Archiculture

- provided by the Tapatio Hot Sauce website, thankfully celebrating their 35th anniversary

This is my new dietary supplement. Some people make those protein shakes and such, but I use a few squirts of this stuff. With only 5% of my daily sodium intake per serving and no other nutritional value, I’m well on my way to physical collapse. I first discovered this magic in a bottle during my first year of non-dorm living while at the Ohio State University. It was the only thing which provided flavor, in my attempt to maximize my funds for beer and music, by eating 10 for a dollar boxes of Macaroni and Cheese from Aldi’s. Now that I find myself at another stage in my life with extremely limited funds, this magic sauce is back with a vengeance. This stuff is the ultimate solution to such classic college dishes as the can of soup, pasta, grilled cheese, baked beans on toast and of course the bowl of Ramen noodles. I implore others with limited means of dietary flavor to find your local Tapatio dealer. I promise it will spur a life long addiction. And make sure to tell them Ian sent you, so I can get the free referrer bottle.

Was this designed with the user in mind? Perhaps they were being polite by allowing the person to have an option.

picture by: www.funnyhub.com

Film making can get pretty intense. Variables include the full gamut of worldly errors, and it would almost seem that when a film is in fact completed, that in itself is a miracle.

Many people are playing key supporting roles for the production, but the day to day team is three of us. While some productions have hundreds of people working on them every day, smaller projects can have crews of sometimes twenty, ten, or less. This is not unusual, but the direct network of three individuals can be hard to manage. With the same tasks to complete as a larger motion picture, keeping yourself in check is a must.

For example, coming from a narrative background, my experience tells me that the more “real” someone is with you, the better the production will go. However here, trying to remain objective with the people in our film is imperative, and that’s very hard to do when you see yourself wanting to befriend those same people.

As a team we’ve done a great job of communicating thus far, and having come on the project a year and a half after David and Ian started preparing it, I’m honored to feel like a part of the team. It’s challenging, as many of their ideas and motivations counter what I know or want to do with my own directorial work, but it’s clear the whole process is working.

Without overlooking this experience, I’m looking more and more forward to the next opportunity I have to direct. An opportunity, I have no doubt, that will only be empowered by the experiences I have and will continue to draw from Archiculture.

On a personal note: The events surrounding Heath Ledger’s death have been both sad and touching. Like most others, I was in disbelief when I found out. Some moving comments on Heath and his death can be found from his The Dark Knight director, Chris Nolan, here, and actor Daniel Day-Lewis, here.

I was first introduced to the concept of car sharing while living in San Francisco over 2 years ago. A few new companies, Zipcar and Flexcar had entered into the Bay Area market to compete with the established City CarShare. Instantly leaflets were every where from gas stations, corner stores, taquerias, Amoeba, etc. The two new companies offered very different alternatives to the old guard of City CarShare. Their rates were cheap, around $8 an hour/$45 for the whole day with gas, insurance and parking included. The key for me, a kid from Ohio who was anxious to explore the West, was that Flexcar offered unlimited mileage and no limit on state lines. This was dangerous. I began renting these cars at least two weekends a month. Fill the car up with a couple friends and the cost of travel was 30 bucks a piece to go see Crater Lake, raft on the Rogue River, walk through the sand dunes in Death Valley, sing along with U2 in Joshua Tree, fly fish in the Sierras, hike around alpine lakes in Yosemite, skiing in Tahoe, sit in the hot springs of Big Sur, try the variation in wines between the Napa, Sonoma, and Russian River valleys, etc. I took full advantage. I even took one car up to Vancouver on a 2000 mile adventure. Since then they have changed their cost structure, which I feel mildly responsible for. These were different times.

