Rewindability

We have this one shot where we zoom into Ben's bleeding finger. At its normal speeded-up speed it looks pretty good. Slow it down too much and it looks dumb because you can see the bad makeup job on Ben's bleeding finger. I've been wondering if watching movies on DVDs changes viewers' expectations? At one time, I think it was easier to get away with certain things because an image would whizz by on a theater screen and you wouldn't be able to look at it closely. You always hear about Verna Fields and the editing sleight of hand she did while cutting Jaws. Apparently, she used a lot of misdirection to get shots working together—you know the kind of thing where an action in one part of the frame is misdirecting you from viewing the other part of the frame which is mismatching. But now, with DVDs and the ability to stop, rewind and examine, I wonder two things. First, is there any expectation that films ought to work on the rewind level—so you can stop at any point and the film should still hold up? Two, is there some way to exploit rewindability? For example, perhaps we ought to make really dense films that function on the viewing level, but also function on the re-viewing level where you can leisurely examine dense or quickly moving imagery. So the film functions as a narrative but also functions as a kind of object or document suspended in time.

The Tonight Show algorithm

I was at the Honda dealership again this morning reading a free copy of USA Today while waiting for the shuttle. There's something about USA Today that got me thinking about the Tonight Show algorithm. A few years ago I realized that there is a formula you can use to create 90% of all Tonight Show jokes. You simply take two topical events and then link them together in some sort-of sensible way. So, for example, in today's paper there was an article about toxic Chinese food imports. Link that with the Iraq war and you get this—and from the war front today.... the Pentagon's newest surge tactics involve bombing Baghdad with packages of Chinese fish.

OK, not that funny, but seriously, is Jay Leno really that funny? The above line is actually based on a really old Carson-era joke that went something like... and the Pentagon's newest tactic in the Afghanistan war involves driving hundreds of Pintos backwards. This was back when Ford's Pinto subcompact was known for its gas tank that exploded when rear ended.

Here's the rest of what I came up with...

Paris Hilton's in the news again. Now that she's out of prison, the first thing she wants to do is spend time with her parents, finish her community service and get in line to buy a new iPhone. Did you hear about the iPhone craze that's sweeping the country? The iPhone is an amazing new cellphone that lets you talk on the phone, listen to music, watch videos, and connect to the internet. Planned updates include faster download times and the ability to make Evan Almighty funny.

OK, maybe it's not in my future to be a comedy writer. But it's amazing the amount of time I spend seriously thinking about things like this. I think that inefficient, non-instrumental wondering is important and in the long run is really productive. It's something I hope that we can retain even as I bemoan its loss in our educational institutions.

Uzumaki, Chinese opera, Chopper Chicks in Zombietown

Last week I showed Ben and Erik Uzumaki, and they saw the performance I liked by the "bad girl." Ben said, "what you like is Chinese opera," and then he started doing a really good imitation of a Chinese opera singer—highly stylized gestures, tiny footsteps, and dramatic poses. Ben actually did some performing in China when he was 10 years old so he has that as a reference. Anyway, Ben is probably right. A lot of modernism is just rehashed Asian thinking. And there's something I like, as Ben later mentioned, about performances that just look like performances.

So when I say, "stylized performance," I mean "Chinese opera-like" or "Kabuki-like." That's part of the problem of not having a background in drama or theater—my vocabulary and understanding of certain things is pretty limited. I found that being trained in a discipline provides a starting point for your own thinking and creates a common ground that helps you communicate with others. When I was working on Shim Ch'ong one of the performers (one of her credits is Chopper Chicks in Zombietown) asked the director about her character. James' response was "it's sort of like Emily in Our Town." The actress seemed to understand instantly. I will probably never have a rich understanding of theatrical canon. But it's nice to have a starting point for my thinking about stylization in performances.

Animation, Hillary Duff, Chris Farley

This morning, while waiting for Sean in the lobby of his new pre-school, I worked on Photoshopping the scanned words that will be assembled into the codex animation. This is the final exposition video that Ben's character has assembled from various bits of media and old newspapers and magazines. Working on the text reminded me in a weird way of a Hillary Duff promo that Sean and I see over and over again on his year-old, taped-off-the- Disney Channel tape. Duff is doing one of those talk and smile things where she looks at the camera and says a couple of lines like "Lizzie McGuire on the Disney channel!" She does it beautifully and unselfconsciously with all these different emotions rippling through her face, sometimes shy, sometimes dreamy, always engaging. I wonder how you direct these things and keep your performers unselfconscious? I remember Lisa Whelchel's segment on the Facts of Life intro where her pasted-on smile couldn't hide her self-consciousness. It got me speculating that maybe you have to direct by giving actors permission. So you put yourself at risk by coming up with stupid scenarios and your willingness to be stupid breaks the ice for the actor.

Maybe I got this idea from watching Penelope Spheeris direct. I forgot if I wrote about this but I once spent two hours watching her direct a scene from Black Sheep. It was the part where Chris Farley finds some teenagers drinking in a old car. He starts to drink with them but then goes all Matt Foley on them talking about the evils of drinking. (The scene ended up being a three-second shot narrated by henchman). Anyway, as I watched them shoot, Spheeris told one of the teen extras "if you want to be an actress you can't worry about how you look" and then she started dancing like a drunk woman at a party, swiveling her hips with her hands up in the air.



Sorry for the flashback in a flashback. So, what I want in the codex text segment is to create an unselfconscious animated performance—animated in both senses as in frame animation and as in "changing and alive" like Hillary Duff. One way I hope to achieve the sense of unselfconsciousness is by playing with the way type is typically used. In typography, you traditionally minimize the size and visual weight of unimportant words like "a," "the," and "of." In the case of the codex video, I'm putting the words together with no particular size relationship in mind so a lot of unimportant words will be visually emphasized. I think this will create a spontaneous feel. To create the sense of emotional change/animation, I'm looking for text sources that have different associations. For example, I want to scan the word "once" from a storybook (as in "once upon a time). And I want to scan the word "new!" from an ad. I like the idea of having all of these unexpected/expected associations running simultaneously with a narration about cults and conspiracies. It's funny to reflect on all of this because until I jotted these thoughts down, I hadn't really thought about what I was doing and how I was trying to derive a performance from a sequence of type.

Narration & title

While waiting at the Honda dealership this morning I wrote/rewrote the narration for the film. I moved away from the noir-style narration and am going for the sound of someone thinking to themselves in whispers. Something like La Jettee. So parts of the narration will be clear and other parts whispery and obscured. I didn't think of it until now, but this seems to match my interest in obscured text. Some of you have seen my gallery of fake Chinese writing on my other site. More recently I put up a gallery of visual gibberish.

I'm thinking of having a typewriter type out the short ending monologue. Yes, a lot of reading in this film. I hope it doesn't feel like it though. I'm really sensitive to not overloading the thing with text. It's like I have every variation of text in the film—scanned words, spoken words, dialogue (very short), voice over, handwriting and now typewriter writing. The only thing I'm missing is subtitles.

