I left with the sense that Miller, in his eagerness, took elements of all his favorite movies without regard for continuity and relation, and blended them like a child who thinks a milkshake made of Phish Food, gummy worms, pixie sticks, and Pop Tarts is a good idea. The end result is an overwhelming sludge with underwhelming appeal.
—Lilly Lampe, Venus Zine
In the end, what The Spirit looks like is student work. A lot of times people think that student work looks bad—fuzzy and clumsy and oddly proportioned. To an extent that's true. But from my experience, what characterizes student work is that it's created 'outside in.' That is, students focus almost exclusively on the tropes of authority. So a typical student Photoshop rendering is shiny and slick (always with lots of airbrush rendering and lens flares), but stiff, with no underlying structure. Or a video project has an elaborate title, lots of 35mm rack focuses, excrutiatingly planned-out three point lighting and an extras DVD with outtakes and special effects breakdowns, but again, no underlying structure. Or a student interior design has lots of expensive tile, complex accent walls, painstakingly chosen lighting and hardware schemes, but no underlying structure. Or student writing has lots of big words ('ramification,' anyone?) but no ideas and no structure. That's exactly what The Spirit is like. It's full of in-jokes, 'moments,' cameos, interesting production design and cinematography and plenty of fodder for the DVD commentary. It's all flash and Easter eggs. But it lacks a skeleton to hold it together resulting in a stiff project.
Another student affectation is to emulate a favorite scene thinking that the scene in itself is interesting. So the film spends all of its time aiming toward the scene without the emotional setup that made the original scene so compelling in the first place. That's working outside in—focusing on the things that leap off the screen and forgetting about the rest.
Monday, December 29, 2008
The Spirit - who's bringing it?
More speculation. Still wondering how a film like The Spirit came to be. There are so many things wrong with it that it's not even instructionally useful.
There's probably a bit of the Lucasitis here. Miller is fresh off two hits in Sin City and 300. That, plus his iconic status probably creates a great deal of critical deference. He has two fans in fx supervisor Stu Maschwitz and DP Bill Pope.
I also wonder if the problem is that no one knew who was supposed to "bring it?" Green screen films tend to be multi-modal; the performance is carried in different ways, sometimes by the actors, sometimes by the production design, sometimes by the visuals. On Sin City, Robert Rodriguez served as director, fx supervisor and DP, so he knew how the film was supposed to work. But on The Spirit, I wonder if no one knew who was bringing it?
I can imagine that on Sin City, Frank Miller was more of a kibitzer, offering suggestions here and there. The Spirit has a kind of kibitzed directorial approach in that it's full of details and affectations but there's no structure. It's like Miller didn't fully understand what Rodriguez brought to Sin City and thought that somehow magically, The Spirit was going to come together. It's like Bill Pope thought that Maschwitz was going to bring it and Maschwitz thought that Miller was going to bring it and in the end, no one really did.
A potentially interesting study of art and leadership.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Notes on The Spirit 2
> With The Spirit, Miller seems to have made a big miscalculation and it is this: just because you can appreciate something doesn't mean you can do it. I don't know much about Eisner's The Spirit, but it seems to have a light, loopy, snappy tone. But Frank Miller can't do light or loopy or snappy. He does whores, dames, guys and freaks. Miller knew what how he wanted The Spirit to come across. But it's just not in him to do it.
> Ooh! Ooh! The evil henchman seemed to be clones of officer Tootie in Car 54 where are you?
>Miller makes the mistake of believing that plots are interesting. I realize I'm as down on plots as I am on characterizations and backstory. Plots aren't inherently interesting. No one cares about the "mysterious bond" between The Spirit and The Octopus. But the question remains: if a film doesn't have characterization, plot or backstory, what's left?
>To me the film looks a lot like Sky Captain and not so much like Sin City. Harry Knowles is right. It would have looked better in a kind of super technicolor, like the super 8 of your dreams.
>I thought the women looked terrible in this film, like they were over-inked, giving them a drag-like appearance. The diffusion didn't help much. Sarah Paulson had the same vacant doll's-eye look that Audrey Tatou had in The da Vinci code.
>I was actually a bit shocked that Samuel Jackson spent much of his time in mud-caked blackface.
>The only good shot for me was the one in which young Spirit holds Sand Serif as she hangs off the end of a train. It was a nice twist on the "I'm flying" scene from Titanic. It works because there's action that tells us something about the characters. But wait, I thought I was down on characterization. Hmmm.
>Another example of bad blocking. Young Spirit and Sand Serif are rushing away from reporters. "Go away" young Spirit yells (or something like that). But he just sits there waiting for the reporter to accost him. Granted, a lot of films have moments like these, but practically every scene had these kinds of blocking problems.
>The whole film reminds me of noise film's bird scene, the one we reshot four times because it never looked right. Some effects were never meant to be.
>Miller seems to have wanted The Spirit to be a bit of a scoundrel. They needed a different kind of actor. But there's only one Harrison Ford and he's too old. They might have gone craggier, uglier, more square-jawed; tougher.
>Engagement: the dance with death stuff could have worked if something was actually happening in those scenes. Film just works differently from literature. It has to have some kind of movement.
> Ooh! Ooh! The evil henchman seemed to be clones of officer Tootie in Car 54 where are you?
>Miller makes the mistake of believing that plots are interesting. I realize I'm as down on plots as I am on characterizations and backstory. Plots aren't inherently interesting. No one cares about the "mysterious bond" between The Spirit and The Octopus. But the question remains: if a film doesn't have characterization, plot or backstory, what's left?
>To me the film looks a lot like Sky Captain and not so much like Sin City. Harry Knowles is right. It would have looked better in a kind of super technicolor, like the super 8 of your dreams.
>I thought the women looked terrible in this film, like they were over-inked, giving them a drag-like appearance. The diffusion didn't help much. Sarah Paulson had the same vacant doll's-eye look that Audrey Tatou had in The da Vinci code.
>I was actually a bit shocked that Samuel Jackson spent much of his time in mud-caked blackface.
>The only good shot for me was the one in which young Spirit holds Sand Serif as she hangs off the end of a train. It was a nice twist on the "I'm flying" scene from Titanic. It works because there's action that tells us something about the characters. But wait, I thought I was down on characterization. Hmmm.
>Another example of bad blocking. Young Spirit and Sand Serif are rushing away from reporters. "Go away" young Spirit yells (or something like that). But he just sits there waiting for the reporter to accost him. Granted, a lot of films have moments like these, but practically every scene had these kinds of blocking problems.
>The whole film reminds me of noise film's bird scene, the one we reshot four times because it never looked right. Some effects were never meant to be.
>Miller seems to have wanted The Spirit to be a bit of a scoundrel. They needed a different kind of actor. But there's only one Harrison Ford and he's too old. They might have gone craggier, uglier, more square-jawed; tougher.
>Engagement: the dance with death stuff could have worked if something was actually happening in those scenes. Film just works differently from literature. It has to have some kind of movement.
Notes on The Spirit
The Spirit has been beckoning me, calling me. I even bought the $30 art book yesterday. I was prepared to see it last night but that 14 hour island-wide power outage got in my way. So tonight, after Sean went to sleep, I drove out to Koko Marina where Barack Obama was seen eating shave ice yesterday and watched it at the Koko Marina 8.
A lot of people seem to think that the film was smug or self-mocking. I think that Miller et. al. were actually very sincere. The problem isn't the intent behind the film. It's Miller's lack of experience.
MEDIUM
Miller doesn't yet understand the difference between comics and cinema. Cinema is literal. So a lot of things you can do in comics won't work in film. Having someone skulk around neck deep in water works fine on paper. But when you see it on film, all you can do is think about is how cold the water is and wonder why everyone isn't freezing to death and why is he skulking in the first place. It doesn't make any sense.
>You can't have sets that are that minimal. It just looks like bad theater.
>People on screen have to be doing something that makes sense. Miller blocks everything as tropes. People move here and there with no reason. In most of the film, there is no underpinning physical or emotional reality. Miller doesn't understand what makes a world a world. A world continues beyond the screen. It is not just about appearances.
>Scenes are very static. They look like moving storyboards but as such make no sense. A comic book panel of three people talking looks fine. But a few minutes of expository walk and talk with the person featured prominently in the middle saying almost nothing is just incompetent.
EDITING
It seems unlikely that Miller would have final cut on this film. But how else would you explain the lack of editing? Just getting rid of a lot of the cutaways/reaction shots and jokes that didn't work would have helped a lot. When it comes out on DVD I think I might do an edit getting rid of the bad stuff just to see if it works any better.
EXPOSITION
The problem isn't the actual words as much as the way they're used. It seemed like 90% of the dialogue was exposition. Correspondingly, none of the dialogue had any subtext. Everyone just explained what they were doing and if you didn't understand that, The Spirit explained it for you. Further, there was fighting but no action. This is a film. You have to have people -do- things, externalize to show how they're feeling and what they're thinking. You can't talk a film into existence. But the thing is crammed with words that have no function. The Spirit is walking around narrating and then a voice over narration of The Spirit immediately follows. Why? The thing feels like wall-to-wall talking, a cinematic horror vacuui.
EMOTIONAL SENSE
The film made no emotional sense. Imagine seeing your long lost love after years of separation and the encounter is treated like buying a loaf of bread. Miller was just outthinking himself here. Not wanting to go sentimental, he tried to play the scene against expectation. But without enough experience to make it work, the scene came across as nothing. It's almost like Miller took advanced classes in film criticism but no basic classes in film production. You can't do something complex until you can do something simple. Miller gives new meaning to the term "result directing." He knew how he wanted the scenes to work. He wanted to avoid sentimentality, to bring cool irony to the film. But he didn't know how to do it. He didn't as my typography instructor used to say, "stay within himself." Essentially, Miller doesn't know enough as a filmmaker to know what's important and what's not.
CONCLUSION
In the long run, I felt like I always knew what Miller was going for. He just didn't have the experience and know how to make it work.
A lot of people seem to think that the film was smug or self-mocking. I think that Miller et. al. were actually very sincere. The problem isn't the intent behind the film. It's Miller's lack of experience.
MEDIUM
Miller doesn't yet understand the difference between comics and cinema. Cinema is literal. So a lot of things you can do in comics won't work in film. Having someone skulk around neck deep in water works fine on paper. But when you see it on film, all you can do is think about is how cold the water is and wonder why everyone isn't freezing to death and why is he skulking in the first place. It doesn't make any sense.
>You can't have sets that are that minimal. It just looks like bad theater.
>People on screen have to be doing something that makes sense. Miller blocks everything as tropes. People move here and there with no reason. In most of the film, there is no underpinning physical or emotional reality. Miller doesn't understand what makes a world a world. A world continues beyond the screen. It is not just about appearances.
>Scenes are very static. They look like moving storyboards but as such make no sense. A comic book panel of three people talking looks fine. But a few minutes of expository walk and talk with the person featured prominently in the middle saying almost nothing is just incompetent.
EDITING
It seems unlikely that Miller would have final cut on this film. But how else would you explain the lack of editing? Just getting rid of a lot of the cutaways/reaction shots and jokes that didn't work would have helped a lot. When it comes out on DVD I think I might do an edit getting rid of the bad stuff just to see if it works any better.
EXPOSITION
The problem isn't the actual words as much as the way they're used. It seemed like 90% of the dialogue was exposition. Correspondingly, none of the dialogue had any subtext. Everyone just explained what they were doing and if you didn't understand that, The Spirit explained it for you. Further, there was fighting but no action. This is a film. You have to have people -do- things, externalize to show how they're feeling and what they're thinking. You can't talk a film into existence. But the thing is crammed with words that have no function. The Spirit is walking around narrating and then a voice over narration of The Spirit immediately follows. Why? The thing feels like wall-to-wall talking, a cinematic horror vacuui.
EMOTIONAL SENSE
The film made no emotional sense. Imagine seeing your long lost love after years of separation and the encounter is treated like buying a loaf of bread. Miller was just outthinking himself here. Not wanting to go sentimental, he tried to play the scene against expectation. But without enough experience to make it work, the scene came across as nothing. It's almost like Miller took advanced classes in film criticism but no basic classes in film production. You can't do something complex until you can do something simple. Miller gives new meaning to the term "result directing." He knew how he wanted the scenes to work. He wanted to avoid sentimentality, to bring cool irony to the film. But he didn't know how to do it. He didn't as my typography instructor used to say, "stay within himself." Essentially, Miller doesn't know enough as a filmmaker to know what's important and what's not.
CONCLUSION
In the long run, I felt like I always knew what Miller was going for. He just didn't have the experience and know how to make it work.
Friday, December 26, 2008
Adult films + happy birthday to us
It was four years ago this month when I started work on noise film. Happy Birthday to us.
