Printing a Shirt

It was raining and nasty today and all I really wanted was to stay in bed with the dog, a cup of tea, and the screenplay I've been working on. Sadly that was not an option. On the other hand, I was wildly productive today.

Things are coming together

My talk on Wexler went well this morning. I knew enough about him. I had a good outline to keep myself on track. I had fun clips. And I talked. I'm good at talking, at teaching people the things that I know. And I think the class found it more interested than probably most of you did. I actually had someone leaning forward in his seat. Yay me. Onward. I need to write a 10-12 page paper on the same topic (well doesn't have to be the same, but I've done all the research) by the end of the month. Should be just a matter of writing up the talk in a more scholarly way than I did here, though I'll stop by the professor's office hours next week to see if he wants me to spin it one way or another.

So that's all fine, but here's the fun part of the day:

What I know about Haskell Wexler

This is roughly what I'm going to tell people on Thursday in class. I won't read it out of course, I just wanted to sort it out in my head. Make sure I know all the things I want to know while I still have time to remedy any missing info. For example I have a copy of the MLA Handbook and of Kate Turbaian's Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, but as I got them both while I was in Ithaca in 1995 neither will tell me how to properly cite videos found on YouTube. For you for general purposes: I watched several of his films, I watched the documentary about him that his son did, I read articles in American Cinematographer and Film Quarterly, and our textbook covered a little bit about him. So if you're interested in Wexler read more.

I guess I guessed well

We got our mid-terms back for Masterworks. I only missed two of the clip identifications when I thought I missed at least half. And I only missed 1 of the multiple choice. So that's cool. I have to be honest though, it doesn't make me in a hurry to read the texts now that I've proved I can get by without. First things first though, presentation next week. That and editing my 2 minute documentary are my big ticket items for the weekend.

I also need to start pre-producing my final project for Production 1. I was looking at the calendar today to figure out when I want to shoot it and I realized that the first rough cut is due 11/28. Which means I need to shoot it the week before Thanksgiving because honestly that week will be a wash. But that means like 2 weeks from tonight I need to be shooting and first I need to find 5 actors.

The good news on that front though is that I'm planning to use my short script from screenwriting for it and we work-shopped that today. It was an interesting discussion. Generally well received, generally understood. A few good suggestions about how to keep the actual murder from getting gratuitously violent. And what I need to do now is re-write the script to turn it in later, but what I want to do is go straight to storyboarding it. I really really wish I could draw.

And I need to have the first draft of Ghost Tours in a couple of weeks as well. I haven't even started that one, but I know if I can get in the zone and get a hunk of undistracted time I'll be able to churn it out. It's a first draft after all.

If you haven't read it, here's the link to Killer.

While I wait for the lights to go out

It's been a weird 24 hours or so. Everyone was preparing for the hurricane yesterday, so I did too, and a bit more this morning. And everyone I know up and down the coast has been off school and/or work today, which was generally announced last night. So I've spent all of this time trying to get stuff done before the power goes out. Now according to the Globe there are over 350,000 people in Massachusetts without power, but so far I've had a nice quiet productive day. It just feels a bit weird, like I've been rushing to get stuff done when in fact I apparently had plenty of time.

A Fresh Start

Well, the 600 or so  pages of reading and the 3 films that I never managed to cross off my to-do list can now be set aside and I have a new chance to not fall behind. Of course I didn't do any of the reading or watching for today because I was studying for the exam so I'm already behind, but not so far as to be unrecoverable.

films of the week and the upcoming exam

I've watched a bunch of things this week in an attempt to catch up on all the required viewing before next week's exam. I saw Force of Evil (Abraham Polonsky, 1947), but to be honest sitting here right now I can't tell you a thing about it. This is a problem, they're all starting to blur. The Battle of San Pietro (John Huston, 1944), a documentary that was trying to be supportive of the war effort, but was so brutal they didn't actually show it until after the war ended. The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (Lewis Milestone, 1946) a noir film that I liked a lot and we talked about in class today. A Letter to Three Wives (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1949) a women's film that I also enjoyed, particularly in contrast to Ivers. Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1950) that is where the famous line "I'm ready for my closeup Mr. de Mille." comes from. And Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren, 1943) which is an Avant Guard short film that we watched in class today.

Naked City

I'm jumping around in my to-do list, half of which is stuff that's past due and half stuff that's due over the next week. I actually intended to finally watch Scarface tonight which was from last week but Netflix wouldn't stream it so I watched Naked City instead. As a person overly fond of the detective genre both on TV and in films this was right up my alley. It wasn't film noir or the hard boiled detective and I'm wondering if it was the precursor to both. We'll find out more next week. In the meantime it was just a fun film. It had this wonderful narrator with a mix of telling us what's going on and sort of "talking" to the detectives. But it's a style you don't see any more. And it ends with that great line: there are 8 million stories in the naked city, this was one of them. 

today's films were depressing

On Thursday we watched Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) which was a post-code gangster movie. What makes it post-code? The gangster redeems himself in the end. The code says you can't have any drugs, can't have too much violence, and certainly can't glorify violence. So there's often people getting shot, but there's never any blood. And at the end of the day the gangster has to do something to make him the bad guy with the heart of gold. In fact in this one there were moments well before the end. We ended up on a discussion of Gangsters vs Westerns. Both are full of men prone to violence. In the Western he comes to town, uses violence to help the community, and then leaves at the end because he's far too violent to actually be part of any civilized community. All the classic westerns end with the hero riding off into the sunset. The hero in a Gangster however doesn't have anywhere to go. He starts out a part of the community. In Angels very early on he gets back to town after having been in and out of jail for 10 years and the community welcomes him back. "Sure I'll rent you a room in my boarding house even though I know exactly who you are and what you've done." He grew up there. Since civilized society can't therefore send him on his way he has to become civilized somehow and/or die. In this case both.

