Autumn

There's always that one day in August when you realise that Autumn will be upon us. That day is today. The temperature has dropped by around 20' and grey has become the colour of choice for skies about town.
So the photos are of bygone days - last saturday, in fact, for the gargoyle and two weeks for the odd sign, about which, more later.
More mysteriously, the second image really did not want to upload, so must remain even more garbo-like and mysterious. Bloody ukrainians.

Paper Tigers

Though these posts in principle are never edited or revised, I make an exception for this one, as other voices will modify, contradict and add. So - here's version one, watch this space for further provocations.

BEAT THE MANIFESTO 1

( ‘béat’ (bay-aah) = ‘blissful’ in French)

There are no excuses for not making films. The BEAT MANIFESTO is designed to specifically eliminate all those obstacles one raises to explain WHY one cannot make films: money, time, experience, resources, colleagues, legal restrictions, inertia.

1. A beat film starts with ONE SITUATION + ONE IMPULSE.

2. Make your films with the means at hand.

3. Violate all copyright law.

4. Tend towards potlatch. Put in as much as you can, and expect nothing in return.

5. Use no paraphernalia. No tripods, no special lenses, no filters, no gadgets.

6. Push your equipment to its limits. Get to know how much you can do with the camera on its own. No automatic settings.

7. Shoot in one uninterrupted session. A film in a day.

8. Edit within a week.

9. Show the film within a month. (after 90 days the film must be left unfinished)

10. Involve strangers. Get involved with them. Film = life and life = film.

11. NO scripts (but scraps of scripts are OK)

12. Make many things.

13. Don’t obsess over details. Get it right NEXT TIME. Do it better.

14. Leave all rough edges.

15. Never sign releases or contracts. Ever.

16. Share your knowledge and skills, switch roles. Get into situations where you do not yet have the skills.

17. Honor your mistakes as hidden intentions.

18. Do not give more to those who already have too much.

19. Work fast.

20. Don’t be precious. Anybody and everybody can do this. The ‘artist’ is an anachronism like a mediaeval guild or closed shop union – designed to exclude. Beat films are designed to include.

21. Place your faith in Allah… but tie up your camel.

Permission To leave

It would be tragic if it weren't so funny. Finally have the visas in my hand now, after nine (count 'em) months of gestation, and leaping through hoops. Yesterday was the highlight, at the US Consulate in Krakow, as new but essential forms were pulled out of thin air before we were allowed entry into the inner sanctum. Therein, one aspirant US visitor - an opera singer - was asked to prove her skills by executing an aria. She did; she got the visa. Would I have to improvise a film, I wondered?
The old Jedi mind powers still work, though, but not over the phone. I did manage to 'persuade' the young Polish gym teachers they hire as filters to let us in, but the disembodied female voice on the telephone was not to be swayed. Still. Feast your eyes. That's what all the fuss has been about.
The great paradox, of course, is that now I have full legal permission to stay in the USA and work, I find I can also - for the first time in over a year - leave the place, and idle about. Hmmm, what a dilemma.
And finally, today, the Ryanair plane we took to London had the Pythonesque ID... EI-DLE. Sick? As a parrot.

Against The Clock

Can I do this in the four minutes before this Krakow (see pic) internet cafe cuts me off? Just been to US Consulate, wrestled (almost literally) with bureaucrats and bureaus and currently await entrance authorisation to return to USA. Hohoho.
Or not. So, last post from the free world, I guess, must upload now before 'computer says 'Nah'.

The Pudding Is Proven

To wit - Lenin and others reappear on the streets of Poland, but this time as Comedy, not Tragedy, as advertising icons for a pizza delivery service. Yet another modern amenity old Vladimir Ilyich did not possess. Ach.

Bez Ilustracja

Just to say that after a couple of days internet uncertainty with servers misbehaving and trips going in contrariwise directions to the wi-fi hotspots (also because of rain) I am now back in a cafe on the main square, in a warm but rather strong wind, trying to convince myself that this is August, I am 'on holiday' and have no worries etc etc. Whereas in fact i feel rather troubled, irritable and unconvinced that anything good will come of this trip.
Must be a blood sugar problem, no?
I did some more whittling on herzog, and though still a while from a rough cut, am now down below 30 minutes. Give in to the beauty of nature, as evidenced by the second shot below.. that'll do it.

