Happy 3rd Birthday to us

I'm in Hawaii now sitting in the same room where I started plotting out Noise Film three years ago. I have no new insights today. I just wanted to note the occasion. Feel free to send presents however.

Oops...

It somehow seems tacky that the plots of films would be advanced by a slip of the lip. It really stuck out in Panic Room... "Well, I'll just take my million dollars and [ooops]..." Yet, slips of the lips have advanced the plot in quality films as well —Godfather II (I knew it was you Phredo!) and Brave and the Beautiful.

Progress report + balls of fury + Panic Room + Sky Captain + Bad and the Beautiful

We're still waiting on Dan for sound design and music. That's it for the progress report. Tonight I watched part of Balls of Fury. How can a movie have so many "ins" and yet suck so much? A takeoff of Enter the Dragon with ping pong + the smokin' Maggie Q + seeing what Jason Scott Lee is up to. It's a no brainer that I would rent it but it was really unwatchable.

I saw Panic Room last week. It was also unbelievably sucky but good enough to watch the whole thing. The movie was weak structurally--there just wasn't enough to push it along. The idea is that the bad guys are trying to break into the panic room to snatch a treasure. But it eventually becomes ridiculous. After surviving all sorts of mishaps the bad guys just keep on going. I mean, at a certain point, wouldn't you just give up? By the end, the characters have just become necessities of the plot.

Sean has been watching Sky Captain again so I've been thinking about that too. It's similar to Star Wars of course in that they both are influenced by mid-century serials. The main difference is that Star Wars is a modernist project while Sky Captain is a post-modernist one. Sky Captain really has no center. It is as if Kerry Conran just came up with a bunch of images he wanted to see and then developed the thinnest of narratives to string everything together. What we are left with is a pastiche that doesn't really make any sense. Example: the robot fight at the beginning of the movie. The robots are obviously straight out of the Max Fleischer Superman shorts but with a glandular disorder: they are about 20 stories tall (the comparable robots in Superman were just a little taller than a human). They made for a good fight in Superman because they were sized similarly and possessed similar capabilities. In Sky Captain, however, it makes no sense that a single plane is fighting a troop of robots on the ground. Plus, where is the military? Plus, exactly what kind of para-military organization does Sky Captain run? Everything in the film is thought out image-first making the film nonsensical and more impotantly, leaving it without propulsion.

One film I did watch all the way through was The Bad and the Beautiful. I can't believe I never heard of that one. It's a good film about films, a classic starring Kirk Douglas. Lots of good observations about filmmaking... it's one of the few films about films, paradoxically, that has something to say about making movies. Well worth watching if you haven't seen it.

cheetah3d + microtonic

I stumbled upon this 3d program I really like called cheetah3d. Selling for only $129, this Mac-only 3D modeling, rendering and animation program is clean and mean with a great, easy to use interface. Just clearing out the features you hardly use is a feature in itself. Really nice. It's got me rendering a spaceship taking off at this very moment. Plus, this thing is full of features—IK, F-curves, radiosity, you name it. The one problem for me is that there's no motion blur. I wrote the program's author and he said that's high on the to-do list. For the kind of stuff I do—a couple of 3D animations here and there output with alpha channels, this promises to be a nice package.

The program reminds me a bit of soniccharge microtonic. Like cheetah, sonic charge is essentially a one-man operation. Their one product--microtonic--is an inexpensive, quality software drum synth with a definite electronic vibe.

Bloomin' daisies!

I'm pretty proud of my blooming daisy video for the current theater project. I wanted a stop motion type effect, sort of like the blooming flower in the title for Magnolia. I was actually going to do it stop motion but I couldn't figure out a way to animate the silk daisy I bought. So I figured out another way to do it. With my hands in black socks in front of black paper, I pulled the daisy through a toilet paper tube that I had narrowed down. Played backwards it creates a beautiful blossoming effect.

My attempt to create a burn element wasn't so successful. I lit some black paper in the bathtub hoping to get a slow smouldering burn that I could use for a traveling matte. But the paper burned unevenly into a weird smile shape and then the whole thing went up in flames. The fire alarm went off and the tub was filled with black ash. Bad idea. I ended up using the CC burned film plug in that comes with After Effects.

TV vs. film vfx

Talked to the director again today. He wanted three changes: make the bombs skinnier, make more of them at the end and extend all the animations to 40 seconds. All in all, pretty easy.

I happened to read this tonight in Cinefx 105. It goes well with what I've been writing about for the past couple of days.

KEVIN KUTCHAVER: I think the best thing about TV is its fluidity. On films, we're just taking our marching orders from the visual effects supervisor. They've already spent a year planning everything out; and so, we are just there to carry out a plan that has already been put in place. It is more rigid. In television, often we're working with a cut that isn't locked, so things are looser.

CINEFX: That seems counterintuitive. You'd think TV would be more rigid because of the lack of time.

KEVIN KUTCHAVER: But see, since there isn't time or money for preplanning, shots have to be created on the fly and even though there is pressure in that, it can make for a very creative, high-octane work atmosphere.

SAM NICHOLSON: In contrast, features can become painting by numbers. By the time you even bid a feature the shots have been boarded, they've been prevized, they've been chewed up and spit out 50 times—and then, after you finish it, you do 60 or 70 turnarounds on one shot! So by the time you're done with it, you hate the shot. But in television, you have a meeting with the director to get a creative connection going; and then they say, 'Okay, go out and do it.'

Shim Ch'ong

More information file images. This is from another theater piece I worked on.

Noise "contact sheet"

I'm putting together my info file for school so I made this page of color-corrected Noise images.

The haircut problem & unplayable effects

If vfx are performances, then perhaps they should be directed like performances. Rather than result-directing fx, you'd treat the fx person more like an actor. The idea wouldn't be to get the fx creator to do what you want (result directing). You'd get them to make something that works. A totally different goal. I realize that I've been thinking about this since college. It's the haircut problem. Do you tell the stylist exactly what you want (a little off the sides, not too much off the top) or do you leave it up to the stylist? The best approach is to find someone good and let them do what they want. It all comes down to casting which is something producers and fx supervisors often do take into account.

Next is considering what is an playable vs. unplayable effect. Certain things were just never meant to be seen on screen. That's the conclusion I came to with the bird effect in Noise film. For whatever reason, the scene was unplayable so I changed it. In acting, a good example of an unplayable scene is anything with an emerging split personality. You can play it for comedy. Steven Martin was great in All of Me and as was Jim Carey in The Mask. But for drama? It can't be done. It's the scene that made acting road kill of Glen Close in Maxie and Halle Berry in Catwoman. It's a testament to Alfred Molina's skill that the split personality scene at the end of Spiderman 2 doesn't stand out as being ridiculous.

There's a difference between uncinematic and anticinematic. A third act exposition is uncinematic. You have someone talking for a long time (again, Sleepy Hollow is my favorite example) or in my case, you just find a way to rationalize putting text up on screen that reveals the plot. The exposition needs to be done so you just try to make it as painless as possible.

But certain images are anticinematic. They just shouldn't be put on film. Like the switcheroo in The da Vinci code that I complained about in an earlier post. There's just no way to make that work. That scene looked like bad TV because that's what bad TV is. It's filled with unplayable, anticinematic scenes that could only exist in a writer's imagination. An example of an unplayable effect that was in fact, never played, occurred in a Smooth Crimina-era Michael Jackson music video. If I remember correctly, the story goes that Jackson wanted Rick Baker to do a robot transformation that started with metal coming out of Jackson's pores. Baker told him not to do it saying, "it looks ugly and I don't think Michael Jackson should look ugly."

fx supervisors as designers

It occurred to me that one thing I'm doing for this project is serving as vfx supervisor. From the little I know, it seems that fx supervisors are really like designers in the same way that production designers are designers. They think about looks and approaches but don't necessarily do all the work. I think that's why the bird-into-planes animation was intriguing enough to engage several minds simultaneously. As designers, we're trying to think of the best way to solve the problem. What's interesting about Ben's approach is that it's theoretically possible but not practically possible. Yes, I knew it was possible to find videos of birds and planes. The problem is finding videos that function as plates—with the right bird flying the right way totally isolated and easy to key. Still, before long it will be possible to follow Ben's approach. The information is there in the video. There just needs to be some inexpensive software that extracts and stabilizes the image, interpolates missing areas (or allows you to do so) and creates an animated and textured 3D model from the data. In the end, it's interesting that for this one animation we came up with three different approaches: Ben's (stitch together videos), Craig's (morph-animate still images) and mine (use 2.5 D images and a simple dissolve).

