July 19, 2005
When I gave the rest of my site its minimalist redesign earlier this year, the one page that I left untouched was the short films page. Now that I'm starting to explore the possibilities of online content, I figured it was high time I fixed that. The new version is is now online. A few of my older shorts have been removed; and one addition has been made.
For better or worse, Still is now available for download. The film, as a whole, is not quite as good as the evocative photograph above (by James M. Johnston, making good use of a malfunctioning camera), but I think I can safely say that it's a whole lot better than it was before. Late last spring (right after watching Robert Altman's Three Women and listening to the commentary track, to be exact), I decided that I was tired of being completely embarassed by the film's drawbacks, and that I'd do follow the gut instincts I ignored so long ago and fix whatever I could. Thus, the film is now significantly...quieter. I asked my friend Brad Mitchell, who I met in Berlin (how lucky that my roommate there was one of the only sound designers to attend the Campus!), if he'd be interested in remixing the whole thing. He agreed, and did an amazing job in filling in all the holes with foley, removing the sound of the camera motor, etc. I knew we'd work well together from the moment he told me that Dead Man was his favorite Jarmusch film...
Anway, once the film was listenable-to, I made a few trims to the cut to adjust the pacing (which no longer had music to cushion it) and to remove some material that I left in originally just because...well, because I was stupid. There's a lot of stuff that's still in there that's also the result of me being stupid, and if I were to distill the whole picture down to the moments that I feel I directed to the fullest, it would only be two minutes long. What it all essentially came down to was whether I wanted to bury the film and its various inadequacies forever or to be proud of what did work (and happy to admit that I've learned from what didn't) - and I chose the latter.
The film is available in a smaller 55 MB version; an alternalte 55 MB version with commentary; or in a great big version that's being hosted at the Internet Archive. If you haven't seen the film before, I'd suggest watching it before you read anything else about it. And if you have any comments - well, as always, I'm a glutton for punishment.
I think I'll have at least one more short to upload by the end of the summer; and after that, things should start getting interesting.
Posted by David Lowery at July 19, 2005 05:01 PM
Comments
Hmmm....maybe it's time to pull out the old "Knocker" files.
Posted by: jmj at July 20, 2005 07:48 AM