Today I was thinking about adult films (films FOR adults). I think it's because of the films that are out now. Sin City and 300 seemed very adolescent to me, like a teenage boy's view of something adult (RE sex and violence). The Spirit seems similar. Benjamin Button is out now which reminded me of Fincher's Se7en. That was another film that wanted desperately to be grown up. To me it came off as stylized, self-conscious and adolescent. Most other 'adult' films seem to be boring and talky or dramas. Films like Midnight Cowboy or The Sterile Cuckoo. So I've been wondering about what would a true adult film look like? What would it be about? What would be its tone and texture?
Today I was thinking about adult films (films FOR adults). I think it's because of the films that are out now. Sin City and 300 seemed very adolescent to me, like a teenage boy's view of something adult (RE sex and violence). The Spirit seems similar. Benjamin Button is out now which reminded me of Fincher's Se7en. That was another film that wanted desperately to be grown up. To me it came off as stylized, self-conscious and adolescent. Most other 'adult' films seem to be boring and talky or dramas. Films like Midnight Cowboy or The Sterile Cuckoo. So I've been wondering about what would a true adult film look like? What would it be about? What would be its tone and texture?
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Frank Miller's Christmas Spirit
I want to see Frank Miller's The Spirit so badly. This tells you what I find interesting about films. Much of the time it's not the pleasure of watching but the curiosity of seeing how thought and process affect the final result. I want to test my conjecture that the film's problems stem from its virtual shooting approach.
This semester I discovered that it's difficult for students to create simple animated virtual shot sequences. For instance, let's imagine you start wide then cut closer then cut to something else. Shooting that sequence in the real world is pretty straightforward. But creating it in After Effects means building everything from scratch. It's a lot harder because you have to control the background size and movement, among other things. I think it's a lot easier to do this sort of thing when you have actual shooting experience first. Without this experience you're practically flying blind.
When Zack Snyder and Robert Rodriguez directed their Frank Miller stories, they were doing something very difficult, perhaps analogous to writing a good sonnet or song lyric. In these cases, meaning is expressed within a highly circumscribed structure. The storyboard is not the reality, but the form of the film. It's like an actor hitting marks. Good performers make it seem natural. But I suspect that in The Spirit, Miller mistook the storyboards for the reality. Without a reservoir of shooting and editing experience, he made the freshman mistake of shooting his boards.
Storyboards only work when they are grounded in actual shooting experience and even then, they only inform the process of shooting. At their best, they prepare the director to more clearly see the moment of shooting. That's why I'm not too big on using storyboards in class at first. I've seen it over and over—students shoot what they had storyboarded but it always comes out wrong because they are trying to impose a template on reality that blinds them to what's there. Storyboards invoke past shooting experience. They do not create it.
The Spirit seems to be an interesting experiment in the development of virtual filmmaking. What often happens in these films is that the actors' performances become backgrounded, upstaged by the production design (e.g., Keanoshow). Or the work takes on a lifeless, puppeteered quality (e.g., Sky Captain). The Spirit, on the other hand, seems to bypass cinema altogether. It doesn't even seem to be animation, but (even more so than Dave McKean's work), storyboards in motion. I can't wait to see it.
This semester I discovered that it's difficult for students to create simple animated virtual shot sequences. For instance, let's imagine you start wide then cut closer then cut to something else. Shooting that sequence in the real world is pretty straightforward. But creating it in After Effects means building everything from scratch. It's a lot harder because you have to control the background size and movement, among other things. I think it's a lot easier to do this sort of thing when you have actual shooting experience first. Without this experience you're practically flying blind.
When Zack Snyder and Robert Rodriguez directed their Frank Miller stories, they were doing something very difficult, perhaps analogous to writing a good sonnet or song lyric. In these cases, meaning is expressed within a highly circumscribed structure. The storyboard is not the reality, but the form of the film. It's like an actor hitting marks. Good performers make it seem natural. But I suspect that in The Spirit, Miller mistook the storyboards for the reality. Without a reservoir of shooting and editing experience, he made the freshman mistake of shooting his boards.
Storyboards only work when they are grounded in actual shooting experience and even then, they only inform the process of shooting. At their best, they prepare the director to more clearly see the moment of shooting. That's why I'm not too big on using storyboards in class at first. I've seen it over and over—students shoot what they had storyboarded but it always comes out wrong because they are trying to impose a template on reality that blinds them to what's there. Storyboards invoke past shooting experience. They do not create it.
The Spirit seems to be an interesting experiment in the development of virtual filmmaking. What often happens in these films is that the actors' performances become backgrounded, upstaged by the production design (e.g., Keanoshow). Or the work takes on a lifeless, puppeteered quality (e.g., Sky Captain). The Spirit, on the other hand, seems to bypass cinema altogether. It doesn't even seem to be animation, but (even more so than Dave McKean's work), storyboards in motion. I can't wait to see it.
Friday, December 19, 2008
Santa's cheeks are rosy tears
In other posts I wrote about trying to create "impossible plotlines." I think the same can be said for "impossible tones." How can you make a movie that has an unlikely tone? Like something about Christmas that is positive yet not self-conscious and not about the "wonder" of Christmas? I got this idea from reading something by Scorsese. He said one problem of student films is that they aren't about anything. A film needs content, he said, even if it's just setting a certain mood.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Gertrude? Gertrude? Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959)
When we were kids, my classmates and I were somehow always able to cajole our parents into letting us stay up late to watch an occasional network "late night movie," something that doesn't exist anymore. We watched Journey to the Center of the Earth and Hitchcock's The Birds over and over. Unlike a lot of old movies, this one retains its charms. We had no idea who Pat Boone and James Mason were, but there were dinosaurs! I still remember a lot of the film which has been inscribed into memory. Some things I picked up on this viewing—
>I was listening to the music thinking, who did this Citizen Kane sound-alike soundtrack? I mean it sounds exactly like Kane, with the vibraphone and everything. The answer, amazingly enough: Bernard Herrmann.
>The movie has a serious Raiders of the Lost Ark vibe. The team finds the path to the center of the earth because of the way the sun beams through a rock feature, laser-like, on a particular day of the month. There's a rolling boulder which almost flattens the heroes. Of course, there's lost treasure and—Atlantis!
>There's an interesting use of sound. Our heroes are walking deeper and deeper into the earth. We then cut to a close up of walking feet. Normally, we'd assume that these were our heroes' feet. But in this case, we know these are the villain's feet because we hear our heroes' voices in the background, all echoey and distant. In this case, a sound cue is used to provide geographical clarity.
>There's an interesting example of bad misdirection at the beginning of the movie. Professor Lindenbrook is in a foul mood because he just received some bad news by mail. As he storms into the library, his daughter (?), Jenny runs up a step ladder to avoid him. After discussion, Lindenbrook and McKuen hatch their scheme to journey to the center of the earth. Expressing her shock, Jenny, who has been listening, bumps down the ladder one step at a time. As I watched the scene unfold, I wondered, why is she running away from him up a ladder? Weird blocking emphasized by an edit. Then, of course, there's the payoff. I often think that conjuring is a good metaphor for film. To continue with the metaphor, the setup attracts too much attention to itself, like a feint that that doesn't work.
Watch it on Netflix instant.
>I was listening to the music thinking, who did this Citizen Kane sound-alike soundtrack? I mean it sounds exactly like Kane, with the vibraphone and everything. The answer, amazingly enough: Bernard Herrmann.
>The movie has a serious Raiders of the Lost Ark vibe. The team finds the path to the center of the earth because of the way the sun beams through a rock feature, laser-like, on a particular day of the month. There's a rolling boulder which almost flattens the heroes. Of course, there's lost treasure and—Atlantis!
>There's an interesting use of sound. Our heroes are walking deeper and deeper into the earth. We then cut to a close up of walking feet. Normally, we'd assume that these were our heroes' feet. But in this case, we know these are the villain's feet because we hear our heroes' voices in the background, all echoey and distant. In this case, a sound cue is used to provide geographical clarity.
>There's an interesting example of bad misdirection at the beginning of the movie. Professor Lindenbrook is in a foul mood because he just received some bad news by mail. As he storms into the library, his daughter (?), Jenny runs up a step ladder to avoid him. After discussion, Lindenbrook and McKuen hatch their scheme to journey to the center of the earth. Expressing her shock, Jenny, who has been listening, bumps down the ladder one step at a time. As I watched the scene unfold, I wondered, why is she running away from him up a ladder? Weird blocking emphasized by an edit. Then, of course, there's the payoff. I often think that conjuring is a good metaphor for film. To continue with the metaphor, the setup attracts too much attention to itself, like a feint that that doesn't work.
Watch it on Netflix instant.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Discoveries
Having found that discoveries are an important part of pushing a film forward, here are a few I've cataloged:
>Anamorph: a drunk couple fumbles as they try to get into their hotel room. The woman falls onto a door and it swings open revealing a terrifying scene.
>Ghost Rider: young Ghost Rider notices something in the wastebasket. He fishes it out and finds his Dad's medical test results.
>Amelie: Amelie is watching the TV news. She drops a ball which rolls to hit and reveal a secret door.
>Coraline: Coraline sees a doll. She walks up to it and then notices a trap door behind the chest.
>Cars: Lightning kicks a can in disgust. It lands near Doc's garage which Lightning proceeds to enter.
>Anamorph: a drunk couple fumbles as they try to get into their hotel room. The woman falls onto a door and it swings open revealing a terrifying scene.
>Ghost Rider: young Ghost Rider notices something in the wastebasket. He fishes it out and finds his Dad's medical test results.
>Amelie: Amelie is watching the TV news. She drops a ball which rolls to hit and reveal a secret door.
>Coraline: Coraline sees a doll. She walks up to it and then notices a trap door behind the chest.
>Cars: Lightning kicks a can in disgust. It lands near Doc's garage which Lightning proceeds to enter.
Anamorph, Basic Instinct, Dark Knight, The Host
Not much happening on the noise film front. Just finishing up with school. Finally taking a break and watching a few movies.
Anamorph
There's one point in the movie where I thought, "Oh my God... they're doing a serial killer flick based on actual aesthetics." There's a copycat killer on the loose. In a lecture, the detective played by Willem Dafoe talks about photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson saying that he was trying to capture "the moment of truth." And I'm thinking, "that's how he's going to get the copy cat--the copy cat can't capture truth, he can only create a lifeless semblance of it!" But then the movie veers off into the domain of not caring and making no sense. This is the way NOT to make an ambigiuous ending. The anamorphic images, the camera obscura and giant pantograph are, in the end, just gimmicks. But I like the idea of creating a mystery in which aesthetics is part of the solution.
Basic Instinct
Watch this for free on hulu. I never saw Basic Instinct before but a few minutes into it, it became obvious that from the mysterious blonde to the psychological gobbledy gook to the Northern California scenery, this is an homage to Hitchcock. Paul Verhooven's talent lies in his ability to cartoonishly stretch believability without breaking the film. The sex scenes, for instance, were more funny than sexy but not so much that they take you out of the movie. Basic Instinct is less about erotic thrills and more about cinema in its purest form. Like a good Hitchcock film, Basic Instinct isn't about anything in particular. It simply does what cinema does best which is build suspense and jerk you around.
The Dark Knight
The newest Batman movie is similar to Basic Instinct in that they exist primarily to jerk you around. What makes The Dark Knight more distasteful than Basic Instinct (or Nolan's similarly jerk-you-around The Prestige) is its aspirations toward profundity. Beyond the plot twists and turns, Nolan wants to ask questi0ns about the human condition: What's more important--personal or global good? What is the nature of sacrifice? What is heroism? What motivates the psychopath? How do we maintain our humanity in the face of life and death decisions?
The problem is that these concerns are all driven by the film's antagonist. My friend who worked at a music store told me that his boss would swipe any money he found lying on the counter by the cash register. This was meant to be a lesson about putting money away quickly and not leaving it out in the open. The lesson my friend learned was not that someone might steal money but that his boss was a jerk. Same here. The Joker's simulated crises tell us only one thing—he is a jerk. So the movie is over two hours of watching a jerk doing things that jerk you around. I found it exhausting.
The Host
I posed the following conundrum to Maria awhile ago. There are two planes, exactly the same, experiencing the exact same engine problem. One is filled with Americans, one is filled with Koreans. The planes descend and the air masks pop out. When they land, all of the Americans are alive and all of the Koreans are dead. If you know the answer to this problem, then you'll understand why The Host is so Korean. That and the part about not being able to feed the hero when he was young contributing to his off-kilter demeanor.
