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An easy shoot for once
Mar. 8th, 2011 12:49 amC. Blacker got into town late Thursday, and we spent Friday and Saturday alternately hanging out and recording a music video which will probably be finished in a month or so. (It has to be animated; we were just taping reference visuals. I thought "Aperture" was a digital-effects-heavy film, but I was clearly just getting started.)
I showed him a few minutes of kludged together Hayseeds footage (since a real rough cut from Shuang won't be here until this weekend), and it was interesting for me because while we were making the film I didn't really feel I was directing it. We didn't have any money, and that drove a lot of decisions, and since one of the lead actors was from out of town we didn't have a lot of chance for rehearsal. The DP and I had agreed in advance that the best thing to do was to let the performances be naturalistic and not storyboard or block rigorously. Meanwhile, I was so busy with AD* work that I didn't really have time to pay attention to directing.
Yet when I watch the footage together, it has my style all over it. I couldn't describe that style, and probably shouldn't be surprised it's there given that I selected all the people who were making the decisions I seemed not to be making on the basis of my belief that they would do so in the way they did, but it is still surprising. I don't know whether I like it or not, and I'm not even sure I'm fooling myself based on the fact that the script is mine, the actors are people who have known me a very, very, very long time, and I kludged together the footage. Still.
I was also thinking about the fact that about 15 minutes into the film, where you'd expect the first turning point, I sort of stop the action dead with five minutes of "look at this creek and this lens flare! It is very pretty!" And looked at one way, that is bold and indulgent, but what I am actually trying to do there is apply a piece of advice by Mike Leigh, who said (I think rightly) that you can absolutely make your audience think about hard things as long as you occasionally give them little rewards for continuing to watch. I am trying to say to people "You have listened to a lot of fast and dense dialog, so now why not have recess for a bit? And then we can go back to paying attention." Hopefully this will work. I try hard to be accessible, but I don't know that I'm good at it. I do know that I enjoy getting to look at the pretty creek for five minutes.
Otherwise, screened Moon for some people from Mom and Dad's church and then we talked about the implications of treating computers and clones as having or not having souls. Which was a good discussion because Mom and Dad's church for instance has various nobelists and so things would come up like "when I met Robert Oppenheimer" and one of the people there was the wife of Bill Woods, who wrote LUNAR. Pretty relevant to Gertie! Pretty relevant. (Ciro, to his credit, immediately geek fanboyed out and knew instantly who she was talking about, and could point to an xkcd reference.)
The only disappointment of the weekend is a suspicion that Chris does not like videogames. Which is not damning or anything, but it's one of those odd things that makes perfect sense to me intellectually but no sense at all limbically, like people who don't like getting dressed up or who are picky eaters. I get wanting to wear comfy sweats all the time or only eating pizza, and I don't dislike you for it or respect you less, but it is a cultural divide in a way actual cultural divides usually aren't for me. So basically it changes nothing and will be immediately taken on board in the file of what does and doesn't make my friends happy. It just surprised me because it is an area where I guess I have a blind spot.
For every day of being on Cipro, I gained a pound, a very uncommon but not unheard of side effect. It's thoroughly odd because it's not normal weight; it's not fat, it doesn't feel like water bloat (but probably is), and it's entirely gathered at my midsection, which is distended. It feels like it feels when you've stubbed your toe and the joint is swollen and can't bend right, only the joint is my waist. I am walking subtly like a penguin.
* The assistant director is the film equivalent of the stage manager. They make sure people turn up on time, get fed on time, and that the tasks of the day get accomplished. They also find out where bathrooms are, get forms signed, rearrange the schedule if it looks like rain, etc. It's a pretty great job if you're very organized and tough, and it's one I naturally gravitate toward. In this case, the titular assistant director wasn't getting the hang of it and I didn't have time for things to not work on schedule. It's worth noting that the film was beset by tragedy and seemingly everyone had a close family member go into the hospital, a truck get stolen, pets go missing, or homes get foreclosed on. And it was Ramadan, so our sound guy was fasting in 100-degree weather.
I showed him a few minutes of kludged together Hayseeds footage (since a real rough cut from Shuang won't be here until this weekend), and it was interesting for me because while we were making the film I didn't really feel I was directing it. We didn't have any money, and that drove a lot of decisions, and since one of the lead actors was from out of town we didn't have a lot of chance for rehearsal. The DP and I had agreed in advance that the best thing to do was to let the performances be naturalistic and not storyboard or block rigorously. Meanwhile, I was so busy with AD* work that I didn't really have time to pay attention to directing.
Yet when I watch the footage together, it has my style all over it. I couldn't describe that style, and probably shouldn't be surprised it's there given that I selected all the people who were making the decisions I seemed not to be making on the basis of my belief that they would do so in the way they did, but it is still surprising. I don't know whether I like it or not, and I'm not even sure I'm fooling myself based on the fact that the script is mine, the actors are people who have known me a very, very, very long time, and I kludged together the footage. Still.
I was also thinking about the fact that about 15 minutes into the film, where you'd expect the first turning point, I sort of stop the action dead with five minutes of "look at this creek and this lens flare! It is very pretty!" And looked at one way, that is bold and indulgent, but what I am actually trying to do there is apply a piece of advice by Mike Leigh, who said (I think rightly) that you can absolutely make your audience think about hard things as long as you occasionally give them little rewards for continuing to watch. I am trying to say to people "You have listened to a lot of fast and dense dialog, so now why not have recess for a bit? And then we can go back to paying attention." Hopefully this will work. I try hard to be accessible, but I don't know that I'm good at it. I do know that I enjoy getting to look at the pretty creek for five minutes.
Otherwise, screened Moon for some people from Mom and Dad's church and then we talked about the implications of treating computers and clones as having or not having souls. Which was a good discussion because Mom and Dad's church for instance has various nobelists and so things would come up like "when I met Robert Oppenheimer" and one of the people there was the wife of Bill Woods, who wrote LUNAR. Pretty relevant to Gertie! Pretty relevant. (Ciro, to his credit, immediately geek fanboyed out and knew instantly who she was talking about, and could point to an xkcd reference.)
The only disappointment of the weekend is a suspicion that Chris does not like videogames. Which is not damning or anything, but it's one of those odd things that makes perfect sense to me intellectually but no sense at all limbically, like people who don't like getting dressed up or who are picky eaters. I get wanting to wear comfy sweats all the time or only eating pizza, and I don't dislike you for it or respect you less, but it is a cultural divide in a way actual cultural divides usually aren't for me. So basically it changes nothing and will be immediately taken on board in the file of what does and doesn't make my friends happy. It just surprised me because it is an area where I guess I have a blind spot.
For every day of being on Cipro, I gained a pound, a very uncommon but not unheard of side effect. It's thoroughly odd because it's not normal weight; it's not fat, it doesn't feel like water bloat (but probably is), and it's entirely gathered at my midsection, which is distended. It feels like it feels when you've stubbed your toe and the joint is swollen and can't bend right, only the joint is my waist. I am walking subtly like a penguin.
* The assistant director is the film equivalent of the stage manager. They make sure people turn up on time, get fed on time, and that the tasks of the day get accomplished. They also find out where bathrooms are, get forms signed, rearrange the schedule if it looks like rain, etc. It's a pretty great job if you're very organized and tough, and it's one I naturally gravitate toward. In this case, the titular assistant director wasn't getting the hang of it and I didn't have time for things to not work on schedule. It's worth noting that the film was beset by tragedy and seemingly everyone had a close family member go into the hospital, a truck get stolen, pets go missing, or homes get foreclosed on. And it was Ramadan, so our sound guy was fasting in 100-degree weather.