Beyond my direct personal love for what the program of car sharing permitted me to experience, on the level of an urban planner/designer, it is socially essential. Each car shared takes countless others out of our parking lots. This is something we come into constant interaction with as architect/landscape/urban designers. How many car spaces does a city require per square foot? How much land and money does the developer have to spend to permit the car culture to continue its dominance over our means of transportation. These costs are absorbed by every consumer and more importantly by the environment in the form of vast parking lots of impenetrable surfaces. We pay. Car sharing begins to make us conscious of our use of the automobile. When is it necessary to drive versus a form or convenience. The car is not a right, it is a privilege. It has always been, but we are only now collectively beginning to come to this realization. We are awakening to its impacts from our previous hundred years of abuse and infrastructure investment. We are on step two of the addiction process and car share programs like Zipcar make this transition possible. The process is amazingly easy. All you have to do is go online. A few short clicks will bring up a map where available vehicles are in your neighborhood. Reserve on the calendar. Walk up to the car with your card, and it will unlock the doors with a key inside. So easy. There are no storefronts, lines or automated talking telephones. Car renting is the way of the dinosaurs.

So as we began working on this film’s sustainable initiatives, it was obvious to include car sharing into our means of decreasing the project’s ecological footprint. For the interviews we will need to get with the students’ parents, industry leading professionals, etc. a car is the obvious option due to our size/amount of equipment, time constraints and varying locations. David and I were originally Flexcar members in San Francisco, but have recently become Zipcar members during the two company merger. Zipcar upholds the same new and reliable standard of vehicles, with a very friendly staff. For more information if car sharing is for you check out Zipcar’s personalized financial calculator and especially their Green Benefits break down on how car sharing is the environmentally conscious alternative.

I have experienced enough highs and lows in the last two months to drop dead of a heart attack. I knew this process would be challenging, but was oblivious to the number of hurdles we would encounter to simply begin production. Despite all of these difficulties, the relationships constructed along the way cast a large shadow over these struggles.
I can pinpoint a few recent relationships that have help restore us with energy at crucial times in this process. The most recent was an encounter with Mark Parsons a sculptor, professor, and production director at Pratt. I went to Mark to find out where I could acquire some materials to build a crane for our cameras. As he inquired about the needs of the materials he became interested in the project. He went as far as to offer the little amount of time and spare materials he had to assist in constructing the crane. More importantly his passion and energy was contagious to the rest of our team, which happen to be at the bottom of the “rollercoaster”.

Another extremely important relationship occurred as we drove across the country to move our production equipment from San Francisco to Brooklyn. We stopped in South Carolina to meet with Pierce Cook to pick his brain on a few production questions we had about our workflow. Although Pierce and I had known each other since elementary school, it had been a long time since the two of us had spoken. However, this did not prevent me from turning to him for his expertise in film. To make a long story short, our coffee session in South Carolina turned into a much needed third member of the team. I asked Pierce if he was interested in moving to New York to work on the project and two weeks later we picked him up from JFK.
Prior to this film I was never one to ask things of people. Honestly, it took an explanation from my uncle in order for me to understand how people can be honored in the things you ask of them and that it is not always as selfish as it may seem. Don’t be timid, go out and ask.

Pierce, David and I took a rare trip to Manhattan on Thursday night to check out the P/A awards which were being hosted by Architect Magazine. Braulio Agnese, the writer who wrote the Studio Verite article about the project in November’s issue and whom we spent some time with in San Francisco last September, sent us an invitation a little over a month ago. It was a great culmination of many things for us at such an early stage of our New York City experience. First of all, it was fantastic to catch up with Braulio and to put faces with voices of the other Architect Magazine staff. It also provided us the ability to introduce Pierce to our growing group of NYC friends and for him to see the space we will debut our trailer this coming March. The P/A awards were held at the Center for Architecture which is held in conjunction with the AIA New York Chapter, and as of this past week have agreed to give us a date in mid March to debut the project. We spent most of the evening making new acquaintances and visualizing our own event. More details to follow.