Anamorph
There's one point in the movie where I thought, "Oh my God... they're doing a serial killer flick based on actual aesthetics." There's a copycat killer on the loose. In a lecture, the detective played by Willem Dafoe talks about photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson saying that he was trying to capture "the moment of truth." And I'm thinking, "that's how he's going to get the copy cat--the copy cat can't capture truth, he can only create a lifeless semblance of it!" But then the movie veers off into the domain of not caring and making no sense. This is the way NOT to make an ambigiuous ending. The anamorphic images, the camera obscura and giant pantograph are, in the end, just gimmicks. But I like the idea of creating a mystery in which aesthetics is part of the solution.
Basic Instinct
Watch this for free on hulu. I never saw Basic Instinct before but a few minutes into it, it became obvious that from the mysterious blonde to the psychological gobbledy gook to the Northern California scenery, this is an homage to Hitchcock. Paul Verhooven's talent lies in his ability to cartoonishly stretch believability without breaking the film. The sex scenes, for instance, were more funny than sexy but not so much that they take you out of the movie. Basic Instinct is less about erotic thrills and more about cinema in its purest form. Like a good Hitchcock film, Basic Instinct isn't about anything in particular. It simply does what cinema does best which is build suspense and jerk you around.
The Dark Knight
The newest Batman movie is similar to Basic Instinct in that they exist primarily to jerk you around. What makes The Dark Knight more distasteful than Basic Instinct (or Nolan's similarly jerk-you-around The Prestige) is its aspirations toward profundity. Beyond the plot twists and turns, Nolan wants to ask questi0ns about the human condition: What's more important--personal or global good? What is the nature of sacrifice? What is heroism? What motivates the psychopath? How do we maintain our humanity in the face of life and death decisions?
The problem is that these concerns are all driven by the film's antagonist. My friend who worked at a music store told me that his boss would swipe any money he found lying on the counter by the cash register. This was meant to be a lesson about putting money away quickly and not leaving it out in the open. The lesson my friend learned was not that someone might steal money but that his boss was a jerk. Same here. The Joker's simulated crises tell us only one thing—he is a jerk. So the movie is over two hours of watching a jerk doing things that jerk you around. I found it exhausting.
The Host
I posed the following conundrum to Maria awhile ago. There are two planes, exactly the same, experiencing the exact same engine problem. One is filled with Americans, one is filled with Koreans. The planes descend and the air masks pop out. When they land, all of the Americans are alive and all of the Koreans are dead. If you know the answer to this problem, then you'll understand why The Host is so Korean. That and the part about not being able to feed the hero when he was young contributing to his off-kilter demeanor.
Friday, December 05, 2008
Feedback on beta 2
Showed beta 2 to Craig today. He's the first person with an art background to see the footage (who has not seen any of the film except for a few shots). I showed it on one of our projectors through the class sound system It looked a little washed out and I realize that my blacks aren't zeroed out as I thought. Ben's voice sounded good.
Some of his comments...
1. The codex video looks too digital compared to everything else. He thinks it needs to look more authentic. This was a good observation I thought.
2. I asked him to categorize it. He called it "mystical science fiction." Hmmm.
3. He said it was reminiscent of "Lost" the TV show that I've never seen. Something about the way the video seems to indicate a scientific backstory and or conspiracy.
4. He also said it reminded him of WWII era Disney instructional videos. That was a good observation since we use a lot of AV material from the mid-century And, as an instructional designer, the fact that the film has an instructional video in it causes me no end of amusement.
5. I think the main thing that comes across is a sense that someone's thought this thing through, so it's not just smoke and mirrors, but it's also not obvious what that is. Perfect.
6. He also said it reminded him (thematically) a bit of the duh... Vinci code.
My basic feeling now is that we're hitting the target consistently and the film is functioning like I want weaving between clarity and ambiguity. Also, one thing he said that made me happy was that he now felt like going out and making a film. That was always the point... making something homely enough to be inspiring.
Some of his comments...
1. The codex video looks too digital compared to everything else. He thinks it needs to look more authentic. This was a good observation I thought.
2. I asked him to categorize it. He called it "mystical science fiction." Hmmm.
3. He said it was reminiscent of "Lost" the TV show that I've never seen. Something about the way the video seems to indicate a scientific backstory and or conspiracy.
4. He also said it reminded him of WWII era Disney instructional videos. That was a good observation since we use a lot of AV material from the mid-century And, as an instructional designer, the fact that the film has an instructional video in it causes me no end of amusement.
5. I think the main thing that comes across is a sense that someone's thought this thing through, so it's not just smoke and mirrors, but it's also not obvious what that is. Perfect.
6. He also said it reminded him (thematically) a bit of the duh... Vinci code.
My basic feeling now is that we're hitting the target consistently and the film is functioning like I want weaving between clarity and ambiguity. Also, one thing he said that made me happy was that he now felt like going out and making a film. That was always the point... making something homely enough to be inspiring.
Friday, November 14, 2008
Seeing Red
Red posted its new approach to selling its cameras yesterday. By modularizing their entire line, they moved away from point-and-click "soccer mom" shooting on the low end, and toward a more professional approach where you specify exactly what you want. The question is how much will it cost for a full configuration? I can see going for the $2,500 Scarlett Brain. But when you add on everything else, you might be spending about $5K+. I dunno. At a certain point you're basically in HVX-200 territory. Plus, the Panasonic comes with something important—a production pipeline that actually works.
But what stuck out to me was this marketing blurb—
The DSMC (digital still motion camera) concept is the epitomy of "Obsolescence Obsolete." As technology pushes forwards, there is no reason to buy a new camera every time a sensor, recording module or display technology improves. Instead you can upgrade individual modules, and even interchange Scarlet and EPIC components at will.
The copy reminded me of what Peavey said when introducing the DPM music synthesizer in the late 80's. Peavey, like Red, was a newcomer to the field. They claimed that their synth would never become obsolete because it used generic 68000 chips and was software upgradeable. But of course, there is nothing more obsolete than non-obsolescence (and 20 year old synthesizers).
The problem comes from misunderstanding the way technology matures. Technology doesn't evolve around components, it develops around systems. Sure you can replace your Red sensor without buying a new camera, but what happens when the fundamental design of cameras changes? What happens when new sensor technologies, form factors and interfaces are developed? What happens when software control extends to areas previously thought of in terms of mechanisms? Apple understands these kinds of problems so it constantly makes their technologies obsolete dropping disk drives, firewire, etc., before the market is even ready for it.
If obsolescence obsolete is just marketing hype, that's fine. I'm just concerned that Red actually believes it.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Alec Baldwin, the Godfather remastered and yes, Sarah Palin
The XX Factor column in Slate had an interesting take on the Alec Baldwin/Sarah Palin SNL sketch last month. One of the columnists remarked that what stood out was the way that Baldwin looked Palin up and down before commenting that she was "hot"—
And as for the moment when Baldwin crudely looks her up and down—it’s gross, to be sure, but I thought it was a self-conscious riff on his character on 30 Rock, who’s always manhandling Tina Fey (and every other female he comes in contact with)with his eyes. He was being gross in character, I’d say, and that’s what made it funny—the play off the way he is with Tina Fey, and all the odd levels that go into that: the fact that Tina Fey is a feminist-minded type, first, and the fact that Palin is a tough gal who can take it, second
I've seen the sketch several times and I still can't see Baldwin doing that. I don't know if it's my masculine eyes or the low resolution of online video, but I just don't see it. At any rate, what's interesting is that the sketch still works even if you can't see Baldwin's look. It got me thinking that successful pieces seem to work even when vital pieces of information are missing. You probably know that The Godfather has been remastered and released on DVD and Blu-Ray. One thing I heard is that in this version you can see the tension on Al Pacino's face before he kills the bad cop. What's interesting is that one of the things I remember from the Godfather is that Pacino seems emotionless about the whole thing and that makes the scene more chilling and effective.
I wonder if successful pieces convey so much information in a variety of ways that you can pick up what's going on even if you miss something. In other words, they're not overly dependent on any one bit of dialogue or event or device.
And as for the moment when Baldwin crudely looks her up and down—it’s gross, to be sure, but I thought it was a self-conscious riff on his character on 30 Rock, who’s always manhandling Tina Fey (and every other female he comes in contact with)with his eyes. He was being gross in character, I’d say, and that’s what made it funny—the play off the way he is with Tina Fey, and all the odd levels that go into that: the fact that Tina Fey is a feminist-minded type, first, and the fact that Palin is a tough gal who can take it, second
I've seen the sketch several times and I still can't see Baldwin doing that. I don't know if it's my masculine eyes or the low resolution of online video, but I just don't see it. At any rate, what's interesting is that the sketch still works even if you can't see Baldwin's look. It got me thinking that successful pieces seem to work even when vital pieces of information are missing. You probably know that The Godfather has been remastered and released on DVD and Blu-Ray. One thing I heard is that in this version you can see the tension on Al Pacino's face before he kills the bad cop. What's interesting is that one of the things I remember from the Godfather is that Pacino seems emotionless about the whole thing and that makes the scene more chilling and effective.
I wonder if successful pieces convey so much information in a variety of ways that you can pick up what's going on even if you miss something. In other words, they're not overly dependent on any one bit of dialogue or event or device.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
They Live!
Found They Live! on Netflix instant so I watched it again... twenty years after I first saw it on VHS. This prototypical Matrix story was directed by John Carpenter and stars pro wrestler Rowdy Roddy Piper. In They Live, the human race exists in an alien-induced trance. We live only to breed and consume so that the aliens can use us as a power source. The heroes wear special sunglasses (they look like ordinary glasses) so that they can see what's really happening around them—aliens walking amongst us, propaganda everywhere (see above).
What makes this a definite B-movie is that image trumps everything. Sure it's fun to see the propaganda and the aliens, but it just doesn't make sense. Why are the aliens there acting like humans? How does the conspiracy work? This is another B-movie trope: sacrificing sense for image.
Monday, November 10, 2008
When ignorance is king
I was thinking of little tweaks I need to make to the film, most of them having to do with our unseen protagonist. The film exists in a very delicate balance with precisely calculated ambiguities. I don't think I could even create a film like this anymore. I know too much. I would probably turn everything into action, and create a literal, rather than implied bad guy. I also think I'd have a much closer to normal shooting ratio. The shoot we did for class went fast and cut well. Something like that. None of this trying to figure out how to make a bird attack in which the bird doesn't attack or how to distort letters precisely so that they look like (but don't quite) spell "ex nihilo." Yeesh. Hopefully, this is all part of the film's charm--seeing something that clings to standard cinematic coherence by a thread. And, referring to my earlier posts about audience expectations: I wonder if charm can trump craft? Believing so is like believing that in the end, the heart wins.
Beta 2
I'm fine tuning beta 2 now. It's totally show-able, but I'm fixing little things here and there. Very close to four years from start to finish.
Saturday, November 08, 2008
Overkill
I realized that an essential part of my production strategy is to gain as much leeway as possible. Even though we're distributing at standard def, we're shooting at HD for example. It gives us some leeway when it comes to quality. When you do things the right way you do get optimal quality. But you also end up paying a lot of attention to technical and other factors that get in the way of the creative process. The trick is not necessarily to maximize the potential of your camera and other technology. It's to wait until it the technology is sufficiently advanced to be overkill for what you need to do.
Unsolvable premises
Awhile ago I was thinking that one way to give a film interest is to provide it with an unsolvable premise. A good example is Casablanca which asks the question, "how can a woman having an affair be heroic?" Another example is Unbreakable which asks, "how can you make a comic book movie that doesn't end with a climactic battle?" I do like the Unbreakable premise. How would you do it? Unsolvable premises could also be a matter of execution. I was watching bits of Spiderman 3 on Netflix instant a few days ago. The shot (that they used in the trailer) of Tobey McGuire sailing through the air grasping at the wedding ring is a beautiful image. How could you create a superhero film with images like that but cheap and without visual effects?
My 'official' Keanoshow review
Stunningly beautiful but tragically flawed, this DVD is both an inspiration and a caution for visual artists working in motion. In this large collection of short films, well-regarded illustrator/comic book artist Dave McKean translates his visual style into film using puppets, actors and computer graphics. The work is astonishingly beautiful, but in the end is difficult to watch because it functions more like painting-in-motion than film. The problem is not the weakness of the narrative or story as much as the way that McKean treats film as an extension of visual art. Film works best when told through the viewpoint of its characters. McKean, on the other hand, is always present in his work designing, composing and controlling his characters as a behind-the-scenes operator. Imagine result direction gone wild. By imposing his vision from without, he sucks the spontaneity out of his characters, objectifying them. The effect is like watching storyboards in motion awaiting a spark of life.
Perhaps the most effective work here are the films. The use of real sets and the palpability of the film grain gives them an energy and integrity missing in the CG work. In his CG videos, McKean superimposes scratch film effects in an attempt to reinvest these videos with liveliness. But while this surface effect aspires to energy it ultimately discloses only the quick and easy reality of computer compositing.
