Well, summer's over, finally. Hopefully with the cold weather will come more time for updating this blog. Seems blogging is very much a winter/fall/early spring activity. Most of my friends blogs have gone over the past couple of months. Wonder if they'll pick up as people start spending less and less time outdoors.
I'm looking forward to spending as much time as I can outdoors over the next month or two, soaking up the delightfully chilly fall weather before Philly turns into a mess of dirty snow, slush, and ice. Many fun things to look forward to in October, including: apple/pumpkin picking at Highland Orchards, a trip to the Ottawa Animation Festival with my girlfriend Sarah Holt, an annual pumpkin carving part/Troll 2 screening at my house, a pre-screening of The Romantic at MIT, and, of course, Ethaween.
This is also my first month on the L&A team. I'm hoping I can keep up with the solid work these guys do on a weekly bases!
The Romantic is finally 100% done. I'm not sure if that's fully sunken in yet. I need to do some serious celebrating. It's a big victory for me. I'm going to be glad to share this victory with my friends, families, and those that have worked on the film come this November, with a pre-screening of the film at Circle of Hope. More info soon.
I'm going to be making Friendly Beasts again this week, starting with some Halloween decorations. I want to get enough of these guys made to sell at Circle's art shop in December. I'm also going to be making a piece to put in a pizza themed art show at The Rocket Cat called "Pizza Without Borders". The show starts in November and is being curated by good ol' Beej Dwyer.
I'll also be working on a personal business card this week, as well as making preparations for michaelpheneghan.com
I've spent three years in a cave working like crazy. Time to show everyone the results!
These past months have passed with unbelievable speed.
It's mid July right now, I haven't posted since the end of April, right before my 25th Birthday. Since my last post my life has been busy with many many things, some positive, some negative, some exciting, some frightening.
I started the month of May with a huge load of work on my plate. The Romantic (my film) had to be finished by June 1st so we'd have time to submit it to the Ottawa International Animation Festival. Nate Terry, the film's composer and all around sound guy was busy finishing the music for the film and didn't have any time left in his schedule to do the sound design. So throughout May I pulled some pretty long hours plugging sound effects into the timeline to give us a pretty decent design for the Ottawa jury. My schedule was made even tighter by a camping trip I took with Sarah to Rickett's Glenn State Park. The trip was beautiful and rejuvenating, but it was a vacation that came at a time when I had very little time. The Romantic team (me, Dan Goat & Nate) managed to hit our deadline (well, we were at least pretty close), and managed to get a copy of the film on DVD mailed off to Canada with a little time to spare. Thanks to Lina Moysis for provided beautiful artwork for our screener DVD!
The next step for The Romantic was/is to tweak some visuals that need enhancing or modification, while Nate cleans up the sound design and does a final mix for us in NYC. We're still working on that, with a tentative deadline for the end of this month (July). The end of this month is also when we'll find out if we made it into Ottawa or not. I'm starting to get a little nervous about it. I was pretty detached from it for a while, not really caring if we got in or not, but now I realize how excited I am to go to Ottawa in October to show my film. I'm really not sure what our chances are for making it in. I don't know what our competition is like, or even if anyone outside my group of friends will even like the film. I could see us making it in and I could see us being shot down. My fingers are crossed.
At the start of June my dad and I went to the Chesapeake Bay to do some fishing. We didn't catch anything this year, but it was still a fun trip. I spent a lot of time on a boat with my dad, which is good, and I spent a lot of time in silence looking out at our beautiful landscape, which is also good.
The rest of June and the start of July has been a little rough for me. I'm in a strange transition period in my life, a period that I've been in for a while now - but it really reached it's climax over the past four weeks or so. The Romantic has been such a large part of my life and I'm really ready to put that era of Heneghan to rest. But there is still odd jobs that need to be done - we need to finish the actual film 100%, and then comes the promotional stuff - business cards need to be made, posters designed, postcards designed, so on and so forth.
I'm trying to figure out what I want to do next and how I'm gonna get it done.
