Tyler Gibb - Writer, Director, Editor, Filmmaker

As a kid, I used to draw all the time. My main influences were the collected works of H. R. Giger and Garfield comic strips.

At some point in my early teenage years I recall becoming very aware - and embarrassed - that unlike my illustration idols, I did not possess any distinct visual style. It was disenfranchising. I felt like I didn’t have an identity.

I don’t think it was until I took some “fine” arts classes in college that I realized how wrong I was. I did have a distinct visual style - most of us do if we’re drawing from an honest place - I just couldn’t see my own work objectively. It took many crits and working along side other illustrators to realize this.

It was comforting. And better still, this new found comfort afforded me the frame of mind to worry less about perception and simply draw from that honest place. Style after all is merely the form without the function - the cosmetic without the content. It is however often the most important initial element in a project from a commercial point of view - in a best foot forward type of way. So still worth considering. Unless you’re a true blue “artist”… And think you can get by on your self-satisfying indignation alone?

Where was I?

Right, I think these early steps allowed me to skip this kind of identity neurosis when it eventually came to writing, animating and everything else. Don’t worry about making your work stand out, worry about making it good. If it doesn’t have the substance, all the style isn’t going to save it anyway.

Apt topic for this delayed weekly log post…

What can I say, I’ve been busy and to make matters worse, I’ve recently discovered the art of deep-frying at home… Which, let me tell you, is dangerous business. Did you know you can deep-fry just about anything and it will be delicious? It’s true. Dangerous, dangerous business.

So a couple weeks ago I was yammering on about letting things cool to gain some time to reflect on them. More recently I’ve bore witness to the dark, flip side of that kind of time and space away from a project - not in my own work fortunately - but it was a stark reminder none the less. The issue was that of momentum.

Sometimes time away - especially forced time away - slows things down. Especially in situations where personal relationships are concerned, and, don’t fool yourself, in creative industries it always gets personal… Because everybody’s so damn touchy wouchy feely weely and that makes pragmatists want to throw up.

Anyway, momentum, it’s important once a project has reached that critical mass. Once all the sober-second-thoughting has been dealt with. Once people have consolidated in their minds (especially on indie, no budget productions) that this project of which they are a part, has merit and that they must devote more and more of their time to it. You’ve got to keep things moving at that point. If things start to lag; if those that are volunteering are given too much time to stray, then the wheels start to wobble. And before you know it you’re in a ditch.

Giving you plenty of time  to contemplate how to keep that momentum going the next time.

Working on a brand new script this past week. And why not? You can never have enough unproduced scripts clogging up your harddrive, right?

Drawing up  the outline for this project I started thinking about rhythm. Becoming more deliberately aware of it. I guess it’s been alive in my thoughts these days as I wander between disciplines; songwriting, scriptwriting and illustrating. Finding the rhythm of what I’m working on seems to be an essential part of the preliminary process.

Vidya was working with her band the other day and I could hear them fleshing out the arrangement of a new song. They were quite literally trying to find its rhythm. The other week I was doing some illustrating and as I worked I was searching for balance in the drawings, pattern, a rhythm. And this past week, with this new outline, I jotted down the story - going from notes to setting up a structure - creating place-holder scenes even though I wasn’t quite sure what they were going to be yet. I knew they had to be there in order to maintain the story’s pace, its rhythm.  There’s a reason the term “beat” applies to scriptwriting. I like to try to get that rhythm right when the story is still in its early stages, before things get complicated with detail.

It’s a universal thing, rhythm. It’s that indefinable quality that keeps everything running smoothly. And we, the audience, know instinctively when it’s off, no matter what the medium.

Hey, Tyler, what have you been working on these days, anyway?

Oh, me? Well, lots actually, thanks for asking.

Been doing a lot of illustrating as a matter of fact, but more on that another time. What I’ve been doing in recent days is some video work, more on that another time as well. What I did want to reflect on here, today, was related to that video work though, which is why I brought it up.

A year ago I shot a demo of sorts for a proposed video series (moreonthatanothertime!). It didn’t turn out great. Producing the documentary form has never been what I gravitate towards and this project was in that genre. But a year later, here we are, and the project has gotten a second wind. And what’s been great is that everything is so clear this time around. Going in a little half-cocked the first time around allowed us to dabble, to try things, to see what worked and moreover, what didn’t. I know, this sounds obvious - I’ve basically just described the principle of trial and error - but I suppose I’m just excited. The project is really coming together this time around. And it was something I’d basically given up on.

Nothing’s ever really dead.

That’s something I’m starting realize about this domain. Sometimes it takes a while longer to get there but if nothing else, at least that gives ideas time to marinate.

Little entertainment TV background on this: At the end of September, Joseph Cerniglia, a one time reality TV participant and failed restaurateur committed suicide. The show on which Cerniglia appeared was the US - and terribly tacky - version of Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares. What gives this non-story its legs is that back in 2007, a former participant in Ramsay’s show Hell’s Kitchen also killed herself. Ooh! A trend! Let’s all make that today’s conversation!

I’ll preface the following with this: It’s a damn shame these unfortunates were so succumb with emotion that they took their own lives. Did their descent into this state have anything to do with Gordon Ramsay or reality TV? Who knows. Is this in anyway Gordon Ramsay or reality TV’s fault?

In the parlance of chef Ramsay:

Fuck off out of here.

This trend has however opened the debate. Do reality TV producers select mentally unstable people to be in their shows? Are you joking? How is this even a debate? Of course they do!

Fuck off out of here.

You are deluded if you think entering the entertainment business isn’t going to either, at some point, destabilize you mentally or exacerbate a current mental instability. Would you send someone off to work on an off shore oil rig with no training whatsoever? No. So what makes some burger flipper think that they can just waltz into the national spotlight without some expectation of peril?

Not the same thing?

Fuck off out of here, it is too. One may have an immediate physical danger but there is no doubt in my mind that prolonged exposure to the emotional business of entertainment can be just as life threatening unless you’re mentally equipped to handle it. On screen performers are trained professionals. They toil and sweat and bleed to get a shot at being in front of that camera. They don’t just fill out an online application and wait for the phone to ring.

I know it’s a wondrous thing to turn on your TV and all these vibrant sights and sounds come shooting out at you but there are a great many people with varying degrees of serious mental issues making that world look as glossy as it does. If you are not one of them, you’re going to get hurt. Please stay behind the yellow line.

Fuck off out of here.