Bradley Olsen

http://unews.utah.edu/p/?r=120108-3 I just returned from meeting one of the most important people I could have ever met. If you read one of my early blog posts you will find one with me raving about a book called Droidmaker, that book is mostly about this person. His name is Ed Catmull and he gave a lecture at the University of Utah tonight. His lecture was particularly helpful to me because it was about good business management and what Pixar does to keep great movies rolling out. Basically the lesson learned was that top to bottom, micromanaged business is bad. Teams need to be formed with people who work well with each other and they need to reach goals and solve problems together. In order to do that everybody needs to give their honest opinion no matter how much they respect and admire or fear those above them. As a result the company will grow, change, and evolve. Pixar is all about having a creative, fun, and hard working environment. If you want to read a full review of w...

So today I participated as a groomsman in Houston's wedding. Duties included escorting a bridesmaid and loading presents into a car. Oh and also eating a lot of food, probably the most important task of them all. My unofficial duty as a member of the wedding party was to decorate Houston's car. The funnest part was when I got to dance with the Bethany (the pretty bridesmaid I escorted) even though I suck at dancing :P Congrats to Houston and Denise!

Today an independent feature film starring Minnie Driver called " Take " is being released in local Utah theaters for all to enjoy. I had the pleasure of going to a special advanced screening last Wednesday evening at the Gateway. It was emotionally heavy and very dramatic, perhaps to strong for me personally. However, it is undoubtly a powerful movie with great perfomances and story throughout. Charles Oliver (writer/director) and Chet Thomas (producer) were there as well for a Q&A session after the movie. Now for those of you who don't know I have a bit of history with Chet Thomas. In early 2003 my commercial art teacher Tom Wood advised me to get involved with a program called Independent Student Media Films ( www.ismfilms.com ). A former student of his (who he said I reminded him of because we both always talked about making big movies someday), Darrin Fletcher, had teamed up with Hollywood producer Chet Thomas and started this nation-wide educational progra...

After a long weekend of shooting my western film project (which finally has a name: The Way to Deadman Pass) classes began on Monday, August 25th. I have two classes on Mondays and Wednesdays. The first class of the day begins at 10:45am and is a visual effects course offered by the Fine Arts program. It's pretty awesome, we're going to play around with Adobe Photoshop and After Effects as well as Final Cut Pro and hopefully Pro Tools. So after that class ends at 12:45pm I wait around all day until my second class which starts at 4:35pm... yeah I know, that kinda sucks. But once we get rolling on projects I'll have plenty to do on the computers at school. My second class of the day is called Intro to Computer Music. The teacher, David Cottle, is a Mac expert and really cool. We're starting off with some simple sound editing using a shareware program called Amadeus Pro but soon enough we'll graduate from that to all out Logic Pro mixing powers! The class ends ...

Okay, I know everyone loves this movie, but if somebody out there does not then that somebody is a moron. Not only does this movie have amazing performances, but the plot is thick and the story is engaging, the cinematography is breathtaking (see it in IMAX), and I don't have a single complaint. This movie lives up to the hype and goes beyond it. It's a superhero movie, normally you can't call a superhero movie a masterpiece, but it is a MASTERPIECE. And it is more than a superhero movie, it's a crime drama and an action/adventure movie too. If you haven't seen this movie GO NOW!!!!! I know my writing sounds super-biased, but I walked into the movie theater without reservations or expectations other than it looked better than "Begins." I was blown away. It should be noted I watch about 10 movies I haven't seen before every week. I see a lot of stuff and I know what a mediocre movie is. I also am studying film at the University of Utah and have had...

The other week I finished the coolest book ever on the history of Lucasfilm and Pixar called Droidmaker: George Lucas and the Digital Revolution . It covers the history of the business, technology, and people that put us where we are today with computer graphics and movie-making. I highly recommend this book to anybody. READ IT NOW!!!! It's like $25 on Amazon .

The morning after seeing the most amazing film ever made, "The Dark Knight," I headed with my family to our cabin at Bear Lake. This is usually an annual trip and in recent years the number of family and friends heading up there has dwindled. It was still a nice weekend and I took it easy. Snagged a few pics while I was there as well.

I became lazy on updating my blog for Clairinski Productions so I decided to be more active in updating that and also decided to create a more personal blog of my own to update those who may be interested in reading what I'm up to in not-always-film-related life.