Such, such were the joys

And this is a w-i-p from Beat Bros Will and Petey. It all looks very Gothic and shifty, but, hey, they went to Harvard, so who cares?

No use crying over spilt milk

O.K. so no-one's heard of Peter Blegvad, but, as Eddy Izzard said, "Well, you should have!". This pic is one of his websites as a cartoonist, but he's also a great singer/songwriter of a decidedly quirky kind. The website is Leviathan and a jolly good time is guaranteed for all.
More entertainment here on the gallery page, to be precise, three new indie trailers in glorious video, about the size of two nicotine patches.
And try the veggie ravioli at Black Bear.
Random? Check out the Alyce trailer before you call me random, though, as Sal's eyes saw, and Taimette's voice said, I am getting sloppy. There are two partly exposed flash frames visible in the fade out after the image of Simon/March Hare... well, what can I say? I done it, your Honour.
Penance will follow, or punishment, same thing from different directions.
What you missed while I was out: did some second camera on P. Griffin's hilarious but scary new opus. Why, the man could film a Russian Phrasebook and make it look interesting!
Somebody? Anything? Someone? Something?
No-one.
Nothing.

Sabotage!

It feels like spring. Finally a good night's sleep and no alarum clock neither. I was musing on the conditions of production of ALYCE and realised that there is one surprising element missing - one obstacle that we did not have to contend with - and that, remarkably, is SABOTAGE.
Strange as it may seem, I have not actually worked on a single (so-called) professional production, whether as director, script writer, technician or observer, where there was not a major element of sabotage involved.
This, in passing, is one of the wonderful things about Indie: no sabotage.
In case you think I'm succumbing to my own paranoia, I have reviewed most of the projects I fell into and come up with a confirmation. there is ALWAYS some person (if we can use that term) who sits inside the project and funnels all elements to their own advantage. Here I am citing specific persons on specific projects, no abstracts.
And of course, I am not referring to honest mistakes, misjudgements, lack of experience or even avoidable flaky f*** ups here. I am talking about deliberate acts of sabotage.
The personal assistant to a millionaire producer who deliberately cancelled meetings before deadlines to pout pressure on writers and directors who (because of the delay) didn't deliver; a writer who 'accidentally' met with a TV producer on a team project and rubbished four other writers, who were then 'let go', co-incidentally doubling the first writer's salary; a soundman who wasted two hours of a four hour shoot miking up a car, then blamed the re-wiring on the cameraman; the administrator who funnelled more than half the production budget into their own pocket, while the project almost collapsed due to lack of funds; a producer who buried a finished film because the director had begun an affair with the producer's female assistant; an actor who cut his hair drastically in between two days' shoots, thus making continuity impossible; another actor who did not turn up for the morning pick up because he had met a girl the previous night and 'forgot'; a producer who fired the editor mid-edit, thus wasting two months of production time.
The list goes on and on.
Why is this?
Film involves money and prestige. Film is a collective art. There are always people - especially in a reasonably efficient structure - who realise that however small their contribution may be, there will come a time or a stage when it is vital to that production. this is the time to 'make your presence felt', in the easiest way possible, by stopping the process.
The alternative, in less than streamlined collectives, is that some people feel useless, deadwood. And sabotage is a wonderful way to demonstrate to others that they are in fact necessary.
How to avoid this? And how have we avoided this so far? (Beware hubris).
One: make sure everyone involved really is involved, and knows they are involved.
Two: do not exploit people. Even if there is little money, make sure everyone's fed, kept warm (oops!) and looked after. Don't neglect even the young intern who gets the coffee. These things are IMPORTANT.
Three: do not hire the paranoid.
Four: if all else fails, it is the duty of the producer (or director - whoever spots it first) to shoot the buggers.
You don't have to actually kill them, you understand, just disable them long enough so that the film can be finished.
A shot to the knee is most effective.
Alright, treat all of the above as secret information and - as the poster suggests - 'Shhhh! The walls have ears!'.
Do svidanya.

Creating situations

Well, quite a zippy day, really, with news and rumors in from all directions (the past, the future and virtuality). First, about the photo above - some friends in Brooklyn, go to
HTTP://WWW.SHOPDROPPING.NET for the full info. Dig.
While we canvas for ideas to film over the summer term, over the summer, and/or for the rest of our lives. I confess I greatly enjoyed cutting the trailer for ALYCE yesterday, as it was a few hours just having to concentrate, having to hit exact frames and play. As Guy Debord might have said. Well, more about that one later. Much later.
Now this Art thing is all very well, and I did find myself getting carried away these last few days in lab (nice idea, small group tutorials) carried away about proxemics (where people stand) and camera movements and blocking (where people shouldn't stand or move) and generally the immense amount of beauty which floods into an image when you wait for it and just catch it, as opposed to all those uphill struiggles to pack a frame with deadness and symmetry. The frame is in time, not in an isolated 1/30th of a second freeze frame. So, beauty. Will beauty save us?
We have to create situations where beauty (real beauty, not a magazine photoshop arrangement) will come in unbeckoned.
Hmm, this is not just Filmmaking 101 anymore, is it?
Oh, and P.S. that Latin quote a few posts down, I was asked today, means: We turn circles in the night, and are consumed by fire.
That kind of beauty.

