January 28, 2007
I’ve arranged for a screening of the Ten Films at the Millennium Film Workshop, 66 East 4th Street between 2nd Ave & Bowery, here in New York. Nearby subway lines: F & V at 2nd Ave, the 6 (or D) at Broadway-Lafayette.
The screening will start at 8pm sharp, on Friday the 9th of February. Arrive early!
All ten films will be screened, with bonus material from the cutting room floor.
I’ll be asking for a donation of $5 to offset the cost of renting the space.
January 22, 2007
Directed by Alberto Lattuada, starring Alberto Sordi, Norma Bengell, and Ugo Attanasio. Originally made for 1962 release, now re-released by Rialto Pictures with English subtitles by Tommaso Cammarano and Bruce Goldstein (2006).
I saw Mafioso tonight at the Angelika Film Center and fell in love with the low-key lighting, the velvety black and white photography, and the multitude of finely-calibrated comic performances. The sound at the theater was set a bit loud, which emphasized, for me, the narrow dynamic range and distorted timbre of the audio track. But the elegance of the camera work and editing more than consoled me. (Even with a couple of focus errors.)
The film tells the story of Antonio (”Nino”) Badalamenti, a Sicilian boy who has made good in the big city of Milan. We meet him in the factory where he apparently serves as a punctilious time-and-motion man. But that’s just the set-up, because Nino is about to take his wife Marta and their two daughters back to Sicily to meet the parents–for the first time, because until now, he’s apparently been the best sort of company man, devoted to his wife but never taking a proper vacation.
Nino’s a different guy back home, and therein lies a lot of the comedy. But it was the film’s dark tone throughout that delighted me the most, along with the sharp, human characterizations of the supporting cast.
And, by golly, Lattuada, along with cinematographer Armando Nannuzzi, set up some lovely shots, including the opening montage, the encounter with the black cat, and a split-second flash of Nino’s wristwatch that’s practically a throw-away. Each one of these moments underlines Nino’s psychology in a way that wasn’t clear to me–and yes, perhaps I’m a bit slow–until I had a few minutes to process them.
In a sense, this is what delights me the most about a good story: everything’s obvious, but only in retrospect. While I’m watching, I’m utterly engaged, trying to figure out what just happened, what’s happening now, and wondering, for the life of me, what will happen next. When the story finishes, I smack my head and say: Well, obviously!
The plot of Mafioso isn’t that complicated. But Nino’s reactions to his circumstances are. And the visual world not only supports the script and the characters, it’s lovely to look at.
For me, that’s a good movie.
January 21, 2007
Wow. Since finishing Film #10, I’ll meet you by the train, my sister broke her elbow, I hosted friends from out of town, I flew to Florida to play nurse-maid and to cook, and I vacationed in Long Island amongst the frosty vineyards of the North Fork.
When I got back this afternoon, I spent some time surfing the ‘net, and found the delightful Venue Songs of They Might Be Giants. The band doesn’t seem to be able to stop writing songs (for better and for worse), but I enjoy the framing device a whole lot.
January 12, 2007
The final film of my series is now available: I’ll meet you by the train. The QuickTime version has the best sound, and the Flash version has the best colors. Oh, and if you’re interested in the ad you see at the end of the video, click on it–I’ll make something like thirteen cents. Awesome!
Anyhow, watch and enjoy. I finished the rough edit at 2am, but sound mix, transcoding, & upload took the remaining time.
And now I’m done!
I’m so delighted, I think I’ll finish making the bed, take a shower, and go to sleep!
January 11, 2007
As I write this, Avid Free DV is exporting my rough cut to an AVI file, so I can edit the sound in Sonar, which means adding a phone call, ambient and incidental sounds, and music. I don’t plan much noise reduction, but we’ll see how it sounds. I’ve added single-frame blips on the video and audio tracks, so if I accidentally slide the dialog track around, I can restore it later. If I wanted to, I could finish in a couple of hours. Oh, and it’s only 12:15am.
Wow, I’m in the home stretch.
The rough cut is not bad. As always, I feel very different about shots once I’ve assembled them. But I’m full of mixed feelings, generally: I urgently want my sleep schedule back, but I’ll sure miss making these movies.
Whatever happens next, in less than 24 hours I’ll be having a celebratory dinner at Saul with dear friends.
That’ll be alright.
January 10, 2007
Focus Puller. The ability to actually pull focus on my camera. A good fluid-head tripod. An A.D. A producer. Fresnel lights. Softboxes. Kino-Flos. Real C-Stands, with arms. And sandbags. A sound mixer. And a studio. Or, what the hell: although I love my friends deeply, dearly, madly, could I now have some whose apartments don’t have white walls?
January 9, 2007
Shot Film #10 tonight. And despite the fact that I’m doing this full time, despite taking breaks and spending time with friends (outside the shoots, I mean), I’m tired and burnt out. So I have to slow myself down and remember to make everything count.
I mean, because of Film #9, we now know that I can get fourteen actors together in a room, and in six hours I can shoot eleven scenes with them. The set will be dressed, the audio will be OK, and we’ll get all the shots. But doing stunts like that uses up all of the creative energy that I would normally use to talk my actors through a scene, keep them emotionally present, and to make the script (that skeletal outline of a story) make sense. In other words, I need a crew, so I can be a director again.
Tonight’s shoot actually went pretty well. The actors were great. But I still have to upload and review the footage before I’ll know if I got all the stuff I need to make a visually coherent narrative.
The end is not far off. Friday, actually. I’m really looking forward to it, and I look forward to just being a humble actor (or art director) again. But, Oh Boy, do I want to keep making movies. My friends still want to play with me (at least, most of them). And stories keep coming into my head.
I need financing. A producer. An assistant director. And, oh yes, a crew.
January 8, 2007
Faced with casting issues, I decided to re-write the script for Film #10. Completely. I’m using the same location, and the two actors I could get on short notice, but you wouldn’t know it from the script. We shoot on Tuesday. We’ll see how Casey and Phil like it. I like it. But what do I know?
The new script is certainly much simpler to shoot than the original, which had five actors and knives and guns and blood. That one will have to wait for another day. And more lead time.
Rain came to Brooklyn. I took a couple of walks in it as I tried to sort out the script in my head. It helped a little bit; I figured out the story’s structure. But to actually write the thing, I just have to sit in front of my computer for as long as it takes to hammer out the dialog, line by line. Sometimes, word by word.
January 5, 2007
I should always upload at 8am; it’s so much easier. Anyhow, Professor F’s Party, is now available. Watch it and enjoy!
Audiophiles may notice something odd about the sound. I apologize; I thought I’d fixed the glitch. I think the story’s coherent, I’m happy with a lot of the images, but whatever the case, it’s done and it’s on to Film #10!
Now, back to my catnap.
January 4, 2007
I finally broke down and bought the entry-level version of Sound Soap 2. It made an enormous difference. (It will work even better next time I use it. I had already run together a bunch of different clips, with different noise characteristics–even though the audio path was the same, different rooms seem to have different sorts of broadband noise. So audiophiles and sound mixers will notice a few bits of nastiness in the mix, but it should be potable by most consumers.)
And I continue to be amazed at how adding music to the soundtrack can change everything. All of a sudden the dry, disconnected scenes gain new life. And it’s crucial to creating the world in which this story takes place.
So things seem to be going well, even with complications. If I’m lucky I’ll go to bed well before 10am.