The assignment that launched a thousand kibbitzes

I finished versions 1 of the bird-into-plane sequence and the rain-into-bombs sequence. The bird-into-planes sequence seemed to generate all sorts of comments. Ben had this idea that it should look like a fireworks explosion where the birds come to a point and then the planes accelerate out of that point. Then he had the idea that the way to do it would be to get a video clip of a bird and a video clip of a plane and somehow merge them together. Not only that, after I told him "yes and where am I supposed to get footage" he found me some clips on the web. Then Craig got into the act. On Thursday I asked him if he wanted to work on that sequence. He didn't say anything so I figured he didn't want to do it. But today he sent me a clip. He used a true morph so it was interesting seeing that. Plus, like Ben, he had the planes accelerating out of frame. But the birds were too flat. Plus, I was already done. Oddly enough, the bird video that Ben sent was also way too flat looking. Plus the bird wasn't flapping wings and worse, parts of the bird were going out of frame. So I'd have to track it, rebuild the wings, and then rotoscope to get this bird working and it wasn't very good to begin with. Very cute though Ben, just like when Sean tries to help me make dinner.

It's funny the acceleration idea kept coming up. Ben later looked at my finished video and then decided it would look OK if I did an anticipation and then accelerated out after the transition to the jet. I kep telling him that if I accelerated out, no one would see it. Plus I think the anticipation would make the sequence look too cartoony. These are tiny jets here. Craig's acceleration was way too fast. In the current version I transition the end planes more quickly so we end with the feeling of planes rather than birds. This probably doesn't work that well though. If I have to make changes to this animation, I'll probably make the transition later so the audience will be able to see it better. Seeing the transition is more important than ending with planes I think.

So the symbiont makes you Italian?

While rendering last night I watched Spiderman 3. It got bad reviews so I wasn't expecting much. I thought it was OK. Some nice relationship moments. A lot of unrealized potential. Some horrible dialogue ("I can change!"). That Topher Grace praying scene really was terrible. Even though it was shot it a church there is nothing redeemable about that sequence. I didn't mind the dancing scene that so many people hated, but I could have done without it. What seemed weird to me was the way that the Symbiont made Pete Parker channel Tony Manero. All in all an odd film. It had a kind of emotional presence that still lingers. Yet it was really uneven. The Mary Jane-shunning Peter stuff barely made sense. The ending scene in the sunset: too much, show a little taste! I didn't care for the monstrous Sand Man. I liked the human-size Sand Man featured in the comics. I have a reprint of the first appearance of the Sand Man (drawn by Steve Ditko). Spiderman saves the day by vacuuming him up!

Speaking of Tony Manero, I remember reading a story about John Travolta filming Saturday Night Fever. There's a scene where he's supposed to crawl out on a beam high above the ground to rescue a friend. But Travolta protested saying his character would never crawl. He wanted to walk on the beam. And Travolta refused to play it any other way.

It made me wonder if part of what constitutes good acting is knowing when to fight battles. It also seems to me that actors have much more clout than the production team because they can't be easily replaced. For example, if I refused to do a scene the way the director wanted it, I could be replaced easily. How would anyone know?

Bombs away

I'm currently rendering falling bombs for the play. It takes forever the way Cinema 4D does motion blur. It takes 17 passes to render each frame so just doing a 1 second render takes a lot longer than you'd expect. LIke most things, it works MUCH faster the sooner you can get into the 2d world so I'm rendering the 3D animations with alpha channels and compositing them in After Effects rather than working completely in 3D. 2.5 D, my friend. Ahhh. This is one of those learning-on-the-job projects. I had to learn how to adjust the F-curves (acceleration curves) and do a stretch in Cinema 4D. It wasn't that hard, but because I'm using an older version (8) and I don't have the docs (they didn't get installed on my machine for some reason), it's all trial and error. Plus, I don't know the software that well since I generally avoid working in 3D whenever possible.

I've been thinking about the seeming contradictions in my thinking about noise film. If you remember, one of the things that interested me in the project was the way it was based on a non-cinematic idea. And then, more recently, I've been recounting how we didn't force certain ideas to work when they didn't seem filmable. So which is it?

Theory vs. practice: more birds!

For the past few weeks I've been conceptualizing and prototyping the visual effects for the play. The projections are taking place on the ceiling. This is one of the most difficult aspects of creating the animations. Since the projection is on the ceiling, not on the wall, there are some unique problems involved. My thought was that I'd try to convert all of the animations into ones that would work specifically within this context. For example, the director wanted an animation of falling rain that then turned into falling bombs. I was afraid that an up-and-down orientation (drops falling from top of frame to bottom) would be confusing for both the character's orientation on stage and for the audience. So I changed the animation to a ceiling orientation. In my version, rain drops ripple outwards and then turn into bomb blasts. It's as if we're viewing everything from a top (or bottom) view. It doesn't matter where you're seated. An additional benefit of this in my thinking is that it made for better sound design possibilities. You can more easily sync a rain drop sound to ripples and an explosion sound to an explosion. Otherwise, you're left putting in washy rain and bomb sounds with no specific audio-video connection.

Well, the director didn't go for all that. He really wanted everything happening up-and-down, vertically. He also didn't like my take on the birds-into-planes sequence. He really wanted it as he specified... with the birds flying from the bottom of the frame up through the top of the frame instead of sort of stationary as I proposed.

So I spent most of yesterday and today trying to figure out how to make the animations work. The first thing was to understand the nature of the design problem which has to do with putting theory into practice. On Noise film, if there was anything that didn't work in prototype form, it didn't make it into the show; the shot got redesigned. That's what took so long to shoot that project.

But the animations I'm designing for this project are created theory-first. This approach approximates Hollywood feature-film practice. I was reading an interesting article about Robert Rodriguez. One of the reasons he serves as fx supervisor on his films is it enables him, as director, to change a shot if its fx cost is too expensive or unwieldy. in other words, there are often times when you can make a minor modification to a shot that makes it less costly to produce but doesn't affect the story. But in traditional Hollywood terms, an fx supervisor can't tell the director what to do. The hierarchy doesn't permit it.

This case is similar so I have to make the shot work as described. What the director's envisioning is something like the image at the top of this post. It's as if we're looking overhead seeing a bird flying. It then transitions into an airplane. The plane is about the same size as the bird because it's higher in the sky. It also has the same apparent speed because although it is traveling faster, it is so much farther away. The sequence needs to take place within 20 seconds.

The whole thing is much more complicated than it seems. First, there's the speed. If the bird flies too fast, it won't register and won't fill the 20 second timing. To make the bird fly more slowly, it has to be positioned higher in the sky. The problem now is that the bird is small since it is positioned farther away from the camera. The speed is right but the bird is hard to see! The other difficulty is one of convention. As some of my early tests indicate, it looks unusual to see a bird flying above us over a stationary camera. We see them fly and then our camera moves to follow them. They swerve or they swarm. But you don't often see birds flying in a relatively straight line overhead at a speed and size necessary for them to recognizably change to a different shape. This image is more of a conceptual, poetic image. It is an image that exists primarily in the mind.

One of the first things I did to make the shot work better is put some particle clouds in the shot moving against the bird. This helps because it creates a rationale for slowing down the bird: the bird is flying into the wind. Therefore I'm able to make the bird bigger. The other thing I did was slow down the clip. Rather than actually add frames to the cycle, I time stretched it. The idea was to create something that looks like a bird flying in slow motion. (I'm using the great flocking birds tutorial for AE at Creative Cow BTW.)

The other concern is one of approach. I did one version of the animation that was relatively photorealistic. But it just didn't fit in with the other animations which are more stylized. So now I'm trying a version with very stylized birds, almost like bird icons. This also helps in that it fits with the conceptual nature of the image since what we're seeing on screen is visual language instantiated within space.

