Qualities of beginner's work

>stiffness
>heaviness
>inconsistency
>grayness

Red Letter Media and Episode 1

Craig sent me a link to Red Letter Media's review of the Phantom Menace. It's extremely intelligent and entertaining but a bit misguided as film criticism. I love this kind of criticism as production theory. It sparks the creative process. It provides insights into what should have been and what could be. I do it all the time. But it's not film criticism. It's part of the creative process.

One take on film criticism is not to describe what would have made a better movie. Instead, it's to try to understand the film in a broader context that aims to enrich our understanding of a work. This can lead to creativity, but does not rely on a reworking of what a filmmaker has already done.

In this vein, I realize that I do have a "film criticism" of the Phantom Menace and it is this: Certainly, the Phantom Menace is filled with problems, but these are problems that stem from aspiration and process. The prequels are Lucas' attempt to make something along the lines of a David Lean film. In trying to show how "an empire becomes an empire" he bit off more than he could chew. This desire to integrate the macro of politics and the micro of human interaction is a lofty goal made more difficult by Lucas' determination to integrate experimental visualization and process into the work. Yes, the Phantom Menace is like a collage that doesn't make sense, but this is a result of the way that Lucas has tried to turn filmmaking into a bricolage-like process created in the editing. The PM wasn't script-driven, it was created via an action-oriented approach in which Lucas tried to reconcile the formal concerns of the images with the plot concerns of the Star Wars back story. If there are holes in the plot, it's because Lucas wasn't able to successfully navigate this difficult improvisation.

The stories of Lucas making an experimental film some day are a smoke screen. In fact, he aspired to integrate experimental filmmaking--the aesthetics of expressionism and improvisational abstraction--into the prequels themselves. The failure of the PM then, is NOT that he was unable to stick to a formula as the Red Letter critique suggests. Instead, it's that he was unable to improvise a successful resolution to the many visual, plot and character conundrums he created for himself. He tried to rewrite the formula of filmmaking itself but was just not skillful enough to pull it off.

Albondigas soup

Yesterday I hired Sean to do some scanning that I had been putting off for years. At .15 cents a copy, it's a great deal for me and a great job for him. He was super happy he made $15. I started playing around with the images and made a couple of pages for my comic book (the final versions will have more characters and word balloons). These took a life of their own. I'll probably use them for a sequence in which the protagonist, in a hypnotic reverie, reminisces about velvety abondigas soup. What struck me about the images, however, are a number of parallels between what I'm doing at school and what I've been thinking about film.

1. These pages are essentially the final project for Art 200. They are multi-modal compositions that incorporate images from Illustrator and Photoshop. I never made the connection before between multi-modal photo montages and my multi-modal approach to film, but there you are. BTW, the photo of the woman is an authentic old school waxy color xerox from the early eighties.

2. Ever since my dissertation I have been wondering about the "in-between" nature of the computer. I wrote about how abstract expressionist painting disclosed anxiety and process. Painting, as an analog medium doesn't allow you to go back and correct things so "mistakes" became fixed into the substance of the work. The computer, on the other hand, is a simulated world in which nothing is fixed. Layers of imagery exist without commitment leading to a tepid, floating quality. Yet there is an approach that exists outside or between authenticity and simulation and it is this: we bring into our use of a medium our understandings, our perceptions and knowledge. When I'm arranging these pages, I frequently put things at slight angles. These aren't a simulation of hand paste-up. This approach is based on my past experience of doing layout by hand. I'm trying to achieve a slightly off-balance, thrown-together look that echoes my experience and observation doings things in the analog world.

3. One way I make these things is to create obstructions for myself. I just start throwing together pretty much any image into a composition. I then try to work myself out of the mess I created. Sometimes I can't do it. At other times I am. This process of trying to rescue and recover work leads to a specific kind of performative quality.

4. I keep writing about how I dislike artiness. These things do look arty, but for me the resemblance is superficial. I think it has to do with why one does things. I think I dislike artiness when it looks like the use of visual signs to give things the authority of art.

Qualities of performance

It's a little embarrassing. I didn't know I was such a by-the-book modernist when it comes to performance. Here are the qualities of performance I always seem to be looking for—

1. Struggle, working oneself out of a series of difficulties, disclosing the struggle of something coming into being, the struggle of an incongruity with the world. We become embedded in and must work our way through history and the presence of things past.

Practically everything I've written about in this blog is about this in some way. Noise shows the struggle of its inception; we learn as we go. Our mistakes determine the outcome of the film. The film is correction-in-motion. It takes the uncinematic and struggles to make it cinematic enough, mostly just hanging by a thread. Brando struggles through obstacles.  My disaffection for films like Goodfellas in which the cinematic virtuosity is astounding, but it  lacks any sense of wonder or experimentation. It is an ostentatious showy blonde of a movie. The handheld camera in Episode II telegraphing, knowing ahead of time where to focus during the Clone Wars sequence.

2. Becoming engaged with the earth and the elements: weather, aging, chemical process. We, our tools and processes become subject to things and do not make all things subject to us.

