FORGE: A Feature Film by 500 Cuts

I watched The Wrestler today for the first time.  It’s bare-bones, character-driven storytelling.  Good stuff.  But more importantly, I watched the making-of in which director Darren Aronofsky lays down some words of advice to filmmakers.

He said to make the films you want to make.  If you worry about what the audience thinks all the time, you’ll never finish anything and you’ll never be happy with the things you do finish.

Why did this strike a chord with me?  For the past few weeks I’ve been lamenting the fact that I may be the only person who likes or even understands the movie we’re making.  It has a slower pace, lots of scientific jargon, and only a couple locations.  Not really a recipe to get people on the edges of their seats.  While none of those qualities of the film have changed, I feel a lot better about making a movie of which I may be the only fan.

Working on and off throughout the day helps me get a lot done without the burnout that comes with grinding away all day for a long streak.  But even so, yesterday I hit some kind of wall.  I couldn’t even lift my head.  There was a physical manifestation of “I can’t do it today.”  The mountain of remaining tasks on the project somehow sucked out everything I had during the night and I woke up more worn out than the night before.

So I took a mental health day.  It was pretty kick ass.  Walker was good enough to kick around with me while I bought crap I didn’t need and ate food I wasn’t hungry for.  Last night, I hung out with Tom (in the movie) we stopped by to see Luke (in the movie) at the Tanker.  It was just us and a Polish guy named Janusz who talked about sex acts with his friend’s wife.  It wasn’t as awesome as it sounds so we split.  I dropped Tom off at his place and stopped at Ground Kontrol to talk writing with Luke’s brother Nick (not in the movie).  We ended up chatting away for at least an hour if not more.  The DJ there (never got his name) was playing some great stuff… old 4 bit video game music over really crunchy beats.  Loved it.

I went to bed “normal” tired instead of completely wiped.  Today, I woke up like I hadn’t been alive in three months.  Like I broke through the layer of ice that covered the lake in which I had been drowning.  My whole body ached and my head spun and I had this urge to hear my mother’s voice.

So I’m back at the machines, coming to grips with the amount of work there is to do and how much I should really hope to accomplish before I submit the movie to the festivals.  Work-in-progress submissions are acceptable, but there are degrees of roughness.  My goal is still 9/20/09 for a submittable version of the film, but if that’s going to happen, I have to figure out a way to stabilize my energy so I don’t have anymore of those days lost at sea.

More soon.

A couple days ago, I set an internal/personal goal of finishing the movie by September 20th.  I also set a goal of learning the full production workflow for visual effects.  Those two goals are butting heads right now.

I have a handful of very talented people helping me out, but they’re also very busy.  That makes everything take longer because every practical tweak or conceptual alteration takes weeks to implement since the schedules never seem to be in sync.  I was really hoping one or two people would take ownership of the complicated shots to build their portfolio, but that’s a lot to ask with all the other opportunities that come up for hard-working visual effects artists in Portland.

But I’ve found inspiration in District 9.  So well made.  Just goes to show where perseverance and a great idea gets you in this industry.

So now I go into zero distraction mode to get this project together.  Gotta build a priority list and stick to it.  As I’ve said before, it’s hard to focus on one thing when there’s so much other stuff to do.  But that’s all there is to it at this point.  Nothing tricky.  Just make the list and check off the items one by one.

I’m pushing forward to get the movie in good enough shape to submit to some of the bigger festivals.  I’m not optimistic about my chances, but I like to think of rejection as proof that I tried.

P.S. Don’t say “industry.”

Things are going really well on the movie so far, but man, the clock is ticking!  I have about 10% of the visual effects shots completed.  Of course, 80% of them are simple screen replacements so they’re not hard, just numerous!

In other news, I recently had coffee (I don’t drink coffee!) with my friend of 15 years, Joe Malina.  We hung out pretty much daily back in ‘96, then I got a girlfriend and screwed that all up.  Nevertheless, we met while taking classes at The Northwest Film Center, and made a few small projects together.  One of which was a no-dialog short shot on 16mm about a guy dealing with loneliness after a recent breakup.  It was Joe’s concept, and we hashed it out together over a burrito at La Sirenitas (the Siren, get it?) back before they got huge. It’s still one of my favorite shorts.   Those were really good times.

The guy who acted in it, David Rolfe, is now the head of broadcast at the globally dominant ad agency, Crispin, Porter, Bogusky.  And the guy who lived in the apartment in which we shot it is now a chef instructor at the school where I work, The Art Institute of Portland.  It’s funny because the culinary program just started there, and I haven’t see the apartment guy, Dave McIntyre, in about 12 years.  Now Joe tells me he works where I work!  That’s classic Portland.

Anyway, Joe is a colorist for film and video.  He trained up at Downstream back in the day, but now lives in Austin, TX and works there and in Dallas.  He was in Portland to visit his wife’s family and looked me up.  It was like we hadn’t missed a day.  What a great feeling to have old friends turn up, and you still have stuff to talk about!

Thanks for checking in.  More as it develops.