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Recent Posts
If I Could Give the World a Hug…
June 10, 2009 – 12:59 pm
It seems like almost everyone I know (myself included) is going through some major and challenging life changes right now: breakups, foreclosures, job losses, moving, legal battles, money trouble, restlessness, scandals, loss of loved ones, losing homes in fires… the list goes on and on.
I am just beginning to clear my mind of a little of my own funk. I have found that two things help me get through a rough time more than anything else: A. Doing things that I love and B. Sharing those things with the people I love.
Luckily for me, there are many things that satisfy “A.” (Truth be told, there are probably too many things that do, but that’s a post for another day.) One thing that has been there for me 27 of my 31 years on this planet, however, is music. I’ve mostly played the piano, though I love to sing and have experimented with the violin and the flute (no, not in a “this one time at band camp” sort of way…)
I have always been reluctant to share my music. It is my sanctuary when things go wrong in my life. I had always feared that if I played and people didn’t like it, it would somehow lose its healing power. That and the fact that I was teased about it pretty ruthlessly in school, which pretty much makes anyone reluctant to revisit anything…
This past year has been pretty eye-opening to me, however. I have learned to be a lot more open to new people, new ideas and to trying new things. So, in an attempt to share the love, I offer two of my very favorite Satie songs to play on the piano when I am feeling blue:
I recorded myself playing these using my digital piano (Yamaha S90ES- best digital piano ever), some fancy gadgets that hook up to my computer, and Cubase recording software. I’m hoping to continue recording more music, perhaps a bit with some vocals if I can figure out how to use my microphone properly and either work around its presence in front of my keyboard or work on my ability to record the vocals and instruments separately (not an easy task when you are used to doing both simultaneously). And maybe, just maybe, I will include some of my own compositions in time.
Anyway, that’s my little virtual hug. Go do something you love and share a little with someone else. Passion and compassion are great healers.
I Heart Writing
May 9, 2009 – 1:00 pm
Most of what I write has no place in the public sphere, but I do enjoy writing and I do enjoy telling stories. I’ve always thought I have a knack for both, but beyond this blog and a few online videos, I’ve never really sought to publish any of the things I’ve written.
That is about to change.
I’ve been reading my journal a lot lately, trying to figure out who I am and what I want. Wedged between the pages of “mean people suck” and Zoolander-esque “who am I’s,” I have found several fictional story lines that I have been juggling over the years. The one that currently has my full (or as close to “full” as my mind allows) attention is one I have been pondering for about six years. I think it would actually work best as a television show or miniseries. I have begun the difficult task of translating my journal jotting to screenplay format in the hopes that I can film the pilot this summer. As an important first step, I purchased a copy of Final Draft 8 (a screenwriting word processor). So far, I’m loving it. I’m still in the process of learning the ins and outs, but below I have posted my first “screenplay” written with the program. I’m hoping that more… interesting… things result from this software purchase, but reading through this, I giggled enough to think that maybe it was worth sharing. Enjoy:
“larningfinaldraft” by Courtney Hoskins
Script created with Final Draft by Final Draft, Inc.
INT. CAFE IN BOULDER - DAY
A WOMAN sits in a cafe, learning how to use Final Draft. Four
WAITERS from a nearby high-end restaurant enter.
The WOMAN attempts to focus on her tutorial, despite the fact
that the WAITERS are relatively cute and talking loudly.
The WAITERS order their breakfast from the hipster BARISTA.
WAITER 1
Do you have bacon?
BARISTA
No.
WAITER 1
Oh! Are you kidding?
WAITER 2
Dude, you should totally get a
Bhakti chai.
WAITER 3
Yeah, man, that stuff is awesome.
It's like total Taj Mahal.
The BARISTA smiles, but rolls her eyes. The WOMAN
attempts to decipher the intricacies of why the hell isn't
this putting in proper line breaks?
WOMAN (V.O.)
Writers often draw their inspiration
from observing people and their
interactions in real life.
Sometimes, they realize that doing
so is a bit of a waste of time and
is actually just keeping them from
writing the pilot episode to their
television show that they know will
be awesome if they can just get the
damn thing filmed.
The WOMAN considers this for a moment and stares at the
screen, still unable to comprehend the line break situation.
She wonders if it has to do with the "Hour TV Drama" template
that she is using.
WOMAN (CONT'D)
I wonder if this looks weird
because it is a funky template. Do
people not use line breaks in TV
land? You know who is cool? Joss
Whedon. Joss Whedon is insanely
cool. So is Damon Lindelof. They
are awesome writers. I bet they
never waste time like this.