This is the problem of Beowolf. We see Beowolf standing there on the ship and yet he is unblinking, impervious to the rain. This makes him seem less heroic, not more. He becomes an object, not a person persevering through the rain which was added only later in post. The characters in episode II talking calmly on helicopter-like gunships like they're on the subway, the only clue to the fact that they are flying is fan-driven hair. The work reveals something about its process whether shot on 3 chip or CMOS or film. The use of faux film techniques evokes the desire to return to a world where we are subject to the earth. Yet, because these effects are digital, they once again become aestheticized as an effect.

3. The lack of self-conscious artistry and overstyling. Being in the moment vs. seeing creation in terms of aesthetic or psychological or social decision-making.

My dislike of conventions that falsely convey authority. Episode II—the overly art-directed Clone Wars, the contrast and composition too perfectly control. Heaven's Gate. Dave McKean.

4. Life and expression—something comes across in the public sphere having a lively quality.

The character has inner necessity. They do things congruent with their speech. It doesn't matter whether actors/animators work inside out or outside in. There just has to be a sense of life, of doing things that make sense, of being a part of a moment happening for the first time. Life is the post position that looks like the pre-position.

5. Observation trumping artsy-ness potentially leading to invention. Understanding and knowing instead of recycling or the unimaginative use of tropes.

Abuses of the shaky cam as trope. The problems with Stealth. and its self-conscious performance.

Heidegger, performance and Brando

From the dark opening of the worn insides of the shoes the toilsome tread of the worker stares forth. In the stiffly rugged heaviness of the shoes there is the accumulated tenacity of her slow trudge through the far-spreading and ever-uniform furrows of the field swept by a raw mind... In the shoes vibrates the silent call of the earth, its quiet gift of ripening grain and its unexplained self-refusal in the fallow desolation of the wintry field. This equipment is pervaded by uncomplaining anxiety as to the certainty of bread, the wordless joy of having once more withstood want, the trembling before the impending childbed and shivering at the surrounding menace of death. This equipment belongs to the earth, and it is protected in the world of the peasant woman. —from Heidegger's Poetry, Language, Thought


The question: why does digital technology seem to be un-motivating when it should be the opposite because it makes creativity so easy? I suspect this has something to do with the way that digital equipment turns artistic activity into a series of aesthetic decisions. At one time, putting together a clean audio chain required a certain kind of skill. In analog electronic audio, there is a constant mechanical battle against buzz, analog oscillators that don't hold their tune, radio interference and noise. In today's world, however, the computer offers so much control that noise becomes an aesthetic decision. Without the constraints of an analog medium, we are left with the music of the imagination. The problem of digital music, then, is that it frames everything in terms of psychology. "The only limit is your imagination." But that's a BIG limitation. It's not possible to create art that discloses a struggle against the earth. We are so removed that we can only wrestle with the world. The solution is to therefore turn to the quality of a performance. We do not need to literally use analog means to express analog consciousness.

This corresponds to my negative orientation toward "arty-ness." Arty-ness discloses imagination, psychology and subjectivity. Arty-ness is the aural or visual chatter that occurs when art becomes aesthetic. This is the art created by a world made subject to the artist. By its nature, the analog-ontological sensibility, on the other hand, is defined by the fact that the artist is made subject to things.

The art of an artist made subject to things is exemplified in the performance of someone like Brando. This is modern acting, the method. In his mumbling, Brando discloses the struggle of mind vs. the earth. In Streetcar, when he speaks while eating a fruit, he remakes Demosthenes for modernity. The post-Adler approach to acting, acting with a ragged edge, is exemplified by its rawness. It is abstract expressionism for the screen.

The question is why this approach still rings true for us. By now, approaching acting as being-in-the-moment should be an anachronism. Yet it is the approach seemingly necessitated by the scrutiny of the camera lens and by the depth of experience we have reading human faces. And watching Brando in The Godfather—speaking through a raspy throat—remains as compelling as it did 40 years ago.

Another discovery

On V: the original miniseries Part II, there is an interesting discovery sequence.

The food service girl steps on gum. She stops to take it off and rests her hand on the wall. She then realizes that her hand is on a time bomb.

I am not immune to this malaise

When I was in grad school in the nineties I didn't have a scanner so I used to go to the computer lab to scan everything I needed in batches. When I needed a font like Bodoni, I would go to a lab, type out the word in Bodoni and then save it as a Photoshop file so I could take it home. Even in the late 90's at CSUN I used to drive 30 miles to ITR to burn backup CD-ROMs. Today it's almost too easy to make things. There's something very un-motivating about having Garage Band sitting on every Mac. Without any significant investment of time, energy or money—without cost—creativity becomes an ever-present possibility that exists in an always-out-of-reach future. Creativity then becomes a purely aesthetic effort divorced from financial and other decisions. It's almost like creativity works better when things aren't too easy.

Demosthenes, transparency + transcendence

Demetrius, the Phalerian, tells us that he was informed by Demosthenes himself, now grown old, that the ways he made use of to remedy his natural bodily infirmities and defects were such as these; his inarticulate and stammering pronunciation he overcame and rendered more distinct by speaking with pebbles in his mouth; his voice he disciplined by declaiming and reciting speeches or verses when he was out of breath, while running or going up steep places; and that in his house he had a large looking-glass, before which he would stand and go through his exercises.  —Demosthenes, by Plutarch


Perhaps there are two ways to think of performing through an obstruction. One approach is transcendent. We transcend the limitations of a medium with our virtuosity. Like spectacular visual effects, photographs that look like paintings, and Michael Jackson. In the other approach, there is no transcendence. We struggle with tools to produce form that never becomes transparent and still maintains its ragged edge. Contemporary theorists would likely think of this as a worn-out cipher for authenticity, the honesty of materials and modernity.

