as I am about decision of the various news outlets to share the killer's self-taped images and/or manifesto, let them know your thoughts about it.

* If you have no connection whatsoever to the events of the past week I request that you pause, for at least 24 hours, reading any news stories on the event, especially from news outlets that have featured the killer's vanity kit. Instead, use that time -- even if it's 5 minutes -- to do something positive in the world.

* If you feel compelled to read the news, I encourage you to visit The Roanoke Times, whose in-depth and respectful coverage has been a source of pride for many of us in the area.

* If you are able to do so, I encourage you to donate to one of the many memorial funds set up to honor the victims.

* Finally, if you are a film professional, in the coming weeks I will be looking for internships and summer work for my 26 filmmaking students. It's vital, to me, to help them find meaningful summer activity, which will move them forward in their career goals and get their minds off of the terrible recent events.

Please contact me directly if you can offer an internship or, even better, paid summer work: pharrill AT selfreliantfilm DOT com