Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: I often think about this when I think about the Flume artwork that I did for Skin, where I was just like, one day I was walking around our garden and I was like, this is ridiculous that a flower is as delicate and complex and beautiful as it is, and it costs nothing. If you asked a person to make a flower as a sculpture and have all the same qualities that it has in terms of light, translucency, and all the rest of it, it would take decades and it would still not be right, and it would cost just an absolute fortune to achieve. And here's this thing that sort of manifests itself out of nature and out of some relatively simple laws.
[00:00:45] Speaker B: I'm Luke Steinfeld.
[00:00:46] Speaker C: And I'm Wyatt Sarkisian.
[00:00:47] Speaker B: We made the 5050 podcast to support you on your filmmaking journey.
[00:00:51] Speaker C: 50% business, 50% creative.
[00:00:53] Speaker B: Every Tuesday, a new how to.
[00:00:55] Speaker C: This week we take a trip down under to visit Jonathan Zawada, an award winning designer and director who gives us an auditory glimpse into his evocative visuals. Flume fans, this one's for you. Enjoy.
[00:01:17] Speaker B: We did some research. We definitely did.
[00:01:19] Speaker C: We researched for this one, ladies and gentlemen.
[00:01:21] Speaker B: Yeah, I would say out of, out of anyone, this has been the most researched, which was honestly really fun because there's so much to find. And like, again, like, thank you so much for wanting to come on here.
[00:01:33] Speaker A: Absolute pleasure. Well, I'm glad you got the timing right because I think that somebody just made a Wikipedia page for me, so hopefully that helps.
[00:01:39] Speaker C: Oh, there we go.
[00:01:40] Speaker A: My website is not very helpful.
[00:01:46] Speaker B: Well, yeah, I mean, just to kind of lay the groundwork here, I feel like we can go in so many different paths, kind of like your career in a way thus far.
But what I will say, just being candid, Wyatt and I are much more knowledgeable about the film side of things. So kind of digging into directing and of course, like, you're with tall tales and stuff like that. And like, I mean, I'm a big Flume guy and would love to talk about the difference music video.
[00:02:16] Speaker A: Oh, great.
[00:02:17] Speaker B: And the thought process behind that. And can it kind of, I think again, just broad overview of like leaning into your work and maybe there's. There's so much here, but I, I.
What I'm getting at is Wyatt and I are not as knowledgeable in the fine art space, which I know you a ton of. But, but I don't, I don't know.
[00:02:41] Speaker A: About any of these spaces. I know nothing about directing and I know nothing about.
[00:02:46] Speaker C: You're a perfect guest for this podcast. Then yeah, nobody knows anything. So.
[00:02:50] Speaker B: Yeah, we don't know.
But you've done a few things.
But then maybe. Maybe we start at the beginning, you know, And I know you're coming off of Tall Tales, and I know that was a journey of more than a few years with that. Got the real filmmaking journey there. Yeah, I guess let's talk about that and then kind of bring it back to the beginning.
[00:03:12] Speaker A: Sure, yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, the Tall Tales project sort of has terms of my. I've had this long, very long relationship with Mark Pritchard, who was, you know, the driving force musically behind that project.
And he and I have worked together for, I don't know, 10, 15 years now, and over the course of that, sort of just gotten more and more aligned. Now we're just primarily very good friends.
So when that started, I mean, our relationship is one that. I talk to him a couple times every week. So as that was bubbling up, he was telling me, and we just naturally started having ideas for it. And I didn't. I don't think I expected it was going to take four years to complete, but I knew it wasn't going to be done in three months or anything like that. So, yeah, that was a mammoth, mammoth undertaking. And I think probably at least. I mean, it's also the most recent thing that I've completed, but it really has put a lot of things that I've sort of struggled with over the course of my long and varied career into a better shape for me. And it's like, probably one of the only things that I found myself sort of looking back at and thinking I really did learn some lessons from that and some things that I have to kind of remind myself about as I'm moving forward.
[00:04:34] Speaker C: That's great. Well, what. What are some of the key takeaways?
Was it things about timeline? Was it things about working with other people or what are those.
[00:04:43] Speaker A: It was things about working with other people. Yeah. I mean, I think. So we started that project and had.
I don't think, like. I don't. I definitely don't think of myself as a director. And I didn't think of. I think when we started, for probably two to three years, a lot of the ideas for that project were just sort of amorphous concepts that could have manifest as either installation pieces in a museum or. Or an art gallery or just out of the world as much as they could have become video works. And then ultimately sort of. They sort of amalgamated into this film.
But that the sort of film component didn't really come into things until maybe the last quarter of working on it. Up until that it could have been anything. And I think the main.
We sort of had probably been working on it for a year and a half, two years maybe, and then had some of these ideas that were quite ambitious and, and sort of more filmic, I guess. And there was some of. Some of the very specific concepts really were more in the territory of like a traditional music video or a art film piece. And we sort of started down that process and started talking to production companies and, you know, everybody sees Tom's name on the bill and gets very excited and, you know, myself included and so many people are such huge Thom York fans that there was a lot of enthusiasm. But there's also, I think with that, Mark and I quickly discovered there was like we had no budget really for the whole project at all. We're like, oh, we realized really quickly we could blow all of this and we'll get three minute music video which will feel like a music video. And that's not really what we're trying to do. And it's not what I felt like the music needed and it's not what Mark wanted really for the project. So I think, yeah, after about a year and a half, two years, we sort of put the brakes on a bunch of stuff and Mark, Tom and I sort of had a chat and I guess, and this has been my number one takeaway from the project was we just. I sort of. I don't know, I had this epiphany where I was like, hang on, we've got time. I can make all this stuff. I want to make all this stuff. I love making things and I love learning about things. I hate managing other people and I hate giving feedback. So rather than farming this workout, I. Why don't we just go about this the way Mark has gone about making the music, which is. I'll just sit here and I'll make piece after piece after piece. And. Yeah, you know how.
[00:07:16] Speaker B: Of course you've. You've shown your work in physical spaces, like the audience before, whether it's in galleries, installations, like with a screening like this. Like, what was, what was that experience like for you?
[00:07:27] Speaker A: Yeah, that. I mean, I was absolutely terrified. I was. I honestly, right up until the day before we had the screening that I went to, which was at a sort of like a film museum thing in Melbourne, and Mark and I went down there and right up until the day before that screening, it really never occurred to me that anybody would watch this thing at all. I was Just making it for Mark and to a slightly lesser extent, for Tom.
And so, you know, I was just making this material. Mark would feed back on it, say what? We'd chat about things we liked or didn't like, and things would change over the course of the whole thing. And it really wasn't until I. And I had sort of thought, oh, this is great. Like, I've made this thing that I love and I feel great about it. And we were asked to come down to go to the screening and do a Q and A. And I was like, I'm quite happy to do the Q and A. For some reason, it just didn't occur to me that I'd have to sit there in a room in front of.