Maybe we can look at Demosthenes in two ways. In the received view, Demosthenes learned to transcend his speech impediment by filling his mouth with stones. But perhaps the "distinct" speech he learned didn't refer to a clarity of pronunciation, but a clarity of expression. Perhaps he didn't overcome his stammering but learned to use it for rhetorical effect.

Light, glass, gears, plastic + performance

I mentioned yesterday that kinetic light pieces fascinate me when they are done mechanically, but are highly uninteresting to me when done via software (e.g., a screensaver). I wonder if this has something to do with the "performing through obstruction" idea that I was thinking about last year.

I'm sure Wilfred felt his Lumia was possible only because of the machine. But I suspect his devices were like vacuum-tube based computers; the idea and the potential far exceeded the hardware. I wonder if Wilfred's machine was simultaneously expressive and obstructive? The machine made Wilfred's work possible but the process of combining light, glass, gears and plastic to simulate the floating quality of modern painting via light was bound by numerous engineering concerns. Perhaps it is this tension that makes the work interesting.

This reminds me of John Knoll's description of his experiences with optical printing. Knoll has spoken of the tension-filled dance that accompanied an optical print run in which a number of elements had to be combined. Perhaps the charm of technologies-on-the-edge is not that they evoke technological mastery, but that they disclose a lack of it. The machines are doing things for which they are ill-suited. It is the tension between control and a lack of control that generates a performance. This may explain why certain computer-based effects are so unsatisfying; the match between concept and machine is so well aligned, that the performance is lost. This is the phenomenon of the screensaver—the perfect realization of machine-based abstraction, yet artistically empty.

This idea seems consistent with my love of misusing technologies. My friend Ward made fun of me saying, "Not everything is a transistor radio that you can turn into a bubble machine." But maybe that's why I keep trying—because it is in the ability to expressively use a mismatched technology (performing through an obstruction) that a performance arises.

Maintaining conflict

Last month I wrote about the problem that occurs when dialogue doesn't match actions. I think the problem comes in extending conflict. Conflict is interesting. But it can be hard thinking of a good reason to keep the conflict going. It therefore makes sense why chase scenes are popular. They work because they extend conflict. What doesn't work is when you say, "leave me alone" and then you just stand there waiting to be accosted (unless that is part of the character, of course.) An old dramatic adage says that in a scene, each person needs to want something. But it might be just as reasonable to say that in a scene, there ought to be conflict, logically extended.

Modern art surprise

On the way to the Wilfred piece I walked through the LACMA modern gallery and was sort of shocked. Usually when I look at modern art I find it to be masculine and tough-looking. But yesterday, everything seemed wispy and arty. One of the Kienholz pieces in particular struck me (History as a planter, left) . In my mind Kienholz's work looks dense and grimy with roplex as thick as gravy. But the piece I saw looked contrived. The brushwork in particular was very self-consciously arty. It reminded me of a bad performance, someone trying to get across the idea of grit but being too civilized to get it right.

The Lumia, screensavers

I went to LACMA yesterday to see Thomas Wilfred's Luccata Opus 162 drawn by Chris Meyer's discussion of it in his provideocoalition blog. The title says it all; this machine-driven light piece comes from that 20th century 'let's use music as a  metaphor for visual abstraction' school of thought. The piece is a disappointment only because you can't see the machinery—the light is rear projected in an enclosed box. I was surprised to see how precise the mechanical motion was. I was expecting to see the subtle shaking you get from dolly tracks—analog interference that occurs despite the gears. But the only thing that wasn't smooth was the 'stepping' that accompanied the fading images, almost as if Wilfred was using cheap potentiometers.

I've been wondering why I find these abstract light machines so compelling when I find screensavers, which produce a very similar effect, so uninteresting.

The character IS the performance

Earlier this summer I complained about creature design in which the creature plays a type [link]. To elaborate on this thought, I think we need to distinguish between 'animation' and 'effects.' In animation, the creature design IS part of the performance. The look, the features, the outfit, the postures, are all a part of the character's performance. The problem with effects, then, is when animation performance paradigms are misapplied to "realistic" scenes and shots. This is what gives so many blockbuster films that cartoony look. A realistic scene might call for a realistic character—one that does not depend on its design for its performance. And yet, it frequently gets a cartoon.

Speech/action incongruity

Last December I wrote about a problematic scene in The Spirit--the part where a young Denny Colt and Sand Seref are accosted by reporters. The problem is that even though Denny tells the reporters to get away he stands there waiting to be accosted. There is no emotional reality to the scene because the speech and action are incongruous.

This past year I saw two student projects that had the exact same problem. There was dramatic dialogue--people arguing and being accosted, yet the actors just sat there like puppets. I think this is another aspect of the performer-objectification problem. The performer becomes an object whose purpose exists to serve up dialogue, a puppet to be manipulated by the artist-director. The character works outside-in vs inside out and has no life of its own.

