Low Shoulders

The past couple of weeks, I’ve been getting a lot of questions about when our movie is going to screen. It’s a good thing—I’m glad people are still interested. I wanted to give you all a quick update, so you know what’s what. So here is the update:

The No One's Home Productions Editing Bay

A few months ago (around October) I purchased a Mac Pro tower to edit on. This machine is FAST. It starts up in literally 8 seconds. It has two 2.8 Ghz quad-core processors, for a total of 8 cores, and 32 GB worth of memory for lightning fast rendering and exporting, a killer graphics card for perfect real-time video playback, and I now have approximately 8 Terrabytes of total hard drive space on 5 separate drives so I can back up the entire project 5 times. Rule #1: always back up your footage!

But not long after the purchase, I had to take a short hiatus from working on Low Shoulders to concentrate on some personal life stuff. But now, it’s a new year, and I have refocused my energies on completing what is, at this point, a one and a half year long project.

Cutting together the last couple of scenes of Low Shoulders.

The good news is that, with my full attention now on this project, everything should proceed exponentially. In fact, I’m very happy to announce that I currently have fully completed a 45 minute rough cut of the entire film. It’s looking great. There are some really beautiful scenes and some powerful lines in the film. The ending is particularly engaging.

I’m working alone on the editing with literally hundreds of hours of footage, so it’s been a lot of work and a lot of time to get where I am, and I am extremely happy to have gotten this far. Continue reading →

A couple of weeks ago, after over a year of production and a half-year on top of that for pre-production, Low Shoulders wrapped filming.

I don’t think we could have found a better way to do it. At about 5:30 AM, right in space where night has ended but the morning hasn’t begun – about 10 minutes before the sky first starts to brighten and dawn begins – Evan pulled up to my apartment. We loaded the gear into his car, and drove out to SF to pick up Dan Williams, who was going to help out on the shoot.

With Dan in the backseat, we headed towards the outer Mission, stopping for coffee along the way. The sun started to rise just as we left Starbucks (probably the 20th time we’ve been inside a Starbucks during filming of Low Shoulders) and when we pulled up to the Precita Market & Deli in San Francisco, it was just past 6:30. The sun was up, and the nearby sounds of Cesar Chavez and the freeway were starting to pick up.

And there was our host, Sang, the owner of the market, waiting for us outside with a friendly smile. He ushered us in and helped us set up our lights and gear.  We had a full on Tota light kit borrowed from Adolph Gasser at the last minute, providing us with nice warm lights to make the scene really glow.

Sang and his family at the Precita Market & Deli

Then Sang’s family arrived bearing donuts and more coffee – de facto craft services for the day. Sean showed up to help us finish up our set-up. Smooth sailing. As we relaxed with our coffee and donuts, Gene and Austin arrived, and we began filming.

I thought it was one of our best shoots of the film, with everyone firing on all cylinders. The excitement of nearing the end was palpable, and the graciousness of our hosts made everything all the easier. We had great input from everyone. Danny even arrived to help finish up the last shots – he had driven up all the way from LA, hauling up California from midnight to daybreak, just to shoot these scenes.

We finished up around 9:30 and I got to say “well boys, that’s a wrap.”

Our shotgun mic (left) and the receipt that resulted from using the cash register as a prop (right).

Thanks to the entire cast and crew for bearing with me on this leg of the journey, and I can’t wait to share the fruits borne of the process.

The other week, I helped a a fellow Bay Area artist and writer produce a short experimental video that is meant to represent a project she is currently working on: “[A] collection of short experimental fictions & essays. The series includes psychoanalytic fairy tales, skewed mythologies, and cautionary tales masquerading as science fiction.”

Here it is:

To make this project happen, my friend is attempting to raise money on Kickstarter. To donate and to purchase a copy of the book, visit http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/58820094/panacea

From Wikipedia:

The panacea ( /pænəˈsiːə/), named after the Greek goddess of healing, Panacea, also known as panchrest, was supposed to be a remedy that would cure all diseases and prolong life indefinitely. It was sought by the alchemists as a connection to the elixir of life and the philosopher’s stone, a mythical substance which would enable the transmutation of common metals into gold.

The Cahuilla Indian people of the Colorado Desert region of California, according to legend, used the red sap of the Elephant Tree as a panacea medicine.

A panacea is also a literary term to represent any solution to solve all problems related to a particular issue.

The voiceover in film has, over the years, developed an unfair bad rap. It has become a despised device, almost as bad as “it was all a dream” or “he was dead all the time!” When I tell someone Low Shoulders will include pretty heavy voiceovers as part of the story-telling technique, the first response is, without fail, incredulity. A grimace tugs at the corner of his or her face, and I can hear an internal groan resound inside his or her skull, and then something jumps in my stomach.

Not that I blame them – voiceovers seem, at first glance, to be the ultimate copout, a way to smooth out narrative inconsistencies, bridge missing gaps, and simply lazy writing. I can think of plenty of examples: Dune, Vicky Christina Barcelona, Little Children, The Shawshank Redemption, and the non-Director’s cut of Blade Runner are a few that immediately come to mind.

Charlie Kaufman sums up the attitude towards voiceover that these types of film engender in his script for 2002′s Adaptation:

God help you! It’s flaccid, sloppy writing. Any idiot can write voice-over narration to explain the thoughts of a character. You must present the internal conflicts of your character in image, in symbol. Film is a medium of movement and image.

But there are plenty of films where voiceover not only does not jar, but is essential to the storytelling and aesthetic of the films, and helps these films become transcendant.

Continue reading →

The other day, my roommate and I decided to write a surf rock song about this car. It’s the Dodge Dart Swinger, and thanks to a friend of a friend, we were able to rent one for a weekend and shoot several key scenes for Low Shoulders.

Maybe these should be some lyrics? [to a surf rock beat]: “Dodge Dart Swinger – It’s mustard yellow! / If it were a person it’d be a real swell fellow!”…

Continue reading →

Recently we shot our shoe store scene. In this scene, Billy and Annie are in their honeymoon phase, and they’re helping each other try on shoes. Those  metal foot measuring devices are surprisingly romantic. The scene is a bit like that familiar moment from the Cinderella story — the moment of trying the shoe on the lover’s foot. Of course, Billy and Annie both already know the shoe is gonna fit.

We went to a Payless Shoe store in Oakland, having called in advance and gotten permission to shoot there. However, once we got there, they promptly turned us away — they had to get approval from corporate, and that involved a series of impossible tasks which no one ought ever dare attempt.

What followed convinced me of the value of supporting locally owned business.

Continue reading →