Little Successes

Yay!!

I finished the first dinner scene!  ("finished")  I can't tell you how relieved this makes me!  Yay!

I will probably go back and tweak it again, eventually, but for now - it plays all the way through from Bill's "Heyyy - there she is!" to Amy's "Oh shut up."  For the time being, I even left the cheer at the very end of the take on it (RJ and I in particular burst out with joy that we got all the way through the scene -- only Bill is thoroughly unamused because he realizes that we skipped the song, somehow -- but only in that take, not on my "timeline," so ten years later, the cheer is well deserved). 

Now I move on to the Skip Gates (who should probably have been Cornell West -- confused my Black intellectuals alienated by Harvard U) dream discussion and Marissa's recognition of Larry.  Wow, I will be glad when this whole dinner sequence is DONE -- five people talking is tough to edit.

I am rather re-impressed with this whole minute-per-page dealio.  I had five and a half pages of the dinner scene; I cut out the bit about "serendipity," which was about a half a page, and the scene turns out to be five minutes long.  Amazing!  Nice.  If it keeps up like that, I'll hit all my formulaic page-marks.

The different color temps and exposures are really something though.  The light on Sarah's CU is bright and white, while Larry's is so dark it was almost unusable.  Most of the others are just too yellow.  I've done a little color correcting, but I am trusting that eventually we'll have someone who really will know how to make them all match.  Fingers crossed.

Pleeeeeased with the progress though -- although worried a little that I won't make my deadline.  We'll see.

Naked Doorways

Okay - I know I said I was going to move on to that important Marissa-breakdown scene, but I just haven't had the stomach for it.  So - back to the 1st dinner scene it is.

I hate editing.  Just so we're clear.

Anyway, this scene was particularly hard -- not just because of the nature of it (lots of reverse angles), but because of the way we shot it.  It's a great example of how breaking the 180-degree rule can cause problems.

Watch the video first.  It's a little less than a minute.

As Larry approaches the hallway to try to find the bathroom to wash his shirt, the camera follows him from behind.  He leans a little to screen-left to be able to peek through a door that's slightly ajar. Then we cut to the reverse angle in order to see his face as he peers into the room -- but we've crossed the 180/vector line, so he is now leaning toward screen-right.  Generally one would want to cut on motion (i.e., cut away from the shot of the back of him when he's mid-lean, and then show his face for the rest of the lean, to complete the motion process) -- the motion helps hide the cut from the viewer's attention ("motion draws the eye," right class?) -- BUT what happens here?  He is leaning to the left - cut - leaning toward the right!  So if we cut on motion, it will be jarring because it looks sort of like he's changing direction.  So I tried to cut it as close to his "rest" as I could -- but THEN, of course, he sees Marissa by accident and jumps and ducks off to the bathroom - toward screen left.  I need to show him going into the bathroom because we then see him in the bathroom, but when I cut back to the angle we shot from behind him, the bathroom is on his and screen right!  Rrrgh!

So this is what I came up with -- using the takes we had, which is also a factor:  in some takes he flinches more physically than others; in some takes he "rests" longer as he looks; in others, he leans farther.  Also, the shots of him from behind are the same shots as the ones when Marissa exits the room, so there are considerations there.  She is sometimes more visible as we approach the room than other times.   You can hear Greg and me discussing this, and there are some rehearsal takes to try to work it all out, but we never quite got it _all_, and we never indicate on tape that we were aware of the leaning-direction problem.

Also, there's the issue of how far away the camera is that is supposed to be representing their POV.  The angle of the POV has to match the shot of their face in terms of how far away the object of their vision is.  So -- for example -- I liked the close up of Marissa best, but her wider POV shot best -- but I can't use both together because they DON'T MATCH.

Anyway - as I said - this is what I came up with. 