[00:08:22] Speaker C: People under the lights where they can see you and maybe you can see them.
[00:08:27] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. And I just, like, compressed into a tiny.
[00:08:33] Speaker C: Yeah. How. How has it been. This is just a general question, but what. How has it been? Talking about your work and have you gotten better at it, at sitting in front of people and talking about it, or are you more comfortable with it?
[00:08:46] Speaker A: I don't think I've gotten any better, but I'm pretty comfortable about it. I don't know why, but I started.
Some of the first public speaking things I did about my design work were when I was, like, 22. I remember I had to stand up in front of something like two and a half thousand people at a, like, design conference.
[00:09:03] Speaker C: Oh, my God.
[00:09:04] Speaker A: So since then, I've been. It's been smaller audiences ever since. But, yeah, I'm kind of. I'm quite happy to do it. I sort of have to be stopped, to be honest.
[00:09:15] Speaker B: That's definitely. That's one way to start at 22.
[00:09:18] Speaker A: Man.
[00:09:19] Speaker C: Oh, my God. Yeah.
[00:09:21] Speaker A: Yeah. It was Trial by Fire that side with.
[00:09:25] Speaker B: With Tall Tales. I wasn't able to watch the feature or find it, but I. I watched the trailer and I saw a ton of the individual music videos for the album.
It's. I mean, it's awesome. Like, it's so out there and, like, so incredibly unique and so much of it, too, by the way. I was trying to figure out if, like, whoa, I've been seeing Jonathan's stuff for years. Or like, you just have such a unique. I don't. Such such a unique style that, like, people have since, like, kind of riffed off of that and, like, made their own stuff based off of you. So it was like, seeing that, I was like, well, like, it almost felt familiar.
[00:10:05] Speaker C: It felt. It does feel very familiar. I can. I can Second that as well.
[00:10:09] Speaker A: Good. I mean, I think, honestly, I feel like a bit of that is like baked into Mark's music is a strange.
Like, he and I talk a lot. A lot about this. It's like there's a nostalgia there that's not nostalgia. And it's a very strange quality. I've never been able to figure out he and I have never been able to figure out a good word for it because it's not. Yeah. Familiar is probably as close as to it as you can get. But it's also. I mean, I'm talking about the music now, but it's. Yeah, it's this and hopefully some of the visual material. But a familiarity whilst it not being too.
Too familiar, I guess.
[00:10:49] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:10:50] Speaker C: A question that I have, which I think could lead us back.
Back in time a little bit to the start of everything, is when. When did you first realize that you had a knack for, you know, making visual components to music?
Was it just with friends who were making music? Were you in music scenes when you were younger? Like, what? Because in film, you know, it's. It's just voice and music with visuals. Like, that's just what it is. Right. So what. Since it's like the. The dialogue is given to you, but you're making just the, you know, the visual component to it in a way.
[00:11:29] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Which is a huge thing. And there's a project that I've been working on at the moment with a.
Some other musicians that I've worked with for a long time, and we're trying to change that. And actually Flume and I attempted to do this over the years as well. And it's always a struggle in terms of a lot of this. Yeah. As you say, you're sort of responding to the music. The music generally comes first and then the visuals are a response to that.
In terms of how. When I found that I sort of was good at it. I don't know if I ever figured out that I was particularly good at it, but I sort of gravitated it towards it for as long as I can remember. I mean, I used to like everybody. That was the bit I used to love was making, you know, cassette tape covers, when I had cassette tapes or mini disc covers for the mini discs that I'd record or like. I remember making very elaborate VHS covers for my. When I'd record a Bjork documentary off the TV and onto.
And then I would spend days making this elaborate version of what my cover for that documentary would be and stick it in the sleeve and put it on my shelf.
So I think like music has just been a thing that I've always loved and.
And visually responding to it I guess is something that I've always enjoyed as well. But I don't think I realized I was. Had any. It's only been in maybe in the last five or ten years that I felt like this is something that I don't know, comes naturally to me and is maybe where I suppose over the course of my career, to be honest, I've kind of struggled to figure out what it is that I actually am good at doing and should be doing.
And this is one area where I think I've sort of slowly but surely gotten into this place where I feel like kind of this is something that I'm. There's a quality there. And I think that the confidence to feel like that has mostly just come out of talking to musicians and the relationships, the long sort of relationships I have with these musicians who seem to respond so positively to the way I respond to what they've made.
[00:13:31] Speaker C: Interesting. So it's more about you being able to work closely with artists and getting the sort of positive reception from artists even, rather than the public's response or the audience response.
[00:13:43] Speaker A: Absolutely. I mean this has been my.
So over the course of my career I've done like straight graphic design work for a long time and worked for advertising and fashion and all these other things as well. And. And then I've done a lot of art, fine art stuff in galleries as well. And I've sort of. The way it's broken down in my head over the years is the design work is. You're very consciously thinking about an audience and the audience is huge and very diverse and an art practice, ideally not thinking about any audience. You're just entirely self serving and that's sort of that outlet. Whereas I've sort of. My approach to music art is the audience is one or two people. However many people are in the band basically or the music outfit. And I don't think beyond those. If they, if they feel like what I've done represents what they were feeling when they made the music, then that's all that matters.
[00:14:36] Speaker B: I know you took a little hiatus from the industry to like pursue your own art after doing years of websites like you said, the COVID art and like visuals and really just like in the industry.
I would love to get into that like that jump of kind of what that felt like of. Of going personal, like the individual route after. Again like you just said, like you're Always kind of like, okay, what do they want? And kind of being able to cater to that and also maybe hide behind that of like, this is me. But like, I'm still a little removed here.
I would love to, yeah, just kind of get your, your thoughts on that transition.
[00:15:23] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I, I'm, you know, I don't want to bore you with too long of a story about that, but like, I, I, for maybe 10 years I had this bifurcated career that was really by day doing graphic design and design work. And that was, and my approach to that was very, very rigorously design oriented. So my strategy there was I always, every single project, do something totally different. I sort of had this information theory basis to like, if I was, if I was creating a piece of visual communication and it had any way, and in any way it was communicating some aspect of my visual style, then the bandwidth of that message was not wholly being dedicated to the client. And so I was doing the wrong thing. So every project I was able to have a completely new aesthetic and I can't. The aim here is don't have my own style. And then periodically I'd have these exhibitions as well, which were at that point all pencil drawings.
And similarly I was like, I'm never letting that material come into my commercial work. So I'll just. Those exhibitions and the artwork will just be my art practice.
[00:16:33] Speaker B: So you were, you were doing exhibitions though, at the time?
[00:16:35] Speaker A: Yeah. You were?
Yeah, yeah.
