Zach here. At eight o’clock this morning I walked the halls of Capital High School, sheepishly avoiding eye contact like I did my first time…nine years ago. And teenagers still seem as callous as they ever did. In fact, I’m sure I would’ve been stuffed into a locker had it not been for my intimidating mustache.
I was relieved to find Ms. Samson’s classroom and duck inside. She’d called me a couple of nights ago to ask if I’d come talk to her film class as a guest speaker. I said that of course I would, and then naturally neglected to prepare anything at all. Well, I prepared a little. I brought a copy of Bummer Summer and the little booklet Nandan and I had put together to promote my next film, The International Sign for Choking. Other than that though, I figured I knew my own story pretty well and thus wouldn’t need to rehearse it.
So after the bell rang and Ms. Samson took attendance, I sat down on a stool in the front of the room and just started talking. Aimlessly. Just a couple months ago I addressed a three hundred person, stadium style audience. In Spanish. And that was a breeze compared to this handful of kids. There’s nothing like the overwhelming apathy in a roomful of sleepy-eyed high school students to make a guy uncomfortable. It was like playing tennis with a brick wall, only there was no brick wall even. Just a deep, uncaring void of nothingness.
But I’m being dramatic, it was actually a pretty decent time. My talk could have used some structure though, that’s certain. Aside from showing the first five minutes of the movie and pulling up the fundraising trailer on YouTube, I filled the entire fifty minute period with my rambling and didn’t even get around to discussing my actual filmmaking method or advertising the upcoming screening (one month from today!).
So as of tomorrow morning I’m going into hiding. And what better place to do so than the Brooklyn Film Festival? I’m very excited. You can still order tickets if you haven’t yet.
Zach here. We just got our first review by a major US publication, and what a publication it was. See the title of this post for a subtle hint. You can read it here.
As you can see, it’s somewhat mixed, although the general vibe is definitely positive. Review-wise, we’ve gotten much better, as well as much worse. Before ever having made a movie, I sometimes wondered how I’d react to reading this stuff. Now I know: kind of apathetically. I don’t believe that movies themselves are “good” or “bad”, only the impressions that they leave on each individual viewer. When someone hates my movie, fine, that’s just one out of however many billion potential impressions. I feel the same way when someone loves it: so what? Admittedly, I’m human and I can’t help hoping that people approve of what I did, but I don’t get angry or defensive in the face of criticism. Except when it’s personal. The film and the filmmaker are separate entities, I can’t stand when people don’t seem to understand that.
But if I really believe all of what I said before, then why am I writing now after having been reviewed by someone “important”? Well, not everyone shares my weird, noncommittal views regarding movie qualification. Variety is a sort of a giant, and so I guess that what makes me anxious about the review is the thought of people taking it as an “official verdict”. Plenty of people make up their minds whether to see a movie based on reviews. Myself, I’m more of a trailer man. But then again, even our trailer has proven polarizing. Whatever, Bummer Summer is no longer my baby. It’s my chubby toddler that won’t stop crying at Red Robin. And I’m pregnant with another, god help me.
In other news, the movie had its most recent festival screening just last night in Athens, OH. Nandan was there in attendance, and from what he tells me it seems to have been our most lackluster screening to date. But I’ll reserve judgment until I read his detailed blog-report, which I’m sure will come any day now. I’m exponentially more excited for our next festival, but I’m not sure that I’m supposed to say what it is yet. Whatever, check back regularly because I’m sure I’ll crack soon enough.
I know it’s not even May yet, but get excited for June as it will include a screening at this festival in question, an article in another major publication, the launch of our fundraising campaign for The International Sign for Choking, and Bummer Summer’s hometown premiere. Details in the coming weeks.
I’m fresh back from an overnight trip to rural New Jersey where the idea was to record some missing sound effects for the movie’s sound design. Naturally, a blizzard rendered this task impossible. I’m getting a lot of anxiety about finishing everything on time, because although there’s plenty to be done, all of it is out of my hands. People are on it, and while they’re all people that I trust and have confidence in, it’s not easy to just sit by with my fingers crossed that nothing goes wrong.
