I was a bit of a Mac zealot growing up, and when I was a kid I would tune in twice a year for Steve Jobs’s Macworld Keynote Address. I’ve been pretty upset about Jobs passing. I was a fan of his, but I don’t think I’d ever thought very hard about why until yesterday. Sure he was the head of two companies that make some of my favorite things, but what I’m realizing set him apart is how high he set the bar for his companies.

In the work I do as a filmmaker, it’s tempting to sometimes settle for good enough when the budget is tight or time is running out. I don’t think Steve Jobs ever succumbed to that temptation, and he led a very public campaign against mediocrity. Everything you get from Apple and Pixar is beautifully conceived. Steve Jobs has been one of my heroes because he almost never let good enough take the place of excellent.

It’s in the whole package and the fine details. I was recently admiring the connection ports on the side of my laptop and how elegantly they interact with the whole of the machine. So many other gadgets when you turn them around to connect the plugs have ugly, cheaply made ports. You can see where the sheet metal ends and the plastic chassis begins. It’s good enough, but not great.

I had the pleasure of seeing one of Pixar’s celebrated directors speak recently, and he talked about the years long process of making a Pixar film. If you don’t know, Pixar spends several years making each of their features. Quite a bit more than any other animation house or live action company. He went into detail on aspects of perfecting a movie that blew my mind. I, as a filmmaker confined to the budgets I have worked with, have never gone for a fifth round of storyboarding, then animated the storyboards with full-blown sound design just to make sure the pacing would be right. I have never had a voiceover actor come in five different times for readings of the same line so that I can take clips from each recording to sculpt the performance of an onscreen character perfectly. Pixar does that stuff on every project they do. They have a nearly unblemished record and they are the envy of the film industry because they don’t settle for good enough.

I think Steve Jobs made plans for his departure, and the two companies he gave the world will continue to work under the ethos he founded them on, but I am sad that we’ll never again be delighted by one of his new, game-changing ideas. His ideas that were insane on paper, but that he realized with such elegance that they caught the imagination and took hold in our culture. Steve Jobs is largely responsible for the computers that have helped me become the professional filmmaker I am today, and movies that have inspired me. But Steve Jobs’s real impact on my life is that he serves as a shining example of what the benefits are of making something great for its own sake. I’m really going to miss him.

I filmed Dave Hill goofing around at Fashion Week this year for the web series I help make, Put This On. It was pretty delightful.

Put This On is a web series about dressing like a grownup. The humble aim of the show is to teach men the basic rules of getting dressed that so many men in our parent’s generation abandoned. I started as a fan of this show, but my involvement increased over the course of the first season, first working as second camera on the last three episodes, then as the show’s editor for the majority of the season.

Now we want to make a second season. For season two I’ll be taking over as the show’s director, with the esteemed Jesse Thorn and Adam Lisagor continuing as its executive producers and hosts. We’re going abroad with the show this time, to look at the unique impact that London, New York and Milan have on menswear.

One of the best things about the show is that it’s not funded by fashion companies that have a vested interest convincing you that clothes you bought twelve months ago aren’t good enough anymore. We point the cameras at classic style, which for men is how it should be. Our viewers are our funders. And in funding the show, they know that we’re not compromising the editorial voice of the show to sell you expensive crap that won’t last. We do this out of a sincere desire to help people learn about clothes that look good and last a long time.

Please check out Season 1 and SUPPORT THE KICKSTARTER!

Gobee Group has a plan to expand a very successful program that helps expecting Kenyan mothers get healthcare services and provides access to safe delivery facilities. Filmmaker Brendan Ferrer and I teamed up to make this pitch video for them. I hope you enjoy it!

This year I had the great pleasure of working on Put This On, a web series about dressing like a grownup. I edited and helped shoot on the last four episodes. I’m really pleased with the results! I hope you’ll watch it and find it useful and entertaining. We just finished our last episode of the season!

Episode guide.

I’m really enjoying re-watching this beautiful split-screen video of three of my favorite cities. It’s incredibly well-done considering the fact that the crew must have had a good deal of lag in-between shoot days. They did great planning and note-taking when they were shooting, and did some great tweaks in post to make everything line up perfectly. It’s beautiful!