Claude Laydu (1927-2011)

A belated “R.I.P.” goes out to Claude Laydu, who I just learned died earlier this year. Laydu is best known for being the lead actor in Robert Bresson’s 1950 tour de force, Diary of a Country Priest. If you care about fine cinema and haven’t seen this film yet, do yourself a favor and check it out–it’s a masterpiece.

Laydu is quite convincing as the troubled Priest of Ambricourt and like any truly great performance it’s hard to imagine anyone else filling those shoes. I haven’t seen his subsequent work but he did go on to act in a number of other films and then write and produce with his wife a popular puppet show for French television called Good Night, Little Ones. The Guardian publication in the UK wrote a nice obituary here.

Bert Jansch (1943-2011)

Earlier this week Scottish music legend Bert Jansch died. He was an immensely talented guitarist and had a wonderful singing voice. I was able to see him live once and it was a great show.

Rest in peace, good sir.

Something New

I have begun work on a new film, finally. I think it’s going to be a good one. Of course in between now and when I started wrapping up Robert on his Lunch Break there were many attempts at creating something new, but until a few days ago nothing gelled. Some people are able to churn out art with great frequency, but for me working on a film is a difficult undertaking–one that takes a lot of time, in the early stages, to go from being a whim to an attainable goal (a viable work of art that I can visualize coming together).

I started making movies informally when I was about ten years old. Since then I’ve only created three or four films that I would officially endorse–not much to show for my troubles. However, I’ve gained a lot of experience and one thing I’ve learned is that I’m not easily satisfied with my own work, so to make a film that I’ll appreciate years after I’ve made it a lot will have to go into it (a lot of toil and a lot of thought). For me, embarking upon a new film is like strapping up for battle: it implies total commitment.

Having said that I don’t think filmmaking (or the creation of art in general) has to be a painful experience. As I age I’m trying to make life easier for myself. Had I known going into Robert on his Lunch Break what I know now, I could have saved myself a lot of hassle. There was a great learning curve with the technical/aesthetic side of things, but I mean something else: I know now that I’m more alone in the world than I thought I was (even though, I feel obliged to add, I have my share of wonderful friends, perhaps more than I deserve).

I know now that “the world” isn’t yet ready for my work. I know now that my point of view as an artist (in so far as a film like Robert embodies it) is more devisive than I thought it was. I’m a loner at heart, and a bit of a contrarian. When it comes to the appreciation of other people’s art, I can be pretty fussy and that complicates things when it comes to networking. I’m not sure anymore if making films makes me a happier person, but I do know that it makes me feel useful, even if such a small number of people seem to have use for a given work.

So, with all of this in mind I’m saying what the hell, time to roll up my shirt sleeves and do it again–what’s the worst that could happen? The production will take place down here in Sarasota. It’s kind of a non-linear film that’s tied together more by themes than plot points. I’m still writing and refining the dialogue. I have yet to cast the actors (there will eight roles). I’m going to need a better camera than the one I have. I don’t know if this is going to be “the one” (i.e. the film most likely to acquire a sizable audience), but I do think it will be reasonably easy for people to latch onto (as opposed to my last film which is more austere and can take several viewings to understand and appreciate).

In short, I’m excited about putting my new film together…it’ll be fun.

Quotes I Like (7)

Claude Debussy:

Music is the silence between notes.

Thanks to my friend Anne-louise for bringing this quote to my attention (I’d never read it before).

Hanging With Donal

Earlier this week I hung out with Irish filmmaker, critic, and curator Donal Foreman. Donal has been making and writing about movies since an early age–you can check out his website here. My favorite film of his is his pleasantly understated, at times Antonioni-esque short, Removal:

To see a picture of Donal and I hanging out click here (I was going to post it on this page, but it seemed too distracting next to the embedded link to his movie).

Slow Down

Yesterday the New York Times published a piece by film critics Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott entitled In Defense of the Slow and the Boring.

Though in asserting the virtues of “slow” and “boring” cinema Dargis and Scott reference a couple of filmmakers whose work I’m not particularly fond of, their article rings true and I couldn’t help but think of Robert on his Lunch Break while reading it.

Dargis:

Thinking is boring, of course (all that silence), which is why so many industrially made movies work so hard to entertain you. If you’re entertained, or so the logic seems to be, you won’t have the time and head space to think about how crummy, inane and familiar the movie looks, and how badly written, shoddily directed and indifferently acted it is. And so the images keep zipping, the sounds keep clanging and the actors keep shouting as if to reassure you that, yes, the money you spent for your ticket was well worth all this clamor, a din that started months, years, earlier when the entertainment companies first fired up the public-relations machine and the entertainment media chimed in to sell the buzz until it rang in your ears.

