giant robot travel guides present...

I just returned from a mid project vacation to the island of Vieques, just off the coast of Puerto Rico.

As Eric has written about what he feels worked in his favor, there's a lot I've had to learn about working freelance. Mostly it's about the anxiety of being out of work, or getting paid for that matter. But one thing I have learned is that you have to schedule things brutally for yourself. Book a vacation and stick to it and don't make every promise to everyone possible - otherwise you never get away, which happened last year. In this case I'd flown Jetblue so much in the past year I'd racked up two free tickets to any destination they fly to. Which includes from NY, Puerto Rico.

Coincidentally I started falling for this girl who had planned on going down there at the same time. So we decided to make a date of it. I've written about her enough in this blog that I hope she's not embarassed by me bringing her into this, but it wouldn't have been the same adventure without her.

Vieques is 21 miles by 6 miles. And it was the best vacation I've ever had. I'm going to write all about the place and what we experienced here, as travel is a big part of what us Giant Robot kids love and I hope all of you have a chance to go there someday. Today though I am scrambling to finish up the video. We have a final review of the edit this morning and then go into our color correction at The Mill at 6pm. Should be a long day / night.


Wild horses roam the island.


And if you're lucky, you can ride them.

editorial

Making a film consists of three fully separate creative acts.

There's writing. Which is fairly self explanatory. And takes its inspiration obviously from past mediums.

There's shooting. Which is akin to recording an album or staging a play and being a photographer.

Then there's editing. Which I believe has no formal equivalent in any other medium and may be the most singular aspect of filmmaking. It's a chance to entirely rewrite.

We're in editorial now and what I wish I could do is show you the various stages of our edits as we move to the end. But we can't really do that, for various reasons. What I will do is try and keep a record of my thoughts about how the edit is proceeding, and introduce you to my wonderful editorial team. Which is mostly Rob Ryang, who everyone knows (or doesn't by name but knows what I'm talking about) as the creator of the incredible Shining trailer, which I consider to have pretty much started the trailer mash up form.



Rob is one of the most creative, brilliant people I've ever met. He also has a keen sense of humor that's relentless and really low key. He'll say something that has me in tears with little or no show off effect. I used to cut my own stuff until at a certain point I realized it was holding me back - there's too much one becomes precious about when shooting that you can't lose when you're just editing... And I have to admit my sense of rhythm and timing for edits is on the slow side.

Back then I got the Shining trailer forwarded to me as it was making its way through some filmmaker types, and as soon as it was over I wanted to know who had done it - there was an email address at the end. So I wrote to it, pleading and hoping we could meet. The very next day I read about Rob Ryang in the NY Times and I thought, well that's over. But he responded and here we are now.

More to come... Today is Saturday. Hoping to get brunch with my sweetheart after she gets up, then probably going to see Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Sonic Youth in the evening.

vacation isn't hard enough

Soon I'm headed off to Puerto Rico on what has to be the most ridiculous date of my life. I've travelled so much this year that I've earned two free flights and hotel stays that I need to cash in by September; conversely the girl I am sorta kinda seeing was planning on going there this time as well (that's a whole other post, an odd summer of synchronicities and coincidences that persists). So off we go.

Again, coincidentally, I have been reading a book by my hero Carl Safina called Voyage of the Turtle in which he spends a year pursuing and examining the state of sea turtles.

When you say sea turtle that conjures up certain images... But I don't think most people realize how large a sea turtle such as a leatherback can be. We're talking Volkswagon sized. Genetically it's got a line of DNA running back to the time of dinosaurs. I remember my first dive on a reef was a riot of sensation and color and imagery. But one single graceful moment overwhelms - a giant sea turtle surfacing by our dive boat upon my return. It was merely one of the most extraordinary things I've ever seen. I think of the heart as a clock, sometimes, and my clock pulsated for a second and I caught my breath - that's honestly what I felt, caught by surprise. There was a singular wonder in sighting such a thing; quietly humbling and exhilarating all at once.

Sometimes friends say I talk like a stupid hippie when I talk about diving. Anyway, researching Puerto Rico I realized it coincided with a chapter in this book about the island of Culebra and hatching sea turtles. And this led to a great find...

Earthwatch volunteer work

The thing about Safina's writing is that he writes so well, and I have to say point blank he writes very well for a scientist, especially. It riles you up, makes you want to take immediate action. But it isn't that easy.

Conversely I feel a lot of us young people are frustrated with the idea of travel and tourism in its prepackaged, sterile pointlessness. We crave authentic experience, not necessarily vacation (I could of course be completely wrong about this). But this has been written about enough by novelists from Ballard to Garland.

So Earthwatch, if you click on the volunteer section, does the following: pairs people up with scientists who need volunteers in field work. Want to help the sea turtle? Give your vacation money to earthwatch and have your accomodation and meals etc. paid for and spend your trip actually working on the beach all night long being a part of a team collecting data which might help the plight of these animals who on the verge of serious depletion. Or explore the rain forest collecting insect samples. I think it's a brilliant idea and one I will save up for.