Up The Creek

HERZOG DIARY 1

The original conception was Peter’s “Werner Herzog Eats 2 Pints of Stewart’s Ice Cream”
An expedition up a Hudson River tributary, in some way a homage to/spoof of ‘Aguirre’ and ‘Fitzcarraldo’. My inevitable thought (as ‘Werner’) is also of the overlapping documentaries ‘Burden of Dreams’ and ‘My Best Fiend’. And a bit of Herzog’s role as the gloomy, feckless father in ‘Julian Donkey Boy’.

We set out with no more information than that, and a little conceptual baggage, viz: there would be two canoes, and one camera (this debate, one or two cameras, was quite lively) everyone except Taima and Jeff would appear in the film as a character (because they both had to leave early) and we would swap the camera around so that all of us filmed something.
We took on the characters of Werner, Walter, Wilhelm, Piotr and Berto. Foxy the dog became ‘Fuchs’, though I guess ‘Fuchsle’ would be a better translation. Can you call a dog ‘fucksly’?

The ‘story’ would evolve as incidents occurred. My jejune mind kept thinking of James Fenimore Cooper.

The day was sunny though it threatened thunder, and around 90 degrees.

We paddled off down Catskill creek, past marinas and onto the Hudson, heading south for about a mile, then ran aground (a-mud, actually)
Canoes were dragged through the mud, and we found an odd Sheriff’s sign stuck up out of the mud most improbably. It said ‘WAKE’.

Up the creek, Joe had to be shot (needed to leave)

Then we proceeded (Peter, Russell, Will, Robin, Foxy) in one canoe upstream as the tide receded

We disembarked and set off on a plod through the mud/jungle/mosquitos etc

Berto (Robin) collapsed in the mud and had to be left behind
Wilhelm (Will) freaked out and ran into the trees
Piotr (Peter) got stranded pushing ‘Werner’(Russell) off as the tide turned

Werner returned alone, Foxy having mysteriously vanished

Unfilmed was the capsized canoe

We have about 90 minutes of raw footage

Peter wondered whether we could film another day of the planning stages of the trip, or should we deliberately limit ourselves to only that footage (remember rules can be broken)

Eventually, it was decided that Peter, myself, Will and Taima would each edit the same footage independently, to produce a kind of ‘Rashomon’ like film. No length was mandated, but about 5 mins each was agreed on.

So, what the other three are doing, I know not.

My first thought was to cut together all the footage I liked, and stick to an absolutely strict chronology.
This ‘bout a bout’ ran 45 minutes.
But while watching, what struck me was the walking through mud, and not the ‘staged’ dramatic dialogue scenes, all improvised in improbable foreign accents, by the way.

I spent some time cutting Joe’s breakdown and murder traditionally, then decided it would be better to offer a different explanation, i.e. that there had been no murder, and that ‘Walter’ was alive and well. As we had – nonsensically – taken a long shot of the two of us walking along chatting AFTER the assassination, this made sense. Werner’s commentary would be about exaggerated rumours of accidents and crimes…
Later it occurs to me to remove these scenes altogether, but am I second guessing the others? That they will include the killing? Then I deny it? Or omit it? Interesting.

I have also decided to find some random Germans and film them as my new producers for a new venture. This means new footage, but if I follow my chronological rule, I can do this, if I add the edit at the end as an epilogue. I can also show my trusty slave ‘Berto’ is still alive, as I have handily brought him along with me.
There are also rivers and creeks here to extend my obsessions.
It’s now the 10th August and I have not sorted out the story yet.

After listening to the actual sound quality and the words spoken, I make the decision to not use live sound except as background, but to voice-over the whole thing. On the condition (I hate voice-overs) that what I say and what we see are in some degree of contradiction. At best, and straightest, like Jacques Cousteau, or parts of some of Chris Marker’s work (like ‘Mammoth’). Dissonance, but smoothed away so it’s not obviously dissonant.