What makes the whole thing really interesting to me is thinking about how certain approaches affect the visual appearance of things. It is almost as if what makes a Hollywood film look like a Hollywood film is the way its images stem from writing. From script to director and then to fx supervisor, the image follows a trajectory in which the idea precedes practice. This is what gives many fx films their certain look. The Star Wars prequels, for example, all have that theory-in-practice look although I'm not sure exactly what characterizes this look! The giant battle of the titans scene in Matrx 3 also has that appearance. It has something to do with the way with the physics of that scene works: two giant forces meeting in battle but propelled by flight. These are scenes in which ideas are visualized, theory turned into practice.

Theater and visual effects

I had a nice talk with Dan the other day. In terms of the film I told him that the only motivational strategy I had was guilt. He's trying to carve out some time to work on the sound but he's super busy with a conference and a major publication in the works. I'm really hoping he can give us something in January. We'll see.

In the meantime I took on a short two-week project. I'm doing some video transitions for a play. Here's what I love about the theater—

>It's not photorealistic. Although I often get asked to do visual effects-type stuff, there's a good match with my own sensibility. It's kind of fun to play around with pyro and other effects. I just don't like it when the end result has to be absolutely photorealistic.

>Theater is inherently modernist-looking, a good match for the way my art looks (flat).

>The role of the designer. What I really like about the theater is the way that the designers work with directors. It's really different from other client-designer relationships (like in graphic design). In this case you're working with someone who comes from an arts perspective. Being a designer is like being a supporting cast member in an ensemble.

>There's something fun about working in the background where you're not the one always responsible for carrying the show.

>For whatever, the subject matter of the shows I've worked on seem to address the kinds of issues I find interesting (in a broad way).

Fires and the tiny Starship Troopers 2

I was rather proud of myself that it wasn't until I saw this photo in the LA Times that I thought to myself, "hey, I wonder if I know anyone with a burned down house that I can shoot?"

I watched part of Starship Troopers 2 the other day. I was reading a Phil Tippet interview about the film and I was curious to see how he handled the miniscule budget and short shooting schedule. To his credit, on the DVD commentaries, Tippet and company don't take the film too seriously. At the same time, though, I see the film as a good example of first-time director bad decisions.

Faced with the tiny budget, Tippet and his writer decided to go with a "monster in the house" approach ala Ridley Scott's Alien. Not a great idea to start with. But the main problem is that whole thing looks tiny, miniscule. Tippet flooded the sets with fog because he thought that otherwise HD looked terrible. But fog always looks cheap, like Roger Corman's Undead. It looks like it's there to obscure the lack of a set. There was some money spent on creature effects and lots of aliens. But they should have spent some of it on some digital set extensions or mattes. Give us the feeling that we're going somewhere. Instead, we spend the whole movie in a dusty, dreary night environment. They also shot really tight, like our film. I never before realized how obvious a dodge that is. It feels like everyone is framed huge so you don't see the light stands just out of frame.

Mi Familia

I started watching Robert Rodriguez' Planet Terror the other day, but didn't even bother to fast forward to the end. It felt like Rodriguez equivocated through the whole thing. Sometimes he ventured into grindhouse satire mode. At other times, he reverted to his own film vocabulary. I also remember watching one shot that didn't make any sense. The camera cranes up while a car drives into frame, but the crane shot just keeps going and doesn't end anywhere. Plus Rose McGowan's acting wasn't very good. It got me wondering if Rodriguez was wearing too many hats. He's writer, director, DP, editor and composer on this one. He probably helped duplicate the DVDs in his spare time.

Then today I found out that Rodriguez is divorcing his wife of 16 years and is now engaged to McGowan. Now it makes sense. He was in love with his actress! That's why he wasn't thinking straight. It's like Irreconcilable Differences, where Ryan O'Neal's film director character dumps Shelley Long for the ingenue played by Sharon Stone. And O'Neal goes off the deep end financing and directing Stone in a musical Civil War pic (based loosely on the Heaven's Gate debacle) which turns into a disaster.

What's interesting to me now is how this will affect Rodriguez' writing. His work has often been about family, one of the central themes in the Spy Kids series. He took the idea so seriously that he got his kids to help him write Shark Boy and Lava Girl (it screens like it was written by children). Publicly, Rodriguez and his ex-wife are on good terms and she is still slated to produce some of his upcoming films. But still, there must be some kind of repercussion from the breakup of a long marriage with five children. I wonder how it will all play out in Rodriguez' films? I can imagine that one of his next pictures might be titled, "Geez, look at her, can you blame me?"

Not with a bang, Ice Age 2 and Jack Kirby

Last week Ben started work on the downstairs of his house so he returned the remaining red room and green room props. Then today I decided to clean out the garage so most of the garage set is down now. It was fun seeing all the old props and devices... the spinner controller and video stabilizer that Ben built, the jury-rigged wiring that Erik and I did... and lots and lots of props. The old school telephone. The Ward Airline TV. The unused shrine prop. So much time and effort invested in what is now a bunch of MiniDV tapes sitting in a plastic shoebox. This is the way the film ends, not with a bang but a whimper—sets slowly being taken down and at a certain point, no going back for reshoots.

Sean's watching Ice Age 2 today which is really terrible, one of those characterization-by-talking movies. The writers try to advance the story through dialogue then put in action interludes. A lot like Cars. And of course, don't forget the golden rule of bad films—if you want someone to fall in love with you, save their life!

It got me thinking about comic book artist Jack Kirby. Stan Lee said that even without words you can look at a Kirby layout and it makes sense. And it's really true. Kirby's layouts are less like looking at storyboards and more like looking at screen captures of an animation taken at 3 second intervals. There's lots and lots of repeated information. It's funny. In my mind, Kirby is about flying fists and dozens of people flying around and weird power auras and bombastic action and things moving quickly. But when you look at those panels, everything is actually spelled out very deliberately. You hear so much about "story telling" in comics. I wonder if this just means filling in all the logistical blanks—like understanding the difference between painting and film, and between montage and continuity.

The dialogue in those Lee/Kirby comics has to work only well enough to keep the viewer engaged while looking through highly continuous illustration. Take a look at the page above. You know exactly what's happening—that the Hulk is "transporting" to another place. Yet, it takes an entire page to move at the speed of light, talk about continuity. The dialogue is almost like filler—in this case literally when the caption reads, "the scientific principle is too complicated to explain!" So maybe part of the success of the Marvel Silver Age is use of visuals, not dialogue, to drive the story, a result of the unusual Marvel development methodology and Kirby's high-continuity sensibility.

CQ: Director, direct the audience!

Still waiting on Dan before continuing work on our film. On a side note, I checked out Photoshop CS3/After Effects CS3. What Adobe calls the perspective grid is actually a form of photogrammetry which could prove very useful for our project. You can take a photo, input perspective information then you can do some simple camera moves on the now 2.5D photo in After Effects. Very nice for exteriors.

Tonight I watched the beginning of Roman Coppola's CQ, which is about the making of a Barbarella-esque go go spy film. I watched the first 20 minutes or so and it seemed like it was going to be one of those indy-vibed, pining from afar, work-simulates-life-simulates-work things. So I just stopped watching it. I realized that a director has to control an audience's expectations. Coppola set me up so I believed I knew exactly where the film was going and how it was going to end. So there was nothing to do but turn it off. Whether I was right or wrong is immaterial. The point is I really thought I knew where it was going.

This contrasts with Zhang Yimou's Hero. One of the things I love about the film is the way that Yimou sets you up to believe that the film is going in one direction. Then he takes it in a totally different direction. Once he does that, he's got me. I'll sit through the whole thing because he proved that he's my master.

Buzz Light Year of Star Command: the adventure begins & another birth!

The other day I asked Erik if he missed working on the movie. He said yeah. He also said he missed reading the blog. I asked him why and he said, "it was something to look at." Not a ringing endorsement, but I know what he means. I have a lot of blogs that I look at just because they're something to follow.

