Wonderful Quote About Story

This is quite a lovely quotation about stories.  It's from The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit.

"Stories are compasses and architecture; we navigate by them, we build our sanctuaries and our prisons out of them, and to be without a story is to be lost in the vastness of a world that spreads in all directions."

7 Reasons to Make a Short (?)

I just read one of those Raindance posts that are often insightful.  This one was "Seven Reasons to Make a Short."  Since I (so far) only make shorts, I thought I'd ruminate on their reasons.

Reason #1: Artistic Freedom. 
I can't talk about reason #1 without referencing Reason #2, because they are kind of the same. . . .

Reason # 2: Practice Doing Riskier, Unique Work.
I think #1 and #2 are essentially the same thing. True, you could exercise artistic freedom to try to totally imitate your favorite TV series.  But unless there is a personal element, which often leads to some unique aspect of the film's style and shape, why are we here?

Reason #3: Post-production Ease
There point is that you can focus more intensively on 10 minutes than you can on a running time of 90 minutes, which is certainly true.  On the other hand, I am typically the only work resource for post work while in a longer piece you might have some help.

Reason #4: Budget.
Yes, it's cheaper (or should be) to make a shorter film. Of course, you still spend a lot of money, too much, but you are not required to.

Reason #5: Online Marketing, by which they mean that it's easier to get a short online and seen, compared to a feature.  Alas, "online" has many more hurdles to jump over in order to really get seen by more than friends & family.  You can build a web site, but getting people to be aware of it, come to it, click through the important stuff, tell their friends and then come back – that's hard to do in our crazy mass culture.

Reason # 6: The Untapped Market, by which they mean to wax lyrical about how you can go viral and shorts are easier to digest, can be grouped together (oh, by Raindance!) and seen in theaters.  My take: sorta kinda, but there's no magic here; see previous paragraph.

Reason #7 was bogus really, pointing out that if you win a major festival you can get qualified to be considered for the Oscars.  Not exactly a reason to decide to do a short, but true.

Conclusion?  

I think there are really only these reasons to make a short.
-    You can do a personal, idiosyncratic film
-    You can afford to do it without selling to some existing market
-    You can expose it to the world easily (but getting the world to notice is still hard)

Blank Pages

Recently someone I follow on Twitter quoted the writer Nora Roberts saying something I found fascinating:

    "I can fix a bad page.  I can't fix a blank page."

I feel the same way about putting a film together.  Or maybe it's my rationalization.  Either way, I'm having a hard time (okay, plenty of normal life excuses too) getting through the first rough cut of my recent film project, working title, First Kiss.

I feel like once I get the rough cut completely, I can make a list of major problems and begin to work on them.  But getting through the "blank page" stage is proving challenging.

My life in high tech was similar.  I was not necessarily going to be the next Steve Jobs, seeing something totally unique.  However, I was good at taking a product and understanding how it had to evolve to become better and better.  I view editing as a similar process.  Originality happens first in writing, then in producing and directing (shooting) the film.  But for editing, I have to do the first rough assembly before I can even really begin to see the film, to try to discover the film hiding in the rough cut.

Some days I wish I had the editing speed and facility of some filmmakers I know, like Nic Beery for one (he's fast) but that's just not the way it works for me.  On the positive side, taking time gives me more distance, better detachment from the original material and enables me to be a bit more objective in editing decisions.  

I can fix a bad cut of the film.

"Going deeper, not wider."

I used this expression in a recent newsletter and it made sense to me when I wrote it.  But, I think there's a lot to figure out about this expression.  Not just what was I thinking, but what are some of the possible meanings of this quest for filmmakers, especially small, self-funded filmmakers.  This is my first attempt to unpack that expression.

As folks who know me and my work are aware, I am primarily interested in stories of human connection.  How we find self-worth, how we find love, how we lose them - these are topics that interest me greatly.  While I have had a gun in one film (okay, that was a docudrama) I've never done films about crime / criminals, space ships, zombies or insanely rich crazy businessmen.  There are great films (and bad ones) about all of those subjects.  I've helped to create a zombie film and it was a great and fun effort (as DP).  But, at the end of the day, it's ordinary people, making their way through the trials and rewards of everyday life that I find the most satisfying.

So going "deeper" to me means primarily exploring the kinds of feelings and actions that make up our lives at this level.  Going deeper means finding a way to enable performances that are rich in the realism of their conflict and nuance.

Okay, so what is "wider" and is that a bad thing?

