Albuquerque Dreamin'

No real progress to report this week, as I've been busy with the end of my academic quarter this past week and stymied by the difficulties I'm having with this pool hall scene. I'll eventually find some combination of angles that seems least horrible and call it "artistic," but at the moment editing's on hold.

A couple of items: I'll be back in Albuquerque next week, from Monday the 31st through Sunday the 6th. As is usual with my weeklong visits to town, things will be action-packed, so reserve your seat now! If you have some time that week and want to shoot some pool, get some chow or just hang out, let me know. My only concrete appointment is the Super Bowl on the 6th. I owe Billy a dinner, so that's gonna be in there somewhere, as well as some 9-ball and beers with Aaron. Other than that, I'll just be bummin' around.

A few posts ago I mentioned an idea I have based around the car culture in Albuquerque. Partly I have this idea because I spent a lot of good years hanging out with a bunch of guys who cruise and race DSM imports (like Eclipses, Talons, Gallants, etc.). I still know a few of the guys around town, and I figured it wouldn't be too hard to talk them into doing a movie, so why not? Well, a friend of mine who owns a small shop in town has asked for help making some videos for his website this summer, which would be an excellent chance to experiment with the complexities involved in filming such a flick. For example, how to film in a car racing down Montgomery at 130 mph.

Of course, that all depends on where I end up this summer and what I end up doing. I'll be done with my MBA program at the end of Spring, so after that I'll be completely out of excuses for not having a high-paying, career-track job. Especially with student loan payments on the way. So, I may have to jump into a job job type job by then, and put amateur filmmaking on hold for the indefinate future. Ideally, I'll find a way to do both, but since when is this an ideal world?

As I ponder these problems and the predicament of my life, I find myself still at a loss for what I wanna be when I grow up. As it turns out, however, I'm not alone in this, and there's a very interesting article in the latest Time Magazine about it. Get a copy of the print version if you can, and especially if you find yourself in a similar quandry. Definately a good read.

Well, I'm off to bed. Got a ten page paper to write tomorrow that I've been putting off for the last possible minute, which is fast approaching. The next two sundays, there probably won't be an update since I'll be away from the editing station and rockin' with y'all in ABQ. Expect editing to resume with renewed vigor upon my return to Cali on Feb. 7.

Anodyne: adj. Capable of Relieving Pain

Well, my apologies in advance, as this post is going to be a little on the short side. Not a whole lot to report as far as editing progress, because Scene 10 is introducing me to a whole new level of frustration and annoyance.

The crux of the problem is this: like Scene 9, this scene would have benefited greatly from a rigid, written blocking plan. This is the pool hall scene, where Clint and Andy are talking over a good old fashioned game of 9-ball. Rather than work out a detailed storyboard ahead of time in order to keep track of things, I just sort of made it up during filming. Bad plan. Very, very bad plan.

The good news is, I was able to keep track of the basic order of the scene and have the actors move logically around the table. The bad news is a couple of minor discontinuities that are proving a tad difficult to reconcile.



Here are the first three cuts of the scene, as it stands now. On the left is the establishing shot we did during pickups, where the camera is focused on the cigarette in the foreground, then switches to the actors when the cigarette is taken away. The focus switch was pulled off well. The only problem is that as soon as the cue ball breaks the rack, Aaron and Leland walk around to the other side of the table. I waited to grab the cigarette until it looked like Aaron was about to shoot, so what happens is Aaron leans down to shoot, the cigarette is picked up, focus shifts, and the actors are already walking to the other side of the table.

Trouble is, when we shot the scene, their first lines of dialogue took place on this side of the table (right). In order to cover this gaffe, I cut to a closeup of the cueball hitting the other balls (middle), then cut to the first section of dialogue (right). This kind of sucks because it means that the establishing shot never focuses on the actors. Just so you know, I'll claim later that this was a purposeful artistic decision (like most of the mistakes). At the premiere,if anyone asks, just say: "Yes, he did that on purpose too. It's a brilliant artistic shot and a powerful statement about postmodern ennui." That usually shuts them up.

The next problem is, when we shot that section of dialogue originally, Aaron starts out alone in the frame, breaks, and then Leland walks in frame and they start talking. I have no idea why I had them do it this way, so I'm going to have to cut from the breaking balls to this first section of dialogue in such a way that it looks like Leland hasn't moved. And this is just the first handful of seconds! Oy.