Examples: use and abuse of shakycam

Macgruber
Stealth
Hancock
Microsoft viral ad of guy jumping
Cloverfield
Crank
Star Trek

I watched the Watchmen

Two things struck me about Watchmen.

First was how small it looked. I realize that in the age of visual effects we know what an effect looks like. So panoramic vistas don't look big. They look small, like an effect. What looks big is when we see a set and movement through a set and 360 degree views through a set.

Second, the main anticipation structure of the story doesn't work because it derives from a print, not film strategy. The ticking nuclear countdown clock is essential to the plot. But because it's a literary device, not an emotional one, the third act lacks the forward propulsion it needs to be effective. We never really feel like the US and Russia are moving toward war. Film anticipation would have required a different approach—people panicking, a military b-story, fighters in the air. But for many fans, that would have contaminated the film.

Movie creatures

Spent the day at an effects house looking at creature designs today. I finally realized why I dislike movie creatures in general. It's because they are art-directed from the ground-up. In other words, their anatomy, proportion and design owes less to an understanding of animals and more to their function in a film. They are cartoon creatures. Real creatures don't look inherently "evil" or "funny" or "good." So the problem with many movie monsters is that their designs are poorly performed. Like one-note cartoon villains, they exist solely to fulfill their function with scary eyes, evil wings and sharp talons. A really terrifying creature would be like a real animal--it would have a hint of beauty, a touch of the mundane and no immediately apparent cinematic value.

Quo Vadis, Rope, Dangerous Liasons, Gattaca & aestheticized death (spoilers)

Today I watched parts of Quo Vadis, a film I'd never seen before. I was mesmerized by all the Nero scenes; Peter Ustinov was born to play debauched Roman leaders. I was struck by how they portrayed Nero as an aesthete—jaded, childish, egotistical, and constantly in search of new experiences. In this version of the story, Nero burns Rome not only to clear the way for the creation of "Neropolis," but to aesthetically experience the tragedy itself. One bit of business that I loved was when Nero shed tears for a lost friend—carefully, one from each eye, into a special crystal vial.

While watching the film I realized how much I am attracted to this particular theme—aestheticized death and violence. Some of you know I love the movie Rope, which I've seen dozens of times. In the film, two friends commit murder to prove their intellectual and artistic superiority as Nietschean supermen (based on the famous Loeb-Leopold case). The theme also occurs in Dangerous Liasons in which John Malkovich and Glenn Close's characters play a decadent game that results in the physical death of one character and the social demise of another. This kind of aestheticized violence is what I was hoping for in Gattaca. For some reason I was expecting a dinner scene in which Ethan Hawke's biologically inferior character tried to keep up with the biologically superior dinner guests, bluffing his way through potentially career killing verbal interchanges.

The theme is the foundation of one of my story ideas in which exotic decadence is played out in a fake Asian setting. I found that in my mind I had mixed this up with my other pseudo Asian setting idea. In this short film, women fight each other in single-blow matches, an idea which probably comes from both Hero and the end of Sanjuro (or was it Yojimbo?). Here, the fight lies not in the fight itself, but in the preparation for the fight. So the women spend the beginning of each match sitting before their opponents, scrutinizing each other's dress and posture for tactical strengths and weaknesses. Then, in a single blow, it is over. One is dead and the other survives. The victor is the one who makes the best decision in sizing up her opponent. In the end, our heroine loses her first and only battle; in this game, one can never lose more than once. As we pull our from her bloodied face Psycho style, we hear her voice over: "I always thought that if I lost, it would be because I failed to see something important. I never thought it would be because I didn't see anything at all."

I think the whole thing works well as a short film. It has to look beautiful, sumptuous. I always think of it as looking like the fantasy sequence from Rampo Noir--



There wouldn't be a lot of dialogue. Just set up the macro anticipation of what will happen in the final death match. Then just put in a lot of micro anticipations: the training, the setting, the loving, tears shed into crystal, all painfully beautiful. It also works as a second short film because it expands on noise film, but not by too much. Only voice over, no sync sound. A few actors, but no acting with a capital "A." Real sets with green screen backgrounds.

Crank, Knowing

I've been going through the film shot by shot coloring. It's gratifying in the sense that the film looks so much better but it takes a long time.

Pick up this month's American Cinematographer for interesting features on Crank High Voltage and Knowing. Crank was shot on a Canon AH-10. This is the same camera we use at school.The whole production with its small cameras and home-made rigs (you should see their home-made "bullet-time" rig) sounds totally "DV Rebel." See the trailer here. In the article, the DP said he doesn't go for the 'shoot gray stretch in post' approach. He keeps his histograms right-leaning.

Knowing, with Nicholas Cage, was shot on a Red camera. So a lot of mainstream digital cinema action out there.

Secret sauce bleach bypass

This image shows the difference between beta 2 (bottom) and my semi-home-made bleach bypass look (top). My technique is a labyrinthine and lame way to achieve effect but it's the only practical approach I've found. Apple Color has a beautiful bleach bypass effect but I have a hard time getting the result I want. Plus, Color itself is such a pain to use because of the way it makes changes and edits so difficult. Magic Bullet Look's bleach bypass looks too thick and I've never been able to get it to look right. Here's the formula. My approach requires Looks but you can probably do something similar using only built-in filters.

