Our test screening is tonight.
How do I feel about that? Kinda numb.
But am reminded of the helpful phrase, which were the first words I wrote in this blog:
"This is so crazy, it just might work."
PRA 5.1.05
To the right I updated the link list with the info for our preview screening of "Untitled Asian Invasion Movie" at VC Filmfest 2005. It's May 1, 9 PM, the DGA on Sunset.
It's "Untitled" cos I may want to back off on the title, although I like it, if I hear any more people struggling to remember what the movie is called. "Test Audience?.....Test....Something...."
It's a preview because the color correction, visual effects, audio and all that are not yet finished. So it will look and sound a little rough in parts but it is a whole movie.
It is also one of about seven different movies in the festival this year involving a love story between two Asian women. But ours is the only one between a human and an alien.
It's "Untitled" cos I may want to back off on the title, although I like it, if I hear any more people struggling to remember what the movie is called. "Test Audience?.....Test....Something...."
It's a preview because the color correction, visual effects, audio and all that are not yet finished. So it will look and sound a little rough in parts but it is a whole movie.
It is also one of about seven different movies in the festival this year involving a love story between two Asian women. But ours is the only one between a human and an alien.
I will stand here and scream while something happens.
Just watched "Spartan" on HBO and decided that I basically like the movie (although it is not David Mamet's best-written work, that still makes it superior to most other film scripts, see previous blog rant on film vs. theater) except can we please please PLEASE call a moratorium on, criminalize, or otherwise cancel for all time this cliche:
Something scary happens, and a girl starts screaming, paralyzed, while other bad things happens...usually until someone rescues her.
It's just toooo stupid to watch. The president's daugher, who at this point in the movie is no stranger to sudden ordeals, sees someone get shot and starts shrieking, and stands Stock Still until someone grabs her. Of course her paralysis puts other lives in danger. Of course this makes me hate her as a person. Of course it is always the girl who does this, even though I'm sure that there are plenty of guys who would also, in such circumstances, suddenly become useless sitting ducks with no fight nor flight instinct. Not that I want to see any of these people in movies. I see enough slow-witted passivity in the course of my daily life. In movies I like to see people taking action under pressure.
Something scary happens, and a girl starts screaming, paralyzed, while other bad things happens...usually until someone rescues her.
It's just toooo stupid to watch. The president's daugher, who at this point in the movie is no stranger to sudden ordeals, sees someone get shot and starts shrieking, and stands Stock Still until someone grabs her. Of course her paralysis puts other lives in danger. Of course this makes me hate her as a person. Of course it is always the girl who does this, even though I'm sure that there are plenty of guys who would also, in such circumstances, suddenly become useless sitting ducks with no fight nor flight instinct. Not that I want to see any of these people in movies. I see enough slow-witted passivity in the course of my daily life. In movies I like to see people taking action under pressure.
Feelgood Montage City
The only thing that kept me going through a strenuous day at work was looking forward to making the closing credit sequence for the movie. We're going to have one of those Top Gun/Trainspotting-esque closing montages introducing all the lead actors and the characters they played (which I believe will be doubly useful because many people among our test audiences have had trouble remembering what the various characters' names are) set to one of our composer's lovely cues. Following that, during the credits roll, we'll throw in all the outtakes from alternate scenes that were funny but contextually didn't fit into the final cut. A little gooshy and indulgent to be sure, but if you can't have this kind of stuff to make you feel good about your movie as it's ending, then why even make one, I ask you.
..."Baby baby....I'll get down on my knees for you..."
..."Baby baby....I'll get down on my knees for you..."
overexposure
Hitting that wall (this happens once a month or so) where I cannot tell whether the editing changes we are making on the movie are making it better, worse, or exactly the same.
...It happens because I stop seeing the movie as a whole but rather as a tediously long stream of minutes formed of 60 seconds each, each second being formed by 24 individual frames that can be rearranged in endless agonizing combinations.
...I want every scene to be great. But watching other movies one notices that most movies are a few good scenes strung together by a bunch of interstitial stuff which enables those good scenes.
...I want every scene to not be noticeably bad. But there are some scenes which while not my favorite are key to setting up the other scenes. So some of those have to stay.
...Most of all I don't want people to go, "so what?" But I honestly don't know whether choosing between 1 or 2 seconds of blackness between scene transitions will make a difference on that score.