Man, I had no idea how hard this continuity stuff really is. We set out with the intention of carefully tracking continuity issues, and with regard to issues like costumes etc. we did pretty well. It's the little things, like positions around a pool table or the positions of the balls that are killers. Hopefully nobody will notice too much. . .

Dai kirai ame nanka. . .

Well, once again, not a lot of forward progress to report on the editing. I haven't moved on to Scene 10 yet, because the little time I've spent on editing has been spent trying to get Scene 9 working. The lack of consistent choreography is just killing me, but since I have no one to blame but myself, I just have to forge on. Let me give you an example of the problem. These two frames come from the same part of the conversation, and this is the best transition point I've been able to find between these two angles:



This is definately the worst cut in terms of continuity in the movie so far, but it may not be as big a deal as it looks, because Crystal is basically in the same pose in each, and Anna's motion right before the cut makes it look like she's straightening up, so her change of pose isn't as jarring as you might think. Still, it bugs me. Guess I'll just have to live with it.

This week I talked to my good friend Tony (our boom mic operator) about the sound issues we have with this scene, which are intimidating. One of the biggest problems is the sound of cicadas during the second shoot. The cicadas aren't too loud, but the problem is that when we changed camera angles we changed the angle of the boom mic, so in the shots of Anna the bugs are loud, and in the shots of Crystal they are barely audible. Tony suggested that while we may not be able to scrub out the cicadas in the Anna shots, we could add it to Crystal's shots so at least there is continuity that way. In any case, this scene is going to take a lot of sound work when we get to that point.

I'll probably get working on scene 10 this week, so check back here next Monday for an update on how that goes.

The weather in California this week has been terrible. I think Los Angeles is getting twice as much rain in the last three weeks as it gets in most years. I guess it's okay though, California and the rest of the Southwest has been mired in drought the last few years, and this may finally be the beginning of the end of it. I haven't been keeping track of the weather situation in New Mexico very closely, but I know that the 505 state is really desperate to end the drought; it was an important issue in 2002 when I was working in state politics. Basically, more people had water rights to the Rio Grande than there was water in the Rio Grande. Add to that pressure from environmental groups to release emergency reserves from state reservoirs to save the silvery minnow, and we had quite a political mess.

Issues like state water management that bore most people to the point of ritual suicide actually hold some interest for me. I was elated to discover a new book by Jared Diamond called Collapse at Target the other day. I'm a big fan of Diamond's books, and a book by him about the decline of civilizations was impossible for me to pass up. Once I saw it, my purchase of it was inevitable, like the immutable motion of the heavens themselves. Fire must burn, rain must fall and I must read Jared Diamond books.

Right now, I'm reading the part about Easter Island. Basically, the Easter Islanders screwed themselves over by deforesting their entire island to build those creepy statues. My theory is that they actually had an ingenious plan for long-term survival based on evolving chemolithoautotrophic abilities, and wanted to have an attractive food source in the form of giant heads. Apparently, they decided to carve the statues without working out a metabolism based on oxidizing ferrous iron for sustenance first. One can only hope we learn from history and don't repeat their silly mistake.

One of the reasons I didn't get much done on the movie was that I had some special visitors. For the first time since I moved to California, friends from Albuquerque came here to visit me. Tony, who worked on the movie as our boom mic operator, came with his wife Kim and 3-month-old daughter Celeste. Their visit was a welcome change of pace in my otherwise bromidic life. I haven't seen Celeste since her birth, and she's grown a lot. I can't wait to see her again, and it might not be too long before I do. The people I know in Albquerque are by far the best thing about the place, and it's high time I went back for a visit. I'm thinking I may return between quarters, which would be the first week of February or so. That'd be as good a time as any, since it'd let me be around for the annual Super Bowl party, which is always fun. Depending on how things work out, I may or may not try to bring the camera and film some of the pickup shots I need, if I can get anyone to agree to help out.

It's funny to think that behind their pulchritudinous exteriors, babies are voracious, insatiable learning machines. Celeste is just starting to understand what toys are, and she watches the colorful links dangling from her car seat's handle with avid interest. She even grabs onto them once in awhile. Such developments may seem tiny to us adults, but just talk to an AI researcher sometime. The brain power contained in a tiny infant is truly incredible.