-I want to be more generative with my money, sharing more of it with my community. -I want to be more generative with my time and talents, sharing more of them with my community. -I want to raise $200,000 for my next film, Burp's Christmas, and I want to start work on that ASAP. I need to save money - 'seed' money, so I can pay for our LLC, website, promotional stuff, basically the stuff I need raise that money. This clashes against above want. -I want to screen The Romantic in film festivals, which will help with raising money for Burp's, but will require money and time for me to actual travel to these places. -I want to start working on Friendly Beasts again (my wooden sculptures), with a goal of having a bunch of them ready to go for the Circle Art Shop in December.
I'm trying to balance these things out and I'm trying to find a way to make them work together, to intertwine the means to my separate goals so that they are working with each other and not against each other. I've been trying to organize this over the past few weeks and to be honest it's made me jam up and fall into a lazy depression. It's only in the past couple days that I feel excited and optimistic over my next coming year. I feel that things are progressing. I'm trying to be happier about my successes and less guilty over my failures.
So that's where I've been and where I'm going. I'm looking forward to heading up to Papa Almquist's lakehouse in upstate New York next week, for vacation # 3 of the summer (I'm getting spoiled). I'm looking forward to the Love Feast, my cell regrouping, BBQs, nighttime bikerides, and spending time with good people doing good things.
I promise it won't be this long til my next post...
Busy, busy, busy. It's what a Bokonist whispers whenever he thinks about how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is.
It's also what I say when it's been a while since I've written a blog because the machinery of life has pulled me away from my computer. This is what I've been working on:
-Wrapping up a second set of Alice in Wonderland Friendly Beasts. I want to get them all done by next week so Carina can photograph them before she goes away for a whole month! The second set are all naked right now, hopefully I can stitch together some clothes by early next week. So far I've done: Alice, The White Rabbit, The Cheshire Cat, The March Hare, The Mad Hatter, The Caterpillar, The Queen of Hearts, Two Card Soldiers, The Walrus and The Carpenter. I've also done three gnomes and a few animals! EDIT: Looks like the set won't be ready! Rats! No beasts up til June.
-Finishing up the film. I'm animating the final credit sequence right now for Dan to put his effects over. Not much more to go! Gotta keep on track for a June 1st deadline.
-Working a lot at my day job, especially this weekend. I'm going to have to miss Jenna and Holly's birthday parties which is a huge bummer.
-Designing some illustrations and logos for aforementioned day job.
-Just joined the circle kids team!
-25th Birthday next week! And going camping shortly after.
Anyway, that's what's on my plate. Looking forward to slowing down in May. Will post some pictures of the updated beasts soon.
Til then, here is a video Mike Almquist made when we were in college together. It's beautiful, and relevant to how I feel right now.
Above: Dan Gauthier makes paintings from sketches. Below: Nathan Terry gives it voice.
On Sunday I had the amazing opportunity to spend the afternoon with two extrordinary artists. Their names are Daniel Gauthier and Nathan Terry.
Even more amazing: these two extremely talented gentlemen are working on The Romantic.
If you don't know me very well, you might not know that for the past three years I've been directing an animated feature film. You can find out more at www.theromanticmovie.com
The movie is about a young man who embarks on an arduous journey that takes him to the ends of the earth and to the Moon and back. When provoked, the young man, named Romance, clumsily offers a bunch of vaguely sincere explanations for his quest, all laden with lofty altruism and self importance.
Above: Romance does what humans do. Below: "Burning Leaves."
But the truth is that the character had not found love and had not found peace and instead tried to make right in the outside world what he could not face inside his own head. And to be honest, while the film is not metaphorically biographical, this part is.
Making an independent animated feature is not done that often, especially by folks like Dan Gauthier, Nate Terry, and myself. Young folks. It's an epic task for even the seasoned professional. Most independent animators spend their entire lives making short films, and if, in their heads, the dream of making a feature exists, it often remains just that. A dream.
Meanwhile, the animated film market is almost entirely dominated by children's films, which are fine, as children's films, but leave something to be desired if you happen to like both animation and engaging adult narrative.
So a few years ago I set off on my own lofty journey to marry the two ideals. To create something that, at it's very least, wasn't being made to sell kids junk that they don't need. And it's been a harrowing journey at that.
