Josh Lowman's Blog

Creating a Writing Habit

Sun, 13 Nov 2011 13:30:00 -0800

My nephew left town a couple days ago, I got my friend’s wedding (and associated responsibilities) under my belt and I still have some time before my first child is born (and all bets are off). It’s time to start a writing habit. Not writing for advertising, I have that habit down. Writing for film.

My goal: I decided that even more than “Write a Feature I Can Shoot”, what I really want to do is to “Create a Writing Habit”. I want this habit to be something that lasts the rest of my life, or thereabouts. This is the same way I think about my exercise habit. Over the last three years I created this exercise habit, and now I have it. I may take a month or two off here and there, but for the most part, I’m an exerciser now, and I wasn’t really before.

That’s what I want with writing, too. I’m hoping that getting a feature written that I want to shoot will follow from having a habit. We will see.

Monday is when it starts, just writing for an hour a day for this week. The thought is to start slow and build slowly. I want this to stick and I also want to give it time to have it’s own ups and downs. Here are the things that I think I need to make it work:

- A reliable way of shutting down all Internet connections especially my damn iPhone

- Other people to talk with about my writing, to get help from

- A structure, a schedule

- Room to fail, have false starts, etc.

The first thing I want to write is something in the vain of The Ice Storm. I know some things about messed up families.

We just finished this video for Benoit Pioulard. A couple days...

Fri, 17 Dec 2010 10:50:00 -0800

We just finished this video for Benoit Pioulard. A couple days ago it premiered on Pitchfork which is our favorite place to launch a video. We don’t get paid much for music videos (or at all) so it’s nice to get a little exposure and recognition.

The important thing is just making more films and learning from each experience. When we can help artists move their music careers forward, that’s fulfilling too.

The illustration and animation was done by Rinee Shah and Sean Gillane. And we got a very nice treatment to work off of from Michael Grant. The concept and story is adapted from Chris Marker’s classic short film, La jetee.

Hope you like.

Just under the wire. (Taken with instagram)

Thu, 09 Dec 2010 15:40:13 -0800

Just under the wire. (Taken with instagram)

Seeking Film Intern, Starting January

Mon, 06 Dec 2010 16:33:00 -0800

I’m looking for a Film Intern at my San Francisco office, starting early January, 2011.

This is an unpaid position where you will directly assist me. Candidates should have strong writing and film editing skills—including experience with Final Cut Pro—and possess a committed work ethic and basic organizational skills. Duties include film editing, prepping equipment for shoots, securing rentals, acting as PA on shoots, and clerical tasks.

You can expect to meet and work with others in the film community, learn about the craft of filmmaking from concept to post-production, and gain an understanding of the nuts and bolts of running a small office dedicated to both art and advertising.

This internship requires at minimum 3 work days per week, from Monday to Friday.

About Me

I’m a writer and director. I try to stake out fresh territory for brands like Nike, Starbucks, and Adidas in my commercial work. At the same time, I’m a working artist, creating short films and music videos that have been featured on MTV, Pitchfork and at film festivals.

My studio is in the Mission district of San Francisco. Learn more at: http://joshlowman.com/

If you’re interested in the internship, please send your resume and (if applicable) a link to your demo reel (no attachments please) to josh@joshlowman.com. The subject header should read “Film Internship”. Submission deadline is Monday, December 21.

Records (Taken with instagram)

Sat, 27 Nov 2010 17:12:15 -0800

Records (Taken with instagram)

Water park in China designed to offer the feeling of...

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 21:23:09 -0700

Water park in China designed to offer the feeling of “Avatar”. Beautiful.

Crazy good. Andy Kennedy‘s short film, Accumulonimbus. From...

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 16:55:35 -0700

Crazy good. Andy Kennedy‘s short film, Accumulonimbus.

From Motionographer.

Autofuss has the coolest robots.

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 14:59:00 -0700

Autofuss has the coolest robots.

Video

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 16:25:18 -0700

Creative reel. The combined hits of Josh Lowman and Guy Seese.

Wed, 04 Aug 2010 23:15:00 -0700

Creative reel. The combined hits of Josh Lowman and Guy Seese.

Photo

Wed, 04 Aug 2010 21:34:23 -0700

Lately // Memoryhouse Directed by Church & Steak

Wed, 04 Aug 2010 10:38:00 -0700

Lately // Memoryhouse

Directed by Church & Steak

A Woolgathering Exodus // Benoit Pioulard Directed by Church...

Wed, 04 Aug 2010 10:33:52 -0700

A Woolgathering Exodus // Benoit Pioulard

Directed by Church & Steak

Just finished this music video for Oakland’s...

Mon, 03 May 2010 12:01:00 -0700

Just finished this music video for Oakland’s Man/Miracle.
Shot by Josh Lowman and Rinee Shah.
Edited by Lee Gardner.