I have spent hours trying to find a distressed and non-automatic look for the film, so it appears to have been shot on super-8. Not using the automatic ‘film look’ filters. Think I have that now, so am leaving it till last. You can get so lost in tweaking and rendering and re-jigging that you forget to actually have a film to tweak.

The other thing I notice, again, is that the story elements fade very quickly after a few viewings. What is strong about a film emerges slowly, once the narrative is accepted or ignored. And what comes out of this is not the spoof or homage element, but the very real slogging through mud, the insects, the heat, and the occasional beauty when everyone shuts up.

Can I make the film segment only with these expedition bits??

In these beat films, what I don’t like (a general dislike) are the following even though I realize they are useful as guidelines, maybe what I want are no guidelines, some obligation to flounder.
a) mockumentary
b) spoof
c) homage
d) making-of

all of these seem to remove the main justification for doing a spontaneous film, i.e. to capture a moment on the fly. By giving such a framework, a lot of that lightness is lost, and two elements can creep in – cheap(easy) humour and plagiarism – I mean direct, ‘can I copy that shot?’ plagiarism

Another thing is that I find almost all mock/spoofs rather disrespectful, whereas I actually have a lot of respect and affection for old Werner H.

Any film is a documentary of what falls before the lens… always a document about the people involved as actors, and the landscapes. This is why I hate studio sets, this part of the form is left blank.
Spoofs are for bar-room conversations. Fun to talk about but why waste film?
Homage is empty, unavoidable subconsciously anyway, so why duplicate an extra layer consciously?
And Peter himself even introduced the motto “don’t let the making-of get in the way of the making”

OK where does that leave me?

A bunch of guys flailing through mud and occasionally getting hysterical.
Shots of jungle and river
A somber voice over (‘Werner’) undercutting the images.

Promising? I’ll watch it all again tonight.

To be continued…

Cutting away

A public utility message about letting an edit arrive in its own time. As related to the beat film fenomenon as she is evolving.

Generally, unless there is some pre-imposed (and therefore unsatisfactory) structure to work from/against, the editing process tends to go something like this.
Was I there? Do I have any pre-conceived notions of what the filmmakers were trying to do? Can I and should I be swayed by their original pre-film intentions? Or those emotive moments from the shoot that might in fact look crappy on film, but call you to include them (don’t listen).
It’s hard but I think each stage of filming must owe no loyalty to the previous phases. The script above all is not sacrosanct, and you inevitably end up filming other things than the script. That’s the whole point. Or we wouldn’t go to the movies, we’d read screenplays.
Or is it quote my film unquote, in which case, what was I after? Did I get it? What else did I get? And what now?
What we should be doing is letting go of anything from an earlier stage which didn’t work, or didn’t come off. I am even tempted to say, we should not allow ourselves to shoot anything we ‘forgot’ or simply did not film for whatever reason. (the dog ate the spare battery)
Whichever case, you find yourself with a couple of DV tapes in your hands. Now what?
Log them, which means WATCH THEM. No great attention need be paid, but I do think you need to actually watch and listen to the footage, open mindedly. This means that as the video goes onto the computer, the images go into your brain. This takes up a lot of disc space, be warned.
Next, I watch again, maybe the next day, and pull out the bits in order, whichever I remember and whichever appeal. These go onto a provisional timeline.
Then, I juggle them around, cut some together, see links between other sections and mentally file a few images as ‘musts’.
At about this point, weird things begin to happen. First, I get all despairing as nothing hangs together, nothing flows and the only obvious correspondences seem to be reminiscent of dull BBC documentaries where every level goes in the same direction. Story rears its dim head again. What does this mean? Who are these people? Where are the beginning, middle and end?
These are not serious questions.
Always, this plateau of despair comes right before the film begins to gel. And it is a plateau. It can last for weeks or even months. The film is boring. It disgusts me. I invent other, more exciting things to do.