When working on the narration I ended up deciding that the spinner spins for a thousand days before things start happening. That had a nice sound to it and is pretty close to 1095 days which is what I had earlier (365 days x 3). I think I got that from the old Genvieve Bujold/Richard Burton movie Anne of a Thousand Days, the story of the romance between King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. I watched the film when I was living in England years ago and thought it was terribly romantic. I saw parts of it again not too long ago. This time I thought it screened like a soap opera. I've been searching for a new title for the film since "Noise the sound of ferrite in motion" seems too long and too obscure (everyone goes "what's that?" and not in a good way). What do you think of "Noise of a thousand days?" Again, the main idea here is to make the title unique enough so that an internet search is easy. It's sort of a marketing thing. I also thought of spelling variations like Nois, Noyz, and Noisz. But those don't seem right. Calling it "noise film" seems to have stuck but obviously that's a dumb name.

11 minutes

It's weird and fun to watch the first 11 minutes of the film fairly complete. I think it's working pretty well but certain sections need to be stretched out. I don't know if this is because Ben appears out of breath in his big scene, but we need more desert shots. I'd love to get a time lapse or something, but I'm scared that I'll drive all the way out there and find no clouds. The whole scene needs to play longer. Think Tarkovsky whose films all seem to play in real time.

Also, the bridge and the red room scenes are so abstract that they blend together. So before the red room maybe we need some kind of dramatic establishing shot. Clue the audience in that we're going to a different place. But it has to look weird. Maybe composite some dark clouds into the shot or something. We also need to add time in there someplace to make sure that the audience has the time to digest things.

I'm realizing that we need to imply the fire more strongly at the end. It would be great to get pix of a charred house. Lacking that, some burned items or keepsakes ought to work. Figuring the last scene will take about 2 minutes, the whole thing times out at about 13+ minutes.

The Miracle Worker

This is a pretty funny take on director's DVD commentaries.

Girl you are NOT all that!

Self-delusion seems to be particularly annoying. I was thinking about that because I'm considering doing some light remodeling to the house and I started thinking about that "let's add value to our house" mentality. That usually means, "let's impose our good taste on this structure" which is how houses end up with black toilets with gold fixtures (actual open house I saw) or how ranch houses end up trying to look like Italian villas (our house) with grape vine wallpaper and grape vine wire toilet paper holders. Everyone is so sure that their taste is so good and that what they're doing is a big improvement! Self-delusion. Like people who think all the crap in their garage is going to fetch big dollars on Ebay. I was thinking that in terms of houses, it might be better to remodel in terms of possibilities. In other words, through remodeling, suit your needs but also create opportunities for future expansion. Imply the possibilities to entice prospective buyers into thinking about what they can do with the house.

Anyway, I think that's what people find so annoying about the way I watch movies. I suspect that they think I'm delusional—that when I say I mostly analyze movies that I'm just not admitting that I really enjoy them. Actually, I think my movie design grid is helpful here because it shows what I'm enjoying in 90% of the films I see. Remember: genre (high concept) + modern filmmaking vocabulary + truth? That's mostly what I enjoy about films. Example: a movie like The Matrix would find its way into my "great film" list because it nails all three of those criteria. It is a high-concept film, has an interesting/artistic filmmaking vocabulary and is a textbook example of existentialism (the world is painful). And sure, there are things I can get emotionally involved in, but that's not the overriding interest to me. It's more like the way emotion shades the above three crteria. It's similar to music. If you come over to my house you may notice that I rarely have music on. There are lots of songs and music I like. But my listening is geared primarily toward analysis.

In a weird way, this comes back to my thinking about houses. I guess I like media products that imply opportunities. I can appreciate The Matrix for many reasons. But I also like the way it opens the door to future possibilities. As you remember, the working title for noise film was "anti-matrix." I like The Matrix not only for what it is, but how it enabled me to participate in extensions of its thinking. There's something rich and compelling about that.

*Ben and Erik, if you are wondering what happened to our Uzumaki discussion, it turned into this post. To others: Ben and Erik decided that one of the main reasons I liked Uzumaki was the Japanese school girls. Ben also thought I was delusional.

Fri & Sat. bridge scene shoot

On Friday we shot the bridge scene for about an hour and a half. All handheld stuff, mostly close ups of Ben looking through materials. It's the research scene. Then on Saturday by myself I shot some pickups. I also tried shooting with a tripod just to see what it would look like. Interestingly I looked at the Se7ven title again and found that most of that stuff is shot locked down. It just gives the impression of being handheld because of the jumpy text.

On Friday I had the idea that I wanted to shoot Ben's POV gazing at various pictures in the notebook so I did that handheld. Somehow it just didn't look like I wanted. So Saturday I tried it with a tripod and accidentally I got exactly the effect I was after. I focused on a picture, framed and locked down the camera. Then while the camera was still running I moved to the next picture, focused, framed and locked the camera, and so on. Speeded up, it looks exactly like what I wanted. It gives the effect of someone's eye flitting from place to place, yet gives enough time and weight to the individual images.

I edited a rough version of the sequence together. It looks pretty good. The main thing is to make sure that the transition from the previous desert scene to the bridge works OK. Otherwise you get this really sudden change to abstraction.

Good acting

Sean is watching Ice Age II, a really dreadful movie that barely holds his attention. It's basically a journey film with comic interludes. Ray Romano's performance is great though. It's amazing how he can make anything sound funny in his cantankerous without-a-clue personna. It got me wondering if it's possible to give a great performance without attracting attention to oneself. Ideally that would be the goal. But is it really possible?

This doesn't bode well for my future as a filmmaker

Remember Uzumaki, the film I said looked like something I would make? I just noticed the customer reviews from Netflix. They're pretty much all like this—

>Amateur night with a video cam. This is so bad it makes the original "Pulse" look like a masterpiece! It can't decide whether it wants to be silly, shocking, or just average. Underneath the bad acting, directing, lighting, effects... there is a great idea for a horror movie!

>I couldn't get into it. It had a kind of Jeunet cartoon quality that I sometimes like, but in the wrong ways.

>The film is ugly looking. It's shot almost entirely in vomit-hued shades of green and the flat lifeless cinematography and overreliance on dutch angles and other "trick shots" give every scene a stale quality. The only possible way to have made the movie any more drab and lifeless would have been to take still photographs of the panels from the manga on which the film was based and assemble them into a feature.

>Movie totally lacked plot, no believability, acting sucked!!!!!!!! No character delevelopment.... I'd grade this an F+ (the + because the actors didn't quit) if I was this naive director's film instructor. Read TV guide instead.

>My initial impressions after viewing this movie can be expressed mainly using just three words: LAME, BORING and STUPID... I think the director actually had intended to make a noticeably B movie at first (silly, but intentional seeming zooms, etc.), then got lost in the idea that what he was creating was art (it's not).

>But this..this is what i imgine would be produced if a 14 year old had been given this script, a budget, and told to go wild.

>Uzumaki is a series of vignettes strung together with high school angst dialogue and events. If you are 14, you might like this. If you're older (say, uh, FIFTEEN!!) you'll probably need to be a J-horror or film aficionado to appreciate the cinematography.

***

On Rottentomatoes, the film gets 55%—an almost-perfect mixed review. However, they just LOVE it on Amazon. I'm debuting all my films on Amazon.

