Got my MBA. Now What?

Oh man, if only I had an actual answer to this one. The whole reason I went to business school was this idea that as creatives, we cut ourselves off at the knee because we don't understand the business end of the creative work we do. It's not like business school was a golden ticket or anything, but now that I've done the thing, I've got a diverse set of new business tools that'll carry me through the rest of my career. At least that's the plan – and what I told St. Anne the Wife.

Being the analytics nerd that I am, I kept track of my time as a graduate student in fifteen minute increments. I'm proud of those 1,700+ hours of class and studying these last 18 months though I'm still bitter about that one B I got in Managerial Accounting.

About two years ago I got serious about pursuing this MBA nonsense and it's been a dead sprint ever since. I finished my last classes this past week and it's now the first Monday I've had in 18 months without a load of classwork. It's wild trying to realistically get my footing again as a working professional now that I'm not also a full-time student.

In addition to wrapping up my graduate work at OU, I was in the DFW area this past weekend with the OU MBA program. We heard from a handful of Dallas-based businesses like Texas Health Resources, 7-Eleven, and PepsiCo. I headed down early and got some face time with a couple of my contacts in the DFW area. Sai Selvarajan is a documentary filmmaker and an editor with Camp Lucky. We had lunch Thursday and talked shop about a few of his recent and upcoming projects. In 2021 he released The Unlikely Fan, a short documentary about his mom and her wild love of basketball. The film got accepted to the 2021 SXSW Film Festival and landed Sai some additional opportunities. He's got another film in the works and I'm looking forward to seeing what that leads to. I also met with Micah Austin who's been my go-to at Filmsupply over the years. Seem's like he's just as much an analytics nerd as I am, so we got deep in the weeds with that nonsense.

There are several creative works I'll start spinning back up this week in addition to pre-production work on a couple of client projects. Surely I'll have more updates on those as they get going again. Since I don't have any of my own nonsense to share at this point, here are a few recent podcasts and news articles I've gone through that are worth your time:

Excuses, excuses

It's getting real that I'm only four weeks away from completing my MBA. My communications class currently has us working on a business proposal and pitch using ChatGPT. My strategy class has us in groups competing with each other's simulated businesses. It's all incredibly interesting and essentially the culmination of the work we've been doing throughout our graduate business program. Still, I'm constantly thinking about lighting, composition, and sharing interesting stories and ideas via short documentaries and photos.

With that in mind, this past week I came across a few short films that certainly kept my attention.

There are a few photographers I'm following on YouTube who I think are doing some interesting work. One of them is a Canadian named Kyle McDougall. He's a film photog and former cinematographer and director who's currently living in the UK. This week he flexed those filmmaker muscles with this short and gorgeous documentary about a buddy of his named Nicholas J.R. White.

Another short doc I ran across this week was a piece about zines and zine culture. What felt great about this one is how appropriately handmade it felt, which no doubt felt like a zine itself. Bonus points too for their smash-and-grab usage of some great punk music.

The last thing I'll leave you with this week comes from another YouTuber I recently stumbled on. This channel shares the work of other well-known photographers and attempts to imitate their approaches as a means of learning new techniques. There are plenty of interesting examples on the channel, but I was especially drawn to this one about photographer Olga Karlovac's work.

There's only four more weeks of being able to use the "I wish I could go out and make something interesting but I'm still in grad school" excuse and I'ma ride that thing into the ground. It's much easier to do that than go out and make something interesting myself.

At least for now...

VICE's Queer Sports: International Gay Rodeo Association

Oh man, I've been waiting for this one to come out for what feels like forever. Getting to work on this piece rocked my world in all the best ways. Back in late October 2022, I got to cam op a couple days on this nonsense just outside the Oklahoma City area.

Rodeos are very much a part of growing up in my part of the world. My parents owned and ran a feed store about an hour south of Dallas when I was born. My mom taught in small country schools where elementary students had dip can rings worn into their back pockets. My dad has stories of being a rodeo clown. Had my parents not trekked back to the Oklahoma City area not long after I was born, I'm certain I'd have grown up much differently.

This thing though. This International Gay Rodeo Association experience last fall fought back against a load of the stereotypes surrounding the world of rodeo and conservative America. I'm glad they're doing great things.

Client: VICE News
Director: Alex Smith
DP: McKinleigh Lair
Camera Op: Tanner Herriott
Sound: Kelly Hallmark
PA: Whitney Goodwin

We Need More Weird Stuff

Normally I'll just delete the Short of the Week email I've been getting for goodness knows how long. But every now and then I'll ignore the black hole of responsibilities just long enough and find gems like this short film by Babak Ganjei.

