FORGE: A Feature Film by 500 Cuts

Thursday, March 18th, 9pm at the Clinton Street Theater.  $2 with A.I. ID.  $5 for everyone else.  Free for cast and crew!

Clinton Street Theater, 9pm, March 18th.

So at last, as we arrive at the one year mark of this project, we hit perfect stride. Quick meetings, phone calls, emails… all of which amount to significant forward progress on the movie. Everybody has a feel for what they’re doing, and they know how to do it! This is my favorite phase of filmmaking; when people fall into sync. We hit it about the third day of shooting back in May. We hit it again when the edit was coming together in August. And now we’re there with visual fx and sound design.

It’s hard to believe it has been a year since I wrote the script for FORGE. People always say, “It’s hard to believe (insert unbelievable amount of time here),” but so much has happened in the past year that it is truly hard to believe. When I look back and make lists of the things that have happened since I wrote this script, it’s pretty amazing that the movie hasn’t fallen apart. Every movie hits that point where everyone involved wonders if it will collapse or continue (usually multiple times). I’ll have to survey the crew and see if there were any of those moments they identified in production, but there were more than a few in post. Here’s just a few…
sketchy early viz fx tests,
teaching overload,
relationship changes,
people start to help then get too busy,
people start to help and it creates more work,
hardware problems,
cat almost dies,
visual fx breakthrough makes all finished shots look like crap…

Just to name a few.

But after all that, the movie prevails. We should be done in a week or so! Thanks for tuning in.

Is it possible that there’s a form of OCD that only kicks in when you’re supposed to be finishing something?  For some reason, now that the movie is so close to being done, I have powerful urges to alphabetize my dvds, organize my hard drives, finish unfinished video games, vacuum…  Is there a name for that?  I mean besides just “procrastination.”  I’m talking a serious physical manifestations of need to do these things!

If there’s no name for it… is there a support group?

Sorry for the large break between updates. Some pretty major changes in my life have distracted my attention away from the project for a couple months, but now I feel like I’m making progress again. I recently had some breakthroughs in how to treat a few of the fx shots so I’m moving forward with those concepts. They may still be kind of rinky dink, but not as thin as before. That’s for sure.

Another cause for the delay is that I’m teaching myself Nuke, which I may have mentioned before. It’s going well, but there’s still stuff that I can do faster in Shake or AE, so it’s a little challenging to stick with it when I’m anxious to get shots in the can. Also, both Shake and AE come with Keylight, but Nuke doesn’t. Their built-in two-stage keyer works well, but I like Keylight. And the Nuke people make Keylight! Why did they leave it out?!

Regardless, I’m still aiming for a late January screening provided everything works out with the folks at the Hollywood. But now that I think about it, I may have a cast/crew screening at the Clinton street since we had such a great experience there with Decrypter. Movie first, drinks at Dots after?  That worked out great last time. I’ll check in with Seth and see if he’s down.

Hit me up on the comments if you have any questions.

If any of you have wondered where I’ve been, it’s been a crazy time here in Portland.  I am currently teaching two production classes that had shoots two weekends in a row.  In addition to that, I had to organize and present information about the project to members of the Art Institute community… i.e. students, faculty, adminstration, etc.  It was a requirement of the sabbatical, but also something I was looking forward to doing.  The problem wasn’t coming up with stuff to say, it was more about framing it in such a way that people outside of the film department would find it interesting and useful. And packing it all into a one hour time slot!

So here’s a quick rundown of what I came up with…

I learned a long time ago that making a film is three processes;  writing, shooting, and editing.  Each one changes the movie in some way.  I’ll come back to that in a second…

When writing Forge, I thought about how I (as a person) am split by the the old school biorhythms; emotional, mental, and physical.  Maybe more than most.  Those three elements in me don’t intermingle.  I’ve been thinking about this a lot in the past couple years.  How can I get these things to work together?  Or at least get the mental and physical out of the way of my emotional?  So I made the story about three characters who personify my three parts.   But I wanted to better connect the generic biorhythm thing with my specific situation, then tie it together with my creative philosophy… or create one since I hadn’t really thought of having a creative philosophy.

In writing the sabbatical presentation, it occurred to me that when I talk about my three parts -emotional, mental, and physical – I really mean creative, technical, and visceral.  I think of it like this:  Creative is the outgoing.  You have ideas and pour them out in writing, music, painting, etc.  Technical is the internal.  You learn and then know your process.  Once the creative concept is in mind, the Technical is simply execution.  Visceral is incoming.  Whether you’re showered with positive feedback, or people hate it, or you get a massage, or take a beating… Visceral is the return cycle of the full circuit.

Then, with a minor modification, I applied that philsophy to filmmaking.  When you write a screenplay (the Creative), you’re putting your ideas out there.  You generate something real from inside yourself.  It’s not easy, and it’s a process plagued with doubt.  You have to power through that doubt to get the ideas where they need to be… outside your head!

