Brian Dilg

What do Serena Williams, Keith Jarrett, Tiger Woods, and Michael Jordan have in common? Is the secret to their overwhelming success just innate talent? How much of it is a result of what they did with it? The good news about greatness is that whatever natural talent you might have, the overwhelming contributor to success is within our control It has more to do with a stubborn insistence on working smart, on attacking your weaknesses, and above all, on consistent effort. There is no magic wand that makes excellence easy, but there is no greater satisfaction than knowing that the credit for your success lays in your own efforts.

Brian directed and shot this documentary for Al Gore's NGO, the Climate Reality Project. It was a privilege to portray one of the most progressive green energy centers in the world, a tiny dairy village in Bavaria, southern Germany.

 In 1999, the town council of Wildspoldsreid in Germany (population: 2,600) set out to become completely energy independent by 2020 with renewables. Today, using a combination of wind, solar, hydropower, biomass, and biogas, the town produces seven times its energy needs - and sells the rest to the grid.

A narrative short film that Brian wrote and directed in 2014-2015, an acerbic comedy about a young boy looking for answers to his father's death who stumbles into the back yard of a foul-mouthed English teacher trying to drink herself into oblivion after a painful divorce. For full cast and crew information, check our IMDB page. Double Negative is part of The 3x3 Project.

Fearless (1993) is the kind of earnest film on serious themes that rarely manages to get made in Hollywood. It's a masterclass in great filmmaking as well as a vital lesson about the struggles to make and market serious films in a business that is serious chiefly about profits. It's become an overlooked masterpiece thanks in part to the way Warner Brothers limited its theatrical release and thus never brought it to the kind of widespread attention it deserved.

In this essay, I analyze the creative choices that makes it such an enduring and moving classic as we're guided through the process of writing and making it in conversation with novelist and screenwriter Rafael Yglesias.

A music video for "That's What I Like" that I shot for New York City-based band Spottiswoode & His Enemies, directed by Andrew Blackwell.

Children need to believe that their caretakers have their best interests at heart. But what if someone in your family is both your hero - and your nemesis? How do you follow your own path and still remain loyal to your family?

There’s no formula guaranteed to make all stories great, but there is one technique that keeps audiences glued to their seats more reliably than any other. This essay explains it in detail, accompanied by examples from great films and using Barry Levinson’s 1988 masterpiece “Rain Man" as a case study. I also wrote a two-part blog post on this topic that goes into additional detail here.

Rock and roll meets silent film classic when composer Giovanni Spinelli is commissioned by archivist and director Paolo Cherchi Usai to write and perform a modern wall-to-wall rock score for the 1927 silent film masterpiece "Sunrise" - with only one electric guitar.

There is a saying that goes something like this: pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. While life unavoidably includes disappointments, betrayals, and setbacks, the pain they cause is different from any suffering that can result. Suffering is the result of wishing that things were different than they are - especially things that you can’t control - or by believing that your inability to control everything makes you a victim.

The purpose of this essay was to face life as it was at the time it was made - imperfect, messy, frustrating, a work in progress, but never without beauty. I needed to remind myself that if you give yourself a break from thinking about your grievances long enough to look around, you will find beauty in every day. You'll never be able to control everything that happens to you, but the meaning you assign to those circumstances is always entirely up to you.

During the pandemic when all I could think about was the misery we were experiencing, I was fortunate to stumble on this insight from Viktor Frankl, who endured Nazi concentration camps and the loss of everyone he loved. He focused on the fact that while by any measure, he had lost everything, no one could control his thoughts. He concentrated on exercising his freedom in the space between the things that happened to him and his ability to choose what to think about - in his case, about the things he planned to do after the war. This gave him hope for the future. He survived to become one of the most influential psychologists of the 20th century, authoring 39 books and affecting millions with his message of hope.

A Hardknocks sportswear spec commercial that Brian shot for director Fred Guerrier.

A beautifully horrifying thriller short film that Brian shot for director and long-time collaborator Jeremiah Kipp, written by Joseph Fiorillo, and starring Lukas Hassel, Cristina Doikos, and Robin Rose Singer.

More about director Jeremiah Kipp on his web site.

A fantastically taut thriller in the vein of his favorite 70s influences, Brian shot this short film for William Speruzzi, about a man whose promotion hinges on taking a disturbingly intrusive medical exam. After a home visit with his pregnant wife and six-year-old son present, he finds out what the medical examiner’s true agenda was. It took home the prize for best cinematography at the 2016 Chain NYC Film Festival.

Find out more at director William Speruzzi's web site. The Exam is part of The 3x3 Project.

Supercat struggles to survive a very. Boring. Day. Just a little home video I made about the Supercat, who gets very annoyed and bored when it's too wet to go outside - by his own choice, mind you...