Lessons

{Below is a mish-mash of thoughts that I've had on my computer as a would-be post for two darn weeks.  It hasn't made it up as a real post yet, because I'm just not sure it actually says what I meant to say about this quote & issue.  I did that thing I said I wouldn't do: I started to try to "write" something and consequently didn't post it.  Rrrrghh.  Also, it was the 1-yr anniversary of my dad's death, so I didn't feel like doing anything creative; and then I went out of town for several days, so I wasn't editing or posting.  So now it's been a long time since my last post.  So Honey Badger's just going to POST THIS and you can make of it what you will -- even if that makes me "cavalier."}

This is an excerpt from an interview with the Serbian filmmaker Emir Kusturica in the book Moviemakers' Master Class (two of Kusturica's films have won the Palm d'Or at Cannes, although of course most Americans will never see his work because we're too busy with crap like Furious War Toys III and It Must Be True Love Because We Don't Have Anything In Common But We're Both So Damn Sexy XVII (Full confession! *I* am an American, and *I* have never seen Kusturica's films).

I would not have expressed my own position in quite the way he does -- I think we do not completely agree on the finer points (I am more pro-collaboration, I think) -- but he definitely is pointing at something here that has been made very clear to me over the last ten years, dealing with Seeing and Believing (and teaching, for that matter):  the director’s level of integrity (which is to say, “wholeness”) will directly affect the integrity (which is to say “quality”) of the picture.  To become a good director, therefore, one must work on building up one’s own level of integrity.  Fittingly, and sort of coincidentally, this is one way of describing what Seeing and Believing is, itself, about. 

For me, the "doubts and divergent opinions" that Kusturica mentions were (and are) certainly real - the world is full of what I like to call “naysayers” (thanks to Shawn Colvin).  Anyone who wants to accomplish anything that's off someone else's beaten path has to put up with those someone elses' attitudes -- be they lack of interest, surprise, skepticism, ridicule, or outright objection.  I’m willing to believe that few people consciously want to prevent others from doing things, but even so, a person has to be willing to fend off all kinds of negativity in order to get anything actually DONE in life besides the dishes.

It was with this conscious thought, or something similar, that I began my preparations to shoot Seeing and Believing, then known to me only by the main characters' first-name initials:  "MLBAS."  I was just finishing up my Master's degree, the pursuit of which had been a fitfully wretched, identity-torturing trial by misery which "shook me and my confidence in a great many things," and I was determined to do something to restore my sense of self in the universe over that summer, before I had to buckle-down and get a job.  I was in a beaten-down, "all my eggs are going into this basket right now even if it kills me" sort of state of mind when I wrote what became the shooting script too quickly.  Fortunately, I had been working with these characters for ten years or so, off and on, and I had already done a lot of thinking about the themes, so the screenplay isn't as bad as it might have been, given how fried I was.  That mind-set, though, never quite left me, through the shoot.  I had a kind of desperate need to get this film shot, one way or seventeen others plus duct tape.  An imperfect script was not going to stop me.  Naysayers were not; my own state of wreckage was not.  Nothing, I told myself, was going to stop me: it was time for the years of thinking about making movies to end.

And thus, thanks to the generous contributions of some amazing friends, I went forward.  Greg (the DP) and I couldn't find a trained sound recordist who was available and willing to work for free.  This would not stop me!  There was a rainstorm the day we held auditions and we didn't get three women that I was confident about.  I would just take a role myself!  Etc.  I was a Myers-Briggs "P" doing my damnedest to embrace the "J" lifestyle:  confront a problem, choose a path, move to the next problem; confront a problem, choose a path, move to the next problem; meticulous painstaking (my preferred modus operandi) would not be allowed to turn into indecisiveness (my usual stumbling block) and stop me!  Lead, follow, or get out of the fricking way!!

However... 