Audiences interested in this kind of video/film may enjoy Chris Shepherd's short film Dad's Dead available on youtube and at higher res on the Sunshine DVD. Shepherd's approach is similar, but ultimately more successful in its ability to meld the layered, spatial world of visual art/special effects with the sequential nature of film.
Perhaps the most effective work here are the films. The use of real sets and the palpability of the film grain gives them an energy and integrity missing in the CG work. In his CG videos, McKean superimposes scratch film effects in an attempt to reinvest these videos with liveliness. But while this surface effect aspires to energy it ultimately discloses only the quick and easy reality of computer compositing.
Audiences interested in this kind of video/film may enjoy Chris Shepherd's short film Dad's Dead available on youtube and at higher res on the Sunshine DVD. Shepherd's approach is similar, but ultimately more successful in its ability to meld the layered, spatial world of visual art/special effects with the sequential nature of film.
TV and Keanoshow
The other night I did the pick up shot of the codex video on TV. It looked really bad. For some reason I always think that shooting something on a real TV is going to look good but it never does. So I did it a different way. I reconnected the 'eye TV' and shot that. It works fine and right now I'm rendering what should be one of the final edits. With any luck, I should be at beta 2 by tomorrow.
Also got Dave (Mirrormask) McKean's DVD Keanoshow today. It's a collection of his surprisingly numerous short films. I find his work endlessly fascinating for its beauty and for the way it helps me to think through the problems that visual artists face when they move into the video/film medium. The main problems with McKean's work are its misunderstanding of viewpoint and performance. Film works best when told through the viewpoint of its characters. McKean, on the other hand, is always present in his work, as a behind-the-scenes operator. He imposes his vision on his films from without, sucking the life out of his characters, objectifying them.
Second, he doesn't allow his performers to perform. By forcing his actors into perfect visual compositions McKean turns them into puppets incapable of spontaneity. The effect is like watching storyboards in motion—flat characters waiting to be turned into living things.
Finally, McKean is partial to superimposing scratch film-like effects over his work. Using techniques reminiscent of Stan Brakhage's and Len Lye's work, McKean attempts to reinvest his films with the movement, energy and life shorn by objectifying his characters. When McKean uses film, the scratches and grain are real. Perhaps this is why the films are more satisfying than the digital work. In his digital creations, the scratches are superimposed becoming an effect that remains on the surface of the work, aspiring to energy and movement, but never quite achieving it.
Monday, November 03, 2008
Zoom
I watched most of Zoom on Netflix instant. Like Ghost Rider, it was instructionally bad. In other words, its glaring deficiencies make good examples of what not to do. The main problem is that the movie makes the actors carry too much of the film. For example, you're just supposed to believe that the two teens like each other. But why? They never do anything except look at each other with longing glances. You just can't act a romance into existence. Whatever happened to that old standby--saving someone's life? Probably the most egregious moment is when Tim Allen experiences an emotional catharsis. But nothing causes the catharsis. He just sits there emoting while the camera 360's around him. It's not his fault (except for agreeing to appear in the picture). It's just structured wrong.
Yong's DOF adapter
Yong brought his cheap 35mm lens adapter to show me. It really does look cheap. If you look inside it, you can see all the glue (it looks like silicone) blobbed up here and there. He got the vibrating one. It's amazing that the vibration doesn't seem to affect the image. It also looks a little heavy. With no rods, you have to be careful with it. The footage he showed me looks great. The main problem is severe vignetting. It's actually quite attractive, but it's always there. One other problem is the lack of a focusing attachment. You can't use a whip so you probably have to do all the focusing yourself.
Random thoughts on finishing
I'm really close to being done. Done, done. With color grading, sound, everything. If I had to I could probably be done in a day or two if you don't count rendering time (and if I had a day or two just to work on it).
As I work on the edit one thing I've been thinking about is consistency. My lighting is all over the place. Sometimes pretty good, most of the time really underexposed. Ben's VO is really good in some places, not so good in one place. I think that's one of the hallmarks of professionalism —consistent results. You know what works and you know how to get it. We're not too consistent and not too professional, but one thing that did help was the ability to shoot and reshoot.
I'm going to solve the red room TV problem by just shooting the black/white TV with a DVD feed sent via RF Modulator. I won't literally show Ben in the same shot as the TV. I'll just imply that he's looking at it starting with his reaction shot. It's weaker that way, but it's more important that the video reads as coming from a TV in the red room and not some abstract thing from nowhere. I always hated those shots in old movies where they never show the actor in the same shot as the bear (or other animal). I already set up a little tableau. It should be pretty easy to shoot it.
I never really solved my pipeline problem. It looks like I'm going straight out of FCP instead of mastering in AE. It ends up that I created and rendered a lot of effects shots in AE and then brought them back into FCP for correction with Magic Bullet Looks. Then finalize sound design. A really inelegant process.
As I work on the edit one thing I've been thinking about is consistency. My lighting is all over the place. Sometimes pretty good, most of the time really underexposed. Ben's VO is really good in some places, not so good in one place. I think that's one of the hallmarks of professionalism —consistent results. You know what works and you know how to get it. We're not too consistent and not too professional, but one thing that did help was the ability to shoot and reshoot.
I'm going to solve the red room TV problem by just shooting the black/white TV with a DVD feed sent via RF Modulator. I won't literally show Ben in the same shot as the TV. I'll just imply that he's looking at it starting with his reaction shot. It's weaker that way, but it's more important that the video reads as coming from a TV in the red room and not some abstract thing from nowhere. I always hated those shots in old movies where they never show the actor in the same shot as the bear (or other animal). I already set up a little tableau. It should be pretty easy to shoot it.
I never really solved my pipeline problem. It looks like I'm going straight out of FCP instead of mastering in AE. It ends up that I created and rendered a lot of effects shots in AE and then brought them back into FCP for correction with Magic Bullet Looks. Then finalize sound design. A really inelegant process.
Sunday, November 02, 2008
Ghost Rider
Set up the Mac beta of Netflix yesterday. It's great for checking out films that aren't worth a rental. My instant list now seems to be populated primarily by Nick Cage films. I watched the beginning of Ghost Rider, a case of attempted style over substance. I'm still trying to figure out why the opening montage doesn't work. The film plays like a typical B-movie—a series of incidents strung together without concern for emotional understanding. Like the devil shows up and promises to heal your sick father and you just believe him. The attempted stylization is interesting too... like where Peter Fonda (the devil) forms a creepy shadow as he talks to a young Johnny Blaze. But like everything else, it is just an image stirred into a vacant stew. There's no anticipation and no resonance. One thing that stuck out was the scene in which Johnny Blaze discovers his dad is sick by finding a letter from the hospital in the trash. I've been thinking about discovery events because it's a common way to keep the plot moving. We have one in noise film when Ben sees the Turning's End flyer. One fancy one that I remember is in Amelie where a rolling ball leads Amelie to a cache of ephemera. The problem with Ghost Rider is that this incident, like everything else in the intro, is a bridge to nowhere. It's as if Mark Steven Johnson had a check list of events he had to cover and then he went down his list. And then when we finally get to the present day, nothing happens. Ignoring the fact that medical test results don't come in envelopes, the problem is not young Blaze's reaction (or lack of it) but the contrivance of this event to begin with. Bad news usually tries to conceal itself shrouded in whispers or euphemisms. The action scenes are a problem too. It's as if there wasn't enough coverage shot to work with. There was no way to build and extend the drama. The early love scenes are similarly problematic—there's some really stilted blocking and a wait to reveal Blaze's girlfriend's face that never pays off. It's as if Johnson had no idea of how this thing was going to be cut and only thought about his crane shot. What makes Ghost Rider interesting is not that it's bad, but that it's instructively bad.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Beta
I'm going to give the current version (sound10) the beta designation. I showed it to my niece tonight. She had pretty much the same reaction as everyone else... you can follow it up to the beginning of the research sequences. And then.... she thought it had something to do with "art." Also she couldn't tell that the video was coming from the little TV. Damn. That means I have to shoot something. The film is testing so consistently that I may just jump to the mastering stage.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Scoring/sound design
Here's what I've discovered about sound design/scoring so far--
1. It's not nearly as difficult as doing video.
2. It's tedious in places. 90% of the audio you hear in noise film was put there by hand. It's almost like animation--building a world from scratch. Probably the most tedious was putting in the typing noises for the typing scene. I found a recording of typing sentences and split it up to match the video. This gives the typing a more natural feel. I think that using the same sample over and over would sound repetitious.
3. The layer/track-based metaphor of the software makes basic layering and assembling operations easy. The hard parts involve sequences that morph or transform from one thing to another.
4. My sound design style is very 'modernist.' I find myself frequently changing the audio when there is a cut, or accentuating cuts. Normally in film, you're supposed to try to smooth out the cuts. I found I love it when there's a cut and you change the room tone. That was always part of my vision for the film.
5. Although I shot MOS, I should watch when I'm talking. I was able to use a lot of desert sound (walking, car stopping) because there was no dialog over it. There's nothing as real as reality. I even used some of the parts where the wind hits the mic creating wind noise. Technically that's considered bad craft, but I really liked the sound of it.
1. It's not nearly as difficult as doing video.
2. It's tedious in places. 90% of the audio you hear in noise film was put there by hand. It's almost like animation--building a world from scratch. Probably the most tedious was putting in the typing noises for the typing scene. I found a recording of typing sentences and split it up to match the video. This gives the typing a more natural feel. I think that using the same sample over and over would sound repetitious.
3. The layer/track-based metaphor of the software makes basic layering and assembling operations easy. The hard parts involve sequences that morph or transform from one thing to another.
4. My sound design style is very 'modernist.' I find myself frequently changing the audio when there is a cut, or accentuating cuts. Normally in film, you're supposed to try to smooth out the cuts. I found I love it when there's a cut and you change the room tone. That was always part of my vision for the film.
5. Although I shot MOS, I should watch when I'm talking. I was able to use a lot of desert sound (walking, car stopping) because there was no dialog over it. There's nothing as real as reality. I even used some of the parts where the wind hits the mic creating wind noise. Technically that's considered bad craft, but I really liked the sound of it.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Friday, October 24, 2008
Incomprehensibilityness
Last night I recorded Ben's narration. It came out well I thought. As usual, when I go through the stuff we recorded I have to listen to myself direct. Sample:
Remember, its' like those lines... it's like you're picking up lines, as they're flying flying by, they're just occurring, thinking, really quick, you're starting to realize something, it's important
Seriously, how does he understand what I'm talking about? But apparently it seems to work since I got what I want and there was a difference from the previous take.
Remember, its' like those lines... it's like you're picking up lines, as they're flying flying by, they're just occurring, thinking, really quick, you're starting to realize something, it's important
Seriously, how does he understand what I'm talking about? But apparently it seems to work since I got what I want and there was a difference from the previous take.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Sarah Palin and 35mm adapters
If noise film were Sarah Palin, it would now be railing against the elitest use of 35mm adapters (see earlier post) promoting, instead, an aesthetic of chromatic aberrations and infinite depth of field. In this lenticular class struggle, standard lenses would be the province of Joe Video Production, a tool for those who exist outside a powerful cultural elite. Yes, 35mm lenses enable the use of high falutin' film grammar like rack focuses but this grammar is grounded in a culture of specialization. You can't be a rugged individualist and drag along a focus puller at the same time! But noise film isn't Palin because it accepts the viability of 35mm lenses. Rather than attacking lens adapters, it wonders aloud whether its own visual and textual qualities are sufficient to make it watchable believing, in the end, that the heart can ultimately prevail.
Noise music
On NPR this morning there was a special segment on "noise music" which, as you might expect, is music that sounds like noise. The music itself is very similar artistically to noise film. In fact, the other week I was thinking of the idea of creating an all-noise internet radio station which would broadcast noisy sounds and music both live and prerecorded. Certainly, in noise media we find a longing for an earlier, analog world.
The moving boundary of unacceptable quality
Yong dropped by today and was talking about the 35mm adapter he's getting. Apparently, while I haven't been watching, a slew of new, cheap static and vibrating adapters have been released (check out this site). This is significant because developments like these will continue to raise the lower bar for acceptable image quality. Already, once cutting-edge SD footage looks dated. The video that comes with the DV Rebel's Guide, for example, now looks brittle and gray. Shooting in HD does make a difference but shooting with a 35mm lens is a real game changer. The footage looks dramatically better.