SF Premiere of "We Are Croissan'wich"

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 23:27:11 -0700

Rickshaw Stop. Happy Hour. Friday June 19.

Church & Steak (which is me and Rinee Shah) presents the SF premier of my short film “We Are Croissan’wich”. PLUS, the premier of the Church & Steak music video “A Woolgathering Exodus”. PLUS two other short, funny films that go great with beer.

It’s all topped off by a potentially mind-blowing performance by DATE NITE.

Come out and let’s have fun.

http://www.wearecroissanwich.com/
http://www.wearedatenite.com/
http://www.vimeo.com/churchandsteak/

"We Are Croissan'wich" at the East Lansing Film Festival

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 21:33:00 -0700

So. Moeka and I are flying back from our second festival. It was such a satisfying experience. The festival director, Susan Woods, and the programming director, Nayana Sen, treated us like royalty. The audiences were engaged and enthusiastic. And we met some insanely talented filmmakers and got to compare notes with them.

The whole thing was a head trip for me personally because I’ve been to so many festivals thinking, I wish I could make a film. Which quickly devolves to: what is wrong with me that I can’t make a film? At some point a couple years ago, a new thought started taking hold: maybe nothing at all was wrong with me. And as that thought increasingly came up, a film kind of naturally came about.

So now to be in East Lansing, my hometown, where my work is seen and even celebrated—it’s just such a reversal of events. I don’t want to seem like an ego-maniac, but of course it feels great to be recognized. It was this moment of, “I did it.”

That quickly brings up another thought: You better think of your next film now and it better be good. But I’m going to try and put that aside for a day or two and just enjoy this.

"Changeling" and "Burn After Reading"

Sun, 01 Mar 2009 16:31:00 -0800

Here are two movies I recently watched by directors I became obsessed with in college. Very different approaches to storytelling. The Coen Brothers are putting on a post-modern vaudeville show with an odd, almost architectural plot, while Clint focusses on reducing a story to it’s essence.

While watching Burn After Reading I was thinking what amazing writers these guys are, how hard it would be to write something like that. Impossible. They always get into scenes in an interesting way. The way the characters’ motivations are revealed, the plot twists—it’s all so specific and fresh. It’s easy to watch and admire what they do.

But too often it’s not that moving and in the end, pretty meaningless. Burn After Reading was a solid middle film of theirs. Way better than something like Oh, Brother Where Art Thou? or Intolerable Cruelty, but nowhere near Lebowski or Miller’s Crossing. Weird how uneven these guys are as filmmakers.

Changeling was kind of the opposite. Each line of dialog, shot, plot twist feels necessary to move a meaningful story forward. It’s not a movie where you gain a lot of insight into your own life because it’s more of a straight-up good versus bad story, but it’s still very moving. There were a couple times where one of the characters would stand up for this woman in trouble, out of a sense of justice. I realized I wish I had more help like that in my life. Maybe that’s the true purpose of movies, to put us in contact with elusive, sometimes powerful parts of ourselves. In doing so maybe they can help us change for the better. I’d love to have lunch with Clint Eastwood and talk to him about all of this.

www.crailtap.com/

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 15:51:00 -0800

www.crailtap.com/

I love this illustrator’s work. His name is James Joyce.

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 00:05:09 -0800

I love this illustrator’s work. His name is James Joyce.

Blu-ray Report

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 15:35:00 -0800

Despite the awesome graphic above, this post is not a robust product comparison of DVD Studio Pro and Adobe Encore. But I did have reason to sway from DVD Studio Pro recently because I wanted to be able to burn Blu-ray discs on my Mac. DVD Studio Pro won’t do it, Encore does. A few people wanted to know what my experience was, so here it is.

The reason for Blu-ray was simple. I was screening this short at a festival and to screen it in full-on 1080 HD, I could either supply them with an HDCAM master or Blu-ray. Getting an HDCAM master made is expensive and I thought I might want to make more Blu-ray discs in the future so I jumped in and bought a LaCie Blu-ray Recordable drive. The discs themselves are relatively cheap at about $10. I can also burn discs in 5.1 surround sound, which is neat.

To get there I had to do a couple easy things. One—I up-rezed the footage from 720 pixels (which we shot in) to 1080. Two—I brought it into Encore, made a menu with a play button and burned a disc. It was amazing how simple it was. I paid a lot of money for FCP Studio and it’s frustrating Apple hasn’t gotten around to supporting Blu-ray yet. Anyway, no matter. Encore was so easy to use I may just switch altogether. Plus, the integration with Photoshop is pretty slick. I didn’t really get into the software enough to put it through its paces but it looks great so far.

The print looked great in a huge theater! We shot on the HVX-200 in 720/24p with an adapter and cinema lenses, blew it up to 1080 for the master and when you watch it in a huge theater, it looks like film. Kind of amazing really.

So there you go. I hope that helps the other film/video people out there that have been helping me with advice and moral support.