Hillman Curtis rocks my socks. (So does Mark Romanek)

Hillman Curtis does a series of videos he calls "artist documentary series" which he posts on his site. I love these things. I watch them over and over again. He interviews some of the most brilliant designers and artists I've ever seen. And every time I rewatch them, I glean something new from what they're saying. Sometimes you're just 'ready' to hear something. Sometimes certain phrases will just stick with you better.

So I was watching the Mark Romanek one this morning, and, well, I just had to record what he was saying somehow, so I started to type:

"One of the secrets of it is having things not be complete. Or having a certain amount of it being inscrutable or inexplicable or something that makes sense in your subconscious. But I talk all the time that things are "too left brain." Meaning it just is what it is. It doesn't have that enigmatic quality to it. There isn't anything open-ended about it. It can be understood too easily. I find that the phrase "right brain" or "left brain" comes up a lot when I'm working with my crew about making decisions about what we're going to shoot and what goes in front of the camera. It's something to do with leaving the audience with a question. What that does is it engages the audience. It becomes interpretive for them. And as soon as it becomes interpretive, you're engaged. You're not just watching something that's laid out for you. You're being asked questions or posed riddles. If a broken chair has more latent, resonate, potential meaning than an unbroken chair, then break the chair."

"At the end of the day, the only thing that's really important is emotionally engaging the people. And then at a certain point, if you're at all wise, then you go, nothing matters but that. It doesn't matter what I went through to get the shot. It doesn't matter how beautiful the shot is. If you're leaving people cold, it's gotta go."
-Mark Romanek

That's not all of it. You should watch the whole thing here. In fact, you should watch all of Curtis' documentaries here.