We were lucky to catch up with Michael Lipton recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Michael thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

Doing it, as many times over, with people you trust and focusing on personal work. Until there’s substance, nobody really cares about the halation and bokeh in the background of your shots.

Keep things simple. Make it easy to start, possible to finish. I’m not sure about quantity though, that’s up to you. I made a short film called Man of The Land a few years ago. My whole thinking was to tell this story as quickly as possible and make it within a day. We shot maybe 4 hours that day in between cooking and relaxing up in Forest Falls. Good experience. Same trip my buddy shot seven shorts. I think we broke even.

Starting is the hardest part, just do it.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I make movies at Badlands Scuba Squad. We’re technically full service, seeing as we do everything in-house, soup to nuts, but we aren’t currently scoping for any commercial work. This may sound flowery, but the current focus is on personal work and building out our team. I want to help my friends become filmmakers. That’s really all that matters.

Badlands has made it possible to pursue so many personal projects. We each challenge ourselves to be better, which might also be a by product of jealousy and oneupmanship. I mean that in the healthiest, most supportive way possible.

You can sell technical prowess and be a videographer, but I already do that elsewhere. What you really want to do is tell stories. If you’re singular enough and someone wants a little of what you have, they ask if you can tell there’s.

https://www.badlandsscubasquad.com/

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I am constantly living down the short sighted thinking of my youth, anyways…

Has anyone ever stopped you and told you how to walk? What would that conversation even look like? Would you appreciate it at all, or nod politely until you can leave. I think the same things goes for starting something creative. Unless you’re making poor financial decisions, or actively putting people in danger, you’re just doing it, going for it. You fail, whatever keep going. You succeed, whatever that means to you, good keep going. Advice goes into two categories: immediately applicable and helpful, or useless until later/never. If it slows you down, or stops you, makes you doubt yourself, that’s useless. The same thing goes for tools.

Have you ever head of a Mitchell BNCR? When Scorsese was making his first feature “who’s that knocking at my door” I guess, in an attempt to feel more legitimate, he rented out that camera for some early scenes. The thing is the size of a car engine. Anyways, it didn’t stick around. Today we have terms like prosumer, meaning out of the box, the product is good and can be scaled up. But I think the same thinking exists, you’re not enough, you need this in order to be better.

All I know is that Ansel Adams had a worse camera than I’ve ever had and I still can’t take pictures like he can. So I don’t think the tools are the problem.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

When you’re young and you fall in love and want to make movies, you’re set up for failure and regret. Which is strange because I should have already known this lesson. But if you fall into the cortorie of filmmaking, you will be shown the masters in hindsight: Hitchcock, Kubrick, Kurosawa. Dead, perfect, inviolate. The end result is 1:1 to the immaculate “vision”, there is no err.

What do you do with that?

I also drawing at the time, more than I do now. I was bored and cellphones didn’t exist. I was never that good, but I was well enough that I could get my point across. Other than my mom who taught me how to draw, people rarely if ever pointed out my mistakes. It’s just assumed that’s part of the final product. You might live with dissatisfaction and regret not doing certain things, but everything you finish is a time stamp and the process reveals what your “vision” left out.

You’re right, you would probably do it differently now, but that’s not even the point. You never could have anticipated what happened in-between and to pretend like that didn’t have an effect is ignorant. Nothing happens in a vacuum, except for educational purpose.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.badlandsscubasquad.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mwlipton/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-lipton-749a0456/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTLUPfpL1Y8
• Other: https://vimeo.com/user2023673

Image Credits
Tal Heruty Ben Floss Brian Nolte