There were long hours and a lot of heartbreak and a lot of frustration trying to make this thing happen. If that sounds romantic it is because I was romantic. When I started I was naive enough to think I could wrap this guy up in about a year and a half and not only was I wrong I was very wrong. This June will mark the third year of the films production. It will also mark the date that we will have copies of The Romantic mastered on DVD. When it will be done.
Above: Romance pays the price for being romantic. Below: "Po's Cave Revisited."
The film's production started off well enough. I had just graduated from Uarts and had gathered together a team of about 15-20 individuals, all committed to fulfilling separate tasks of various sizes during the production. But that wasn't to last.
One by one workers began to fall off of the film. Some told me outright. Others feigned working on the film, delaying meetings, not answering phone calls, promising that progress had been made and so forth, only surprising me months later with a sheepish eMail or MySpace message explaining why the dog ate their homework. Why there wasn't anything done.
This rocked my boat a little and threw off my confidence as a director. When these folks were covering for themselves, I was covering for them to other folks, and when they let me down, I had to let other artists down. It lowered the overall morale and made me seem inconsistent. It helped inspire others to jump ship, which only made my despair worsen.
By no means do I blame anyone who left the production. In retrospect, I'm incredibly surprised anyone had the breadth of heart to even humor me enough to attend just one of the production meetings. The problem is, to be honest, there wasn't much in it for them. I wasn't offering money in return for their work and that's a pretty bogus deal. I wasn't being paid to do this, and, unfortunately, I didn't have the resources to compensate them. Instead I offered them a percentage of the film's profits (if it ever made any) in correlation to the percentage of work they completed on the production. If the film made any money, they would make money. But it's understandably difficult to spend time doing something you'd rather not do when you aren't getting financially compensated for it. Period.
When I was in school it dawned on me that for the most part working in the animation industry is a bummer and that I didn't really want to do it unless it was on my own terms. I didn't want to make kids entertainment because the majority of it is kinda creepy and kinda insincere and I didn't want to make commercials because all of them are creepy and all of them are insincere. I especially disliked the idea of working on someone else's kids show or commercial - spending my life with little job security and long work hours to make real a disingenuous idea that wasn't even my own disingenuous idea. The pros, if there were any, were smothered by the cons. If I was going to work that hard and sacrifice so much just to make money I would have invested in law instead of art and had a job that at least attempted to financially compensate me for bending over backwards.
So I figured I'd rally my friends. We would start a studio and let The Romantic be our figurehead and if it succeeded we'd be able to start our own animation hub in Philadelphia and everyone who worked on The Romantic would be given a job and a voice. It would not be my film, it would be our film. And if it failed at least it would be a failure that I understood. I was selfish and I was naive and I thought that this dream would be other people's dreams but in truth I think it was just mine. I have a hell of a lot of ambition and one large chip on my shoulder and often times ones the match and ones the gas and when the stars align something sure as hell gets set on fire and I'm truly sorry if anyone got burned when I tried to make them stand too close to the flames. Too close to my film, not ours.
So people dropped off and I found myself in a very tough spot a little over a year in, where it seemed the amount of work in front of me was insurmountable, yet, at the same time, I'd gone so far into production and invested so much time and money and made so many promises that there was no turning back. I was swimming blindly through an unknown length of water and I could see no land ahead and no land behind. There seemed to be nothing to do but swim as hard as I could as fast as I could and I did this with no regard for the condition I'd be in when I finally washed up on shore. I fell into the film, or I escaped into the film, often working fifteen hour days Mon-Fri and eight hour days on the weekends. This went on for another year. My relationships suffered - though I somehow found time for friends, that time was often soured by my ornery and exhausted attitude that I harbored from working myself so hard. Somehow I managed to delude myself, like the character of Romance, that the quest I was on was noble - that working hard meant you had integrity and meant you had true grit and that is not true. If you are letting anything jeopardize the love you bring into this world then that thing is not noble. It is foolish.
Above: Pjorrc understands the weight of understanding. Below: "Traveling to Hate."
