Strictly Personal

I’ve recently posted Banana Bus on Squiggle. Also, I edited a short doc on Luam, a dance choreographer, for Scene Interactive.

Something that I have been doing a lot of thinking about since I moved from New York city to a small town outside of Raleigh. I have gotten fatter. I socialize less. The restaurants around here are all fast food, unless I go into Cary. Random adventures pop up in less frequency.

However, I get more done because I spend more time at home/ office. There is a space that you call your own. To enjoy your dog, to work on projects. There is room for all of this. Traveling in cars is less stressful than say the subways. But it is clearly less fun.

I think people’s expressions vary from suburbia to urban. Suburban’s smile fully. The city dwellers, however, are more expressive from moment to moment.

I wish there was more of a community feel in the suburbs. I don’t mean the neighborhood community association. I mean like artists coming together. There is not too many of them and they usually work in an insular environment.

Inspired to write this today because of this article.

My next short will have a financial backer. There is not a better affirmation of my work when someone decides to spend their own money only because they like my work and would like to see my idea come to life.

This is one of few smooth projects. The hardest part was coming up with the title. The best part was the collaboration with Carmela. It is getting easy to understand each other.

Watch and Read all about it

I was at the Annapolis film festival this weekend as my short Dear Stranger was playing there in a shorts program. Where do I start?

Like expected, people generally liked the film. They liked the shooting style, the editing, the eye. But they also liked the story and the actors. But there is something holding it back from a great movie. As I have thought before, there is a general problem with pacing. Not in terms of cutting as much. Which I think I fixed but in terms of story. There wasn’t a surprise till the end. The key moment is the entrance of the new guy. He doesn’t invade her life. The first time is too normal. That little moment has a huge impact on the second part of the story. It is cohesive but not dramatic. This is what I felt when I watched it. When that scene came, I just looked down, unable to watch it.

I was very proud of Dear Stranger. I would not have traded that film with any other at the festival. But that depresses me. I am not a crowd pleaser. I may not even be the award winner. I am not the buzz creator. I sadly like small moments. I don’t think this is a good thing.

I also can see how festivals could be better. I think proximity is important. Feeling like you are part of something is important. A tradition. A family. I think festivals miss the boat on this.

I enjoyed being around the filmmakers. But everyone is there for one reason, to promote their projects. It is hard to exchange ideas. Do people do that anymore? Do people only spark ideas within themselves?

I liked being the mini-celebrity (very very mini). I had something to say and have done something of significance. That was nice.

The best parts of the trip was when Kelly and I were lost. Bored in a hotel room. Excited that there was a restaurant at the hotel. Kelly being more nervous than me. Hanging out with people I know afterwards. Talking. Driving late at night, silently challenging myself to do better.

I did see some good work there. Documentaries continue to be more interesting than fiction for the most part. I was looking all around the frame and not the subject. That is fun to do in docs.

I can’t wait to do all this again.

My lessons from directing Indian Giver:

• You will not understand the nature of the piece till you have everything on one timeline. Till then, it is all a dream.
• Figure out your editing plan. Figure this out or you will creative energy will be sapped when it comes time to edit.
• Again, always get more than what you want. Take a gamble on other emotions, ideas that weren’t in the script. You will always need it.
• Remember you did well to recover from bad weather. The story shifted away from the original and that was probably a good thing.
• If you going to do a story in a music video, be detailed about the plot and hi and lows of the song. Make sure the movements are correct.
• If possible, pick actors and other stuff based on flexibility. Because Lindsey lived so faraway, I could not shoot any reshoots. I had one shot. And because the weather was screwed up, that simply wasn’t enough.
• On a positive note, the camera work was good. Making something out of nothing.
• I didn’t achieve anything with the editing till it got messy. Till I started making choices. Till then I wasn’t going anywhere. Being editor, don’t be afraid of losing the plot a little. Of getting your hands dirty.
• If you are going to do something that works in a subtle way. Also include obvious scenes, even if you don’t plan to do anything with them. The obvious moments made this video. Otherwise, it was very very bland.
• Subtlety works well when something else is very obvious or direct.
• Actor chemistry is so important. Important that people meet and you have a chance to watch them interact.
• Many times actors work when the camera likes them in the same angles.
• HD is overrated. Lighting is underrated.

Some videos take so long, that you wonder if you will ever finish it. Because of weather, I had to reconstruct a story from the pieces of videos that we had shot. Reshooting was out of the question because the actress lived faraway and the person who lent me the camera did not want to give it out anymore.

When I finally started to edit, almost six months after we shot it, I faced the long tedious task of deciding what goes with what. Not just what cut comes after the other but what goes next to it. This was the longest part of an edit. Once I had the pieces even somewhat aligned, the pace started to quicken.

But the combination of editing HDV in dual windows on a computer that had very little RAM became torture. Every cut had to be rendered. Every step had a 3+ minute break in between. Never again. I don’t know if I could have made it better than what I did but at the end of it, I had no enthusiasm for the piece and that is never good.

Watch it here 

Dear Stranger got into the Annapolis film festival, a great festival but also it made it in the competitive section. I was just complaining about that. When I read the news, all this stress, all kinds of insecurities were lifted. I loved that movie but the whole festival voodoo made me resent it. Welcome back stranger.

I have found success online but the film festival market is impossible to break into!!! It happens over and over again. I create more, I interact more, more people watch my films but it is *only* online, right? Festivals and all that feel like one big club that I never seem to get into.

I have started a series of Blurring podcasts. The first episode “Blurring Fat” is one of my favorite pieces. I love that I didn’t have to rely on anything superficial. All the drama is there, in the performance.