Two more

Watch out soon for the trailer.

Kvin of Herz

Dan's temperature has subsided to a normal 98.4 ish

in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni

Is this a latter day gathering of the founders of an iconoclastic art movement? Or just four middle aged English blokes waiting for their beer?
A long long weekend brooding about life and art and the future and all those things, fuelled partly by driving around Kingston at night in the cold, and stopping into various diners, unabl;e to not overhear inane conversations, then wondering how on earth I could expect conversations in a Kingston diner to be anything other than inane. People shouting into cellphones. I mean, literally shouting, as if we were back in the days of CB radio. Made digesting my banana pancakes very difficult.
Driving through the deserted streets, and probably also because I was ill for no reason (like everyone else) I had slept for 18 hours straight - with that, my mindmaps of the area had been erased and I found myself in new, but oddly familiar streets, as in a dream. Reminded me for no other good reason of France - there's a street by the Y in Kingston that leads to the cemetery, with an avenue of trees. And, as the French like to say, at night all cats are gray. All streets are the same.
Which - being averse to nostalgia - led me to wonder how to get out of this impasse.
Did I not mention the impasse?
We all have sell-by dates and I feel I've outlived my own. Time to do something.
And we've all been talking about the contingent, and instrumentality, and, and, and...
so the line atop this posting is a pure palindrome in Latin.
Well, that's just a freak of language and letters, like madam, I'm Adam or Peel's foe, not a set animal laminates a tone of sleep.
But what does it mean?
Ah... homework.

V

Opinions may vary on this. I don't know why i bother expressing mine on such a commercial venture. But I did not feel cheated by 'V'. I don't think it betrayed the graphic novel of Alan Moore - though his name was conspicuous by its absence from the end credits - from the graphic novel drawn by David Lloyd - was the line. No flashy CGI effects, and a look grounded in the Michael Radford '1984', and maybe the Richard Loncraine/ Ian McKellen take on 'Richard III' for its iconography - and some lovely little touches and nods to the Sex Pistols, who are rapidly emerging in this post historic period as the sharpest critics of post capitalism. And I mean that most sincerely (though by Sex Pistols, I really mean John Lydon). And John Hurt being fraught, Hugo Weaving faceless. And some red dominos. Well, I liked it. In its own fey way. Unless this is Politics for the Hot Topic generation?
A little footnote: the film was scheduled to open in the U.K. last November, but the release date was pushed back due to the real life 'terror' of the London tube bombings. Would that we lived in a world where the courage of convictions weighed more than the desire to make a buck.
But then again, I was born on the Fifth of November, so I would say that.