Each day I sit on the noise film footage, it gets worse looking, not because the footage is changing, but because the world into which it will be released is changing. One way to address this problem is to move laterally, working with the footage in such a way that its musty quality is made irrelevant, or essential to its character. This is what David Lynch tried to do with Inland Empire, using the PD-150 for its quirky, homemade quality. But it's a tough trick because of the transparent way in which we accept technological advances. At a certain point, you don't see the spectacular image of a nice 35mm lens. It just looks normal. And everything else looks bad in comparison.
Each day I sit on the noise film footage, it gets worse looking, not because the footage is changing, but because the world into which it will be released is changing. One way to address this problem is to move laterally, working with the footage in such a way that its musty quality is made irrelevant, or essential to its character. This is what David Lynch tried to do with Inland Empire, using the PD-150 for its quirky, homemade quality. But it's a tough trick because of the transparent way in which we accept technological advances. At a certain point, you don't see the spectacular image of a nice 35mm lens. It just looks normal. And everything else looks bad in comparison.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Knowing the score
I met with Dan last week to talk about the score... or I should I say lack of it. We decided to go another route with it, which right now, means me. I'm about a third done with it and I think it's turning out well. Dan reminded me about the film Hara Kiri that I had given to him as a reference. So I dug up some Asian and shamisen sampling CDs I had stashed away and started assembling a score along with various pads. I found some great resources in the process. I got a lot of sounds from soundsnap.com and the freesound project. Both sites are free and well worth checking out. I also got some effects and pads from Soundtrack Pro's library which is surprisingly extensive.
The hardest part of the whole thing was deciding what program to use. I like Pro Tools for its interface, but I hate it for its insistence on making me carry around an mBox dongle. I tried Soundtrack Pro but was bewildered by its interface. I did a lot of work in Final Cut, but it lacked sufficient audio processing capabilities. I finally settled on Logic Express which is working pretty well. What I would really like is a program that makes it easy to simultaneously edit video and audio. There was a program that did something like that, but it disappeared. I forget what it was called.
I think we're now looking realistically at an end of the year release date.
The hardest part of the whole thing was deciding what program to use. I like Pro Tools for its interface, but I hate it for its insistence on making me carry around an mBox dongle. I tried Soundtrack Pro but was bewildered by its interface. I did a lot of work in Final Cut, but it lacked sufficient audio processing capabilities. I finally settled on Logic Express which is working pretty well. What I would really like is a program that makes it easy to simultaneously edit video and audio. There was a program that did something like that, but it disappeared. I forget what it was called.
I think we're now looking realistically at an end of the year release date.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Sarah Palin, mediocrity and noise film
One of the things that we've inherited from science is its culture of specialization. To function in a technical culture, you need to possess a great deal of specialized knowledge; without it, you are easily dismissed. The same premise has become a part of the arts as well. I clearly remember one of my undergrad profs criticizing an artwork saying, "it was the same idea I had just seen someplace else. That's why it's important to keep current." Art has become a discourse like science and requires a similar understanding of how one's work fits into a broader contemporary context.
The problem with this idea is the extent to which it makes it easy to be dismissive of others. Placing such a great emphasis on discerning the quality of practice framed through the criteria of a specific discourse often causes us to diminish the voices of other people. We potentially lose shadings and meaningful takes on ideas that we have already deemed naive or irrelevant. It's not like I want to see more artwork about the nature of passion or the ineffability of existence or the alienation of the artist. But we should not automatically dismiss the sum of an artist's thought simply because it begins with ideas that seem to us tired and worn.
Which brings us to Sarah Palin and noise film. The impetus to write this blog entry came when I started trying to understand Palin's popularity. What is her appeal? Why are her advocates so willing to ignore her misleading statements, her poor professional preparation and her vapid interview performances? And it occurred to me that what Palin represents is the voice of people dismissed by technological discourses. Palin's seeming faults (e.g., her misleading statements), then, are simply politics, a way in which she appropriates the grammar of an existing discourse for use against that discourse. Criticisms that she represents a culture of mediocrity only serve to signify the contempt that those in power have for those who are not part of their discursive "elite." Flubs on Palin's part illustrate the fact that she really is an outsider. Palin's reflexive, unthoughtful understanding of leadership shows her refusal to submit to technological authority.
Noise film, then, is Palinesque in many ways. In its barely good-enough craft, it too strains against a culture in which money and the impeccable skills of a trained elite are used to confer a false authority on beliefs. Like Palin, noise film is a homespun product with rough edges. Yet, there is one essential difference. Noise film is an experiment that results in a product existing on a cultural periphery. Palin, on the other hand, is a creature of achievement bent on entering a culture of power.
The problem with this idea is the extent to which it makes it easy to be dismissive of others. Placing such a great emphasis on discerning the quality of practice framed through the criteria of a specific discourse often causes us to diminish the voices of other people. We potentially lose shadings and meaningful takes on ideas that we have already deemed naive or irrelevant. It's not like I want to see more artwork about the nature of passion or the ineffability of existence or the alienation of the artist. But we should not automatically dismiss the sum of an artist's thought simply because it begins with ideas that seem to us tired and worn.
Which brings us to Sarah Palin and noise film. The impetus to write this blog entry came when I started trying to understand Palin's popularity. What is her appeal? Why are her advocates so willing to ignore her misleading statements, her poor professional preparation and her vapid interview performances? And it occurred to me that what Palin represents is the voice of people dismissed by technological discourses. Palin's seeming faults (e.g., her misleading statements), then, are simply politics, a way in which she appropriates the grammar of an existing discourse for use against that discourse. Criticisms that she represents a culture of mediocrity only serve to signify the contempt that those in power have for those who are not part of their discursive "elite." Flubs on Palin's part illustrate the fact that she really is an outsider. Palin's reflexive, unthoughtful understanding of leadership shows her refusal to submit to technological authority.
Noise film, then, is Palinesque in many ways. In its barely good-enough craft, it too strains against a culture in which money and the impeccable skills of a trained elite are used to confer a false authority on beliefs. Like Palin, noise film is a homespun product with rough edges. Yet, there is one essential difference. Noise film is an experiment that results in a product existing on a cultural periphery. Palin, on the other hand, is a creature of achievement bent on entering a culture of power.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Speed Racer edited [spoilers]
When I saw Speed Racer at the theater, I remember thinking that the final race scene was barely comprehensible. As color and motion splashed by on screen, I felt that the only thing that helped me understand the sequence was the frequently use of cutaways to Mom and Pops Racer, Trixie, (and others). So last night I made an edit of the final sequence without the flashbacks and cutaways. I wanted to see if the sequence would in fact be incomprehensible. What I ended up with surprised me.
First of all I was surprised to see the rigid structure of the sequence. It's always this: racing, CU of Speed, flashback/cutaway. Racing, CU of Speed, flashback/cutaway. Over and over. So when you cut out the flashbacks and cutaways, you just end up with racing, Speed CU, racing, Speed CU, racing. Not only that, the close ups are basically the same shot: Speed gymbals slightly left or right. What's weird is that the sequence actually seems to make more sense without the cutaways. In fact, it's the cutaways and flashbacks that add a sense of cacophony and urgency to the sequence. Also, without the cutaways, you lose a lot of the feverish emotion of the scene.
There is one part of the sequence that is designed from the ground up to be incomprehensible. It's the part immediately before Speed comes out of the tunnel to win the race. There is some sort of explosion with two cars; I still don't know what happened. All you can make out is that Speed is determined to do something, there's an explosion and flying through the explosion is Speed Racer. It's an interesting, highly abstract sequence.
A couple of other things I noticed: after Speed flies through the explosion to cross the finish line, the car teeters on its front end before skidding to a stop. The animation/effect is really terrible, very awkward. Then, when the Mach 6 finally comes to a stop, you see rubber dripping off a tire which then deflates as if the race was won just in time.
My fascination with the sequence lies in its baroque formalism. There's nothing you need to bring to the scene. It does it all for you telling you exactly what you need to know and what you should be feeling.
First of all I was surprised to see the rigid structure of the sequence. It's always this: racing, CU of Speed, flashback/cutaway. Racing, CU of Speed, flashback/cutaway. Over and over. So when you cut out the flashbacks and cutaways, you just end up with racing, Speed CU, racing, Speed CU, racing. Not only that, the close ups are basically the same shot: Speed gymbals slightly left or right. What's weird is that the sequence actually seems to make more sense without the cutaways. In fact, it's the cutaways and flashbacks that add a sense of cacophony and urgency to the sequence. Also, without the cutaways, you lose a lot of the feverish emotion of the scene.
There is one part of the sequence that is designed from the ground up to be incomprehensible. It's the part immediately before Speed comes out of the tunnel to win the race. There is some sort of explosion with two cars; I still don't know what happened. All you can make out is that Speed is determined to do something, there's an explosion and flying through the explosion is Speed Racer. It's an interesting, highly abstract sequence.
A couple of other things I noticed: after Speed flies through the explosion to cross the finish line, the car teeters on its front end before skidding to a stop. The animation/effect is really terrible, very awkward. Then, when the Mach 6 finally comes to a stop, you see rubber dripping off a tire which then deflates as if the race was won just in time.
My fascination with the sequence lies in its baroque formalism. There's nothing you need to bring to the scene. It does it all for you telling you exactly what you need to know and what you should be feeling.
Theater video projection technique
For the past month or so I've been working on the projections for another theater project. I did a preshow loop, and two cues for the show that ended up being about 10 cues. The producers hired a person to mount the projector. The guy also made a really neat dowser for the projector. It's like a little door that slides up when you pull up the string. This makes life so much easier. Now the stage manager (who's running the show) simply connects her laptop to the projector and pulls up a Quicktime movie. By using the space bar, she is able to stop and go. Then when she needs to change movies, she just dowses the projector and pulls up a new video. SO much easier than the way we did it in the last show. Problems with that show---
1. I should have kept video separate from the audio. We were trying to make it easier for the show runner, but the software we used isn't there yet.
2. It is really easy to make a dowser. Part of the reason the other show was tough was because we were trying to run in true two-screen mode. A dowser is a low-tech, but pretty fool-proff system.
3. Running Quicktime movies out of Quicktime player was easier and cheaper than running out of cueing software. Plus, we were able to use any old computer (in this case a Dell laptop).
4. It was really easy to send updates down. I just sent QT movies via the internet when I had to make changes. No fooling around with cue lists and no having to show up.
1. I should have kept video separate from the audio. We were trying to make it easier for the show runner, but the software we used isn't there yet.
2. It is really easy to make a dowser. Part of the reason the other show was tough was because we were trying to run in true two-screen mode. A dowser is a low-tech, but pretty fool-proff system.
3. Running Quicktime movies out of Quicktime player was easier and cheaper than running out of cueing software. Plus, we were able to use any old computer (in this case a Dell laptop).
4. It was really easy to send updates down. I just sent QT movies via the internet when I had to make changes. No fooling around with cue lists and no having to show up.
Waiting outside the Elephant
[written 2 weeks ago, posted later]
I'm sitting here outside the Elephant Theater waiting for the director to show up. We're supposed to run some video tests today for this new theater project I'm working on. I'm doing a short pre-show video + one other surveillance-style video.
We're still in wait mode on the score. I'm almost scared to talk to Dan and find out how far he's gotten—or not gotten. We'll see. Ben showed Alpha 77 to his brother and new sister-in-law. She said it was "SO Pi." I'm a little afraid that people will pigeon hole it too quickly. But you know, I should have built in some anti-pigeon holing into the video. You know, do an unexpected zig zag. Then the audience is like putty in my hands.
Here's the difference between Ben and me. Ben played me some songs he's been writing. One is about his daughter. I've been circuit-bending some toys. For some reason I just really wanted to do it. I've really been wanting to circuit bend some video. So I bent a Pixel Chix toy I bought a few years ago. It was pretty expensive, $30. But the bend turned out great. I realized that there are two kinds of LCD screens. The really cheap ones have images burned in, like the $1 Space Invaders game I bought at Walmart. There are no pixels in those games, just shapes that blink on and off. Pixel Chix, on the other hand, is pixel based which makes it possible to create some really nice bends. One short leaves the character with a floating head. Another bend creates weird rectangles. I have about five or six bent items waiting boxes.
I was able to get an old circuit working. I forgot what it was originally. Now it has a grid of circles that blink on and off in repetition along with a buzzy noise. I call it the meditator.
We're still in wait mode on the score. I'm almost scared to talk to Dan and find out how far he's gotten—or not gotten. We'll see. Ben showed Alpha 77 to his brother and new sister-in-law. She said it was "SO Pi." I'm a little afraid that people will pigeon hole it too quickly. But you know, I should have built in some anti-pigeon holing into the video. You know, do an unexpected zig zag. Then the audience is like putty in my hands.
