🪵 Logjam: Why I Still Make Small, Weird Things

This April, Morgan and I entered the 48 Hour Film Competition curated by the fantabulous Green Feather Foundation (HUGE THANKS!).

We were given three prompts: Wood. Nudge. Movement. We had two days, an iPhone, an absurdly large pile of puppets, and absolutely no one to answer to.

The result is Logjam — a short puppet film that operates by its own internal logic, made in part with images from an old Golden Book encyclopedia set, featuring Carol Channing and music I made just for the film.

Logjam was awarded Runner Up in the competition. You can watch all the finalist entries here, and there really are some incredible films.

But here's what I actually want to talk about: the making of it.

There is something irreplaceable about creative work that has no brief. No stakeholders. No timeline longer than 48 hours.

You just go. You just do it. No overthinking.

A glimpse of the worktable - BTS

My day job is wonderful and enormous and full of creative decisions that matter at a scale I've spent decades dreaming about. And I LOVE it. However, precisely because of that complexity in my job, I need THIS counterweight.

Not as an escape, but as a different kind of exercise.

The freedom to experiment wildly, to be wrong quickly, to follow a surreal idea all the way to the end... just to see where it goes, that keeps the creative engine revving and the intent honest. It fills my belly in a way that only work like this can and makes me sharper when I come back to the big table.

Forty-eight hours, a digestive forest, a legend of the stage, and my favorite collaborator. Yes.

More dispatches soon.