I think a lot of people think that working in the "movie business" must be fun and exciting. When in reality, a lot of it is in some dark room somewhere slowly twisting your hair into a wadded ball while your project is slowly dying on screen. Yeah, that's the negative view of it. I figure a lot of jobs, people can drop it, not think about it for the next 12 hours and focus on the real importance of life (which I believe to be family and friends) and come back to it with a slight case of amnesia from the day before. Not so with your personal creative project.
I spent the greater Memorial Day hovered over my computer looking over scanned DPX files of the short project I shot a week ago. What I'm basically looking at are snapshots. The sequence of shots are numbered so that they go in order so the program I use to conform knows how to play back. To simplify, a very elaborate flipbook.
I shot some 16mm film on a Bolex. It's a dirty format when scanned, so I throw these cells into Adobe Photoshop and "dust bust" the shots. 4,242 frames to be exact. A few of you who may be savvy may be asking "why don't you just clean the shots you use instead of all of it?" That would've saved me hours of work. And that would be true. Except...for some reason, the program I use to playback so I can compress the file wasn't reading the cells correctly, so I had to re-save each file...then it would populate properly into the timeline. I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I JUST WROTE, but I know this process worked. Yeah, I stumbled around like Bambi when he was born. Anyway, I figured, since I have to look at all 4,000+ shots, why not clean up the shots. Fast forward 3 days later =).
The thing about being coup'd up in this working environment is that you are really in your own mind. I stopped to go to the gym. Buy groceries. Eat a menial amount of food. Drink. But the whole time, you focus on other things. For me, I hadn't chosen music yet. It's a more daunting task then I knew what to do with. My collection of tunes is outdated, and quite frankly...lame. I searched the internet for any inspiration. Finally drawing on inspiration from ethereal soundtrack music I remember as a kid. Vangelis. Futuristic and operatic. A weird combination. It wasn't so much Vangelis music that I used, but it pushed me towards other music and eventually I came across the perfect tune that I felt would work. Remember in earlier blogs as I was bad-mouthing the internet...well look who came calling now.
Editing, organizing, researching...all very very lonely. For me, I really beat myself up over the stupidest details. A frame here and there. Trying to decide what crop size to use. Are both my 35mm and 16mm framing going to import properly into my editing program. Programs to fix other programs that use other programs to fix. These run through your mind the endless amount of hours you sit and just think if this thing will even work. And...and...the best part...at this juncture...I hadn't even started editing yet.
I dunno if you can consider this self-torture. I mean in a way, it's very therapeutic. I have to remember that I'm doing this for myself. I'm not under any contract or deadline to complete it. This was originally a project I took on to get back into making films. Is this what I remembered from film school?
Not quite. It's hard to remember when I lived in that institutionalized setting. I suppose corporate work is very similar. You can blend into the background and never be noticed unless something goes really wrong. In college, a whole community was set-up so you had all the "illusion" of independent living. The reality is that if you don't take it upon yourself to do for yourself, no one is going to schedule your life for you.
I recently spoke to a co-worker about the importance of creative outlooks. Yeah, government cut so much dough on the arts but it really is something that massages our brains. It's not that you have weird-o flaky people doing this work, it's that they're not out there stealing your stereo. More importantly, expressing a feeling you may have. By underfunding this, you risk making the concrete walls seem so much more bland. As our imagination and general well-being. Wow...did I digress there.
Anyway, making short films in college...I had all the time in the world to focus on. When you have a full time job and doing this...it's a genuine grind. But nothing you care about ever comes easy.
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