In this context, I guess wider means encompassing a larger scope of possible "things" or life but therefore not necessarily revealing as much about the meaning and interior of these things.  I'm not convinced, as I write, that it's the best or only way of thinking about these things, but here's my thoughts.

Wider - for the average indie wannabe filmmaker at my level - [that's the lowest level, btw] often means trying to tell stories about things that you don't really know.  I could write a story about being in prison and trying to make it as an ex-convict.  I've actually worked with ex-convicts but I've never been in prison and my idea of what that's really like has been formed primarily by other movies, e.g. not real experience.  I can imagine some things about it, but it's not based on personal experience.

Am I saying that you can only write based on personal experience?  That you shouldn't write a story about climbing Mt. Everest or running from the Mob?  Well, yes, in the sense that most of us have no real idea what is involved, what matters, what's important in those worlds.  But, of course, you can create a story about climbing a mountain without being a mountain climber yourself.  It may or may not be realistic but it can be a clever construct, full of twists and turns that will entertain folks.  That's kind of what I mean by "wider."  But if the film is going to feel personal, going to resonate with an audience deeply (there's that word again) I believe you have to find a way to connect to the issues personally.  So, even in the mountain climbing story, it's possible to connect genuinely and deeply with surviving in a hostile place, struggling to maintain your focus, overcoming physical exhaustion.  Reinforced with some careful research, you can write this story with personal energy. 

Of course Hollywood, when things really work unusually well, manage to marry a massive amount of research and resources with personal insights – that can produce a film like Gravity.  But that's just not a realistic option for me or filmmakers at my level of resources.

In other words, to the extent that I can connect with something personal, even a bit metaphorically, I can go deeper into the story.  To the extent that I am only trying to reel in elements I find cool or popular but have no real connection to, I'm going wider.  And going wide of the mark of personal filmmaking.  And personal films are the only films I can make that will have unique value.

Collaboration

I’m adapting a play by Durham author Robert Wallace for a short film.  The play is a set piece in a kitchen between a 68-year-old Mother, returning from her 50th high school reunion, and her Son, who has stayed home to babysit his Father (her Husband) who is in the early stages of dementia.

In the play, the “backstory” of the Son is implied but not developed.  I felt the need to create more layers for the character of the Son.  Added is a brief moment when the Son talks to the Father (who is really incapable of understanding) about the possibility of leaving town to follow a woman in his life, before the Mother comes home.

With that planted in the back of the audience’s mind, the Son’s reactions to the Mother’s thoughts about her life, her husband and the future, take on a slightly more interesting aspect.  So far so good.

Last night we had a read-through of the play with the cast and - to put it simply - they pointed out another place where we need to allude to the Son’s situation.  It made total sense and it’s being added to the rewrite.

I try not to be too proud to accept a good idea from someone, and this was a clear case of a good idea.  It also underscores, for me, the range of the contribution that actors can make if they are allowed to.  We are all trying to breath life into this story and any change that enhances that for the film is welcome, regardless of the source.  I love the collaborative nature of this work.

The Grave - March 2013 (not about film exactly)

I was a sophomore at Cranbrook School when my brother died.  He had some form of kidney disease that is probably curable or transplantable today, but was fatal in 1962.

He had had difficulties in his journey.  First, as a bookworm and budding intellectual, he was a total misfit in the public high school.  When my parents sent him to Cranbrook, I think that was a great step forward for him.  But he dropped out of Michigan and maybe dropped out of Wayne State (or simply took a few classes).  He seemed melancholy, I think, but had started to find his way a bit in 1961.  He was the assistant manager of what was then Doubleday Books on Pierce Street in Birmingham.  Working in a book store was a perfect occupation for him and I think it seemed like his troubles were behind him when he became ill.

I don’t remember much about his illness.  Six years older than me, we didn’t have a lot of things in common at that age (he was 21, I was 15). But he was in the hospital for several weeks; six maybe?  I was still a boarding student at Cranbrook, so I didn’t visit the hospital regularly.  I came on the weekends, I guess.  My Mother went every day, making a point to look nice and smile despite what she knew about his condition.

For reasons which I was unaware of, I was at home on the morning of February 26th.  I had been at home for the weekend; the 26th was a Monday and I guess I thought I was going back to school late that day for some reason.  (That would have been very unusual.)  Friends of my parents, Grace and Don Sass, came early in the morning and took my sister off on some play date (she was about 3 and 1/2 at the time.)  Then my parents told me - we were seated in the living room - that Jack had died the night before.  My face turned hotter than I had ever experienced and we sat together and cried.  I had never expected to hear that.

