Sometimes You See Your Life Through Others (part two)

I've been doing things all wrong. We are never never ever servants of a faceless being. We are our own motivators, and the driver of our lives. Why, why, why do we let others' designate what our lives are suppose to be.

My dream wasn't to be working in a post house somewhere in Hollywood grudgingly punching in countless hours on someone else's project. It was that I would be recognize for the art I created in motion pictures. Along the way, I seem to have lost a certain step in the process. A 22 year old version of me that stepped into his VW Fox with its 80CCs and headed out west somehow vanished. So many obstacles. So many moments of convincing myself of what could go wrong. What does that sound like?

Fear.

Whiny fear. But fear nonetheless.

Fear, my dear landlord explained, is what stands in EVERYONE's way. Fear of losing everything. Why? Because we don't understand what it must feel like to be a complete and total failure, we're all happy to take the little nibbles of existence as NOT failing miserably and being a statistic. So we're a small failure. Tiny enough that the fear still consumes us but eeking out an existence.

Isn't it funny how we talk so very much about the rise and fall of people. Mostly the fall, as it is more comical. These cautionary tales spread like wildfire. And the next thing we know, we've talked ourselves out of taking chances. Self-sabotage.

How awful. Who told us we don't deserve the very best? Or that we weren't in control of our own destiny? My guess is the same people who enslave us with the meager scraps tossed to us in hopes of placating our instincts of survival. SO not the reality.

Reality is that NO ONE owns your future. YOU decide when you've had enough of rank and filing in line. We're not meant to be good li'l soldiers. We were meant to live a individualistic life. Where when we wake up in the more WE decide what to do. NOT the IRS. NOT your boss. NOT your spouse. Yeah, easier said than done. Because we fear. Fear getting audited. Getting fired. Not getting sex. All fears. Some more legit than others (sex). But this is terrible. Since as I add it all together, we just don't know what we want, we just know we don't want rock bottom.

I envy the ones who aren't anchored by fear. They seem to take it and re-distribute it to a more manageable task. I think their secret is...

...stay tune for part 3.

Sometimes You See Your Life Through Others (part one)

It worries me sometimes when I see guys in their 50 or 60's who look behind in their lives and wondered if they did the most they could do. Because I have a direct view of my future, UNLESS I choose to change it. At work I get the benefit of a young person who is just starting out in his career enamored with the minefield of a story of mine.

The old guys seem to be a ghost of Christmas future. They're skill set is so specific, very few options are opened to them when they're let go, or they retire. Both their hobby and their lives have inexplicably merged, so that when one ends, the other continues...just without a paycheck. And that is sad.

I'm in a sea of carcasses of dreams and drive I use to have. Mostly because complacency requires I just do, NOT do more. A young man's game, I think. Not quite.

The other day a woman had moved out of the neighborhood. She had been occupying her space for 25 years. Out of curiosity I walked to the patio and turn the knob of the door. It opened. Inside was the remnants of a hasty move. Dirty carpet, cheap book case, filthy walls. It was 25 years of neglect.

I turned towards the front door to see an elderly man. He startled me. Mostly because as a person of color, this breaking and entering may appear to be...dangerous for me. He happened to be renting the house I'm in now. A nice guy I'd met in passing. He didn't mind I had entered the home. He quietly removed his bermuda hat and looked around. He was the one who told me Marsha had lived there for 25 years. A feat I've yet to hear anywhere in Los Angeles.

He seemed a bit wistful. In his hands were drafting papers. He quietly walked through the home. Each room seemed to stop him. The place was a disaster. But a very unique disaster. There was an enclosed porch that looked like it once housed a outdoor fireplace. It'd been used as storage I bet. Cobwebs enveloped the home. I couldn't imagine her allowing her home to come to this unlivable state, but what are you going to do...20 years is a long time. With each room, Dan (building manager/owner) would give me a piece of history of the home's layout. I was fascinated by what the grounds use to look like. The place was frozen in time. The decor was from the 1960's. Dan had preserved it because the vintage quality was considered "rentable". The actual compound once belong to actress Jane Russell

People tend to remember her for her humongous personality.

When Dan was finished with his tour, we stood outside, sized me up and said "this damn country, doing things all backwards...teaching kids to be good little soldiers. You should be working for yourself NOT for them." And it dawned on me...I've been doing this thing all wrong.

EBay Is A Really Horrible Awesome Horrible Place

Now that a portion of the industry has "gone digital" there appears to be a surplus of film cameras and vintage film accessories up for grabs on EBay.

Now, I enjoy shopping on EBay. Something about having very specific interest in an obscure thing that others have, has a very strange bonding to it. For instance, if I had a fetish for Elvis dinner plates, I know I could probably locate some on EBay. And that just makes me feel better, because I'm not out of my mind for wanting to eat a peanut butter and banana sandwich off Elvis plates.

Here's the thing about film equipment: there's always a corresponding YouTube video for it.

Yes, as I am about to make a purchase on a camera, there is inevitably a YouTube video with some other hobbyist talking about his love of the camera I'm in the market to purchase.

Talk about an insane brotherhood. Today I was looking for a Bolex camera...this is a handcrank Swiss made 16mm camera manufactured from the 1940's to the present day. The collectibility of this item is that A) precision B) you can do stop motion animation C) no batteries D) cheap

Okay, I need to backtrack on D.

It is a cheap camera but....but...the presence on YouTube has driven the "trend" up. Therefore, no one will budge on their prices. Look...when was the last time you heard of someone who shot 16mm crank camera? How about shooting 16mm film in general? Where the Hell are you even going to develop this film? Only a handful of people know, and yet...no flexibility.

People's relationship to film cameras are an intriguing thing. Much like motorcycles, we all look at it with a lot of reverence and memory. How and why are we so connect to inanimate objects? I suppose it's all about the connections we make with people. I LOVE sharing my adventures with Bolex cameras the same way I enjoy sharing riding stories on my Honda CB450. And I've shot with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of cameras and lenses. But this camera is so much more personal.

I sometimes have long conversations with people about camera equipment that have NOTHING to do with the sale itself. We get each other. Of course, I sidestep the ones who just want to sell equipment and have very little patience for chitchat. But for the ones who are true students of analog filmmaking, they understand. Saw footsteps in the sand on a deserted island.

I'm not sure how others treat EBay. But to me, a certain communal quality creeps in. I know some people have more practical uses for it, but...I mean...didn't EBay tout itself as place that you could re-purchase your memories? I think it's a time machine sometimes.

The Lonely World In The Editing Bay

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.