The Snoot Letter #15 - May The Fourth
The Snoot Letter
Issue #15 – May 4, 2020
May is here, and I’m sending out this missive on May the 4th, aka Star Wars Day. Because “May the 4th” sounds a little bit like “May the Force” as in “may the force be with you” as in the thing that Jedi folk say to people in the Star Wars movies. Jedis are like peaceful monks that also slice people open with lightsabers. Lightsabers are laser swords.
I think that provides enough background information to any of you who are just learning about Star Wars for the first time today.
Star Wars Day is a grassroots fan-created holiday, and has been embraced by the Star Wars fan community.
Now that Disney owns Star Wars, via their acquisition of Lucasfilm, they are trying to take ownership of the holiday too. Literally. Check out this ludicrous tweet from the official Disney+ account.
Yowsers.
The designer Damien Newman created this illustration to explain the process of design. I love it. I think it’s broader than just design in application, and serves as a great explanation for the creative process in general.
The creative process can feel like chaos at the start, but through that accumulation of research and exploration you start to define your guiding principles. You stumble upon the core of what you want to express, and then you begin the process of layering elements around that core and executing on the concept.
It can feel frustrating to be in the chaotic-squiggle part of the creative process, but I think it’s important to let it percolate and accumulate. You can’t rush these things. Sometimes the organizing principles can come to you early in the process, but if they aren’t there yet then be honest with yourself. Let the squiggle keep doing its thing.
I went back to the Mission Tiki Drive-In Theatre earlier this week! It’s a wonderful place to watch movies during the pandemic quarantine. If you’re interested in checking out a drive-in movie, NEON are having free advance screenings of Spaceship Earth at a few drive-in theaters around the country today in Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Sacramento!
More info on the Sundance twitter feed.
I read this fascinating article about how new accents can develop when a set of people live together in isolation, based on research from a remote research base in Antarctica. It seems unlikely that this will happen to our household sized micro-communities during the current quarantine, but I love this outgoing quote:
If they ever really decided to colonize another planet, like Mars, we’d be right in there wanting to study that. They would develop a Martian accent. Can you imagine that?
I love imagining that, and I hope I get to hear a real Martian accent in my lifetime.
I know I said I’d have a list of fun classic movies for you to check out, but I’m still working on it. Pushing that one to later this month.
A few of you have been reaching out to me about the newsletter, and I love hearing any comments and responses! Feel free to shoot me an email.
~ Keith Calder
This Week’s Recommendations
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📖 I love this interview with horror icon Barbara Crampton, and not just because she says such lovely things about me and the process of making You’re Next.
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⚰️ The fabulous film website Birth.Movies.Death. is coming back under new ownership!
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🎶 A six-year-old child wrote a song about wondering what’s in her mother’s butthole. Jonathan Mann remixed it.