Here's the difference between Ben and me. Ben played me some songs he's been writing. One is about his daughter. I've been circuit-bending some toys. For some reason I just really wanted to do it. I've really been wanting to circuit bend some video. So I bent a Pixel Chix toy I bought a few years ago. It was pretty expensive, $30. But the bend turned out great. I realized that there are two kinds of LCD screens. The really cheap ones have images burned in, like the $1 Space Invaders game I bought at Walmart. There are no pixels in those games, just shapes that blink on and off. Pixel Chix, on the other hand, is pixel based which makes it possible to create some really nice bends. One short leaves the character with a floating head. Another bend creates weird rectangles. I have about five or six bent items waiting boxes.
I was able to get an old circuit working. I forgot what it was originally. Now it has a grid of circles that blink on and off in repetition along with a buzzy noise. I call it the meditator.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Crypto-chrono-geo-hulu-nostalgia
A young Nobu McCarthy
I'm gradually emerging from a cocoon of rest and work only to awaken to the feverish pangs of middle age and nostalgia. The other night on hulu I saw the season premiere of Charlie's Angels season two (watch), the one where the angels go to Hawaii to rescue a kidnapped Charlie AKA the episode that introduced Cheryl Ladd as Kris Munroe, Jill's (Farah Fawcett) little sister. There was something very strange about seeing the helicopter shots of the city and knowing that I was probably literally in that shot somewhere or seeing my old boss Al Harrington as a henchman (I worked at his Polynesian show as a bus boy after college. The going away gift he gave me personally when I left for grad school—a Farah Fawcett T-shirt). It was also strange in a pop culture sense seeing France Nuyen as a bikinied dragon lady when I had known her only as Liat in South Pacific, or the Dolman in Star Trek or Aunty Ying Ying in the Joy Luck Club and never realized they were all the same person; seeing Don Ho playing, uh, Don Ho; wondering if the "you too sistah" pidgin English was more ebonic than local.
I'm still trying to figure out how TV worked in the seventies. People today can't look at shows from that era without finding them relentlessly cheesy. TV shows back then were marvels of artifice with highly stylized "move 'em from point A to point B" blocking and connect the dots editing. I think there was a much greater chasm between film and TV. Now the distinction is blurred. But back then, movies were serious. I remember seeing Network and Taxi Driver about that time. Gritty. Real. But TV was TV and we knew that Charlie's Angels was dumb and yet we watched it every week. Somehow the episodes were just different enough, the plot contrivances just buried enough, and the costume changes just frequent enough to make it entertaining. TV was episodic then, rarely serial, and it seemed to exist on its own dramatic island separate from Cinema.
Tonight I watched the entire Karate Kid II (watch) which, ten years after Charlie's Angels, still traversed the same cartoon-drama groove. It's certainly no less nostalgic. Along with Teahouse of the August Moon (Marlon Brando), Karate Kid II is one of the few Hollywood films set in Okinawa (I'm half Okinawan). It was shot on Oahu and you can see Fisherman's Hat featured prominently. Plus it debuted Tamlyn Tomita who was a Nisei week Queen several years after a girl I sort-of dated. The film also exacerbated my middle age crisis when I found out that Danny Kamekona was only two years older than I am now when he played Sato, Miyagi's nemesis. Ex-model and Hollywood starlet Nobu McCarthy, who played Pat Morita's love interest, was about three years older than I am now. She can act with a capital "A" by the way. There's a strange sincerity about the film, as if it assumed that you didn't notice its underlying machinery. One great sequence is the bar room ice-breaking scene where the evil Chozun suddenly appears. Then Mr. Miyagi suddenly shows up. Then Sato! Where did all these people keep coming from? And the villains are relentless. They're not just bad, they're book throwing, garden bulldozing, fishing industry-killing, weights & measures-cheating, sell-out dojo running, deed-owning, house busting bad. Then there's the love scene with the music by Chicago.
This, folks, is what I've been reduced to: reliving my life for free on Hulu.
Thursday, August 07, 2008
What's up
Do director's crazy rooms count? Above is a picture of Independence Day director Roland Emmerich's home office.
Here's what's happening... Dan is at work on the score. Slow progress he said. Ben forgot to show up for his narration recording. I'm back from the East coast. I'm prepping for school. Also working on two short video segments for another theater project. It's pretty easy except for the rotoscoping.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
The Watchmen trailer
In the first Watchmen trailer the actors don't perform as much as they pose, moving from one iconic comic book stance to another. The Dr. Manhattan sequence is a good example. Trapped in a science experiment gone wrong, the doctor doesn't try to escape or shield himself but transitions between classic super hero postures expressing trepidation, awe and then transformation. Like Delsarte's theatrical gestures (above) they indicate the content of the scene through stylized conventions.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Josh Becker's response
(Above: a complete copy of Josh Becker's If I Had a Hammer is available on youtube.)
Those of you who have been reading the blog know that I find Josh Becker an interesting character. He answers pretty much any directing question you care to ask on his site. Here's his response to my question, something I've wondered about for awhile.
Name: ron
E-mail:
Hi Josh,
Question: Looking back, how do you feel about your career as a writer/director? Do you tend to feel happy about what you've accomplished? Or are you more prone to feel like you should have accomplished more by now? Do you like your role as someone who exists (on purpose) on the outskirts of the film industry? Do you ever wish you had greater mainstream success or fame?
Thanks for all your work on the site.
Ron
Dear ron:
No, I'm not satisfied at all with my career. And yes, some success would be nice. I certainly don't feel like I've lived up to my potential. However, it's not just me, it's the entire film industry, which totally changed in the last 30 years. Basically, I was tricked. I grew up watching and studying great movies, and Hollywood doesn't make great movies anymore, nor are they even interested in attempting them. There isn't a single studio executive at this point who wouldn't be FAR happier making the 17th Batman movie instead of the 1st of anything. In 1977 with the release and enormous success of "Star Wars," Hollywood conciously decided that kids were more important than adults, as did our whole society, too. It's like a singing voice, if you don't use it you lose it. Hollywood CAN'T make good movies anymore because it's been so long since they've made one, there's nothing to base it on. I trained myself in classical storytelling and filmmaking, and that's no longer of any use at all. In 2001, after eight years of directing idiotic TV shows, and not the slightest interest by any distributor in my at least somewhat intelligent, reasonably original, independent feature, "If I Had a Hammer," I knew it was time to leave. I haven't yet given up -- I sent out two scripts this week -- but I no longer hold out much hope that anything of mine will ever get made, nor have I the slightest interest in raising money independently anymore. So, there it is.
Josh
The Udvar-Hazy hobby punk heaven
Hobby punk is the pre-digital technology of the second World War continuing into hobby products of the leisure time fifties. Hobby punk evokes the moment before technology became invisible, miniaturized into integrated circuits. In hobby punk we see individual transistors and capacitors soldered onto breadboards. It is the era of technology that existed before computer-aided design, where technology was defined by primitive, easy-to-create shapes and held together with screws, braces and solder. In the place of computer-defined curves we find hammered out-sheet metal, wood and wire. Hobby punk speaks to a particular scale and mode of production. It refers to the kind of thing that someone could make in their garage given the time and inclination using ordinary hand tools and common equipment. It is the proto-garage aesthetic, things that look barely held together because they exist somewhere between prototype and production model. Hobby punk is partially repurposed, partially customized bricolage in motion. It is covered with handwritten notations, worn, and leaks oil. Noise film is a hobby punk movie.
From the Udvar-Hazy Space & Air museum—
Target drone used for military exercises.
Hand-written notations on early computer system.
Interior of early satellite.
Exterior of the same satellite with solar panels.
Early 128k computer painted mint green.
Early prototype of one-person helicopter.
Late WWII German surface-air missle with wood fins.
From the Udvar-Hazy Space & Air museum—
Target drone used for military exercises.
Hand-written notations on early computer system.
Interior of early satellite.
Exterior of the same satellite with solar panels.
Early 128k computer painted mint green.
Early prototype of one-person helicopter.
Late WWII German surface-air missle with wood fins.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
fresh footage: 8 to 10 minutes
I went through the cut today to see how much footage is in noise film that was not reshot. Answer: about 8 to 10 minutes, roughly half since the film is 16 minutes long. But that figure is an estimate. This does NOT include footage where we had to reshoot using a different approach (or having changed the story) because the first approach didn't work.
So why did we shoot so much? There was a lot of extra footage shot including test footage. We shot lots of stuff that we didn't end up using: Ben walking around outside, the truck driving toward the horizon, the attempts to rebuild the spinner, etc. We also shot a lot of pickups, stuff we forgot to shoot the first time around.
I guess the basic idea was to see if it's true that we shot everything twice. The answer is, no, only about half of the film.
So why did we shoot so much? There was a lot of extra footage shot including test footage. We shot lots of stuff that we didn't end up using: Ben walking around outside, the truck driving toward the horizon, the attempts to rebuild the spinner, etc. We also shot a lot of pickups, stuff we forgot to shoot the first time around.
I guess the basic idea was to see if it's true that we shot everything twice. The answer is, no, only about half of the film.
Friday, July 11, 2008
The 'Our Town' conundrum
Today I watched parts of the Paul Newman version of Our Town, a play I had heard about but never seen. I just wanted to watch the end where Emily goes back in time to revisit her life as a twelve year old. Overcome by the richness of the mundane events she asks, "Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?" Answers Newman's stage manager, "No. The saints and poets, maybe. They do some."
This conundrum has been part of my life for years. Once I said to my friend Katie, "wouldn't it be nice to be able to travel back in time and see what things were like?" By this I meant go back in time with today's eyes, to walk around and see everything as wonderful and strange. She said no. I took it to mean that Katie, as a nature lover, had a different sense of time. Going back 20 or 30 years wouldn't make much difference to the way you saw a forest or mountain range (conservation concerns aside). I then assumed that my desire was really an urban one and that urban living created a temporal sense that potentially led to wistfulness. I even wrote a story about this. A villain is being hunted down by primitive natives. He runs toward a hill where he unveils a time machine. "Behold!" he says, expecting the savages to bow down before him in awe of his invention. Instead, the savages rip him to pieces. "I could have told you" winces our hero. "Time travel is fascinating only to city dwellers."
About 15 years ago my mom got stomach cancer which is often fatal. I asked a friend what it would mean to make the most of our time together. She said, "why don't you buy her some flowers?" When I asked Maria the same question some years later, she said, "what kind of stupid question is that?" What she meant is that the nature of our existence is such that we can only let things slip by. We do not and wouldn't want to live our lives with Emily's sense of retrospect. My mom, by the way, is still alive and kicking.
When you have children the Our Town conundrum always comes up. Everyone will tell you, "enjoy them while they're young... they grow up so fast." Yet you can't look at your kids as you would in retrospect ten years from now. Instead of treating them as people you'd treat them with fascination as museum pieces.
Noise film has strands of the Our Town conundrum running through it. The conundrum is about consciousness and how our consciousness changes things and our appreciation of events. Let's say that your leg gets chopped off. You bemoan your fate and get angry and depressed. Now let's say that you're given an outrageous cosmic choice. Your first born child dies or you get your leg chopped off. Most of us would choose the second option, of course. In both cases, you end up the same. But the second instance is easier to take. Your loss, as a sacrifice, takes on a vastly different sense of significance. Another way of looking at it is to say that our beliefs play a great role in how we respond to events. Maybe we would all be happier if we could manipulate our beliefs in such a way that we lived in peace and gratitude. But beliefs are given to us. For many things, we are subject to beliefs, not the other way around. And that is one way to think about the ending of Noise film.
This conundrum has been part of my life for years. Once I said to my friend Katie, "wouldn't it be nice to be able to travel back in time and see what things were like?" By this I meant go back in time with today's eyes, to walk around and see everything as wonderful and strange. She said no. I took it to mean that Katie, as a nature lover, had a different sense of time. Going back 20 or 30 years wouldn't make much difference to the way you saw a forest or mountain range (conservation concerns aside). I then assumed that my desire was really an urban one and that urban living created a temporal sense that potentially led to wistfulness. I even wrote a story about this. A villain is being hunted down by primitive natives. He runs toward a hill where he unveils a time machine. "Behold!" he says, expecting the savages to bow down before him in awe of his invention. Instead, the savages rip him to pieces. "I could have told you" winces our hero. "Time travel is fascinating only to city dwellers."
About 15 years ago my mom got stomach cancer which is often fatal. I asked a friend what it would mean to make the most of our time together. She said, "why don't you buy her some flowers?" When I asked Maria the same question some years later, she said, "what kind of stupid question is that?" What she meant is that the nature of our existence is such that we can only let things slip by. We do not and wouldn't want to live our lives with Emily's sense of retrospect. My mom, by the way, is still alive and kicking.