My problem was that I got so much affirmation from my work that I stopped needing affirmation for my love and that is a very very bad place for anyone to be (especially artists) and my journey from the Earth to the Moon and back was essentially me wrapping my mind around that and subverting the priorities that were dug like wood cuts into the matter of my brain partly from learned behavior and partly from my vocation and partly from my own desire to be the hero of my own story instead of being a cog in the clock of time just like any other cog not more important or less important than my neighbors and that is what we are - parts, and any individual value I placed on mine own was an ego illusion for infinity turns value inside out and weighs the biggest and the smallest with the same irreverence. There are no heroes and this is not a conventional story. This is the universe and I guess I had to almost drown in a sea of my own ambition to figure that one out. Whoops.
Old habits die hard and it's taken a lot of effort to rework my work addiction and I'm not completely there yet though I have made progress. I still believe the best days are productive days, which I guess is true, though my definition of "productive" needs some rewiring. I'm trying to be more generous with my time and with myself, and I'm trying to be more 'present' during that time but it is difficult. My work follows me everywhere like a little incessant gremlin and often times when I'm hanging out with friends the little bastard starts chewing on my shoulder and all I can think about is what work I want to do and what work I should be doing and my imagination gets awakened in my head like an atomic blast of creativity and all of a sudden I'm paying more attention to characters or plot lines or deadlines instead of the people and the love that has been graciously and bountifully bestowed upon me despite my unworthiness of such blessings. I need help with this and I'm trying real hard.
Above: To the Moon and back. Below: "To the Moon and Back."
So that's the journey I've been on and am on. Watching the film this weekend with Dan's effects and Nate's music was sublime. I saw the past three years in it's frustration and it's exhaustion and it's beauty and it's blessing encoded in cartoon and song and it gave me that happy/sad feeling that all good things give me. I'm super excited to finally share this thing with you guys!
Before I wrap up, I have to thank Dan, Nate, Dooley, Almquist, my folks, Christie, Kayla, Kelly, Bryan, Sean, Kat, Tiff, and Chris and anyone who helped this thing happen. And thanks to Nick, Josh, Mike, Mueller, and my cell(s) for not letting me fall in while it was happening.
You see them on TV, you hear them on the radio. They put up posters. They're on the street. Sometimes they go door to door, sometimes they call you. Sometimes they are celebrities and sometimes they are your friends.
They all make cases as to why voting is important.
And I agree.
I agree a bit too much.
Once every four years we as Americans are given the opportunity to vote for a few affluent individuals who engage in aggressive marketing campaigns in order to sell themselves to as many of us as possible. They tell us "what we want to hear", and, frankly, that says something kinda creepy about what it is we want to hear. It's a rare occasion that they ever tell us anything we need to hear. That might upset us. And if we're upset, we might vote for the other fella. And that would be a shame.
Instead we get a luke warm pissing contest - meant to inspire us... kind of - that is almost always vague and is almost always mediocre. A ham fisted apathy inspiring spectacle that is as flaccid as it is cunning. You can't say military industrial complex on national television, folks, it's been dubbed a four letter word by General Electric and you better believe you'll be ripped off the air and out of the minds of the citizens faster than you can say "is anyone really driving this thing?" if you're stupid enough to think that's what people "want to hear". And look, NBC isn't really down with you acknowledging that "we're spending more money killing people than feeding them. Good people are dying, enemies are being made, the poor are still starving, and in this world we have all the power to fix it and we're not because it would mean radically changing our lives and that's far too inconvenient for almost all of us and frankly that says something kind of scary not about America or about the world but about the human condition and this is almost too much to handle but it's okay because there is love and maybe if we start with love and start with not being too macho or too intellectual or too proud to evoke loves name we might might might stop this car from driving off the cliff."
Better not go there.