[00:16:38] Speaker C: It was completely separate, right? It was, as you said, bifurcated.
[00:16:41] Speaker A: Yeah, totally, yeah. And, you know, had the benefit of being like, I feel like in times, sort of later in my career where I've just focused on art in the reality of commerce and, and just living your life and having to pay bills starts creeping in. So the motivation, creation of work changes a little bit.
Whereas at that point it was like I had no expectation of selling and I was also very young and nobody wanted to buy it, but like had no expectation of selling any of that stuff. So it was very pure and it was easy to keep it pure. And the challenge was to stop, I guess, clients who then subsequently started asking for that kind of work as commercial output.
So then by the time, you know, jump forward a few years, a bunch of years, and I got asked to have an exhibition, this great gallery in la, and I'd had this idea for these paintings that I'd wanted to do for a long time.
And so then I just sort of set about basically building a little nest, like financial nest for myself, doing a bunch of work and then I just completely shut the doors on the commercial work, dedicated myself 24 hours a day to producing that work for that show with no expectation that anything would come after that. And then that exhibition went well and the gallery was really keen for me to come over, so we packed up our house, moved to LA and. And then wholly dedicated myself to just artwork for a number of years, which was sort of also coincided with kind of getting the shits a little bit with how.
How. I don't know, various industries that I was working in, how they were run, and, like, environmental concerns that I had to do with. I guess at the time, most of my clients were either fashion or music. And I didn't really. The environmental part of fashion, really, I objected to. And the way record companies treated musicians, I also objected to. So this is great.
[00:18:39] Speaker C: I can like it all. It all.
[00:18:41] Speaker A: It'll.
[00:18:41] Speaker C: It seems like it all came together into that decision.
[00:18:44] Speaker A: Right.
[00:18:44] Speaker C: You had issues with all of the industries you were working with to some extent, and you were needing that sense of self, right?
[00:18:52] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. And that there were these ideas. I mean, from a creative standpoint, there were these ideas that I had that I couldn't realize within the framework of a commercial project or anything like that, which I wanted to get out.
[00:19:07] Speaker B: Did you have support behind you when you kind of leaped into that.
That individual realm when you buried yourself for 24 hours a day kind of preparing for that calorie? Or was it just like, oh, my God, I. There's so much pressure on me. I have to do this perfectly. Like, what's going to happen?
[00:19:21] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, it was. No, there was no support. I mean, the gallery, with the gallery. The guy that ran the gallery was.
[00:19:27] Speaker C: Lovely, but he was happy.
[00:19:29] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, but I was like, I had never done. I had never painted in oils before, bar a couple of tiny times. So I'd done some acrylic painting and stuff like that when I was younger, and. And then I was also setting myself this unbelievably high bar in terms of the flatness that I wanted in the painting and all these sorts of things. So I was sure I was an absolute nervous wreck for the entire time, just feeling like it was all shit and I was useless and. Yeah, no, I'm sure my wife would probably say I was horrible to be around. She was supportive. Yeah.
[00:20:07] Speaker B: Did that, like, at that. At that opening, did it really click for you? Was it like a. Oh, wow. Like, this is it, like this is the path for me going forward, or was it like, okay, like this was good. But, like, I also just spent all of this insane amount of time, like, in a closet painting and like, this is it.
[00:20:29] Speaker C: And I miss. And I miss. And I miss T Mobile and AT&T. You know.
[00:20:37] Speaker A: I mean, I love, like, this is my arrangement now. I don't leave my house for days and days on end. I'm quite happy to be by myself most of the time. So I certainly didn't miss that part of things. I think I was under no illusion that it would last or that I would be able to keep doing that. I think it was just such a crazy whirlwind. I mean, that gallery was huge. It was much bigger than any gallery I'd ever shown him before.
Like, on the opening, Elton John bought one of my paintings and, like, had a chat with him about that. So it was just this crazy fast sort of whirlwind of change, I guess that happened like my entire life sort of got turned upside down and we were just living in a different place and doing completely different things. I certainly wasn't missing, at least at that point. I wasn't missing any of the aspects of my commercial and design projects. I think as time went on, I did sort of miss. Begun to miss the creative collaborations. And I've sort of. I guess this I've sort of realized over the years. And this probably goes back to what we're talking about with the music side of things. I'm not a very good collaborator when it comes to what I can do and what I know. So anything sort of vaguely visual. I'm not a great person to collaborate with, I'm sure, or I find it hard to figure out how to do that. But I do really value creative collaboration. I think that's what I love about working with musicians, is that it's still there, but you're not stepping on each other's toes in any way. You sort of.
You're able to give comments and talk about what the other person's doing, but you've definitely got your lane. You've each got.
Which was great.
[00:22:17] Speaker B: How. How does that conversation differentiate between Flume and. In quotes, T Mobile? Like a brand, you know, like.
[00:22:25] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I think for some musicians. And I. I tended to not work with these musicians, those musicians for long or, you know, on a repeating basis.
You know, Flume is one of those people that. He has probably the same attitude as me. He's like, I just. Whatever it should be that makes him feel good, he doesn't. I don't think he thinks about his audience either. You know, in a good. In a positive way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So working with him is exactly the same. I mean, that's a unique, really unique scenario where he's a large enough act that the machine around him is very aware of the audience. And there are realities, and I'm sure he gets told about those realities all of the time. But in terms of our relationship, it's. It's identical to the kind of relationship I'd have with somebody that was just, you know, making music in their bedroom and putting some stuff out, which I equally love doing. Like, it's just purely on a level of like, does this feel good? Does. Yeah. That feels like sort of what I was trying to get at with this or.
Yeah, I'm not sure if that totally answers.
[00:23:32] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And then I'm curious about the inverse, which is when you are talking with a brand or. And you're doing graphics for them or specifically working in advertising, what do those conversations actually look like?
[00:23:45] Speaker A: Yeah, I think. I mean, I bristled at that a lot. And it's taken me a long time to find the areas of that kind of commercial work that I'm comfortable in now. And I think that's become sort of a mixture of either, you know, I've sort of stepped away from my earlier, earlier ideology of like, not wanting to have a signature style. And I'm quite happy to, you know, if somebody comes to me and says, we really love all these digital flowers, like, do you want to do some digital flowers for such and such a thing? And it seems interesting enough, you know, I'm happy to dive in and have a go at.
So there's sort of that version of it which is like, I guess over the course of my career as a designer, I started doing, you know, when I started doing design work, it was very much like a, here's a problem, give us a solution. I feel like what design is now, what commercial art is now is like, it's much more commodified. And the companies or the ad agencies or whatever, they're just picking things off a shelf. Right. Like, they've already decided we want X. And then they go to whatever and they find who are the six people that fill in this gap and they ask them all, do you want to do this thing?
