Made By: Cameron Moll

Cameron Moll, who you may know as the founder of Authentic Jobs and the guy who designed those "Structures in Type" letterpress posters a while back, spent a couple days recording this episode of Envato's "Made By" interview series.

Here's a good quote, on the difficulty of creating the letterpress posters:

I think that's defined who I've been up to this point in my career. Trying stuff that I was totally unqualified for and trying to make it work, and make it look good, and make it perform.

The interview is nicely shot and I liked getting a peek at how Cameron manages to balance his work with being a family man. (On that note: Five sons?! I only have one son and he's already a handful at 3 years old. Props to Cameron and his wife for keeping their sanity.)

Update: Cameron wrote a little behind-the-scenes post (with photos) about the video on the Authentic Jobs Tumblr.

Jeff Sheldon's Iceland Trip [Video]

Jeff Sheldon—of Ugmonk fame—recorded this footage while recently vacationing in Iceland. It was shot on an Olympus E-M10, the same awesome micro four-thirds camera Shawn Blanc extensively reviewed on Tools & Toys.

The trip was beautifully captured, despite Jeff's claim not to know much about videography. Clearly the man has an eye for composition. Now I want to visit Iceland.

A Day in the Life of John Lasseter [Video]

Speaking of John Lasseter, this 25-minute documentary provides a fascinating look at a typical day in the man's life—namely: Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011.

The camera follows him from breakfast at his incredible house all the way through his workday at Pixar HQ. I particularly liked how he can work remotely from an iPad using Pixar's in-house apps, and of course getting a peek at the creative process is awesome too.

Am I a weirdo for finding this sort of thing entertaining? Maybe. I don't care.

iOS 8's Time-Lapse Feature

Dan Provost of Studio Neat examined how the time-lapse feature in iOS 8 works and shares his findings.

“Time-lapse videos look best when they are buttery smooth, and dynamically selecting intervals in this fashion would create a jittery and jerky video. So what does Apple mean by "dynamically selected intervals"?

Turns out, what Apple is doing in quite simple, and indeed, pretty clever.”

Apple's method is indeed clever, even elegant.

(By the way, can I just geek out for a moment about how gorgeous the Studio Neat website is nowadays? My goodness.)

The Clues to a Great Story

Andrew Stanton of Pixar, during a 2012 TED Talk in which he shares some of the storytelling secrets he's learned over the years (timestamps included):

[6:22] “Storytelling without dialogue. It's the purest form of cinematic storytelling. It's the most inclusive approach you can take. It confirmed something I really had a hunch on, is that the audience actually wants to work for their meal. They just don't want to know that they're doing that. That's your job as a storyteller, is to hide the fact that you're making them work for their meal. We're born problem solvers. We're compelled to deduce and to deduct, because that's what we do in real life. It's this well-organized absence of information that draws us in.”

[12:19] “And it just went to prove that storytelling has *guidelines*, not hard, fast rules.”

[16:27] “And that's what I think the magic ingredient is, the secret sauce, is can you invoke wonder. Wonder is honest, it's completely innocent. It can't be artificially evoked. For me, there's no greater ability than the gift of another human being giving you that feeling -- to hold them still just for a brief moment in their day and have them surrender to wonder.”

If there's anyone I trust when it comes to guidelines for good storytelling, it's the director of Finding Nemo and WALL•E—two of my all-time favorite films. Definitely set aside twenty minutes to watch this video.

"Not Your Average Bread and Butter"

Chef Dan Richer has been dubbed the "Jiro Dreams of Sushi" of bread and butter, and rightfully so. Rather than carelessly serving up some dull and forgettable form of this pre-meal staple at his New Jersey restaurant, he has poured his soul into perfecting the recipe.

His approach to food is rather similar to the editing practices of great writers:

“I'm like the anti-chef. Like, I wanna do less to something, and I wanna put less on the plate. If there's an ingredient I can take off of the plate to make it more simple and more pure so you can actually experience the essence of what it is that we're serving, that's what's special to me.”

Absolutely wonderful video. Set aside eight minutes to watch it and prepare to salivate.

"Take a Talk Show and Make It Move"

I really enjoyed watching this hour-long chat between Jerry Seinfeld and David Letterman. They discuss the inner workings of the Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee web series, why it was created in the first place, the importance of good editing, and so much more. Lots of funny moments and interesting insights.

Neil Gaiman's 2012 Commencement Speech [Video]

This link was originally published before the launch of The Spark Journal. I will be republishing (and lightly editing, in some cases) a handful of such things in the coming days, mainly because I feel they're worth seeing twice. My apologies if this annoys anyone.

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Somehow I completely missed out on watching this speech until recently. It seems like the kind of thing I should have come across sooner, since my internet friends presumably would have been linking it left and right at the time. But I guess better late than never right?

Here are a few of my favorite highlights, with accompanying time markers:

[1:51] - “First of all, when you start out on a career in the arts, you have no idea what you're doing. This is great. People who know what they're doing know the rules, and they know what is possible, and what is impossible. You do not, and you should not.”

[2:10] “The rules on what is possible and impossible in the arts were made by people who had not tested the bounds of the possible by going beyond them. And you can. If you don't know it's impossible, it's easier to do. And because nobody's done it before, they haven't made up rules to stop anyone doing that particular thing again.”

[19:29] “And now, go and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. Make. Good. Art.”