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February 29, 2008
Time Lapses, Weekends, Nights, Bats & Hats, etc.
I haven't started editing yet. I could, but I'm just not mentally ready. So I've spent this week doing two things:
- Hanging out on the set with a camera and a dolly, shooting things, getting the sort of isolated images and textural and temporal studies that are almost as important to me as the material with the actors.
- Going through nearly a terabyte of footage and naming and categorizing each shot. Which is a pain. Whenever I'm handling someone else's film, I import and name each shot according to the slate, or at the very least the scene in the script. Here, though, we were rolling constantly, usually with two cameras, and while we had enough scene numbers to put together a shooting schedule, those scenes would frequently permutate into other things, shift around, get replaced. So I'm just naming them as best as I can with some rough numerical system and the occasional exclamatory note (e.g. 30AT1_GREAT!). It should be just enough to make sense of things when I start cutting. Which I'm committed to beginning next week...
...and hopefully find a little bit of time to continue on throughout SXSW, which I'll be driving down in exactly one week. Am I being optimistic?
Speaking of which, I guess I should start paying attention to what's playing at SXSW this year. Part of my viewing schedule is going to be decided for me in advance (more on that later), but so far the only films explicitly on my radar are the ones my friends made (including Yeast, Present Company and Goliath, which I saw at Sundance but definitely want to see again) or are touting (Mike Tully has me very excited about Josh Safdie's The Pleasure Of Being Robbed). And then there's Joe's latest, Nights And Weekends, which will be the first film of his since Kissing On The Mouth that I'll be walking into blind. When he was down here shooting second unit St. Nick, I told him that having no idea what to expect was actually really refreshing - but then the trailer showed up online, and I couldn't resist watching it. It's gorgeous and, and as it turns out, being made entirely of footage cut from the film, it spoils nothing at all.
This and two other trailers are available in higher definition at the film's official website. This one's been a long time coming, and I can't wait for the premiere.
Oh, and lest I forget, the hands-down best film I saw at Slamdance is going to be playing in the Animated Shorts category. It's called I Hate You Don't Touch Me, or Bat and Hat, and it's directed by Becky James, who describes the work thusly:
At its core, the film is an exploration of what it means to lose that which we believe defines us. Purposefully or not, all people use personal signifiers to express who they are. These identity markers can be lost, co-opted, or confused; I am interested in what this corruption means for the identities tied to them.
Now just wait until you actually see it.
Posted by David Lowery at February 29, 2008 12:50 PM