Some film­mak­ers put sto­ry­boards, those com­ic book-look­ing shot plans you some­times glimpse in mak­ing-of doc­u­men­taries, at the cen­ter of their cre­ative process. Ter­ry Gilliam, he of Brazil and 12 Mon­keys, has described sto­ry­boards as the one thing he can safe­ly “lock onto” dur­ing the com­pli­cat­ed, ever-shift­ing shoot­ing process. Oth­er film­mak­ers, such as the hearti­ly impro­vi­sa­tion­al Wern­er Her­zog, have dis­missed sto­ry­boards as the tool of “cow­ards,” of “those who lack imag­i­na­tion,” of “those who are bureau­crat­ic and noth­ing else on the set.” Hav­ing spent sev­en for­ma­tive years in art school, Alien and Blade Run­ner direc­tor Rid­ley Scott devel­ops his films by think­ing as much through the frame­work of visu­al art as through that of cin­e­ma. In the video above, a laid-back Scott, cig­ar in hand, dis­cuss­es how sto­ry­boards, sketch­es, and oth­er pieces of hand-drawn imagery help him make movies.

Telling how he’s found loca­tions, envi­sioned scenes with­in them, and used draw­ings to build those scenes, Scott offers an insight into the look and feel of his own work and use­ful advice to fel­low cre­ators, whether or not they work in a visu­al medi­um. His inspi­ra­tion begins with an activ­i­ty as sim­ple — but nonethe­less a source of “great enjoy­ment” — as look­ing at indus­tri­al land­scapes out the win­dow of a car. Some­times he even begins thumb­nail sketch­es then and there, in tran­sit. Not only does his draft­ing back­ground enable him to do that, but it leads to clos­er work­ing rela­tion­ships with his pro­fes­sion­al sto­ry­board artists. Con­fer­ring with them men­tal­ly pre­pares him to “hit the floor” and shoot the scene. He reveals that, whether you’re direct­ing a $120 mil­lion motion pic­ture, paint­ing a paint­ing, or even writ­ing a blog post, you face the same chal­lenge: “Get rid of the white can­vas. Get some­thing right across the can­vas. Oth­er­wise you’re always look­ing at that area of white, which is like a blank sheet.” He notes that his meth­ods have led to some call­ing his films “overde­signed and over-thought out,” but admits that, at this point, “I’ll prob­a­bly just stay with the plan.”

via @webacion

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mak­ing of Blade Run­ner

Rid­ley Scott Read­ies a Pre­quel to Alien; Guy Pearce Gives Its “TED Talk”

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Hill­man Cur­tis began his career in the San Fran­cis­co new wave group Mrs. Green, served as Macro­me­di­a’s design direc­tor, found­ed the design firm hill­man­cur­tis, Inc., wrote man­u­als on new media, and shot short doc­u­men­taries. He accom­plished much of note across the design pro­fes­sions before his untime­ly pass­ing last month, and these projects reveal his great affin­i­ty for like-mind­ed­ly mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary and aes­thet­i­cal­ly inclined cre­ators. He won a great deal of his inter­net fame exam­in­ing just such peo­ple in the Artist Series, a cycle of five-to-ten minute pro­files of, broad­ly speak­ing, his col­leagues. These include Mil­ton Glaser, the man behind the look of the immor­tal I Love New York cam­paign; David Car­son, art direc­tor of the nineties’ cultish­ly cov­et­ed rock mag­a­zine Ray Gun; and Mark Romanek, direc­tor of strik­ing com­mer­cials and fea­ture films like One Hour Pho­to.

At the top of this post, you’ll find Cur­tis’ Artist Series short on Daniel Libe­skind, the archi­tect over­see­ing the rebuild­ing of the World Trade Cen­ter. It exam­ines the archi­tec­t’s build­ings, his sketch­es, his meet­ings, and his ideas about the built envi­ron­ment as a tool for lib­er­a­tion rather than a “neu­tral world that con­firms all our ideas.” Ulti­mate­ly, Libe­skind asks this of his craft, his pro­fes­sion, and his world­view: “How will it car­ry peo­ple into a world that is good?” Direct­ly above is Cur­tis’ pro­file of graph­ic design­er Paula Sch­er, who talks about the speed with which she sketched the Citibank logo. The client seems to have balked at this, assum­ing that any­thing so quick­ly cre­at­ed could­n’t pos­si­bly war­rant the cost. Sch­er argues that, while it appeared to take her only a sec­ond, it real­ly took her “a sec­ond and 34 years,” “a sec­ond and every expe­ri­ence and every movie and every thing of my life that’s in my head.” Nei­ther she nor any­one else in the Artist Series sees divi­sions between their work, their life, and the rest of human­i­ty. Hill­man Cur­tis, by all accounts, lived the same way.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Pow­ers of Ten: The 1968 Doc­u­men­tary by Leg­endary Design­ers Ray and Charles Eames

Pao­la Antonel­li on Design as the Inter­face Between Progress and Human­i­ty

Clas­sic Jazz Album Cov­ers Ani­mat­ed, or the Re-Birth of Cool

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Tom Waits nar­rates this whim­si­cal, fast-mov­ing intro­duc­tion to the life and work of West-Coast con­cep­tu­al artist John Baldessari. The film was direct­ed by Hen­ry Joost and Ariel Schul­man, the cre­ative team behind Cat­fish and Para­nor­mal Activ­i­ty 3. It was made for the Los Ange­les Coun­ty Muse­um of Art’s inau­gur­al Art & Film Gala, held last Novem­ber in hon­or of Baldessari and Clint East­wood. Baldessari mix­es a vari­ety of media in his art, includ­ing sculp­ture, paint­ing, print­mak­ing and video. “His work,” writes Elis­a­beth Roark of Grove Art Online, “is char­ac­ter­ized by a con­scious­ness of lan­guage evi­dent in his use of puns, seman­tics based on the struc­tural­ism of Claude Lévi-Strauss and by the incor­po­ra­tion of mate­r­i­al drawn from pop­u­lar cul­ture.” When Joost and Schul­man ask Baldessari how he will be remem­bered 100 years hence, he says dry­ly, “I’m the guy who puts dots over peo­ple’s faces.”

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tom Waits Reads Charles Bukows­ki

Tom Waits Makes Com­ic Appear­ance on Fer­n­wood Tonight (1977)

Tom Waits Reads Two Charles Bukows­ki Poems, “The Laugh­ing Heart” and “Nir­vana”