Update, Music, Connectedness

Okay, so, the "little bit" of audio fixing that I wuzgonna do has turned into a rather tedious and time-consuming process.  MAN - I really thought I was just about DONE!  Anyway, I'm progressing slowly -- at 43 mins, so about the halfway point -- and reeeeally intend to be done this week and to burn DVDs this weekend! 

Also want to add:

1.  I did pull some photos off-line and make a quasi-montage-of-pain.  It's not good, but it will tell you (and a potential real editor) what's supposed to go there.

2.  We really need music.  The quasi-montage (I mean, I guess technically it's a real "montage," but it's not really the way I would want the final one to look) made that all the more obvious -- as has going back through the film and paying particular attention to sound.

A friend of mine, not a professional film person, recently commented that she likes movies without music.  I tried to tell her that movies almost always have music, that it's a rare, rare indie arty thing that doesn't -- more likely to have less music in a documentary, but even those include very important music.  Movies have music.  She didn't seem to believe me.  I talked about how effectively dramatic silent scenes can be when they don't use music -- but that's because the rest of the film has music.  She told me in the same conversation that she really liked the movie In the Valley of Elah  (starring Tommy Lee Jones, with Susan Sarandon and Jason Patrick--who didn't get a single title card! what up with that??), so I watched it.  Of course there was music ALL OVER THE PLACE.  It really proved my point to myself and made me just that much more aware of how much Seeing and Believing needs a score.  Granted, it's not going to ever play like a movie like Valley of Elah -- but think of how important music is to sex, lies and videotape and Hal Hartley movies.  Yegads.  Hm.  So: music.

3.  Today I have been doing the audio for the scene between Bill and Marissa (in the Jenkins'/MIT kitchen) in which Bill is explaining his philosophy of "attraction":  "It's not the attraction to the thing that kills them.... It's a stupid reaction to the attraction."  This is one of those scenes (another is Amy & Sarah's argument about conservatism) that I wish I had done one more draft of -- or, more accurately, that I wish I could re-write from 2013.  I knew intuitively why those scenes were there, and how they were important, but I wasn't 100% clear consciously, and as written, I can see that others may wonder.

They are about connection:  How are you connected to other people and to the world?  How much do you see yourself (and everyone else) as a part of a larger web of connectedness?  What is the individual's role inside that connectedness?  (i.e., ESP and friendship as other expressions of "connectedness")

I was thinking this morning about what Bill should have said in that scene that never got articulated in the screenplay.  Here's part of the conversation:

-->

               MARISSA

     I don’t think lemmings fits with

     your analogy.  They’re not "attracted"

     to jumping off the cliff.

               BILL

     Sure it fits.  They’re attracted

     to community, to safety in numbers -

     and those are good things.

               MARISSA

     Good things that ultimately kill them.

               BILL

     But it's not the attraction to the 

     thing that kills them; there's no

     such thing as a 'fatal attraction.' 

     What’s fatal is a stupid reaction

     to the attraction.  They misread it

     and make a dumb decision in response. 

          (imitates moth

          hitting flame)

     You see my point?

What he doesn't ever say, that I wish he did say, is (vis.):  "Imagine how it would be if they weren't attracted to those things.  Imagine how it would be if a moth was not attracted to heat, or if lemmings were not attracted to community.  That would be much worse for them, wouldn't it?  Imagine if we were not attracted to things or to other people.  Imagine that!  We would just be... all... just in ourselves.  Contained in ourselves.  We'd be completely alone.  That would suck!  Wouldn't it?"

Now, on seeing that written out, I think it's probably too explicit and something a little more subtle would probably serve the movie better.  "But you get my point," as Bill says.

Ah well, time marches on.  In 2002, I did not know what I know now -- THAT's for damn sure.