So how do I deal with it? I sit around, I stress, I go to work, I make nervous phone calls, and most entertainingly, I browse my hard drive for amusing photos or video to post on the internet. Enjoy.
Zach here. I’d like to open this entry with an excerpt from a previous entry.
“Zach here. Nandan and I are at the ‘office’ right now slaving away on our personal bios to put in the prospectus so that people will give us money. And we’re doing a terrible job. I don’t like writing about myself in this way, it makes me feel slimy all over. So slimy. Worst of all is how far removed this is from the actual film itself on a creative level. So even though technically we’re working towards getting the film made, I can’t manage to feel like it’s worthwhile.”
That was ten and a half months ago, but it’s starting to sound wincingly familiar. Between the submission process, putting together a new website, and working with sound man/graphic wizard Dusty to design a poster, I’m beginning to feel all of that old self-promotion slime oozing back to me. But this time it’s worse.
Like I said back in January, we were working towards getting the film made. But how do I rationalize this shit now? I could claim that we’re working towards getting the film seen. But I don’t know. I don’t think that anyone needs to see this. That’s arrogant. It’s been made, it’s done, and it is what it is: a solid first attempt with some great moments and a lot of rough edges. I know that it’s important to meditate on and be proud of the accomplishment, but then I’d like to very promptly leave it behind and try another.
Actually I just realized that the success of this first effort could probably make the second one exponentially easier to get off the ground. I had a lot more griping to do, but I guess I’ve found my rationalization. Thanks, blog, for helping me arrive here.
My original complaint still stands, however. This work we’re doing isn’t any fun. Seeing Dusty’s poster designs is actually pretty cool. But the rest of it…no, thank you.
In other news, for family and friends, I’ve been very sick but I’m better now, and today was the first day of my brand new and soon-to-be-very-grueling retail job.
And to thank everyone for putting up with me in this post, I’ll end on something kind of interesting. Kind of.
That is a still from one of our rehearsals. It was, in my opinion, far and away our worst rehearsal. No one was taking it seriously, and the shit we were coming up with was seriously stupid. You can see that Julia and Mackinley are having a good time, while my face says otherwise. It was early on in the process and a definite low point.
That is a still from the very same scene as it appears in the movie. You may expect me to talk about how much I love the scene now and how rewarding it is to see in light of that bad rehearsal. Well, it’s actually one of my least favorite scenes. It’s not bad, I just don’t like it all that much. But the point is that I get a kick out of seeing the two stills next to one another and I hope you do to.
Zach here. It’s never anyone else anymore. I wish Nandan would post something.
Last thing I wrote was about our weird screening. That was cut one. On Sunday night we screened cut three to a diverse crowd composed partially of non-ex-film students (the common man, if you will), and partially of formidably opinionated ex-film students. The general reaction was positive. There was a lot of interesting discussion about the unlikeability of characters and whether or not it necessarily meant an unlikeable movie. Luckily for me, I think we came to the consensus that it didn’t. I’m excited to see what a larger audience thinks of it, for better or worse, because I think I’ll be able to derive a lot about the nature of movies and how people perceive them. It that sense, this entire process has been experimental.
So now that the movie’s almost done (cut four is already complete), what’s next? My friend Nick, who was generous enough to host the screening I just wrote about, has since been hounding me relentlessly to submit to festivals immediately, considering the volume of important deadlines in November. This has generally come in the form of a text message every three hours or so. “u submit yet???” But the sound is a shit-show. Well actually, for being completely unmixed, the sound is awesome (thanks Dusty and Luc, seriously). But the last scene is garbled and the dialogue is completely inaudible. My friend and current generous host Katie worked with the clip for two hours last night before deeming it unsalvageable. We’re now scrambling to complete a full ADR/foley reconstruction of the scene, which includes recording dialogue from actors in three different cities. Meanwhile, the deadlines are too fast approaching. Nick insists that I submit the movie incomplete as a work in progress. Last night I exported a version with the last scene silenced and subtitled. It’s kind of artsy, actually. I’m waiting for the DVD to burn right now.