What I thought of at the time as an unfoilable determination was not, apparently, taken for such by all who surrounded me and had to work with me.  Nor, in fact, did it always result in the best choices, as can't surprise anyone, really.  In fact, Greg told me late in the shoot that I seemed to him, at least, to be "cavalier" about it all, which almost knocked me, windless, to the floor.  My "all naysayers will talk to the hand" single-mindedness felt as far from "cavalier" as I could imagine -- all my eggs are in this basket! -- but my approach was seen as an overall lack of carefulness, a lack of taking care.  I thought I was saying, "Let's not get waylaid by fretting over inevitable imperfections and threaten our getting to the finish line at all," but I guess he heard, "I don't care."  Wow.  But what about all those takes I put everyone through?   

It has taken me years to process the relationship between these two disparate perspectives on the same set of choices.  I now see the truth that he was looking at in a way that I simply could not at the time, given my rather panicky, myopic state.  The thing is, we were both right, and had we communicated better, we might have bonded into a super-strong creative alloy and been able to prevent a little of the painful hair-pulling that I’m doing right now as I try to edit the footage that we came away with, working as we did.  But we didn’t, and ultimately, the failure between us was mine – not just for the specific “what I did and didn’t do” sorts of reasons, but also simply because I was the Director.  

I was the Director, but I was no author.  I wanted to be – I had some moments there – but my inner world was so chaotic, so scattered, that I only sporadically knew my own mind even as I charged ahead.  It’s true that I’m given to thinking about things, so certainly I did some of that, and I had some visual intentions and thematic justifications for those, blah, blah blah – but I didn’t think it all the way through:  I scratched the surface, and then I did scratch again, but then I stopped.  That’s why I call it a “level” of integrity:  I was not without it, but it was not complete.  And when I did know my mind, I often did not have enough inner calm to figure out how to assert myself through the resistance (the “doubts and divergent opinions”) that I inevitably met (and by “resistance” I don't necessarily mean outrightly contentious people, which I rarely encountered – we all got along pretty well, for the most part).  I would try to get over or around the resistance, try to make it go away, but when the tactics I was easy with failed me, I didn’t trust myself (or others) enough to _stop_ things and look for a new way in to what *I* wanted.  When genuinely challenged, I rarely felt whole enough to say “no” – I was too frightened of getting derailed entirely.  I relinquished my position as leader and gave in to the path of least resistance – which meant that I sacrificed the integrity, the wholeness and therefore quality of the picture.  An author keeps the whole, whole.  I let S & B stay a kind of gestalt of itself, a suggestion.  Sometimes, this makes me mourn its lost potential, but other times I know that such a feeling about it was inevitable, given its place as my first, and the imperfections make up a big part of what motivates me to try again, as they should.

In the quote above, Kusturica says that it's important for a would-be filmmaker "to learn to become an author...."  His (or the translator's?) use of the phrase "learn to become" beautifully allows for the reality of the pace of the process; it conveys how much work and attention it truly takes -- how much time, how many (many) so-called mistakes one has to make before one has learned this.  You don't just "learn" to do it, you learn to "become" it; i.e., you begin ignorant of even the growth process that is before you.  In other words: author-ness is not simply about innate "talent" or "vision" -- whether you "have it" or not -- nor even is it about the concrete acts involved in directing; it is not just the doing.  You are simply not an author already when you start directing; you must figure out how to grow into one: how to piece that identity together.

The ability to guide all the various "tools"/people that help you craft your cinematic tale is a set of skills that needs to be acquired and honed, utilized and honed again.  It took me years to watch the footage of Seeing and Believing and forgive myself for all the "missteps" I saw and heard -- even the ones ostensibly made by other people, if not these especially, because they all show how ignorant I was of things I didn't know I was ignorant of.  But I've come to appreciate each misstep as supplying me with a well-needed and genuinely invaluable lesson.  Those missteps make up my path, my private class.   

