Knock on Wood

Today was a very long day. As I type this my eyes are glazed, my fingers to uncertain to type without making constant mistakes, and my brain is a mushy pile of... mush.

But I am riding pretty high. Today was the first day we didn't do primarily interiors and I discovered that we move at pace that definitely slower, is at least comparable to what we've been doing with interiors. Meaning, that (and maybe I shouldn't say this and risk bringing a terrible jinx down upon my head) um, where was I? Oh, yes. I'm pretty darn sure we're going to finish this film. 

That was always my biggest fear with this project- I don't have a safety net if shooting falls through. If I don't get almost all the footage we need, this is screwed. And, yes I do know that in editing I'm gonna look back and swear shooting was the easy part. I'm fully anticipating and prepared for the computer headaches, the unending quality post production has, and of course that little thing where this is about ten times longer than anything I've ever made before.

But production is the dangerous part. It's the part where things go wrong, where things fall apart and projects don't get finished. And obviously that could still happen, but I don't think it will. As huge as this project seems, for the first time I can really see how we are going to make it to the end of shooting. And that, my friends, is grand.

The Easy Part

Shoot big scene today! Is yayness! 

Tragically we went half an hour over... This has happened at least once before, and I'm getting concerned it's becoming a habit. Buuuuut, we got  a very very big scene done today, and I'm optimistic it'll turn out swell. I'm a little nervous about the technical end, perpetually so in fact. It's because I'm working the camera, and that just isn't my area of expertise. But le actors nailed it, hard. We are almost entirely done with scenes in the apartment. That's the good news. The bad news is those were the easy part...

One Week Down...

How many to go? We started production last Monday (06/22), and we've done 3 days of around 6 hours, and 3 days that were less than that. We are making solid time, not jaw drop beautiful time, but certainly not bad. This past week has blurred together in my mind... From now on I am going to update after every shooting day when things are a little more fresh in my mind. But some highlights:

1. My cinematography is unbelievably sketchy- so far there have been 4 people working the camera and setting up shots, depending on who can make it on what day. I actually do think this is going to turn out alright. Think/pray, because frankly this is all kinds of wrong. 

2. I haven't loaded and watched all the footage that we shot yet, but so far everything looks good. Some looks even better then I thought it would.

3. I have to find a better way to mark my sound and visual tracks for synching, cos the way I've been doing it takes for flipping ever. And is really really frustrating.

Yup. That's it for now... More soon!!

Peace

The Kindness of Strangers

So this week has been largely devoted to the fun and challenging task of getting that last little "oomph" I need in terms of start-up funds for this project. In addition to asking all my friends to kick in a buck or two (a HUGE thanks to the wonderful non-strangers who contributed) I've been contacting local businesses to see if any were interested in donating/small-scale sponsorship in exchange for marketing love. I thought that this was primarily going to be an exercise in form. I was wrong. 

People pretty much rock.  

More on this later, but a have definitely learned a couple of things this week.

1. If you have weird/outside the box ideas don't be afraid to try them. You may waste a little time, but you may get some results.  And any results are great results.

2. If you are going to do fundraising at all, give yourself enough time to do it. I didn't give myself quite enough time. It's a bit of a bummer. 

Moral of this story: I am extremely grateful to everyone who is contributing to this project, be it through talent, generosity, or simple well-wishes. Without your support I would just be sitting alone in room with a camcorder filming my toes and trying to call it "art."   

Thanks to all the beautiful people spreading the love!

Peace Out!

Ask me about the gender binary...

Or really, ask Tommy. Because to some extent I'm worried that I pretty much failed at addressing that part of my story... This is a mistake that I tend to make a lot in story telling, I forget to give my readers or viewers the context that I assume but they might not be familiar with. I don't want to be obvious or to beat people over the head with points, I really do try to be subtle. But when I'm not careful, "subtle" becomes "lost."

For example, what the heck am I talking about right now? My second primary character, Tommy, is supposed to be a "gender anarchist"... or at least a subverter. He cross-dresses for political not fetishistic reasons. He isn't transgendered, just a little gender-queer. 

Well, isn't transgendered depends on your definition of the word... Tommy does not identify as female, so he isn't trans in that sense of the word. Authors such as Riki Wilchins have encouraged people to look at transgendered to mean transgressively gendered, a rather broad and provocative paradigm. 

