Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Moving Forward Without Permission


So it's been over a month now from when I received my first studio permissions rejection letters. Some were outright "No" and others asked for thousands upon thousands of dollars for seconds of footage I wanted to use and then still didn't guarantee clearance since technically the actors in the clips would also need to be contacted for permission to use their image. A simple "No" would have sufficed. And besides, all it takes is one "No" and the effect I had planned with the imagery no longer holds up. I was already defeated from the very first letter.

Alas. At first I was considerably upset. You know more than 4 people I know of now have actually cried they were so moved by the film...I watched my friend's cathartic reaction as my film did for her in 15 minutes what that Spiritual Warriors film failed to do in an entire hour 45! And now? I can't show it anywhere! Frustration doesn't even begin to cover it. But that was only my first thought. My second thought was of a most beautiful person I know who gave me a message. She said, "Don't worry about changing...you thought you were moving in one direction and then suddenly you found yourself somewhere entirely different. But it's not being changed, don't think of it as changing your film, think of it as enhancing it"

I had NO IDEA what the funk she was talking about at the time. But when I received my rejection letters, after the crying, came the revelation. I don't need the copyrighted footage. The film wasn't really hinging upon that footage, the iconic famous footage images were more of an enhancement. A layer. But as any good film editor knows, when you pull back and strip away a layer of content in your film, what's left in the cut ends up being more enhanced, more emphasized, standing out more than before. Suddenly you see things that you didn't see before, maybe even clearer because there's not all this other footage mixed in with it.

Then my mentor added, "You thought that your story needed that big famous movie footage to enhance it, but what you don't realize is that your story is it's own big movie. It's good enough all on it's own, just as good as any one of those other big movies."

I never thought of it that way before! Suddenly the worst news became the most inspiring vote of confidence that any out-of-work yet still capable and promising young filmmaker could hope to hear.

Here I was waiting around for somebody else to allow me to go forth. Waiting for them to grant me permission so I can move forward and send my film to festivals. Waiting to finally get back to being the filmmaker that I am. When really, it was in my power to do so all along!

The copyrighted footage has henceforth been completely cut from the film. A very genuine thank you to all those film studios and their "big movies" for responding to my request and providing me with the closure I needed so that here I am, finally, moving forward without permission.


Thursday, March 18, 2010

2012:Time For Change Film Premiere



A Special Advance Screening of 2012:Time For Change, a documentary featuring best selling author Daniel Pinchbeck is scheduled to launch in April! I was the Assistant Editor on the film and it promises to be a thought provoking piece that might really peak your interest.

For more about the film please visit http://www.2012timeforchange.com

Your invited!

Buy Tickets: http://cli.gs/2012.tickets

SCREENINGS:

Friday, April 9th , 7pm

Saturday, April 10th, 7pm

Sunday, April 11th, 7pm

And Come to the After Party Free with your Ticket Stub, Sunday after closing night!


Sunday, March 14, 2010

Films in Review: An Analysis of Spiritual Warriors (2007)


I came upon this film haphazardly online and after watching the trailer was rightfully intrigued, especially considering the striking similarity and resemblances it bares to my own feature film, which I've been writing since 2005. Both incorporate such themes as past life remembrances and the warrior's spiritual journey, themes that seem to keep encroaching into media consciousness as we continue to evolve as people in our current turbulent time of transition. Be that as it may, I went into the viewing of Spiritual Warriors excited and eager to see what other fellow filmmakers had come up with in presenting and capturing that often elusive spiritual experience that has taken hold for so many at this time, including myself. However, to my great disappointment I found myself completely unable to connect with it, on almost every level.

The film, while full of compelling performances by actors Jsu Garcia, Shyla Marlin and Robert Easton, lacked a coherent cohesive assembly as a story, one that felt haphazardly strung together with no sense of purpose or connection. It was as if just when one story thread began to develop, we took off into a completely different subplot, then another, with so many tangents that there was no chance for development in any of them. While spiritual truths were touched upon, they were conveyed through characters talking at each other and preaching truth. The old man Roger (Robert Easton) becomes a cliched guru/mentor serving only to be a talking head on screen whose main purpose is simply to spout out wisdoms. They even literally had paragraphs of text of "spiritual teachings" written out on screen intermittently, rather than the concept being shown or explored through the emotional journey of the characters in a deeper way. Film is a medium in which to show, not tell. If I wanted to read about spiritual truths, I would've picked up a book.