Kusturica's (or his translator's) use of the word "impose" is unfortunate, but it does, if too severely, get at the crux of the issue:  it all comes back to you and your success or failure as a cinematic author.  As a director, you have two essential tasks once you're in production (1) to get other people to understand what you want – what you “see” – what you’re doing there – and (2) to give them what they need to be co-creators with you of whatever that vision you have is.  It's not really about "imposing;" it's about leading.  But if you don’t go into the whirlwind endeavor already congealed, if you will, it is very hard, if not impossible, I suspect, to find your wholeness in the maelstrom of filming.  And if you're not whole, it's next to impossible to lead in one unified, coherent - let alone brilliant - direction, because pieces of you are all over the place. 

Why I Mentioned the Cat-Box Cleaner

Here's a short video sample of what I have been living with that no one else ever gets to see. 

It's a very strange phenomenon that is a part of editing most people don't think of:  the editor is not only in charge of finding the good stuff, but also watches everything else, including what happens when the scene is cut, but the camera keeps rolling.  There is less of this when using "real" celluloid, because film stock is golden/expensive, but with mini-DV, we regularly (not constantly) let the camera roll.  So I could not enumerate how many between-take semi-conversations I have heard the snatches of over the last few months -- R.J. perplexed by why he stayed up so late for no reason, Christine talking about her stigmata dream, Rachel O gushing about her love of doing the slate, Kevin giving Greg pointers about the lights.  Mostly it's just the actors, because they're on screen and the mics are pointed on them, but occasionally I hear a voice from off, and I realize, Oh! Erin was there that day! or Sean! Or Cynthia!  Jack's laughter is pretty clear in this particular clip.  I'm working on an outtake reel.

To me, one of the funniest things about this clip is the dead pause after RJ says "We should go ask," because no one knows what the heck he's talking about (he's responding to something I believe the sound recordist has said to him that is inaudible to us).  The various individual perspectives, moments and interpersonal dynamics are funny too, when looked at independently -- like the fact that I can only barely smile at the explanation of the noise because I'm trying to keep up morale, but I'm really quite bummed out, aggravated and embarrassed about the whole thing.  And hot.  Maybe "funny" isn't the right word.  We were all hot here - does it show?  But this is only 14B, so it's nothing compared to 14C, 14D, 14E, 14F, 14G...  Christine eventually eschews an offered bobby pin because she can just stick her bangs to the side of her head with sweat.  But here, we're still able to laugh -- at least they are.

E, F(-ing), G

Hi!

So I have begun work on the first dinner scene.   As anyone present for those few days of shooting will recall, Boston was enduring a heatwave, and we were in Somerville, far from the cooling ocean breezes we would have welcomed, and would have received, had we been shooting any of the beach-side scenes that week.  Temps outside were near 100 degrees and the humidity was bizarrely high.  We had lots of high-wattage (i.e., very hot) lights shining right on all the actors and turning our little un-air-conditioned apartment into an oven.  It's really kind of a wonder that no one passed out.  There was that one room with the window AC (referred to reverently as "the cool room"), where we had to send Kevin/Bill every so often to cool down and dry off because he'd start sweating through his shirt visibly, and we couldn't have this on screen.  Poor RachelO/Amy was wearing a sweater [*appalled face].

I took a break from deciphering the notes I made in 2002 (when I logged all the footage) to draw you (whoever you are -- or aren't!) a little map of our scene:

I considered trying to figure out how to change the smiles to grimaces, but the truth is, everyone stayed remarkably good-natured and on task (if red-faced) through it all -- even when the food was clearly spoiling after a couple hours and actors had to sort of pick around on their plates for the rare item that they felt they could safely eat.  In the long run, this was probably better for continuity, anyway:  no sequences where somebody's plate contents jump around from full to empty to full again; no one saying their line with a fork at their mouth for one take, but not another.  Then again, I haven't re-watched all the footage yet, so I guess I shouldn't feel too safe about that latter one.  I believe it was the greenbeans that remained safe and that everyone began to gravitate toward.

Anyway -- I called this post "E, F, G" (or something like that) because I wanted to say something about camera angles.

