The structures of our thought filter what we see, and in fact there is no seeing apart from those structures. This film is part of an ongoing project to show where I am in a (here, natural) landscape in a way that reflects those structures of thought. It is "hypnogogic," not so much perceptually (although to some extent that too) as conceptually. Our eyes see constantly, but what do we actually notice? That vision is excessive, wasteful, even; in paring down, it becomes both more spare and more concentrated.

It is also a meditation in process of how my marvelous son Marcus has changed my life and my way of being in the world, recoloring a place where I was already.

A vision of the mountains in which I live, both gentle and harsh, domestic and wild, populated and not. Shot on a homemade pinhole camera. Edited initially in 2007, then finished and printed in 2010.

A pinhole film shot and processed during the 2008 Wilderness Film Expedition in Colorado; the footage was edited later at home. A journey to the trip's highest point, Big Agnes Mountain, to see what we could see.

A study in the rhythmic flicker possibilities in a triangular arrangement of three frames.

A phrase repeated for a homemade pinhole camera, creating a collage of increasing abstraction that leads back to the one seen.

I get depressed if the sun is not out. This is not a particularly useful personality trait, but it highlights a sence I have always had that somehow there is a way to find happiness in this world, if we could only discover how to see it correctly -- and in the process, perhaps see more of what is there. Where are we going, anyway?

An early encounter with one who was already a big part of my life, and who would only get bigger! And in this case, all sizes are the best. Captured on a homemade pinhole camera.

An imagining of a bee’s eye view of a spring day in Golden Gate Park. A primitive, home-made camera reveals a world of vibrant, frenetic color, racing between flowers and losing itself in the revelry of survival and sunshine.

One hears in the call of the sea the feeling of a promise made to us before birth, that we can know the world not merely as an atlas of things seen, but rather as a continuum of felt experience in which it is impossible to distinguish between our selves and the world around us: self and other are melded into one. To the Beach explores this feeling from three vantage points, filmed (respectively) near, in, and under the sea using a variety of techniques, and registers the resulting images onto hand-made film emulsion. I. Approaching the Shore: in which the ocean first offers its irresistible salty scent. II. Swimming: in which we become again what we are. III. Seeing Stars: as above, so below.

Originally a performance for dancer (Michelle Spencer) who moved in front of the rear-projected images, and a score for live violin and electronic accompaniment, it is here presented as just the film and a wholly recorded score. It premiered on October, 29 1999, in Boulder Colorado. It was presented again in Boulder as part of the Modern Music Festival, April 7, 2000, and opened the first annual Telluride International Experimental Film Festival on October 30, 2000, with the dancer but without the violinist. The original short notes follow: Filmmaker Robert Schaller, composer Michael Theodore, and performance artist Michelle Spencer have combined their unique talents to create an innovative new work entitled, If Not One and One. In this multi-media presentation, Spencer, in live performance, interacts with three rear-projected, 16mm experimental films based on images of herself as well as with an evocative score for violin and computer-processed acoustic sounds. Loosely based on Homer's Odyssey and Gertrude Stein's Stanzas in Meditation, If not One and One offers a kinetic and visual exploration of identity in a postmodern world.

An excursion into the world of hand-made film emulsion and an exposition of some formal possibilities of using three images side by side. A dancer's brief gesture is treated, repeated, and juxtaposed, becoming the fabric of a visual construction that is less about representation than rhythm and time. Projected on three interlocked 16mm projectors. -- RS Winner, Director's Prize, Black Maria Film Festival, 1997.

Sets out to portray six phases of life using only the photographic image of a single tree (supplemented by several other neighboring trees), thus exploring the possibilities of altering our experience by changing the way we think rather than by changing our circumstances. This attention to the experience of perception is amplified by the procedure of making the film, which was edited entirely in-camera (except for the black intervals between sections). - RS

Originally part of a solo dance performance, which, like the film, reveals the musings of a young woman about herself and her life.

Composed and edited in camera, is not so much concerned with the recording of experience as in the structuring of the mundane into the formally elegant, weaving the ordinary into myth. Footage from two beaches where fate required that I be was combined with footage from a necessary cross-country drive. The second part goes further by going nowhere at all, being composed entirely from shots of the view from my window. The result is an effort to find beauty in a personal experience of death and despair. -- RS Picture and sound by Robert Schaller, with sound assistance by John Drumheller.

A 16mm sound film focusing on how experience is filtered by the mental state and history we bring to it, with the film itself being a record of how of the experience of making it was noticed and translated into memory. I composed a detailed shooting score according to musical proportions, and took this plan into the world where I "performed" it, filling it with whatever I saw: what it became was determined as much by what I brought to it -- the score -- as by what I encountered physically in shooting it. In keeping with the dichotomy between plan and chance, all editing was pre-planned and executed in-camera, and all specific image content spontaneous. As such, it became a model for the interplay between immediate perception and preexisting mental states characteristic of life. -- RS Picture and sound by Robert Schaller.