The Architectural League, Cooper Union, and MoMA are sponsoring presentations and roundtable discussions by the WTC site architects and teams. Go ask the “Dream Team” what they’re trying to cover up. [Sample question (from The Last Emperor), while hysterically, spitting mad: “Confess your crimes!!”]
Today (Wed.) at Cooper Union starts at 4PM and goes until 10:30 (it’s sold out, but I bet it’ll thin out around, say, 7.)
Tomorrow (Thurs.) at Town Hall is a more civilized two hour program, starting at 7PM. MoMA’s Terence “I helped pick these teams” Riley is one of the moderators.
[thanks, Gawker!]
Author: greg
NYC vs. DC
Like Europe, it’s the little differences. One that dawned on me at the gym: Underclothes
Sorry, no pictures. [And, thankfully, Frank Rich was not involved in this comparison in any way.]
Describing S(J03): “How about… The Grandson?”
This is what I sent to New Directors/New Films:
Synopsis: A man carefully irons a shirt before spending the day at the rural Utah dry cleaners once owned by his grandfather.
Utah Ark? It is shot in one day and is about the past, memory, and the links between history and present. It’s not one take, ain’t the Hermitage, though, and we didn’t shoot the nearby Springville Art Museum…
Dogme? Well, it’s close. Perhaps fitting for a movie shot in small-town Utah, it adheres quite closely to the Vow of Chastity. But the Dogme filmmakers are fighting auteur-y demons I don’t see, I have to confess, we didn’t put a record player in the backseat of the driving shots, so our music is verboten. And they don’t certify short films anyway Dog-me films, indeed.
The Grandson: No violent deaths, no throbbing neck veins and stifled rage, but from the reviews for The Son and a familiarity with/admiration for the Dardenne brothers’ previous work, I have to imagine some of their films’ stylistic tendencies and refusal of melodrama have an (indirect) influence on my work. Cf. Souvenir‘s setting in a loud manual work-place, the handheld camerawork and (near) absence of music. I can only hope I attain some of their film’s emotional impact. Read David Edelstein’s Slate review .
Peer Pressurized Cabin: A Recurring Look At My Neighborhood
My street may have more Gulfstreams than any other in the world; the peer pressure to get one is intense.
Alec Wildenstein has one; he flew Nobu chefs around in it for his Russian girlfriend.
Edgar Bronfman has a G-V, although it’s not clear for how much longer.
Donatella Versace refuses to fly anything else.
Ivana Trump doesn’t have one. And if Tony Mottola had one at Sony, he doesn’t have it now.
Lately, for reasons I will soon explain, Cessna, the makers of the popular Citation business jets, have been wooing me to purchase one of their planes. A stronger man might be able to do it, but I worry; if I bought a Citation, would I have to park it around the corner, so my G-Thang neighbors don’t harsh on me? What’s a simple filmmaker to do? I want to be independent, take a stand, but it seems like folly to go against the sentiment of “the Manhattan street.”
S(J03) In The Can, In The Mail (Pix at 11)
Clocking in at a not-dragging 11’16”; with balanced sound; a few sound effects, even (you’d never notice if I didn’t mention it); a dramatically pared down soundtrack (just one song, with LP3 vinyl effects I wrote about Friday); some actually beautiful images; rhythm, edits and transitions I’m quite happy with; titles and credits made simple (through too much time and effort); and narrative and emotional elements I’m not sick of watching, Souvenir (January 2003) is DONE.
Now it’s off to the post, before the deadline leniency graciously extended by the Film Society of Lincoln Center runs out.
Stay tuned for stills and a little more discussion when I get back.
S(J03) Stills
“The Eiffel Tower for the 21st Century”
This morning on Kurt Andersen’s Studio360, Paul Goldberger suggested “the Eiffel tower of 21st century, something that would use the technology of our time with the brilliance that Eiffel used the technology of the 19th century,” be built at the WTC site. It’s a powerful articulation (7 words, including an ‘of’ and two ‘thes’) of a compelling idea. [Listen here.]
Interestingly, Goldberger discussed a similar idea on Studio360 less than a month after the Towers fell. [Listen here.] Keep your eyes peeled for a 3,500-word theoretical exegesis by Goldberger’s successor at the Times. An unsung but influential force in the Ground Zero rebuilding debate, Goldberger early on uncovered the political playing field of the LMDC and Port Authority, and was the first to publish the early, architects’ conception of the Towers of Light.
Since I once visited Kings Island in Cincinnati as a child, I’ve never felt the urge to go up the Eiffel Tower. (The Ohio version is 1/3 the French one’s height, I was about 1/3 my present height; I get the concept.)
