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.

Rip Van Winkle'd

Dang... I Rip Van Winkle'd this blog for a solid chunk of the summer. Last thing I remember was talking about a DIY case and then somehow slipped out this website. It's not like I've "not been doing the things." Freakin' far from it. That's probably what happened. That mysterious "work" came around and brought it's bill-paying elixir, only to have me fall asleep on trying to keep to healthy writing habits. Still got that 'ol Moleskine notebook habit going though. There's plenty in there from the last bit...

A quick recap on what's happened the last two months:

  • I've been back and forth to NYC twice now: once for work; another with fam (and more work).
  • There was that one day shoot at the Oklahoma State Capitol about a bounty (alive, preferably) on an Oklahoman Bigfoot. You'll notice I tried my best to dodge the news cameras.
  • Then there was a solid weeklong project with me cam op'ing on a network pilot shooting here in Oklahoma City; bulletproof vests and minivans were absolutely involved. Thank goodness for EasyRigs being stronger than 12 hour days and a full-kitted out Amira with cine zooms.
  • Finally another weeklong shoot full of 12+ hour days, but this time as a still photographer sweating my tail off in the heat on a feature shooting up in Guthrie, OK. I legit shot and had to cull through something like 10,000+ still images from the week.

With all that going, I've still kept at it with my rubber stamp doc. I'm three interviews deep at this point and sitting on about 1.4tb of footage. I'm actually heading out Tuesday for a cross-country trip to a rubber stamp convention in Washington, D.C. at the end of the week with the National Park Travelers Club. The drive should take about two days each way, so you'd better believe I'll be picking up some new stamps along the way. I've also super stoked about landing an interview with a guy out in Knoxville, TN, to talk about his world of rubber stamps and the mail art projects he's been part of over the years.

Anyone Have a Map?

“When people are under a long period of chronic, unpredictable stress, they develop behavioral anhedonia,” Dr. Wehrenberg said, meaning the loss of the ability to take pleasure in their activities. “And so they get lethargic, and they show a lack of interest — and obviously that plays a huge role in productivity.” We Have All Hit a Wall, nytimes.com

Personally I've felt like I'm eye-ball deep in this season of some kind of transition. "Eye-ball deep" sounds so much more positive than "drowning," so I'll lean into that optimism for now. It's hard to describe the transition and what's on the other side, but here we are.

A wild part of the time we're in has been a general boredom and lack of interest in the imagery I'm seeing. I'm not sure I've ever dealt with something like this considering what I do for a living and how overly saturated we are with visual imagery. Again, I'm not confident in describing it, but it feels like it's easy to make beautiful images, but they feel incredibly empty. So many things look the same right now that almost nothing stands out. Things just feel so uninteresting. No question that goes for anything I've been shooting, but I'm still trying.

It's been so long since normal that even getting back to some kind of familiar feels off. My first instinct is to mention how long it's been since I've worked, but the reality is that I've been working this whole time. I'm shooting a lot less than I'd like, I'm not behind a camera on as many projects as I'd want, but it seems like that energy has gone into other outlets. The last few months have certainly felt like I've been grasping at straws or simply throwing things at the wall and moving on with what sticks.

Thankfully public and university libraries in my area have started opening up again and I've gone out of my way to get lost in the stacks when I can. The last couple weeks in libraries have pulled double duty with the usual hopes of serendipity plus research into my rubber stamp documentary project. So far I've not found a ton of content around rubber stamps, but that's led me into other avenues of printmaking (linocuts, Japanese woodblock, etc.).

The University of Oklahoma Fine Arts Library is one of my favorite places at the moment considering all the out there nonsense I find and the ideas they lead to. I'd mentioned the Trapped in Oklahoma Instagram account of old Oklahoma underground music ephemera to one of the OU Fine Arts librarians and they directed me to Ephemeral Art. By all means check into Andy Goldsworthy and his natural sculptures.

I keep coming back to this idea of a documentary about rubber stamps. The wall behind my desk is slowly being covered in Post-it notes with ideas and directions all in hopes of getting somewhat organized. I've reached out and connected with multiple artists online and that's led to even more questions to ask and people to meet. What's great is that the more I'm looking, the more I'm finding. The hard part at this point is trying to sift through and figure out what I'll do with all I've come across.

One of the more interesting rubber stamp pockets I've found on the internet is StampZine, "an international rubber stamp assembling zine in the Sanizdat tradition compiled by Picasso Gaglione." Over the weekend I got incredibly uncomfortable and made 20 original rubber stamp prints to submit to an upcoming edition.

I'm just hoping the practice of process will help me during this transitional season. It's not like I have a map.