Performing the notebook type

You may have noticed in the JPEGs from earlier in the week that the notebooks have typewritten notes pasted here and there. Here's the story of their development.

My first inclination was to use a real typewriter so I borrowed my neighbor's electric. But the resulting letters looked too thin and crisp. As is often the case, the real thing didn't look like the real thing! So I created the document in Illustrator using the MS Gothic font. Even though the actual typewriter page didn't work visually, the typing experience itself was worthwhile. It gave me the idea to recreate some of my typing errors in the Illustrator document. It also gave me a sense of about how many errors I made. It's sort of like playing an accent. You don't want to overdo it.

One reason I chose MS Gothic is because it conjures for me my experience with the ubiquitous Selectric which I used in my stint as a secretary and also for personal projects back in high school. The Selectric association justifies the type's consistency. To my eye, it just looks a lot better and more authentic than typical typewriter fonts. A typewriter font like American Typewriter just looks wrong. It isn't capable of recreating the pressure inconsistencies that you get with a real typewriter. Plus as vector files, fonts aren't capable of creating the effect of inked edges soaking into paper. Look at the chunky, poorly-drawn outline of the "n" below. It screams "computer" to me as in bad bezier curves. I look at the font and I never think typewriter. I think cheap, distressed auto-traced font made in the nineties that you can download for free.



It never occurred to me until now that the reason I'm spending so much time on these props is that at this point, they are supposed to be carrying the film. And I know that whenever I see something on screen that looks like some lazy Word file trying to stand in for a newspaper, etc., I just get taken out of the story. It reminds me of when I saw AI. There's a scene in a lab where sitting right there on a table is one of those old iMac sub woofers. It took me right out of the film. For our project, even the Scotch tape is important. I always use shiny tape for props, not the matte "magic" tape. The magic tape just looks wrong. For me, all that textural stuff really makes a difference especially when we're shooting this close. So in the notebooks we have a real photo, real vintage grid paper, regular bond print outs, transparencies, real handwriting, shiny Scotch tape and real photo corners. Without the visual variety in texture and reflectivity, everything looks fake, flat and uninteresting. The test will be to see if all of this really makes a difference on screen.

Artist-film features

Look on the Call of Cthulhu DVD and you'll find a pdf file of a newspaper prop used in the film sitting there right next to the VOB files. The creators of the film are proud of the research they did to ensure the historical accuracy of this prop (above). The director even designed the historically accurate fonts! [download] Compare this to the noise film notebook designs that have no historical reference and are highly stylized. The difference between the two got me thinking.

I sometimes suspect that traditional film interpretation is unwittingly based on the old discrimination between primary and secondary qualities. I got this idea from the media blitz surrounding James Cameron's Titanic. There was a lot written about how Cameron was a stickler for accuracy in representing ship life and the vessel itself. It's almost as if Cameron wanted to ensure that the primary qualities of the vessel were correct. Then upon this framework, he used secondary qualities such as lighting (e.g., cinematography) to help tell the story.

Feature 1 Transforming primary and other qualities

One of the features of the film approach I am trying to describe is that there is not this strong emphasis on using only secondary qualities for expressive purposes. Instead, the filmmaker/artist considers transforming the "primary qualities" themselves. So the very design of the sets themselves might be altered to suit the film. The expressionistic Caligari, of course, is the perfect example. But let's think about noise film which is shot within conventional rooms. Is there any sense in which the "primary qualities" are altered? Yes— consider some of my recent experiments with post-production. It's very likely that one of the spinner shots will be slightly rearranged in post, shifted to the side with a light bulb added at the left side. Here, post-production enables us to transform the set for expressive reasons.

Feature 2 Performance orientation

I think one of the main problems with many artist-films is their misunderstanding about what it means to perform. It is almost as if visual artists tend to create films that function like landscapes. A landscape painting might be engaging to look at. But it holds interest on screen for just a few moments and it won't carry a film. I think that is the problem of both Heaven's Gate and Mirror Mask. Both of these films are beautiful but because they function as cinematic landscapes, there is not enough to sustain intereset.

I stumbled upon this idea about "carrying a production" when I worked on Shim Ch'ong, the multimedia theater piece for which I did video projections. I remember thinking it was easy to do the projections since they were mostly backgrounds or added visual and thematic layering. For the most part, the projections were simply supporting players. However, there was one brief segment where a cell phone appeared to interrupt the performance. And during this 30 seconds, my projection had to help carry the production. So I intuitively treated that segment differently using video, sync sound, motion, etc. The distinction between carrying and not carrying the piece was really intriguing to me. It made me realize that visual artists are trained to carry the entirety of an aesthetic experience in a certain way. This leads to two caveats. First, visual artistry need not always carry the film. Sometimes, just sometimes, you might want to consider using the actors. Second, typical visual arts engagement is not the same as a performance. Sure Imaginary Forces makes great titles, but try watching their work over and over like I do in class. Beautiful stuff, but those titles seem to go on forever; narratively, they simply put the film on the shelf for a few minutes.

Feature 3 Shifting performance

A third feature of our film approach is that the location of the performance shifts. In a traditional film, it's the actors that carry the film. What I'm trying to do is to have different media/characters carry the film at different times. Sometimes it's Ben. Sometimes it's the audio. The shrine, as a character, carries the film for a short amount of screen time as does the spinner. As we progress through the film, more and more of the film is carried through the art-media, resolving in the final codex video exposition. The codex video is like Hercules Poirot summing up the loose plot ends in an Agatha Christie book. Probably this is why Ben feels like I'm never asking him to act. It's because he doesn't have to carry the film by himself; a lot of times, it's the other characters' turn.

noli me tangere!

OK, Ben, maybe this will help clarify. The top photo is what the page actually looks like assembled with the transparencies, etc. Since this scene involves assembling things, all of the transparencies can be flipped up or down as needed. Also, more transparencies can be added to obtain the appropriate messiness (or deleted to make the page cleaner). The bottom page (of the two above) is the same as the top page but with more transparencies. Also, remember most of these items will be shot tight so that people can read the text. A full page is the equivalent of a really wide shot. In fact, I don't think people will have a sense of the individual pages at all, just a sequence of images gradually getting denser over time.

Cosmos + everything's an arc

Here's the cosmos page. I'm busy reworking everything to make sure there's an arc. The notebook will change from organized and tidy to more layered and disorderly.

Bridge sequence notebook pages (Ben read this!)

Here are the preliminary notebook pages for the bridge sequence. You have to imagine them with a bit of handwriting on them. I'm hoping to shoot this sequence on Friday (Ben are you listening?). Last time I made pages like this he said, "that doesn't look something I (my character) would make." So complain now or hold your peace. Know anyone with a manual or even an electric typewriter? Typing would make the pages look a lot better. The text for these pages is adapted from Wikipedia which is free for any sort of use. The Latin "noli me tangere" means, "don't touch me," as in "I have things I must do." The moons in the tangere image are by Galileo. Apparently he had art lessons and was quite an accomplished watercolorist. The eye in the top image is a weird extrapolation of the spinner shape. It was originally going to be a complex clue, but now it just serves as a background image. I will probably make one more page, a cosmology page.

