Tyler Gibb - Writer, Director, Editor, Filmmaker

Loyal subscriber to my blog! Long time no post!

Nearly two years ago I kind of hung up my blogging boots. I was doing far less “producing” of film and online content at the time. Far less interesting stuff to blog about. I shifted my interests. As those of you who know me may recollect, I tend to do that.

Turns out what I’ve shifted my attention to has become very interesting after all. Two things in fact. Screenwriting and pre-production previsualization / illustration. Eventually, I suspect, one of those two pursuits will take precedence over the other. But until then, I’m gonna wear these two hats.

And I’ve decided to once again yack about it like an idiot on social media! Unfortunately this old blog is somewhat bogged down by spam and my own limitations as a website admin. So I’m taking my new stab at online chatter to Tumblr: tylergibb.tumblr.com

Thus, this will be the final post on this old tylergibb.com blog. The archive of posts will live on here indefinitely. For posterity. For the tragically bored.

Thanks for reading and see you out there!

Tyler

Yeah. I know. What happened? I know. I took a little hiatus there didn’t I? Or, more precisely, I’m taking a little hiatus from the ol’ weblog.

It’s nothing personal– It’s not you! It’s me.

When I started posting, lo those many years ago, it was mostly to answer publicly all the questions about my work that I would get in private emails from other animators and filmmakers. Sort of an FAQ to cut down on the redundancy. That was mostly during the Minushi days and on through Refrain. And since my focus of late has become much more about writing, it’s a little less interesting to yack on about stuff that’s so behind the scenes.

So that’s where we’re at my fine, fellow internodes. Hiatus. From the blog. Until further notice.

When you think of me - and you will think of me - picture a duck calmly crossing a serene lake. It won’t look like much is happening on the surface. But underneath… Oh, underneath…

I used to draw constantly as a kid. During high school and beyond I would whittle away night after night illustrating imaginative nonsense. Barring a few exceptions, those drawings are now stacked in a basement somewhere. They may never be gazed upon again. I never give it much thought.

At the time, and to this day, I understood that finishing the drawing was merely an end point. Not even a goal. Just a place where I had to stop and pull out a new sheet of paper. The fact is, it was the act of drawing that was so appealing. The ultimate distraction. The quelling of the incessant popcorn-maker that is my brain.

These days I’ve been writing as much as I used to draw. The schedule has changed - I like to write in the breaking hours of the morning rather than those wee ones - but the ritual seems to be quite similar. The pieces of paper are starting to pile up again.

Maybe there is something to be said for quantity. Maybe devaluing our own laborious strokes, be they pencil or key, and our own beloved ideas helps to wash away the arrogance and fear that can sometimes come with toiling relentlessly on what we make up in our minds as precious. Maybe all the magic we need is in that enormous pile, however watered down it may be in its raw form. Just waiting to be picked up and parlayed into something else.

All I know is it is a good ritual. If nothing else. It’s good at the moment. Existentially. What business do I have cooping up all these awesome stories in my little head anyway?

I finish things that I start. Always have. It’s not at all a principle thing. I just don’t know any other way.

Sometimes, in the interest of keeping the focus on one thing, this has meant putting off things like chores, or other projects, or having a social life… Or a career…

Anyway the point is, I like to finish things.

At this time, for probably a whole whack of reasons that I’m not going get long-winded about right now, I  happen to have a lot of little yet time consuming projects going on simultaneously. And I want to finish some of them. I want conclusions. Not because I’m having trouble multi-focusing - I’m actually quite adept at that; it comes from a lifetime of driving with my knees while eating take out and changing the cassette in the tape deck*. No, I’m looking to smack a period on some things right now because there’s more I’d like to do.

*You heard me.

I don’t usually have so many lengthy projects on the go at once. It’s not even a boredom thing; I just want to see some of these things tied off.

So yeah. Apparently, I just blog my inane thoughts now with no redeeming lesson whatsoever.

There are two kinds of currency in the entertainment business. Credit and, well, currency. You can have all the talent and a bucket load more but sadly, it will mean nothing to the business end of the business without either of these.

This is because people with money for investing in something as precarious as the film business tend to not want to make such an investment without the (perception) of security. As such, it seems very rare that any effort is ever made to move forward with something as unbolstered as an unrepresented spec script. The most lowly respected yet fundamental of all entertainment commodities.

Lowly respected, that is, to people with no balls. And that’s because, it takes balls to pick up a simple story - with no celebrity attachments, no development financing, no endorsements of any kind, and see its potential. The balls to be unencumbered by the concerns of others. The confidence in one’s own achievements to trust one’s gut. The balls to be a champion for the script and trust that sometimes greatness is found where you least expect it. The self-assurance in saying yes to something rather than passing on it out of fear of damaging the status quo of one’s own career. The balls to be able to boldly seek out material rather than dwell in complacent wait of the recommendations of others or to follow the whims of the herd.

Balls aren’t a measure of how much risk someone’s willing to take, their a measure of how confident they are in themselves.

I love balls.