I would LOOOOOOOVE it if several people commented and said something about what level of success this version has achieved.  I've lost perspective.  Does it work?  AT ALL?  Is the shot of the doorway from Marissa's POV even intelligible?  What would make it better?  (you can comment without a Blogger acct very easily, just choose "url/name" when it asks you to identify yourself and then type in your name)

Please comment.  I hate editing - have I mentioned?  Company - even virtual - would make things so much better.  Maybe I'd procrastinate less.  I ain't too proud to beg, sweet darlin'. 

Why is the lemonade full?

Here - I thought this might amuse you.

(this is "Sarah" at the first dinner, setting up the "woo-woo" conversation)

Love,
Rachel

On Directorial Acting (& Update)

I had a tough few weeks and didn't edit for a bit, but I'm back to it now. 

Before I gave up for a spell, I had started the first dinner scene.  I did the beginning:  Marissa tries to get Bill to help her figure out what to wear; Sarah arrives and confers with Bill about weight gain; Amy and Larry arrive with a blotchy shirt and juice; Marissa and Larry accidentally see each other half-undressed; Marissa refuses to tell Sarah where she's been; food arrives (I cut around "Get it while it's hot!" - we'll see if it works) and they all sit; Marissa asks Larry if they've met before, he says no, and Amy says he plays piano at the Fielding, which Sarah then explains is run by "fucking union busters," to which everyone responds, and she expounds. 

Actually, the latter is a really good example of why I SHOULD NOT HAVE TAKEN A ROLE but should have stayed on the "other" side of the camera.  Because I didn't realize that Bill and Marissa were sort of poo-pooing Sarah for this statement and her following explanation about how the hotel operates in a union-busty way.  Amy should have been the only one who was unsympathetic, thus marking her very early on as  something of an outsider.  Bill says "uh-oh," when Sarah curses, but this should not have been derisive of her main point in any way, only of her generally "angry and shit" attitude (already alluded to in the Davis Square scene); he doesn't want it to derail his pleasant dinner party.  There should have been no eye-rolling as she proceeded to explain herself, more concern that she not go too far into uncomfortable topics.  And Marissa's response, "Unfortunately that's pretty common nowadays" was meant to show that she is knowledgeable about such things herself -- she's joining in _with_ Sarah -- but it comes across as if she is implying that Sarah is getting upset over nothing.  Larry makes a good "Huh" noise (as in, "I just learned something interesting") but it's inaudible in some takes, and I can't cut to a CU there because that would over-emphasize the importance of the moment (viewers might then log away a mental note that Larry is becoming politicized about his job and expect this to be a developing subplot).  SO it ends up being _Sarah_ who leaves this moment as the alien, as it were, while Amy ends up emotionally grouped with Marissa and Bill.  Darn!  If I had not been _acting_, I would have noticed this. 

Also - I would have realized that we needed one more take of me singing (yegads) because we only got one and it doesn't work.  Trying to cut around it.

All that is, as I say, a good example of what I meant about a lesson that I have learned in watching this footage.  Keeping track of all those _little_ moments (for this exchange about the hotel really is a _little_ moment) so that they all add up to the right sum is what a director needs to be able to do well.

Anyway -

I've decided that I've been procrastinating getting back into editing because I'm bored of the dinner scene  ("Uh-oh," says Bill).  So rather than keep avoiding it and doing no editing, I am going to move to a more interesting scene.  I think I'll try the Marissa freak-out scene.  Christine and Kevin and crew will remember that this is the scene we shot twice, i.e., on two different days because the light and the blocking were somehow off - ?  It's a very emotionally intense scene and both actors were fabulous troopers about it all, staying committed as best as they could.  

I am going to do this scene next, A) because I'm curious about it, and B) because it really is Marissa's big turning point and the dialogue in it probably gets at the point of the movie better than any other single scene.  If I can get a decent cut of it together, it's something that I will be able and willing to post here and share more widely than the other scenes I've cut so far.  That is, it has a potential "P.R." quality.  We'll see.  It may be that once I get into looking at the footage I realize that it's too important a scene for such an amateur as myself to handle.  I'll let you know. 

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.