She takes a swig of her cappuccino.
WOMAN (CONT'D)
I really need to stop drinking
dairy.
She looks up and realizes that the cute WAITERS are gone, as
is fifteen minutes of her life. The result of both missing
elements in her life is this one page of inane script.
END
Script created with Final Draft by Final Draft, Inc.
Taken by Taken
April 22, 2009 – 2:04 pm
My friends and I have been watching the miniseries “Taken” that was on the SciFi channel a while ago. I had already seen it, but watching it again has really made me appreciate the writing, especially for a show about aliens!
I have gathered some of my favorite quotes, spoken by the character Allie Keys (played by Dakota Fanning).
My mom told me once that when you’re afraid of something, what you want more than anything else is to make it go away. You want your life back to the way it was before you found out that there was something to be afraid of. You want to build a high wall and live your old life behind it. But nothing ever stays the same. That’s not your old life at all. That’s your new life with a wall around it. Your choice is not about going back to the way things were. Your choice is about hiding, or about going right to the heart of the thing that scares you.
You know in cartoons, the way someone can run off a cliff and they’re fine, they don’t fall until they look down? My mom always said that was the secret of life. Never look down. But it’s more than that. It’s not just about not looking. It’s about not ever realizing that you’re in the middle of the air and you don’t know how to fly.
Some people have given up all hope of anything in their lives ever changing. They just go on with it day by day, and if something were to come along and make things different they probably wouldn’t even notice it right off, except for that kind of nervous feeling you get in your stomach. My mom and I used to call that “the car trip feeling,” because it was how I’d feel whenever I knew we were going to go somewhere far away or somewhere new.
People like to examine the things that frighten them, to look at them and give them names, so saints look for God, and scientists look for evidence. They’re both just trying to take away the mystery, to take away the fear.
We all like to think that we have some control over the events in our lives, and a lot of the time we can fool ourselves into thinking that we really are in charge. But then something happens to remind us that the world runs by its own rules and not ours and that we’re just along for the ride.
The world is made up of the big things that happen and the small ones. And the part that’s so unfair is that we call them “big” and “small”, because when something happens to you, when you lose something or someone that you really care about, that’s all there is. The world may be blowing up around you, but you don’t care about that. You don’t care about that at all.
I have this idea about why people do the terrible things they do. Same reason little kids push each other on the schoolyard. If you’re the one doing the pushing, then you’re not going to be the one who gets pushed. If you’re the monster, then nothing will be waiting in the shadows to jump out at you. It’s pretty simple, really. People do the terrible things they do because they’re scared.
We’re all standing on the edge of a cliff, all the time, every day, a cliff we’re all going over. Our choice isn’t about that. Our choice is about whether we want to go kicking and screaming or whether we might want to open our eyes and our hearts to what happens once we start to fall.
Some people put a lot of work into their lawn, as if a patch of green grass was the most important thing in the world. As if they thought that as long as the lawn out front was green and mowed and beautiful, it wouldn’t matter at all what was going on inside of the house.
People move through their lives sometimes without really thinking about where they’re going. Days pile up, and they get sadder and lonelier without really knowing why they’re so sad or how they got so lonely. Then something happens. They meet someone who looks a certain way or has something in their smile. Maybe that’s all that falling in love is; finding someone who makes you feel a little less alone.
People talk a lot as if the most important thing in life is to always see things for what they really are. But everything we do, every plan we make, is kind of a lie. We’re closing our eyes and pretending that the day won’t ever come when we won’t need to make any more plans. Hope is the biggest lie there is, and it is the best. We have to keep going as if it all mattered, or else we wouldn’t keep going at all.
People say that when we grow up, we kick at everything we’ve been told, we rebel against the world our parents worked so hard to bring us into, that part of growing of is kicking at the ties that bind. But I don’t think that’s why we kick at all. I think we kick when we find out that our parents don’t know much more about the world than we do. They don’t have all the answers. We rebel when we find out that they’ve been lying to us all along, that there isn’t any Santa Claus at all.
Is every moment of our lives built into us before we’re born? If it is, does that make us less responsible for the things we do? Or is the responsibility built in too? After you hit the ball, do you stand and wait to see if it goes out, or do you start running and let nature take its course?
What makes a man who he is? Is it the worst things he’s ever done, or the best things he wants to be? When you find yourself in the middle of your life and you’re nowhere near of where you were going, how do you find the way from the person you’ve become to the one you know you could have been?