When the French wanted an Eiffel Tower for the 21st century (l’An 2000. Repetez: an deux mille), they got le scintillement: trillions of sparkly lights covering the Tower, which started scintillement-ing on the hour. It was a magical effect that’d stop conversations in Paris…like clockwork.
Get smart: The Eiffel Tower at Wikipedia; Roland Barthes’ The Eiffel Tower and Other Mythologies; fin de siecle idea for Eiffel Tower base jumping [via gmtPlus9].
Love Thy Neighbor
Especially when you’re in DC (i.e., away from DSL) and there’s a new wireless connection pouring in through your window.
An Old-Time Music Workaround I’m calling LP3
The clock radio’s out of the script, but music’s still going in. In a piece about memory and attempting to connect with the past in a self-aware way, I want to use old-time music, my square-dancing-every-saturday, stack-of-78’s-on-the-shelf, singin-cowboy, a-one-and-a-two kind of music (clearances pending, of course). And I want it to sound old.
It seems I’m not alone. Randy Lewis just wrote for the LA Times about artists adding vinyl effects to create “a frame of reference that suddenly orients you toward another time.” Hey, that’s my idea: music that sounds like my grandparents’ hi-fi or the AM country station in their old Buick.
But a couple of the tracks I want aren’t readily available on CD (some aren’t readily available at all, especially in the Big City), and I don’t have pro audio software, so for the moment (i.e., the submission deadline, remember?), I’m left with mp3. If logic, not Google prevailed, an LP-sounding mp3, then, should be an LP3: Here’s how to make them, then get them ready to use in Final Cut:
Friday night is now officially Audio Editing Dork Night. TGIAEDN!
But Some Things Can’t Wait
Obviously, I can’t do it now, but I have a list for a second edition of greg.org answers, wherein I provide the information you thought you’d find on this site, but didn’t. [In the mean time, check out the first edition of greg.org answers and the in-progress Showgirls Special Edition.]
Google search to launch a thousand anime episodes: “Tadao Undo, Architect”
A: Yes, Reviews of Chekhov Have Been A Great Influence On My Work
“I had a professor once who said that as Chekhov got older he lopped off the eventful beginnings and twist endings of his early works and that quivering middle was the mature short story.”
-David Edelstein, Slate
Here’s to you, David Edelstein. Geez, I love you more than you could know. This sentence (the phrase “quivering middle,” actually), in a movie discussion I’d already posted about, convinced me to some changes in S(J03). Ch-ch-ch-changes? Well, I lopped off the ending, for starters. And there was that schmaltzy, obviously un-quivering scene with the clock radio. Gone. At first I was afraid, I was petrified. But when I heard Chekhov’d done it, well, ain’t no stoppin’ me now. [I have stopped the…cheap trick…of making insipid oldies music references, though. Boston, Chicago, you may proceed.]
So while I must confess to not having read much Chekhov, I have read several articles about Chekhov, and they have alternately inspired/influenced/condemned me. There’s John Bayley’s NY Review of Books. Review. And those previously untranslated short stories in Harper’s, the ones where a friend I’d lost track of turned up in the translated byline. And a few more here and there. Cart, Horse. Horse, Cart, I know, but if I’m going to continue making naturalistic short films, I think I’d better study Chekhov a little more carefully. And I hear he wrote scripts, too. (image: nybooks.com)
Apple, Final Cut Pro Back On My Good Side
Sound editing tip: Keyframes are your best friend. Actually, The LA Final Cut Pro Users Group website is your best friend.
Where’d you hear that? 2-pop discussion boards, you know you’re my best friend.
Of course, using keyframes to adjust your audio levels and effects doesn’t make you a sound designer, any more than snapping pictures makes you a photographer.
[Note to self: Last time you had to do this, you linked to freakin’ Charlie’s Angels. This time, put it on your own damn website so you don’t have to ferret around for (seems like) hours trying to find the settings again.]
FCP settings for a telephone effect filter
There are two things that characterize a telephone sound: limited frequency range and harmonic distorion.
For frequency, apply high pass filter (about 300 Hz cutoff, high Q), low pass filter (about 3000 Hz cutoff, high Q), and maybe a notch filter at about 1000 Hz. Play with the cutoff frequencies…
I don’t think FCP has any audio distortion filters. If you’re not satisfied with frequency filters alone, apply distortion in a different audio program… Or play a clip and record it with a crappy microphone 🙂
JM (Thanks, JM!)
Another note: I balanced half the audio levels last night (2AM), and finished this morning (11AM). As I listened to the whole piece through, the first half averaged about 3-4 dB lower than the second. The difference? No traffic or street noise last night. To a New Yorker, that’s interesting. To anyone else, annoying. (Which thought did you have?)
