Tall, dramatic, Lithuanian, and utterly hilarious, Mrs. McGann was everybody’s favorite teacher. She made a regular practice of issuing impossibly difficult assignments for the first week of school to weed out those unable or unwilling to work at a rigorous college level. We knew the twelfth grade AP English curriculum, but never could predict how she would deliver each lesson. From choreographed classroom sword fights to riddle-writing, Mrs. McGann kept us on our toes. We adored her.

What’s that you say? The holiday season is in full swing and you need something stimulating to work on before you sink into a sick-of-cheesy-songs-in-the-supermarket, blinded-by-tacky-yard-decorations, chocolate-induced seasonal slump? Well then, it’s a good thing you’re reading my blog.

Choose an image from T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock” and illustrate it through art, audio, video, or any other creative medium.

I’m always on the lookout for new adaptations of lesser-known fairy tales, and just over a month ago I was lucky enough to find one practically on my doorstep, at the National Gallery of Art. De Vilde Svaner (The Wild Swans) is one of Hans Christian Andersen’s most beautiful stories, and I had high expectations.

The more I read about this production, an hour-long Danish production with art design created by–no joke–Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, the more apprehensive I became. A film with découpage backdrops and actors greenscreened in? I just wasn’t convinced that they’d be able to pull it off.

And oh boy, was I wrong!

I’m still here! Despite my hectic work schedule, I’ve gotten quite a few art projects done over the past month. More on that later. But now, a sneak preview of my next project!

I finally got around to uploading part of the film I worked on last year for my independent study. This is just a 4-minute clip, but it will have to do for now.

I briefly linked to two animated versions of Bluebeard in my last post, but they’re both so interesting that I wanted to do them justice. The first, “Blue Beard’s Last Wife” (“La Dernière femme de barbe bleue”), blends the Bluebeard legend with ancient Greek mythology in an unexpected (and humorous) way. The second, “A Very Blue Beard” (“Ochen sinyaya boroda”) is a Russian musical short about a detective investigating Bluebeard’s crimes… with a surprising twist! So take a break, put your feet up, and watch a couple of really neat shorts!

One of my readings this week in Marina Warner’s From the Beast to the Blonde focuses on the symbolism and origins of the Bluebeard story. In a chapter titled “The Ogre’s Appetite”, Warner discusses many different iterations of a common theme: the serial murderer. What with Perrault’s fairy tales, medieval legends, devoured Catholic saints, and historical child killers, it’s pretty clear that society has been morbidly obsessed with these stories for centuries.

Brady Earnhart, brilliant musician and professor, has a new song. And I got to make the music video! In beautiful HD glory…

In addition to the more traditional storyboards, I thought I’d try a photographic approach for a couple of early scenes in my new film.

I watched “No Country for Old Men” last week as part of my independent study (more about that later). This post has been floating around in my head for some time, but this is the first opportunity I’ve had to write it out.
The most striking thing–for me, at least–about the Coen Brothers is their unwavering attention to shot composition. They do everything well, obviously, but I think their very strongest point is the way they excel at creating form, rhythm, style, and meaning through something as small as a single …