...In theater it's nice because if something sucks one night you just adjust it for the performance the next night. But at this stage, if it sucks, it will remain so in perpetuity. So I'm trying to keep my suck antennae at maximum sensitivity. But it's hard, because all it takes is One Bad Second.
...It happens because I stop seeing the movie as a whole but rather as a tediously long stream of minutes formed of 60 seconds each, each second being formed by 24 individual frames that can be rearranged in endless agonizing combinations.
...I want every scene to be great. But watching other movies one notices that most movies are a few good scenes strung together by a bunch of interstitial stuff which enables those good scenes.
...I want every scene to not be noticeably bad. But there are some scenes which while not my favorite are key to setting up the other scenes. So some of those have to stay.
...Most of all I don't want people to go, "so what?" But I honestly don't know whether choosing between 1 or 2 seconds of blackness between scene transitions will make a difference on that score.
...In theater it's nice because if something sucks one night you just adjust it for the performance the next night. But at this stage, if it sucks, it will remain so in perpetuity. So I'm trying to keep my suck antennae at maximum sensitivity. But it's hard, because all it takes is One Bad Second.
all this Poetry of the Human Condition stuff is nice, but....
...I really hope the next movie I make has a giant robot in it.
....
....or a spontaneous rock musical number. I really like those.
....
....or a spontaneous rock musical number. I really like those.
theater vs. film
Just saw a lovely play, Lodestone's Solve For X, and it got me thinking again about the paradox of my two favorite art forms. So closely related, yet so incompatible. One so popular and funded, one so esoteric and poor. The same questions always pop up in my brain:
- Why is there so much good writing in plays, and so much bad writing in movies? -
Plays are about language, movies about image. Of course there is tons of bad writing in theater, but a Really Well-Written Play is ALWAYS about a thousand times better than a screenplay that is considered "well-written." When people say "it's a beautifully written screenplay" they mean "it's not incredibly horrible like every other screenplay I've read/written." Because the standard is much much lower. Plus, seeing a bad play is not quite so offensive to the societal fabric as seeing a bad movie. Seeing a badly-written play is like watching someone fall down publicly on the sidewalk; oh well, that was too bad, no harm done. Seeing those badly-written movies, especially the ones that are erroneously reviewed as having "beautifully-written screenplays," is like being complicit in the national travesty of ego, wasted money, and propaganda that conspires to make the Gigantic Horrible Offensive Films that pass for our entertainment and common reference point.
But there's something else, and I think it has to do with the kind of personalities that write plays. To me, a really well-done play offers a truthful observation about human behavior, something gleaned from years and years of watching people, probably from the sullen dark silent corner of the room in which the potential playwrights are often lurking, wondering about people and why they do things. Films however are made by people whose talent for observation might stop at "My lead actress looks really hot when she's backlit." Y'know, people who don't really care why someone does anything as long as they look good doing it. So if I ruled the world all movies would be made by documentary filmmakers, and music video directors would have to struggle mightily to be handed a narrative project.
- Why are movies more fun than plays? -
Answer, I think: Filmmakers understand something about pop thrill that theater people don't. Duh, obviously, movies are the most popular art form in the world. Movies are the only art form that is truly corrupted by economies of scale. Of course, every artist has to struggle with the balance between "entertaining" and "truthful" (or flash vs. substance, or however you want to frame it) but only in movies is the art of dumbing down the material so highly revered by the establishment. You have to make it dumb so it will play to the potential audience of everyone in the world. Also, you have to give the people what they want in terms of the visceral thrill of high cheekbones and big explosions, and this usually means tossing the incisive, keenly-observed bits of the story, and putting in the money shots.
Obviously, not all movies do this. The movies that you like on the second viewing, or ten years after you first see them, probably don't. The movie that you just saw and enjoyed but can't remember the name of the main character, probably did.
The play I saw tonight offered simple pleasures like well-turned sentences and intimacy with expressive actors. It had moments of theatrical beauty which, for better or worse, just aren't most people's cup of tea. One could say that is because theater is elitist and tends to cater to a literate upper-crust audience; or one could say that is because people don't like to think about their entertainment, and most movies are made so you don't have to think. Hence, they are more fun.
Some plays, most of mine for example, try to get around this by bringing back the populist elements of theater and leaving out the long draining talky parts. So you get plays that have kung-fu battles and musical numbers and, within reason, explosions....and that's all well and good. But it's still more taxing than a night out at the movies because you have to be in physical awe of the person who's actually doing that thing, because oh my god they're actually doing it. They Might Screw Up. In movies, you can just relax and go, "Hey look, Superman flies. He's probably gonna make it to the other side of the screen, and boy am I gonna feel good when that happens. Let's rewind and look at it again."
