Author: greg

“The Eiffel Tower for the 21st Century”

scintillement at the tour d'eiffel, image: abcparislive.com

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].

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:

  • Use Izotope’s Vinyl Plugin for Winamp, which rocks. (You’ll notice, if you switch, that winamp doesn’t follow you.)
  • Output at CD-quality using Nullsoft Diskwriter, which generates a big WAV file, complete with vinyl effects.
  • Rip mp3’s from the WAV’s to ftp them to the Powerbook (I guess if I knew more about my wireless router, I could just network the two laptops and transfer them as WAV’s… update: Yes, Australia, I could’ve used an iPod, but I don’t have a Windows adapter for it.)
  • Use Quicktime Pro to convert the lp3.mp3’s back into 44.1khz etc MOV files for use in Final Cut (this is needed to eliminate the popping and squelches mp3 introduces. I’m not evoking the Napster era here.)
    Friday night is now officially Audio Editing Dork Night. TGIAEDN!

    • 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.]
    Chekov, image:nybooks.com
    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.]

    Charlie Rose Dream Team Pictures, image: charlierose.com
    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.

    Thumbnail image for dream_team_memorial_sq.jpg
    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.

    [2024 update: fixed broken links to charlierose.com]

    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.

    based on the earliest known illustration of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. DMCA THAT, Mr. Valenti...

    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…

    S(J03) Editing, Day 1.5

    Day 1.5 is complete, and the first cut is about half done. Never mind that it’s five minutes long, which is about what I’d imagined the finished cut to be. I got the first act laid down and that was about three minutes. With that pace set, I blocked out the rest of the film; comes to around 10 minutes (10:20 with credits).
    The first cut of S(N01) was about twice as long, but with that one, the target length (15 min.) was less flexible (it was the requirement for Cannes, which I knew would show it, even though it wasn’t quite done). Let’s see if this one settles in around 8 min.
    Here is a quick html version of the outline I blocked out on paper this afternoon.

    Overview: Powerpoint as Creative Medium


    Bright Glow Tube (all images, powerpointart.com)

    Slide 1 – Background:

    ‘Lost’ Swedish Soap Commercial Director Ingmar Bergman Finally Gets Recognition

    The Surgery, Bris soap commercial, dir. by Ingmar Bergman image:bizprocessdesign.com
    The Surgery, Bris soap commercial directed by Ingmar Bergman

    See, if you stick with it long enough, recognition will come. When his commercials for Bris soap were shown in 1951, Ingmar Bergman seemed to be living the admaker’s dream: “He had final cut, he had free hands, he could do whatever he wanted,” says director Anders Roennqvist. Inexplicably, though, the promising young director soon vanished into ad-biz obscurity; I searched Adwik Svenska‘s 80-year archives using my mobile phone, but found nothing.
    Well, thanks to Mr. Rosennqvist, you can see all these forgotten classics in Bergman’s Commercials Preceding the Play, a documentary which provides an “aha-feeling of why and how Ingmar Bergman made soap commercials” (and without that annoying abba-ring around the tub!) The collection is screening this weekend at London’s National Film Theatre, along with a bunch of other Bergman-related junk. (At least it is according to the Guardian; I can’t find it on the NFT schedule. Why don’t you all stop texting for a minute and figure out what the hell’s going on?)
    In addition to the aha-feeling, seeing it will “make you feel free, well and fresh,” just like the Bris brand itself. (Frankly, those were not the qualities I had previously associated with bris, but then I live in New York.)

    Editing, or Not

    Editing, here I come. I finished logging and capturing all the footage I’ll use in S(J03); it seems like it’ll be tough to get it down to 5-6 minutes. The last tape I captured was all the ironing (three white dress shirts’ worth). As I mentioned before, the third shirt has such great, engaged shots, it almost doesn’t make sense to use anything else. The result: I’m going to try two different editing “tones.” For the ironing scenes, there’ll be long, continuous takes, maybe with a few dissolves; the car and cleaners scenes will have quicker cuts, jump cuts, a slightly more dynamic feel. That’s the plan, anyway. I start tomorrow (Sunday). ND/NF deadline is four days away.

    Russian Ark, dir. Aleksandr Sokurov, image:guardian.co.uk
    Russian Ark, dir. by Aleksandr Sokurov
    image: guardian.co.uk

    We just got home from seeing     Russian Ark, the single-take epic poem of Russian history directed by Aleksandr Sokurov. It was quite stunning for a while, then normal, then stunning again at the end. The Hermitage itself is the real star. Even without the tour de force (or gimmick, depending on your cynicism) of shooting with no edits, the film’s exploration of the centuries of momentous people and events witnessed by the building would be worth seeing. The insane staging (the credits list six stage managers and twenty assistants) required to pull the thing off in one 96-minute shot is just a layer of gold leaf on the film. And as the Hermitage demonstrates, everything’s better with gold leaf.
    The impact and resonance of the continuous Steadicam/tracking shot seems to be changing, though. I have a theory, which I’ll try to expand on later, that the emergence of first-person shooter (FPS) video games is changing the meaning of the visual vocabulary for both film and games. When I play a Vice City for an hour, it’s a continuous take, visually, even if it’s not as bravura as Sokurov’s, Welles’, or Scorsese’s.
    Comparing the edits in classic movie musicals (3 or 4 per number) to, say, Moulin Rouge (120 per minute in some songs), it’s clear that the meaning/significance of the long take has changed before. Technology is changing it once again.
    Some links I’d start with: Machinima.com, turning “first person shooter” into “first person cinematographer.” A broad article at Polygonweb about cinema-game influences. Game Research briefly discusses point-of-view in games and film.