When you have children the Our Town conundrum always comes up. Everyone will tell you, "enjoy them while they're young... they grow up so fast." Yet you can't look at your kids as you would in retrospect ten years from now. Instead of treating them as people you'd treat them with fascination as museum pieces.
Noise film has strands of the Our Town conundrum running through it. The conundrum is about consciousness and how our consciousness changes things and our appreciation of events. Let's say that your leg gets chopped off. You bemoan your fate and get angry and depressed. Now let's say that you're given an outrageous cosmic choice. Your first born child dies or you get your leg chopped off. Most of us would choose the second option, of course. In both cases, you end up the same. But the second instance is easier to take. Your loss, as a sacrifice, takes on a vastly different sense of significance. Another way of looking at it is to say that our beliefs play a great role in how we respond to events. Maybe we would all be happier if we could manipulate our beliefs in such a way that we lived in peace and gratitude. But beliefs are given to us. For many things, we are subject to beliefs, not the other way around. And that is one way to think about the ending of Noise film.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Alpha 81 is locked
Our last alpha version is locked. There are a couple of non-timing related shots that aren't finished, but shouldn't make a difference.
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Ben, I'm relying on your amazing ability as an actor...
The other night, I finished rewriting the script taking into account the various notes I've received on Alpha 77. Ben is still probably going to feel that there is much more narration than necessary. I leave him with this story from Mike Figgis' book...
"When I was making One Night Stand I had a confrontation with Wesley Snipes. He questioned the substance of a scene and said that he found it hard to believe that he would do what was in the script. It was a scene where he spills ink on his shirt and Nastassja Kinski offers him her room in which to change. Wesley—quite correctly—said that he wouldn't go upstairs with a strange blonde woman to change a shirt. His body was in great shape, and he'd change right there in the lobby. 'So why am I going upstairs with her?' Again, this was a very public debate in front of the crew and the actors. I thought for a while and then said the following. "Wesley, you are entirely correct, the scene is not particularly well conceived and I hope, will occupy only a short amount of time in the film, so that the audience doesn't come to the same conclusion as you. However, without the scene, the film will not work—there will be no romance. So I rely on your amazing ability as an actor to get us through this moment convincingly and quickly.' He was happy with this response and did just that. The mistake would have been to argue the point."
"When I was making One Night Stand I had a confrontation with Wesley Snipes. He questioned the substance of a scene and said that he found it hard to believe that he would do what was in the script. It was a scene where he spills ink on his shirt and Nastassja Kinski offers him her room in which to change. Wesley—quite correctly—said that he wouldn't go upstairs with a strange blonde woman to change a shirt. His body was in great shape, and he'd change right there in the lobby. 'So why am I going upstairs with her?' Again, this was a very public debate in front of the crew and the actors. I thought for a while and then said the following. "Wesley, you are entirely correct, the scene is not particularly well conceived and I hope, will occupy only a short amount of time in the film, so that the audience doesn't come to the same conclusion as you. However, without the scene, the film will not work—there will be no romance. So I rely on your amazing ability as an actor to get us through this moment convincingly and quickly.' He was happy with this response and did just that. The mistake would have been to argue the point."
Reshooting the last scene
Today Ben, David and I reshot the last scene, the one with the flyers. If my car crashed, we would have lost 75% of the readers of this blog. I told Ben he had to come along since he's the one who had such firm ideas about how it should look. Ben was very good as second unit director— he knew what he wanted. In this case, this means that Ben was discerning, really wanted the scene to work and knew how to make it work. This inspired confidence. So not knowing what you want means you're not sure what the scene is supposed to do, you're not sure how to do it and you don't inspire confidence. This made me feel like I didn't have to think about the scene unless I wanted to. I could just worry about what I was doing. So knowing what you want doesn't mean that you're closed to other people's ideas. It just means that you're taking care of things and you know where we're going and how it's all going to fit together.
I was also thinking about my "shoot it twice" approach. I was trying to remember how many scenes I was able to complete without reshooting, oh wait, here's the answer—NONE. I was telling Ben and David that because we have so many props, the first shoot is the essentially the dress rehearsal. The performance depends on the entire scene, not on actors who can change and adopt when transplanted into a location. Using this kind of approach, reshooting is almost a given.
My other hypothesis is that we don't have many standard shots in the film. For example, a typical film will have dialogue scenes that you shoot in certain standard ways—over the shoulder, two shot, or whatever. Noise film isn't like that. We have interactions with devices, Ben noticing things, Ben getting attacked by mysterious non-entities. So just getting the information to come across is complicated, especially when you don't have too much experience.
Plus, a lot of what we're doing is trying to balance certain ambiguities. If you want everything to be crystal clear, I think it makes it easier. But when you're trying to create certain interactions—like how do you make a bird appear without actually showing it appear, or how do you get across the idea that Ben is being pulled into the desert by an idea, it's just harder. Or maybe I just don't know what I want.
I was also thinking about my "shoot it twice" approach. I was trying to remember how many scenes I was able to complete without reshooting, oh wait, here's the answer—NONE. I was telling Ben and David that because we have so many props, the first shoot is the essentially the dress rehearsal. The performance depends on the entire scene, not on actors who can change and adopt when transplanted into a location. Using this kind of approach, reshooting is almost a given.
My other hypothesis is that we don't have many standard shots in the film. For example, a typical film will have dialogue scenes that you shoot in certain standard ways—over the shoulder, two shot, or whatever. Noise film isn't like that. We have interactions with devices, Ben noticing things, Ben getting attacked by mysterious non-entities. So just getting the information to come across is complicated, especially when you don't have too much experience.
Plus, a lot of what we're doing is trying to balance certain ambiguities. If you want everything to be crystal clear, I think it makes it easier. But when you're trying to create certain interactions—like how do you make a bird appear without actually showing it appear, or how do you get across the idea that Ben is being pulled into the desert by an idea, it's just harder. Or maybe I just don't know what I want.
Monday, July 07, 2008
Chewy hollow centers
Dan and I were talking today and we reiterated one of the ideas we had discussed earlier. The film is like a parody in the sense that it takes certain conventions and tries to turn them inside out and upside down in a playful way. Examples...
> Everyone knows there's supposed to be a build and climax at the end. We have a conceptual build and a cartoon fire. The whole ending claims to overturn all we know about physics! What an incredible tale! But it's presented in fuzzy abstract text. You don't see anything, you just imagine most of it.
>Everyone knows that clues take you from one place to the next. In our movie, unlike the Da Vinci Code, however, the clues are open to question. For example, the shrine interior is based on the idea of dinosaur bones in which they restore a whole dinosaur from just a couple of bone fragments. Is it a real creature or just wishful thinking? Is that really a spinner plate in there? Does XNHILO really spell "ex nihilo?" Is it a real clue or just wishful thinking?
>There's a protagonist caught up in a conspiracy and two other characters--one trying to help him and the other trying to kill him. But you only see the protagonist.
It's as if I tore out the center of a typical conspiracy story and built a film around the shape of the hole that remained. A film for a movie-savvy generation.
> Everyone knows there's supposed to be a build and climax at the end. We have a conceptual build and a cartoon fire. The whole ending claims to overturn all we know about physics! What an incredible tale! But it's presented in fuzzy abstract text. You don't see anything, you just imagine most of it.
>Everyone knows that clues take you from one place to the next. In our movie, unlike the Da Vinci Code, however, the clues are open to question. For example, the shrine interior is based on the idea of dinosaur bones in which they restore a whole dinosaur from just a couple of bone fragments. Is it a real creature or just wishful thinking? Is that really a spinner plate in there? Does XNHILO really spell "ex nihilo?" Is it a real clue or just wishful thinking?
>There's a protagonist caught up in a conspiracy and two other characters--one trying to help him and the other trying to kill him. But you only see the protagonist.
It's as if I tore out the center of a typical conspiracy story and built a film around the shape of the hole that remained. A film for a movie-savvy generation.
To do: Alpha 78+
RESHOOT
>Shrine interior with wide angle
>Last scene
EDITING CHANGES
>Slow down slow motion star bounce.
>Make slow zoom to broken spinner upon first appearance longer.
>Make flashbacks longer.
>redit final sequence ala Dan's transition
>Make credits bigger
>Make zoom out from star on desert ground longer.
>Make it clearer that Ben's looking at a video screen in red room
>Longer dissolve to cloud. Make that section feel like "morphing weirdness."
THINGS TO WRITE
>Write ending codex narration
AUDIO TO RECORD
>Sounds needed: tape recorder, typing
>Ben's narration
FOR MASTER/ONLINE
>Delete desert tower
>fix lens spot
>Correct the early scenes dirty
>fix blinks
>fx shot-delete paper from Ben's hand on stairs
>insert garbage removal shot
>insert truck shot
>Make clouds glitchy
>fix burning house scene
>desert map CU
>Shrine interior with wide angle
>Last scene
EDITING CHANGES
>Slow down slow motion star bounce.
>Make slow zoom to broken spinner upon first appearance longer.
>Make flashbacks longer.
>redit final sequence ala Dan's transition
>Make credits bigger
>Make zoom out from star on desert ground longer.
>Make it clearer that Ben's looking at a video screen in red room
>Longer dissolve to cloud. Make that section feel like "morphing weirdness."
THINGS TO WRITE
>Write ending codex narration
AUDIO TO RECORD
>Sounds needed: tape recorder, typing
>Ben's narration
FOR MASTER/ONLINE
>Delete desert tower
>fix lens spot
>Correct the early scenes dirty
>fix blinks
>fx shot-delete paper from Ben's hand on stairs
>insert garbage removal shot
>insert truck shot
>Make clouds glitchy
>fix burning house scene
>desert map CU
Dan's notes on Alpha 77
>Record VO for end segment and possibly segue into VO which then turns into noise. Possibly cut out from end typing earlier to create clearer connection from typing to flyer.
>Take out, "crow, a symbol of death," but he liked the other text about being called and haunted.
>Delete "over-unity effects" VO.
>Intro needs some kind of VO to set up later VO. Could be Ben mumbling, like "input .01 volts..." etc. etc.
>Slow down slow motion star bounce.
>Make slow zoom to spinner upon first appearance longer.
>Longer dissolve to cloud. Make that section feel like "morphing weirdness."
>Make desert VO more directed since Ben seems to be charging ahead
>Make flashbacks longer.
>Sounds needed: tape recorder, typing
>Make clouds glitchy?
>Make zoom out from star on desert ground longer.
>He liked all the "conjecture/question" text.
>Supported idea of adding the new VO to make ending clearer in terms of backstory.
>Change codex VO line to something like "obscured by physics."
>At end also suggested many more flyers "filling up the windows."
>Restore overlapping audio for microfiche scene.
>Felt overall structure makes sense. Noted that each segment (stars/mystery/bad thing) gets longer and longer which is appropriate.
>He liked the reaction to the dead bird since Ben didn't totally freak out, but treated the bird as an odd, awesome but not totally horrific event. As director, I took credit for this.
BTW, Dan said he's starting on the scoring/sound design next week.
>Take out, "crow, a symbol of death," but he liked the other text about being called and haunted.
>Delete "over-unity effects" VO.
>Intro needs some kind of VO to set up later VO. Could be Ben mumbling, like "input .01 volts..." etc. etc.
>Slow down slow motion star bounce.
>Make slow zoom to spinner upon first appearance longer.
>Longer dissolve to cloud. Make that section feel like "morphing weirdness."
>Make desert VO more directed since Ben seems to be charging ahead
>Make flashbacks longer.
>Sounds needed: tape recorder, typing
>Make clouds glitchy?
>Make zoom out from star on desert ground longer.
>He liked all the "conjecture/question" text.
>Supported idea of adding the new VO to make ending clearer in terms of backstory.
>Change codex VO line to something like "obscured by physics."
>At end also suggested many more flyers "filling up the windows."
>Restore overlapping audio for microfiche scene.
>Felt overall structure makes sense. Noted that each segment (stars/mystery/bad thing) gets longer and longer which is appropriate.
>He liked the reaction to the dead bird since Ben didn't totally freak out, but treated the bird as an odd, awesome but not totally horrific event. As director, I took credit for this.
BTW, Dan said he's starting on the scoring/sound design next week.
How anime works
Sean loves Pokemon so I'm always walking past him watching and seeing bits and pieces of the show. Unlike Dan, I kind of like it and I was so excited to see Misty again in this weekend's DVD. I wondered what happened to her. A Pokemon battle, I discovered, is incomprehensible without the narration provided by the onlookers like Brock or May. You just see a lot of abstraction on screen and the onlookers explain what's happening and whether it's good or bad. Speed Racer worked in exactly the same way. Most of the time, you're just seeing flashing things and the only way you know what's happening is by the expression on the Racer family's faces. In the case of Pokemon, I think the aesthetic is driven by financial and storytelling concerns. The fights are visually simple (low frame rate) with abstraction taking the place of action. Plus, the onlookers are good for providing the necessary exposition—"What's he doing? You can't fight a water type with an electric type! (or whatever)" It works for Pokemon but generally speaking, it seems better if the audience is able to make those judgements about what's happening for themselves.
