With all the challenges that we each face in our ever changing world, I think it is important to take a few moments to be thankful for what we do have, where we are now, as artists.

Cinema and filmmaking are undergoing the most profound change, since the advent of synchronous sound in the late 1920s. The existence of the computer has completely changed how we make movies, taking what was a technologically complex analog process, where large industries, filled with specialists were essential to create the art, to today, where you can literally “do it on your laptop.”

This sort of change and upheaval in a business can be frightening, but it also can be healthy if we give thanks to the opportunity presented and rise to the occasion.  Certainly in art, change and the new idea or the new way, gives birth to the evolution of the art.  Thus the new evolving nature of the business model of filmmaking, to that of the art of filmmaking, is again, once again uncharted territory.

This has occurred a number of times, with the advent of synchronous sound, color, arrival of small highly portable location sound recorders (the Nagra, for those who care), something called Crystal Sync, which freed filmmakers from the confines studio back lots, to the collapse of the studio system in the 1970s to the arrival of electronic editing.

All of those times were periods of great change, and the art form advanced.  And that is such a period as we are in today.   And so I think it is important to give thanks that we are filmmakers at this point in history and to challenge ourselves to take the tools, production and distribution models available to us – and push the envelope and see where they take us.

What stories will we tell?  What will they look like?  How will they sound?  And that’s what will be exciting to see.  And for that, and to participate in that, I give thanks.

Please have a happy and safe holiday.