Back in March when we

Back in March when we were editing Souvenir November 2001, we spent some grim days dealing with sound. We’d recorded audio on the DV camera and on Mini-Disc (not DAT), using slate (not timecodes) to sync the sound. Then at the last minute we had problems loading the MD’s into Final Cut Pro and had to transfer them to CD. Sync’ing the audio was supposed to be easy, but it was a huge pain. Why mention this now?
In the newest issue of Filmmaker Magazine, there’s a roundtable with Steven Soderbergh’s team from Full Frontal where they talk shop. Here’s what Susan Littenberg (1st asst. ed.) says they did (note: they had two Final Cut Pro systems, which sounds luxe.):

  • Digitize DV in 45-60 minute chunks.
  • Digitize each DAT take separately
  • Create a FCP sequence with a starting time code set to first digitized frame of the DV.
  • Line up each DAT sound file in the sequence.
  • Create a new DV tape (“a clone with better sound”) with timecodes using a Sony DSR2000 deck.
  • Then don’t redigitize the clones. Edit from the sync’ed subclips; unlink and relink the files when they get screwed up; “tax the system and cause more crashes than it might have had we done it the other way.”
    In the last paragraph: “Is there anything that you can think of that filmmakers should avoid? Any advice you can give filmmakers before they get started on a project like Full Frontal?”
    “Don’t sync audio to video in Final Cut! Take the extra time up front to do the sync dailies and reload them.”
    Two takeaways: 1) We’re doin’ it more Soderbergh-style than we’d imagined (or wanted to, frankly), and 2) Finish the article before you start typing your weblog entry.

    • New Project: Did I mention

    New Project: Did I mention it’s animated? Actually, yeah, I did. Indirectly, anyway. Did I mention it’s a musical? Umm, yeah. Well, I’ve been researching anime, animation production, CG, and techniques today. Here are some interesting links I’ve assembled so far:

  • Animation through Virtual Studios, from Animation World Magazine. Forget posting an online production diary. These guys made an animated short entirely online, with 100+ collaborators worldwide using a production website and database.
  • Robert Breer. I was wracking my brain this morning to remember his name. Breer is widely known (among underground animation fans, anyway) for his animation, which is experimental, minimalist, and whimsical (but not in a stupid way). But I was blown away by an exhibition last year of his sculpture (think 60’s minimalism, but motorized so that it wanders around the gallery floor). Turns out he worked on The Electric Company in the 70’s.
  • Stephen Arthur’s Vision Point: a fascinating example of pixilation, the animation of live images. (Remember Peter Gabriel?) Vision Point was made by animating 35mm photographs taken every four seconds along a western Canadian roadtrip.

    • Gabriel Orozco at Documenta 11

    Contrary to one writer’s opinion, Gabriel Orozco is a Mexican who can make pottery. After seeing Peter Schjeldahl’s misguided critique of Orozco’s work at Documenta 11 cited on ArtKrush to support an even broad(er)side on the state of contemporary art, I have to call bulls*** [Sorry, Mom.] on the whole thing.
    Orozco’s Documenta 11 installation, Cazuelas (Beginnings), is comprised of “thrown” clay bowls. While the clay was still wet, Orozco threw smaller balls of clay into the bowls, where they were embedded like embryos in a uterine wall. The artist left deep fingermarks on the rims of some bowls, traces of where he lifted or deformed the “finished” product. Regarding this work, Schjeldahl claims Orozco’s “lively formal ideas are blunted by the artist’s rudimentary skills.” Zooming out, this supposed failure, then, “makes the point that in today’s convulsive world everyone must learn new things. I was obliged to include myself: a New York art critic who left Kassel feeling uncomfortably marginalized.” Well, if you’re marginalized, please don’t blame it on Gabriel Orozco, whose work is, in fact, the exact opposite of “blunted,” “rudimentary,” and a “first effort.” Beginnings extends ideas and techniques Orozco has been working with for over ten years: the transformation of the humblest material by the touch, gesture, or glance of the artist.
    At frenchculture.org is an image of My Hands are My Heart, a 1991 work where Orozco cradles a transformed ball of clay in his hands. Here is an image of Made in Belgium, which was shown in Orozco’s seminal 1993 exhibit at Galerie Chantal Crousel (which also included La DS, his famously altered Citroen). Just before these roof tiles entered the kiln, Orozco grabbed and distorted them, leaving his gesture (and even his fingerprints) on the clay. And in 1999, he showed Pinched, seductive aluminum forms cast from heavily kneaded clay. Orozco’s work at Documenta is more a culmination than a first effort, and his skills are anything but rudimentary; they’ve been honed in the public eye for at least eleven years. So if you’re looking to throw something at contemporary art, don’t take aim at Gabriel Orozco; you’ll wind up hitting yourself.