Scott:

Movies may be the only art form whose core audience is widely believed to be actively hostile to ambition, difficulty or anything that seems to demand too much work on their part. In other words, there is, at every level of the culture — among studio executives, entertainment reporters, fans and quite a few critics — a lingering bias against the notion that movies should aspire to the highest levels of artistic accomplishment.

Some of this anti-art bias reflects the glorious fact that film has always been a popular art form, a great democratic amusement accessible to everyone and proud of its lack of aristocratic pedigree. But lately, I think, protests against the deep-dish and the highbrow — to use old-fashioned populist epithets of a kind you used to hear a lot in movies themselves — mask another agenda, which is a defense of the corporate status quo. For some reason it needs to be asserted, over and over again, that the primary purpose of movies is to provide entertainment, that the reason everyone goes to the movies is to have fun. Any suggestion to the contrary, and any film that dares, however modestly, to depart from the orthodoxies of escapist ideology, is met with dismissal and ridicule.

Better Late Than Never

Over the past several weeks I’ve been intermittently removing pesky specks and debris from the transferred Super 8 footage that made it into the final cut of Robert on his Lunch Break.

This is a simple but time-consuming process.

It involves breaking a movie clip down into an image sequence (in this case a series of Tiff files), identifying a splotch or squiggle (caused by a piece of dirt or dust the lab failed to remove prior to scanning the film), copying the same section from the previous or following frame and then pasting it on top of the offending area so that the image in question looks pristine. Once the image sequence is done being touched up, it’s turned back into a self-contained movie file and put in place of the original, “blemished” movie.

If done without a keen attention to detail this process does more harm than good, but if one knows his way around Photoshop and he’s willing to put the time in it can result in a film looking markedly better. (While I’m not done yet I’ve A-B’d the “cleaned” image sequences with the original movies and I’m definitely glad I’ve bothered to do this.)

Of course if I had any real money I would have either paid the lab to clean and scan the film again, or I would have sent the transferred footage to a post-production house that has some sort of high-end program with an algorithm that removes specks and debris automatically.

But alas, I am, at least for the time being, a no-budget filmmaker.

Some might think, “Why bother? Hardly anyone notices stuff like that, those little specks and debris and whatnot.”

Well, I do. I’ve seen the film many times now and since I think it’s a fine work of art I treat it as such, doing what I can to improve it. Before the year is over I’d like to release a limited run of bluray discs, and if I’m going to bother doing that it would be best if the film were presented in the highest quality possible.

Anyway, the reason I’ve decided to post about this is that I had a minor revelation while going over the film for the umpteenth time…

It occurred to me that the shots in which Robert is opposite Nika weren’t quite appropriate. In hindsight the expressions on my face and my general demeanor weren’t too effective in the context of those particular moments in the film–Robert appeared too irked by the encounter with Bradley and not relieved enough by Nika’s presence.

Originally I thought that Robert should look visibly upset and uncomfortable at that point in the scene, but in retrospect I went too far in that direction and should have settled on a more amiable disposition for my character. I ran this by my mom, a film-savvy retired art teacher who’s seen Robert on his Lunch Break many times, and she totally agreed.

So, long story short, I reshot those parts of the film, and I’m quite happy with the results:

Hanging With Aza

On Sunday afternoon I hung out with Azazel Jacobs before catching a screening of his new film Terri at the Sarasota Film Festival.

It was a historic meeting of the minds, with no shortage of great conversation!

Nice and Cozy

Liva, one of the programmers at 2Annas in Latvia, just sent me this lovely snapshot of one the audiences who saw Robert on his Lunch Break (and the other films in Programme II of the 2Annas Projector) back in December:

Looks nice and cozy. I hope they enjoyed the film.

Trish Keenan (1968-2011)

I was deeply saddened today when I learned that Trish Keenan, vocalist of the band Broadcast, has passed away.

My ten favorite Broadcast songs:

“Before We Begin”
“Message From Home”
“Come On Let’s Go”
“Hawk”
“Michael A Grammar”
“Pendulum”
“Poem of Dead Song”
“Papercuts”
“Ominous Cloud”
“Lights Out”

They were an excellent band and Trish will be missed.

Requiescat in pace.