Film Journal 1/31

Having scribbled these various thoughts down on cocktail napkins and other scraps of paper yet forgotten to post them as of yet, I am now going to attempt to catch up with this ol' film journal.

An idea for today: I should try a project in pixilation. I've always loved the style whenever I've seen it employed (of course Norm LcLaren's Neighbors is an absolute classic), so I should try my hand and see if I can do anything substantial with the technique. However I don't feel I have anything to add to the playful practice of pixilation as of yet, so I'll let you know if I come up with any ideas worth execution.

Film Journal 1/30

Last night I watched Infernal Affairs, the Hong Kong film that Scorsese's The Departed was based off of. It wasn't the best film I've ever seen, but the story was brilliant. Basically there is a drug lord who sends his younger minions off to become police officers so they can work for him on the inside. One gets "kicked out" and works undercover for the police and the other becomes a high ranking police chief. Many years later, the under cover one is a mole for the police and the other is a police chief mole for the drug lord.
The two moles eventually learn of each other and in the end you find out whether they will team up for one side or whether they have to kill each other. It's not the most original sounding premise (the double more thing), but I really can't think of any other film that plays this dynamic so well. I haven't seen The Departed yet (though I plan to as soon as it comes out on DVD), but now I'm very excited to see Mr. Scorsese's spin on the whole thing.

Film Journal 1/29

I watched Pink Floyd's The Wall the other day for the first time in a couple of years. I was really hoping that I would understand more of it this time through. I understand that "the wall" represents alienation and the barriers we put up for ourselves and that are put up for us by others, but I still don't think a lot of the symbolism is all that meaningful. It could have used some more thought maybe.

But don't get me wrong, the animated sequences still blow my mind. I love them so much I usually end up watching those over again after finishing the whole movie.

Film Journal 1/28

Today I watched one of my favorite TV shows across the years: The Simpsons, although almost everybody agrees the show just isn't funny anymore. Just a quick thought right now about why it's just not up to the same quality it used to be-- the characters have become unbelievable. So the thing I hope to take from this is that if I write anything with characters, they need to be similar enough to actual people that viewers can relate (or something along those lines), otherwise people don't have a reason to watch.

Film Journal 1/25

Yesterday while walking to class I was listening to a Blind Melon song called "The Duke," which goes "Out here in the nothin' engulfed by the sea/ And there's no one here 'cept these fishes and me." So I started picturing myself walking underwater and I decided that would be a beautiful image for an experimental film: someone walking underwater, only they're actually on the street, there's no one else walking like that, and there's no water around.

The person would be walking much slower and doing that thing with their arms to kind of swim/walk as they go, but they'd be removed from their surroundings in this cool visual juxtaposition.

I'm nearly certain that this can't be a totally original idea; it must be in some music video or avant-garde film somewhere. But I'm also wondering what the best way to do it would be? It would be nearly impossibly to chroma key a person who's actually under water, and a roto-scopejob would take nearly forever if the shot was at all sizable in length.

Nonetheless, I'd love to see if this little "problem" would be a fun one to tackle. Maybe I'll try to photoshop something more like what I'm actually picturing and post it at a later date.

Film Journal 1/23

Well, I'd be surprised if anybody except for Professor Jacobson is reading this, so, hello Professor Jacobson.

Last night I watched Die Hard 2, and it wasn't exactly "fine cinema" by any means, but it was a fun ride nonetheless I suppose. The main thing I took away from it was that the plot didn't have the break-neck pace of most of the action films that come out these days. It seems to me that almost all movies released in the past 5 years or so race towards their ending almost as if they don't feel they can keep the audience's attention span through clear to the end.

The action itself in Die Hard 2 wasn't slow, nor was it an especially long movie, but there were parts near the middle of the film where they were pretty much just waiting on the terrorists to do something (and for Bruce Willis to witty quips). It was almost as if the filmmakers were giving the audience the benefit of the doubt that we weren't going to change the channel between explosions just because they couldn't cut the plot down to a "stomachable" 90 minutes.

It's very refreshing to see a film (especially an action film!) that stops to smell the roses along the way. Just off the top of my head, another movie released lately that did this was Good Night and Good Luck. A relaxed pace is certainly something I would like to incorporate into my work.

Project: "Dead Reckoning"

Last summer I went out and shot a crappy zombie movie, just to have some fun. I started out with a little hook and build a script from there with the help of collaborator Andrea (my producer on this project). We scouted some creepy locations but ended up shooting behind a small business, Best Regards owned by our friends and it worked out just fine.

With a load of zombies on our side we set to work making the most cliché kind of student film. We used fake blood and gray make-up to get our friends looking like the undead and all in all I'd say we were pretty successful. It's not a great movie, but it was never meant to be. We just had a lot of fun making it.

So without any further ado, here's Dead Reckoning.