“Glints of Magic in this endless rough” is an idea by Nathan Heller from an interview with director Richard Linklater during the filming of his twelve-year project Boyhood.
As Linklater said, “One of my favorite moments is when an actor does something incredible that you film—you know you’ve achieved that—and then just to see him wander, after the scene, over to the craft-service table and strike up a conversation,” he says. “Life is just around these heightened moments. You captured something within the world, that is a record, that exists—and you just move on. Like, ‘O.K., we got that. What’s the next shot? Oh, the sun’s going down.’ ”
Linklater says it’s Tolstoy’s view of history that we all periodically exceed ourselves before going back to our ordinary lives. These are the moments the best storytellers are trying to capture. The hard work, the routines, drift by in a montage segment. The glints of magic are rare and wonderful.
Strive to create the glints of magic.