- Why is doing theater more fun than making films/videos, and why the heck am I making films/videos? -
The plays we did at Emerald Rain Productions (ERP) were, for the most part, like summer camp. Although the quality of the performances varied, the rehearsal process was almost always laughing, singing, dancing, screwing around, the best time I ever had spent with friends, with the added pathos that comes from the built-in finite length of the rehearsal and the play's run, Like the school year, you got to look forward to the bittersweet release of closing night, and the end.
I haven't made like 20 feature films so I'm not the expert, OK, but being on a movie set is not like that. There's too much stuff to do to ever enjoy yourself. All that you care about is that the footage you get can be edited into something that resembles fun, although no fun was had in its creation.
The thing is in films there is the illusory promise of living the "good" life. There's money in the film industry that pays for a lot of peoples' nice cars, nice houses, nice food. You might get pampered in a way that theater people never are. (It's always hilarious to watch "A Long Day's Journey Into Night" and try to imagine the world in which a patriarch could be a rich STAGE actor....) You might get to hang out with people who aren't constantly stressed out, as theater people are, by rent and day jobs and doing a two-hour live show four nights a week for an average of three audience members. You could get to be one of those elitist people, the kind who can, y'know, afford to go to theater.
That promise is a hollow crock of crap of course. But so many people are involved in the business of pursuing it, the hustling, starf*cking and misrepresenting yourself for a part of the Big Film, that the quality of human interactions in the film industry is much less honest and more generally agonizing than those in theater.
Theater is like getting to be in love with someone a little bit without most of the pain.
The fundamental unit of theater-making is communicating with other people.
You can't make a living off theater, but doing it is the best way to spend the moments of your life.
- Why is there so much good writing in plays, and so much bad writing in movies? -
Plays are about language, movies about image. Of course there is tons of bad writing in theater, but a Really Well-Written Play is ALWAYS about a thousand times better than a screenplay that is considered "well-written." When people say "it's a beautifully written screenplay" they mean "it's not incredibly horrible like every other screenplay I've read/written." Because the standard is much much lower. Plus, seeing a bad play is not quite so offensive to the societal fabric as seeing a bad movie. Seeing a badly-written play is like watching someone fall down publicly on the sidewalk; oh well, that was too bad, no harm done. Seeing those badly-written movies, especially the ones that are erroneously reviewed as having "beautifully-written screenplays," is like being complicit in the national travesty of ego, wasted money, and propaganda that conspires to make the Gigantic Horrible Offensive Films that pass for our entertainment and common reference point.
But there's something else, and I think it has to do with the kind of personalities that write plays. To me, a really well-done play offers a truthful observation about human behavior, something gleaned from years and years of watching people, probably from the sullen dark silent corner of the room in which the potential playwrights are often lurking, wondering about people and why they do things. Films however are made by people whose talent for observation might stop at "My lead actress looks really hot when she's backlit." Y'know, people who don't really care why someone does anything as long as they look good doing it. So if I ruled the world all movies would be made by documentary filmmakers, and music video directors would have to struggle mightily to be handed a narrative project.
- Why are movies more fun than plays? -
Answer, I think: Filmmakers understand something about pop thrill that theater people don't. Duh, obviously, movies are the most popular art form in the world. Movies are the only art form that is truly corrupted by economies of scale. Of course, every artist has to struggle with the balance between "entertaining" and "truthful" (or flash vs. substance, or however you want to frame it) but only in movies is the art of dumbing down the material so highly revered by the establishment. You have to make it dumb so it will play to the potential audience of everyone in the world. Also, you have to give the people what they want in terms of the visceral thrill of high cheekbones and big explosions, and this usually means tossing the incisive, keenly-observed bits of the story, and putting in the money shots.
Obviously, not all movies do this. The movies that you like on the second viewing, or ten years after you first see them, probably don't. The movie that you just saw and enjoyed but can't remember the name of the main character, probably did.
The play I saw tonight offered simple pleasures like well-turned sentences and intimacy with expressive actors. It had moments of theatrical beauty which, for better or worse, just aren't most people's cup of tea. One could say that is because theater is elitist and tends to cater to a literate upper-crust audience; or one could say that is because people don't like to think about their entertainment, and most movies are made so you don't have to think. Hence, they are more fun.