[00:24:52] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:24:53] Speaker A: So there's sort of those which are. Which are fine and they're very transactional relationships. And then I still do the occasional project, maybe one or two a year that is much more design oriented. And I'm dealing with, like, art directors. Who are very intelligent and really know their craft and their world. And I've sort of come to realize. I think I. I really didn't like that for a long time, but now I've sort of come to see those as opportunities for me to just hone my craft in a framework that quite often that work comes out, and I'm either legally not allowed to say that I worked on it, or, you know, I just choose not to put it out and put my name to it or say that I've worked on it. But it's a wonderful chance for me to sort of. Yeah. Drill into, like, okay. Lighting or, like, light refraction.
[00:25:46] Speaker C: Yeah. It challenges you a little bit.
[00:25:49] Speaker A: Totally. Yeah. And when you're working on something like a music project where there's no budget, you don't really. No one's going to pay you. There's not nearly enough money for you to spend two weeks thinking about how light refracts for second. Little bit. But, yeah, you get this opportunity in that.
[00:26:05] Speaker B: What. What is it about fractal geometry, man, that. That you love so much?
[00:26:11] Speaker A: I don't know. I. I mean, it's like. I mean, it's. It's. You sound like such a hippie, like, tripper whenever you talk about it, but it really is just this.
I. From way back, I think, like, nature always was such a hugely inspiring thing to me. And, like, I often think about this when I think about the flume artwork that I did for Skin, where I was just like, one day I was walking around our garden, and I was like, this is ridiculous that a flower is as delicate and complex and beautiful as it is, and it costs nothing. If you asked a person to make a flower as a sculpture and have all the same qualities that it has in terms of light, translucency and all the rest of it, it would take decades and it would still not be right, and it would cost just an absolute fortune to achieve. And here's this thing that sort of manifests itself out of nature and out of some relatively simple laws.
And I think that's the same for fractals. To me, it's like, this is crazy that through these relatively simple, basic elements, you can get these things that are so deep and complex and complicated, but also because of. Because of their fractal, nature always sort of have this sense of balance to them. There's a weird sort of. It's not just chaos there. There's a balance going on. So, yeah, I think. I. I don't know that. I mean, they're Never endingly interesting things like that for me.
[00:27:36] Speaker C: Absolutely. I, my, my dad is actually a geometry teacher. So I, I grew up having the Pythagorean theorem memorized at the age of, you know, whatever three.
And he oftentimes talks about like Fibonacci sequences and the sequences of geometry that occur in, in nature. Right, yeah. So I have. Have you been inspired by like actual geometry and actual math in your artistic pursuits?
[00:28:03] Speaker A: Yeah, totally. I mean, I'm not good at it. I like, I've tried to do sort of the most advanced maths that I could ever do at any education.
[00:28:13] Speaker C: I tried to do math in general.
[00:28:14] Speaker B: In the same time, so.
But I like flowers, so.
[00:28:19] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, I get, I get to a point and I'm like, all right, I'm off now I'm getting off this because that's yes me, but I have to, I mean, I think through, through. There's an element of it in the, in my process and my creative workflow in terms of like the way I build shaders and things. There's some aspect of maths involved in that which I have to know a little bit about, but it's by no means terribly advanced. But I love reading like pop.
Pop science books on that kind of stuff. I mean like the last Flume campaign was so massively influenced by a book called Scale, which is about the scaling relationships between all life on Earth and the direct scaling relationship between like, say, how you can predict.
All mammals adhere to some sort of structure in terms of their size, their heart rate, their lifespan, and they're all relative to one another. And it's because of like an aspect to do with fluid dynamics and pressure and the, and how much pumped around the vascular system, which that, I mean, all that sort of stuff. Yeah, I find super inspiring. I like, I've tried so hard with like physics and things like that too, to get into it, but I like, can't, I can't. I do my best. I read through.
[00:29:34] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, it's, I mean, it's absolutely mind blowing the way that you guys think about that sort of thing. And you can be inspired by things as an artist that are so not, not seeming like. It's not like you're like seeing a play and you're like, oh, like I'm inspired to make music. It's like you're seeing fluid dynamics and inspired. You know what I mean? Like, it's, it's so not what you would expect, right?
[00:29:58] Speaker A: Oh, that's good. Yeah. I mean, I'm, I, I Find the opposite. I find, like, so we now live out in the countryside, and it's been so good for me because I find, like, living in a city, looking at other art I don't find inspiring. I just. I'd. Like. There's some bad part of my psychology that is, like. I find it like somebody's challenging me to do that thing better or why haven't I done that? Like.
[00:30:22] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, yeah.
[00:30:23] Speaker A: I just.
[00:30:24] Speaker C: That's a huge thing. It's. It's.
[00:30:26] Speaker A: You are.
[00:30:27] Speaker C: You're not alone in that. Definitely. It's. It's. It's absolutely. I.
It's something that, personally, I feel like as an artist, I've. I've tried to get over and, you know, going.
Going to see. I go and see a lot of theater and going to see a play and not being like, oh, like, that guy's better than I could ever be as an actor or. Or that this writing is so much better, or I could write better or just thinking about all these things.
[00:30:51] Speaker A: Compare.
[00:30:52] Speaker C: Like, taking it out of yourself is a very hard thing to do.
[00:30:56] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. It's. Oh, I mean, it's just so difficult. Like, you just. I just would find. I would. Yeah. You said all those things that you just said. You compare yourself. And then I. Whatever. Whatever sort of unique framework my mind was in, or, you know, never totally unique, but semi unique, if I was working on something suddenly that gets derailed by me feeling like, oh, no, that's probably the wrong thing. Like, seems like I should be working on, like, horror. Like, whatever.
[00:31:22] Speaker C: Yeah. Being like, how can I do that?
[00:31:24] Speaker A: Like, and. And a little bit of that, I guess, is good, but it's. Yeah. I mean, it's not.
It's also like, I think I. I've just found over the years, it's like a. A well that runs dry. You know, earlier in my career, I think I was very inspired by art and other artists, but, you know, you kind of exhaust that. Whereas nature, maths, science, it just, you know, I can't ever get to the bottom of it.
[00:31:50] Speaker C: It's ever. It's ever flowing.
[00:31:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:51] Speaker C: Do you feel like you've.
[00:31:53] Speaker B: You've officially found your artistic voice, or do you feel like there's. There's still a lot.
[00:32:01] Speaker A: I mean, there's growth. This. So, I mean, I think in terms of the bit that I feel like I found is just being totally happy with the idea that I'm probably going to keep trying to do different things and not repeating myself too often. I mean, there's certainly some aspects of things that I feel like I'm comfortable in. And I guess as I age, you kind of get habitualized to things. So there's, like, methods of making work that I probably stick with more often than not. But I think.
I think if I'm understanding the question right, I think I have gotten quite.