Sean's been watching the Buzz Lightyear traditionally-animated movie. Pretty primitive. I remember the other month I speculated that one of the qualities of a B-movie is that it doesn't have any "moments." If that's true, then Buzz Lightyear is definitely all-B. Somehow I had it in my mind that in animation you can do anything. If you can draw it you can do it. But after thinking about it, I realized that this isn't true. You can set your story in any place you like. But the more animation you have the more it costs and the more backgrounds you have the more it costs. Like those other B-movies, Buzz Lightyear's direction is more about connecting the dots than anything else. You can follow the story, but most of the (surprisingly decent) jokes get swallowed and no moments are ever created. I think I realized this in the ship crash landing scene. Instead of actually seeing the landing, the ship disappears into the distance. Then we see the ship already crashed with smoke coming out. That's the way you would have directed it if you were shooting live to save money. But this is animation! You would think they could have animated the crash. That would have been what—48 frames? But I guess not. So the film has an overall flatness and cheapness about it. It would be a good exercise to think about how certain scenes could be reshot to make them more momentous.

In other news, Gracie just gave birth to a son (I think)! So in the time we've been shooting she had time to get pregnant and have a baby. I think our goal should be to finish the film before Ben's next baby arrives.

The deafening silence of music being scored and people being consumed

Well, that posting gap was probably the longest I've had in the past couple of years. The reasons: the beginning of the school year, work on some other projects, Sean going to a new school and the hand off of version 33 to Dan for scoring/sound design. For now, some mini reviews of films I've seen.

Astronaut Farmer.
Subtitle: Desperately seeking poetry
Probably one of the worst movies I've fast-forwarded through. From the opening shots of Billy Bob Thornton riding a horse in a space suit, this one has grand poetic aspirations thwarted by images that don't make sense and an overall directorial clumsiness. I have a thing for backyard rockets, but this was really terrible.

Grizzly Man
I liked this quite a bit. Not a flattering portrait of Timothy Treadwell whose love for bears was apparently surpassed only by the size of his ego and the depth of his delusion.

Inland Empire
I watched part of this. Amazing transfer of PD-150 Standard DV footage to film aided by a super (expensive) gadget box. I liked the rabbits. But it made me realize that part of what I enjoyed about Mulholland Drive was Naomi Watts' fresh-faced appeal and simultaneous quirkiness (I liked how she repeated everyone's name in a seeming attempt at memorization). It was the surface quality of that movie that made it watchable. Less so with Inland Empire, which seems to be only about oddball characters and mysterious moments in typical Lynch-ian fashion.

Chased by Dinosaurs
This stars Nigel Marven in an imaginary nature doc in prehistoric times. It's well-performed and pretty amusing, like the croc hunter with visual effects. Marven, an actual zoologist, goes back in time, traipses among prehistoric beasts, and almost gets eaten many times.

Prehistoric Park
Follow up also featuring Nigel Marven. This one blurs the line and goes from imaginary nature documentary to all-out drama. I was waiting for Marven to fall in love with the blond vet's assistant thereby provoking the jealousy of the just-comely-enough vet herself. The idea behind this one is that Marven is going back in time to collect prehistoric animals to bring them back to the present to save them from extinction. A strangely colonialist effort. This one doesn't work as well as Chased by Dinosaurs. One major reason is that they try to have it both ways. On the one hand they want it to be a reality show/documentary. On the other hand, a lot of the shots are designed for maximum eye appeal without regard to authenticity. It's like an awkward blend of a Hollywood film with a pseudo-doc.

Koi... Mil Gaya
The first Bollywood science fiction film. I didn't mind the goofiness of this one but I was surprised by the production values which I thought would be higher. Has the goofiness that we Americans expect of international efforts. I was half expecting Bumblee Man to jump out from behind a tree. Watching this made me realize that Miike's Happiness of the Katakuris is simply Bollywood wrought Japanese.

Errata
Earlier I wrote that director Albert Pyun was a real-life Ed Wood. Ben informs me that Ed Wood was, in fact, a real person.

Did you miss me?

I've been busy getting ready for school. One thing I've been doing is following the new iMacs. I've been needing something more powerful with a bigger screen to do color correction and mastering. But when I saw the screen I was shocked and disappointed. The shiny glass just does not make sense. Look at one at the Apple store and all you can see is the person behind you. iPhonemania has also died down. Unlike a few weeks ago, you can easily find one in an Apple store to play with. The interface seems nice, but really, in the end, how interesting is a phone? I played with one for about a minute.

It's a wrap!

It just occurred to me that with Ben and Erik done, we are essentially wrapped. Not only that, but because of the way we shot and edited at the same time, the film is now 99% done, including most of the visual effects. Ben and Erik tell me that we're supposed to have a wrap party with food and actresses. Being socially and cinematically ignorant, that never even occurred to me. We'll see. The major things left are a few easy pickups, sound design + music, color grading and mastering.

I just finished editing in the footage we shot Friday. The desert clue footage--not sure about that. I'll have to get some feedback on whether it makes any sense. The ending hallway stuff is really beautiful. The lighting is great, just natural lighting. The phone stuff looks fine. Hopefully it will all work.

And the winner is....

The winner of the complete-the-story contest is Ben Davis. I thought Ben's entry made the most sense within the dramatic context and had the most internal logic. Ben wins a copy of Living in Oblivion (Canadian edition). Congratulations Ben!

Ben Davis is done!

We shot today for about two hours. I now declare Ben Davis done. Actually, Erik is probably done as well since I can do the remaining few shots by myself. Go get your hair cut Ben.

Feedback on entries so far—still time to enter!

We now have a contest with entries from Ben and David. Erik, John and anyone else... enter soon!

Ben and David, feel free to address the following in a comment somewhere. These are just the off-the-top-of-my-head responses.

Ben
This plot outline reminds me of the classic Star Trek episode Errand of Mercy, which sucks us into believing that the aliens are passive and incompetent. At the end, though, we find that we're the ones who are the problem. Great meaning, but dramatically not too strong. First, as Hitchcock points out, audiences generally want to be in the superior position (e.g., they know a bomb is going off but the characters don't). They often resent being put in an inferior position. Second, and more important, is that these kinds of stories are often dramatically weak. The audience participation aspect is involving, but the characters on screen sometimes don't have much to do. So what happens after Valerie says "I agree with the director." Where does all that energy and momentum go? Also, there's the risk of creating an artificial buildup. If I'm the audience I might be inclined to think "why didn't the trainers just talk to Valerie before they got high and mighty?" It seems the story depends too much on this one twist and may not have enough drama to sustain momentum.

David
I like the audition segment but I'm wondering what this would actually look like. Keep in mind that Valerie's just a janitor without real access to the animals. Is this a full fledged whale show or a more realistic interaction with the whale? How would Valerie's genius come across? Also, if Valerie is such a lone wolf, then why would she let herself get involved in an audition in the first place? Wouldn't she resist that sort of thing? Also, your story implies (a bit) that Valerie likes to use her position as a charity case to get things. Actually a few undergrads are like that. They present themselves as weak, underprivileged minorities and then depend on the charity of instructors to get by. It would be interesting to see this developed. The drugs/alcohol angle seems a bit superimposed on the story structure. Traditionally, the ending should be surprising yet inevitable. The drugs are surprising, but not yet inevitable.

CURRENT ever-changing shot list

REMAINING SHOTS--

new infinite motion map
cutaways for last scene
pix of ben's distressed finger
falling stars

FX shots
--desert roto electric lines

Albert Pyun, Scott Shaw & Zack Snyder's 300

I've long been fascinated by director Albert Pyun. A bit older than me and raised in Hawaii, Pyun (bio) is something of a real-life Ed Wood. Despite his auspicious start as a member of Takao Saito's (Akira Kurosawa's DP) crew, Pyun is known for churning out dozens of Z-grade, direct-t0-nowhere genre films. Constantly battling low budgets and interference by producers (read a fascinating article), Pyun's talent lies in helming a 20 year directing career that exists almost in spite of itself. I find Pyun's approach to directing really interesting—

No storyboards. Ever. I worked pretty organically. I just go where my impulses lead and mostly where the budget and time limitations dictate! I have always called my style of filmmaking "evolutionary filmmaking" I take the limits of budget and time and try to stretch both to fit my vision. I don't try to fight the limitations. Instead I flow with them.