On Screen

Now that was a night. I could use a few more like that after a day spent in conclave, editing, and formatting tapes.
Taima really came through, and basically single-handedly edited one person's film, in absentia. Sorry to hear that our Deadpool is still ill, hope his fever abates this St. Paddy's Day (yes, it's past midnight).
A great reception for this first partial view of Alyce, which surprisingly, unanimously, hangs together despite its five distinct styles and voices. Bacci's piece drew great respect from the gathered filmmakers and I think the Tea Party worked well enough - Mikhail was present to lend support, and kudos to him, Phil Levine's Tweedledee was rather menacing and believeable too. Makes you wonder about his roots, actually... it was also nice to see that Jolie can stretch herself a little emotionally (in Dan's scene and in a lovely outburst in the Tea Party. Plus the first appearance of Trevor's Little Helpers.
Thanks to Jenna, Lillian, Joe and Trevor for turning up and exposing themselves (?) to the crowd.
Also good to bump into Ricky and Anya Aldridge. though filming at Rokeby didn't work out this time, they were both very friendly, enthusiastic and wowed by the filming. Maybe in the future, with a little more notice and more logical planning, we can do something there?
And Will - he'd better watch out for ladies' favors after his 'strong and sexy' (I quote!) role as the Cheshire Man in TWO segments. Dorota remarked that one thing which also held all the segments together was the stylistic work of Bayla, who made many of the costumes, and to Iyla, for a real eye as production manager / slash/ production designer. It's not an accident that there was a consequent color scheme, and that for example, the faded roses in Tweedledum's buttonhole were of the same variety and color as the roses on the table at the Tea Party. Or the eerie black mesh and red motif of the guards and the QoH were handmade with care by the above ladies, along with Emmi and Noria. Or the extremely realistic looking (yet intrinsically harmless) knives scattered about the scenes. And Zoe was talked of, too, which makes a nice circularity, back to the Ur-script. So, we are off ground zero now, I will try to arrange for some fun as we (you - remember the Prime Directive!) now find the finished shape and layers of the film.
All this from the chaos of yesterday's first cuts.
Oh God - yes, I ran some of Dan's scenes together for him, but I sort of wanted it to be clear to the uninitiated that this was an assembly, not a director's rough, so I left a few repeat takes and overlaps in the sequence. it's alright like that. And I did try to explain a little of Dan's conception (the layout like a manga). But I left in one false start where the Queen of Hearts flubs a line and goes 'Oh, fuck...' then restarts. I like it. the audience liked it , too. Sorry Vanessa.
And Judy and Sam, after what was perhaps a difficult evening to sit through, beaming at the end, was a pretty good sight too. I fear the film about Cuba gave Peter permanent liver and tongue-biting damage.
But amazingly no equipment glitches or itches. Later adjourned to Michael's Diner to stuff faces and decontract. Always nice to drift on past midnight, into the real world.
Now, I'm thinking about travelling. Us, we, you, travelling with the films. A project to think about. Felt very proud of everyone who's put so much into this Alyce idea.
Most left-field question of the night was: (to the directors) Do you keep a tally of your hours spent on the film?
The answer: No.
But the phrase of the night goes to Robin, for 'deja done'.
Well, it was.
And tomorrow it's 'V for Vendetta'.
And a nice cup of tea.
Goodnight, ladies, goodnight.

Progress report

No pictures tonight, just a short heads-up on our five films, with some interesting 'overheard' comments.
In script order:
Bacci's Cheshire man is almost in fine cut stage. This due to Joe's very economical shooting methods, working chronologically and then making overlaps and adding needed inserts as they suggest themselves. Quite improvisatory, but very effective, and a very low shoot to film ratio. And, of course, a much more straightforward edit.
The Trial has suffered because Dan C. has been ill, and still unable to start importing. So today, under his bedside instructions, I took in a series of sample shots, from a LOT of material (three cameras) but it cuts together pretty well. Stilol, what you will see will have none of Dan's planned effects and framing. I will say no more here about that. Ask him on the night. just this, though: Vanessa's performance is GREAT, and I think she brought out a little extra from Jolie, too, who looks genuinely scared here.
It occurred to me, at this point, that both the above scenes are rather grim and eerie. Quite Alice like, in fact.
The Tea Party also has a wealth of material, here because of multiple cameras, and the free ranging improvs. However, we are starting to make sense of it. The thing to remember about editing is you do need to CUT. So we will have a fairly lively scene for your pleasure. That lens...
Best of all (from my p.o.v.) is that Jenna and Lillian are now picking up Final Cut, and are passably impatient with my explanations and interference, and want to do the edit themselves. So tomoorow's is the first end-to-end of a rather complex verbal scene.
Becky's Caterpillar is proceeding apace, but on two levels. becky - perhaps from her documentary background - doesn't like making 'rough cuts' of a whole piece, but prefers concentrating on the minutae of a shorter sequence. So the beginning is almost done, while the later part of the scene is pretty much 'as shot'. Here. we have the best sound (radio mikes in a silent barn) and two actors, doing their stuff. I think Jolie sounds particularly convincing as a tired girl, here. It was zero degrees.
And finally, Trevor will have finished the live action start and finish of his piece, but he is AS I WRITE attacking the animated midsection of the film in the basement. I do not ask him to have this rushed and ready for tomorrow night.

What remains after this is to photograph the start (Bayla, Emmi and Christina, in ten days); to film a few transition scenes in tunnels and corridors. Preferably without dead deer... and , finally, hopefully this Friday night?? to film one shot at a Baba Yaga gig in Woodstock.
Right now - 9.16 p.m. it's bedtime.

In the round

A $ 40 fisheye lens represents the POV of the sleeping Dormouse. On the table.

Hatta, Haigha, et al

Images from Jennillian's Tea Party. Note the variety of lenses. And more red, too.





The main achievement in this scene, however, is the lively and ofttimes hysterical improvs of the actors.

Framed

These from Trevor's and Becky's... no color correction yet, but faces and places.