Just only in the last few years and probably as a result of something like Tall Tales, like, really gotten quite comfortable with feeling like, okay, no, this is.
This is my lane, and I do know this thing. And it feels. It feels like a corner of the world that I can exist in that can be mine.
You know, beyond that, in terms of, like, the expression that goes into that, I think that'll continue to change.
[00:33:01] Speaker B: Do you think you could have gotten there without those kind of early formative years of, like, digesting or consuming so much pop culture? Or, like, being surrounded by the ultimate, like, oh, well, they're doing this and they're doing that, so we should. Do you know what I mean? Like, literally, like, you went from that to the polar opposite to, like, I don't even watch movies. I just go look at flowers and, like, everything, you know? But seriously, though, right?
[00:33:27] Speaker A: So, like, I wonder if I could have gotten there. I don't think I could have. I don't think. I don't think my younger mind was calm enough for one or, like, occupied enough to have been.
To have been slow. To slow down to the point that I could get there. But I also do think that there's, like, something I love about pop culture. And, like, that has been. That's, like, part of everything that I make now is directly informed by these sorts of. All these things that had a huge impression on me when I was younger, and I still hold on to those. And, like, in terms of visual language, like, I love. I absolutely love all that stuff. And I. I feel like there's something. You know, had I just gone down a fine art route, I would have been. That feels incredibly disingenuous to me. It feels like a non. Feels like you're not really engaging with the real world. It feels like you've sort of said, okay. I mean, it's like, literally manifest in a gallery, right? You, like, all right, these are some perfect white walls. And we'll just pretend the whole world outside doesn't really exist. And if we do that, suddenly all this stuff feels very important and deep and interesting. But the real world can have that same depth. And if you are willing to let in all of that stuff from pop culture and all the things that people and audiences genuinely want to engage with, then I think that, you know, the doors fly wide open and you can kind of absorb all of that and get the best of all of those worlds.
[00:34:53] Speaker C: That's so interesting. Do you have any.
If you were to do it all again, would you tell your, your younger self anything? Would you say, like, don't, you know, not, not even specific, like, don't work with this person, but more so just like ideology wise, like, would you, would you have changed anything?
[00:35:14] Speaker A: I think I would have said, you know, I went through this phase and this is a little older for me now, where I was really worried about people discovering my references and my, the things that I was finding inspiration from and I would hide that and try to hide that. And at some point I did this talk and I sort of, this is a long time ago now, but changed my website and any project I did, I would throw up all the reference material at the same time.
[00:35:38] Speaker C: Oh, interesting.
[00:35:40] Speaker A: Hugely liberating to me. Like.
[00:35:42] Speaker C: Yeah, almost like your sources if you're doing a thesis or something.
[00:35:47] Speaker A: Right, exactly, yeah. And as a way of like preemptively fending off an attack if someone was, oh my God, yeah, I said I stole it.
[00:35:58] Speaker C: Yeah, I said I stole it.
[00:35:59] Speaker B: Yeah, I did that.
[00:36:00] Speaker C: I did.
[00:36:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
And I think had I. And it was. I fully expected the first few times that I did that. I really thought people were just going to be, this is an outrage. And look. Yeah, all right, I see you don't have any talent. Like, you just stole all these things.
And in actual fact, it just became this immensely liberating thing where then I was able to. I guess the bit that I discovered for me from that was like all of a sudden this small pool of references that I kept drawing from, once I exposed them to the world, I kind of was forced to move on and find something somewhere else. And that was awesome.
So, yeah, I mean, I think that I still, you know, I've got. Quit my university degree within like the first six months to go, and I had got a job and started working and, and I don't really regret any of that. And I really, really value all the stuff I learned by working. But, you know, for purely practical purposes and to the degree that I think it would help me not feel like such an outsider now, I kind of wish I'd finished my degree.
[00:37:09] Speaker C: Did I, did I read that you, you yourself teach sometimes. And you do you teach classes? Okay.
[00:37:16] Speaker A: I feel like I. I feel like that may be an inevitable outcome. You know, I don't know what happened.
[00:37:22] Speaker C: Maybe I just manifested it for you. I don't know.
[00:37:25] Speaker A: I feel like that's one of those. Like I'm just not. It's, you know, it's linked to the not being a good collaborator. I'm just not. I can't imagine myself in front of a room full of amazing young students. Students and them showing me some incredible work and me not being antagonized by how brilliant they are, you know.
[00:37:43] Speaker C: Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. It's. It's the plight of an artist, you know, It's. It's what? It's what?
Yeah, it's what people go through. I, I understand that. Yeah.
[00:37:52] Speaker B: What is. I mean, clearly you're, you're a multi hyphenate artist in the way of, like you've, you're, you're really not in one lane. And you even said it yourself too, of like, staying in fine art would be disingenuous to Jonathan. Like, to you.
Where does that come from? And like, where does that go, you know, like, like, is there, is there any ceiling? Is that like, oh, I want to put 110 into everything. And like, of course you're gonna get super, super just fried and burnout and the whole thing. But like, I wonder, I guess maybe leaning into your process here.
[00:38:32] Speaker A: Right. I mean, I don't think I have that figured out. I think that's a really good point and something I increasingly, you know, as you get older. I've got two kids and a family. I've had to completely readdress how much time I spend on things and how I structure that time.
And I still now am struggling with that where I'm like, I want to do. I really want to do this and I really want to do that. And, and. But these things are all going to take a lot of time and effort and concentration and they require more as well of those things and they sort of get more deep and more specific.
I think, you know, practically for me, the way I've addressed a lot of that is, you know, one of the major things, and this seems really dumb, but was like we'd been in L. A for something like seven or eight years, something like that, and then we moved back here. This was a few years before COVID and it was really just sort of realizing like a. I don't want that. Like the goal of, you know, to me and my read on that city was like, if you don't want to keep climbing up the hill and you don't want to keep getting a bigger mansion Further up the hill with a better view, which I wasn't particularly interested in. Then.
What are you doing? Why am I there? I don't know what I'm there for. You know, then I'm. I'm in the wrong game. Like, that's what that.
[00:39:52] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. There is something very financial about the art scene in. In la. Right. I, weirdly, I. I have a. A cousin who I. I don't think he would mind me saying this, but he. He is a very successful writer and. And has written some tentpole movies and was a very, you know, is a very desired writer, yet he didn't have that urge to. I mean, as a writer, you eventually start. If you have a really established voice, you maybe want to start your own production company or get hired on the next Marvel thing for Pass it. And he just did not want to go commercial and do that. And he's actually now living in Australia, which is funny.
[00:40:30] Speaker A: Oh, no way.
[00:40:31] Speaker C: But it's just so interesting that, that sort of. I'd love for you to dig into that in your experience in L. A and everything and, you know, what pressure you felt there.
