the environment is cool again

We even recycled our own stove burners since Brent based the burner sizes on our stove- which apparently is of a non-standard size!

When I was in 5th grade, at another time when it was in style to care about nature, they made us sit through an assembly that involved a robot from the future who rapped about the importance of saving the environment. I was lucky enough to switch schools that year which allowed an encore performance of this what have you. Maybe that's why I think it's important that a lot of the things in this film are actually re-appropriated; we pulled siding off of a dilapidated farm house (where we also got some room molding and some flooring too!), a lot of the construction wood and wood for sculptural pieces is from an old barn that fell down on the property, the props Brent didn't make are (cheap) antiques we scouted out in nearby shops...the future rapping robot would be so proud!

Here you can see the missing siding of the house in the backgroundwhich we then made into the set facade in the foreground!

part of the furniture?

Right now this thing is taking up more than a quarter of our living space...your guess is as good as mine! Actually, I do know what it is...it's some kind of contraption to project images onto and then draw or paint onto glass to add to the image- like an analogue photoshop layering system if you will! The accordian is just to throw you off! Ha! Actually, that is another project...sigh...now how to get into those cabinets?

in cars

 We've been searching for two used cars- pre-1980, don't have to run- for a particular scene in the film for months! It seems everyone in rural PA has space to  keep all the cars in all the yards forever. We've tried the internet, we tried those car finder magazines, we've been to three salvage yards- no luck! I took this picture in one of the yards with my phone. The conversation there went: "You need a car from the 70s?" "Yes." "We have one. Right there. Doesn't work though." "O? How much?" "I'm not selling it but you can take pictures of it!" Cars out here are apparently worth a lot of something...but it's definitely not money!

 

Wish us luck!

needle & thread

I didn't realize how much cloth was in the film until I somehow managed to get on a fabric factory outlet e-mail list that I CAN'T GET OFF OF despite my best efforts. That was from when we bought the fabric for those 34ft long curtains that block out the world from the set. We rolled up to a shady looking loading dock and these men threw bolt after bolt of fabric into the car repeatedly asking what we were doing with it. The ladies at the not so local Jo-Ann fabric are also constantly inquiring about our fabric purchases from them which have included an entire bolt of white felt for that huge dress, yards of cream muslin and near constant orders of upholstery fabric that line the walls of much of the interior of the main set house. After I once

answered to their questions "We're working on a film" to which I was greeted with a local woman's son's headshot, I've stuck with the answer "It's for a school play." I've also bought a lot of fabric at thrift shops, felted my own felt from locally produced wool and recycled as much of the scraps that I can for my own miniature animation sets! By the way, all of the sewing done for this film was done by hand or with a $20 beginner sewing machine I got at Sears- didn't know it was such an accessible/affordable hobby, don't fear the needle & thread!

I am a cinematographer

It was a special day at Nervous Films yesterday because the amazingly talented Pete Sillen came out to the barn with a station wagon filled with cameras & his teenage son! Pete is half the creative genius behind the film Benjamin Smoke (the other half being Jem Cohen who also made an appearance at the barn a few pre-blog months back) and the cinematographer for the hypnotically beautiful Old Joy. His new feature film, which I was lucky enough to see a rough cut of in his NY studio a little while ago, is titled I Am Secretly An Important Man. It is a documentary about the Seattle based poet Steven "Jesse" Bernstein who is a little known grunge pioneer that created a legacy of near myth surrounding his outsider life and work. Bernstein is a fascinating subject and the images in the film are pure Sillen magic, muted shots that somehow manage to be intimate and expansive at the same time. I can't wait to see how these beautiful filmakers saw our own film! Now to get Pete's footage developed (and Jem's too!) which is a new thing to our digital still camera world...

animation

Susa's Red Ears

Brent always says when he thinks of a story he sees it in his head in a certain way- I like to think of his head as a crazy organ player at an old newsreel screening, images churning out to his wild narration. Sometimes he'll see things with curvy, wispy line drawings, sometimes with little wooden hinged figures, most recently he saw the story of Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then being acted out by humans.

His early animation was all hand drawn with little more than acetate, paint, tape and sharpie shot on a questionably obtained camera. I've read people describe those pieces as "adamantly handmade," you can see the number drawn on the cels, the scotch tape holding the action in place, Brent's reflection in the shot.

Paulina Hollers

Other films such as Paulina Hollers and Weird Carolers were made in stop motion with move-able characters. Paulina was made mostly with tiny figures carved out of wood  with wire&bead screw/ball & socket joints slowly moving each figure a little one picture at a time.

 Tinkerer Used To Be a Trade started introducing some scenes with humans (me and our neighbor Jerry!) acting frame by frame. In this film we were mostly treated as puppets playing out an action with no real character development. Then came Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then which takes the human stop motion a little bit further allowing the actors to bring human qualities to their roles, including talking!

Tinkerer

During testing for the film Brent first tried videotaping the action and dialogue, playing it back and having me mimic the syllable mouth movements and the body movements. This was weird. It was a bit exaggerated. Really though, I looked like I was a fish with a gaping mouth groping for food on the ocean floor, flapping fins to stay afloat.

After a few more tests he devised an insanely time consuming way of mapping out dialogue. First he records us speaking, then he divides the scene into frames (15 frames per second is what he determined looked the most smooth), then he breaks up the syllables we speak into those frames. A normal film shoot involves a lot of "LLL for Leonard, eeaan for Leonard, arrr for Leonard" breaking up each phonetic sound to match the frame. 