As a filmmaker, Pyun is reminiscent of Scott Shaw. Shaw is an obscurer-than-thou martial artist, author, musician, producer, mystic, film theorist and star of dozens of sub-B movies. In an online article, Shaw describes his approach as "zen filmmaking."

"Just what the hell is a Zen Film?" First of all, and perhaps most importantly, scripts are out the window. I like to say, "Scripts are for sissies." This doesn't mean that we let the actors improv. For the most part, you wouldn't want to see novice actors improving. The problem with scripts is that performances become so contrived when people have their lines memorized for days or weeks -- its just boring. To create a film what we do is Don or I comes up with a concept, we cast some people who fit the roles we have in mind, go out to a location, get inspired and then guide them through what they should say and do. As Don says, "Zen Filmmaking is like painting: you get a canvas, you get some paint, but you never know what the painting is going to look like until you apply the paint to the canvas."

And no, Shaw doesn't use storyboards either. I've never seen a Scott Shaw film. I've seen one Albert Pyun film—Captain America. The thing that struck me about it was its odd sense of proportion. Important moments weren't underscored. Unimportant moments were dragged out. This is in direct contrast to Zack Snyder's 300 which I watched over the weekend. 300 is all about moments—emphasizing them, deemphasizing them, creating them. Everything, from the virtual sets to the extensive use of time effects is about making moments.

This, of course, was one of the big concerns as we worked on our film. Dan and Ben constantly reminded me that I had to emphasize certain moments. Ben discovers the broken spinner. Ben finds the desert shrine. It wasn't enough to get the continuity and sequence right. The important moments had to come across as important which is why we had to pick up so many shots. You do capture energy and vitality when you "go with the flow" but it's too hard to control momentum, proportion and emphasis if you don't know how you're going to cut.

There's a delicate line that separates A and B movies, especially now that so many genre films have made it big time. For every Sam Raimi and James Cameron, there are Josh Beckers, Albert Pyuns and Donald G. Jacksons who toil in relative obscurity. The industry is small enough that many of these people have worked together. Josh Becker worked on Sam Raimi's early films before turning to Xena and other B-fare. The late Donald G. Jackson, the "Don" mentioned by Scott Shaw, worked camera on the original Terminator and directed 31 B-films. I suspect that one thing that separates the A from the B is the existence of moments that proportionately and meaningfully dovetail with the narrative, something made difficult by run and gun shooting.

Enter my contest! Prizes!

I know, it's embarassing. Why spend my time thinking up ideas for TV series—especially when I don't even want to see them through? (Read the previous post before continuing.) But if you've been following this blog for awhile, you already know why I do these things. First, I believe that non-result oriented play is almost always productive. Second, creating work "in the style of..." is a way of integrating analysis with performance. It's an artistic way of distilling the features and qualities of a media product and of answering the ontological question "what is this?"

To have fun with this idea, I created this contest. Here are the rules...

1. Read the previous post on TV series ideas.
2. In a short paragraph write an ending for the episode 6 scenario of the marine park series (see below). Post as a comment to this blog entry.
3. At least two people must enter for the prize to be awarded.
4. The prize will be a new DVD of my choosing from my collection.
5. You must post your answer by next week

Scenario
Episode 6
The Whale Whisperer

Valerie has been working at the marine park as a night janitor. During her free moments, she interacts with the killer whales and we discover that she has a special, extraordinary gift for communicating with the animals. In fact, she is able to get a normally reticent whale to perform. One of the park managers notices Valerie's gift and wants to make her a trainer. Valerie loves the idea. But the show's director argues that short and thick Valerie just doesn't have the "look" to be in front of an audience.

Hint:
Serious answers are more likely to win than non-serious answers. Don't have Valerie opening her own water park in Mexico to popular acclaim! Also, drama and moodiness counts. This show is supposed to be more "Studio 60" than "Baywatch." You can make slight changes to the scenario if needed or change Valerie's name. Actually, when I thought of this idea, Valerie was named Maria and this episode was going to be a comment on race and class. A semi-ironic ending plot twist is always a nice touch.

TV series ideas*

A couple of weeks ago Ben was telling me about his idea for a TV series. It would be about academics dealing with students. The idea came from a discussion we had about this blog. He asked me how many of my students read it and I said I think about two (David and Carlo, and I'm not even sure about Carlo). He thought that was weird and that he thought more students would want to see what their professors were up to. I told him probably the reverse was true—most students would expect me to be reading their blogs. So I guess this series would be about the weird relationships between students and professors.

We just got back from Seaworld and it occurred to me that a marine park would make a great setting for a TV series. I got the idea from seeing the trainers at the Shamu show. They were good performers, young, poised, articulate plus they were all wearing skin tight wet suits. We have the typical Aaron Sorkin setup here—a show within a show, professionals at work & sex appeal.

Here are some story ideas I came up with while watching the Shamu "Believe" show—

Pilot: Superman
Kyle, a trainer with a Superman tatoo is the new kid on the block. As a trainer he has it all—great swimmer, great performer and great with the animals. It's no surprise that quiet, long-haired Katie develops a crush on him. They date a while and seem to be serious. But then they run into a big problem—Takara, the killer whale. "You're jealous of a killer whale?" says Katie in amazement. Inter-species romance jokes follow. After some arguments and the b story wrap up we reach the conclusion—Katie really does love Takara more than Kyle as dramatized in a scene in which she elegantly swims with the whale in slow motion. In the last shot we see Katie at the tattoo parlor having the name "Lois Lane" tatooed on her shoulder.

Episode 2:
A trainer loses his nerve for performing after hearing about a killer whale's attack on a trainer at another park.

Episode 3:
A trainer's love of the spotlight causes the other trainers to question her commitment to the animals.

Episode 4:
The trainers struggle to learn a new show created by a young, hot-shot producer.

Episode 5:
The trainers face an ethical dilemma when they discover that the show's corporate parent is responsible for the deaths of dozens of dolphins.

*See the following post for an exciting contest!

Authors' reviews

I liked this review of Goya's Ghosts at AICN by Drew McWeeny. It's the kind of review that looks at a film from the inside out, the way a writer or director might look at it (McWeeny is a writer for TV and film). The review is partly about "is this good?" but mostly about "how does it (or does it not) work?"

fx-house burn

According to my list I have just one more effects shot but I'm sure I'll find more. Today I finished the house burn shot. This shot is taken from the public domain cartoon Audrey in Dreamland which seems to be ubiquitous on PD compilations. I had to extend the burning fire and then get rid of the "school" text on the front of the house. I tried slowing down the burn but it didn't look good so I just made several loops, mixed them up and repeated them. To get rid of the school text, I exported the individual frames and painted over the text until the flames covered it. Sounds tedious but it really wasn't. I painted no more than 18 frames. It literally took just a few minutes. I was thinking that if I made an fx reel, it would be pretty funny because everything would look so simple.

Not-yet-crazy person's room

Clue-building scene from A Beautiful Mind.

A Streetcar Named Desire

I saw A Streetcar Named Desire at the library the other day so I picked it up. The only thing I know about Streetcar is Brando, "Stellaaa" and the Simpson's musical version of it. I'd never seen one of the early Brando films before so it was interesting watching his performance. It looked like Brando was doing two things—performing and playing games. The game was trying to see if he could perform through disruptions—eating, scratching, flexing. Then he goes and turns the disruptions into performances. There's a section where he's throwing Blanche's coats around and a feather drifts into the air. Brando studies it—a moment that seems to take forever—then continues with his rant. Brando's method seemed to be less about naturalism and more about performing through novel problems.

It reminded me of Ben in a way. First of all, Ben has an earthy, compact look that reminds me of Brando. Maybe it's just the T-shirts. Second, Ben is always playing little games during his performances. Sometimes he's pretending to be a method actor and working through an emotion. Sometimes he tries to have no idea of what's going on, on purpose. At other times he tries to be a technical actor seeing what he can get away with—like miming the heaviness of a box in one scene, or seeing if he can make himself look hot and tired in another. I never call him on anything so that's why he always teases me about my non-directing. I guess I either don't notice until later or it doesn't seem to matter. Some director.

I was surprised that Vivien Leigh let herself look so bad. She looked perfect for the part and had the "fading Southern dame" thing down. At the beginning the whole thing was so theatrical and talky. But after awhile, either you get used to it, or the nature of the film changes. I don't know which.