[00:40:43] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I mean, I think this is exactly as you described. I mean, that's exactly it. Right. It's like these opportunities present themselves and you can't, you've. You can't really say no to them and there's an expectation that you are going to want to keep scaling. You know, I think my experience of that working on Flume, when I was working on the Flume stuff at that time, and he was sort of getting bigger and bigger and bigger and there were all these opportunities, I sort of. That, that whole scenario, I got dragged back in. I was just doing the art, my art stuff. And then his label were sort of asked me a bunch of times, like, please, can you have a look at this working with this artist?
And I met with him once and he was lovely and I thought, well, I'll just do this one album cover and then that's it. I'm not doing anything else.
And then, yeah, that kept growing and then it's like, oh, don't you want to, like, direct a live show? And blah, blah, blah. And I. It's like, I don't want to do any of that stuff. Like, part of me does want to do it, but only if I can do it. I don't want to do it if I'm. If your version of that is sort of like what you described, starting a production company and employing a bunch of people and, and, and that yeah, it's. I. It took so long for me to realize that, like, in la. And I think this is true. I mean, you know, it's just. It's easier to avoid it in Australia because there aren't nearly so many opportunities. But if you don't want to do that and you do just enjoy. You know, I just kept sort of realizing I actually just enjoy making things I don't enjoy.
My goal here is not to produce the product at the end. My goal here is to enjoy the process of making the product.
I like making the video or, like, making the painting much more than putting it up on the wall or, like, you know, I don't. Once it's out, it's gone and you've.
[00:42:32] Speaker C: Sort of got to move.
[00:42:35] Speaker A: And. Yeah, it took me so long to realize that combined with, like, actually, if I. If we move back to Australia and we move out into the countryside, like, my cost of living is incredibly low, and I don't. I no longer need to do the mental arithmetic of, like, all right, there's this video. The budget is this. That means, therefore, I can only spend three days on it, and what can I do in three days? I can do right. This. And then you sort of, like, become a bit. I don't know, like, your creative scope is so limited by that as opposed to now. And, like, the Mark the Tall Tales project's a good example where it was just like, there's no way the money covered the time in any way, shape or form spent on that project, but by just sort of jimmying with my reality a little bit, live in a place that it does work. And it does work.
[00:43:23] Speaker C: Yeah. And it seems like you're more inspired out there in nature and everything, too.
[00:43:27] Speaker A: Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Much more inspired. And none of those weird things. City pressures that, you know, creative pressures that I felt like, were there.
[00:43:34] Speaker B: Are you creating every day? Like, are you.
I mean, yeah, I. Yeah, yeah.
[00:43:40] Speaker A: I mean, I. I'm one of those people. I. There's a couple of musicians that I talk to who. We talk about this kind of thing. Like, if I don't. If I haven't made something by the end of the day, I get. I'm really shitty to be around. I'm very frustrated and I'm short.
[00:43:57] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:43:59] Speaker B: Can that be anything? I know you're in pottery as well. Like. Like, what is. Is it. Can it just be a drawing? Like, can it. Like, can it be.
[00:44:05] Speaker A: Yeah, it can be anything. It can be anything.
[00:44:07] Speaker C: A smoothie. Okay. Yeah, great.
An amazing smoothie.
[00:44:11] Speaker A: Yeah. Lately, it's been like fixing the cassette deck in my old car.
[00:44:15] Speaker C: Perfect, perfect.
[00:44:17] Speaker A: Just.
[00:44:17] Speaker C: I mean, there's.
Fixing something is one of the most satisfying things. But I, I relate to that. I mean, I, I. In my current job, I'm an executive assistant, and a lot of the work I do feels like it doesn't have an end, and it's kind of just.
I'm half in it, half not in it, and there's not a lot of satisfaction. So for me, being able to do this podcast is like, the best outlet ever, because I'm able to, like, after this interview, I have a sense of completion, or I also edit the podcast. So when I'm done editing, and I feel like editing is, in a way, an art form as well, so when I'm able to do that and then I put it out there, it's like a sigh of relief, you know? So I feel like, as. As a young artist, incorporating those things where you can be satisfied with one thing every day is really, really important.
[00:45:06] Speaker A: Oh, totally. And I think that, that, you know, coming back to, like, the commercial work side of things, that's something I loved about that and I still love about that. Is. It's like a. What it is is a. You know, the times in my life when I've just worked on my art projects, it can be quite hard to get up and be like, all right, I'm dedicating another day to this idea that I'm not sure it's going to work. The outcome is a long way off on the horizon. Like, it's next year and whatever. Whereas, you know, when someone's just saying, there's a deadline in two days, you need to make this thing. It's a great thing for, like, getting you out of bed and getting you to do a thing. And then once you're doing. I mean, this is what I realized. Like, once I was doing that, I'd so kind of hate that, that my mind would wander off and I'd be like, geez, I wish I was really painting this painting that I want to be painting. And then like, okay, now you know what you really want to do. You should probably do that now that you've gotten out of your rut.
[00:45:57] Speaker C: Yeah, that. That commercial work gives you a lot of perspective is what I'm hearing. Yeah, that's so interesting.
[00:46:04] Speaker B: The, like, I guess again, like, leaning into your product. I mean, we haven't even spoken about, like, Blender or Unreal Engine or, like, any, Any of the, Any of the film tools, which I'd love to get into. And I know also on the AI side of things, you were an early user of Midjourney and other tools like that. And I guess would kind of love to start to lean into that because we've spoken about you. I mean being not the greatest collaborator makes sense with your fantastic on a computer with Blender and again in your space, I think would love to talk about that. And also the difference of directing a scene in Unreal Engine vs Flume and Jazz to where we want. You know what I mean?
[00:47:00] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I mean they're all so different. Honestly, I feel like I'm just as amateurish at all of those things as anybody else. I think Blend is one of those amazing scenarios. This is part of my turnaround when I went and started doing art where I was like, it, I'm only going to use open source. So I like started using Linux computers and was only doing. Got rid of all my Apple stuff and was just like, I'm going to use Blender and all this open source stuff. And because I had done 3D work way back like in the 90s and I dabbled in it around and around it for a long time then. And then when I got back into Blender and was like, now I, you know, it's my most familiar tool. But I mean the wonderful thing about Blender is just that because it's open source and because there's a huge community of like, it engenders a wonderful support, it's a non transactional tool. So there's so many people producing so much stuff, telling you how to do things and like explaining how stuff works or making their own weird little tools that plug into it and like the ecosystem around it is very messy and weird and idiosyncratic, but it's like lovely and generous. And so where I've tried to like learn Houdini occasionally over the years, that that's like, all right, pay $600 and do this three week course or whatever. And I'm like, that's, that's not how my brain works. I'm not very good at learning in a structured way like that. But equally like, I don't know, there's something about society that I don't like embedded in that where like, like I really love that aspect of, of Blender that it's like, yeah, just a big massive community of people helping each other kind of and there's so much to take from. So I don't feel like, I mean it's one of those weird things where it's like I use it every day and I probably do know quite a lot about it at this point, but I still don't really feel like I know, you know, there's people out there that know so much about those tools and similarly, unreal. I've used that for a long time on and off and dip in and out of it and. And sort of have a love hate relationship with that, you know, for various reasons. It's a weird, fiddly piece of thing. But yeah, as compared to like, I suppose like what you're saying, directing a live action kind of thing, you know, I feel much more comfortable, not so much standing in front of people and doing the act of directing, which I'm no good at. And I've like. I kind of just fell into that. Right. Like, I never, never thought of myself as our. The closest I ever thought of myself was as a bit of an animator, like an amateur animator. That's what I was.