In FCP, use a standard 3 way corrector to adjust the overall brightness and contrast of the image. Then apply the neo noir filter to make the clip black and white. I like to add a bit of grain—6. The neo noir filter adds a bit of diffusion which makes the light areas glow like film.

Copy the clip and place the new clip above the original clip. Then, in the new clip, replace the neo noir filter with any of the film Looks. Usually these film looks are gaudy. The approach I'm describing makes any of them usable. I've been using the Bistrocity look. I've been pronouncing it to rhyme with atrocity but I think it's supposed to be Bistro City.

Apply the Overlay blend mode to the top layer. Adjust its Opacity if necessary.

Essentially, this technique has two layers of footage, the color one on top and the b/w on bottom. The color layer has the Overlay blend mode applied.

Correction-again

After trying the interesting but unusable super 8 test I was pretty sure I was going to make noise film b/w. Then my computer went down and I had to get the disk replaced. So then I was playing with the film and combined the b/w version with the color version and got pretty much what I wanted originally--a very rich, super-saturated black look so maybe I'll go with this. This one uses the old Overlay blend mode trick in which you put two layers of video together and apply Overlay to the top layer. The difference in this case is that the bottom is b/w effected through Magic Bullet Looks with some added grain. It's a time consuming render because there are actually four simultaneous corrections + the blend mode going on but I think it looks nice.

Breaking the rules

The Spirit just came out on DVD so I had to rent it. The badness of it was so etched in my mind from my first viewing that seeing it a second time was a disappointment. The Spirit is just not good enough to be bad enough to be good. It's incompetent. And the problem with incompetence, apparently, is that in the long run it's dull. The first time I saw it I thought The Spirit might be saved with a better edit. Seeing it again I suspect that there's nothing that can help it. Its weaknesses are structural and more deeply embedded than I thought—

>Talk about the difference between 'showing' and 'telling.' The Spirit is all telling which makes it difficult to tell what's happening. It's as if Miller created his characters by labelling them "good guy," "bad guy." The Octopus, for example, is talked about in hushed tones. But we only see him doing the most paltry of evils and that's only at the end of the film.

>The scenes have no direction in the "they don't go anywhere" meaning of the word (well, in the "directing" sense also). Therefore, they don't make sense. The much maligned opening fight sequence between the Octopus and The Spirit, for example, has no reason for being. There is no objective to the fight. Worse, the Octopus himself KNOWS that there's no point to the fight. Characters wander through the film aimlessly puppeteered by a meandering plot.

>Despite its non-stop exposition, the film doesn't convey enough information for the drama to make sense. It's like sitting there trying to listen to something you should be reading.

In The Spirit Frank Miller tried to break the rules. But he made a fatal beginner's mistake. He didn't realize that "breaking the rules" really means "transcending the rules." This is what the old saying "you have to know the rules to break them" means. Breaking the rules doesn't mean creating without rules. It means that one is incorporating "the rules" into one's work but in indirect, invisible ways, sometimes even working around the rules. The error of the beginner is to not see structures, either acknowledge or negated, which remain invisible.

Some discriminations

The 'post Spielberg' style is associated (negatively) with thrill-ride, blockbuster, mainstream cinema. But I think it's important to note that the style itself is not problematic. More often, the problem is the way in which the style becomes an easy way to replace understanding with roller coaster experience.

For example, this is a little thing but it annoys me. In Jurassic Park there is a sequence in which the T-Rex stomps closer and closer to the car. We don't see him. Instead we see ripples in a plastic cup. The DVD extras shows the prop guy talking about how hard it was to create that effect. And that is the problem. The problem comes out of the mind, not from experience. Does the water in a cup ripple? It sort of does, but not as pretty as it does in JP (yes I tried it). And that's the problem I have with so many feature films. Subjective emotional experience takes precedent over any understanding of the way things work. It's almost like a perfect description of Kierkegaard's definition of aesthetic experience in which the world becomes so uninteresting that our encounter with it must be intensified into poetry. Even water moving in a cup has to be a visual effect. This is what I'm always complaining about—the falling spaceship in Superman Returns, the crowd scenes in Lord of the Rings, Here, psychological devices replace understanding.

Still, the post-Spielberg style does not necessitate this use of psychological devices. In fact, I tried to do a lot of post-Spielberg moves in noise film but they were just too hard. Few people have seen one of the early desert shots in which we see Ben looking at a photo from a high angle crane shot. Then the wind comes and the photo blows into the sky right toward the camera. We tried a bunch of times but could never make that shot work.

Then there was the desert blood reveal that I storyboarded. We would see Ben's feet walking toward the car from an underneath-the-car view. Then rack focus close to see blood dripping. The camera cranes up slowly showing us blood dripping down the side of the car door. The camera then stops in the window which we can see is cracked and bloody. Through the window we see Ben walking closer and closer to the car. I didn't try that shot because we couldn't go back out to the desert. But I doubt we could have gotten that shot anyway. It would have necessitated using a long lens on a crane plus two focus pulls. The shaking from moving the long lens would have been enough to make the shot impossible (though I wonder if we could have stabilized the shot in post?). These shots contain many post-Spielberg elements. However I designed them for grace and efficiency, not psychological effect.

