Welcome

Hi, thanks for dropping by. Here's a little background on me, and what I am writing about.

I am a filmmaker based out of Atlanta, Georgia. I am a small part of what I can only describe as the budding creative community of filmmakers in Atlanta. I have seen friends or acquaintances “outgrow” our city, head out for the west coast, only to return in a year’s time. Something special is happening here, although it’s hard to put a finger on it yet. Even those who don’t move back often return when it comes time to actually produce something. We make things here, and we help each other on our projects, asking very little in return.

There is my friend, David Tabor, who is way out ahead of us in his ideas and with his eye for the particulars of our cultural moment. His film, Content, is criminally under-seen. Whether it’s in a year, or in twenty, I hope his film will be recognized as a time capsule, and cultural document of our moment, both hilarious and uncanny. David was still kind enough to hold the boom and run sound on my own feature film which I am working on getting released.

Also way out ahead of us, are Ruckus and Lane Skye, who had an eye for the incredible talent of Danielle Deadwyler years before the world took notice. I was privileged enough to work on their first feature film, The Devil to Pay as a grip. There was something immediately iconic about Danielle’s Lemon Cassidy. She had a way of shrugging to keep her sweater on her shoulders, as if shaking off the stench of the world. It reminded me of Toshiro Mifune’s nameless Samurai’s shrug in Yojimbo.

I was busy gripping, but I lugged around my medium format camera and managed to get a few BTS shots. Danielle Deadwyler diggin’ graves between takes in “The Devil to Pay”

Brandon McCormick and Nick Kirk of Whitestone Motion Pictures were here before all of us. I was hearing about their films and the community they built up in Buford when I was still in high school, long before Trilith Studios, tax incentives, or even the DSLR revolution. I am always meeting Whitestone “Alumni” who recollect their first days on film set with Nick and Brandon, always to be remembered as glory days of old. Now their first feature film is in post-Production, and it looks to be a wild ride.

There is Phil Stevens, a mentor to many, not simply in film, but in how he carries himself, and his eye for noticing the value in people. Phil has just launched his own production company, Missio Dei films, and is looking forward to directing his own first feature film, the first of a slate of productions later this year. I plan to be there.

Isaac Deitz has the heart of a teacher, and an incredible gift for building community. In years past, his basement would be jam packed with filmmakers and actors getting started on their journey. He has a way of gamifying filmmaking, of giving prompts and challenges designed to make you start seeing your limitations as the source of your creative drive. He fosters an unpretentious atmosphere where actors feel free to try their own hand at directing, and directors give a try at acting. Many a creative and nuptial engagement has been birthed at his gatherings. It’s always exciting to see what he comes up with next. His music videos have started to reveal to us the breadth of his talents and the incredible variety of ideas he has bouncing around in his head.

Everyone I have mentioned has Viviana Chavez in common as a friend and collaborator, and multi-talented actor. She seemed to me like the best person to send off in a space ship to a distant planet as our emissary.

Slightly out of focus shot of Vivi I took between takes on The Emissary, but I still like it.

This is hardly a complete survey of the multifaceted community that is starting to take root here. There are many others who I admire and who I’m in great debt to in my own work, and many more that I haven’t had the pleasure of working with.

Rick Andosca, Jesse Scimeca, Mark Ashworth

So where is this going? I don’t want to constrain myself merely to Atlanta film. Will there even be a film industry to break into? The outlook is pretty bleak right now on the national scale for new filmmakers, with only a narrow category of films connecting with the audiences so as to make for a sustainable business. It may be reasonable to expect some down-scaling in the near future. That’s awkward for us Georgians because we’re building studios everywhere.

I don’t either know if the next ten years will bring community of the same depth as the last ten years. For community is among the most ephemeral of human institutions, faster slipping from hand the tighter it is grasped.

Even wider afield, I think often about the vast technological change that is coming for us in the form of Artificial Intelligence. A lot of talk about this space conjures up fear of Terminators and the Matrix but while that makes for good fiction, I think this is utterly the wrong approach. We’ve got to think about this the way we long ago noticed how social media shapes our thinking and can distort our picture of reality. We have to try and anticipate the kind of incentive structures that AI assistance and generative art will produce, not just for film but for our whole society.  

We have to ask why independent film seems to be so far away from the taste of the general audience. I have little patience for Hollywood types excoriating sections of the public for their negative reactions and for their indifference. Film is a collective art. It is on us to find the common threads that bind our hopes and our anxieties together, not to drive a further wedge between communities. If we can’t do that, we shouldn’t expect anyone to care about what we’re doing.

We should think about the kind of blockbusters that can paint a vision of the future that we’d actually like to move toward, and how we can escape the endless loop of nostalgia culture.

We have to examine the incentive structures of our very society, which seem profoundly willing to sacrifice quality and depth to cost and efficiency wherever the trade can be made. I am less interested in political answers to this question and more in the deeply human ones. After all, the choices of materialism and short-sighted gain are presented to all of us, regardless of our leanings or backgrounds.

There are mistakes behind us, and ahead, certainly. But my hope is that we can carve out some corner of the industry where we can make meaningful films with meaningful community. Lucid Themes is going to be my effort to help keep our eyes open.

If you’d like to follow along, consider subscribing. All you have to do is leave your email here, and you’ll get an automatic email from me whenever I release a new post.

Ultimately, I am a filmmaker first, not a journalist, but I am going to try to write on a consistent schedule. My plan is to start with a Friday film recommendation “From the Vaults.” I will be sharing a deep cut film that I think speaks to something our present moment is lacking.

On Sunday I will release a weekly think piece. Sometimes it might be quite technical and specific to filmmaking, other times I might go further afield to broad questions of society and aesthetics. Where the writing muse goes, I will follow.

Along the way I am hoping there will be some space for reporting on the film scene here, and other places where ideas and community are growing organically. I will share some of my own work, experience, and process when it is relevant to our themes. In general, I am figuring this all out myself so I will welcome your feedback as to what is vital and enriching to your day. If I find that the pace of output is too fast I’ll slow it down to maintain quality.

Thanks for being here,

Bryan

To create may be to miss a step in the dance; or to deal a chisel stroke awry when you are carving stone. Little matters it what the gesture brings forth. To you in your blindness such an effort may seem fruitless, for you bring your eyes too close. Only stand back and observe from a distance the activity in this quarter of the city. You shall see there a vast ardor and a gold cloud of dust billowing above the work. No longer will you notice gestures that go astray. Intent on their task, all these men are building, whether they will or no, palaces, cisterns, hanging gardens. Their hands are spellbound and these things are born of their enchantment.

after Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Citadelle (1948)