Saturday, July 05, 2008
Papermart.com
This belongs in my series of images that remind me of the final scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark. The last scene in our film is supposed to be reminiscent of this. From Papermart in Los Angeles.
Thursday, July 03, 2008
Final scene problems
Ben called me today because he remembered his problem with the final scene. When David and I are walking by, he said it looks like we're walking single file which looks unnatural. I told him this was an optical illusion. I was actually about 10" further away from the camera than David, but it probably looks like we're walking single file because the size of my head compensated for the depth. (The surest sign you have is a big head is when your mom assures you, "No, you don't have a big head. In fact it's kind of small.")
So Ben and I started talking about all the problems with the final scene. It's really not that bad but there are a lot of small annoying things. So I said I'd try to arrange to reshoot. Here are the problems from biggest to least:
1. I shouldn't have put so much text on the flyer because it makes the audience want to read it. So in version 77 I blurred out most of the text but of course it looks artificial.
2. The shot is kind of dead because there aren't enough people walking in the wide shot. I have some accidental footage of David walking through the shot that really gives it life. This would also help cut better when we go from medium to wide.
3. The tilt starts stationary with the flyers centered. I realized when editing that I should have started the tilt pointed down and then moved up so I could cut into the shot right before the flyers were centered.
4. It would have been nice if we put a lot more flyers, maybe twice as many to make the scene more dramatic.
5. I didn't look at the flyers carefully enough. One says "2007" in huge letters. Another has color print outs.
6. Ben thinks the flyer arrangement was too unnaturally haphazard.
Movies that try to start movements
There's something I find arrogant and annoying about movies that seem to want to create cultural trends. I felt that way when watching Speed Racer which for me came across as the Wachowskis trying to jump start a photo-anime-pop fashion movement. I also felt that way about Be Kind Rewind, as if Michel Gondry was hoping to incite us all to create communal films. Network irked me because it wanted to be so prophetic and clever. And you can bet I didn't see Pay It Forward.
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
The Trouble With Humor
Mary Wickes
I've been reliving my childhood watching films that I saw on the big screen when I was a kid. I watched bits and pieces of Lt. Robin Crusoe, USN a couple of months ago. Dick Van Dyke stars as a Navy pilot who goes down in the Pacific and makes a home for himself on a tropical island (along with Nancy Kwan). In the mid-sixties, the association between the military/World War II and the South Pacific was still fresh in peoples' minds so there is a strange connection between films like this one and the mid-century Tiki/Lounge aesthetic.
Tonight I watched bits of The Trouble with Angels, a Hayley Mills movie in which she plays a rebellious student at an all-girls Catholic School. The film is a loose series of vignettes of the girls getting in trouble but the narrative ties up with a surprisingly emotional ending. There is very little momentum in the film—it really is just incidents pasted together. Angels was directed by Ida Lupino (Bewitched, Gilligan's Island , The Twilight Zone) and includes appearances by a stunning Camilla Sparv and a born-to-play-nuns Mary Wickes.
There's something about comedy that makes it antithetical to art films. Both of these films are shot flat like TV shows and have a very loose, almost careless feel. It's like there's nothing standing between you and the raw presence of the leads who look as if they're not getting any direction at all. Guy Maddin's able to pull of humor but there's a partial fit there because of his loose, quirky hand-held style. I like the fact that Michel Gondry was willing to give humor a shot in Be Kind Rewind, but the problem was too tough for him to solve. He was trying to do something that James McKenney pulled off in Automatons when the enemy leader communicates using a brick-sized wrist communicator. The humor is dry, almost indiscernible, a humor of situation without a punchline. It's like the scene in Superman II when debris is falling from the sky as Superman battles Zod and out of the corner of your eye you see a convertible putting its top up. Be Kind, however, just comes off as if it's trying too hard. The car, the metal hats—it's just too self-conscious. Wes Anderson did a great job in The Life Aquatic. It's an art film with a nimble, gently comedic touch. Worth studying for combining art film and comedy.
Ben, Britton and Elizabeth's take on alpha 77
My testing strategy for noise film alpha 77 is not too scientific. I brought it to Ben's house and he had some friends and relatives there so they saw the cut (Mona saw it because I was having lunch with her). The reaction of Britton and Elizabeth as outsiders was interesting. I think they were pretty interested in watching until the end when it all got abstract and seemed to peter out. At a certain point all you're seeing is text flashing by on the screen.
> Ben and Elizabeth, unlike Mona, didn't have any trouble understanding the very beginning scene.
> Unlike Mona Ben didn't have any trouble seeing the falling stars.
> Ben thinks the CU of the stars falling is confusing unneeded. I think he's right.
>He thinks the flashback scene of the broken spinner needs to be longer, more of a climax in his character's thinking. Sounds good to me.
>He really liked the interior shot of the spinner box. Much better than the old one. I told him that's one of the shots I did when I finally figured out how to light. It reads as old and mysterious now for him unlike before when he said it was too much like a Hollywood prop.
>The time lapse clouds don't seem to bother him too much, but EVERYONE mentions them in one way or another so I should probably get rid of them. I think they're just too overly dramatic and look like a royalty-free clip.
>I liked Britton's reaction during the bird scene. "What's that, a dead bird?" Then the close up cuts in. That's exactly the response I wanted. The prop seems to have worked well. At least no one tells me it looks fake. I found that styrofoam really looks like bird guts on camera.
>The shrine interior before the microfiche scene doesn't have enough oomph. That gave me the idea to reshoot it with the wide angle.
>Krissy said, "is that microfiche?" I was happy with that... at least it comes across. Better than, what the hell is that?
>Ben thinks there are too many words in the transition from ex nihilo to the red room. He thinks there should only be one long exposition. I think he's right.
>He really liked the red room sequence in terms of it making sense and the color correction. Almost everyone who sees the film thinks it looks nice in general. That's great, but every time I see it I think how much better it would look if I could use better lenses. Ben was also really happy with his bleary eyes that he created by gouging his thumbs into his eye sockets before the shot. No method actor he.
>He still thinks I have to make it clearer that the codex video is coming from the screen. He thinks brightening the screen in the red room will work. I told him I might have to reshoot a slow push in to the screen which is in a cabinet that David gave me. Problem: Ben uses it to keep paint.
>There was something that was bothering him about the last sequence--the ending, but he couldn't figure out what. I think I just cut too fast after head wipe.
>As the camera tilted up into the sky Ben made a white noise sound. He knew it was coming.
>I found that the credits are too small at standard DV resolution.
>Ben hated the final temp piano music (from Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain). Hmm. I thought it was pretty good in terms of mood.
>Ben tells people that this thing took three years to make. In December, it will be four years.
> Ben and Elizabeth, unlike Mona, didn't have any trouble understanding the very beginning scene.
> Unlike Mona Ben didn't have any trouble seeing the falling stars.
> Ben thinks the CU of the stars falling is confusing unneeded. I think he's right.
>He thinks the flashback scene of the broken spinner needs to be longer, more of a climax in his character's thinking. Sounds good to me.
>He really liked the interior shot of the spinner box. Much better than the old one. I told him that's one of the shots I did when I finally figured out how to light. It reads as old and mysterious now for him unlike before when he said it was too much like a Hollywood prop.
>The time lapse clouds don't seem to bother him too much, but EVERYONE mentions them in one way or another so I should probably get rid of them. I think they're just too overly dramatic and look like a royalty-free clip.
>I liked Britton's reaction during the bird scene. "What's that, a dead bird?" Then the close up cuts in. That's exactly the response I wanted. The prop seems to have worked well. At least no one tells me it looks fake. I found that styrofoam really looks like bird guts on camera.
>The shrine interior before the microfiche scene doesn't have enough oomph. That gave me the idea to reshoot it with the wide angle.
>Krissy said, "is that microfiche?" I was happy with that... at least it comes across. Better than, what the hell is that?
>Ben thinks there are too many words in the transition from ex nihilo to the red room. He thinks there should only be one long exposition. I think he's right.
>He really liked the red room sequence in terms of it making sense and the color correction. Almost everyone who sees the film thinks it looks nice in general. That's great, but every time I see it I think how much better it would look if I could use better lenses. Ben was also really happy with his bleary eyes that he created by gouging his thumbs into his eye sockets before the shot. No method actor he.
>He still thinks I have to make it clearer that the codex video is coming from the screen. He thinks brightening the screen in the red room will work. I told him I might have to reshoot a slow push in to the screen which is in a cabinet that David gave me. Problem: Ben uses it to keep paint.
>There was something that was bothering him about the last sequence--the ending, but he couldn't figure out what. I think I just cut too fast after head wipe.
>As the camera tilted up into the sky Ben made a white noise sound. He knew it was coming.
>I found that the credits are too small at standard DV resolution.
>Ben hated the final temp piano music (from Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain). Hmm. I thought it was pretty good in terms of mood.
>Ben tells people that this thing took three years to make. In December, it will be four years.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Mona's feedback on version 77
Mona is a good person for feedback since she hasn't seen much of the film but has a good understanding of what I'm after + she's seen a lot of video and film, both traditional and experimental.
>Her main comment was that I don't need as much expository narration, it makes enough sense without a lot of it. Specifically, she mentioned that we don't need "a crow... a symbol of death..." In a sense, what she's doing is asking for a return to the film's roots—to create a wave of sensual and intellectual experience.
> She hated the temp music. She said it makes it sound like Titanic. Hopefully that will soon be taken care of.
> She liked the way the desert scenes were corrected. She thinks the early shots of the spinner in the workroom were too clean.
>She said the beginning didn't make sense to her. Apparently my attempt to crib together a sequence of left-over pieces didn't work. So I'll probably cut that down.
>Like a lot of other people, she thought the dark clouds stuck out, like a clip I purchased. I'll probably replace with blowing desert trees or something.
>She agreed with Ben that the desert tower should come out to make it look more isolated.
>She's the first person to notice the spot on the lens in one shot. She thinks that should be corrected.
>I asked her if she thought there were any bad acting moments. She said no.
>She thought the visuals were nice.
>She really liked the microfiche sequence.
>She couldn't see the stars in the master shot. I may need to make that more apparent.
>The way I did the burning scene didn't work for her. I'll try to put the white noise on top of it to make it match the existing cartoon footage better.
>She said it didn't make her sleepy and that it seemed shorter than its 16 minute running time.
>Her main comment was that I don't need as much expository narration, it makes enough sense without a lot of it. Specifically, she mentioned that we don't need "a crow... a symbol of death..." In a sense, what she's doing is asking for a return to the film's roots—to create a wave of sensual and intellectual experience.
> She hated the temp music. She said it makes it sound like Titanic. Hopefully that will soon be taken care of.
> She liked the way the desert scenes were corrected. She thinks the early shots of the spinner in the workroom were too clean.
>She said the beginning didn't make sense to her. Apparently my attempt to crib together a sequence of left-over pieces didn't work. So I'll probably cut that down.
>Like a lot of other people, she thought the dark clouds stuck out, like a clip I purchased. I'll probably replace with blowing desert trees or something.
>She agreed with Ben that the desert tower should come out to make it look more isolated.
>She's the first person to notice the spot on the lens in one shot. She thinks that should be corrected.
>I asked her if she thought there were any bad acting moments. She said no.
>She thought the visuals were nice.
>She really liked the microfiche sequence.
>She couldn't see the stars in the master shot. I may need to make that more apparent.
>The way I did the burning scene didn't work for her. I'll try to put the white noise on top of it to make it match the existing cartoon footage better.
>She said it didn't make her sleepy and that it seemed shorter than its 16 minute running time.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
I am Tarkovsky!
I was watching the film again last night and started falling asleep. This happens every time if I am just the slightest bit sleepy. Only Tarkovsky has a similar effect on me. I'm not sure what it is, but it's not simply boredom. Maria always used to get sleepy when I talked a lot. Now I know what she meant.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Gravitas
I rendered another version with the narrative connecting ex nihilo to the tape codex creation. It helps a lot. It's as if simply acknowledging that there needs to be something there and filling it up with something—anything—helps. When I rendered that version I realized I have another problem. I stripped so much out of the story that the final realization about creation ex nihilo doesn't have enough impact. It is without weight. In the case of our film, this is not a dramatic problem, it's an information problem. The impact lies in the reasoning about why modern physics was developed. So I have to put some voice over about that. I'll try it tonight.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