The typewriter ribbon

Yesterday I spent part of the afternoon getting a new typewriter ribbon for the prop typewriter. There is a small old office equipment store I see every day on the way to Sean's school so I stopped there. The place is incredible. It is filled to the ceiling with faded signs, old typewriters, calculators, videotapes and junk. It would make a great set. The proprietor was a funny guy named Eddie who could be Lou Jacobi's twin brother. He said the shop's been there for 38 years. To change the ribbon, he cut the old ribbon off, got the new ribbon and manually wound it on to the old reel. I helped him by holding the new ribbon reel with a screwdriver. We had a nice chat and he offered to sell me some selectric balls (I've been thinking of getting some). This is one of those places where you have no idea how they pay the rent. It's fun to know that they still exist.

Walking with Monsters and... oh no!—Apocalypto!

Some of you remember my ranting and raving about Apocalypto a few weeks back. My complaint was that the film used certain tropes and cinematographic techniques to confer a sense of authority on a wildly fictitious premise. If I could go on and on about that for three or four posts, you would think I could do the same for BBC's Walking with Monsters. This series, which I've been watching with Sean, uses all sorts of devices to convey a documentary, you-are-there feel. The beasts are continually splattering and even breaking the camera lenses. The night shots are night-vision green or extremely grainy. There's documentary-standard hand held camerawork and time-lapse photography. Of course this is all an illusion since the critters are CGI animations composited on to actual backgrounds.

One of the complaints about the series is that it is wildly conjectural and that the CGI and other techniques give these conjectures too much authority—a complaint very similar to the one I had about Apocalypto. Only Walking with Monsters doesn't bother me. I think it's because the series is so outlandish that it is hard to take seriously. Apocalypto wants to be a serious comment on the decline of a civilization. Walking with Monsters, with its non-stop anthropomorphization, is more like a Disney cartoon. After nearly being eaten, the amphibian looks back at the predator as if to say, "whew!" When a prehistoric spider attacks, it raises up on its hind legs like an attacking horse. A trapped lizard backs away from a spider only to be surprised from behind. Another lizard impales a giant centipede on a tree. Where Disney could use only narration to dramatize his documentaries, the BBC literally animates their creatures for dramatic effect. Add the suspenseful music and you get some very entertaining segments.

fx: speed ramp

As I write, the computer is rendering the speed ramp that occurs when the malevolent entity whishes past the spinner. This is the first time I used the AE 7.0 curves. They are SO much easier to use than the 6.5 curves. I'm also trying Pixel Motion for the first time. Pixel Motion is supposed to make slow motion look better than using the typical frame blending setting. I heard that it builds missing frames through a form of interpolation. I'm curious to see if it makes any difference. One thing it affects is rendering time. It's taking 35 minutes to render 6 seconds of footage! There are so many speed changes in my edit that I will probably use conventional frame blending for most of the master just to keep rendering times sane.

fx: more tales of tedium to amaze and astound you

Ben finds a lot of what I do incredibly tedious so to drive him nuts I thought I'd write about tonight's venture into tedium. I'm working on two bursts of static now—one for the end of the Rube Goldberg segment and one for the end of the tape rewinding segment. My source for static is a VHS tape I made (eventually digitized) when I happened to see some crazy noise while doing a tape transfer at school in the 90's. However, there are some segments in the noise that look blocky and digital (see above). So tonight I spit out the static as individual frames and deleted all the frames with the blocky look. I then reimported the frames back into a movie and then displaced imagery as needed. I also spent some time adding additional noise to the static and color correcting it. This stuff isn't fun to do but it isn't awful either. It's something to do at night when you don't want to think too hard.

fx: trash removal & multiplane

Ben thinks that I sound most like a director when I talk about visual effects. I'm not sure where that comes from. The other day I built a multi-plane to do the push in to the morning workroom exterior from still images. It's OK. I may try another location I just found. In the future when photogrammetry becomes easy and widespread, this kind of thing will be a snap.

I also did the desert trash removal shot. That was as easy as expected and looks great. In After Effects I drew masks to delete the offending trash. Then I put a duplicate layer of the footage underneath the masked layer and moved it over. The brush is so busy and dense you just cannot see the effect. Plus, because I'm using the same layer, the color and movement match well.

More on Hillary Duff

Some of you remember my Hillary Duff post. I found the promo I was referring to on youtube (posted above).

The mother of all crazy people's rooms films

When I started watching The Number 23, a wave of concern rippled through me. For the first 45 minutes the film comes off as a decent conspiracy-noir art flick—maybe a little boring and maybe a bit flimsy, but not Rottentomatoes 8% bad. Plus, art-DP Matthew Libatique's photography is all-out gorgeous. I was thinking that if people don't like this film, then how will audiences respond to our primitive effort?

Then it starts to get bad. And then it gets worse. And by the end it's a Jim Carrey comedy with Jim Carrey as the straight man. This is one of those yank-you-around films in the vein of The Illusionist. My main question now is why The Illusionist was so well received. Both films have a lot in common including decades-long third act expositions.

There are two problems with the film: the script and an absence of taste. The basic premise, while a little far-fetched, is not that bad. The problem is that the questions raised by the story are handled poorly and with a clumsy sense of proportion. Then, there's the matter of taste. The film shows a lot of things that simply shouldn't be shown. Editing out huge chunks of the last 30 minutes would make the film a lot better. That dog has just got to go.

The film isn't a total loss. I might get a cheap copy just for the cinematography. It really is beautiful. I love the way Libatique uses mixed temperature light sources and achieves rich, sumptuous color. Plus, there are the crazy peoples' rooms. Folks, this is the motherlode. You won't find more or crazier rooms anywhere. And yes, the red crazy room features a light bulb. I thought the performances were good considering what the actors were asked to do. Jim Carrey is fine until the end when he's asked to play crazy. I don't think crazy is playable. The closest I've seen that works is Martin Sheen at the beginning of Apocalypse Now. Virginia Madsen is a little annoying to watch because of her botoxed forehead which has a weird ripply appearance when she frowns. Christine Taylor's forehead has the same look too (opinion only, don't sue!). It got me thinking that computer fx makeup has gotten so advanced that actors will have to start rethinking plastic surgery. Maybe in the future, actors will bring personal fx artists along with their own makeup artists.

I've been looking forward to seeing this film for a long time. Not quite as instructive as I'd hoped, but worth seeing nonetheless.

More shots...

Did three more shots today. Gas leak, notebook pick up and shrine interior. The gas pipe was easy to nail through contrary to our expectations. But the way the shot came out, I could have drawn on the thing with a magic marker. About ten more shots remain. I had a dream last night that I got the Destination Infinity print back and I messed up the file so it came out wrong. I've been working on this too long.

Productivity

I'm pretty close to moving the project into After Effects for mastering. So I've been fixing bugs in the film trying to just get it done. I got rid of two shots in the shot list today—

Ben caresses the spinner in the shrine
Open door with jacket on

I just corrected the caressing scene to make it look better and cut out the part with Ben's shirt. Done. I also just got rid of the CU shot where Ben opens the door and used the establishing shot instead. Done.

This morning I spent a few hours readying Destination Infinity for printing. I then sent it out to Winkflash, my favorite vendor for this kind of stuff. Cards, posters, no minimum print runs and great quality. Then I spent a few hours going through the old master tapes looking for some missing shots.

The hard part of doing all of this is feeling productive. It all has to be done but it's time consuming and I don't feel like I'm getting much accomplished.

My Dad wanted to see the film last night so I showed it to him. He found it hard to follow in terms of the story line (duh, especially in its current state). He had the good observation that it reminded him of The da Vinci code. He also thought Ben was "impressive." We have a temp voice over in there now so I didn't get the "where's the dialogue?" comment.

