music video shoot

Our shoot went really well. Fortunately we were able to find one and a half (1&1/2) days where all four of us could shoot. we started out on the beach on our first half day and it was miserable. the wind was blowing, it was freezing but our actors were so nice even though we made them stand out on the windy rainy beach. this first day i followed the camera around with an umbrella to make sure it was dry.
Thankfully our next day was better. it was not as cold out and we had a lot more time to work on it. we finished up some stuff at the beach and then went to this really cool alley way.
i think the alley stuff is going to be my favorite. but the beach "story" was my idea so i kinda really want to see how it comes together. and then there's the woods!
ah the woods.
tomorrow we're going out to shoot some stuff in the morning at the beach. it's going to be really cool. we shot this over a week ago so i'm already anxious about seeing how it turned out. i hate that part of the waiting game. knowing that the next step is just more waiting. i've never shot on super 8 before but always loved the look of it.
so exhausted, i hope i'm able to wake up in time for tomorrow!
the on-set dynamics of our group worked really well. we didn't know exactly what our locations were going to be like so we made our shot list and some storyboards based on our ideas. mostly we flew by the seats of our pants (?) when it came to shot construction. evan got some great shots and really went to new heights for our project. courtney was great and really thought ahead about what props we would need among other things. morgan, too, brought a lot to the table in this project. she got our actors, was our fearless leader and helped bring everything together.
yea for our project!

installation!

(before i do the actual blog assignment, i'm going to indulge in the blogginess of this blog. i hate talking in front of people i don't know. and i stumbled and stuttered and misspoke my way through my presentation this morning but i was really excited to have learned so much about mekas. he. rocks.)

I'm really excited about the installation. Honestly, I was hoping to work on Free steak but that's more because i thought too much about free steak. i like to think about it as a film statement (although this interpretation applies in theory more than practice). the animals would be frozen in plastic frames and have images over them. like film frames themselves, they're just moments of life preserved and frozen in plastic. played over and over again.

but i'm excited about ours, too! i was impressed by abz's idea of having people walk through a tunnel with bizarre objects around. he said he wasn't really committed to every single part of it so i'm pretty stoked to be able to add my two cents to the installation.

I was thinking about his tunnel idea and about a curtain i made for the Cucalorus office. (next time you're there, check it out, it's in the front office window) it's made from a 35mm print that dan told me to get rid of. i kept it and made the curtain out of it. it hung on my bedroom wall for a while but it works better over a big light source. anywho, i was thinking that it would be kind of cool to make the tunnel or at least parts of the tunnel like that. it could be very dark or be full of colors, depending on the lighting and what film we use.

as for the fire and water, i have to admit i don't entirely understand the set up. probably because i was philosophizing about plastic-covered animals while he was presenting. but i know one thing, i hope i don't entirely understand it ever.

I'll give mohammad and his mountain a call

I have worked at three, count 'em, three movie theaters in my life: 1. Galaxy Cinema, Cary NC's premier and only art house and independently owned theater. 2. Jengo's Playhouse Microcinema and the heart of Jengo's playhouse. 3. the evil impersonal conglomerate known as Regal Mayfaire 16.

So it's not just my normal know-it-all personality speaking when I say when it comes to film exhibition, I know what I'm talking about. I'm very passionate but even more disheartened with the concept of bringing art and art film to the proverbial masses

Several points were brought up in the article "From Art House to Microcinema" that I found striking. . The first being the apparent need for an alternative to the alternative across the U.S. Jengo's Playhouse, I like to think, used to serve this purpose well. From stories dipped in sepia tone told around Cucalorus the weekly screenings at Jengos used to be packed with people. The only times I've ever seen it packed are for the festival and a few screenings and events across the years. Then weekly screenings at Jengo's were cancelled for this year. 2008 and 2007 were notable weekend nights because I would sit in the cantina at Jengos waiting for maybe 5 people to come see our weekly screening. 5 people was a big crowd. It was not uncommon to have no people. In spite of this obvious problem I still tried to fight for our weekly screenings. It didn't work out in my favor.

I was always believed that we were doing a valuable service to the community until I realized that the community didn't value the service. If they had, they would have showed up.

This was not my first encounter with the possibility of shutting down an operation.

Galaxy Cinema is a place that you do not notice unless you've been there before-a huge problem for the theater's marketing. I worked there for years and couldn't count the number of times a patron would say "I've lived here for years and had no idea you were here." Galaxy Cinema faced similar problems that Jengo's did- their screenings were sparsley attended. While the galaxy and Jengos are not quite established establishments, they were by no means new when I came onboard.

Galaxy usually features independent, foreign, and documentary films that the Carmike and Regal in town won’t screen. Great idea for a well-off community with too much spare time on its hands, right?
Maybe not so right.
Galaxy Cinema struggled, and as far as I’ve heard still struggles with attendance. So much so that they’ve recently shown blockbusters. I was shocked to read the weekly newsletter that said Galaxy was having a midnight screening of Harry Potter. And then soon after it was showing Star Trek. Both by no means independent or underscreened films. I guess Harry Potter could be a foreign film but it’s kind of a stretch.

The first thing that popped into my mind was “WHAT?” It was not the happily-caught-off-guard “what?” that normally accompanies my viewings of the latest episode of LOST but an angry “what?” that was similar to the reaction when I opened my first credit-card bill.

It was a “what?” that questioned the very integrity of Galaxy, of their mission and goal.

I’ve seen Mayfaire, on the other decrepit and sinister hand (sinister in the evil way, not the left handed way . . . well I guess it could be the left hand). Not so much struggle with staying open but with how much money they could wrangle from people. They raised ticket prices, cut down on staff privileges, and installed a 3-D theater to be able to charge more money for tickets.

It’s a stomach churning realization that comes. It’s a heart-breaking truth that arrives. It’s a terrible result of over-commercialization and impersonalization that all of these theaters’ bottom lines were financial survival.

The need isn’t in North Carolina, maybe, for a cutting edge cinema. The thirst for art is not as strong as in other cities across the states.

If you can’t bring the people to the art, how can you bring the art to the people?

Jonas Mekas

Been doing some research today on my filmmaker for our presentations and I'm really glad I got Jonas Mekas.

plan stan x 2

I like being producer- I like seeing other people's creativity work and I like facilitating it.

I did kind of add on an idea I had from a previous brainstorm to our music video planning. Unfortunately all of our schedules together stink. Mine's no exception, though.

My role in this production is part creative part organizational. And that's exactly how I want it. I think we'll all sort of go in and out of our respective roles to share others, offer strengths to the project, and put the project before ego or designated roles.

I'm excited to see how ours turns out. I think we've got a really interesting aesthetic concept and I hope it translates well to our finished film.

self portrait

Film has the beautiful ability to take 1 single still collection of light and make the viewer believe that they're seeing part of a story.
so, too, does time create the illusion that our lives are a story with a beginning, a middle and an end.
illusion.
i believe that is not you- you are not the events you've experienced, but how you've experienced them; not the people you know but how you relate to them; not the hardships you've endured or overcome but the strengths or weaknesses discovered in the process.
The events in your life happen to unearth and unwrap who you are.

now putting that on film
i've been toying with the idea of doing a double exposure in post of two different things. the first being four simultaneous perspectives of one action. the second what is taken from those actions. and what those actions are will be a reflection of what i do- and what is "taken" or expressed or discovered personally in those actions.
or something like that.

i plan on sitting down this wednesday after class and planning what i want from this project. ( i hope i get some feedback on my other projects . . . i'm starting to feel that neurotic twitch of "o shit what if my shit is shit")