I believe that nothing brings peace to people like challenging themselves and overcoming it, having singular experiences that push them to new limits and achievements, as well as collectively taking part in something for a greater good. Hardship gives us a sense of serenity that merely consuming never will. Instead of being nihilistically downtrodden about the whole thing, there's a whole world of action to take.

So says he before sticking a pop tart in his mouth in the morning.

a great band name

Looking for something to call your band? I propose "The Wilhelm Scream". This generic shrieking man getting killed sound effect has been secretly pulsating in the background of countless movies. Whoever Wilhelm was, his ghost is now solidly in the machine. Will he be suffering for all eternity? There's a great Harlan Ellison short story I can't remember the name of, in which a man tries to free his mother's laugh from being imprisoned on a laugh track for sitcoms. Here's a great link to a history of the sound.



Today - dim sum in the morning, amazing pineapple and lychee sorbet from Chinatown, dropped by the lovely Anne Ishii at Giant Robot NY (there's some amazing stuff up on the walls right now), drinking juice and a long chat on church steps, stupidly got a cab maybe three blocks, admiring my crush in a dress, went shopping with her guidance and bought sunglasses. As far as buying balller sunglasses goes, the heat has melted my brain. And now of course, the heatwave is ending. Thankfully. I felt semi normal instead of a leaky boat, what with the gallons I sweat this past week. A lovely Saturday.

Oh yeah, and this is for Eric. Today I took a shit at Chipotle, instead of buying one there. Fnar!

single frames

Here's a picture of my entire crew and company right after we got off our last shot in San Diego's airport. Me and Tarin and Mike, our insanely awesome grip (who is soon off to USC to become the next great games designer and was running Earthquake simulators for UCSD's supercomputer) are showing off the farmer tans we got shooting on the cliff in La Jolla.



This is a picture which shows that filmmaking requires a lot of sweat and dirt and grime. This is on the cockroach ridden sidewalk outside the Turf Club.



So day two: again it's all a hazy adreanline filled blur. We thought we could cruise a little on day two because we had a three hour chunk from the day before we didn't repeat. But the silly thing was this: we needed to repeat every single shot we had taken the day before, but at different times of day with a different actor. The same background extras needed to show up, too, wearing the same clothing. It was like self imposed deja vu.

Other than that it went fairly ok until due to some accidents we lost two hours of our shooting day and once again had to move to beat the sun. We fucking booked. Drive to location, jump out grab shot, and jump back to the next.

And finally we got to shoot in the airport... After Kyle brilliantly dealt with securing a permit over two weeks and all sorts of beauracratical jumping around and our hotel nearly losing our shooting permit... We rolled up to the airport tense and wary. A cop asked us what we were doing. We said we had a permit to shoot, but Kyle wasn't there yet and we didn't have it. Cop shrugged and walked off.

We continued to shoot in the airport without anyone saying a single word to us. We almost wanted to get busted so we could pull out our permit and smile proudly. But no. Not in the cards. I think the airport shots are the most beautiful we got, though.

_

That was wrap. I bought the crew dinner and Tarin and I shot closeups of clock faces in the hotel room until 3 am. Tarin works harder than anyone I know. And then comic con began. That's a whole other story...

When I got back to New York I was expecting to crash for a day or two but such is production that I ended up working Monday after getting back on a redeye. We're doing great though. Rob is cutting away.

So I've finally written about day two. Comic Con next.

let it rain

Heatwave here in New York. And apparently a cursory glance at any television news weather map reveals that no, global warming isn't really anything, nothing to see here. While it's true that aberrational weather has happened in the past, with temperatures to match recorded in Central Park around the '30s I believe, we're going from aberrational heatwaves to this kind of summer becoming standard. I've been reading a book of JG Ballard quotes lately here and there and I'd like to posit as he does - soon summer time will be the most dreaded of all seasons, and our cyclical nature will shift slightly to accomodate. Summer vacation will be seen as poisonous, people will flock to movie theaters and subway cars to avoid the heat, and soon we'll have palm trees in Toronto. Spring will soon become the tourist season of choice.

Still having to apologize for not blogging more. Today I just wrote a treatment for CSS. I was dreading writing it for some unspecified reason and thought I'd be up all night and all of a sudden it just came out in a torrent. Right after standing in the downpour that arrived in Brooklyn this afternoon, greeted on the streets by cheers.

We're also finishing up a DVD for The Decemberists. It's coming together really amazingly, better than I could've hoped for due to the talents and dilligence of a great many people who have worked on it as a passion project. I think it's going to be one of the most exceptional DVDs ever put out by a band on a label of KRS' stature at the time they were on it. Not to slight KRS, labels like this just don't have money to pour into fixing production problems. I think we've surpassed our problems with our care. It's playing in the background right now and damn I will watch this from time to time when I miss the band's live show.

I will not be doing the video for the band's first single on Capitol, as instead the rather wonderfully talented Cat Solen will who I've posted about before. They wanted to do something more with animation than live action.

What to say about day two on the last video? It was really, really hard. For all my hyper attenuated focus while shooting, I can barely remember what happened the next day. I guess it's like making out. You wish you could remember what it was like to the extent you can feel it, but you never can.

Maybe watching the footage again will jog my memory... More later. I'm still having problems posting pictures to blogger.