Screenshots

These are actual frame blow-ups from Bacci's rather sinister version of the Cheshire Catman. All knives are replicas. Note the effect of ultra-violet light on video.

Editing, too many cameras, and RED

Monday. What a hive of activity this afternoon as Joe, Becky, Trevor and Jenna & Lillian all arrived to start or continue their rough cuts. The media room was like a furnace. Sleeping bodies in every corner, while Bayla began painting her animation about her theory of the Universe. Sorta like google Mars...
And here we run into an interesting schism, that of the shoot and the edit. Many of us had decided to shoot some or all of the sequence with two or more cameras running simultaneously. Vast overequipping was discouraged, but there seemed to be a desire there, so... taking the Prime Directive to heart... there are certain undeniable advantages, for instance where keeping synch is a necessity (e.g. in one species of the concert movie) or punctually for a 'once only' shot (e.g. blowing up Kingston Mall) or even, as Mr. Bongiorno contended, to preserve the perfect flow in an improv or intimate dialogue. But I feel these cases are rare. What follows from the facility of a two camera shoot, is that you think (inside your head) that you have the scene covered. But you don't. What really happens is you turn off that little voice (inside your head) which thinks about where to put the camera for each shot, and about what is needed and what is superfulous. Or, on the third hand, you have to be super careful and strict about not getting that other camera in shot (or you have to be super experienced as a team, but we are none of the above). So what you get is two (or three, or four...) mitigated versions of the exact same thing. It's not a financial problem, tape being cheap, but it becomes an editing problem, first because you have to watch all the stuff, and second, because the sheer weight of material tends to confuse and muddy the film which risks getting submerged inside the multiple takes.
Two of our films were shot with just one camera. The directors paused and thought between each take, and varied the set-up according to what they'd already filmed, and the ideas which came up there and then. These segments are a) almost finished, and b) have a coherence born from lack of dispersion and repetition during the shoot.
Is there a lesson here? Methinks.

But aside from all of this, i.e. a much harder edit curve, the elements are there inside the mass of material, and will be brought out.
We are trying to arrange a professional colorist to make a final pass in a month or so, which is why two things are being deliberately neglected THIS WEEK. 1) no color correction and 2) no sound mix or music added.
We must get the broad lines of the segments in the next two days, and start detailing the leaves on the trees after the Thursday screening.
At least, that's the way I feel right now, to quote Thelonious Monk. It may change.
It all looks luvverly. And by the by, there's a wealth of funny outtakes in the Tea Party scene, due to the very funny improvs of Mikhail and Simon, as well as a plethora of missed cues, and general confusion between takes, and the so-called producer and professional actors vying with each other in the Nazi accent stakes. I only asked him to ztop rocking ze table!
And yes, we'll all have to sit down and work out the bestest ways of camera placement when you are in a room with a bright window...
I am so glad we chose red and black as the key colors.

Weekend

Late Sunday. End with an image of late Saturday (more below). Tommorow - the dread of Monday. Oh.

All Our Yesterdays

They are all here, and I must get a web-literate assistant to weed and repair. But if you want to read (no photos yet) the entire blog from DAY ONE. Here it is:
http://alycearchive.blogspot.com/

Screening Alert

Thursday evening, in the Rondout. We will be presenting rough cuts (maybe incomplete) of all five segments of ALYCE. here are the details. There'll also be a piece of artsy tosh by meself. Bad sound, shaky camerawork and abstruse meaning, just to show you how not to do things. Oh, no, it's a searching attempt to break new ground in the interview/essay format. Almost forgot...

The Fourth Monthly Evening of the "In-the-Works" Film and Video Festival, March 16th, 7:00 PM (sharp!) at the Sky-Tree Gallery, 42 Abeel Street, Kingston, NY. $5,00 Suggested Donation.

Alyce- by Trevor Grassi, Becky Sellinger, Jenna Coluccio & Lillian Brooks, Dan Cayea, and Joe Bacci. A free adaptation of vignettes from "Alice in Wonderland" with a modern twist, these are five separate short films in the works by students in the Indie after school program at Onteora High School.

Be there or be square.

Temple of Odd Fellows

Oh, I have been lax as an Icelandic salmon. Much to do, and fell into bed at 1 a.m. yesterday after a wondrous evening combining a belated birthday of one RFR and a post-principal -photography (PPP?) gathering of many ALYCErs.
The whole set off by (let's name 'em all) Sewer Goats, Defenestrators, Warm Seat, Dusty Bones, a full strength BabaYaga and a simply, sincerely amazing Frankie and his Fingers (the stunning, crisp Sami). Manyest thanks to Trey, Marie and Jasper for hosting us. I, as 'producer', did what I wish all producers would do. Bugger off, grab pizza, and field drunks on the street.
I will make an effort to get back to matters more centrally cinematic next week, when we all tackle the problems and delights (yes, delights, too...) of editing.

