Where The Sidewalk Ends
Alex D'Agostino's Tribute To Shel Silverstein and Jumping Off The Sidewalk.
When making these really short scene projects, a lot of times an idea just pops into my head. I try not to ask myself why, I just start figuring out how to do it. I enjoy creating scenes that feel like they are cut out of a bigger idea or project but can seem out of context on their own. That limbo is where the excitement is for me.
Alex D
Most of us grew up reading Shel Silverstein. I can still remember the smell of the scholastic book fair where I first laid my hands on one of those gleaming white-covered copies. The two kids and their dog peering over an endless void where the sidewalk ended, an image that now as a 27 year old holds a different meaning.
I started my career alongside Alex. I’ve watched him blossom into a commercial and documentary power-house filmmaker. But as time has gone on our careers have developed and been pushed from pure creative spirit to the spirit of margins, budgets, and profits. Our lives have new additions of family aspirations and developed costs-of-living. Over the course of our years as friends and collaborators our conversations have come to the reality that we are no longer just two kids galavanting past the sidewalk into any dream we have. Anything made for the sake of making it has to be pursued ferociously. When you begin to pay bills with your passion, jumping off where the sidewalk ends becomes much more frightening. The sidewalk you jumped off of as a kid seems to now root your feet with gum. You start to accept those asphalt flowers as the only flowers left. You go where those chalk-white arrows tell you to go because that’s what the last guy with gum on his shoes told you. But then you remember what jumping feels like. There was never a rhyme or reason, and you didn’t have to have context for anything but when you might hit the ground and find the next cliff of another great adventure.
In the end Alex’s short vignette visual showcases just how beautiful that decision to jump or not can be. Whether it’s creatively or personally, we are faced with cliffed-out sidewalks every day. Sometimes we jump, sometimes we don’t. But what’s important is that we keep peering over the edge and asking ourselves what’s below the clouds.
Eep! So great. Jumping isn't equally easy forever. Love it.
A) Baller vignette. I freaking love a good vignette!
B) What a killer closing paragraph! The Schrödinger's cat of creativity - did they jump or not? You might have a guess, but never fully know; beauty is found in the tension between the two.