I plan on printing some of these images directly onto the grid notebook paper. Some other images will be taped/pasted on or a transparency. Why are the images printed directly on the notebook? Is it because Ben is a printer? Actually, I just like the way they look. You can make up whatever rationalization you want.

Crazy peoples' lairs, the album

Now in slide show format for your viewing enjoyment.

mg + Jmf + et + lb + n = mY fiLM

Here's today's it's SO LA story. I was writing the Uzumaki post on my laptop while waiting for Sean at Korean school. One of the older kids sat by me and started reading what I was writing. Are you a director? he asked. Think about it—not what are you writing or what are you doing?

Yesterday, I finally figured out the heuristic that describes my orientation to film. It is this—

mixed genre + Japanese modernist film vocabulary + existentialist take on truth + low budget + narrative.

Here's how it works. Let's take the Superman film idea I wrote about the other day. Superman is a genre film. But I tend to like mixing genres so let's make it a Superman in the thirties, torch song, science fiction movie—deco Superman, living in the era of his origins. Superman, crystal radios, chanteuses, an era amazed to see Superman on the R-A-D-A-R.

Then we approach it like a Japanese modernist film. Odd angles. Straight on. The camera hardly moves. You never really see Superman save things. It's all implied. Superman exists more in poses than in action, a Superman whose power is conveyed in stillness.

Finally, we ground the film in some sort of existential truth: the relationship of pain to humanity. Superman is cut off from others because of his invulnerability. He doesn't truly understand what it means to be human. Next step: budget. We can't afford the rights for Superman. So we create our own character and design a simple costume. Use miniatures and small walk-through sets made of cardboard. The bad guy is a puppet. A musical number written by me. Some footage from the public domain. The emotion of the film is muted. But it is heavy on mood and there are one or two shock moments. Finally, narrative ties it all together—just enough to make the movie watchable.

And there you have it—an idea for a film. That is something I would really love to see. If any of you (all four of you) can think of an existing movie that fits this formula, let me know!

Uzumaki: beyond the Japanese school girls

Some films are notable because you like them, others because you think they're good or because they have instructional value. I liked Uzumaki for a totally different reason: it looks like something I'd do. To me, it looks SO me. Which is sort of embarassing since it comes from a director with the nickname Higunchinksy who used to make music videos. Here's what I was responded to—

It never occurs to me to set up complex masters with difficult blocking and lots of camera moves. Instead, the camera gets planted in one place and the actor(s) move in and out of frame as if it were a proscenium. It seems to be a Japanese thing. It happens in Uzumaki a lot and in Harakiri as I've described before. There's a certain kind of formality and stiffness in the presentation.

Similarly, the acting at certain points is extremely stylized. In Uzumaki, it's the drama queen bad girl, or the heroine boo-hooing as a girl. For some reason it doesn't come across as bad acting to me but as purposeful artifice. Plus, there's not a lot of movement within the shots. You may observe that in noise film, you never see Ben sit down in a chair or get up. These movements look awkward to me; a lot of the physical interconnections are implied.

It's interesting how traditional Eisenstein-esque technique nowadays translates as low-budget. Higunchinksy uses a couple of montages to show crashes and other moments. They look a lot like my previzes for the bird attack scene. You don't actually see the crash; the event is implied, Psycho shower scene style. Of course, I could never really make it work. But I do have such a sequence planned for the bridge scene.

Shot selection: straight on centered or odd angles, often shot with wide angle lenses. Spare dialogue. There is just enough to communicate what's going on, but the film is heavily visuals-driven. To top it off, there is a full-fledged research scene in a library PLUS a crazy person's lair (see above)! Lots of video-mediated scenes too, including studying-video scenes. If that isn't enough, the film is shot greenish, although too lacking in contrast for my taste. Even the sense of humor is like mine. None of the reviews I read seems to find it a horror-comedy like I do. Black comedy, obviously, but often cartoonish and probably too dry for most. Mood moments and shock moments, but few (one) emotional moments. The movie is just not about emotion in an American movie sense. You won't laugh and you won't cry. You might smirk and feel a twinge of poignancy. Uzumaki is really not much of a horror movie. It's more of a mood piece with enough narrative to make it watchable. Some key concepts: implied, vs. literal. Static proscenium. Mediation. Obsession. Stylization. Formal. Spare.

Some things I didn't like: it's a little too over the top in places. The snails, for instance (you have to see it to believe it). At least Higunchinksy had the good taste to display the snails via video. And the overuse of what looks like After Effects' twirl filter. Also, it's not the cheapness of the visual effects that disturbs me, it's their presence at all. I would have preferred something less literal.

All in all, a great watch. I think I'll start going by the name Saitolnikoff.

Virtual lighting test

I thought this test came out pretty well. Instead of using a gradient, I put the right side of the frame in shadow (second image). I had to use a huge (127 pixel) mask to make it work.

Superman Returns redux part II again & "fixing" films

I rented Superman Returns again to rewatch those scenes I'm always griping about. The beginning Lex Luthor scene seemed totally fine, not stiff at all. The spaceship landing scene was still a bit annoying. There were some other interesting moments that the film didn't elaborate upon. I liked when Superman was trying to save the plane but he inadvertantly ripped off its wing. It got me thinking that there's a whole vulnerability about super powers angle that would be interesting to explore. There's really only so much one person can do. My Superman movie would be about Superman being callous because there are so many people who need help and he can't do much about it. So he's always making choices and always turning a deaf ear to cries for help. Plus, he's invulnerable and apparently insensitive to pain. So he has a hard time relating to other people. And you think he's kind and gentle but you find out it's all an act. It's like those kids with congenital insensitivity to pain trying to act normal but they start biting their fingernails and before you know it, they've chewed their fingers down to the bone. Or someone saying, "yes, I know how you feel" but you know they don't. So it would be interesting to see a Superman movie about Superman learning to be human. Now that I think about it, it would also be interesting to see a movie about a Superman who was invulnerable but could feel pain. So Superman would get shot in the eye with a bullet and he would be fine, but he would be going "ow ow owwww." I guess that would be more of a comedy.

For as long as I can remember I've been trying to "fix" films, rethinking them, riffing on them, developing them with different assumptions As you recall, noise film started with me trying to create The Matrix around the opposite epistemological assumptions. I tried to share this approach in class once. I showed the class a film (the old version of Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge) and then we discussed how to "fix" it. What I mostly got was fixing logic errors and making the music and acting better. Having thought about it, I think what I mean by "fixing" a film is trying to anchor it in a more truthful understanding of things. You may have noticed that I watch lots of genre films. I guess my ideal film would be a genre film transplanted into the reality in which I exist. I find this compelling as spectacle but also in the way it serves to underscore meaning. It makes sense that I would like Team America so much because this is exactly what it does. It takes a (certain kind of) genre film then transplants it into a more truthful, ambiguous reality. This is also what noise film tries to do. It takes a genre (suspense/conspiracy film) and then asks the question: but how would this really work? I think this is what I meant awhile ago when I said that noise is a satire of conspiracy films. It's probably not as much a satire as it is a type of grounding in its attempt to redevelop the narrative in a way that seems more truthful.