The question that arises is whether the reality of shooting in the post-Spielberg style encourages a certain take on things. Yes, the style itself is not a problem. And yet, to make it work requires an extraordinary control over mise en scene. Your blood has to be dripping just right. You have to use a lot of hardware and personnel to get the camera move right. Plus, any visual effect has to be seamless. In the shot of the photo flying overhead, we were trying to use a real photo pulled by fish line. I knew that using a CGI photo wouldn't look good (even good CGI tends to look fake to me). So in my thinking, you have to have all that control plus you can't use effects. At a certain point, working in the post-Spielberg style becomes counterproductive. But I think it can be done. One way is to give up attempts at photorealism. Going slightly theatrical would make the approach possible.

Eye candy

What Bettman calls "eye candy" I call "abstraction enters into the film via narratively-justified mise en scene." The reason this idea is important is because it is subtle, much less obvious than the self-consciously artistic approaches that have become commonplace among post music video directors. It is indeed a "missing link" between mainstream cinema and art film.

You can see a good example in Spielberg's Minority Report. At the beginning of the film Tom Cruise's character is desperately looking for a house in which a murder is about to take place. When he discovers the right address he bolts for the house. We see this from a variety of angles with the camera shutter strobing to intensify the action. One notable shot shows Cruise running toward the door while in the foreground, a child's merry go around spins ferociously adding to the strobing effect. The action then continues as Cruise runs up the stairs past the railing, with each rail continuing the strobing effect.

The child's merry go round is so well justified in this context that it recedes from our memory. All we remember is the intensification of action. This is one of the main differences between Spielberg and Lucas. Spielberg is less obviously abstract; Lucas more obviously so.

The missing link

I'm really enjoying Gil Bettman's book (see last post). It's sort of the missing link between the various approaches to filmmaking I've been outlining in the blog. So here's what we have so far.

THE FOUNDATION

1. Film requires a series of micro-level and macro-level anticipations. Without these anticipations you get bored or lost.

2. Film is structured around the emotional arcs of the protagonist. It is through these emotional arcs that we are able to "enter into" the film. Film is not a series of events strung together chronologically. The protagonist's emotional arcs determine what events are meaningful and how they are meaningful.

BETTMAN (missing link)

1. The camera must show everything that needs to be seen.

2. The camera must focus attention on the center of the drama.

3. Abstraction enters into the film via narratively-justified mise en scene. (My definition of what Bettman calls "eye candy.")

ART FILM

1. Art film integrates modes of modernist abstraction into filmmaking (e.g., machine approaches, gestural approaches). In more mainstream films, these modes are rationalized within a narrative. In less mainstream approaches, the modes are unjustified.

2. Bettman strongly argues that in mainstream film, technique cannot overshadow a narrative. In other words, when a shot calls attention to itself it draws you out of the moment of the film. I would suggest that the contemporary film audience has learned to be simultaneously both "inside" and "outside" of the film. For example, a lot of the shots in The Matrix call attention to themselves while simultaneously being rationalized within the narrative. Another approach is to break the spell of the film testing the ability of the audience to maintain interest. This is how the opening title of Se7en works. The narrative is propelled forward at an infintestimally slow pace; it is almost put on hold.

First time director by Gil Bettman

This is a great book, probably the best presentation of mainstream camera and actor blocking I've found. Bettman divides films into two categories—pre-Spielberg and post-Spielberg. In the pre-Spielberg era, directors shot mostly static masters and close ups cutting them together in the edit. In the post-Spielberg era, directors keep their camera and actors moving, transforming one shot into another and still another while using various lenses to add dynamism by "forcing perspective."

In most ways, noise film is pre-Spielberg. Consider the dead bird sequence. As Ben sees the dead bird we see his reaction. Then there's a high angle shot of Ben looking into the sky. Then wide on the dead bird. Then close on the dead bird. Four shots. The post-Spielberg approach would be different. We might still see Ben's reaction and then cut to a high angle shot of Ben looking into the sky. But then the camera would swoop down past Ben toward the truck and start traveling slowly along the truck's body toward the door building anticipation. Then the camera would enter the door and we'd see a first glimpse of the bird. What is that? we'd think. The camera travels closer and then tilts down as we see the bird sprawled out below us in blood. Then, with the bird centered in frame, the camera would begin to rotate to convey disorientation.

It's easy to see why this approach has become the standard for mainstream filmmaking. First, it is highly technological. It expresses production value—money—in its virtuostic use of the camera (which requires a certain size crew and certain investment in hardware). I still believe that the hallmark of certain institutions is their merging of financial clout with aesthetics to provide a competitive advantage. Second, the style exagerrates the emotional content of the scene. We know Ben has seen something terrible. As the camera creeps up on the door, suspense/anticipation builds. Once we enter the car door, more suspense. We see some weird shadowy shape in the light. Then we get closer. Still the same shot. Yes, it IS a bird. As we pull out slightly, the camera rotates expressing Ben's confused emotional state and changing world view. This style is particularly appropriate for the nature of the medium. As I described in my post on Basic Instinct, building anticipation and jerking people around constitutes perhaps the purest substance of narrative film.