I don’t remember much about the following days.  His funeral was on Wednesday, which was “Headmaster’s Holiday” at Cranbrook - a kind of cabin fever break in the winter.  At the funeral, the family sat to the side, somewhat out of sight of the “audience” which included many of his friends from Cranbrook, who were, I think, pall-bearers also.  My only concrete memory was my Mother wincing visibly when my Grandmother McQuaid kissed Jack before the coffin was closed.

We drove to the cemetery and there was, I guess another piece of ceremony there.  I do remember seeing Harry Hoey, the headmaster, looking quite forlorn.  Nevertheless, we were able to joke that Jack would have enjoyed ruining the Headmaster’s holiday, as he had no great love for him or the school.

That was February 28, 1962.

Then I had a wonderful girlfriend, finished Cranbrook, college, graduate school.  I taught, l moved around, I had a cat, I got married and had two daughters, moved to North Carolina, had a career in high tech and made some short films.  I observed my sixty-sixth birthday.

On March 21, 2013, I drove from Cleveland, where I was visiting my elderly Aunt Ethel, to Detroit.  I came up Southfield, retracing my Father’s commute from the Ford Motor Company.  I crossed the city on Fenkell, past empty stores and trashy neighborhoods.  Getting to the better kept neighborhoods of Redford Township, I drove past the site of my old elementary school (a vacant lot) and past the location of a barber shop, now gone, where I cried when they asked how my brother was doing.  I toured Dow Road, the street we lived on in 1962, and glimpsed the country club where I swam many summers.  I headed up Telegraph Road - a bit gentrified by time, but clearly a highway with a lot of small industrial concerns.  Detroit is a factory town.

Grand Lawn Cemetery nestles into Telegraph and Grand River, which meet at an angle.  I’d spoken to the office before coming and they had a map for me.  The greyness of the late winter day and the sights of old familiar places, some cared for, some not, had already created a melancholic pre-disposition, I guess.

It took only a few moments to get to “section W” and then to locate “lot 173, grave 3.”  There is no headstone, only a simple marker in the ground with the name and life dates.  Time had pushed the dirt and grass in from all sides a bit.  I began to clear that away to read the entire marker.  I got an ice & snow scraper from the car and chipped away at the soil, exposing the whole marker and I shot photographs as I worked.  At one point, I made a photograph of the trees behind, thinking that, in an odd way, this has been his view of the world.  I also partially cleared off the markers for my maternal grandparents, buried a few graves away.

Perhaps it was the sense that there was nothing more I could do.  And it has to be also the memory of loss but I simply began to cry and then sob, finally just sitting in my car to cry.  I texted my sister, “thinking of you.”  She happened to be free at that moment and we exchanged some words.  Then I took a photo of the marker with my phone and sent it to her.  She was a great comfort in that moment.

It’s curious how little there really is to say.  I had a brother and then I did not have a brother.  I have lived three-fourths of my life with no brother, though always remembering February 25th each year.  (In the early days, when people at work still wore ties, I had a black tie I wore only on that day.) 

It is impossible to know what my life would have been like had he lived and impossible not to wonder.

Art films: "art of the moving image" screening at Duke

Last night I spent 90 minutes attending a screening of a dozen or so short films produced by students in the “Art of the Moving Image” program at Duke.  Please understand that I don’t know much about this program or how it relates to other film stuff at Duke, although it’s clearly not part of the documentary work going on in and around the University.

Quick summary: a lot of self-indulgent, semi-meaningless images thrown together.  There were several films that had coherence and meaning, mostly critiques based on showing advertising footage and contrasting that with reality (one on fast food, one on women’s images).  And one film wanted to be a documentary about folks trying to break into professional video gaming, but it suffered from the general artiness of the evening.

One film, a meditation on water - very very short - used what I am calling “artiness” to its advantage.  It put together a group of images that had some relationship both visually and content-wise.  It was kind of fun too.  But most of the rest of the films were - to me - sadly lacking in anything like emotion or engagement.  Many momentarily arresting images but simply thrown in or repeated endlessly.

Many of the filmmakers clearly have an eye, but I’m old-fashioned perhaps in believing that having an eye is not, by itself, enough.  There may be a refined, high culture place for films like this, perhaps a gallery in Soho or Dumbo.  But it’s a symptom of the disintegration of culture to me.  At one end are the Michael Bay films - hugely entertaining, hugely expensive - and at the other end are these montages of disconnected images.  Both fail (in varying degrees) to connect with the heart and soul.  One is certainly corporate, not personal and the other is (perhaps) personal to the degree that it is hermetic.

I want to make films in the middle of this.