One of my most transformational discoveries this year was stumbling upon the Northwest Film Forum RG Pro production workshop intensives. One weekend each month, I've been holed up in a Capitol Hill production space learning everything from writing a call sheet to negotiating lighting with flags and gels.
"Remove the Gap Productions (RG PRO), works to support and uplift the careers of girls, women, nonbinary, femme, trans, and gender-nonconforming filmmakers. RG PRO was founded on the belief that in order to achieve equity and advancement in today’s industry and creative economy, female and gender-nonconforming filmmakers must be active participants in all aspects of media production....Based on a feminist curriculum, industry professionals and the RG PRO team will walk through the fundamentals of pre-production, camera, audio, livestreaming, and post-production to ensure that participants have the basic skillsets to create media confidently."
On first read, I was intrigued by the idea of a feminist curriculum; while I didn't know what to expect, just the consideration and care around underrepresented identities in a largely homogenous film industry was intriguing. Little did I know that being surrounded by a classroom of largely women and queer folks would be so impactful in creating a freeing, safe, comfortable learning environment. Week after week, conversations drifted to how lovely it was to exist within a space where we could ask questions without judgement or fear; we could ask to go back and revisit a topic; we could let creativity take its time; we could take up space.
Our Seattle Central Creative Academy speaker last week, "Type Goblin" Martin Brendecke, shared a quote from a former classmate: When asked why she had joined the program, she said "I'm here because it would make 8-year-old me happy."
Sometimes I feel like a collector of creative skills, from the NWFF workshops to all I'll learn at SCCA over the next two years. Eight-year-old me, digging through our coat closet turned craft closet for stickers and construction paper, would be thrilled.
A silly little animation made in this weekend's NWFF workshop using newfound After Effects know-how, a film photo from my '90s childhood, and a bit of nostalgia.
Following Martin's presentation on his typeface projects, many of which were influenced by the French Gothic type he found on ancient European buildings, we set out to find the alphabet in our surroundings—without using text. Wanting my alphabet set to have a small sense of cohesion, I chose to walk around Seattle's Fremont neighborhood at dusk with my camera and flash. I've really been enjoying the almost garish use of flash recently; it evokes the memory of those shitty early digital cameras and the disposable cameras I toted around as a little kid barely able to keep heads in frame. Kind of a Y2K vibe.
On a nearly 2-mile walk over about an hour, I captured letters in waning fall light. Obviously, I Strava'ed it. Some letters were easy to find: M's, W's, U's were abundant. F...not so much. In any case, behold The Alphabet of Fremont.
