For those of you who know how pragmatic I can be, you know I don’t normally subscribe to karma. Something is different about the way I feel about welcoming the new year and I’m ready to take on new challenges with a new determination and discipline. In short, I have a very good feeling about 2010. I am excited about several things on the horizon:

1. Trevor White’s new developing feature “Jamesy Boy” is a fantastic script that I am ready to sink my teeth into. The storytelling structure offers an exciting chance to craft two complimentary looks and I am excited to do an early scout with Trevor next week.

2. “Do You Dream in Color”, the new documentary feature I am currently shooting has the potential to travel to China later this year. Combined with some inspiration from my recent travels abroad, I have reinspired myself to take on learning a second language (Mandarin) with a new vigor. In a sense, it has become a very serious New Years resolution.

3. Generally, work is supposed to pick up! I heard the Universal backlot was full of cars yesterday (the first official work day of the year)… And is it true that LA is implementing new tax incentives for film production?

Oddly, even though this blog has just begun (and it took me so many months to even get to this point), it is only the beginning.

As a DP, and as a filmmaker, I must make a confession. I acknowledge with a certain melancholy that I greatly miss that sweet feeling of completion. What I’m referring to are those moments when you can sit in an audience, sense the reaction of people against the events of the screen unfold, and laugh or be moved with them.

And it’s a feeling of completion, because you were in part responsible for why those people feel the way they do.

I’m only bringing this up now because as I progress through my career, I feel ever more distant from the audience, in that many completed works are making their way onto the internet rather than a movie theater, or I was shooting the next project while the last one plays at the local festival.

This, it seems, will be a pattern for a time to come now.