Studio
Notes
Formerly my blog, I now post longer pieces on Substack and here I will be documenting work in progress and regular updates.
Currently Working on
The Discipline of CURIOSITY
This week on my Substack: A creative way to approach challenges.
The AWE + Creativity Connection
Light up your brain. This week on Substack: Have we lost our sense of wonder? And why does this matter? A deep dive.
The Peace of Wild Things and POETRY for Beginners
This week on my Substack: How to begin with poetry… therapy for the restless mind
The Creative Process: Permission to PLAY
This week on Substack: Overcoming creative inertia
The Creative Practice: Flying Blind
One day in September I opened up the house and saw — nothing. Not the town in the valley to the east nor the ocean beyond the cliff. I knew what that meant…
Off-Scale Happiness and Moving Country
This week on Substack: Storytelling insights from master Vonnegut and facing a loss of identity as a foreigner.
RESILIENCE and the Life of Trees
This week on Substack: Nine months since super typhoon Odette hit Siargao, the beautiful island I once called home.
The Border is to be On The Way
When things get difficult, according to the Moomins
Sitzfleisch and Catching IDEAS
This week on Substack: Inspiration needs office hours.
Short Films and Long WALKS
This week on Substack: On sauntering in the name of creativity, an Eames video on the Polaroid SX-70, artists’ rituals and my grandad.
A Mind That is Stretched By an Idea
This week on Substack: A quote from the 1800s, revisiting an American photographer, thoughts on keeping a diary (for creatives).
Leave a place you loved any way except a slow way
I did not document leaving Siargao Island, my home of three and a half years, because I wanted to be present and enjoy every last moment to the fullest, just in case…
Mastering brand collaborations as a filmmaker
There is great satisfaction seeing a creative project and one’s own ideas come to fruition but a collaboration also always means that…
Designing a personal website for yourself
We live in a time where we can do anything with an app and it’s possible to create a whole brand and run a business without a website. That is pretty amazing.
Living in Tune With Nature (on a small remote island)
The force of the waves at high tide makes my house vibrate. It is a distance of about 20 metres but my house is more a hut or a cabin, built on stilts onto the ground that is basically part of the reef. During the stormy season it can be so loud that it wakes me up.
Where Ideas Come From and How to Turn Them Into Projects
The toaster was at least twenty, possibly thirty years old. I was visiting a very old, very lovely lady who sold me her barely used car of similar age. As I sat at her kitchen table drinking a cup of coffee and I looked at this piece of retro equipment, I thought:
Dumb Idea: Making a Film in an unknown place
It occurred to me for the first time when I returned from a mad road trip through Morocco. What the heck was I thinking (which will be the title of my memoir btw)?! Making a film with just my DP and a photographer/talent, in a country I had never been there before. After I returned home
Happiness is the Sum of Small Moments (or: go outside!)
A moment in nature is never wasted. Why is it worth going outside, even if it’s just briefly and even though the weather may be rubbish?
How to Stay Creative in Difficult Times
Free Mini Course /// For someone who makes a living of ideas and creativity, this is a big one. How do you stay sane and productive when you’re broke, sick, burnt out or experience a change or loss of any kind
The Story behind the Film: Layers of Our Lives
A look behind the scenes and learnings of making this series of mini films in numerous locations across greater Sydney and (much greater) Mumbai…