The Opposite of a Cakewalk

Well, it's been a bit again – and that's totally fine by the way. The last few weeks have been a freakin' whirlwind.

I finished out the first module of my MBA with an A in both my Financial Accounting and Quantitative Analysis classes. Let me rephrase that: I earned those two As considering I was studying 30-40 hours a week in addition to my work and family responsibilities. The graduate work I'd done back in 2005-06 was an absolute cakewalk compared to what I went through these last eight weeks. We've already started our second module for the semester, and I'm taking classes in Financial Management and Leadership. Soon enough I'll start sharing what I'm learning in those classes, but considering how little time I have at the moment, I'll just leave you with a couple quotes I've already read for my leadership class:

"The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook." - William James

"When you say everything is a high priority, then nothing is a high priority. It really indicates that you're unwilling or unable to make a decision, which means you won't get anything done." - John Maxwell

During the tail end of finals week I was over in Amsterdam meeting with and interviewing the incredibly kind people behind Royal Posthumus. I'd mentioned it in an earlier post, but their story plays a large roll in my rubber stamp documentary. I'd been wanting to connect with them in person for what feels like forever at this point and I'm stoked it finally happened. I'll save the storyline details for the film, but I'm actually hoping to share some of the logistical experiences I went through in making that nonsense happen and what I learned.

While I've travelled alone internationally before, I've always met up with American crews on site and had producers and directors who were the "adults in the room." I'd not had to hire out and pay foreign crew in local currencies, deal with the whole Carnet thing, plus a notebook full of other things. Beyond that, there's the whole thing of me being up way too late studying and taking one of my MBA finals in a European hotel room and having to figure out how to keep my computer charged using my rental car's USB-c port because I'd accidentally left my charger at home.

There's also those other shoots I could talk about since my last post – Life.Church and Habitat for Humanity shoots here in Oklahoma City and that last minute job out in Kansas City, MO – but you'll just have to trust me and a few iPhone photos without context to prove I've been working my tail off lately.

Curb Stomp'd (but diggin' it...for the most part)

You wanna talk about depreciation schedules or amortization? Maybe basket purchases, asset turnover ratios, and how to dispose of those assets at the end of their service life? We could also get into Student's t-distributions and linear regression models if you're interested.

Literally no clue why any of you are still here (hi mom).

The last couple months my world has basically been a tossed salad of math, spreadsheets, reading assignments, and a couple stale croutons of creative work. There's also a side of Cub Scouts with Housefire No.2, and for dessert, an upcoming trip to Amsterdam for my rubber stamp documentary.

There's also our household getting absolutely wrecked earlier this month when we had to put down Clara the Dog. St. Anne the Wife and I got her in 2010 for our first wedding anniversary and over the last 12 years that English Bulldog was no question a member of our family. We knew Clara was getting towards the sunset of life, but her last few weeks went south quickly. We're incredibly lucky to have had such a great companion all these years and I'm glad we had the time with her that we did.

Regarding my school work, I'm freakin' floored with what I'm learning. Turns out the accountants and CPAs I've worked with over the years are true heroes and I'm absolutely not cut from that same cloth. There's also those statistical super powers and their potential I'm trying to comprehend that've basically made my head explode – in addition to literal headaches. One of our in-class examples last week worked through the actual correlation between political campaign results and the relationship to campaign spending. Freakin' fascinating.

Is this intentional mental torture getting me more creative work? No, not by a long shot. Is it making me think differently about how I approach what I do from a business standpoint? Unquestionably, and that's why I'm here.

We're more than half-way through our first eight week module and I'm stoked about my grades being as high as they are. On average, I've been spending nearly 40 hours a week studying and most the time I feel like I'm barely hanging on. Seeing as how flexible my freelance schedule typically is, I can't imagine how my cohorts are dealing with this nonsense in addition to the demands of a full-time job, let alone a family or personal life. I've got a shoot this week that'll have me missing one of my classes, and then mid-Oct I'll be seven time zones away during my finals week. I guess I'll let you know how that goes.

Speaking of seven time zones away, I'm off to Amsterdam to meet with some of the people behind Royal Posthumus. They're a company I'd learned about that played a major role in rubber stamp art as well as usse stamps to fight the Nazis during World War Two. I've been wanting to head over to do these interviews for what feels like forever at this point.

There's a bit of time during the week when I'm not getting curb stomped by my own choices and responsibilities. That's when both Housefires are bed and Anne and I have time to chill out and watch the internet. Chef's Table: Pizza is basically crack to me as a filmmaker who's interested in people and food. Atlanta, well, thank goodness for something interesting and original. And for something incredibly heavy but necessary, Anne and I started watching The U.S. and the Holocaust from documentary filmmakers Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein (and a ton of others). It premiered last weekend and I'm sure it'll take us awhile to make it through the six-plus hour film, but good grief this should be required viewing for all Americans.

Anne and I started watching The U.S. and the Holocaust from documentary filmmakers Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein (and a ton of others). It premiered last weekend and I'm sure it'll take us awhile to make it through the six-plus hour film, but good grief this should be required viewing for all Americans.

