NEW YORK—During the latter half of South by Southwest, the Austin Convention Center housed the SXSW Trade Show, in which a whole bunch of exhibitors displayed their sites, apps and other digital technologies. I walked through a part of the trade-show floor one of those days and came across a company named Pro8mm, a Burbank, Calif.-based company specializing in Super 8mm and Super 16mm film. One of the ways they were promoting Pro8mm was by allowing people to take one of the film cameras they had available and, arming all of them with both 200 feet of actual Super 8mm film and a quick tutorial in how to use the camera, let them roam around and outside the Convention Center to shoot about 2½ minutes of footage.
I had never actually shot anything on film before, so this intrigued me. Thus, a couple days after I had walked past the Pro8mm stand, I came back to give it a shot.
This is the result of my experimentation:
I have to say, I find seeing all that film grain in something I shot quite pleasing to my eyes. I also have to say that trying to shoot handheld footage with a film camera can be quite a challenge. Those cameras are quite bulky! I can see why so many filmmakers, both young and old, are turning to digital cameras; supposedly they are just easier to use.
Anyway, hope you all enjoy the footage I shot! The video above doesn't technically represent the sum total of everything I shot; I cut out about eight seconds of footage of me pointing the camera at myself as I walked in the Austin Convention Center, because I forgot at the time that film cameras, unlike video cameras, don't actually record live sound. (I had a digital voice recorder on me at SXSW, so I could have used it if I had remembered that! Oh well; I think this silent footage still has considerable analog charm anyway.)
Pro8mm, by the way, in addition to sending me a CD with a digitally transferred .mov file of my Super 8mm footage, actually sent back to me the original roll of film I shot!
There's not much new to report on the filmmaking front other than the fact that I started working on the script on-and-off last week—and I'm glad I wrote out a treatment before jumping into writing the script, because having a screen story right in front of you, I discovered, really helps you focus while writing a screenplay. I've already written one major scene and a couple of smaller establishing ones, and it only took me a couple of hours to accomplish. If I hadn't planned it out beforehand, I might have spent a lot more time as I tried to figure things out on the fly.
Another thing that has cut down on scriptwriting time? Getting used to the realization that, in a script, you're not directing the film...yet. I started out this project not only with a story idea, but also with images in my head and possible camera angles mapped out; in other words, I embarked on this venture with the hope that I would eventually get to direct it myself. But, as both online screenwriting guides and a friend who is currently working on a script of his own have advised, when it comes to the script itself, it's best to try to take a hands-off approach and not overwhelm the script with detailed camera and actor directions. Eventually, whether you're directing or not, you'll be working with a group of collaborators that may well trump whatever ideas you may have initially had for, say, casting, shot selection or line readings. So it's good for a script to provide that kind of room for interpretation.
That's a bit of a relief for me; it means there is a lot of detail I can leave out for now, and thus less words to put on paper. But it also helps me realize that, as much as some critics might like to romanticize the auteur theory—roughly speaking, the idea that a director's vision and personality will come out no matter the cinematic context—the filmmaking process itself is as much about the people a director works with, and their dueling egos, as it is about the director him- or herself. And I think that I, by nature, am all about inclusiveness and hearing other people's ideas.
I still hope to direct this short film myself...but if/when I do, I will certainly be exploring and collaborating as much as I am trying to put a personal vision on the screen. Adventures indeed!
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Speaking of a sense of discovery: Who knew that Jean Renoir had already staked out emotional territory that I was interested in exploring in my short film?
On Saturday night, I went to Brooklyn Academy of Music to catch a double feature of the legendary French filmmaker's 40-minute 1936 short A Day in the Country and his 1932 classic feature Boudu Saved from Drowning. I had seen neither film before, but I was especially stoked for the former film, which I had heard much great things about, but which isn't available on Region 1 DVD (though it is available on a Region 2 disc from BFI). Both turned out to be as terrific as I had heard, but I was especially stunned by the tantalizing final moments of A Day in the Country, which, in its deeply felt evocation of missed opportunity and regret—coming as it does at the end of a film that celebrates the pastoral, Pierre-Auguste Renoir-inspired beauty and sense of freedom offered by the countryside—very much reflects the kind of rueful mood I'm hoping to capture with my short film.
In my more angst-ridden younger days, I might have been disappointed by this discovery the way, say, the main character in this weekend's major new theatrical release Kick-Assfeels devastated by the sense of inferiority he experiences in witnessing Hit Girl's ruthless demolition of bad guys. (Wait, Renoir already did this? Why bother doing it myself then, if it's already been done?) But I guess you could say I'm older, wiser (?) and just generally more tired of feeling inferior about everything the way I used to. As a therapist I used to see during a stretch of time in my undergrad years told me: There will always be people better than you at even the things you're most passionate about. Better to find inspiration from your betters rather than merely regretting the fact that you're not on their level.