Eventually, I try something. Might be what I call a ‘trick’ (i.e. something which always works, like tweaking the colour response, or adding a nice slow motion shot, putting in a title or adding a guide track piece of music) or it might be an epiphany from usually another piece of work, or music… put it in. Reorder some sequences. Remove a big narrative chunk, and suddenly, somewhere (it is sudden, it happens and you see it all at once) a couple of sequences fit. The rest don’t of course, but you’re not depressed about them anymore. Maybe shift that last but overwhelmingly ‘final’ sequence of shots to the start? Or reverse a cause and effect sequence. Or remove the cause altogether.
There’s an exhilaration in cutting away, in trimming (oh, look I’ve got a 33 second masterpiece!). Then, you give the whole film a close pass, taking out frames here and there, maybe flopping a shot to keep the eye engaged. Removing one or two shots – even a favourite. (kill your darlings)
Now there’s something to look at. I call this stage the rough cut. Before any magic intervenes, you’re just mechanically sifting, thinking things through with the eyes. Which is why I always seem to imagine an extra stage to filmmaking than most textbooks use. Film – edit 1 (watch & select, then eliminate) – edit 2 (order and build) – show

In reality the two edit phases can run many times in a loop. Build, destroy, re-build, re-destroy, etc.
It’s a happy time locked up with the stale coffee and pop-tarts.
But it never fails to amaze me that this magic does occur, and unless it occurs, you don’t have a film.

So, right now I’m not even at the rough cut stage on Peter’s ‘Herzog’ film, so it’s maybe an interesting perspective to see how it evolves emotionally? Let’s see, from time to time over the next weeks.

Last Didactic post, I promise

It’s not a pleasant thought that you might only get one original idea every ten years, but the concept of entropy has been forcing itself on me with horrible regularity recently. A propos the continuing lamenting about audio-visual proliferation, and the fragments of lesser evil which it engenders. I wondered if the subject matter of these micro-niche, narrowcast ‘shows’ will not inevitably tend to the highest levels of entropy. By which I mean, in order to make capital circulate faster and faster, the gain control will have to turned up past 10, accelerating (downhill) as the segments get cheaper, shabbier and more pervasive. And I do mean necessarily, not accidentally. That is, there would be no way to subvert any of these genres by introducing high level content. It would not fit.
And, if I want to follow the train of thought to its logically absurd end, what are the two human activities which are the most entropic? Violence and drugs. Seen as commodities. The smaller step from this is to take violence and drug use to their ultimate forms – war and addiction. Can there be any co-incidence, then, that as crime grows, it escalates precisely to (gang) war and providing for addictions. Creating and not quite satisfying them.
As a person’s basic needs can be met quite easily, new needs must be constantly fabricated, whether this is in the almost benign form of fashion (clothing, style or music) or more damaging forms like ‘lifestyle’.
It came to me last night that the wholly approved and above board science of marketing is of the same ilk. Recently I worked on a recording for a marketing company, and learnt about ‘lifetime value’ of a customer. The concept being that it is no longer enough to sell any one object to any one customer. You must factor in the cost and publicity of your product against the total lifetime ‘utility’ of any one customer to your company. Now, this is not ‘customer loyalty’, and even, if necessary, the company could totally change its products. What we have here is an exact replica of an efficient parasite adapting to its host. Look at cars. Any American adult can be expected to purchase a car at some time in his or her life. That may represent a ‘profit’ of $5,000 to $10,000 to GM or Toyota. But that same adult will probably buy, rent, lease of otherwise consume 15 to 20 cars in a lifetime, ideally going further and further upmarket each time. That’s the aim. So, assuming you can hook an individual, you are looking at almost a quarter of a million dollars ‘lifetime value’ to your company. For that, you can indeed throw in some 0% financing and silver wheel trims. Not so sinister? Now, apply this ideology to pharmaceutical companies. What’s the value of a lifetime addicted customer then?
The next obvious detail is that merchandise which lasts can fit into this system. Things must of necessity fall apart and need to be replaced. Obsolesence.

So, a root cause of all this, I have been asked to help out with a project which involves old rock stars and ex-addicts giving ‘don’t do it’ speeches to teenagers at risk. I’ve always found such things unbearably sanctimonious and ineffective. Then I thought, why not get some of those rockers still actively abusing substances to openly endorse them? A kind of ‘kids get smashed’ campaign. I thinkthe utter lameness of these rich slobs would put more people off drugs than any well-thinking campaign. The wife says I’m wrong, but it’s just a thought. I cite Sid Vicious’ ‘interview’ while on heroin in ‘The Filth & The Fury’ as prima facie evidence in my case. Your Honour.