Gender as a binary - male/female - is a deep and important part of our culture. We hold it to be a self-evident truism, when in my opinion it deserves some very heavy scrutiny. On some levels this is starting to be deconstructed in a major way - for example most people have started to differentiate between "sex" and "gender." On the other hand I wonder if ways in which we are deconstructing is always useful. To take the above example, people tend to think that "sex" is a biological reality, "gender" is a more flexible cultural construct. While I'm not convinced that I completely disagree with this perspective, it is an over-simplification at best. When we say that sex is biological and binary what part of biology are we referring to? Anatomy? Hormones? DNA? These different aspects of biology don't always match up. At best a biological binary is a human likelyhood, not an absolute. 

Okay, I'm pretty much rambling now. Long story short, I believe in a multitude of gender experiences, from biology on up.  Tommy as a character is designed to challenge some of the "trappings" of gender through visual juxtaposition, and political camp. But as I said at the beginning, he isn't quite where he needs to be for this notion to be clear on camera.

If anyone has any favorite drag/camp/gender subverting movies or art I can hit up for inspiration I'd love to hear them. : )

If you are interested in an actually coherent version of what I was talking about above please check out Kate Bornstein http://www.katebornstein.com/KatePages/indexkb.htm, or Riki Wilchins, http://books.google.com/books?id=RysbAAAAYAAJ&dq=inauthor:Riki+inauthor:Anne+inauthor:Wilchins&ei=j-QmSrDVHZCGkAT2sLTaCg&pgis=1 in my opinion two of the most accessibly intelligent authors writing in this area.

Things that you remember

I am make a rough draft of a shooting schedule! I am alarmed at the size of this freaking thing! I am listening to Sounds of Silence and pretending to be Benjamin Braddock! Minimum of 7 different 10 hour days to film, and probably somewhat more...

Soooo, I'm just not thinking about that anymore today. Here is some random concept-y ish images I'm jes pulling off of ze internets... These are the things that you remember/know about the 60's/70's. If any of these images are remotely foreign to you  I would seriously reevaluate what you are doing with your life ; )

Concept Pictures

1. Sheila is soooo not cell phone savvy. Sure they seem just like those communicator dealios from Star Trek, but Kirk made it look so easy. Oh well, no twitter no cry.

2. Don't help the homeless... Boulder has some problems with it's homeless population. I don't mean that the homeless are particularly numerous or hostile here. I mean that we just don't want them. Our begging laws are semi-draconian and every time the homeless shelter tries to move anywhere the nearest neighborhood complains. In the meantime we power down our fair-trade vegan lattes and god help you if you forget to recycle. The song "Easy to Be Hard" from Hair was written for my town.

3. "Beatniks and politics, nothing is new." 

4. Hippies will evidently pray to anything. In an earlier draft of the script I had a sort of mini-arc where Sheila thought she was turning into Shiva. That got mostly dropped in the current incarnation, but I still have several scenes where she is rubbing ash all over herself.

5. I have a long and involved dance sequence. It is also a dream sequence. Sure, no one does either of those anymore... But, um, it's an homage. Yup, definitely not something I would put in any other movie. I'M BEING HOMAGE-Y NOT WIERD OKAY!

6. Sheila may spend a little too much time at the begging of the movie huddled up asleep. But look! Her sweatshirt matches the flowers!

7. The economy is bad news man. No one should have to spend 8 hours a day asking strangers if they have a minute to save the children. That's okay... Sheila manages to turn her campaign job into a slightly better paying internet guerilla job. And play spy vs. spy with the Boulder Obama campaign's other top guerilla while she's at it. 

8. Sexualized advertising can be a little shocking. But it's Sheila's fault right? She believed in the sexual revolution.

9. Tommy getting into the dragz. Tommy isn't a transsexual, he's just into gender subversion. Or something. Who knows with kids these days? Aaand, who can guess what movie this picture is inspired by!

 

10. What does change mean to you? Sheila's had enough change for the time being, but she's working her butt off for Obama anyway... 

11. Sheila and Tommy spend a lot of (okay, fine, maybe too much) time sitting around in coffee shops having faux-intellectual discussions about nebulous social-studies issues. Hey, they say to write what you know.