What's more rad is the fact this short film was from the same people who brought us the weird AF surrealist horror comedy Don't Hug Me I'm Scared. And more rad-erer is the fact that YouTube series by Blink Industries is now a fancy pants TV show on British Channel 4 (that I can't watch here in the U.S. until I figure out how to use a VPN).

In a roundabout way, this nonsense connects me even more with a podcast I'd heard last week. The Daily podcast from The New York Times interviewed one of their own, film critic A.O. Scott, about why he's done with the movies.

"After 23 years as a film critic, Mr. Scott discusses why he is done with the movies, and what his decision reveals about the new realities of American cinema." - The New York Times

They get into major studios leaning so hard into superhero movies and crowding out other other potential film projects as well as how streaming platforms have changed the game. Seriously worth a listen.

The budding MBA brain of mine is down to argue the economics of this nonsense with the other part of me who just wants to make weird art kid stuff no one asked for. It makes me optimistic knowing that the film Everything Everywhere All at Once did so incredibly well this year at the Oscars and will hopefully further open the door to more independent and original films.

Shooting with Penny Pitchlynn

Meet Penny Pitchlynn. She's a badass. She's the Norman, OK, based musician behind LABRYS, plus she's the bass player in the indie rock band BRONCHO. I also remember her Low Litas days a while back. She reached out a few weeks ago through a buddy of mine and we finally got to work on something together. Have I mentioned I'm always down to make stuff with other creatives? 'Cause I am.

When she reached out I immediately knew I didn't want to shoot something with her playing or an interview about her music projects – there's plenty of solid stuff out there already. I did want to try and play with contrasts though. I'm always a fan of the idea of who we are vs. the person we sometimes need to be. In setting up the shoot, I sent Penny some reference images and an idea of a person being in two different worlds; Kinda like how I feel about being on LinkedIn. Footage from this film is available for licensing over at Filmsupply.

This was also a bit of a shotgun blast in the dark with hopes of hitting something. "Hey, let's try a book light." "Oh I know! Let's shoot white on black and black on white!" "Man, that Vaseline on a clear flat would be cool." "What about shooting through a curved piece of glass to distort the image?" If you're up for it, here's a link to download the look book I put together for the shoot.

Penny had an interesting comment while we were shooting and trying out different techniques and ideas. She mentioned it was kinda like her time in the recording studio and recording with different microphones. There's not always one right way to do something and there's creative value in trying different approaches.

CRAZY thanks again to Cynthia Dreier for coming on again to be part of a personal project. She's one of my favorite people to work with on set. Obviously, she kills it with the hair and makeup, but more than that, I trust her and the ideas she brings to keep things looking great on camera.

For wardrobe, I had Penny bring a couple different options but we stuck with solid white and black. I knew I was going for a Polished vs. Rough look and wanted contrasting white-on-black and black-on-white, but wasn't set on which was which personality beforehand.

I did the whole "convert-your-bedroom-into-a-simple-studio" thing again with a white paper backdrop for one setup and a black piece of fabric for the other. I knew I wanted to feature Penny and especially her facial expressions, so I didn't try to go all dark and moody" with the lighting. Again, I used my styrofoam bust to rough in the lighting setups before having the talent sit in.

For the black background, I set up a book light to camera left using an ARRI 650 bounced off some white paper I'd taped to the wall, and pushed through a roll of diffusion hanging from a C-stand. I also used a small ARRI 150 through diffusion as a backlight on camera right to help separate her from the background.

For the white background, I'd originally planned to stay with the book light on camera left as the key, but having such a large light source made the white background too bright and distracting. Having the background brighter than Penny's face wasn't working and I didn't have a way – or the space – to cut the background spill from the book light. I swapped the lighting setup so the key light was a smaller source and coming from above. Now that the source was smaller, I was able to use a solid flag to cut even more of the spill from making its way to the white background.

For the in-camera effects, I used a thin coat of Vaseline on a clear flat in the matte box for some shots as well as shooting through a curved lens. Shooting through the Vaseline made for softer edges and a cloudy image if you use too much. Yes, I know... I used too much of it in some of the shots and it's distracting – fight me. I also used the curved lens of a pair of plastic safety glasses held right in front of the lens to make the double image distortion. I've also tried shooting through curved glass like wine glasses and vases, but keep coming back to the smaller lenses on safety glasses. Shooting through the curved lens changes the path of the light as it gets to the image sensor.

deadCenter 2017

deadCenter is easily my favorite week of the summer in Oklahoma City. Over the years – give or take a couple – I've been able to work with the film festival in covering events and screenings with on-camera talent Katie Parker. Here's this year's recap video.

 

Oh, and another thing I got to be part of screened this year in Okie Shorts. Check out the link to Illustrators Anonymous for more info about our film.