Quirky relationship films

Here are a bunch of (apparently) low/no-budget, non-distributed indy films I've run into over the past few weeks. The overall theme: quirky relationships & beaches.

Broken Arrows
Some nice HDV cinematography. It always surprises me when indy filmmakers have a burning desire to make quirky relationship films. It's easier for me to understand something like this, where it's a guy trying to make something cool looking.

Tahiti
This movie tries SO hard to be a quirky relationship comedy I almost want to take it home in a blanket. Curiously, the guy who directed this film was the DP on Call of Cthulu.

Tomorrow is Today
Another quirky relationship film shot on HDV. This one won some sort of minor cinematography award. Note the use of gradients to keep the eye in frame—in every shot. I think the people who made this are video software developers.

Arc overview

Here's a document I made showing an overview of the film. It's a guide to help me edit/color/shoot the film. For example, all the brownish parts are alike in tone and approach.

Rebuilding shots

Here's a test to see how hard it is to rebuild a shot. I had to extend the sky outwards to fill the 2.35:1 frame without enlarging Ben. You can see that I was sloppy on the right side where I duplicated the sky by Ben's shoulder Also, I'd have to rotoscope the plants. The sky matching is not nearly as hard as I thought. It's a lot like doing a monitor calibration. It's those stupid plants that are hard.

More thoughts on the bridge

Today I stopped by to see how Erik's work on the deck is coming. He mispoured something so he has to redo some concrete. Then I stopped by Ben's to see how his deck is coming. I'm working on a film instead of making a deck.

I was talking to Ben about the bridge scene. He says I want to do everything like a production person and he wants to do everything like an actor. In other words, he wants to be rummaging through papers with his hands. Somehow this got me thinking about the "media arc." We have a lot of arcs going on including the hair arc, which is not a joke, but is a real arc in the film (Ben's hair is really long at the end). The media arc, is an arc that just occurred to me. Ben starts out in the analog world and then by the end, his world becomes intensely mediated. Metaphorically, this indicates his detachment from reality. Since the red room shows Ben going from paper to video, I realized it's probably important to keep the bridge sequence all analog/all paper. So probably this scene is going to be a bit like Kyle Cooper's Se7en titles. It's a bit depressing because that opening is so iconic by now, that if you do anything halfway like it, it's going to be compared. This version of the bridge may also enable me to use the baby Sarah footage. It would be nice to have it playing in the background with the audio fading in and out. And we see close ups of notebooks and real books in the foreground slightly abstracted.

More 2.35:1 composition tests

Full size, proper aspect ratio. In college I had a friend who worked at the Ford modeling agency. He was somewhat in awe of Cheryl Tiegs saying she could never take a bad picture. Ben, while eating, is sort of the opposite. It takes quite a bit of effort not to get a frame where his mouth looks like the first photo below.

For whatever reason, I'm very sensitive about trying to keep the viewer's eye in frame. I'm trying not to overuse them, but to me, practically everything looks better with a gradient filter in it. You can see it in the first photo below on the right. It's almost as if I use a gradient if I couldn't figure out a way to light one edge black. Or check out the red room photo below. There are three, count 'em, three black edges.

Also, I think I figured out the problem with framing. Since this movie only features Ben, there are no two shots or group shots to change the framing. So of course everything's going to look big since we just see medium shots or close ups of Ben most of the time.

Cute attempts to be helpful & Marathon Man

Needing some coverage for a desert shot I asked Ben for an idea. He said, "maybe you could put a shot of a lizard there, you know, the way they do pushups in the sun." Good idea for a shot. Very helpful—NOT. This morning, I was wondering how best to show computer monitors reflecting letters on someone's face so I looked it up in my digital cookbook production text. It said to use a video projector. Another helpful idea—NOT. BTW, it doesn't work to use a regular video light and just shine it through a transparency.

I was trying to watch Marathon Man. You know, "my dear boy, why don't you just act it" and all that. I got 55 minutes into it and still nothing has happened. I have no idea what this movie is about. Back to Netflix you go.

Bridge scene: analysis

As you may know, the bridge scene is a research scene that takes Ben from the words "ex nihilo" to images of scary devils and such. Here's how my thinking has developed. My first idea was to follow the action. This refers to the original scene where the camera was pushing in on Ben in the library and we'd see flashes of scary images every once in a while. My more recent idea was to think of the scene purely visually. Use projections and other ways to make the scene more visually interesting. Then I went back to the production theory idea we came up with the other week—how does this relate to an understanding of the situation? This scene is about research. What is research?

This scene is based on the idea of "snowballing," a typical research technique. You find one article. Then look up the references. Then read those. Then look up the references. So you're researching a backwards chain. Visually, this would be something like a chain or link of pages spreading outwards or backwards into history. What's important in this scene is the transition. Research is not just about gaining information. It's about having one's understanding change. You think you're solving one problem and then the problem itself transforms into a different problem.

So maybe we start seeing lots of text having to do with "ex nihilo." Then more text. Then we start seeing images of creation: planets and stars and galaxies. Then we see religious images. Then we start to see the scary demonic images. And actually, the demonic images have been flashing by. We just haven't been paying attention to them. So this is research as a plot point. Ben's understanding starts to change. He realizes that he's no longer dealing with a purely scientific phenomenon, but one with a supernatural twist. And as the images get scarier and scarier, we see a medieval image of a hand. And there seems to be some kind of distortion on it. Then we cut to Ben's hand which is by now swollen and bleeding dark blood.

Right now, the best way I can think of to show these research images is to bring back the Memex only this time, it would be land-based, not portable. What I like about the Memex is the feeling of speed and acceleration as a filmstrip of images whizz by. I also like the fact that you're actually riffling by other images to get where you're going. I also like the fact that it's easy to shoot. It's just a couple of shots of Ben watching and reacting and turning a knob. Then, it's create it in post.

Ben says I have a reference scene for every scene in the movie. Here's one for this scene: Halle Berry doing internet research in Catwoman. The scene doesn't seem to do much but the graphics are beautifully done. But I think I'm going to go for something more straightforward and less arty.

Aspect ratios: 2.35:1

I was looking at my test footage at full 853 x 480 resolution (16 x 9). Everything looks big! It's that framing problem I keep running into where I tend to frame really tight. The footage looks better the smaller it displays on screen. So I got the idea of changing the aspect ratio of the film from 16 x 9 to the super-wide 2.35:1. To do this you stay at 853 x 480 but add bars to the top and bottom.

When I looked through my footage I found that it's really easy to make this conversion. I light with so many black shadows that all I have to do is fill in the empty space with more black. To sell the effect I just need to composite something in the black space here and there (you know, lightbulbs). This opens a whole can of worms adding even more effects shots to the to-do list. Where do I stop? I just eye-balled the test images above which is why the aspect ratios aren't consistent.