In last week's post I talked a little about my resolutions or plans for the year. On New Year's, or maybe a day or two later, a powerful idea started forming. I'm not sure whether or not I'll go through with it, but I have the inklings of an idea for another, entirely different movie. Unlike LoE, it'd probably be filmed here in California, on a very tight one or two week schedule, and cost virtually nothing. If I can really do it as cheaply as I think, there might be no real reason not to film it. But I haven't decided for sure yet, and I haven't written a script yet, so you'll have to stand by on that one. In the eventuality that I do decide to go ahead with it, all the old cast and crew will be invited out to help, although I'm sure most of you would have a hard time just wandering off to California for a couple weeks. Still, the offer is there. Because I like you all so much.

I have two other major ideas for movies to make in NM. One would be another slacker comedy/drama based around the Albuquerque import (as in cars) sub-culture and the other is the much-rumored Western. I haven't gotten very far in scripting or developing either one of them. For one thing, both ideas are bigger than LoE, and there's no possible way I could fun them myself, especially given my current financial state of affairs. That would mean getting money from somewhere, which probably means paying it back at some point. That naturally leads to the question, can I make money doing this? You know I'd love to, and chances are if you're reading this blog, you'd love to as well. But can it actually be done?

If it can't, or if I decide just to pursue filmmaking as a hobby and nothing more, it means sticking to smaller, cheaper projects. This isn't inherently bad. Some of my favorite movies were very simple, requiring only a good group of actors and a set or two. Cheaper movies also increase the liklihood of making a profit, because we might actually recoup the costs of a movie with a five hundred dollar budget in a few screenings at the Guild.

I've also been thinking that a smaller, more character-driven film would be good for my own development as a writer. One of the biggest problems I have with LoE in retrospect is that the main character, Clint, is actually kind of boring. He's very much a Joe Everyman type, which can work and kind of does, given the concept of this story. The problem is, I always write main characters like that. I see myself as kind of a passive, aloof observer in real life, and write characters who behave the same way; they don't do things, things just happen to them. Although Clint makes some proactive moves in LoE, and could be said to change over the course of the story, is he really a person worth telling a story about? He doesn't really seem distinctive at all, and his fatal flaw (if he can be said to have one) is banality.

So, I'm thinking that maybe a small, cheap, dramatic and character-intensive flick may be a good next step. I'm thinking pure drama may be the way to go instead of trying for comedy. One thing I'm noticing in the LoE footage is that a lot of the lines I intended to be funny weren't nearly as good as stuff the actors came up with on their own when I told them to improv. That may mean that an improv comedy is somewhere in our future, but since dramatic fiction is where my heart really lies I'd like to give it a more serious shot. I'm thinking the story will be something along the lines of Reservoir Dogs or 12 Angry Men. A tense, tight drama revolving around a few distinctive characters caught in a stressful situation.

Well, anyway, enough rambling. I'll let you know more about this idea as it develops (if it does). In any case, check back next week for a progress report on scene 10 and parts beyond!

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I. . .

“I thought you got the day off,” I said, squeezing the phone angrily.

“Well, I have to work,” said the other person. “I’m not independently wealthy.”

I took a couple breaths and regained my composure. Sure, yet another scheduling snafu had arisen, but so what? That was everyday life on this movie set. “All right,” I said. “Just get here as soon as you can.”

I hung up and started pacing. Thanks to this new delay, I had some time to waste, so I spent a little of it mulling over this “independently wealthy” comment. It wasn’t the first time, or the last, that someone working on the movie would make some similar comment. I wandered out to the backyard and sat on the old yellow couch. Somehow, that bedraggled, odoriferous seat with its panoramic view of the tangled power lines crisscrossing the sky behind 312 Harvard SE was always a comfortable place to sit and think.

I'm often asked how much the movie cost to make. I've estimated that it cost something like $10,000, but that was really just a number I pulled out of my ass. Now I have a slightly better answer:$9,645.46. This isn't really the cost of the movie itself. That figure I may never know for sure. This is the amount my net worth has decreased since last year at this time. I guess you could say it's what I lost to make the movie happen.

At the time of this conversation, I was facing a serious shortage of funds. I’d spent all the cash I’d borrowed from grandma and maxed out my credit card. I still had a bit in savings, but if I drained that account completely I’d have nothing left. A week or two later I’d get a surprise call from an ex-employer who owed me some money and had decided to pay up. That money saved the last few weeks of production, but before it came I was really starting to worry.

It’s kinda weird to be accused of wealth. Accused is really the right word; an unmistakable barb of bitterness usually lurked beneath these offhand comments. Maybe it was just a bizarre paranoia of my own, founded on a few isolated and meaningless remarks. But it got me thinking. And today, as I sit at my computer desk in California, doing my end-of-year finances and sipping a Strawberry Manilow while watching the Twilight Zone marathon on the Sci-fi channel, I find myself thinking those same thoughts again.