Never On A Sunday

I should explain the reference to ‘prostitutes’ below. Was I hasty or dismissive? Perhaps ‘strippers’ is kinder? At any rate, the actuality is neither, as the girls are alone in front of a camera. Two of the immediate signs of gharbazdegi as it manifests itself in Catholic, Roman alphabetized, occidental, post-Communist Poland are a) luxury commodities such as coffee, once parsimoniously eked out half-spoon by half-spoon, are now liberally (sic) shoveled into the cup and b) the former glories of three State run TV channels are now the euro-glories of 999 cable channels. The father-in-law recently had this service installed. Never mind that 600 of the channels are radio stations from Zagreb and Tirane, after about channel 20 they are all premium pay channels like HBO, Fox, Canal+ and so on. But as one scrolls through the higher numbers late at night, with the sound down, there are clusters of odd grouped thematics. 343 to 370 is dial-up interactive telephone porn. (Go above channel 370, however, and you get into the really bizarre: small audience random religious broadcasts. The objective is the same, however: to obtain your Mastercard number. Now that’s really scary. Where’s our Martin Luther of the irreligious ether?) The below-mentioned holding pages are rather PG: girls on sofas, or Betty Page type poses. OK, PG-13. Of course, if you possess the secret code (a credit card) you can go beyond these guardians. The women look bored. Some of them scratch their arses, or fall off the sofa while trying to gracefully turn round. Some have the remote control themselves (is this a cottage industry?) and zoom in and out randomly. I assume they are alone in a basement somewhere (Italy, apparently) and have been told not to be too provocative until people start paying. Though there are some young things cavorting in bikinis, most of the ladies seem to be in their 40s, pastured out from the harder slog of actually doing porn, and shoved over into the less strenuous task of just looking porny. I sincerely hope so, for their sakes. The younger girls look as though they think they have one over on the punters. They don’t, of course, and will be 40 too, one day. And although Lenin did not (as far as we know) have 999 ‘hot’ cable channels, he did nevertheless predict that late capitalism would be forced into many odd corners, appropriating all aspects of our so-called private lives, and inserting as many middlemen as possible between ourselves and the end objects of our desires, be those desires apples, tractor parts or ladies of the night. Lacan, I believe, went further, and insisted that new surplus ‘desires’ would have to be created, then profit wrung from them. Curiously, by investing the ‘object’ with precisely its own lack. In other words, coffee can be made more expensive and profitable by removing the caffeine and selling premium high cost decaf; sweetness can be abstracted, repackaged and resold as aspartamine; and sex can be reduced to commerce, then made virtual, and finally buried behind a curtain of keystrokes. Remembering also that fragmentation is not a simple quantitative division, but a qualitative change of state, and that the former saving grace of television, namely that its very lack of choice unified the viewers into a small number of open-ended camps with a commonly shared set of (pop)cultural references, has now morphed into a shattered set of isolated mini-groups whose mutual knowledge and interest asymptotically approaches zero. There’s even a new word for it, ‘narrowcast’, as opposed to ‘broadcast’. And ‘niche channels’ which, frankly, when you are scanning the 370s sounds like a gynecological term. Hmm. And I got that (more or less) from the former head of Canal + France, now a Socialist Mayor in Cap d’Ag, near Nice. So there. (He also told me to spend more time with my baby son than on building a career, his main regret vis-à-vis his own children, so he has a lot to answer for/be thanked for)
As Elias Canetti said, ”the most sinister movement of the 20th century was the avoidance of the concrete.” And he said that long before the internet.
Perhaps the project for the 21st century should be to locate and celebrate the concrete? What do you say?
Another more close-to-home quote, from Green of Scritti Politti (the pop group whose fansite is up at the top of this page). When asked how he felt about the ‘insults’ of ‘pretentious’ and ‘intellectual’ once thrown at him, he said he could think of worse, for example – ‘unpretentious and pig-ignorant’. I couldn’t agree more.