Coloring

I spent some time today working on coloring. I was ready to order Magic Bullet (the software that converts 60i video to 24p to make it more film-like) then I discovered that a new version is awaiting release. Then I got caught up playing around with coloring frames since Magic Bullet comes with coloring software. I really like the Traffic-like preset so I tried that but made the effect less intense. Still just playing

The bridge, more on effects

This afternoon I stopped by Ben's house. I showed him and Erik the most recent cut and apparently they think it's fine. Ben seems to be feeling that the scenes are being punctuated properly now so our long discussion from the other Friday must have helped. I also asked him about the "bridge" scene. The bridge scene is a transition from the desert to the red room. In the desert, he gets cut on the finger and things get ominous. In the red room, Ben is maniacal. I was wondering if we could just skip the bridge scene and just go to the red room—not the full red room, but a few documents in the red room that build to the whole thing. I forgot why the bridge was in there anyway.

Ben said it was like an aria in opera where you imply you're going to hit a high note several times but don't quite get there. Then finally, in the climax you get there. The bridge should be a way of both easing and developing tension. You can't sustain the development of tension for too long he said. Sounds good to me. But I'm still not sure what this should look like. The bridge was once part of the bird scene—doing research in a church. Then it became research in the laundry room. Then research in the slide library. It has to accomplish three things—

>connect "ex nihilo" to scary images
>show Ben incorporate an everyday pop cultural item (or items) into his thinking
>show Ben's gross bloody finger

Most recently, this scene has existed as the rotating pull out, the green screen window with collage images in the window and looking at slides. This scene should be fun. It's where things start to get abstract. There's not much to accomplish in this scene since it's not nearly as linear as the others. This scene also transitions from a linear "normal" world to a more abstract, flatter world. Maybe that's what's making it hard. So I should add the following to the above list—

>transition from normalcy to abstract flatness.

Whatever the case, there's something difficult about this scene. Coming up with ideas is no problem. Coming up with the one idea that seems like the best solution is more elusive.

While I was at Ben's I also shot some footage of baby Sara, now almost a year old. The camera was white balanced for indoors and she was outdoors and she photographed the most beautiful bluish pink color. It was a nice look that for some reason reminded me of old super 8 films. I was thinking that maybe there's some way to integrate the footage into the film. Maybe the footage would be in the background to imply that Ben has a family. Everyone likes babies.

I'm beginning to realize how many 'effects' shots I have—much more than I detailed in that post the other day. I also have the videotape distortion shots, the "intruder" view effect and desert trash removal. I think we're going to be at about 60 to 70% effects shots. I've been thinking maybe it's time to put things into After Effects. The way you're supposed to do it is to take your uncompressed timeline into AE and final it there so your project gets recompressed only once. But I think I'm going to go another way that will be more efficient in the long run. I'll probably do the effects shots as separate pieces saved in Animation compression. Then I'll final those shots in AE. That will save lots of rendering time.

American Astronaut

I made it about 20 minutes into this space western musical before I realized that this film is more of an extended music video, not a drama. So I started fast forwarding. You can't really sit through this any more than you can sit through a music video for 90 minutes. Beautiful film, b/w cinematography and retro-anachronistic production design. It was shot on a few small sets so it has a claustrophobic feel even though they finally get outdoors at the end. Return of Cthulu was like that too; the miniatures didn't really seem to provide a sense of scale. Instructive, since I've often thought of making a film along these lines. The problem: how do you create not-too-good miniatures that lend a sense of scale and space to a picture? Now that I think about it, Guy Maddin has solved this problem since his films never seem small to me. BTW, that's one of the reasons we go out to the desert in our film. I was figuring that people would get tired being indoors by that point. Rent this one at Netflix while you can. It doesn't appear to be in release anymore.

Shooting the subway

Hey, how come no one is standing up for the academy award winning Marty? Yesterday, I took Sean on the subway to shoot trains (for Ben going to work). For some reason, I can never get anything right the first time. It's only after looking at and thinking about the footage when I realized I should get some shots of the train whizzing by, like a transition, from straight on side view. So my "shoot it twice" approach (or disability) still holds.

Got off in Los Feliz and took Sean to Fred 62 for lunch then stopped by Skylight books where they have probably the largest, best-stocked section on film production I've seen in LA. Los Feliz is one of those areas where I just don't belong. Everyone looks like they're in their twenties and you know they hang out at various coffeeshops with their laptops editing videos and writing scripts. At Fred 62's website they have a downloadable contract for using their restaurant as a film location. A different world.

On a sidenote, one of my Korean relatives kept talking about "Rose Palace" one evening. I finally realized that he was in fact talking about Los Feliz.

Apocalypto pt. 4

I think Ben is proud of his ability to needle me about Apocalypto. So with goat got, I continue. Apocalypto starts off with a Will Durant quote—"a great civilization is not conquered from without, until it has destroyed itself from within." That's great, except the the film isn't about the decline of a civilization. The evil, heart-ripping, head-throwing Mayans simply serve as a backdrop for the capture and chase. Or is Gibson trying to tell us that the Mayans deserved to be colonized because they were responsible for their destruction "from within?"

This is where my mixed admiration for George Lucas shines through. You have to give Lucas credit for his vision, even when he overreaches. The Star Wars prequels try to show us how an empire becomes an empire. They look to Kurosawa as a model in their portrayal of human spectacle wrought large-scale and small. And even though they fail in that regard, you have to admire the films' ambition. I guess I don't react well when art tries to tell me that it's important. That's like grad student work. But I appreciate attempts to show us how things work and how things come to be. So Gibson uses the Durant quote to cloak his film in a sense of importance and the heightened documentary-style cinematography to convey a sense of realism. It's a film that wants to be more than the solidly-crafted entertainment that it is.

Visual effects: just call me re-po man

Here are some fx shots we have scheduled (easy stuff):

> sky replacement (make white sky cloudy)
> repositions (when Ben misses his mark). Move frame to right, fill in sky on left.
> wire/antenna removals
>add the text "PRINTING" to storefront

Altered States, Strictly Ballroom, Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (2005)

When I met with Dan a few weeks ago he mentioned that one sequence reminded him of the beginning of Altered States. So I rented it and ended up watching the whole thing. I don't know about Paddy Chayesvsky. He has such a big reputation but I can't say I've really liked anything I've seen by him. Marty may be number one on my list of movies that I hate. I mean really, really hate. I think it's the way the film takes on the plight of the ugly as if it were some kind of cause, like saving the whales. Its message seems to be that ugly people are humans too. Anyway, the premise of Altered States was interesting and it was fun to see the nascent composited images. I found one of the scenes at the end curious. Blair Brown, having just witnessed a huge space-time vortex carries on about how William Hurt's character never really loved her. It's a well-performed, emotional scene. But a scientist sees a vortex and is primarily concerned about what it means for her love life? Leave it to a woman.

I watched Strictly Ballroom because Ben liked the concept of the sexy ugly girl and the plot point where the story turns to the woman's family. I didn't find Tara Morice very sexy. She came across to me as the well-adjusted ugly girl. You know, like Natalie on the Facts of Life was the well-adjusted fat girl. The theatricality of the film was interesting. Also, one really bad camera move where the camera moves from the second floor down to the first floor and then into the room. When the camera moves into the room, it shakes jarringly. But you know, isn't that the message of the film? Spirit and heart are more important than technical perfection. Yes, I'm a jerk. A very Romantic movie.