Foto of Focus

Focus in every sense. It's Mr. Joe Bacci lost in concentration getting a close up in this light. The result is beautiful as you will be able to see next Thursday.

The Prime Directive

Thought I would share this with you, as I have been asked (and/or admonished for doing it and for refusing to do it) why we at Indie are not helping more in the shooting and editing process – or, in contrapartie, why we have occasionally suddenly ‘helped out’ or – to quote one young fellow ‘become fascist’. Well, we are (mostly) only human...
It goes like this:

INDIE PRIME DIRECTIVE

In the Star Trek universe, the Prime Directive, Starfleet's General Order #1, is the most prominent guiding principle of the United Federation of Planets. The Prime Directive dictates that there be no interference with the natural development of any primitive society, chiefly meaning that no primitive culture can be given or exposed to any information regarding advanced technology or alien races. It also forbids any effort to improve or change in any way the natural course of such a society, even if that change is well-intentioned and kept totally secret. "Primitive" is defined as any culture which has not yet attained warp drive. Starfleet allows scientific missions to investigate and move amongst pre-warp civilizations as long as no advanced technology is left behind, and there is no interference with events or no revelation of their identity.
It appears that the non-interference concept originated with Vulcans and predated the formation of the Federation in 2161 but did not exist on pre-Federation Earth.

This is why Indie staff may comment, suggest, demonstrate techniques and help with drudge work but may not actually DO THE CREATIVE WORK on a student project.

Just ask Mr. Spock.

I hope that’s clear…

New Order

Ah, good to be back after a day of nervous tics and dark thoughts.

Now, the image above is more to the point: by Trevor, and in anticipation of the style of his entire Alyce episode - to wit, all colors dropped to black-and-white (or blanco y negro) and the reds (Alyce's dress and lips) heightened.
What do you think????

Photoshop work

This magnificent detailing was done by Trevor. Because my wife, the Dorota, said 'that girl must hate you'... because the photo (which i like very much) was 'au naturel'. Well, here's a retouched version and very nice it is too. Just a great performance from vanessa, and the make-up work by Emmi stylised but understated.
Maybe Vanessa will not hate me now?

Flame Wars

Well, here's (semi) interesting.
Those of you - if there are any - who have been following the site sospendo situation will have noticed that for the moment, ALYCE has two blogsites. the old one,*** (name changed to protect the innocent), last night sent me a couple of e-mails asking why i had 'abandoned' them. Just one of the inevitable accidents of hi-tech. In my reply, I asked some direct questions about who they were and where they were. I like to know. especially as all their messages were posted in Portuguese. It's the global village. My ISP is run by a very small, efficient and nice bunch of Argentinians, Webjogger up in Tivoli, NY. I wondered if *** was a similar outfit.
the reply to my questions was a) *** suspended my blog (check - a blank page!) and sent me this lovely e-mail. remember, I had asked them if they were a bunch of colleagues, or part of a big corporation.
"The message you sent requires that you verify that you
are a real live human being and not a spam source."
A SPAM source, indeed!
Does this mean I am dealing with a bunch of touchy inter-techs?
Do they think I am anti-Brasilian racist? (when I am a soccer fan, and love the spirit of their country)
ORDEM e PROGRESO, eh?
we'll see. But it's sorta interesting to get shouted at in an ironic manner by a program.
I will keep yous informed (here, obviously) without wasting more of your time.
Lots of love
Russell
(a real person)

Feed Your Head

The Dormouse said... well we all know what the Dormouse said, don't we?

Yesteryear

I know this was long, long ago... but it's such a gorgeous Pre-Raphaelite image and that section of the shoot was magical, with the snow flurries. So it's here as talisman and target.

Old Times

Testing, testing

Jolie inaugurating this new site.

For the Hatter

Well, just a few pics to offset that horrid systems crash... here's one of actors relaxing below another one of a strange man waving his hands about
Does this go hereunder beneath?

Back Again

O.K.
This is a new server because the previous one kept going ga-ga.
I mean, it started giving me text messages in Portuguese.
From Portugal?
Like this:

Site Suspenso
Entre em contato com o seu provedor de hospedagem para averiguar o problema.

Or Brazil?
(or Angola?)
So this is just the back-up of all the old stuff below, and all the new stuff will appear from here on in.
Remember: cyberspace doesn't really exist.
No, it's Mozambique!
And the Queen of Hearts' lips.