Next you have the Technical.  That’s the shooting and the editing.  These are things that I’m comfortable with.  Once you begin the technical phase, you need to put aside the doubt and execute.  Proper planning and a good support group makes all the difference.  In the case of Forge, it was the crew.  Without these guys, the experience wouldn’t have been nearly as enjoyable.  Naturally, you still worry that the project will suck, but you can’t be crippled by that or you’ll never finish anything.  In all art forms, once you start the technical, you can’t constantly change the creative, and you can’t worry about the visceral.  Just do the work!  Finishing the work is your ONLY goal on an artistic project.  Positive (or negative) feedback is merely a side effect.

When the feedback comes, you’re in receiving mode:  the Visceral. You can’t change what people think at this stage, and you can’t go back and alter the work.  Sure, you can rearrange a few things here and there, but you’re just moving your vegetables around the plate.  The ultimate concept is locked in.  So just take what comes and know that you finished something and start the next one.

I stuck editing in the technical because I think the presentation of the film is the third part of the filmmaking experience.  If you always stop at after the technical phase, your creative will never grow.  I see this in a lot of friends who create original media.  They write, shoot, and cut, but never show.  You need to experience all three to complete the circuit.  Some people love feedback, some dread it.  But you need it or your creative phase will fizzle out.

The trick is to connect the three phases, but keep them from getting in the way of each other.  That’s my problem.  When I’m writing, I worry about how I can pull it off technically.  When I’m shooting or editing, I worry about what people will think.  On a broader level, when I’m in creative mode, I’m distracted by technical things like visual effects tests or shopping for gear, and non-filmmaking visceral things that would be more fun… video games, movies, going out with friends… but thinking technical is no good until the story is done, and the visceral comes at the end.  It’s the reward!  Someone asked comic book writer Brian Bendis how he can be so prolific.  His answer was, “I don’t drink and I don’t have an Xbox.”  Take note, kids.

SPOILER AHEAD!  STOP READING IF YOU HATE KNOWING HOW IT ENDS.

I put these thoughts into Forge.  Paul is the creative/emotional.  He wants to make things good again.  John is the technical/mental.  He sees the universe as matter and energy without human connection.  And there’s Jimmy, the visceral/physical.  He sees the world in terms of how it affects him.  Throughout the story, Paul makes an effort to repair the damaged family only to be interrupted by Jimmy.  Or he reaches out to John and is rebuked for misunderstanding the reality of the universe.  Finally, Paul realizes that the only way he can exist is to shed the other two and move ahead on his own.  To me, Paul becomes the true artist, unfettered by the technical and the visceral.  He leaves the story clear of burden.

That’s my goal, too.

Thanks for the overwhelmingly positive feedback on the trailer. I really didn’t expect the great response. So thanks for that. The encouragement is much appreciated.

Stay tuned for a mini behind-the-scenes short that I hope to post by Friday, the 30th.

Sorry for the blog lapse. My sister and parents came to visit for a week. I haven’t eaten so much in a long time! Now I really need to buckle down and quit my whining and get this movie done.

More soon.

Just a reminder, if you want to see stills or clips, click on the archive link for “clips” in the categories section.

Sorry for the minor hiatus, but as some of you know, I also dabble in web-hosting.  I recently upgraded my situation to take advantage of a major increase in bandwidth.  If anyone needs a site, just say the word.  $20/YEAR!  Can you believe that? Anyway, the domain switch took a couple days so that’s where the blog has been.

Back to the movie now!

The forces of technology continually conspire against me. When my two month old 28″ Hanns-G monitor blinks out… When Premiere crashes every other time after weeks of working perfectly…. When my computer won’t see a hard drive with all my footage on it… ALL IN A THREE DAY PERIOD! With every blow, they seek to return me to pen and paper.

Don’t they know who I am?

Yes, I have battled the Tech Lords for nigh on 30 years. Since my first computer class in the summer of 1980 in which the teacher broke the 1.77 MHz Radio Shack TRS-80 Model I to this morning when my custom 2.5GHz quad core went into an infinite reboot loop… The Tech Lords have done their best to keep me from achieving my goals. But with very few exceptions, I have emerged victorious. 1980? Fixed it. This morning? Fixed it. Hanns-G? bad adapter, monitor fine. Premiere? Corrupt font file, software fine. Hard drive? Bad pin in the cable.

Now, I’ll be the first to tell you that pride and arrogance will be your downfall when dealing with computers and data.  But hear this, Tech Dieties…

When my heart beats its last, I will at last pass into the realm of The Knowing. No technological malfunction will ever stand in my way! I will relentlessly hunt down your gremlin minions and crush them with my bare hands.

Keep coming, you sons-a-bitches. I’ll be waiting.

The End… ?