Of the three stylized b/w films shot on miniDV I saw recently—Able Edwards, Call of Cthulu, and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (2005), I was expecting Caligari to be the worst. Somehow I thought it was going to be present day actors interacting with the original actors sort of like a Roger Rabbit in b/w thing. In fact, the whole project was a remake. The only elements of the original used were the story and the backgrounds. New actors performing with new dialogue were composited into the original restored backgrounds along with some new props and elements. The compositing was really good, especially amazing since they shot miniDV. Caligari was well-written and performed at a heightened theatrical pitch. For me, the film transcended its gimmick and was a worthwhile, if tiring watch. Beautiful dvx100 b/w footage. If I remember correctly, it was shot by one of James Cameron's fx cinematographers. Also, apparently they did a lot of the lighting and shadow effects in post.

Overall progress and words

For the past week I've been shooting b-roll and editing everything together. It's really interesting to see the film take shape. It's like figuring out a big puzzle. The big pieces are all there, the pieces you can't change. Then you have to make it work with what you have or the least amount of energy. The map is a good example. The design of the map keeps changing as I see exactly how it has to function. But that's OK. The little details are easy to shoot and were made to be changed.

I'm also realizing that in the shrine and the spinner I've created animated characters. The spinner spins. The shrine has dangly crosses. I've been thinking about what it would mean for Ben to interact with these props if we think of them as characters. I keep forgetting to tell Ben to listen to the props.

***

Either I'm getting worse or our expectations are getting higher. In general, our newest footage doesn't look as good as the footage we shot earlier. I checked our records and found that it took 5 hours over three days to set up and light the green room. Maybe that's why. Back then, there was no expectation that we'd be able to light any faster than that.

***

I'm still thinking about how the voice over will work. The cut is much clearer now so I think I can use less words. My goal is to use as little language as possible. I had the idea that a more modal approach might work. I got the idea from watching Inside Man, where Clive Owen is talking directly to the camera. Some sample dialogue if we go with this approach:

Question Assuming that the difference between input and output falls within measurement error and that it's impossible to wait for infinity, how do you know if you've invented a perpetual motion machine?

Answer: when the mathematics fail, it becomes a matter of belief.

Question: Assuming it catalyzes new material, is an machine an over-unity device even when the machine itself stops?

Answer: unknown

***

Question: How long do you keep trying to make something work?

Answer: most of the time it's not up to you.

Eaton Canyon shoot

Yesterday we shot from about 2 to 4 at Eaton Canyon which is standing in for the desert. The area we used is about 40 yards away from the parking lot. It would be easy an walk except we were all wary of finding rattlesnakes.

Ben was talking on his cellphone between shots. When he wasn't needed Erik was just waiting around. Just like a big budget shoot. The footage cuts pretty well together. One wide shot is slightly out of focus. It's the first time I've been out of focus. The lens is also dirty. Maybe they're related; you can see the dirty lens because the shot is out of focus. Fortunately it was windy. It makes a big difference. Now I know why productions use those gigantic wind fans. The wind, and Ben's comment that we were shooting a "showdown," made me realize that this scene is a bit like a Western: a showdown between Ben and the shrine. All we were missing was tumbleweeds.

There are rattlesnakes in Eaton Canyon

This morning I shot a lot of b-roll by myself. Simple things like closeups of fixing the spinner. Then in the afternoon I picked up Sean and went to Eaton Canyon to scout locations for Friday. When we first got there Sean and I were playing and then Sean started freaking out and said, "Dad, dad, there's a snake!" I ran down to look thinking it was one of those harmless green snakes. Then I saw a snake with a flat, broad head—one of the indications of a bad snake. Sean had stepped on the rock 6 inches from where the snake was resting. He thought it was poop. When I got home I looked it up on the internet and found it was a rattler. Yikes. Not, it wasn't rattling.

Anyway, Eaton Canyon is going to stand in for the desert for a couple of pickups. It's fairly similar looking and you can't beat five minutes away from our house (vs. an hour each way). It looks good facing south where you see the sky instead of the mountains. It got me thinking that the real advantage of digital technologies is not that you can bluescreen anything into the background, but that you can do fixes like removing towers and wires. I might try also try removing the hill on the right to put more sky in the shot.

This is NOT Mick Grierson's site

Bizarremag mistakenly linked to this site. You really want to go HERE.

Apocalypto III

This refers to my last post on Apocalypto. Now imagine if the cinematography in Apocalypto looked like this trailer. It would be a different film right? This is what I mean by being more honest. The film would still look brutal, but it would look more appropriately fantastic instead of trying to buy authority by looking like a documentary.

Mike Figgis, Moviemakers' master class, more on camera

I bought that Mike Figgis book and now that I'm reading it more thoroughly I'm actually liking it. That should please both Ben and Ward who think I don't actually read anything. Ben would be even happier if I got emotionally involved with the text. Figgis' book is one of those "how does DV changes the process?" meditations which is useful. I've never seen one of his films, not even Timecode. They just look too ugly. If you read this you know why. He's definitely one of those "performance is more important than the look" guys. I also skimmed through Tirard's Moviemakers' Master Class, a collection of interviews with filmmakers on production approaches. What was interesting was that this diverse group of directors all seem to say the same thing: you can only learn filmmaking by doing it, a performance begins with casting, you can't go in with too many preconceptions. A worthwhile read with a very spcecific production focus.

Two things I learned from Sunday's shoot. First, I was leading Ben too much in the pedestal/jib down. It's like anticipating something too much. I should have let his move "pull" the camera down. Second, I'm playing around with the POV shots. I originally shot the POVs of the broken spinner from a true Ben's eye POV. But when watching the shots I realized that they would look better wider making the spinner look more isolated and lonely. So I reshot the POV yesterday by myself. But then a new problem surfaced. The shot is so wide that it's obvious Ben isn't in it. So I have to reframe. Anyway, the point of all this is that a POV doesn't have to be too literal. Sometimes the more meaningful shot works better.

Future ideas: hideous asians and fake writing

One of the ideas for a future project revolves around the idea of childhood and information—the way information is interpreted and misintrepreted by children, the way information is transformed, the way information is kept from children. Here are some galleries I've put together recently with some reference material. The idea is that in this world, writing is not informative or is misinformative. Maybe the posters or films all have messages that seem to make sense but in the wrong way. Like my "guns and alcohol don't mix" misunderstanding. Or maybe the text is literally gibberish—Gallery of gibberish

Here are some war-era propaganda images of hideous Asians—Gallery of hideous asians

Useful notes on lenses

This info is pretty obvious but it's useful and I thought it would be nice to compile it in one place.