Because although I did like my first.
My first job after school when I was like 14 and 15, was a traditional cell animation person. So I did.
[00:49:45] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:49:45] Speaker A: Yeah, like cleanups for a couple of years. So I did enough of that, but I also did enough of that to know that I'm not. I don't really know what I'm doing.
And I went like, you know, cowarts or anything and don't know how real animators do it.
And then similarly, I sort of just like fell into this thing of like directing some live action stuff. And in the same way I've sort of had to. It's taken me years to realize how supportive sort of ads have been to me and producers have been and how they put things in the right place to allow me to do what I am capable to do.
[00:50:24] Speaker C: Only your job, right?
[00:50:25] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that I'm good at. Not the bit that's like standing up and yelling at people and like moving or whatever like that stuff, which I'm really at. But it's a bit of like, I've got a vision for this and I think this could work if we do it this way. Can I open that to this person and then they can tell everybody, then that would work.
[00:50:47] Speaker C: That's so interesting. Well, I'm curious, since we've gone through so much of your career, I'm curious what. What you think is next for you and what you're finding yourself really interested in or if you're seeing anything that's inspiring you from other people these days or what's inspiring you. I know you try not to look at other people's art.
[00:51:06] Speaker A: But, I mean, I'm just primarily bad with names in terms of inspiring, like, stuff. I don't really take a mental note, honestly.
I can't remember the names, but there's. One of your podcasts was with two animators and they had done a short for adults.
[00:51:25] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:51:27] Speaker A: That was amazing. I found that so inspiring and, like, just so exciting to listen to. And.
And then I've watched a bunch of their stuff and found that incredibly inspiring.
[00:51:39] Speaker C: They're pretty great.
[00:51:41] Speaker A: Yeah. So, so good.
[00:51:43] Speaker B: That is a good answer, man. That's. That is a.
[00:51:46] Speaker C: Keeping it in the 5050 family. That's. That's how we like it.
[00:51:50] Speaker A: I mean. Yeah, it's not. I honestly, I don't. I don't go. You know, I spent so much time in my youth trolling, like, for stuff and collecting and, like, I don't.
[00:52:00] Speaker C: Yeah.
Is there. Are you. Are you, like, watching trash TV or.
[00:52:05] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:52:07] Speaker C: Are you, like. What are you. What. What's your, like, guilty pleasure of, like, this is not high art, but I am just getting into it.
[00:52:15] Speaker A: I mean, I heard this same answer from someone else on your podcast, which is Bake off, which.
[00:52:20] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, yeah.
[00:52:22] Speaker A: I go to. And then. What have I been watching lately? We've been re. Watching Chernobyl.
[00:52:29] Speaker C: Oh, yeah.
[00:52:30] Speaker B: Fantastic.
[00:52:31] Speaker A: Yes. So, so good. And I only just. You know, this is another one of those examples where I was like, who is this director? And then I looked him up and was like, oh, he's directed like a million music videos. And. And then it immediate this, I was like, oh, that's why I don't look at this stuff, because it immediately made me feel like a failure.
[00:52:48] Speaker C: Oh, my God. Yeah. Where's your Chernobyl?
[00:52:53] Speaker A: That's terrible.
Oh, man.
[00:52:55] Speaker C: I under. It's a very real feeling.
[00:52:57] Speaker A: It's a very real feeling. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, we don't. We get a very small window of television watching. You know what I do love is my son is obsessed with apple and onion. I don't know if you guys have ever watched that show. It's like a Cartoon Network thing with Richard Ioady and this other guy, can't remember his name, who created it, and it's fucking brilliant. It's. Yeah. Being.
[00:53:19] Speaker B: Being a dad who's an artist, are you kind of like putting a paintbrush in your.
[00:53:24] Speaker A: In your.
[00:53:25] Speaker B: In the kid's hands? Or is it like.
[00:53:29] Speaker A: I mean, my first. So our son was born in la and he moved back here when he was a Bit older, but he was born with a genetic deletion, so he doesn't have. Have really any fine motor skills at all. And he's got sort of cognitive delays and learning delays and things like that. So he's like. What he does have is a ton of synthesizers that I've like. Because he loves hard style techno and like, amazing. Got a video he'll just fall asleep to, like, hard style blazing in his room. So, wow. Force music onto him. And he's got all these bonkers synthesizers that I bought him. More like Flume has been very generous.
[00:54:07] Speaker B: I say Harley could help out with that.
[00:54:09] Speaker A: He's come over with, like, and set up a studio and things like that. And, yeah, I don't know, it hasn't gone very far. I get a lot of joy out of messing with that stuff. But he doesn't. But, yeah, my. Where. My daughter, who's now seven, she's like, I. I put. No, I think, you know, my. This is a bad thing. Every time I've said this to somebody, they're like. And they've sort of gone ashen. Like, even other artists like my. Both my wife and my attitude is like, become an electrician. Don't. If you like painting or drawing, like, that's an awesome hobby. And if you can keep going with your hobby, like, you'll get a lot of joy and pleasure of it out of it. If you turn that into your job, you'll turn into a nervous wreck and your whole identity will be about how successful you are as an artist. Right. And it will stop feeding you and it will start sucking the life out of you.
[00:55:00] Speaker C: Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Too real. Too real.
[00:55:04] Speaker A: Do you.
[00:55:04] Speaker B: Do you feel like that, you know, at this. At this point, or do you feel like you've kind of gotten over the hump?
[00:55:10] Speaker A: No, I still feel like that. I mean, I love.
[00:55:13] Speaker B: Why aren't you an electrician? You know, why aren't you a plumber?
[00:55:16] Speaker A: Because I'm so lazy. You know, this is such an easy job for lazy people who don't want to, like, stick to rules, right? Like, yeah, yeah, you can do it. It's like, why try trade the job where you say you can get up whenever you want to get up and do whatever you want, and you can justify it in whatever way you feel like you can.
[00:55:35] Speaker C: Right, Right. If electricians were like, I just try to do one thing every day, and it's one light bulb every day, and.