There's one part of me that thinks it would be fun to shoot in the Spielberg-ian way. I'm sure that for a lot of directors, this is directing—choreographing the camera in a dance with the subject matter. But the other part of me feels that this style takes away from the story. It's like dressing up something that doesn't need to be dressed up. It's like writing in all caps and exclamation points or substituting suspense for wonder (see earlier post). And yet, noise film is a post-Spielberg film. My dislike of editing cutaways into a master is likely an acknowledgment of mainstream film style. Noise film's camera blocking is simplistic, but it's post-Spielberg simplistic—almost as if it was shot like the storyboards for a mainstream film.

Final super-8 kinoscope test

Here's the version that was reshot to produce a better exposed image.

RE: Convert noisefilm to Super 8 test

Untitled from ron s on Vimeo.

The guy from the lab emailed me today and said that the first kinescope didn't come out well. It was too dark and there was too little detail so he had to reprocess the film. Yes, FILM. Still, he uploaded a copy so I could see it (see above). I was trembling like a 12 year old opening a copy of Penthouse when I started it up in Quicktime player. The result was... interesting. It really does look like Super-8 or at least the super 8 of my memory, only blotchier. I love the jitter (or is that judder?). The indoor stuff is dark, but the outdoor shot came out OK. There's a lot of grain. I can see using this approach for other projects. Much easier than shooting actual Super-8.

How not to write a how not to book

How not to make a short film by Roberta Munroe

Munroe's book is at its best when it lives up to its title and talks about how NOT to make a short film. I especially liked the chapters on short film plots we've seen a million times and the list of 50 short film cliches (who knew that opening with a Japanese tea ceremony was a cliche?). The material on what festival programmers are looking for (and not looking for) is also valuable.

However, most of the book is actually devoted to "how TO" make a short film citing the author's experience making two short films. Don't expect anything out of the ordinary here. There's some good information spliced into sections on directing, producing, budgeting and marketing. But Munroe's approach to filmmaking is strictly top-down, old-school, hire the best crew you can stuff with a heavy emphasis on production value. Here, Munroe doesn't have much new to offer. This title is a worthwhile read if you can accept it for what it is--a couple of great chapters and a catchy title padded with vanilla material on professionalism and following the traditional filmmaking process.

Update March 2009

I've been reading the recently-released "How NOT to make a short film." Written by a former Sundance shorts programmer, the book is at its best when it discusses short film cliches. The cliches are the same things I complain about and generally stem from confusing impressiveness with authority (e.g., use of crane shots) and basing one's understanding of the world on film rather than life (e.g., two people sitting in a car talking about nothing). There are also a few cliches I never heard of (opening with a shot of a Japanese tea ceremony).

Reading the book got me thinking about noise film so I watched it again. It's pretty good I think but there are three remaining problems. First, the HDV footage doesn't have much character. It's great at picking up all the important subtleties I shot but it has an overall brittle quality that I don't like. Second, the transition between the microfiche sequence and the red room is weak. I just threw in some codex footage there. It should really be a high-speed deluge of research images. Finally, at the end of the red room sequence needs to be more developed. It needs more of a climax.

The last two problems are not too hard to fix. I've been thinking about solving the first problem. I found a place (link) that does DV -> Super 8 or 16mm conversion so I'm thinking of trying that. It's not going to make the video look film-like, but it might give the footage an interesting character.

Out of money

I'm trying to get up the motivation to enter the film into some festivals. It's about as exciting as buying socks. Saw Mark a few weeks ago. He had some good ideas about the codex segment. But I'm all out of energy. With this kind of project, energy = money so I am functionally out of money. At a certain time, it ceases to be helpful to work on a project and you just move on.

Spreading the pain around

As you know, the main reason why it's taken me so long to finish the movie is that I kept shooting and reshooting things. This is not a matter of perfectionism but derives from the fact that for certain sections of the video I had no idea what I was doing. So I shot the bird scene four different times and shot about 20 times as much workroom footage as I need. The ingenuity of my process is that it enables someone to take a project that they care about it and shape and refine it until (to some extent) it starts to function properly. The other advantage is that it's profoundly instructive. You learn a lot because you're constantly running into—and resolving— extremely difficult problems, sometimes alone, often with the help of others. The (dis?) ingenuity of my process is that it's slow. Plus, it forces others to play along and participate in a seemingly never-ending process.

The Dark Knight — I just don't get it

I'm still trying to figure out how and why The Dark Knight was so popular and well received. Then again, Jim Cameron's Titanic...

My main beef with The Dark Knight is similar to my problem with Poseidon. It promises to be a gritty real-life drama and yet sidesteps some fundamental concerns. To me, the underlying question of TDK is this—what would stop you from killing someone? In other words, why doesn't Batman just kill the Joker? He has a lot of chances. The question is one with a lot of political ramifications. Do you have to wait till someone commits mayhem? How much mayhem is enough? Is a preemptive strike ever justified? The problem with the Batman character is his ambivalence. On the one hand he works outside the system. But on the other hand, he is beholden to the system. And it is his inability to reconcile these two conflicting halves that leads to the Joker's run on Gotham City. This is the same morally weak Batman as the one in Batman Begins, the one who says (ridiculously), "I won't kill you, but I don't have to save you." Just kill him or don't. The Darker Knight.