If you have not figured it out yet from the last post on here or some of the other hints around our website, we just added a secret weapon to the project’s arsenal. That weapon is our new team member, Pierce Cook, shown stepping out of his packaging above. He is an amazingly talented filmmaker from South Carolina with his own production company Whispering Statues, and a depth of professional experience. We had been in conversation with him for the past few months regarding some of our technical questions leading up to production. We re-routed ourselves through South Carolina to meet with him briefly on our cross country road trip. We arrived in New York, and just after New Years, he sent along some of his work samples for the editing requests. David and I watched them twice, and he was on a plane to NYC less than a week later. Simple right? It is when you see someone with this kind of talent, maturity and potential. He will significantly increase the film’s quality on so many levels. In a few long days he has become our third, day-to-day member of the production crew. His immediate goal is to help create, capture, edit and cut our trailer for the film. This will be sometime in March at the Center for Architecture with support from AIANY. We are still trying to slip into their packed schedule and should have the date available in a few days. We can’t wait to show off the footage we have already captured and will have to wait till mid March to reveal. For the time being we will have some video blogs/podcast coming online shortly. We’ve also been receiving a pretty strong interest from the students regarding their blog and should have the first posts coming within the next week.

Film making is a lifestyle.

Every day begins and ends with a conversation. So much is starting to happen that entertaining tomorrows idle moments may be a capital offense. The exchange of plans becomes the exchange of actions, and the outlines on paper get discarded for improvisation. It’s one hundred percent action and reaction. Although the objective remains the same, the goals you set yesterday will rarely be the goals for tomorrow. Something is always happening. A variable is always changing.

I arrived in New York on Sunday, having made the final arrangements less than a week before. One morning I was waiting to hear back about a job in Florida, and that afternoon I had a ticket to New York. While I have always found myself encouraging my friends to think outside of the box and dream big, this was one of the biggest opportunities I had been confronted with that involved me leaving home. I remember when I was young, as much as part of me loved my home, I was the one who always wanted to leave.

I was one of the last to go.

So far it has made me question my skills, motivations, goals, and the overall integrity of the decision to commit my life to film. Since I graduated from college I’ve done much to nurture my distractions. While I did expand my resume in those last two and a half years, I feel like I could have pushed myself harder. I’ve had the pleasure of working and learning from jobs that have ranged from Broadway shows, national television, and major feature films. Although most of these jobs were strictly supportive in nature, I’ve been yearning for something that allows me to be creative.

I have had the pleasure of doing a number of feature films in a creative position, one as director and another as cinematographer. I’ve also won a few awards for my short films, but the ache for something to challenge me again has been overwhelming. I just got to a comfortable place and didn’t revel in what I was doing. Now, however, everything is different.

I wake up every morning going to work with two extremely dedicated individuals. In every way, this is key. I’ve been told time and again that all I need to get moving is a good producer, someone who hires me because they really want me. This could not be more the case, and I’m looking forward to the experiences I’m about to share with my two cohorts who so openly welcomed me to New York. Already we’ve dealt with unexpected hurdles, some of which are still unresolved, but I have no doubt that by March 14th when we debut the trailer, things will keep moving. I’m excited that two of my other film making partners are excited about meeting the guys I’m working with now. There will be more work after this, with more of my friends, and new faces who are as dedicated and hard working as we are.

I can already tell the partnerships we’re starting to create will lead to more opportunities. The trust we’ve placed has gone unquestioned. Honesty is key. It’s a fairy tale relationship and the only thing we have to do every day is slay dragons, build villages, and get back to the castle for a (sometimes late) dinner.

I miss South Carolina already, but New York felt like home when I got off the plane.

Welcome back, kid.