    Editing: After a couple of

    Editing: After a couple of false starts, we’re finally set to make the editing tweaks on Souvenir November 2001 this week. (Since I only have FCP 1.0 loaded, and the project got saved in 3.0, I couldn’t open it without 3.0.) We really worked to balance the documentary “vocabulary” of the movie, that is, the degree to which the filmmaking process asserts itself: lighting quality, high-contrast exposure rates, handheld camera movement, crew and equipment appearances. Post-preview screening, we heard strong reactions to the contrast between “performed” scenes and “documented” scenes which went to the heart of the story. The two major editing tweaks deal with this balance:

  • slo-mo: The opening airport montage’s smoothness needs to be equalized. There are 2-3 shots in the opening airport sequence that are a little too fast. There’s also one shot at the memorial where the camera bobbles a bit; Slowing the shot down about 10-20% will smooth that out. This goes in the “performed” column, or the “in control” column, to be more accurate. Fluid and reassuring.
  • documentary “fixes”: There’s a shot at the crater that Jonah and I debated over endlessly. It was an utterly unscripted, unexpected incident that turned out to be one of the most emotionally charged moments of the shoot (and, hopefully, of the film). Because it wasn’t blocked, planned, or anticipated, the camera just flew around for a second or two when we got caught off guard. We’d taken that section out, but I’m going to put it back in; the combination of unexpected occurrence and documentary vocabulary is what people responded to.
  • dialogue/titles: There’s one exchange when the guy’s asking townspeople for directions. We’d cut off the preceding question, but I think I’ll add it back. A little repetition may enhance the rhythm of the sequence.
  • sound levels: A couple of audio files need to be relaid; there are some weird level changes that don’t appear in the original tracks.
  • ambient sound: In one of the ambient sound loops (a 8-second clip of background sound that plays under a scene), there’s just the wind. And me sniffling. Someone asked if it was supposed to be crying; since it happens every 8 seconds, it’s a little annoying. And once it’s pointed out, it’s even more annoying. So, it’ll be a 7-second loop soon.
  • music: I’m thinking about swapping out one of the tracks for another one by the same artist. And I have to add a music credits screen.
    The changes should only add 15-20 seconds or so to the film. Now that it’s not constrained by the Cannes 15-minute limit, it’s fine. Also, we’ll output it to DVD and Beta SP for the first time–a definitive version, suitable for screening at your local film festival (local if you live in Park City or one of the places listed at left). Stay tuned.

    • How Kevin Smith may be the Most Important Filmmaker on The Internet

    Kevin Smith‘s irreverent but brilliant Dogma just ended on Comedy Central (albeit in highly edited form). I sat behind Smith and his posse when it premiered at the 1999 NY Film Festival, but I haven’t seen it since. It really is great–a serious exploration of real issues of faith in an unexpected way (and by an under-the-radar believer). Smith is certainly an influence in terms of his career and his smart use of the net–via his View Askew site–to connect with his audience, if not in his actual films. Don’t get me wrong; I love his movies, but I haven’t really studied them. Here is Kevin’s online production diary from Dogma. Begun in March 1998, it’s the earliest moviemaking “weblog” I’ve found.

    On Maya Lin’s ninja-like approach to the WTC Memorial

    There’s an interesting article by Louis Menand in this week’s New Yorker about Maya Lin called “The Reluctant Memorialist.” He talks about her early rejection of any WTC Memorial-related requests and about her recent informal advisory work for the decisionmakers (as someone who’s “been through the process.”) In talking about Lin’s reticence and justifiable anger at the Viet Nam memorial process (which sounds horrific, frankly, and doesn’t give me too much hope for New York City’s efforts), it’s strange that Menand doesn’t quote from or even mention Lin’s own essay, written in 1982 but only published in 2000. [It was in the NY Review of Books and in Boundaries, a book published by Lin about her work.]
    As you may know (if you’ve seen Souvenir or read the script), Lin figures into the story as an plot point and motivation; also, the Sir Edwin Lutyens memorial in the movie was cited by Lin and her teachers at Yale as a source for her VN design. That connection is also oddly absent from Menand’s article, whereas Richard Serra does get a mention, even though Lin professed to having never seen Serra’s work before designing the memorial.