WIDE ANGLE
Captures a bigger area/looks less "real"
Makes things look bigger/more distortion
Has much larger depth of field. Good for run and gun since you don't have to focus all the time.
Emphasizes motion, especially z-axis motion
Minimizes camera shake (better for dolly shots, handheld)

LONG
Looks more "normal"
Supposedly more flattering for portraits/less distortion
Easier to get depth of field effects (blurred backgrounds)
Deemphasizes motion, especially z-axis motion
Emphasizes camera shake (worse for dolly shots/handheld, or use for effect)

Sunday night workroom shoot

Last night we shot from 11 to 1. It took forever to light. I'm not sure why it's taking so long to light these days. I pretty much have only one lighting scheme—the Robert Rodriguez offside key with varying types of fill, so I always think it will go fast. We were trying to simulate a rainy day outside so we tried diffusing everything. But I tend to dislike soft lighting so I wanted some areas with hard light. So we have a soft/hard thing going. The lighting we ended up with is odd in the sense that it works the opposite of what you might think. There are two key points in the shot—Ben discovering the dead spinner and then Ben looking closely at the spinner. At both of these points, Ben's face is totally obscured in shadow. You only see him before and after. Acting via shadows. Ben says that in terms of acting, I'm always asking him to do nothing. I told him the Jack Lemmon story. Director: Give me less, Jack. Jack Lemmon: if I give you less I won't be doing anything! Director: Exactly.

Notes: Tota with diffusion and daylight gel outside the window, Omni pointed toward back of room. Far away Omni fill with umbrella. 25 watt lightbulb to the right of Ben's face. I cut the sequence together last night. I'm still not sure how it works. The edit fell into an interesting place in the Batman music and as usual, the music informed the edit. It caused me to really extend some shots for the better I think.

Tip of the day: we used the jib to do the pedestal down (sorry, I forget the more contemporary term for this move). The shot kept bouncing off the pillow I used to slow the camera. Finally I figured out it works best if you don't "land" on the pillow but actually push the jib down into the pillow with some force. Much better result and no bounce.

More crazy people's rooms

Technically speaking I guess this is more of a warlock's lair than a crazy person's room. From Clive Barker's Lord of Illusions.

The Godfather

I've been thinking about The Godfather for two reasons. One, its drama is based on understanding and observation, not technique. Two, I'm trying to figure out what I want to do that's different. It's not that I'm trying to be different for its own sake. But there's something I'm after that I don't find in the film.

Some details I really like:

At the beginning Luca Brasi, having practiced his lines over and over is talking to the Godfather. You know, "and may their first child be a masculine child." His performance is interrupted by children running through the room. That is a great moment because that's what always happens when you over rehearse. Something or someone interrupts and you can't accomodate the interruption.

At the wedding party the old guy gets up to sing. And he's out of tune and out of time, but everyone is loving it. That expresses so much about what family events are like.

Contrast this to the scene in Superman Returns which I hated:

Everything shakes when the rocketship lands. That that scene is about the way rocketships land in movies.

What I'm after

I'm still not exactly sure what I want our final product to look like. But I do have an idea of how to get there. I'm not sure if what I want qualifies as drama or not. Or whether I'm after "good" drama (vs. bad drama). I like the look of art films, but I don't often find them engaging. Art films are great at setting mood, but then the mood doesn't seem to go anyplace. But there's something about the look of a film that's important. I'm going for a certain kind of clarity. There is an underlying structure that supports the film. But I'm not concerned that audiences understand every image and every sequence. That's one of the things I like about George Lucas' films (which he acknowledges). You watch them and much of time, you're not sure what's happening but you do know that there is an internal logic at work. I do like David Mamet's idea that film is a sequence of uninflected shots. I like the idea of trying to do away with technique. At the same time, I don't want the film to be a transparent window to a performance. I really like Mamet's conception of dialogue as a light dusting that supports images.

Wisdom vs. devices

Yesterday Ben was giving me some editing suggestions while we sat at the computer. It was really productive because our discussion brought up a variety of issues. As you know, I've been going through the film trying to emphasize and punctuate certain events. So I've been applying various punctuation "techniques" all the while feeling uneasy about doing so. Ben's and my discussion inevitably turned to Steven Spielberg. His films, especially Raiders, showcase a variety of emphasis and underscoring techniques so we use them as a touchstone for discussion. Example: in every Spielberg film you will see a dramatic push in for emphasis. Ben's take on Spielberg was that he generally substitutes technique for wisdom. In other words, any emotional understanding is eclipsed by an emphasis on techniques that prespecify emotion.

Ben's thoughts on the matter made a lot of sense to me and really helped me to articulate some of the problems I'm having with the film. First, segments of the film feel perfunctory, as if they exist only to move Ben from point A to point B. It's areas like these that Ben thinks are too "unceremonious." Ben was saying, correctly, that the film (like any art) is the details. You have to want to draw in an audience to experience something every step of the way. But until now, I've been feeling that I have only two choices: keep the flow of events moving (which ends up looking too prosaic), or apply some dramatic emphasis technique (which seems contrived).

Ben's comments helped me to realize that I really am interested in drama and the specifics of the film. I'm just interested in a particular take on film drama. The problem, then, is not that the scenes are unpuncuated. It is that they are inadequately expressed. When I say expression, I am not talking about the projection of emotion, but the artistic act of making meaning public. I don't need to "dramatize" events. I need to cinematically express an understanding of the event. Sometimes, this even requires expressing an event's prosaic nature. For example, let's consider the scene where Ben finds the map with "Infinite Motion" Nevada on it. Right now he looks at the map and then we dissolve to the truck driving in the desert. It needs something. This is a big revelation in the film. It breaks Ben's monotonous routine, intruding on his life. But for me, revelation is less about aha! and more about tenacity. There is a mundane quality to revelation. It doesn't leap out; it lingers.

So rather than showing some dramatic reaction shot or having the camera swirling around our character ala A Beautiful Mind (both of which I've considered), maybe we go a different way. Maybe Ben sees the map. But then he goes back to work. And he keeps working at the printing press. But maybe now he seems to be thinking about what he just saw. And then maybe we cut back to the map. And it just spins around and around in circles for awhile. Like the spinner. The scene is less about awe and more about hearing an unrelenting persistent voice.

The entire discussion with Ben was very helpful and left me giddy for the rest of the day. I feel like I have a handle on what I'm going for. And Ben, you'll never work in this town again.

Apocalypto revisited

Yesterday, we had a good discussion about Apocalypto which Ben and I both saw recently. Gene reiterated his distaste for criticism when it establishes a certain position of judgement. I was arguing that analysis can be good when it is a matter of discernment, of trying to understand how authority works.

Ben said that my comment about the film—"the most exciting National Geographic special ever made"—was condescending. That's not how I meant it. But I then realized that the "National Geographic" comment was alluding to something that was bothering me. I think it has to do with the way that Apocalypto uses signifiers of authenticity to seduce us. It has all of the National Geographic stereotypes: bare breasted women, happy natives, exotic customs. The cinematography itself uses the grammar of documentary footage. Plus it's shot on all-real, no CGI sets. Then there's the native language subtitled in English. It's not enough for Gibson to shoot an exciting film. He also wants it to be real.

In my thinking it would have been more honest to stylize the movie. Maybe crush the blacks and whites a bit. Make it a bit more noir, or a bit prettier. Romanticize it. That way, the presentation of the film would match its content more closely. This wouldn't make it a better film. But I guess I feel it would be more honest. It's a matter of where one's authority comes from. Apocalypto wants to establish a certain kind of credibility, as if we're gaining an insider's look at the decline of a civilization. Instead, what we are really shown is a romanticized, outsider's view of a culture used primarily as a backdrop for a well-crafted adventure.