Dream Team-gate: WTC Architects on Charlie Rose Make White House Flak Look Candid, Honest
[2018 UPDATE: In 2018 The New York Times reports that five women who worked with Meier, either at his firm or as a contractor, have come forward to say the architect made aggressive and unwanted sexual advances and propositions to them. The report also makes painfully clear that Meier’s behavior was widely known for a long time, and that his colleagues and partners did basically nothing to stop it beyond occasionally warning young employees to not find themselves alone with him. This update has been added to every post on greg.org pertaining to Meier or his work.]
That guy on the left isn’t at all. He’s Dan Bartlett, flak for the Architect of the Axis of Evil (and, alarmingly, the most straight-talking guy on the show) image: charlierose.com
Just caught The WTC “Dream Team” (their quotes)–Charles Gwathmey, Peter Eisenman, Steven Holl, and Richard Meier –on Charlie Rose. [thanks for the headsup, archinect!] Preceded by an interview with White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett, Rose apparently chose obfuscation as tonight’s theme.
It was a lot of serious-minded awe eliciting empty comments about massive publicity (“How do you deal with being so great, old friend?”), one seemingly unintended admission, and an easy-to-miss editing mystery. (A coverup? If it were a coverup, I’m sure Charlie “60 Minutes2” Rose’d be on it, not in it…) What went basically unsaid (because unasked) was a discussion of the Dream Team’s actual dream. (Check the Day After the unveiling, where the connection between their grid/tower concept and the wrecked shards of the original towers is made clear.)
I am very unsettled by this team’s refusal to discuss what seems to be the guiding principle of their design.
Gwathmey: “It’s haunting…eerie”
Meier: “ix-nay on the aunting-hay, uck-Chay”
image: LMDC
Still, Charles Gwathmey came really close when he talked about how their plan addresses New York at both levels, “the pedestrian plane” (! Plane?) and the “sky plane.” (!! Two planes?) He said, “It’s haunting. It’s an eerie speculation about memory and presence. The image is incredibly powerful.” Gwathmey’s reference to the skyline rules out the possibility he was discussing the declared memorial aspect of their plan: street-level gardens in the shape of the Twin Towers’ shadows, which extend across the World Financial Center and into the Hudson.
There was no articulation of what this image is or why, no discussion of the form, no followup, no discussion about (this) memorial. Eisenman quoted Adolf Loos (again, also here, in relation to his Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe), “The work of architecture is monuments and graves, and in other words, the work of memory.” Even if I like their concept of a monumental shard taking over the downtown skyline (and I have to admit, it’s quite powerful), their conscious avoidance of expressing or acknowledging their clear intent is arrogant, verging on deceitful.
The surreal TV moment: a minute or so later, there’s a jump cut; something was obviously excised from the conversation. While Eisenman is talking next to him, an anxious Meier is slowly trying to drop some folded papers from view, and all the while he’s sending intense messages across the table with his eyes. To whom? According to that basic element of continuity editing, eyeline matching, it was Charles Gwathmey.
Don Quixote? I Feel More Like William Tell’s Son
Apple is certainly on my mind, if not on my head. While Jobs is off announcing the next great toy, I’m here newly switched, on deadline, and the damn Powerbook keeps freezing up and opening in recovery mode-OS9.2. How many hard powerdowns and reboots does it take to get somewhere I can change the preferences? Oh, and am I not supposed to be doing touch-ups on audio and outputting at this point instead? I’m posting this from my Thinkpad, BTW.
Long story short, even if I do get done in time, I don’t know if I’ll be psychologically ready to go to the Apple SoHo store tomorrow night (Thursday, Dec. 9, 6:30PM) to hear directors Louis Pepe and Keith Fulton’s war stories from Lost in La Mancha, their hi-larious-looking documentary about Terry Gilliam’s Don Quixote (a phrase as redundant as they come), but it sure sounds like fun. [Some of you may already know my production company is called First Sally, so I know from errant adventures and self-delusion. Trivia: First Sally’s logo is derived from the earliest known Quixote illustration, from a 1618 Paris edition of the novel. DMCA that, Mr Valenti…]
ugh. rough cut done
S(J03) is done. at least the first cut is. 12’30” is a little long. I watched it all the way through once, and there’s definitely a minute I can trim. The rest, though, it’ll be tougher. Maybe 10 minutes isn’t so bad after all. Wed AM is trimming, audio levels (just for the rough cut; I’ve got to get it to the real sound editor before locking it) and output. There may be a Quicktime version available for a while online. If you’re interested in seeing a rough cut, gimme a holler.
I gotta go to bed. Weblogs weren’t even invented the last time I stayed up this late for so many nights in a row…