Week in (brief) review September 28, 2008

I shot my directing scene all day yesterday, thus a truncated journal for this week.  But the shoot went exceptionally well.  I'll write some details sometime during the week, or at least by next week's journal review.  Busy week ahead: writing and pitching my 507 project (a few details on its themes below), starting pre-production on it, editing the directing scene, and lots of general work.  I like it though.  I'm using my time rather than idling through.

Journal Selections September 22 - 28, 2008

This week was all about my first two projects: first casting and breaking down the script for my fundamentals of directing course, in which I’m shooting a scene from NOTES ON A SCANDAL, and secondly my first film for 507 that will be shot in a few weeks.

My biggest battle has been coming up with an idea for my first project.  I’ve had plenty of ideas for films that I both brought with me to film school and that I’ve come up with since arriving.  But I keep worrying that this project will require too much lighting, or this one relies on post-production sound, or this one would be better suited to being shot either on film or with a lens adaptor like my last HD project.  The challenge is to come up with a great idea that can be done simply, or to embrace the limitations as opportunities rather than roadblocks.

I’ve scribbled ideas down, revisited notebooks that date back to my junior year of college (that’s six years ago!), and stared at blank computer screens for far too long.  Finally, yesterday morning, I laid in bed after I woke up and allowed that “near dream-state” consciousness to take over.  All of the writing and thinking about our lives over the past few weeks has continuously made me reflect on the inaccessibility of the past.  I began to see myself as an old man, looking back on my life and unable to connect to it sincerely.  I think that one of the most splendid things about film is its relation to memory: how seeing something on film very much resembles the way we recall something in our minds, or how it can spark nostalgia for our own past despite the true disconnect between the viewer and the events on screen.  I tried to visit some of these themes in my short film SWERVE, but I’m interested in engaging them more directly.  Interestingly, sometimes making a film helps me connect to the past more directly than any other activity.  Something about drawing on my own experiences, or recreating them in a filmic way, helps me to process and reconnect with my past.

So my first film is going to deal with memory: not only our own memories, but of our loved ones.  I think that a fundamental aspect of the human condition is the distance between one another, and that one of the underlying building blocks of love is the desire to bridge that impossible gap.  In film, though, we’re able to allow the impossible to become reality, and I want to try to create a film that captures the mystery and profound beauty of experiencing a loved one’s memories.  Absurdly ambitious?  Maybe.  Too much to chew on for a first projec?  Probably.  But what is school for if you can’t make glorious mistakes in the name of art?