During a road trip to Denver a few years ago, I was sitting in the passenger seat playing Solitaire on a laptop when a funny metaphysical thought struck me. It’s hardly a unique one, but as a metaphor for life it comes back to me now and then. You know the old fate versus free will debate? I never figured out a solid stance on that one. The closest I came to a resolution was my Solitaire compromise.

See, in each game of Solitaire, the cards are shuffled and their starting positions can’t be changed. In some games, the cards are arranged in such a way that it’s really impossible to win. Other times, the game seems unbelievably easy. Usually,it’s possible to win, but easy to make mistakes. You can’t change the order of the cards in the deck, but your choices make the difference between winning and losing.

Life’s the same way. There are things in life that can’t be altered by anyone’s choices. A star in a faraway galaxy is fluctuating, eating the last of its hydrogen and getting ready to supernova. No choice that anyone makes can stop it; the forces are already in motion. Its violent eruption may as well be a proscription of fate. Such a supernova could have already happened 35 years ago to a star 50 light-years away, and as we sit here scurrying about our earthly affairs the end of all life on earth is radiating toward us through the trackless depths of the Void. If such a card has been dealt for us, then all our choices are for nothing.

But on the mundane scale of everyday affairs, the outlook is a little less dramatic. The cards of your life are more often the result of choices other people have made than fated absolutes dictated by physics. Your birth, the people you meet, the virus you pick up. Some are just the thing you needed and some really ruin your day. And, for the most part, it’s what you decide to do about them that determines your success. Of course, in life, success is a little more subjectively defined than it is in Solitaire.

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine said the oddest thing to me. He’s a cool guy, married, two kids, and owns his own business. Out of the blue one day while we were talking he said he envied me, what with my exotic and adventurous life of filming in Albuquerque, cavorting with beautiful actresses, and so forth. I was downright stunned. I mean, I enjoyed making the movie and all, but my life is hardly an enviable one.

Having the opportunity to live in Albuquerque for the summer and make a movie was partly because of the cards I was dealt, but much more because of the way I played them. I’ve made a lot of choices in my life, and I’m not happy with all of them. It’s the same with everyone, I suspect. We’re always haunted by the choices we didn’t make – the roads we might have traveled. At particularly introspective moments, we look at people who have things we don’t and wonder if we might have had that if only we’d handled those pivotal moments differently.

The people I tend to envy are the ones with independence and stability. The ones who’ve found a good woman (or man, whatever), make a living doing something they enjoy, own their own house. At times I wonder if I could’ve been like that. If only I’d used my good ACT score to get into a good college out of town instead of taking the lottery scholarship to UNM. If only I’d moved into the dorms as a freshman, met some new people, gotten some independence instead of staying in my parents’ house and spending time with my high school friends. If only I’d gotten some good internships instead of spending my summers having fun. If only I’d gotten a career-starting job instead of working part-time as a network admin and taking odd jobs on the side.

If only. . . but I didn’t.

So today, when I look at my life, I don’t see myself as an adventurous, wealthy cad, swooping through life and taking no prisoners. I see a guy who’s still single, lives with his grandmother, hasn’t had a steady job in two years, and who’s crippled by an inability to decide on a career. If a classy camera pan revealed Rod Serling standing unobtrusively in a corner of my bedroom, smoking his cigarette and smiling with that strangely stiff upper lip, and if he solemnly delivered to me an offer to trade what I’ve got for a life of contentment and responsibility. . . I might take it.

Would I be any happier? Probably not. A confidant of mine who I talked to about this recently suggested that I’ve made the choices I have because stability isn’t really what I want. If I did find myself in that position, it’d probably drive me crazy. You know that old saying, “Temet Nosce” (“Know Thyself”)? It’s funny how we really don’t know ourselves. We feel like passengers in our own brains, passive spectators of our own lives. Do we really understand why we make the decisions we do? Do we think about our choices before we make them, or do we only rationalize later?

In light of these airy musings, I’ve been trying to formulate a handful of resolutions for the year. This time last year, I set my sights on making a movie. Now that that project is barreling inexorably to its conclusion, what should my next objective be? Another movie? Starting some kind of business? A steady job as the start a good career? Or maybe just waiting to see which card is next in the deck?

Whatever I end up doing, I wish the rest of you the best of luck in untangling your own dilemmas in 2005. Happy New Year Everyone!