Am I old or am I experienced?

You know we have been watching films this week. Yesterday was Frankenstein and I was a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (both 1931 and pre-code). Tomorrow we're watching Angels with Dirty Faces (1938, so post-code) and then talking about all three. They were interesting/entertaining enough. It was a little difficult to watch Frankenstein mostly because I've recently seen the National Theater Live broadcasted stage version of Frankenstein which was based on the original source material and not on the movie and so wildly different. And so I watched the whole thing constantly comparing the two. But if you think about the three eras - when the book was written, when the film was made, and when the stage play was made - it is an interesting comparison. You learn a lot about people by what they find horrific. Mostly though I'm falling farther and farther behind in my reading for that class because it's just not as interesting to me as trying to prep for tomorrow's shoot, or trying to work my head around new story ideas for screenwriting.

What we've been watching lately

I've been neglecting the blog in an attempt to stay a step ahead on my homework. Today is the first day that I don't feel behind since classes started. You tend to start out a little behind just because everyone wants the readings done on the day they're listed on the syllabus and everyone had reading listed on the first day of class. I still have stuff to do, but I finally don't feel like I'm playing catch up.

My treatment got approved for my first film for Production 1 so on our walk this afternoon I was taking pictures of park benches trying to pick which one to use. It would probably be more realistic if I used one of the metro stations near the Commons and then used a bench there for the in the park scenes. I'm trying to avoid dragging everyone downtown. And if I shoot it right only people who live in Boston will notice that I've cheated.

And for those following along on the "important movies" list, I've watched 6 more since the last time I updated.

Why study film history at all

They weren't working in a vacuum and neither are we. I am on a path whether I want to be or not. It's hard to go forward without knowing where you're coming from. All of the visual language that we understand today without even knowing that we know it was either developed or exploited by the people who came before.

The classes I have the most and the least experience in

On Wednesdays I have 2 classes. In the morning Film Production 1 and in the afternoon Acting for Directors. In both classes it's just the 5 of us. (#6, a guy named Brian, bailed at the last minute so really just the 5 of us.) One would think the production class will be the one we bond most in because film production is what we're here for. I don't think that's going to be true though. I think Acting is where we'll end up becoming friends (or not, but I think yes).

For production we're starting out with actual film, which is very cool as I've not shot film before. Not moving film anyway. Though so far my still film background is helping in that we were discussing how it works physically: emulsion and the chemical reaction of silver halide to the sun and that sort of stuff. It all made sense to me from what I already knew. Have to write a treatment for our first project to turn in on Monday. I think I have an idea so I just need to write it up. Will try to get that done before the weekend. I don't mind leaving myself reading to do on the plane, but I'd rather not have the pressure of getting writing done while I'm otherwise stressed.

And then acting. I'm not sure what to say about acting. We did exercises. He talked a lot, but he's kind of funny so that's all right. At the end we did a sort of scene. That would have been more painful if there was any expectation on me to be a good actor. But there's not so the fact that I sucked was fine. 10 years ago that would have been the most anxiety producing class ever, but now it's just fun. He was very surprised when there was only the 5 of us there. We really are the smallest class they've ever had. But after he thought about it he was pleased because we'll be able to do more things with a smaller group because you don't have to wait so long for everyone to have a turn at whatever.

Tonight for my Masterworks class I'll be watching Birth of a Nation by D.W.Griffith (1915). I understand why it's important; it's one of the first films to do narrative storytelling in the way we now understand it for film. Or probably more accurate to say we understand narrative storytelling because of this film. I don't anticipate enjoying the story though. It is at it's core a white supremacist propaganda film.

First Day of Class

I had my first class today: American Masterworks. It's not all of American film history, because you couldn't really fit that in one semester. So it's 1894 to the 1970s and even that "narrowing down" will still be a survey rather than in depth. I didn't really feel old until he started talking about the films of the 80s being historical but still probably seen by most of the people in the room, and likely we've even all seen Jaws and Star Wars, yes??? He and I might have been the only ones to see it in the theater though. His goal is to pick films we might not have seen or wouldn't necessarily know why they're significant. [So apparently Linda's new tee shirt of the sand people guy doing the John Cusak pose would go over the heads of all my classmates.]

We have 32 movies on our must watch list, most of them I either haven't seen or haven't seen recently enough to remember well. But as this was a class that several people wanted to know what we were going to watch and what we're talking about I figure I'll take it week by week.