Today marks the first day of the Spring semester for Pratt students, which means the first day of production for Archiculture. The campus is finally coming back to life, the bike racks are slam full, and the air is once again filled with the aroma of coffee. I must admit that it is extremely intoxicating (not a reference to booze) to be back in an educational environment, but I can’t exactly pinpoint what it is about the institutional setting that is so fascinating to me. Is it the youthful environment? Is it the pursuit of a particular passion/profession? Or is it the feeling of freedom and self exploration? It is certainly not the diet. No matter what the reason is, there is some glowing aura surrounding college-life. We see it all the time in films, television shows, and in conversations. Some people make it seem like college is the apex of your existence. I can’t count the number of times I heard, “Enjoy it while you can, those are the days of your life, man.” Is this true, and if it is how did this come to be? I wonder if I took four years of my life and the $40,000 dollars it costs to go to school, if I could create an equally amazing experience outside of school. Who am I kidding, I’d probably spend it on one $40,000 dollar bottle of wine (is a reference to booze). All joking aside, it is thrilling to be back in the studio environment and equally exciting to capture it on film.

This post is a mild step away from our normal topics for this blog. It is a reaction to my time spent away from the film at home in the Midwest.

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While I was at home over the holidays in Cincinnati, I took my annual tour around town to see how the previous year had impacted the city. Now I must admit that I have a dear love for my hometown which is manifested in my fanaticism for the local sports teams and getting my daily fix by reading the Cincinnati Enquirer. I read for urban planning issues specifically. Not because I’m hunting as an investor (yet…), but as an exiled architectural urbanite. Having studied architecture and urban planning at the University of Cincinnati, the contemporary work for these fields is along the coast and plugged into the overseas markets. It is not in the rust belt. The tide of energy has receded far away and is awaiting its time for a potential urban population flood. Its been waiting since the WWII addiction to the automobile transformed Cincinnati and the other old Northwest Territory industrial cities into an ever expanding suburban culture with economically forgotten cores. It has been waiting since the 1880’s and gay 90’s when Mark Twain echoed his hallowed words, “”When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Cincinnati because it’s always twenty years behind the times.” Now don’t takes these words as stemming from some dark subconscious ill will towards my place of origin, but as an accepted fact endured by all my generational peers from the Midwest. In large part the movers and shakers left with their manifest destiny for the West or got stuck in Chicago before our parents were alive.

So aside from my validation for the harsh realities of my feelings for my hometown, this post is about one specific area I ran into along my tour. It is the southern edge of my alma mater’s campus where it meets the adjoining neighborhood of Corryville. As a teenager transversing these streets to and from school, I remember a dynamic assemblage of old brick row-houses, drive-thru fast food joints and your normal collection of college bars and eateries. Nothing phenomenal but a very dynamic urban mix for the needs of the students, neighborhood families and high volume crosstown vehicular corridor. As I drove by and saw the leveled wasteland, I could not help but shudder to feel pain for what has occurred.

This land has laid vacant and completely unchanged for over two years. Well the only difference is that they have planted grass and taken down the tall perimeter fencing, which feels like they’ve succumb to the realities of their proposal’s demise. This area is the residual from an extremely ambitions plan by the university to take a multi-front effort on its urban edges to reclaim them in the name of urban revitalization with dense multi-use buildings such as the one shown above. The problem was that while they were busy remaking the interior of the entire campus with star-architecture, which has been widely publicized with rave reviews across the country with work from Gwathmey Siegel, Morphosis, Hargreaves, etc, they were projecting such things as the Stratford Heights (aka Pleasantville) and empty revitalization promises into the adjacent neighborhoods.

Now I do not know the entire story here on how the city, university and local neighborhood associations played their cards in tempting and using eminent domain for this. What is the most difficult aspect for me to stomach, is how it still stands in this form. This area photographed has laid barren for over 2 years, started demolition over 4 years ago and began planning before I was a student. This is just a microcosm of why I chose to leave this town for my professional pursuits. How did the local citizens and their government permit such an urban scar? How do they permit it to still exist? This is an issue at every level, from the politics of the region, to the awareness and apathy of its citizens, and as a mirror to the University of Cincinnati’s so-called successful MainStreet development.

I have to apologize for this vent. I did not know this would all come out but it unearthed some of the core reasons why I, and many of my generation’s Midwestern transplant have decided to test themselves upon the ever shrinking global playing field… Or maybe we are the ones to blame for leaving our home devoid of its next crop of leaders.