Also—Heath Ledger's Joker. The performance was fine, but I would have preferred if it were more transparent. I can practically hear his development work on the character ("I'm a rat, a fidgety rodent"). But the main problem is the way The Joker was written. The Joker is a bit of a throwback to the eighties that brought us films like Robocop. Then, the overriding fear was randomness, the idea that you might get robbed or killed for no good reason. The Joker is capricious, and, as the film reminds us many times, playfully, frighteningly insane. No doubt Chris Nolan learned one thing from 9/11. The question "what do they want from us?" doesn't always have a logical answer. But that's where Nolan's understanding of The Joker ends. For a film that aspires to address big issues, the idea that The Joker just wants to have fun is not enough.

Figuring it out

I flushed out Callaghan (see comment in last post) with my statement that The Spirit was more interesting to me than Goodfellas. My assertion makes sense if you understand my reasons for engaging in creative activity. For me, creativity is a form of research, a way of trying to figure something out. So I'm most attracted to art products in which I see understanding coming-into-being. When I see a film like Goodfellas, I see Scorsese telling me what he already knows. The film is a statement, where research typically asks questions. Granted, The Spirit is not great research but it exhibits some of the exuberance and fearlessness of research. It's like the first stage of research before reflection.

When art stems from research it has a certain kind of life. Goodfellas is certainly a lively film with lively performances. But it lacks the awkwardness of life, the meaningful disjoints that occur when you're not exactly sure of what you're doing. It's not that kind of film. I like films that are more like abstract expressionist painting in which you see the missteps and mid-course corrections. In a way Goodfellas is more like Shakespeare's work in which the poetry unfolds perfectly within structure.

Also, in response to David: I would be more impressed with the tonal changes in Goodfellas if Scorsese added some slapstick.

Goodfellas and the raw Spirit

Watched Goodfellas on Netflix instant tonight. It was masterful with an impeccable sense of timing. Plus, it creates a credible world. Here I'm not talking about a world, as in a world of practice and history (though it does that too), but a world as something alive on screen. Just the other night I watched the Glenn Miller story (also on Netflix instant), one of my old favorites. There's a moment in which June Alyson gets a phone call but before she comes running down the stairs you see her shadow standing still, awaiting her cue. There's nothing like that in Goodfellas where all of the characters seem to live lives on and off the screen, walking into frame and then out of frame, living and breathing where ever the camera turns, their moves choreographed to the camera like dance (e.g., Ray Liotta and Larraine Bracco's characters on their first date).

As good as Goodfellas is, it isn't as engaging for me as The Spirit. The Spirit has a sense of rawness and experimentation. And its sincerity and reckless ambition make it more than a dimestore freakshow.

The play's the thing

Awhile ago I wrote a post about how I hate movies that try to start movements (e.g., Pay it Forward and Be Kind Rewind). Turns out that Be Kind Rewind was indeed an attempt to create a movement. Gondry's "You'll love this film because you're in it: the Be Kind Rewind protocol" is a slim book in which Gondry provides a game-like, algorithmic approach to DIY filmmaking. It's all very sincere but shows why Be Kind Rewind was so problematic. Not only was it created using some of these strategies; it wanted to encourage people to go out and make their own videos. That was the problem with Be Kind Rewind. It made its characters subservient to its meaning. Art usually doesn't turn out too well when it has an overriding agenda. As they say, "the play's the thing."

PS. Click here to visit the Pay it Forward foundation.

The Spirit—for example...

Here's the setup. As a teen, Denny Colt (The Spirit) was in love with Sand Seref. Then a tragic death occurs that tears them apart. Sand Seref says she's never coming back to Central City. He yells at her, "I hate you!" and they never see each other again. Until one fateful day. Years later. Sand Seref returns. The Spirit and Sand Seref, once naive young lovers, now hardened adults, meet again for the first time in years.

Now watch their first meeting in years...

If you find yourself wondering if you got the right scene, then you are beginning to understand the awesome strangeness that is The Spirit.

A Spirited obsession

Ben wants to know—why my obsession with The Spirit? First, this entire blog is about what it means for a visual artist to make a narrative film. Frank Miller making a film? Check. However what makes The Spirit particularly interesting is that it introduces a whole new set of never-before-seen problems. Usually, the main problem with artist-made narrative films is that the look of the film upstages the acting. The film works design-in, vs. character out and the performers become objectified. At worst, you get something that is kind of boring (Sky Captain) or confuses movement in space for thematic and emotional development (Mirror Mask).

But the Spirit falls into its own unique category--

1. Somehow, the film managed to bypass the corporate blanderizer's numerous checks and edits. They could have fixed it in the script, production, and editing, but there are significant problems at every level. How did that happen?

2. Frank Miller was given the carte blanche to put a graphic novel into film form. The movie isn't really a movie. It's more like a grand experiment, the superimposition of one medium into another, perhaps the purest extension of a 2D sensibility put into cinema. Like Haley's comet, this is something we may see only once in our lifetime.

3. It's an incredible example of a film that makes no compromises. It shoots for the sky and fails at every point. It attempts to do things even Spielberg couldn't pull off. Live action slapstick? Tough. See 1941. Doing a film in another person's style? Spielberg does Stanley Kubrik's AI with mixed results. Put both in the same film PLUS tonal experimentation? Not a project for a first time director, if any director.

This review does a pretty good job of describing my fascination with this film.