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October 7, 2009

Progress

I was bicycling through a cold and rainy Austin evening not too long ago and it occurred to me that come February it will have been two years since I directed St. Nick. This dawning moment was accompanied by a momentary flash of panic - two year since I last directed something! What have I been doing with my time? Disaster!

Then I remembered that in that ensuing time and space, I've photographed two feature films, edited two others, co-edited a massive documentary, spent a summer making Alexander The Last with Joe (not to mention a few weeks on his follow-up project), made a movie in Costa Rica with Kris, directed all those Boy Crazy spots, made that music video with Toby, helped Kentucker Audley with his new feature and also did everything that needed to be done between the actual production of St. Nick and this very moment, when it still needs tender loving care (but of a decidedly different sort). And I've written an awful lot and might be making headway towards getting a new project off the ground on a slightly larger scale. So I guess I haven't been exactly idle. I've kept my creative instincts burning while endeavoring as a craftsman. I think about someone like Walter Murch and fancy him a kindred spirit (which reminds me that I never wrote about how much I loved Tetro). But still...two years...

One of those films I DPd was Frank V. Ross' Audrey The Trainwreck. We began principal photography in Chicago a year ago yesterday. All my memories of that month are nothing but warm and cozy; I think of the shoot and I picture cold air and misty windows and leaves falling and all the other accouterments of autumn wrapped up in the tough gossamer of a remarkable creative experience. Working day in and out with Frank and Adam and Alexi. It was really my first film as a cinematographer, and I set out to shoot something that maintained the rough aesthetic that is Frank's trademark while simultaneously being unabashedly gorgeous, and dark, and burnished. In late February of this year, Frank sent me the first cut. He mailed it to me in Austin, but I was in Dallas at the time, doing the mix on St. Nick. I rememberr that late night drive down South, knowing it would be in the mailbox waiting for me. I remember telling him that I hadn't looked forward to seeing a movie that much since There Will Be Blood, which was true. I was excited not just because I had shot it, but because the script had meant so much to me and I'd lost sight of that over the course of the shoot. I put the DVD in as soon as I got to town, and since then I've seen each and every iteration of the film, as Frank hewed it into the auburn gem it currently is. It's an amazing film. Masterful. I'm so proud to have been a part of it. Frank is in a league of his own.

My second film ever as cinematographer came in short order, with Bryan Poyser's Lovers Of Hate. I've been more closely tied to the post-production on this one, having seen the first 30 minutes come together over the spring and then traveling to Austin in late July to help Bryan trim the two-and-a-half hour first cut. Since then I've watched it about a dozen times - including last weekend, when I saw the now 89-minute cut for the first time with Toby's color correction, and this morning, when we screened the film (with great success) for John Pierson's class at UT. It's more difficult for me to watch this one, primarily because it was so much more challenging to make (though no less fun) and I'm commensurately much harder on my own work. But seeing it with an audience, and hearing them laugh uproariously and then fall quiet as they get caught up in the intricate emotional tightrope Bryan's constructed is consistently thrilling; hearing myself laugh and then finding myself sucked into that same piercing gray zone is even better. Better, even, than people talking about how they much they like the way it looks, because when I hear things like that I still feel like I've somehow pulled something over on them.

Both films will be finding wider audiences in the coming months. Both deserve nothing but the best. Festival programmers, if you read this and think my opinion is worth a damn, please take note.

I'm writing this from my little editing suite at 501 Post in Austin, where I just finished cutting a new feature directed by my friend Chris Ohlson. I measured my progress in coffee cups from the appropriately named Progress Coffee around the corner. This is what a feature film looks like:

Posted by David Lowery at October 7, 2009 4:35 PM

Comments

Posted by: tom at October 8, 2009 12:41 AM