Rubber Stamps, Work, and Books

Short and sweet this week. It's another busy one and I'm on the road in the Tulsa area for a bit with some wild call times. Thankfully I got a later call this morning and was able to sneak over to a coffeeshop in Broken Arrow, OK. Big fan of the dude behind West of Death and the work they've done for Rattlesnake Cafe and Lioness Coffee Roasters, plus their sister shop Chimera in Tulsa.

More to come later, but I'm like 20 mins from being strapped into an EasyRig and full-kitted out Sony FX9 for the next 12 hours. Trying to get some reading in beforehand. I'd finished Ernest Cline's Ready Player One last week (and was beyond disappointed by Steven Spielberg's dumpster fire film adaptation). I'm now into David Graeber's Debt: The First 5,000 Years and dang that dude has come out swinging.

Travel Week

It's a travel week and I'll be on road through this July 4th holiday. St. Anne the Wife is maintaining her role as family superhero while I'm hustling through airports and hoping my footage is exposed and framed well and somewhat in focus.

It's Saturday as I'm writing this and I'm on a three hour layover in Houston before my next flight. Both the airport shuttle driver and the ticket counter agent asked if I was getting paid extra to work over the holiday weekend. I'm assuming it was the stack equipment cases I'm traveling with that suggested I wasn't out for a summer vacation like the rest of the world. Two plus years is a long time to be putting off leisure travel and a lot's changed since I started flying again during the pandemic. Those nearly empty airports and flights back in August 2020 are long gone and it's certainly back to fighting for empty seats and armrests.

I'm flying from a different city on another airline and meeting my producer/director & field audio at our destination. Luckily my 7am flight out of OKC had no issues, but they're delayed and hoping to make their connecting flight. If you've been paying attention, they're not the only ones dealing with yet another Covid related dumpster fire.

Delays and cancellations have plagued air travel, and the Fourth of July weekend may be the biggest test yet for the airline industry, which has faced scrutiny from customers, regulators and investors. - Lauren Hirsch, nytimes.com

Still, as a freelancer who's certainly gone months without work – especially this year – I'm a happy clam to jump on an early flight to a paid gig.

In the meantime, the July-August edition of EdibleOKC just came out and includes a two page spread about my rubber stamp collection. I'd connected with EdibleOKC Editor and Co-Publisher Stuart Husdson via Sam DuRegger (Woodshed Tea & TMRW Coffee). The fine folks at EdibleOKC heard about my stamp hunting and are doing a series on food related collecting. Stuart and I connected for a couple different interviews for the print piece and they sent out a fantastic freelance photographer based in OKC named Charlie Neuenschwander. I'm an awkward person to begin with plus not used to being on the business end of a camera. Crazy thanks to both of them for putting up with me, let alone being interested in my project. I've yet to see an online version of the article, but I'll make sure and include a link if and when it's available. While I'm writing this too, make sure and check out the other work Charlie's website.

Electrical Fires and Actually Working

I may or may not have had to deal with a small electrical fire this morning, so there's that. Late Saturday afternoon Oklahoma County was under a tornado warning and I'd unplugged my computer and server setup just incase things went absolutely south. It's storm season here and you grow up learning to pay attention to the weather. Luckily the storm petered out by the time it was close enough to us to have done any serious damage, but the power in our neighborhood went out for a few house.

This morning I started to plug everything back in for the start of the work week and had a legit cloud of white smoke rolling out from under my desk. A power adapter for an external hard drive had shorted out and the metal part you shove into the hard drive was getting crazy hot, vaporizing the plastic around it. Luckily it wasn't connected to a hard drive at the time and even luckily'er I was able to put out the small fire that'd started. So, technically – I'm assuming – that'd be (delayed) storm damage and not just me being an idiot for having too much plugged in.

The last couple months were focused on applying to grad school and various "adult/parent responsibilities." Now with that heavy lifting behind me for the most part, I've been able to get back to my rubber stamp doc.

The teaser has been updated after some previous notes I'd gotten plus I added a couple new sections. I still don't have a title for project, but that'll come soon enough. I've also connected with a few new people in the stamp world that I'm hoping can help add meat to the skeleton I've already got. And considering how my last name constantly gets butchered, I bought rubberstampdoc.com and rubberstampfilm.com to help make life easier. Those URLs just forward to the webpage I've been using for months.

More and more people have started asking about updates on the project, so I've also added an email list you can sign up for if that's your thing. No plans at this point to do a regular newsletter or anything, but I do know it's helpful to have an idea about a potential audience. I've been thinking too about possible distribution, film festivals, and all that vs. just putting the thing on YouTube and moving on. There's still quite a lot I'd like to do and people I want to interview.

So far the project has been self-funded with business profits and stock footage sales. At times too I've been able extend client related travel so I'm able to land additional interviews (NYC, San Francisco). I've kept production costs super lean by one-man-banding all things, but that becomes a liability soon enough. Ideally I'd be able to hire out audio (priority) and a cam op (secondary) so I can focus on the interviews. Once we get to full-on post-production I'd like to work with a colorist plus someone who knows what they're doing in terms of final delivery. There's also an aspect of animation and graphic design I'd want to incorporate, but I'm not there yet. There's all the things under the hood of a film that no one outside the industry talks about, but you absolutely recognize them if they're not there.

