Y'all, I'm Pro

So, I've been feeling pretty good about the movie and, by extension, myself.

And then I was reminded that it's never a good idea to feel good about myself. By the abrupt and unpleasant realization that I evidently do not know how to use a head-cleaning tape. Someone who I saw vaguely as an authority figure in highschool told me that you should run the whole head-cleaning tape frequently, the whole way through (around 5 minutes) , and then rewind it. And for some reason I never bothered to check and learn that's about the absolute last way that you should use it.

Head-cleaning tapes are very abrasive, so you are actually supposed to run them infrequently, for about 5 seconds, and throw out the tape once you eventually get to the end, which, incidentally is way more intuitive when you actually think about what is happening and how the equipment works.

So, I've been randomly wearing out an important part of my camera, because I can't pay attention to what I'm doing.

Go. Me.

On the bright side, as I maybe(?) mentioned, even though there is still a whole lot left to do, I can now actually see the end of this project in a very tangible, non abstracted, very movie-like kinda way.

Help Me If You Can...

Because this one section is. not. go.

Do the drugs and dance go back to back? 20 minutes apart? 30? When does the freaking bracelet scene happen? Gr.

On an unrelated note, some stills from the reshoots:

It's like, that one sequence in The Hobbit where they all chill at the horse dude's house...

I think I have discovered my problem with updating here, and, as promised in the title it is exactly like The Hobbit (the book, not the animated feature which is, incidentally, my Favorite Movie Of All Time and doesn't contain said sequence, probably for the reasons I will outline below.)

But you know how in The Hobbit there is that the brief section where after they get rescued by the eagles they all rest in the house with the dude with the horses and dogs, and they all have to let their belts out a few notches because they are finally getting enough to eat? (Obviously I pretty much don't). And it's a relatively long while in the story itself, but, unless I'm horribly confused, Tolkien doesn't spend much page time on it because everything is going well, so it's totally boring?

That's kinda been the problem with this movie. In terms of what's been going on on-set I don't really know what I can say that's terribly interesting... Describing shooting would pretty much look like this for every single day:

We were a little behind schedule, the actors were all terrific and don't seem at ALL like they belong in silly indie films, and Peter was indispensably awesome/awesomely indispensable. At some point in the day, we all felt either a little or a lot burned out.

Describing editing is even worse:

I stared at the screen, and frantically hit hot-keys in an attempt to will a cogent structure into being. Then, I freaked out over the fact that the politics aren't coming through clearly. Then, I got really excited when an actor perfectly synched up with a music sting. Then, I decided that I needed to A. add more scenes B. add random archival footage or C. seriously consider adding animation. Sometimes I edit scenes.

Lather, Rinse, Repeat.

Although from my perspective there is plenty going on, there's not the kind of drama that I can easily write about, for the most part it's been a smooth (if overly extended and overly ambitious) little project.

So I don't really know what to do about this little blog. I do want to blog more, but I'm thinking of switching to a more general film-related blog that is more general and less project centered. We'll see. I'm getting close to the point of putting up an actual webpage for Sheila so I'll probably wait till then before making any changes here.

Until then, (my dear, like, 2 readers) keep an eye out for my little-less-then-month-on-average updates here!