FARMERS LIFE — My Icelandic Documentary Is Now Free on YouTube (English Subtitles)

Subscribe To My Youtube Channel Some stories take you halfway around the world. Others bring you home. MAKING THE DOCUMENTARY Since I started making films I’ve always travelled the world looking for interesting subjects. When I find them, they usually have foreign connotations because “Iceland vis-à-vis the

From Idea to Screen: Learn Filmmaking for Free on YouTube

I’ve just uploaded my full filmmaking class, From Idea to Screen, to YouTube—and it’s completely free. 

A Fully Free Storyboard Tool I Used on My Latest Feature Film

Storyboarder is a little gem: practical, intuitive and fully free.

Want Better Creative Ideas? Stop Trying to Solve the Problem

Subscribe To My Youtube Channel I’m heavily into editing a feature film at the moment, and I’m trying to remind myself of something I seem to forget every time I make a film: my job is not always to find the solution. sometimes my job is just to

Taming The Elephant: The Inner Critic’s No-Win Loop When Selecting Creative Task

... and not before long, the same voice returns with a different complaint: "You’re not moving fast enough."

The Threshold State: When Too Many Creative Projects Cancel Each Other Out

Subscribe To My Youtube Channel Four questions for getting through the strange doorway between thinking and doing. “I’m working on six projects,” I used to say early in my career. Like it was a sign that I was highly active. I’m the same today—a wagon being pulled

The Scene That Starts The Film Process & Writing For Actors

Subscribe To My Youtube Channel In my case, there is usually one scene that starts the process of making a film. I may not know the film yet. I may not know the ending. I may not know if the idea is strong enough to survive all the practical humiliations

A Few Thoughts After Finishing a Feature Film

A couple of weeks ago, I finished shooting a feature film. Months of preparation, schedules, rewrites, weather forecasts, batteries charging, lens choices, emotional pressure, compromises, accidents, and tiny miracles.

The Creative Case for Doing Absolutely Nothing

Some ideas belong in an unfinished state. Crooked. Half-formed. Still breathing.

Final Cut Pro X and the Shape of Thought

I Didn’t Switch to Final Cut Pro X -- I drifted into it.

THE STRANGE FOCUS TRICK

Why looking away from the screen helps you work longer

Stopping Is the Work

For me, writing is never just about producing words. It is a custom job each day, sometimes each hour, where the real task is figuring out how to interrupt momentum long enough for that something to appear.