With the movie being so close to the end and all, I figured it’d be fun to post a photo from when the movie was so close to the beginning.
This is me, embarrassingly enough, outlining the plot of the movie on the chalkboard that Nandan painted onto the wall of our Brooklyn apartment. It was taken on September 22, 2008. Pretty wild.
Zach here. Editing has been a slow process, but it’s definitely happening. Yesterday was particularly productive, and equally grueling. I’m starting to uncover all of the mistakes that I made as director, and it stings when there’s nothing to be done about them. We looked at twenty-three takes of a single scene yesterday and none of them were right because I hadn’t realized or been willing to confront what wasn’t working. And now we’ve got to salvage what we can. Feature films are huge and there are so many different ways to blow it. It’s hard not to lose confidence in the entire machine when one of its parts isn’t working. We’ve pieced together the first thirty minutes, and will hopefully have finished much more by the end of this week. I’m sorry that editing isn’t such a photogenic process as shooting. This blog is starting to lag on the pretty picture front.
I’m going to dedicate a reflection to Nandan, because he’s been studying very hard and doing lots of homework. Also because his mug doesn’t show up too often on the blog.
This photo really captures my favorite side of Nandan: the miserable side. That particular afternoon we were on one of our signature leisurely location scouts, in search of a country swimming hole. I had already modeled a nice, miniature cliff jump for the camera, but we wanted to see someone using the ropeswing farther downstream. The water was freezing, and I didn’t want to swim out to it, so Nandan stepped up to the plate. I started rolling and he – in classic, country-bred form – went for a dive in lieu of the standard swing-to-drop. And he must have been rusty, because in failing to get his hands out on time he took the unbroken surface of the water straight to the face. Lucky for us I was standing by giddily to photograph the result in beautiful black and white.
Zach here. With exciting news. When I got out of bed this morning (out of couch, to be accurate), all of the footage had finally finished compressing and was ready and waiting in editable form. Jesse and I began reviewing takes this afternoon and have started charting out the film’s course on paper. He even got started on the opening sequence as I ate burritos over his shoulder. It won’t be long at all until our first cut is finished. Get psyched.
Meanwhile, a reflection. Strolling down Bedford this afternoon, a passing SUV gave all of us pedestrians a treat: “Boom Boom Pow” by the Black Eyed Peas bumping from the stereo and out through the tinted windows. Suddenly, memories. Memories of Skateland, where they would play that song at least twice per session. Back west we used to go every Wednesday night…religiously. Once shooting got underway, however, we were either too busy or too tired to ever make it there again. In fact, our very last trip out there was after our very first day of shooting. That’s when I took this photo:
This is the kid that works the skate rental window. I think his name might be Hunter, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Anyway, he was and undoubtedly still is consistently there to dish out skates begrudgingly…always with a side of sarcasm. Seeing this photo of him makes me smile, especially on account of what a kook he looks like in it. Here’s to you, Hunter. Or whatever your name might be.
Zach here. I made it on the Greyhound. It was a pretty grueling trip and mostly uneventful. When I first sat down on the bus in Olympia, I noticed that someone had written in marker on the back of the seat in front of me. “Welcome to hell.” That about sums it up.
But now I’m in New York, and it feels nice to be back. Here’s the view from Jesse the editor’s Brooklyn rooftop:
Everyone is excited to start putting the movie together. Frustratingly, there are a few days of tedious file compression that are going to have to take place before we’re ready to edit, which we started this afternoon. I’ll let you know once we’ve gotten underway with the real snipping.
Meanwhile, here’s another reflection.