    On July Fourth, I watched a lot of movies and called it research. (But don’t hate me; one was Flashdance)

    For the new project (comments to follow):

  • Everyone Says I Love You(Woody Allen) – An utterly joyless, excruciating experience. I just wanted his characters to shut up for even one second. Everyone seemed to be doing a frantic, bad Woody Allen impression; the most “successful,” Poor Ed Norton was possessed. Just wrong in every way. This is one of the films he sued his longtime producer over; he’s lucky I wasn’t on the jury.
  • Disney’s Classics of the 50’s (Various) – Some animated shorts (what we called “cartoons” when we watched them on Saturday mornings.), including “Pigs is Pigs” and a too-long stop-action “Noah’s Ark.” What I really need is “Donald Duck in Mathmagic Land.”
  • Bedknobs & Broomsticks (Robert Stevenson) – Waiting to watch it on the train
  • Flashdance (Adrian Lyne) – The invention of the music video. heh. Watching this was prompted by Buffy’s dread of “a workout montage” (see previous post). Pretty unwatchable, but interesting. (How is that possible?)
  • Erin Brockovich(Steven Soderbergh) – Saving grace. I thought I’d better get a crowdpleaser, in case all my other choices fell through (which they have, so far. Only Angela Lansbury can save me now.) Soderbergh’s style is there for the groupie (me) but invisible to anyone who just wants “a good movie.” People smiled politely at my excitement over the long early shot, the one where Julia Roberts gets in a car, drives off, and then gets slammed by a car going 50 mph. How’d they DO that? (Agent- and insurance-wise, it’s impossible. Turns out to be a composited shot, although I still can’t believe it.)

    • On hating musicals while making plans to watch Buffy; On The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, which I don’t hate

    Last night was a rerun of Buffy: The Musical, Joss Whedon’s annual stunt episode of the show (two seasons ago, there was the silent episode, then the “no background noise” episode. In 2001, it was the “background singer” episode, I guess.) Not a Buffy fan, but with the gushing reviews from last fall still fresh in my conscience, we sat down to watch it. [note: Stephanie Zacharek’s Salon.com review is dripping with the vampire-inspired ecstasy that so scared the Victorians. You want to offer her a cigarette by the last paragraph. In the mean time, here’s a site with enough mp3 files and lyrics links to restage the whole thing at home.]
    Anyway, it was pretty interesting, especially for the unexpectedness of it. Favorite lines were self-referential: “Off we go to stop the killer/ I think this line is mostly filler.” And it was pretty game of the whole cast to sing. Makes me wonder, what if Catherine Deneuve hadn’t been dubbed in Jacques Demy’s Umbrellas of Cherbourg? Cherbourg is a bizarre (if you think about it) technicolor classic where garagistes offhandedly sing about fixing the fuel injector on a Mercedes. Thanks go to Agnes Varda, whose tireless efforts to restore and rerelease Cherbourg in 1992 brought the film–and her former husband’s reputation–new life.
    [Chicago Reader has a looong, impassioned article from 1996 about Demy and coming to love Cherbourg. Buy Cherbourg here.]
    Even though I hate musicals (with the exceptions noted previously), or maybe because I hate musicals, I feel compelled to make one. If only to rationalize writing about Buffy, The new project I’m working on (in addition to the feature-length story incorporating Souvenir) is a musical. I guess I’d better add streaming to the site.

    How my film is(not) like a busload of Chinese tourists looking at a famous war memorial

    This morning, I did a driveby at the Iwo Jima Memorial (there had been a big formation of Marines there earlier in the day). Whatever Americans know of Iwo Jima today, it’s almost certain they recognize the statue. It was based on a photograph by Life Magazine combat cameraman, Joe Rosenthal [Iwojima.com has good background information.] Within 72 hours, the first 3-dimensional version, sculpted in clay by Felix deWeldon. The monument followed on a wave of popular sentiment.
    As I drove by, a busload of Chinese tourists was busy snapping pictures of each other with the monument in the background. Only, they were all at the “head” of the monument, on the “wrong” axis of the sculpture/photograph. At first, I smirked at their cluelessness, but then its source became obvious, and the monument’s utter dependence on the photo alarmed me.
    I would bet they had no knowledge of the monument’s (formal) origins. A monument that is inextricably linked to an image will eventually have to serve people who have no shared cultural experience, who haven’t been “trained” through repeated viewing of an image (and through history taught with this image). It ends up serving as a monument to the WWII-era American public’s media-driven remembrance; we are still living in the shadow of that memory.
    Iwo Jima is at least one or two generations closer, historical distance-wise, than the WWI memorials in Souvenir November 2001, but the separation of the memorial and the cultural memory is already showing.

    On why Rem Koolhaas should wake up every day thanking his mother


    Usually, when you get googled for “I went to high school with Ben Affleck” or “    red vines and hidden meaning,” you’re left to wonder who the hell that was, and what’s going on in those folks’ heads? So imagine my thrill when the guy searching for “Rem Koolhaas architecture and Matt Damon” sends a confessional email and includes a link to his weblog, Laughing Boy. Check it out [Mom, this doesn’t include you.] Of course, I still have no idea what’s going on in Laughing Boy’s head, but it’s pretty funny nonetheless.
    While on that search query, there’s a great quote in Deborah Solomon’s logically warped and implausibly generousNYTimes Magazine article about the Guggenheim and its wack director Tom Krens. Smarmy casino developer and recovering binge art collector Steve Wynn said of Rem Koolhaas, ”If his name were Sid Schwartz, no one would want him.”