Best pretend this automobile of our systematically inhumane humanity is running okay and if there is a problem it's not with the muffler that fell off a couple miles back or the cooling system that's on the fritz or with the breaks that sound like a tortured cat when you try to make that stop sign or with the engine that appears to be on fire as thick plumes of noxious smoke ribbon out from beneath the hood. No, the mention of such problems might disenfranchise your target audience so if we're gonna critique this suspicious machine lets just leave the sour comments to it's paint job and call it a day. And if we want "hope" or "change" we should "hope" to have the chips on the car's paint touched up (they're barely noticeable anyway), and maybe "change" the hood ornament while we're at it (it does look a bit sinister and optimism is back in 2009).
Best not suggest we get a new car.
And the band plays on.
We're left divided. Left to be judgemental towards each other (what a joke!). And maybe we're left feeling like we don't have control over anything besides ourselves.
We have control over ourselves.
We have control over ourselves and we also have the power to vote. And by voting, I don't mean this baffoonish puppet show every four years. I mean every single day we spend money on something and who or what we spend that money on might just be a more powerful statement than who we punch on the presidential ticket. This is a big responsibility and it's kinda daunting and kinda annoying because it might make us feel guilty and it might mean our lives are inconvenienced or severely inconvenienced and it might mean that we can't blame conservatives or liberals or politicians or capitalists. We might start by blaming ourselves but really that's pretty unproductive and really that's not the point. The point is about bringing as much love as possible into this system, to cut down on the damage we as individuals are doing.
After all, we can't really get a new car because we are the car and it's made up of an incalculable number of parts, some broken, some corrupt, some infinitely frustrating...but all beautiful. The solution is bigger than us. That's okay. But until that solution is realized we can start by making sure our individual part isn't gunking up the mechanism. Now we're faced with that individualistic conundrum - "I don't matter". Well, that's partly true. You don't matter. And you do matter. All at the same time. The contradiction is real and it is the truth, wrap your noodle around that and move on.
This is what I'm working with right now and I'm sorry to lambast you with the soap boxed rampage above but to be honest it does feel pretty good to get it off my chest. This lent I've given up spending money on non life essentials, and this voting with my money idea has been hovering over my noggin quite incessantly this season. I've been taking into consideration where my money goes after I earn the damn stuff. Where ALL of it goes, from the Coca-Cola I buy when I see a movie to the pants I wear to the electricity I use to the pasta I eat for supper to the soap I use in the shower each morning. So much money, going to so many people. So many votes being cast all the time. But whose getting my money and what are they doing with it? Who or what am I voting for? And who or what am I for voting this way?
This is a question every consumer (ie every American) should ask but unfortunately it's a very difficult one to answer and I believe this is because it's not in the best interest of most of the people doing the selling. The ideal of the educated consumer is not an ideal, it is a myth.
Because if you met the people who actually make your pants you might need to cry for a real long time. And you might just want to give that person all your money. And you might not want any pants in return.
We're so inconvenienced already. Those bastards have already exhausted us. They've stretched us so thin and made us so tired and depressed that, darn it, don't we deserve that bottle of beer already? Do I really have to stop buying Coke at the theater? Can't I be left alone with my Doritos, my Comcast, and my Urban Outfitters? My baseball? My Phillies?
You don't have to do anything. But if you start taking a peak behind the curtain, you just might want to. However, if you do want to know where the money tree starts and stops you're going to have to do a lot of researching. Then you might have to either make excuses as to why the disparaging information you've learned about isn't that bad, or you'll stop participating in anything you believe to be evil. Gandhi suggested we do the latter, and I agree. Einstein agreed with Gandhi, too, and that man was smart enough to figure out that time is one of the weirdest things that's ever happened (the idea that things are happening being weird enough as it is).
Most likely, however, this information will cause us to be in conflict for the rest of our lives as we attempt to sacrifice what we want in exchange for what we know to be true. And sometimes there will be no alternatives, and we will plunk down our cash (a symbolic representation of our weird times, our weird lives) and vote for people who are profiting off of the enslavement of others. But do not be afraid! It doesn't matter if you win our lose, it's that you see through the game. Those oh so easy to hate capitalist insert-profane-epithet folks aren't really profiting, because luckily, the universe is orchestrated in such a manner so as to render it impossible for anyone to profit off of the suffering of others.