Return of the Muddied Men

You'd think one could get away from all of that, wouldn't you? Jimi H. plays on the stereo of the Polish cafe, and all is well with the world, thus getting me over having spent a morning wrestling with bureaucracies, people saying 'computer says 'nah' and suchlike. And why a $20 dollar ticket actually costs $250. Taxes.
But enough of the mundane and sublunar. It stopped raining (briefly), I found an old sweater, London looms (see...) and the edit plan for the Herzog film has become clearer to me. Though I am taking a risk expecting three other people to do their own Rashomoning on it.
What else? Life is Good, despite all evidence to the contrary. Coffee helps, and the slightly overweight prostitutes on the cover pages of restricted satellite TV channels are actually captivating in their humanity. I mean, you can imagine having a cup of tea and a laugh with them. I must be getting old.
I'd also like to note that despite possible appearance to the contrary, the above photo is wholly heterosexual (or not at all sexual) in character. There, feel re-assured.

Cholerna Pogoda

Or, bloody weather. Though I feel as at home as proust and his madelaines, having just spent a james Bond moment in the local Honarary Comsulate - deserted building, guarded by a 50-something apparatchik lady (very polite), up a flight of composite stairs, enter an empty office suite. A young Ms Moneypenny behind a desk. Empty cupboards. telephone, fax, computer... a front if ever I saw one. Maybe... Anyway, I got my passport forms and have to send them off with lots of money. Bureaucracy!
The images are of the airbus wing over Germany, and some rainy night streetlamp. Romantic, no? these will undoubtedly find their way into a fillum at some point. Meanwhile, I'm off before I get collared by the waitress.

Samobslugo

The internal camera in this mac acts up a bit. Sometimes it says 'Computer says 'Nah'... but now it worked so here are two photos (or fotos) of me in sexy Eurokaffeehaus and the wonderful, empty, rainy Rynek.
Yes, I love being in Poland.

Rathaus Eins

They call it the 'Rynek' now, but no-one is being fooled. It's a rathouse. A I sit in the three day drizzle (prayers answered, see?) grateful to be out of the 100 degree heat and my soul on a string catches up with me after all those airmiles, I await momentous events. Not sure quite what...
Anyway, first notes from the city square, from inside a nice european coffee bar and traditional Polish wi-fi spot. More to follow.

Pre-Production

Despite being exhausted, Robin mooted shooting a beat film here in the airport. I told him to wait just a while (big error) with the resultant pre-production meeting you see here.
You'd have probably only got a mockumentary on the toilets anyway.

Stranded. A bit.

Im Luft

Am Luft?

Whatever, this is being written on a laptop on a Lufthansa flight somewhere just east of Goose Bay, in the cold North Atlantic, or to be most accurate, 35,000 ft above it. It’s the 1st of August, as we head out to Poland. My reputation/self-esteem having taken quite a knock as the Department of Homeland security decided (yesterday) that I am of a fine and upstanding character, and should be given leave (without let or hindrance, I expect) to remain in these sceptered federated states for three years more. Ah, well.
It’s getting on for 1 a.m. and little sense can be expected from I. Mustn’t drain the battery, after all.

Did I mention that the flight is jam packed full of Jehovah’s Witnesses from all compass points of the USA, all going to Poland for a J-fest? Is our karma that weird?

Transatlantic flight elided.

Here’s ironic then, suffering the same fate as Green of Scritti did last week – left too long cooking on the JFK tarmac, we missed our fast transfer and are now faced with YET ANOTHER 5 hour wait in designer hell, i.e. an airport terminal, albeit a nice one like Munich (or Copenhagen). Lufthansa bought us dinner. The gay steward was called A. Kamp, I kid you not. So, to sleep or not to sleep, dass ist die (or der) Frage. For in that airport lounge of Hell what dreams may come. I am delirious now, after only 5 hours sleep followed by (so far) 21 hours of travel, interrupted.
See later. Words are failing me, hence photos.

Later, took the plunge and logged on at this nice wi-fi spot. Sleep lack is making thought processes dim and , er, interesting. We will reach a bed in about four hours, or a 30 hour trip. Ho Hum.

Oh, the toilets here are fantastic. recommended.