I always thought this photo was hilarious but for some reason it would never upload to the blog back when it was taken. We needed to create the effect of a smoking engine for our roadside breakdown scene. For lord-knows-what reason, Dusty had packed a smoke bomb and wound up saving the day as he had before and would certainly do again. Anyway, there was all sorts of debate about whether it was safe to light a smoke bomb on top of the engine of my car. I was hesitant, and Julia was downright against it, but everyone else seemed to have a shoulder-shruggy, “let’s see what happens” sort of attitude so we went ahead with it. Anyway, I really like this photo. I think it serves as a nice visual metaphor for our filmmaking process.
Zach here. Bright and way too early Tuesday morning, Luc and I rode the bus up to Seattle to shoot a scene starring Julia that she could use in her reel.
It was a fun exercise for me to shoot something in a “conventional” way after having spent so much time riding the boring-ass-artsy-long-take wagon. The scene itself was also fun. Somehow we finished it all in an unexpectedly smooth and brief manner. Wrap-party around a peach cobbler.
I stuck around for the night and spent the next day shooting an installation piece for my friend Vicci that centered around some large papier-mâché heads she had crafted. Julia came around to return the boom pole I’d left at her house and to drop off a file to be included in her reel. When it was time to go she gave me the good old goofy “well shoot, I hope I see you again someday” goodbye. It’s weird to be exchanging such long term see-you-laters with these people with whom I’ve been sharing this project for the past several months. Which brings us to today’s reflection.
When we first met with Julia, it was because our friend Lucy (as seen in the fundraising trailer) had dropped out due to a too-busy work schedule. We decided she seemed right for the part, when all of the sudden Lucy changed her mind on us and asked to rejoin the team. This created an uncomfortable situation. We were upfront with both of them by admitting that we were seeing someone else, and asked for a week’s deliberation. On the day that the principal cast was made official, we took this photograph for the blog and yet somehow never got around to posting it. I think it’s nice.
Zach here. I just uploaded a new video to our YouTube Channel. It’s a clip of us testing out something known as “the Dusty track”. Here’s the back-story:
One day, early on in production, Nandan, Dusty, and I were lounging around watching one of my favorite no-brainer popcorn flicks: Antonioni’s The Passenger. Naturally, we got to talking about that famous penultimate shot (you know the one) and how it was done. I figured it was just a steadicam or maybe a dolly and the only tricky part was splitting apart the bars in the window once the camera was close enough. We looked it up. So much more complicated. Apparently there were all kinds of complex gyroscopic devices involved, and the camera was actually transferred mid-shot from dolly to crane via a mounted hook. Antonioni directed the scene by radio from a van with multiple video monitors.
Dusty’s mouth was watering. He started speculating about all of the complex trick shots that we could rig up. Later that afternoon we were scheduled to shoot the backseat makeout scene, so we joked about the idea of the camera starting outside the car, moving in through one window, tracking across the backseat, and exiting through the opposite window. I explained that the camera moves one time throughout the entire movie – it doesn’t even pan – so such a showy shot would look ridiculously out of place. Dusty was bummed. Sympathetically, I offered him a generous budget of $30 to let him design whatever shot he wanted. We would shoot it, and whether or not it remained part of the movie would be determined later on.
Three weeks later, the Dusty track had been perfected. It was a drill-powered (seriously, drill-powered), camera-mountable, 20-foot-long 2×6 covered with all sorts of screws, pulleys, ribbons, and other things I don’t understand. It was designed to sit across the open windows of my car to track in one side and out the other. We’d been watching the thing grow slowly the entire time. An earlier, undeveloped prototype had come along on our Oregon road trip. I remember being parked on the side of a deserted rural road to shoot a breakdown scene and seeing Dusty making adjustments to it the entire time. Then there was the day we were unable to shoot our scheduled scene for some reason or another and tried to shoot Dusty’s shot instead only to find that the thing still wasn’t ready. Here’s the only image I could find of the track, taken by Rob on that same day:
The track didn’t ever work until the gray, drizzly day that Dusty left. But it worked great. To all of our regret, it was never used for the movie, but we shot some test footage, which is now up on YouTube.