Not in any way that matters. Not if you know what's really going on. Jesus suggested this. He saw through the game.
He knew what was really going on.
So, yeah, this is what I'm working with. I've been poking around the internet, trying to do my research, and surprise surprise, it is remarkably difficult to find any sophisticated websites that offer up to date, comprehensive information about where our money goes when we spend it. Who we are voting for. I put the word out on the dialogue and my friends came through for me. I got a handful of resources that I'm about to share with you, that while limited, at least help to point one in the right direction.
The most streamlined resource is a website called Better World Shopper. It has synthesized over 20 years of research into a directory of companies that are graded from A+ to F based on category. The companies are scored based on their positive or negative contributions to human rights, the environment, animal protection, community involvement, and social justice. It's very easy to use, and they sell a book for $10 (which I purchased and you can borrow) that includes more information. It is on this website that I learned that I shouldn't be drinking PBR anymore at wing night, even if it's cheap (it garnered an F rating), nor should I be using Mitchum deodorant (D+) anymore, even though it stops my arm pits from being the Great Lakes in the dredges of summer. I plan on using this guide after lent to curb my negative ethical consumer footprint by only shopping at companies ranked B or above. Or at least I'll try. Want to try this with me? It will mean being inconvenienced, often. But lets give it a whirl!
Unfortunately, however, Better World Shopper isn't as comprehensive as it needs to be. The website itself admits that their resources are stretched thin, and that in their current form they can't harvest enough information to cover all companies all the time.
Bummer. I've talked about this with my buddy Josh many times and he's getting amped to start up a website in the same vain. Maybe wikipedia style? Maybe just a pipe dream, but what a pipe dream. Imagine being able to type in a company name and finding out who they are, who they are owned by, where their products are manufactured (specifically), and any insight on how they treat their workers. All with footnotes and links to outside references. Maybe with links to ethical alternatives.
It would be awesome.
Here are some other great websites suggested to me:
Green America Today - An alphabetical list of companies with more information than BWS. New American Dream - A magazine style website that provides information on "green" consumerism compiled into different articles grouped into categories. Has a section on local buying guides - there isn't one for Philly yet (closest is Meadville, PA). Maybe we could start one? SocialFunds.com - A website devoted to socially responsible investing. I don't make enough money to invest in anything besides tonight's supper, but if you do, check this out. Sustainable Business Network of Greater Philadelphia - A website that networks socially and environmentally responsible local businesses in Philadelphia. Also has a recommended reading list. Buy Local Philly - List of local Philly businesses. Site needs to be updated.
Also suggested to me were the books:
Going Local and Small Mart Revolution by Michael Shumon The Ethics of What We Eat by Peter Singer The Revolution Will Not be Microwaved by Sandor Katz
Exhausted yet? Yeah, it's pretty daunting. But maybe someday if enough information is dissolved to enough people, more votes will be cast towards responsible candidates. And then maybe someday it won't be General Electric deciding what presidential candidates talk on television. It will be us.
Let's go out with some funniness. I leave you with Bill Hicks telling it like it is:
Hey folks. It's getting beautiful outside and I'm getting pumped. I've been hibernating for the later part of winter and I'm excited to finally leave the cave.
I've got a camping trip booked for the first week of May and a fishing trip planned with my dad for the second week of June. I'm getting excited for BBQs, long bike rides, late nights, and seeing the sun!
To go with this theme, here is a picture of some felt flowers I've been making:
They are background props to go with the Friendly Beasts when I photograph them. I'm also thinking of making compositions with them, kind of like needlepoints, and putting them in frames. We'll see!
Work was pretty interrupted this week - the basement workshop got flooded and I had to pack it up and move half of my stuff upstairs. I spent many hours waiting for the landlord and his wild card friends to fix the problem, and then afterwards I had to bail out the murky water from the basement floor. Things are drying off now, though, and I'll be setup again by Monday.
Speaking of Monday. My girlfriend Sarah Holt! has been in Guatemala doing all sorts of Guatemala things this past week, I'm pumped to have her back home safe and sound on Monday.
Anyhow, spring has sprung. Lets get off the computer and go to a park!