In addition to having been poorly shot, the film was compounded with second rate visual effects that feel juvenile and amateur at best (this I could forgive if the story had been masterfully constructed), often overcompensating with special "light effects" to convey spiritual phenomenon in place of actually developing moments of awe, significantly felt within the characters. With the exception of maybe one particularly beautiful closeup of Finn in the heat of the desert, the overall framing and composition of the cinematography is so distanced and uninspired, that it separates you from the main action, making you feel as a voyeur rather than an immersed participant in the drama of the story. Alongside a complete lack of lighting design, scenes appear flat, with no shadow or contrast, which in turn gives this film a feeling of no real depth, intrigue or intimacy which would really be of the utmost importance in order to portray realms of an inner world. The main villain, called the "Prince of Darkness" (Stephen Sowan) is portrayed as a laughable lesser version of Anakin Skywalker, with the only nodd to his dark side being heavily applied dark eyeliner. Otherwise he appears in scenes brightly lit just the same as the others without any shadow or nuanced indication thereof. Not to mention this film was so poorly edited in its construction that they could not even clearly connect that the random African American (E.Milton Wheeler) dressed in a cliched Egyptian costume who pops out of a wall carving was supposed to be the reknowned Pharoah Akhenaten. Really? If I don't "get it" and I'm already familiar with the content having done years of research on the Amarna period, how is a general audience member going to make that connection? Just because the previous scene is desperately over-cut with overlaying shots of the Akhenaten bust doesn't automatically convey or lend significance to this random character in your next scene! It's as if these filmmakers had no idea or understanding of how to go about constructing a film? The overall effect is amateur, flat, and devoid of any real connection to emotion, story, or character (nevermind spiritual truth), the likes of which we'd come to expect from high school video shop (right down to the cheesy rip off red glowing light saber swords).

I am terribly disappointed but I'm glad that I was able to see this film, and see a film that at least tried to articulate truths that were worth the effort. So many films today are empty and spectacle driven without heart, so to their credit, I can sense that the filmmakers here were really after something deeper, without perhaps the tools to execute it. In that way I can give them the benefit of the doubt. However, the one exception that I take to this, is the "surprise twist" ending of the film, for which there is no excuse and is clearly done deliberately. It completely negates any efforts on their part that were invested in the seeking of spiritual truth in a ridiculous attempt to be "clever." It felt like a hat trick that only might've been taken seriously circa the 1980s. Audiences back then might've been "oowwed" but today's audiences having been exposed to the likes of Avatar and The Sixth Sense, really require a directorial savvy applied to their films which employ just a little bit more than commonplace cheap turnabouts "for effect." In short, it leaves you with that rather annoyed feeling of "I can't believe I just sat through this whole movie, for that?"

I'm really quite sorry for having to comment on all of this so unfavorably. I am not one in the habit of completely panning films outright because I appreciate the immense effort that filmmakers undergo to bring something to the screen, especially the independents. So I try to offer some praise of some aspect of the film that was well done. In this case, I'd like to point out that the poster design with the pyramids has a nice sepia colored gradation to it that lends sophistication. The trailer was very well cut to market the film. And the actors involved had a lot to offer, particularly Jsu Garcia as the main protagonist Finn really had a quality about him that lent itself nicely to the role, especially in his eyes. Also Cosimo Canale as Joe was particularly real in his portrayal of a hardened drug runner. And Shyla Marlin as Claire really gave an emotional performance; had she been utilized and shot correctly it would have made a great impact. Lastly, I am eternally grateful to Spiritual Warriors, for venturing out and making all the mistakes for me that I could've ever possibly made in crafting a spiritually focused feature film. Not an easy task as it might seem. And as a wise one once said, "Learn from other people's mistakes, because life is too short to make them all yourself."