My mother always talked to me a lot about the sky. She liked to watch the clouds in the day, and the stars at night… especially the stars. We would play a game sometimes, a game called, what’s beyond the sky. We would imagine darkness, or a blinding light, or something else that we didn’t know how to name. But of course, that was just a game. There’s nothing beyond the sky. The sky just is, and it goes on and on, and we’ll play all of our games beneath it.
People are lonely in this world for lots of different reasons. Some people have something in their disposition. Maybe they were just born too mean, or maybe they were born too tender. But most people are brought to where they are by circumstance, by calamity or a broken heart or something else happening in their lives that wasn’t anything they planned on. People are lonely in this world for lots of different reasons. The one thing that I do know is, it doesn’t matter what any one of them might tell you–nobody wants to be alone.
The hardest thing you’ll ever learn is how to say goodbye.
My Musical Soulmate
April 2, 2009 – 6:24 pm
Every few years, I discover a musician whose music goes to the core of my heart… or the heart of my core…. hmm…
Being something of a musician myself (one who has always been afraid to write her own music), I always think that this is because our musical and lyrical cadences are in step with one another. “If I wrote songs,” I imagine, “they would be just like this.”
My latest musical BFF is Sia. Her child-like sense of humor and adventure mixed with wisdom and “serious” emotion is something that I’ve felt is hard to find in other people. So many of her songs are really encapsulating what I feel right now- on both the silly and the serious sides of life. Below are music videos from my favorite songs of hers (where I am allowed):
My absolute favorite Sia song is Breathe Me. The music video also feels like something I would make (too bad the Universal Media Group felt it was uncool to allow me to embed it in my blog or offer it in higher quality- you have to click the link to watch it on youtube).
Second favorite (bonus for the great lyrics) is Academia:
Soon We’ll be Found (again- just the kind of music video I would want to make and I can’t embed it here).
Enjoy! I certainly do…
“I Was a Film School Reject”
March 25, 2009 – 9:50 am
These may be words that come out of my mouth someday in an interview with Filmmaker magazine or Inside the Actor’s Studio. I’ll say those words right after James Lipton asks me what my favorite swear word is…
I have officially received the “best of luck in all of your endeavors” letter from the film and video program at CalArts. I have to admit that I wasn’t really expecting that. I was expecting to panic about having to find a way to pay the extremely high tuition costs at that school after having been accepted. Based on the advice of people I’ve known who have gone to that school or who currently work there, I thought I had a real shot.
Yeah, that might seem a little cocky, sure. I am pretty confident in my abilities, though, and 100% sure of my ambitions and motivations. I also think my work shows at least a little talent. If not, I think the potential is there. It’s quite possible that I had just applied too late, applied to the wrong program, expressed too much love for Terry Gilliam or the color blue, or just didn’t have the academic recommendations or variety of film work they wanted. Whatever their reasons, I know what I’m not doing in September, now I just have to figure out what I am doing…
Why am I sharing this with the world? Because I learned something valuable in all of this: if you really want to know more about yourself as an artist, apply for an MFA! Even if you don’t get in, it’s worth the application fee to discover valuable things you may not have known about yourself. I learned so much about myself, my influences, my goals, and my ambitions and desires through writing my “artist’s statement,” and my “thoughts and influences” and whatnot that I actually still feel more confident than defeated by the rejection. In fact, my personality is such that it makes me more determined to do what I want to do. In the end, all this means to me is that I’m saving $36,000 in tuition this year. That money might be better served as an investment in my own film, anyway.
I share it too because perhaps this could apply to a lot of people in a lot of situations- not just artists seeking MFAs. You might get rejected, but you have to try. So many of us build up walls around ourselves and live in “some day” while the world goes on around us- we don’t apply for that job or that scholarship, ask that cute boy out, tell someone we love them, move to that new place, etc. because we feel that a “better time” might come along… So far, the only thing I have gained from that philosophy in my short lifetime has been a feeling of regret. So I’m plowing forward full speed. I’m proud of my rejection.
Just thought I would share that with the inter-sphere, the web-iverse, or what have you. We tend to be critical of ourselves and one another fairly easily, but support and understanding is often a little harder to find. Whoever you are in the world, let your freak flag fly! I don’t know why we have to make things so hard on ourselves and on each other, but often times, we do.
In response to one of Lipton’s other “10 questions,” when he asks “If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?” My answer will be “yeah, so… sorry about all of that weird shit.” 
Please Say Something
March 5, 2009 – 11:14 am
My friend Pericles sent me this by way of Twitter by way of These Are Those Things (all of these interconnections- it’s how the interwebs work). It’s a really great animated short called “Please Say Something” by David O’Reilly. I think it really touches upon many thoughts and emotions I and others have had concerning relationships and daily life (and even touches upon my annoyance at the unrelenting winds that have been afflicting Boulder lately). It won the Golden Bear for best short film at the Berlin Film Festival this year:
Please Say Something – Full Length from David OReilly on Vimeo.