Here we have a dinner scene with FIVE people talking.  Shit!  Whose idea was THAT??  Not to mention you had yourself a crazy Director who had refused to make a storyboard or a complete shot breakdown for the scene in advance, and who was actually acting in this scene (as "Sarah"), so her already very tired, very distractable brain was not...quite... uh -- what was I saying?  My point was:  multiple takes.  She, the Director -- *I* -- made us all go through this scene over and over - in the blazing heat - from SIX different angles (actually eight, but more on that below), and doing several takes for each angle.  I don't think I made us go back to the beginning every time (did I??!) that would have been Truly Nuts.

I'm sorry!

Here's what I will be combing through for the best moments:

14B:  WS from kitchen door of scene's beginning (behind Bill on the map above)
14C:  MCU-Sarah, over Larry's shoulder
14D:  MCU-Marissa,  with Bill's profile sometimes on screen-right
14E-1:  MS-Bill from Larry's POV
14F-1:  MS-Bill from Sarah's POV
14G:  MS-Amy&Larry, over M&B's shoulders

...annnd..

14E-2:  MCU-Marissa, from Larry's POV (I think)
14F-2: MCU-Larry from Marissa's POV (I think)

because for these two sets of takes, we were running Cynthia's second camera.  Now, I write this based on my notes from 2002, having not actually looked through most of this footage yet.  I'm a little confused/concerned/puzzled by how 14E supposedly has two cameras in one position.  Is this really true?

I do thank Heaven that I already figured out that E and F were shot twice, simultaneously.  The dumb thing was that we did not slate them differently.  Let me say that again, just to strike a quiver of terror through any experienced editor's heart:  we did not slate them differently.  In other words, when I was first watching the tapes and making notes, I watched take after take of all the different angles, and then suddenly I was seeing a shot from yet another angle, that was identically slated with an angle I'd already logged.  "I already did 14E!  How can this one be 14E??!" I would have said to myself.  Then I would have played it and seen a whole new angle and been totally flummoxed -- because it's almost ten years later, and I can honestly say that I do not remember anymore which scenes we did with a second camera or not, let alone which angles. 

So here's your advice for the day:  If you shoot anything with two cameras, give each camera a different slate, each angle a different modifier, and note on the slate that the audio is identical to whatever other angle is also being recorded.  See?  All the dialogue from 14E will be exactly the same, though the two angles are completely different.

Ugh.

My annotations are done (I meant "annotations," not "storyboards" in teh previous post - Duh), so I shall now start watching all the millions of takes of this scene, and - no offense to any of us - I am not looking forward to the singing.

Cheers,
REA

Lahh Diddy Da Diddy Da-Dahh....

Where Things Stand

OK, well:

I have so far cut together the following scenes:

1-13:  Marissa leaves hospital and arrives at Bill's quietly; eventually she is welcomed by Bill, who brought raspberries; Sarah rejects Bill over ice cream in Davis Square; Sarah, Amy & Larry arrive at the first dinner - Larry's shirt has a blotch; Larry and Marissa accidentally see each other half-naked in turns, and then all reconvene for the dinner ("Get it while it's hot!" Bill says, and then we all look like we're going to pass out because it was 105 degrees).

23-27:  Larry returns to "the piano room" after running into Marissa on the beach, daydreams about M and "the game," then converses with Amy about his father and his new job; meanwhile, Marissa hears a message in Quaker meeting about alone vs. not alone/crazy vs. trusting; then Bill and Marissa watch the gay comedian on TV.

32-37:  Following their dinner, which didn't end well, M walks home and experiences her ESP in public for the first time; she then hurries home and writes, joined eventually by Bill (who does not call her "Miss Bat Ears" because I took out that line when, upon hearing it said, I found it unbearably stupid); the next morning, Amy wakes up alone and is soon greeted by an apologetic Larry, who proceeds to have his own ESP-sort-of-sensation connecting him to Marissa, which freaks him out, but not Marissa (what? did someone say "foreshadow"??).