Kristen Wiig & cinematography

This idea is really half-baked, more of a note to myself. I've been thinking about SNL's Kristen Wiig and how she's a good model for filmmaking aesthetics. I think she's really attractive... it's something about the way she looks plus the way she comes across. It's like there's a kind of "discoverability" about her, like maybe you're the only one in your group that really likes her. To me, that's why she doesn't come across as well when she plays sexy (green leotard in video above)—she loses her discoverability. (This is the point where my old friend Veronica would say very seriously, "Ron, she's married.") At any rate, I think that's the problem with some of those all-CGI films like Mirror Mask. They don't want to be discoverable. They want to be all-out beautiful. They demand your attention and don't allow you to give it. I wonder if this comes from the way that 2D imagery works. In a sense, a painting or illustration has to call out to you because it's competing for attention. It just sits there in a crowd of other voices. But a film already has your attention. Plus it's moving. A film doesn't need to shout at you. It just needs to keep you engaged and intrigued.

The breakfast club

Today I dropped by Ben's house to pick up some props. We talked a bit about La Vie en Rose which he saw the other night. He thought it was device-y in the way it jumps back and forth throughout time. All I knew about it was that it was shot on Fuji film (I think) from an article in American Cinematographer. Then we talked about performance and how the kind of "document performance" I'm doing is so different from "acting performance." We both seem to find each other's area painfully tedious. He can't imagine thinking about documents at the level of detail that seems normal to me and I can't imagine doing what actors do (memorizing lines, doing relaxation exercises, figuring out beats, research). Yuck. We also talked about eroticism in cinema and a distinction between thinking about the erotic as intimacy vs. power and position. I then stopped by the hardware store to buy a gas hose so I could punch a hole in it for our dramatic gas leak scene. I was annoyed by the fact that it cost $22. I should have thought of something cheaper! What am I going to do with an old gas hose with a hole in it? Plus, Ben says gas hoses are tough to puncture so I don't even know how I'm going to create the puncture—blown outwards no less.

I've been realizing lately that my lifestyle must be apparent by reading this blog. It sounds like Ben, Erik and I are always eating and talking about stuff or I'm dropping by Ben's house or we're shooting. And it's true that my time with them is like a big blurry mix of events that flows from socializing to filmmaking and then back again. I don't know if it sounds fun, but it is actually.

I heard from Dan tonight as well (via email). He liked the Destination Infinity clue idea so that was reassuring. He suggested making the connection between the lobby card and the spinner idea really clear which is a good idea. He also mentioned that he liked the name "Kurt von Stroud." It's funny that people pick up on that. But then, he is a dreamboat.

Kurt von Stroud: dreamboat

Here's an answer to David's question about the Destination Infinity lobby card names.

A lot of times filmmakers will use fun references for fictitious names. Example: in Monsters Inc., the sushi restaurant is named Harryhausen's after renowned fx animator Ray Harryhausen. It's not that I really mind this sort of thing, but I have to admit I spent a few seconds pondering how that name makes sense for a sushi restaurant. Another strategy would be to create satirical names like they do in The Simpsons—for example, Try-N-Save or Bloodbath and Beyond. Interestingly, in The Simpsons, quite a few names are "peformed" names and are not overtly satirical—for example, Kwik-E-Mart, or the Android's Dungeon.

My preference is for the names to be part of the performance. The names in the lobby card all had a sort of fifties sound to me. Dwight, for example, is one of those names you don't hear much any more. I'm sure that one came from Dwight Eisenhower. Surely too obvious a choice and in that way, a poor "performance." Anna Klein and Kurt von Stroud were supposed to be immigrants. The idea here was that b-movie producers might try to emulate the imported success of Garbo and Bergman. So they cast Kurt, "the Dutch Dreamboat" von Stroud as a lead. Now that I think about it that's probably a German name. Anna Klein was supposed to be German. Corda Delaney was supposed to be one of those names that brings absolutely no image to mind. There always seems to be a name like that in a cast where you can't tell whether it's a man or a woman, a matron or an ingenue, a star or a bit player. I had the idea that the above-the-line positions were all filled by waspish types, hence, Gordon Devane and Harvey Plame. Of course the producer B. George MacArthur would have the most waspish name of all with an added initial, Cecil B. Demille-like. Now that I think about it, MacArthur probably comes from Douglas MacArthur. Another too-obvious choice, the naming performance equivalent of biting your knuckles. "William Stout" is one of those names that sounds pejorative but just sticks. Somehow, I think of the fifties as a time when you could have a name like "Stout" and people would just accept it and not think you're fat. Or maybe it had to do with the fact that the word stout is just seldom used today.

Regalscape comes from the naming conventions of the time when companies generally tried to sound big, monolithic and imperial. So you'd get something like "Royal International Pictures" or "A King-Universal production." Being postmodern, we no longer have names like that. That's how you end up with Pinkberry. Regalvision is of course a nod to the various cinematic strategies used at the time to differentiate movies from TV. Back then, everything really did seem to be a kind of "-vision" or "-scope" or "-rama." I guess Regalvision was Regalscape's proprietary, but soon forgotten anamorphic format. Or maybe it was a cheap way of trying to make b/w films look more colorful. I remember in the seventies, I bought this plastic sheet that you put on your TV screen to make a b/w TV image look like color. I dimly remember that it gave everything a prism-like effect. Speaking of plastic sheets, some of you may remember Winky-Dink, a b/w cartoon where at a certain point in the story, you were supposed to cover your TV with a plastic sheet and then draw on it to help the character get out of trouble.

If the lobby card prop got more screen time, I might have put more care into the names. Actually, I'm still mostly bothered by the type. If I had more energy I'd fix the "o" in Destination which is poorly drawn in the font. Also notice how the "A" is poorly weighted. But that stuff takes too long. I should at least fix the letter spacing since the "N" and "A" are smashed together. The type in the body of the card still isn't great. But part of the art is knowing when to stop.

What I'm watching

You may have noticed that I haven't posted anything about movies lately. There are a couple of reasons for that. First, there don't seem to be many July releases for items I'm following. So my Netflix cue has been filled with stuff for other people (e.g., Spongebob). The next films I'm looking forward to seeing are 300 and The Number 23. I guess this is number month.

Second, since I'm doing post-production grunt work, I don't need to look at any movies for reference. Probably the last thing I saw was Walking with Monsters by the BBC with Sean. I thought the CG was incredible except for the animation. Then I found out that all the stuff I thought was so impressive was actually real: landscapes and practical model closeups. In other words, the only CG was the creature animation which wasn't that great.

One thing I might watch soon is K. Gordon Murray's Santa Claus which is sitting on my desk. It looks positively freaky.

Friday's shoot

Yesterday, for about two hours we shot a bunch of pickups/reshoots in the workroom. This had to be really boring for Erik and Ben since these were just short unrelated bits—e.g., the spinner falls, or Ben clicks on the hand clicker, or Ben stands there in front of the spinner. Despite their simplicity, some of the shots took awhile. Just getting a good clicker shot was tough. Ben handles the tedium by acting like a nightmare actor. It's like directing Chad Palomino.

The Ben standing shot worked great. I finally figured how to achieve that look I was going for. It's all in the setup, not the shot. You build some tension before the shot and then—boom! Ben is just standing there. And the spinner is broken. I like the way it came out.

The one thing that we have to do again is the jib shot of Ben reaching into the shrine. First, the lighting is too off. It just won't pass for outside (we shot it in the garage). Two, you can't read "ex nihilo." Three, Ben is wearing the wrong color shirt.

It's interesting what Ben cares about. He has lots of comments on some storypoints and the way certain things look. He has incredibly sharp eyes for some things. Then, there are things he just accepts. Like why he has to be typing on a typewriter instead of a computer. Or that the clue is embedded in a lobby card. "You're the director," he says.

Performance

This morning we had breakfast at Erik's. While eating I was pondering his casual dining area ceiling which I can touch with my hand. I forgot to ask Ben if Altadena is more lax about ceiling heights than Pasadena. Anyway, before I stole a big hunk of Erik's Toblerone, we had a long discussion about the nature of performance. I used the Destination Infinity document as a visual aid to talk about a couple of ideas. The few people who have seen it think it looks very authentic. My Dad, for example, thought it was an actual ad I had laying around. This case of mistaken identity reminded me of this quote in Michael Caine's book on acting:

...rehearsing can be a good test of your spontaneity: if you're running lines with an other actor and the assistant director comes up and says, "Sorry to interrupt your rehearsal," you've failed. If he comes up and says, "Sorry to interrupt your chat," then you're on the right course. Your lines should sound like spontaneous conversation, not like acting at all. And that comes from actively listening (pg. 69).

