20200810
Currently trying to build up the base of a short that’s been kicking around in my head since 20… 2010?.
It’s been through a lot revisions but I never quite hit a simple and powerful enough character core that was inline with the themes. There are strong visual elements and a core conceit which I haven’t seen since first thinking about it. I am motivated by nothing quite like the desire to see something I imagine in the world, which does not already exist. In this way, it is a more pure motivation than any I have other than simple kindness. There is no pride in comletion of art. At best contentment, and rarely that.
Anyway, here’s the Hollywood pitch: The Cleaners meeets Sorry To Bother You.
I guess I’ll post up the development of it here as I go. I’d be nervous about someone nicking the idea if there were anyone reading. Bless anonymity.
#faceworker
August 9, 2020
HOW I BEAT THE COVID DOLDRUMS
- no coffee
- no alcohol
- full grid nutrition (and plant-based!)
- a protein shake and fruit first thing in the morning
- lots of mugs of hot water
- lots of fresh air indoors
- at least an hour outside
- maximising open space indoors
- being keen on tidiness indoors
- no video games, TV binging or other long form continuous entertainment
- basically mild dopamine fasting
#journal
August 9, 2020
ON THE FERRIS BUELLER GALLERY SEQUENCE
I used to enjoy posting 3 frame sequences from film or TV over at tumblr as a little exercise in understanding good montage/editing. Often three to five angles are as many as are meaning fully shown in a scene to communicate a concept or change.
The art gallery scene in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off goes well beyond this. I was habitually tempted to cut off the preceding montage at 4 or even 5 frames but that montage would have a very different meaning. It would have been easy for Hughes to end this sequence on Sloan and Ferris making out in the “chapel”. Other directors would. That would make the scene about Ferris “winning”. The possible lesson: his larger deception is rewarded with hedonism.
This sequence marks the turning point in the film. The trio have a fun day together. The couple slip away and the would-be third wheel is left to contemplate some art alone. But Cameron is never really a third wheel; they’re pretty cohesive as a trio of friends. I love this good relationship modelling.
Hughes commits to this sequence to the point of audience discomfort. The painted face becomes almost horrific, certainly abstracted, as we punch further in. We get so close that we see large grain in the image, as big as the painting’s impressionist brush strokes were just a few cuts prior. The grain is that of Cameron’s reality, like the impressionists revealed the limits of the fidelity of their medium. The fourth wall is broken now, not by a character, by the form of film itself.
When we break convention, we gain a lightness. Possibilities are revealed as having always been there. This is not an art lesson; this is introspection.
Cameron looks at the child. Cameron is also a child.
Cameron looks closer at the child’s face. It is clarified as no face.
Cameron looks at his life. It is clarified as no life. He has “grown up” without meaningful agency or connections with family. He is denied even simple physical connections to objects in his home!
Was Cameron’s crisis planned by his friend? Maybe. Probably not to this degree of specificity.
It might be Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, but it’s Cameron Frye’s Day Of Transformation.
#film #anaylsis #montage
July 26, 2020
ON DEAD TUMBLR LINKPOSTS
I was originally planning on porting over a bunch of the index posts from my now dead and burned tumblr. Since I stopped looking at those indexes mostly when I stopped writing comics to focus mainly on video, it seems moot.
Maybe some of those articles will make their way into the regular link posts.
It’d be nice to have a plan for megaposts. Maybe I’ll need to conjure a tagging scheme to make this work the way I want. Maybe I’ll get used to blogging purely in journalistic serial like the dinosaurs of 2007.
This interface seems encouraging and minimal and I like being able to run my whole life out of Dropbox and an email account.
Let’s see how we go.
July 21, 2020