All together, this amounts to about 24-ish minutes of video.   24 mins is probably too big a chunk of the target final run-time of about 100 minutes -- especially considering that none of these scenes is what I think of as one of the "long scenes" -- i.e., M&L Showdown, M&BCrying, first dinner including the recognition, the suicide scene -- nor the shorter-but-key scenes like M&L's private dinner and game experiment, Bill's coming out, and Marissa's Montage of Humanity, which culminates in the drunk stranger screaming at her. Not to mention all the other scenes, which also matter and take up screen time.  I'm going to just cut each scene together and then see how long the first rough cut is.  Hopefully it won't be more than like 110 mins (??!!). 

One nice thing about the timing of the first 13 scenes is that the "inciting incident" (Larry arrives for dinner and thus meets Marissa - it is the event that makes the story happen) does seem to be falling around the 10th minute, which conforms to the "classic aesthetic" of narrative film.  Yay!  I think this bodes well for the rhythm of the script in general. 

Next I am going to tackle the first dinner scene (14) and Marissa's recognition of Larry, which is technically the following scene (15) because they've moved to the living room by then.  THIS IS GOING TO BE HARD.  Man oh man.  My plan is to go back to the script and actually make a storyboard sketch of theses scenes based on my ideal shot sequence (e.g., which moments should be shots of the whole group, which should be close-ups of individuals -- all these choices have "meaning," ideally, that contributes to the overall impact and purpose of the film). Did I do a storyboard in '02?  No, I did not.  Did I make all these poor fucking actors go through the whole damn scene over and over and over from a million angles even though it was 1,005 degrees?  Yes, I did.  And sometimes we had two cameras going at once.  Mother. Of. Pearl.  ... So, uh, I'll do the storyboards and then I'll look through the PEDL (see Glossary) I made in '02, then I'll look through all the footage, then I'll cut the scene as close to how I want it as the footage will allow. 

Wish me luck!

Love,
Rachel

Honey Badgering

The only way I'm going to be able to do this on a regular basis is if I don't think of it as "writing," but rather as "updating" or "reporting" or maybe "thinking."  And maybe, it occurred to me yesterday, I should not think about people reading it.  This seems contradictory to the blog's very purpose -- I know that -- but I think I might be more likely to get stuff up here if I adopt the pretension that I don't care what y'all think (like "adopt the pretension" - is "pretension" used correctly here? "pretense" is wrong, I think - but if I stay here in this thought process I may never get out!).  I mean, this not-taking-the-communication-event-seriously thing is actually one of my complaints about BLOGS generally, come to think of it: they are, as a genre, thinly developed, slap-dash snippets of thought.  But maybe I should just "join 'em" for a bit, instead of allowing some misguided desire for perfection (??!!) stop me from writing at all.  Hm? 

So that, my friends (who may or may not be reading this - honey badger don't care!),  is my apologia (is that the right word?  honey badger don't give a shit if she uses the right word!  Honey badger uses the word "apologia" - AND the word "nonplussed" - whenever she damn well pleases!), and it's the only one you're going to get.  You may come and go and listen/read or not.  I'm going to jot - JOT, I say - some things here about the editing and whatnots whenever and however it turns out that I do. 

Now I have to go to meeting ("Quaker freak!" as Bill says), but if you want to amuse yourself with the honey badger, I'll attach a link on my way out.

Peas,
Rachel
Honey Badger (original narration)

Yes, it's 2012

Well, well, well -- here we are again.

[tumbleweed blows by]

Yes, Sir.

I think I'm going to try this again.  I've had a lot of, you know, thoughts about directing and movies and art and all those sorts of things since I started editing S&B again in December (2011).  I don't know if any of them will be interesting to others or not, but many of them seem to be longer than a Facebook "status," and I have some friends who don't really use FB much, anyway, soooo...  I mean, what the hay?

So keep an eye out.  I've updated the layout and color scheme and I'll be back.

Rachel