What I’m exploring · The newsletter
How do artists discover what they’re trying to make—and how do they know when to stop?
This email series explores those questions through filmmaking. Some directors find the film on the page before a camera rolls. Others search through performances, locations, and accidents on set. Still others, like Terrence Malick, spend years discovering what their footage might become.
But a director rarely searches alone. Actors commit to performances that may disappear. Editors discover relationships nobody planned. Producers must decide how much more uncertainty they can afford. We’ll explore how an individual vision takes shape through other people’s work—and what happens when their intentions diverge.
We’ll also meet filmmakers who do nearly everything themselves, asking what working alone makes possible and what it costs. Along the way, we’ll consider the constraints that shape every creative practice: money, time, material, endurance, and the need to eventually call something finished.
Sign up if you’re interested in the creative process: how ideas become works, how collaboration changes them, and how to tell the difference between a project that needs more time and one you’re struggling to let go.