 12-25-2004  |
Okay.... first off... Merry Christmas. So I didn't get to bed last night until 2am and then I end up waking up at 6:30am. Wide awake. So I decide to get up and read. I'm reading this book I recently purchased at the DV Convention in Los Angeles earlier this month. A little history on the DV Convention. Back in 2001 or so, my good friend Ben Dimagmaliw talked me into going to the DV Convention. I didn't know what it was but Ben and I share a number of common interests, movie making being one of them. Ben was heavily involved with the Asian Film Foundation here in San Diego, so at the time he was way more involved with movies and independent film. Needless to say, we showed up at the show and it was amazing. It was here that I first saw the Panasonic AG-DVX 100 and decided that I wanted to shoot my first film on it instead of my GL1. I garnered immeasurable information from the show and was sold on returning again and again. Flash forward to earlier this month... I headed up to the show alone, Ben has recently moved to Japan. I've been so busy with work that I didn't really pay attention to what the show had in store. I did however decide to go up on the day of the keynote. I didn't know the name, but I figured it would be fun. What an amazing underestimate. The show was the same, a little more proffesional looking. I saw numerous things I wanted to buy but couldn't afford. I did decide to buy a book on the editing of Cold Mountain (pictured left) I'd heard that it was the first big "hollywood" film edited with Final Cut Pro (excluding Full Frontal which was shot DV on a Canon XL-1). Cold Mountain is an interesting film for me. I wasn't interested in seeing it all that much, but when I finally did see the film in my hotel room earlier this year (while visiting Davey up in Seattle) I was markedly changed. It took me a couple of days, but I realized it was a damn good movie. I even bought the soundtrack before I saw the film and had grown attached to it. Okay.. back to the convention... I was done with it pretty quick so I decided to check out one of the seminars before the keynote and the films that the convention were showcasing across town later in the night. The seminar was great (more on that at a later date) and as I exited to go to the keynote I realized I didn't have far to walk. The long line for the keynote was right outside the door. I waited for about ten minutes and then they let us in. The crowd was electric. By now I realized that the book I purchased earlier was actually by this guy who was talking. He apparently edited English Patient, The Conversation and Apocalypse Now (which for some reason I thought Francis had edited.) I kept forgetting the guys name, so I would check the cover of the book to remind myself who I was going to be listening to. Walter Murch. The name is engrained on my brain now. His keynote was excellent. Words of wisdom and some great philosophy on editing flows from this guy like water from a fountain. He's such a cool guy. He started off showing a great little short film called "Bitch Fight" to show how Final Cut Pro is empowering people. He heralds FCP better than anyone I've ever seen or read. Later he showed a clip from Cold Mountain and explained why it was cut. I could go on and on... I probably will at a later date... but as you can imagine.. I missed the films they were showing later and stayed to watch Walter and his assistant Sean talk to the LA FCPUG. I called Davey inbetween talks to tell him how much I was geeking out. When Walter was done I stayed for a little of the Apple FCP experts.. but I ended up leaving with a Buzz... I was stuck in traffic on the way home (5 hours to drive home when it took me 2 to drive up) but my mind was swimming with thougths of editing. One of the favorite things I brought away from Walter's speech was when he said you should edit not like you're talking to the viewer him or herself, but with their imagination. Whoah.. that was wall shattering when I pushed that through my brain. Again... whoah. So here we are.. Christmas Day and I'm wide awake typing away at my movie blog of sorts. Why you might ask.... well I just read something very telling in Mr. Murch's book that explained away a huge mountain of guilt I've been feeling. Ya see.. it's been six months and there's no trailer or footage to show anyone. "What's wrong with me?" the time for cold feet is over... it's painfull to see my friends faces wondering where the film is at... even knowing that it's gonna be here real soon. I needed to have an explanation for this feeling that has been holding me back... and then I read it in this book... line after wonderful line. I doubt it will mean anything to anyone else... but it's been sort of a godhead moment for me. Here's the line from the book in case you're interested.... The line is in reference to Anthony Minghella weeks after directing Cold Mountain... "As Walter sees it, the break a director is forced to take between filming and editing is a good thing, a necessary transition. Film directors should come down off the emotional roller coaster of shooting a movie before they enter the quiet, deliberative enviroment of the editing room. From production's white-hot, highly social milieu of a large crew and top-notch cast, Minghella now joins Murch where a quieter, cooler, and more dispassionate viewpoint prevails. A director must now be prepared to judge a shot for what it is on the screen, not for particular events or emotions involved in filming it. Associations recalled from that particular day on location, positive or negative, are memories to be left behind. Such withdrawl takes time. The further the director distances himself from shooting, the more helpful he will be in the editing room. On Julia, the 1977 film with Jane Fonda and Vanessa Redgrave that Murch edited, 70 year-old director Fred Zinneman went off to the Alps to scale some mountains, to put himself in life-threatening situations where he had to forget about shooting. For Minghella, a director who relishes the editing process and feels completely at home inside the edit room, coming down off that mountain is a good thing." Walter Murch from his book Behind the Seen. Well, I'm down from my mountain now. Time to get busy. Jeromy |
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12-22-2004  |
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12-12-2004  |
sorry about that.... |
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12-11-2004  |
This is a test...repeat.. this is a test...
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