One of my fellow interns/residents at Pixar, Colin Levy, had the privilege of meeting the legendary Martin Scorsese a couple years ago. Colin sent him a thank-you card and asked for some viewing recommendations. This is the list Scorsese sent back. I’ve only seen two of these films so far, but I’m determined to dive deeper and go through this incredible list of masterpieces through a screening of one film every week at the studio!
Edit: This just made front-page on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/rd116/young_filmmaker_sends_martin_scorsese_a_note/
Da Capo - If this is a dream which starts over and over again, what reality holds this person?
Every once in awhile I’ll lose sight of the big picture and get frustrated over the little obstacles and tasks that stand in the way of creating something amazing. As tempting as it is to splash a bucket of paint on a canvas to get things moving, it’s important to remember that it’s the little details and tiny brushstrokes that ultimately create the masterpiece and tell the story.
This performance by Shaun Evaristo really conveys what I’m trying to say. He’s a master of detail, and you can truly feel how each movement has a purpose: to tell an insanely great story.
Shaun Evaristo: JUST THE BEGINNING
I’ve been wanting to post this since last year but life kept coming and somehow it all just got lost in the shuffle of things in my life. Never the less, here is it… enjoy!
Late September, 2006. I had just moved to LA and choreographed my first Carnival set. I was fresh from San Francisco and I…
Shaun Evaristo. I look up to this guy so much. If you’re familiar with his work and his creative masterpieces, read his story to see how hard he worked to get to where he is today. In the odd chance that you’re not familiar with his stuff, look him up and prepare to be inspired.
10 Lessons Jeremy Lin Can Teach Us Before We Go To Work Monday Morning
“Suffering produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us.”
Late Friday night at Pixar.
BOBBYHUNDREDS: ABE.
This may very well be the greatest The Hundreds story, never told.
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As many of you already know, The Hundreds was conceived while Ben and I were law students. Maybe it’s not the coolest chapter of The Hundreds’ history, and you probably don’t wanna believe that your…
Vote Down To Funk for Movement Lifestyle’s theTOUR contest!
It’s truly amazing how much this group is growing each and every day. I still remember stumbling across Popping Club as a first year at UC Davis - it was just a small handful of people back then, but it’s grown into an army of talented students and teachers. I’ve seen a couple of the dancers in this video grow from beginners who couldn’t match movement with music to beat killers who could manipulate any song. One of my friends in particular, Eric Kim, has grown right in front of my eyes and is now the president of Popping Club (and a great mentor to the newbies as well). So please support him, Down to Funk, Popping Club, UC Davis, and the Davis dance community by voting for them in the link below!
I know this has been posted a lot already, but great things like this should always be shared and circulated as much as possible.
This video really hits close to home for many reasons, and I’m sure most of my friends who are away from their homes can relate.
Dedicated to our families.
Like the mother and daughter, we all have those moments where we neglect our parents, too busy living our own life, we often forget that on the other side our parents are working hard and have struggled to give us as good a life as they can.
Like the son, pressures from school can be the biggest struggle for young people. While it’s important, sometimes stepping away to find that true peace keeps us going. Whether it’s in art and photography, making videos, singing, dancing, or even video games with friends.
Like the father, jobs and financial worries can bring us down. Especially in these tough times, when so much is uncertain, the greatest gift we have is knowing that there is one constant, family.
-Wong Fu Productions
Community - Entertainment 101 & The Psychology of Dan Harmon
Time and time again, Community has amazed me with its incredibly smart writing and talented ensemble cast. It’s a real shame that this show is going on hiatus, and the low ratings for this show tell a really depressing story about today’s world of entertainment and the audience consuming it. In the landscape of entertainment where questionable reality TV shows gain higher ratings and shows with laugh tracks and canned laughter tell people what they’re supposed to find “funny”, it’s almost not surprising why smart comedies like Community are overlooked.
I recently read a quote by Seth Godin that ties in very closely with this:
The secret of good reviews and positive word of mouth is simple: if people get the joke, feel like insiders, finish the book, grow, learn, and are part of what you make, you win.
If they don’t, if your product or service makes them feel dumb or poor or excluded, they won’t talk about you the same way.
You don’t need everyone to talk about you. But obsessing about making a target group feel smart and successful is a great way to make those conversations happen.
The flip side: if someone outside of the target group doesn’t get the joke, don’t worry. That’s not why you made your art in the first place.
By all standards, Dan Harmon is an artist in his writing. There’s a reason Community has such an insane cult following, but sadly this reason is lost on a good amount of viewers who might not understand the unique meta-humor or outrageous pop culture references in the show. I mean, what other show spends three years sneakily setting up a Beetlejuice gag?
While it’s true that Harmon has done an amazing job garnering the love and support of his target group, the flip side that Godin mentions is swept away in the tide of television where ratings are the biggest factor in determining a show’s longevity. The good thing is that those who “get the joke” and love the show watch it religiously, talk about it, and even write long blog posts about it when they have final exams to study for (haha).
Wired Magazine did an interesting article about Harmon’s storytelling process, and it’s hard to imagine how this doesn’t drive him insane:
He wanted to codify the storytelling process—to find the hidden structure powering the movies and TV shows, even songs, he’d been absorbing since he was a kid. “I was thinking, there must be some symmetry to this,” he says of how stories are told. “Some simplicity.” So he watched a lot of Die Hard, boiled down a lot of Joseph Campbell, and came up with the circle, an algorithm that distills a narrative into eight steps:
1. A character is in a zone of comfort
2. But they want something
3. They enter an unfamiliar situation
4. Adapt to it
5. Get what they wanted
6. Pay a heavy price for it
7. Then return to their familiar situation
8. Having changedHarmon calls his circles embryos—they contain all the elements needed for a satisfying story—and he uses them to map out nearly every turn on Community, from throwaway gags to entire seasons. If a plot doesn’t follow these steps, the embryo is invalid, and he starts over. To this day, Harmon still studies each film and TV show he watches, searching for his algorithm underneath, checking to see if the theory is airtight. “I can’t not see that circle,” he says. “It’s tattooed on my brain.”
As an aspiring creator and lover of good writing and TV/Film, I can only hope that one day I’ll be able to create something that comes close to the witty and creative product of Harmon’s crazy mind.