As for our movement, we sort of block out what we are going to do while Brent directs  how many more frames we have to get from keyframe A to B. For example, I am going to move my hand from one place to another and have x amount of frames in which to do so. You can see a short film about the feature film here that has a moment of pixelated dialogue and some clips we have begun editing.

I heard Brent being interviewed recently about why he chose to make the film with humans and he said, "I would have had to use hundreds of drawings to convey what one human face can." I actually never thought about how many drawings would have to be made to convey "sad" as opposed to a quick click of a still camera shutter after I move inch by inch. I do think that building a town in our backyard was just time consuming as drawing thousands of expressions though. When we talked about making the film in human stop motion he also really wanted the special effects to be real, immediate and accessible- all things that animation allows. It's really odd how my eyes have adjusted to watching a film frame by frame but I guess when it comes down to it all movies are really frame by frame. Now where's my stop motion heating pad?

Bird

I somehow managed to introduce another (!) bird into the script, and I don't mean those pesky ducks or the birds my character tries to lure into houses in the yard, it is in a whole other way... This is how we have ended up with Virginia the all yellow "Rare" Parakeet. So far she is pretty quiet, a little messy and only mildly interested in escaping. How do I convince Brent to keep the little sweetie? I mean...is anyone interested in a pet bird?

Ducks

 These local kids raise birds in a pen in our yard. I don't know what they do with the birds exactly.  First it was pheasants (who occaisionally fly and sit on the cage looking for their old friends or maybe for food), then it was turkeys (who upon release immediately targeted cars as the enemy meaning they would bum rush all moving cars and mercilessly peck at them) and now it's the ducks. The ducks wouldn't be so bad if the music/sound recording we are doing for the film wasn't accented with evil quacking laughter throughout! Update: The ducks were just mysteriously freed from the pen (Brent, I am looking at you) and have now taken to circling the set...

Nervousfilms: 1 Frozen Ground: 0

I think we figured out a way to defeat that pesky frozen ground....

Leonard

 Film still: Mike as Leonard.

The main character Leonard is a pretty complex guy. Building a house to save your wife's life/ as a means to avoid the inevitable while looking toward God for serious answers in between shifts at the hardware store isn't really an easy part to play. When Brent was trying to figure out who would be Leonard he knew he wanted to use a musician because he wasn't used to the actorly direction that most stage/screen actors employ. He knew he could express the character in more literary or musical terms "more like Bob Dylan," "more like Vonnegut," "more like a young Tom Waits." After thinking and re-thinking we were lucky enough to have the well-read musician Mike McGinley pop into our heads!

 Mike in his band The Bitter Tears

Mike lives and works, part time as a chef (and thank goodness for his culinary education sponsoring some delicious meals during film shoots) and full time as a musician (more on that below) in Chicago where he was born and raised in the suburbs of. Playing a multitude of instruments him, and friend Alan  Scalpone, lead the band The Bitter Tears http://thebittertears.com/. Their burlesque style live shows infuriate some and amuse many around the world (they recently returned from a European tour opening for Magnolia Electric Co. and are headed back to Europe in the Spring as headliners) and their music though hard to describe (I keep wanting to say it is like Nina Simone on heroin during a big band/hard rock phase but that's not even close! http://thebittertears.com/mp3/bts_Slay.mp3) is consistently wonderful. Mike has been a great addition to the film and his stop motion acting has come a long way from its initial "I look like I'm walking like a turtle" phase! And, as Brent likes to point out, "he is handsome while missing teeth."

Freeze Frame

During the making of this film there's one scene I have been looking forward to the whole time which we are about to shoot. You wouldn't know looking at it but the entire front of the house is hinged. Like a big dollhouse. The front swings open to reveal Leonard's entire vision sort of exposed and raw. Raw and cold as the frozen dirt that is keeping this scene from progressing! Here you see a haggard director and Michael McGinley (as Leonard) as they took turns pick axeing at the frozen earth that is determined to keep the house just where it is.

My Friend Goo

So it seems finding jars of goo throughout my house is a new normal I must learn how to deal with. This week alone there have been a jar filled with a glue/food coloring mixture used as window paint*(pictured at right) a litle too close to the computer and a mug sitting on my bathroom sink brimming with a cornsyrup/food coloring mixture for some good old fashioned movie blood! These are just adding to the plethora of resin/stick mixing buckets (which I keep threatening to turn into an art piece "Bucket Stick 1 of 27") and the many, many jars of homemade stain mixes. O ! The UPS man is here with the new camera! Yay! Must clean those goo jars....um...later?

*One of the things Leonard did when he was building his home was paint the windows of the house different colors. I'm not sure whether he was trying to make the windows into stained glass or if he was trying to maybe get some light therapy to work for his wife? Either way it was an act of love and the glowing light they cast is pretty beautiful....makes me wonder why colored glass isn't a more common, calming thing.

R.I.P. Camera

 It was a sad day at Nervousfilms yesterday. Into the second day of this shoot, with two ailing actors & freezing cold temperatures, the camera died. Not that the camera hasn't served us well. It has made five of Brent's shorts (Paulina, Carlin, Beethoven, Tinkerer, Girl & the Goose), more than half of the feature and everything else around here that needs its picture taken! So, for now, a borrowed camera and excitement when we hear a mail truck...

(Side Note: We were just sitting around trying to come  up with a rough number of shots this camera has fired. We came up with 50,000 pictures for just Gravity....  alone! )