Similarly, you don't want someone talking about your "prop." You want someone talking about your perpetual motion device, or lobby card, or whatever. But while the Destination Infinity document apparently looks authentic, I don't believe that it would fool a specialist. There is probably something about the layout or the particular combination of images that wouldn't ring true. I'm not talking about knowing that the images come from the film Phantom Planet. It would be more along the lines of knowing that certain kinds of layouts or marketing appeals weren't used back then.

Note that I don't see this as a liability. Performance is not about fooling people. It is not about making a perfect counterfeit. Rather, it is a kind of embodied understanding. One observes carefully and then impersonates someone or something else but without losing a sense of oneself. The performance is the intersection between one's own understanding and the material expressed publicly. While there may be things to rehearse or research, the performance is made lively not by trying to be correct, but by the fullness and depth of one's knowledge and experience. It is as if one is swept away by a tide of understanding.

What this means is that as in certain kinds of actors' performances, one's consciousness is not set on various effects but on completing a hypothetical task. The liveliness and richness of the performance seeps out the edges of the task; it is not indicated. For instance, now that I look at the Destination Infinity document, I notice all sorts of things that I hadn't before. It is as if I unknowingly adopted the Freudian consciousness of the time. The rocket in the background is a sexual allusion. The tagline ("Do you dare make the journey") highlights an adolescent conflict between sexual longing and a fear of the unknown. If I had tried to put these elements in consciously they would have looked forced.

Therefore, when people comment on the authenticity of the lobby card, I think they are really commenting on several things. First, there is a certain amount of technical accuracy gained from research and training. I know from training that the type—Univers—was mid-century (1957). The images come from the public domain Phantom Planet released in 1961. The design/color of the card was derived from lobby card images I found on the web including 1957's Back From the Dead and 1963's Invasion of the Star Creatures.

The piece also embodies a lot of my own experience. I remember seeing lobby cards in theaters—the ones that looked like b/w photos. I also drew from my background in old-school graphics techniques. The woman's hair is cutout roughly partly because I was lazy, but also because that's what it looked like when you cut rubylith overlays—back then there were no bluescreens or bezier curves. I framed the small photos using lines slightly thicker than a point on purpose. I remember once, long ago, I got lightly reprimanded by a printer because I specified the insertion of a photo within a hairline frame: the tolerance was too tight. So the Infinity piece has a heavy, simple, opaque look. This appearance comes from designing with larger tolerances and a manually assembled plate in mind.

But beyond all this, is the sense of performance. For me, performance is not a loss of identity, but a presentation of identity. It is an analysis in which the result is not a typology of features but a kind of anthropology embodied within an artistic form.

Sketch

I'm posting this sketch for my records. This is one of several sketches I did to work out the Destination Infinity clue. It's remarkably unartistic.

Destination Infinity final

Here's how the lobby card clue turned out. My note to Dan about the sequence:

As you can see, I went slightly goofy with it, so the currently melodramatic sting in the temp track is way overboard. I guess the trick will be to create something that embraces the dramatic, the nostalgic and the silly all at once. Or maybe it quotes some of the classic SCI-FI electronic scores but with a detached sense of irony. I guess the trick is to be good silly and not stupid silly.

The way I expect this to work....

Ben is moving boxes in the green room. THen looks at the item he's printed. Something arrests his eye. He goes back to printing. As he prints, we see the following text flash, as if he's thinking about it: NON STOP ACTION / A SECRET REVEALED / DO YOU DARE MAKE THE JOURNEY? We go back to see the the lobby card. Then we see a closeup of the joshua tree photo at the right middle. Dissolve to a real joshua tree in the desert. Dissolve to the wide horizon shot of the truck coming in from the horizon. Ben gets out of the truck. He looks at a tiny stack of papers. The first one is a clipping from "A SECRET REVEALED" from the sci fi lobby card. Only this one has writing on it--his guess as to the mountain range in the background. YUCCA BREVIFOLIA (scientific name of joshua tree). Some possible coordinates. Then he flips to the next clipping in his stack. It says NON STOP ACTION. He flips a map transparency down over the astronaut image. The stars align with several features on the map. He's circled where the rocket ship star goes. That's his destination. Then Ben goes off into the desert.

D'oh, I've gone viral

At simpsonizeme.com, you can upload a photo of yourself and the site will generate a Simpsons cartoon version of you. This is how I turned out. Maybe they should call it caucasionizeme.com.

Destination: Infinity #4

Looks like the lobby card will look something like this. The red represents Ben's notes which tell him where to go in the desert.

Destination: Infinity #3

Yet another version. It's easy to get the map OR the lobby card to work. It's hard to get both.

Destination: Infinity #2

Still working with this idea. I think I like the other one better.

Destination: Infinity

The clue that tells Ben how to get to the desert was originally a simple map with the text "Infinite Motion" on it. The idea was that there was a small place named "Infinite Motion" in Nevada. Here's my latest approach for this sequence. This idea, still in its very rough stages, comes from the phrase: non-stop action! It made sense to me that this phrase might be a found on movie advertising. It's also logical that Ben's print shop might be producing one or two-color lobby cards for a production company.

The idea is that Ben will piece together the desert map from the stars and some of the photos. This is a low-budget film so maybe the production company has joshua trees standing in for alien plants. This also gives us some text to flash on the screen. You have to imagine Ben thinking as he grinds away at the printing press and then the text "Do you dare make the voyage?" or "Non-stop action!" burns in from white. Well, I'll see how far I get with this approach. Still not happy with the headline type but that's what you get for free. The photos are from the public domain film The Phantom Planet.

DVD extras

I'm not sure what's happening to everyone but this past week, Erik went AWOL. Hopefully he will show up soon. Ben and I have been talking about DVD extras. The extras I think up are all educational. Ben's ideas all sound like mockumentaries. As soon as we're done shooting pickups/reshoots, he wants to shave his head so he has this idea that we should interview him on video then. I keep telling him about the extras for the Happiness of the Katakuris and how the behind-the-scenes documentary has a Hanna Barbera-esque rupture between screen image and interview personality. So I thought I'd better post some pictures for him. The above photo is the from the movie, a dark comedy in which a humble, frumpy middle class Japanese family is beset with obstacles as they try to run a bed and breakfast. Notice the grandfather and the mom (circled). Below is how they appear in their DVD interviews. I love the mom's feathers and the grandfather's Gregory Peck-esque style.

vfx: Mike's print shop

While driving through Alhambra today I noticed the now defunct Mike's Tailor Shop (bottom photo) and realized that it wouldn't be too difficult to jiggle the words around to create Mike's Print Shop. The only letter I had to build was "N" and it was easy to do that by manipulating the "M" in "Mike." Editing the sign was easy, changing all the buildings was hard. It took awhile to rebuild the surrounding buildings to simplify things. To do this, I used a couple of other pictures that I had of the other side of the street. I flipped the photos so that the lighting would be the same. I'm pretty satisfied with the Hopper-esque result. Of the three I like this one the best. One of the things that's fun about doing the movie is roaming around these places. I really like LA's mid-century look.

Note to Dan an audio parallelism

RE: the pretty-->scary structure.

I'm trying to make it so that in all three sequences, there are the followng 3 elements--

--something beautiful
--something sends out a 'signal' into 'outer space'
--something mysterious happens in response.

So for example, in the bouncing stars sequence:

We see the stars falling in slow motion and it's beautiful and mysterious and hypnotic. Then the bouncing noise seems to ring out into the sky, almost like a homing signal. In response, now, the evil entity returns to zap the spinner into three pieces!

In the touching spinner sequence:
We see ex nihilo, and hear the dangling crosses. It's beautiful and mysterious. Ben touches the spinner and we hear a metallic noise maybe that drifts out into space. Then things get myterious as we see the blood drips.

In the gas burning sequence:
Ben's watching the TV sequence where the 'new matter' is spinning around beautifull and wonderfully. This spinning noise seems to soar into space. The evil entity then 'sneaks up' behind Ben and drops into the floor causing the house to burn door.

By the way, the actual long cartoon house burn should be mysterious and pretty.