In that sense, then, I'd say: For that, at least, thank you, Jean Renoir, for making A Day in the Country. Perhaps you and your sublime little film have inspired me to raise my own game in some way.
I will have more to say, by the way, about Boudu and Kick-Ass in a future post (especially the latter, which I think is a good try at a smart genre deconstruction, if not quite as smart as it thinks it is).
EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—And thus ends my four-day weekend of cinephile catch-up, in which I saw all good-to-great movies and no clunkers in sight.
One of them was perhaps what one might call a deeply spiritual experience: I had seen F.W. Murnau's Sunrise(1927) in a film class at Rutgers, and was certainly impressed by it...but seeing it again in a brand new 35mm print at Film Forum on Saturday nearly brought tears to my eyes at a couple of moments, most memorably during the scene where the nameless husband and wife—after the husband has tried to murder his wife and lost his nerve—reaffirm their love for each other at a city church during another couple's wedding. Overall, though: such overflowing visual invention (even in 2010, Murnau's expressionistic imagery remains as fresh as ever), such profound depth of feeling, such sheer thirst for life and living! Even though I had seen the film once before, I felt like I was seeing it with new eyes, one more alert to the world around me than the moviegoer I was during, say, my junior year of college.
Once again, repertory cinema does me good...very good.
If any of you haven't seen this classic of American cinema, then you really owe it to yourself to do so immediately. It's just beautiful. And, oh yeah, fuck Tom O'Neil for dissingSunrise a couple of years ago at the Los Angeles Times.
The other films I saw theatrically this weekend, in rough order of preference:
I've already had my say on Close-Up and Bluebeardhere; I aim to say more about the other three soon enough. For now, though: How about some more photos?
***
I've still been working on-and-off my treatment for that film I'm hoping to make, so I haven't even gotten started on writing a script for it yet. On Saturday, however, I decided to take a few snaps of locations I'm thinking about using in this film. I'll share those photos with all of you here; maybe this will give you all at least a sliver of an idea as to what I have in mind for this project.
Across from Father Demo Hall is Father Demo Square, which offers plenty of benches on which to sit—and, if you're single and alone like myself, to people-watch.
For those who have never been: This is Film Forum. (Sorry about the truck obscuring part of the view, though really, it ain't obscuring much.)
One of the Film Forum screening rooms—the one in which I saw the new Sunrise print, in fact
Down in the W 4th St. MTA subway station waiting for an A, C or E train
Yes, Duke Ellington, I took the A train. And the train car I was on was packed. Can human connections be made in packed train cars, however?
It's been only a week since I was hit by filmmaking inspiration while walking around in New York on a lovely Saturday, and already I feel like I've made some progress in the process.
Not that you'd know it by the actual physical results so far.
I still have no script to speak of; all I have, as of today, is a treatment that I quickly wrote up in the heat of that inspiration. And even that treatment is about to be trashed, with my original idea in the midst of transformation.
What brought this change about? Basically, the change came about because of comments made by one friend of mine who recently went to the New York Film Academy and told me, explicitly and directly, that the idea I pitched to him was pretty much the same idea he has seen "manymanymanymanymany" other students try to shoot as a short film of theirs. This disappointed me at first—but, as others reminded me later, a lot of times in art, it's what you do with an idea that can be more important than whether the idea itself is breathtakingly original.
This friend made another suggestion, one which also rubbed me the wrong way at the time: he suggested that I simply throw out the downbeat ending I had originally envisioned and turn it into an upbeat one. My friend is perhaps more naturally optimistic and joyful than I am, so at first I chalked this up to simply a clash of worldviews. But then I started to do some minor soul-searching: Does the kind of downbeat ending I had thought of in the first place truly express my own worldview? Does it feel honest and personal, or is it just a pose of some sort—negativity in place of hard truth? I don't consider myself what most people might think of as "happy-go-lucky," by any means (and I know how to drive a car—nudge nudge wink wink, Mike Leigh fans), but I certainly don't think I'm so depressive a personality that I'll wallow in so much sadness that it crowds out the moments of happiness I feel, say, at a film screening upon seeing something great passing through my field of vision. My moods tend to swing pretty wildly, but in the long run, I think I'm a fairly positive person. Maybe it would be more interesting to make a film that genuinely reflected what I see as the way despair and ecstasy can bunch up against each other—because, as I perceive it, that's life.
So I guess you could say, I've more or less gone back to the drawing board on this film project. I may simply revise my original treatment or just throw it out altogether and come up with a new one. In any case, I don't take this as a setback, by any means. Surely revision or plain rewriting is a part of any creative writing process. And since I'm not bound by any deadlines, I'm taking this new development in stride and proceeding accordingly.
EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—Over the years, a few friends of mine have insisted that I should try my hand at making a film of my own, that getting the experience of doing so might enhance my criticism in some way. I always listened to these people with a twinge of guilt. Deep down, I knew that there was certainly something to be said for what they were suggesting...but the truth is, I don't think I've ever really come up with any idea that I felt confident about trying to shoot and edit into some kind of movie. Furthermore, I don't think I've ever really felt a strong desire to put in the time, effort and money to make my own film; I guess, for a long time, I've felt content to merely watch, think and write about movies rather than getting my own hands dirty.
Until this past weekend, on Saturday, that is.
On Saturday, I went to see the last two screenings in the Museum of Modern Art's Jia Zhang-ke retrospective, which paired his 20-minute short Cry Me a River (2008) with Fei Mu's classic 1948 Chinese feature, Spring in a Small Town, the latter of which Jia has cited as an inspiration for his short. I was dazzled by both: Spring in a Small Town is a beautiful film full of wonderfully complex emotions, and the Jia short acts as an affecting modern elaboration on its themes of romantic yearning and regret amidst social and environmental change.
Walking out of MoMA into the bright sunshine, I found the rueful melancholy of Cry Me a River sticking to me pretty closely. The fact that I was by my lonesome in taking in this pair of films only increased that feeling, one I felt even more acutely than usual on a gorgeous 70°F day. I wanted to share my soaring feelings of ecstasy with someone, and found no one at my side with which to share them. I often tell myself I've become used to solitude over the years...but that day, I thought, Oh, who am I kidding? Company is a nice thing to have, especially on a day like today.
And then an unexpected thing happened, one that, in all my years of cinephilia, I've never experienced to the degree I experienced it Saturday afternoon: I started to feel a strong desire to pick up a camera and turn some of these emotions into a film. Inspired mostly by Jia Zhang-ke's long takes and careful framing, I started to map out camera moves in my head that I wanted to execute, and shards of a possible storyline started to come together. I thought maybe this desire might be merely a passing one...but then I saw more fascinating long takes, in a far different context, at Film Forum with a newly restored 35mm print of Joseph Losey's great film noir The Prowler (1951). As I walked out of that theater, that compulsion reared its head again as I walked up to the W. 4th St. train station to head home.
Only the next day, however, though, did I feel my mental engine really revving up to this idea. You know what?, I remember thinking. Maybe I should actually follow through on this. It's about time to perhaps get some experience in doing some filmmaking of your own. You're feeling a strong desire to express yourself in some way other than my own writing, and you know you've been thinking about doing this in the back of your mind. But you've never felt the full strength of inspiration hit you. Now you have. Act on it! Or you may well regret letting that flame of inspiration pass by.
Later that day, I started working on a treatment. And during my lunch break at work, I walked up a block from my office and just stood by a ledge, mentally parsing through visual and aural details, mapping out images and shots, considering details of mise-en-scène, and so on.
I think that mental vehicle is off and running.
***
I don't plan on doing anything overly ambitious for what I'm thinking will end up being merely a few minutes long. In fact, I don't even think it will have much of a story. Instead, feelings are what I'm interested in capturing. I do have some mild formal experimentation in mind, though nothing Stan Brakhage-like or anything (but of course; I don't have any film to manually distort).
Mostly, though, I'm thinking about doing this for the experience of making a film. And dammit, I could use such experience! When I was contemplating aspects of my film over the weekend, I couldn't help but reflect on just how little I actually know about the filmmaking process, for all that I crow about how much I love the cinema. And in thinking about what I might have to do in order to be able to get this thing successfully shot—buying equipment and editing software, rounding up friends, hiring some actors/technical hands, maybe even appealing to a producer for funds—some of that old reluctance started to kick in.
But no: I intend to not let skittishness get in the way of this effort. Besides, these days, I could use the feeling of accomplishment that completing such a project might inspire.
***
So I'm posting this for a few reasons:
1) Posting this on a public forum such as my blog is perhaps a good way to keep up my motivation in hopefully seeing this project through. You readers will be the ones keeping me honest!
2) If you find me blogging a bit less than usual here at My Life, at 24 Frames Per Second, then this is the reason. Thus, consider this a fair warning.
3) This is a direct appeal to all of you reading this who may or may not have filmmaking expertise: Any help in this adventure I plan to embark on would very much appreciated!
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P.S. Though this would be my first attempt at fiction filmmaking, this isn't exactly my first film. Almost two years ago, when the family dog Dusty died, I made a short video to his memory. It's not much: With the help of iMovie, I stitched together a bunch of cellphone pics and scored it to the transcendent concluding bars of Anton Bruckner's Ninth Symphony. But I'm still proud of the way it came out (even if the one asshole who gave it a 3/5 rating on YouTube disagrees).