I’m not going to make any empty promises to update my blog more frequently, but I’ve been posting a LOT on Twitter lately. I’m anticipating grad school news, preparing for South by Southwest, doing yoga and kung fu until I pass out (see: anticipating grad school news) and dealing with a lot of new emotional territory that comes with being alone for the first time in… ever. Oh, and as always, I’m trying to update this damn site because it doesn’t make any sense!
Autodesk Educational VFX Package
January 10, 2009 – 1:20 pm
I am one of those strange people who was able to teach themselves Maya and ZBrush. It can be done, but it is not easy (admittedly, ZBrush was FAR easier to learn than Maya, but that’s beside the point). That being said, if you are a student (or an employee or affiliate of an educational institution) and would like to learn about 3D modeling, animation and/or video compositing Autodesk has a GREAT deal going on right now:
For $200, you can get a 14-month educational license of Maya 2009. But that’s not all! Act now (actually, I think this deal will be around for a while, so don’t impulsively blow money) and you will also receive: Mudbox (a 3D digital sculpting program that is awesome), Toxik (a node-based compositing program that is awesome), Motion Builder (a 3D character animation program that is awesome) and Cleaner XL (which comes with Autodesk everything, whether you want it or not)! If you weren’t able to gather from this paragraph, this is awesome! Several months ago, it would have cost me more than $300 just to upgrade to Maya 2008. With the exception of Motion Builder, I have other software that will do much of what these other programs do. This deal, however, might be too good to pass up.
My favorite place to get educational software is Torcomp. You can find this deal on other sites such as Academic Superstore. The license is a few dollars cheaper and a couple months longer at Torcomp/Studica…
http://www.torcomp.com/products/product_detail.cfm?productid=57961
If you’re not a student, I’m not sure if there is a bundle like this. I honestly haven’t looked into it because I’m not yet really making money on any of this software so I have no need to have a full license. Some day, though. Some day…
Just for Now
December 22, 2008 – 1:38 pm
So, I’ve been listening to “Speak For Yourself” by Imogen Heap kind of nonstop lately. These are the lyrics to one of my favorite songs and I found them quite funny and “holiday appropriate,” so I thought I’d post them here:
Just for Now:
It’s that time of year
Leave all our hopelessnesses aside
if just for a little while
Tears stop right here
I know we’ve all had a bumpy ride
I’m secretly on your side
How did you know?
It’s what I always wanted
You can never have too many of these
Will ya, quit kicking me under the table
I’m trying, will somebody make her
Shut up about it!
Can we settle down please?
It’s that time of year
Leave all our hopelessnesses aside
if just for a little while
Tears stop right here
I know we’ve all had a bumpy ride
I’m secretly on your side
Bite Tongue, deep breaths, count to 10, nod your head.
(sniff sniff) i think something is burning
No you’ve ruined the whole thing
Muffle the smoke alarm
Whoever put on this music
had better quick sharp remove it
Pour me another
and don’t wag your finger at me
It’s that time of year
Leave all our hopelessnesses aside
if just for a little while
Tears stop right here
I know we’ve all had a bumpy ride
I’m secretly on your side
Get me out of here
Get me out of here
Get me out of here
Have a very happy and sane holiday season!
Film Screening at the Pompidou
December 4, 2008 – 12:30 pm
One of my less frequently screened films is going to be playing at the Pompidou center in Paris this weekend. I doubt anyone who reads my blog will be there, but if you happen to find yourself in the City of Lights with nothing to do on Saturday, you might want to check it out. It will be part of the “Festival des cinemas differents de Paris,” playing on December 6th at 8:00PM. The film is “Ether Twist” (click the link to read about it) and is one of my early experimental polarized light films.
I don’t really like for people to watch my films online. I mean, I don’t “mind” when people do, but I haven’t put HD versions up yet (does that mean they are forthcoming? Yes, it does! In fact, my whole site is being slowly overhauled.) The pieces lose their power when they cannot envelop the viewer, so I try to push the live screenings when I can. This film in particular is rather dark and quiet and tends to lose its “mood” on the small screen. Still, I’ve embedded it here, so happy viewing if you care to watch!
It’s abstract, but has a scientific sort of logic behind it. The images are polarized bits of plastic while the sound is VLF radio recordings or auroras and meteor showers and the like. Oh, and yes, the title comes from Tori Amos.
