Reverse entropy

Reverse Entropy began with a sabbatical Casey and I took to the Salton Sea in Southern California. We wanted to capture the degradation of the land and the beauty we found in its decay. There was no client or brief. It was an opportunity to get away, make images, and see where our curiosity would take us.

The trip became much more than gathering footage. We spent time talking about life, what we think it is, and the larger questions that keep drawing us back. Casey introduced me to Isaac Asimov’s “The Last Question,” and its idea of reversing entropy gave those conversations a new direction. The film grew out of that shared experience: a piece of art made by the two of us, following something we both felt connected to.

I had been to the Salton Sea several times before, but it still feels like another world. It is ethereal and removed from my normal life, almost like visiting an alien planet. There is a scar left on the land, and a strange tension between what feels natural and what feels deeply altered by people.

The contrasts are what stay with me. An enormous body of water sits in the valley, seeming almost lifeless, while nearby farmland produces food in the middle of the desert. Looking at those things together feels surreal. It is a landscape where creation and degradation exist beside one another, and that contradiction became part of the way we thought about the film.

Casey and I have a great deal of trust in one another. We enjoy each other’s work, so the collaboration is guided by taste and instinct. Rather than defining every step in advance, we leave room for the other person to find something unexpected.

I often begin by taking stills from the footage and laying them out so I can see everything at once. That gives me a way to think about the images and their sequence before committing to an edit. I put together an initial timeline and passed it to Casey, asking what he thought of that series of events.

Casey is an exceptional editor. He took that starting point and ran with it, finding connections and rhythms I had not anticipated. I would take his edit and add to it, then send it back. He would respond with further editing, music, score, and sound design. We went through roughly five rounds before arriving at the finished film. It felt like a jazz band: improvising, responding, and finding the art through the exchange.

The hardest part was getting our programs and edits to work together. The creative exchange felt natural, but synchronizing the projects was a constant source of friction. Trying to keep everything aligned became frustrating enough that it nearly stopped the film from being finished.

I am glad we pushed through that. The difficulty was in the mechanics of working together, while the trust in the work itself remained. Getting past that obstacle allowed us to keep following the ideas that had brought us together in the first place.