David Licata | April 26, 2012
We all need some kind of reassurance from time to time. One of the things I need it for is my skill as a cinematographer. So on my corkboard is a print out of an email from Andy Bowley, a very fine cinematographer who shot much of A Life’s Work. Thank you, Andy. Your email [...]
David Licata | March 30, 2012
In the previous post (Using the Accident), I quoted a passage from an interview I did with Jill Tarter for A Life’s Work. It’s a gem, if you ask me. The problem is, I’m not sure it fits in the film. And that’s very frustrating. I have a surfeit of good material. I’m not complaining, [...]
David Licata | March 27, 2012
I’m doing some work for hire that I can’t talk about just yet, but I can tell you that the other day I researched special effects legend Douglas Trumbull’s animation work on the Stargate sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey. (I also held in my white-archival-gloved hands a copy of an early draft of 2001. [...]
David Licata | February 4, 2012
I thought of this post the other day. It seems as relevant now as it was then, so I thought I’d repost it. I had spent the previous days working on a grant proposal, and now that that was done and out, I was ready to sit down and think about editing A Life’s Work [...]
David Licata | October 21, 2011
Be an opener of doors for such as come after thee. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Here’s a clip of Jill Tarter speaking about Frank Drake, who conducted the first SETI experiment in 1960, thereby opening the door for future generations of SETI scientists. Thanks to the mighty fine poet Susan Elbe for bringing the Emerson [...]
David Licata | October 7, 2011
Last week I dropped a teaser about Sputnik’s impact on Jill Tarter, Director, Center for SETI Research, SETI Institute. (What’s the Filmmaker Reading?) In the clip below, Tarter reveals when she discovered her passion for science, the effect Sputnik had on her education, and more. Sputnik caused a seismic shift in educational priorities in this [...]
David Licata | September 30, 2011
The Department of Mad Scientists: How DARPA Is Remaking Our World, from the Internet to Artificial Limbs by Michael Belfiore, a book loaned to me by filmmaker and friend Daria Price. In the book, Belfiore discusses the birth of DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), an agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible [...]
David Licata | June 22, 2011
Yesterday’s post about SETI was in the works since last week. Soon after it went live, I found out about SETIstars, the SETI Institute’s effort to raise $200,000 so they can get the Allen Telescope Array out of hibernation and back online. And soon after that I was contacted by SETI’s PR firm, who requested [...]
David Licata | June 21, 2011
I know you enjoy seeing clips of A Life’s Work, and this post has one, but first this. The Los Angeles Times recently ran an Op-Ed by Christopher Cokinos about the SETI Institute’s financial woes. These two paragraphs jumped out at me. Certainly we don’t cotton to the idea of being alone. We yearn for [...]
David Licata | May 27, 2011
Documentary filmmakers frequently encounter a dilemma: how do you know when to say, “production is over.” You can always shoot more, especially now with video. For Grey Gardens, a film I reference frequently, the Maysles shot more than 70 hours of footage over the course of six weeks. That’s film, not video. And film stock [...]