Some plays, most of mine for example, try to get around this by bringing back the populist elements of theater and leaving out the long draining talky parts. So you get plays that have kung-fu battles and musical numbers and, within reason, explosions....and that's all well and good. But it's still more taxing than a night out at the movies because you have to be in physical awe of the person who's actually doing that thing, because oh my god they're actually doing it. They Might Screw Up. In movies, you can just relax and go, "Hey look, Superman flies. He's probably gonna make it to the other side of the screen, and boy am I gonna feel good when that happens. Let's rewind and look at it again."
- Why is doing theater more fun than making films/videos, and why the heck am I making films/videos? -
The plays we did at Emerald Rain Productions (ERP) were, for the most part, like summer camp. Although the quality of the performances varied, the rehearsal process was almost always laughing, singing, dancing, screwing around, the best time I ever had spent with friends, with the added pathos that comes from the built-in finite length of the rehearsal and the play's run, Like the school year, you got to look forward to the bittersweet release of closing night, and the end.
I haven't made like 20 feature films so I'm not the expert, OK, but being on a movie set is not like that. There's too much stuff to do to ever enjoy yourself. All that you care about is that the footage you get can be edited into something that resembles fun, although no fun was had in its creation.
The thing is in films there is the illusory promise of living the "good" life. There's money in the film industry that pays for a lot of peoples' nice cars, nice houses, nice food. You might get pampered in a way that theater people never are. (It's always hilarious to watch "A Long Day's Journey Into Night" and try to imagine the world in which a patriarch could be a rich STAGE actor....) You might get to hang out with people who aren't constantly stressed out, as theater people are, by rent and day jobs and doing a two-hour live show four nights a week for an average of three audience members. You could get to be one of those elitist people, the kind who can, y'know, afford to go to theater.
That promise is a hollow crock of crap of course. But so many people are involved in the business of pursuing it, the hustling, starf*cking and misrepresenting yourself for a part of the Big Film, that the quality of human interactions in the film industry is much less honest and more generally agonizing than those in theater.
Theater is like getting to be in love with someone a little bit without most of the pain.
The fundamental unit of theater-making is communicating with other people.
You can't make a living off theater, but doing it is the best way to spend the moments of your life.
Fun with ESL
This will sound racist, but look, I'm Asian too. I think there should be a new subclass of mondegreen (misheard song lyric) devoted to Asian singers singing in their second language, perhaps to be called a "Mala-J-Popism." Consider this chestnut from Mika Nakashima's cover of "The Rose."
...
"Some say love it is a laser, that leaves your soul to breed."
Pretty deep, right?
...
"Some say love it is a laser, that leaves your soul to breed."
Pretty deep, right?
Ouch.
Eyes hurt from movie.
Ears hurt from job.
Some sort of butt pain from lying down wrong.
Did not shower today.
But hey...
...I figured out how to use the chroma key filter!
Ears hurt from job.
Some sort of butt pain from lying down wrong.
Did not shower today.
But hey...
...I figured out how to use the chroma key filter!
LA Marathon day
Had an encouraging focus group test screening today. It's close. Very very close.
Hard to believe a year ago today I was hacking up phlegm globs during the shooting of the car scene, while Jen was shooting Michelle running the LA Marathon.
And we're still working on this thing....but...not too many more miles now....
Hard to believe a year ago today I was hacking up phlegm globs during the shooting of the car scene, while Jen was shooting Michelle running the LA Marathon.
And we're still working on this thing....but...not too many more miles now....
observations at Fedex
Sound post and visual effects are both happening in the Bay Area right now, so I've been at the FedEx office a lot. In the last hour before the final 6:15 pm pickup deadline, a nice feeling of Zen descends onto the area right in front of the counter. Yes, the FedEx workers are in what I'm sure is a daily crisis mode, but the customers are strangely at peace with one another. I see people opening doors for other people with heavy loads, people helping each other tape boxes together, yielding places in line to the older or more burdened or the picking-up-onlies. I assume everyone there is on some deadline or another, and like me, have spent their whole days running around and gathering crap and waiting for printouts and forgetting to write down addresses and driving and parking. I further assume that the people who have successfully arrived at the FedEx counter have, like me, made it. The great relief that comes from that, the feeling of falling into a bed of completion, is what I think accounts for the general good humor and semi-utopian consideration for each other. A small thing to be sure, but something I look forward to.
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