Oh, and I actually finally finished reading that Capital in the 21st Century book by Thomas Piketty. Seriously I've not read something that interesting in a long time. Thick and dense AF, but dang this amateur economist was glued and completely nerded out. St. Anne the Wife asked me to stop talking about it more than one occasion. I also finished Dave Grohl's The Storyteller this past weekend. In a former creative life I was actually a musician and learned to play thanks to listening to hours and hours of Nirvana. There was so much in his book that I related to with his time and experiences on the road. He seriously seems like such a nice guy. I've already started re-reading Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis and I've got a couple other books waiting in the wings. Months ago I'd ordered the 11th Edition of the American Cinematographer Manual and it was finally delivered this past week. I'd also picked up the 4th edition of Directing the Documentary by Michael Rabiger at a used bookstore awhile ago.

Rubber Stamp Doc teaser

Early last week I finally put together a quick teaser for my untitled rubber stamp project. Good Lord I'm far from finished with the whole thing, but it's something to see parts of it coming to life.

It's to the point where I think it's detrimental trying to do the entire thing by myself. Having a project teaser at leasts gives me something to send out to those possibly interested: crew, producers, production companies, etc. There's still a pitch deck to put together and at least a rough budget to figure out so I have some kind of answer when asked what I think I need. Ideally I'd love to land an executive producer who's been down this road before so I'd have help asking the questions I don't know to ask. So far it's helped start some additional conversations and hopefully too it'll help add some legitimacy to the cold emails, text messages, and DMs I'm sending out.

I've done documentary work since I started behind a camera, but I think this project has legs enough to be seen by more than my immediate family and those 10-15 regulars on Vimeo.

There's plenty more interviews I'm wanting to do and topics to chase down. There's a few people I want to talk to here in the US plus Europe, Australia, and Japan. With what I have so far, I'm pretty sure I could put out a festival ready short or possible feature length film. Being ambitious, it's not out of the question to see it as a docuseries considering what I've learned so far.

To DC and Back

It's been about a month, so surely it's time for another update.

The Washington, D.C. trip came and went a few weeks ago. For the first time, I kinda got to "peak rubber stamp" considering how saturated the week was. Looking through my notebook those few days I landed something like 65 different stamps. Most were directly related to ones you could find at National Park sites, but that's totally fine considering it being the main reason I drove about 3,200 miles in seven days.

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There's also the new buddies I made out in eastern Tennessee. Picasso Gaglione and Darlene Domel let me spend most of the day at their place in Knoxville and talk rubber stamps till I ran out of hard drive space (and then some). They were both incredibly kind, interesting, and their creative worlds and experiences went way beyond the scope of my rubber stamp documentary.

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With all the stamp hunting between Oklahoma City and D.C., I'm pretty sure I found the best egg sandwich in the country at Fox In The Snow Cafe in Columbus, OH. I'd already had at least three coffees in about four hours, so I can't speak to their espresso offerings but damn that sandwich probably changed my life. There's something to be said too about A Dopo Sourdough Pizza in Knoxville, TN and how I'll be making my own pizza dough plus thanks to A Baked Joint in D.C. for reintroducing to Tabasco sauce. And thank goodness to the coffee shop owner at Redhawk Coffee in Pittsburg who kinda blew my mind with a quote about "cup stamping being the backbone of the hipster economy."

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For the actual National Park Travelers Club conference in DC, I'd not really had a plan going into it. All I knew was what I'd learned during my interview with Mike Brown back in June and some of the time I'd spent on their website. Ideally I'd have gone into the event as a producer with wireless video signal and headphones connected a dedicated camera op and production sound mixer/boom op. But, there I was like an idiot trying to do all the nonsense myself seeing as how I didn't have an additional $1k-1500/day to hire out a crew.

I'm pushing hard on this project to do what I can with what I have, so I was out there with my RED Weapon, a set of prime lenses, and some filtration/NDs. If I were to do it again, I'd have tried to spent the $1k to rent out a couple of the Angenieux EZ cinema zooms for the week and at least used a monopod vs. trying to keep the camera package as SUPER lean and unobtrusive as possible while filming the conference. I'd also planned to shoot some sit-down interviews with convention go-ers back in my hotel room, but that never panned out. This project is more a marathon than a sprint, so I'll probably be making some changes as I go.

I'm still hoping to make it overseas and meet up with some connections I've made (London, Melbourne, etc) plus get some of the Eki train stamps in Japan, but that's quite a bit of money I'll need to come up with to make that happen. Seeing as how I'm planning to pay for all this via my stock footage revenue, I did shoot quite a bit of skyline footage with my drone while I was out (Little Rock, Nashville, Pittsburgh, Columbus, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, St. Louis) plus a handful of things with my RED. I'm also considering reaching out to some production companies and other connections I've made over the years to see if those could be options to help fund this nonsense.