[00:55:44] Speaker A: Today I might mix the red and the blue wires.
[00:55:46] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly.
[00:55:47] Speaker A: Yeah. Who knows?
[00:55:49] Speaker C: And they're like, you didn't feel fix anything in our house. We're not paying you.
[00:55:54] Speaker B: But it looks good.
[00:55:56] Speaker A: Yeah. It's really pretty wiring.
[00:55:59] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[00:56:01] Speaker B: Do you have a.
Sorry, do you have a piece or installation or. Or any sort of output that you look back at and are just like, yes, like that. I am really like, that speaks to me in a way that like nothing else does.
[00:56:22] Speaker A: I mean, yeah, I think it's such a.
[00:56:26] Speaker B: Are you still searching for that? Right?
[00:56:28] Speaker A: Yeah, quite a lot. I think like. Like the thing that I guess I've gotten attracted to and I found myself doing as the years have gone on is like a big part of what I did for music was building a universe around the release, like, and constructing this world around whatever the record was. And gradually that's grown into now this sort of version where it's like, well, if you built the world, you may as well tell a story in that world. And it's sort of gravitating more towards this kind of storytelling, world building aspect of things. But they're so sprawling, you know, those things are so big and sprawling and they require so much time and effort, so nothing ever feels like it. It is ever going to crystallize that thing properly for me. So I've had moments of that where I feel like this is getting close, but it's not quite getting there. And to your point? Yeah, I think I'm still kind of like trying to get there with some of these things and trying to figure out even like what exactly is. I don't even know what the medium is anymore that represents this idea or how I can articulate that idea. Is it a installation or. Increasingly, it's getting to the point where I'm like. I'm quite satisfied with having just written that down.
Yeah, yeah.
[00:57:40] Speaker C: When you, when you have an idea, do you have like an idea journal you put it in or what is your process there?
[00:57:44] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I've got this. This. It's like the oldest app I've ever had. It's called Workflowy. And it's like an endless cascading. I mean it's just like. Like you click on a bullet point and then it goes to the next page. Sorry, I'll cascade them. But it's just like you can endlessly nest bits of text, pictures within whatever else. So you can just keep making categories and categories and categories of things or. And jotting items. So I jot. Every idea I have goes into that and then it eventually finds a home somewhere maybe, or I can revisit it whenever I want.
[00:58:21] Speaker B: Well, it's. It's Monday morning over there. What. What else you got?
[00:58:26] Speaker A: Today I'm going to like, this is my challenge. This is why I'm excited about today. I'm going to.
To figure out how to get my MIDI keyboard to animate blender for me. Animate things in blender. So. Okay, that's my. Wow. Exciting.
[00:58:42] Speaker C: I was thinking. Yeah, I was thinking of doing the same thing on my end, just trying to.
[00:58:45] Speaker A: I mean, there's. Somebody wrote a thing. There's like a. There's a plugin. I'm sure it's not going to be. I've done it before, but everything's. The world's moved on since then, so I'll try that again. But it's like that. That's like, this is my perfect kind of day, which is like, there's a very tangible task to start with, which is, will I get that working or not? And then I have confidence that the rest of the day will, like, unravel behind it.
[00:59:11] Speaker C: Amazing. Well, really, thank you so, so much for coming on the podcast. We really, really appreciate it and I know we're both inspired by you in so many ways and try not to be jealous of you in so many ways as.
[00:59:24] Speaker A: As.
[00:59:24] Speaker B: Well, what's. Final question. What's.
What's like a flower we should look for?
[00:59:32] Speaker A: Oh, out in the world. I mean, that LA has just the best gardens ever because it's like the. I don't know, something in the soil and then constant sun and everybody gets to water it so you can grow whatever you want. When I was there, I was just never endingly stumbling, stumbling upon incredible, incredible flowers, trying to think of what the last flowers that I was excited by were.
[00:59:55] Speaker C: I mean, whenever I see passion fruit flowers, I love them.
[00:59:59] Speaker A: Wild, aren't they?
[01:00:00] Speaker C: Amazing.
[01:00:01] Speaker A: And I always amazing because we had an amazing vine when we were in la and to see it in bloom and then to think then it also has this incredible fruit.
[01:00:09] Speaker C: I know, I know. It's one of my favorite fruits. It's very exciting. And the idea that it's a fruit that grows on a vine is. Is kind of revolutionary in a way. I really. That's one of my faves.
[01:00:19] Speaker A: Totally. Yeah. It's a weed. So where I live now, we're like, we have to regenerate the bush. Like Australia, you know, has this very delicate ecosystem, and a lot of our land has been overtaken by invasive weeds and things. So I've been over the years, like, getting rid of those unfortunately Passion fruit is a weed here. So it is in the bush and it grows on these vines. And we'll find, like, all these passion fruits on the. On the ground, which are both like, hooray. This passion fruits and. Oh, I've got to go kill that vine.
[01:00:47] Speaker B: Yeah, Yeah, I. I took this video today.
What is that?
[01:00:54] Speaker A: I have no idea. I'm sure, you know.
[01:00:58] Speaker C: Well, I used to. My family used to have a tree that would drop those.
We would just call them spiky balls. So I think that's. I think that's what those are.
[01:01:08] Speaker B: That's.
[01:01:08] Speaker C: I don't.
[01:01:09] Speaker B: That's the one.
[01:01:10] Speaker C: I don't know. But I. I like. I like them.
[01:01:12] Speaker A: I mean, surely it's going to explode into something, right?
[01:01:15] Speaker B: Yeah, it's got to be something.
[01:01:17] Speaker C: Maybe. I don't know.
They would kind of just fall onto the ground in my family's backyard. But. But you guys can keep hoping that.
[01:01:27] Speaker B: Well, thank you. Thank you so much again, Jonathan.
[01:01:30] Speaker A: Thank you guys. Thank you so much. I mean, honestly, it was like, I was so flattered and that anybody would want to talk to me about in particular, my front, knowing where you guys come from from a sort of like, film perspective and video perspective. Like, as I said, like, listening to everybody on your podcast, I was just in awe of and was so flattered that you guys are going to talk to me. So thank you.
[01:01:54] Speaker C: We appreciate it.
[01:01:56] Speaker B: Enjoy your. Enjoy your Monday.
[01:01:58] Speaker A: Thanks. Have a good rest of your Sunday. Relax.
[01:02:01] Speaker C: Have a good one. Thank you.
[01:02:03] Speaker A: Take care, guys. Bye.
[01:02:10] Speaker B: Did you learn something? I'm like your mom. Did you learn something in this episode? I hope so. Or not. That's okay. Thanks for hanging. Make sure you follow us at the 5050fest on Instagram and give us five stars because. Why not? Why not subscribe? Why not? You know why not? Okay, bye.
