see this as a placeholder:
-news-
i have work in 2010 (yay) and advancement (tentative yay, nailbiting, etc.)
i went to a party with the red bucket films crowd and ladies at jessica oreck's house, (a veritable wunderkammer- photographic evidence here) who may be my new fantastic obsession of 2009. she's the very coolest lady. i was a little starfuckery but it was cool to see these people who have attained unbelievable success in my industry in no time at all (jealous.)
clyde and i are talking about the phenomenon amongst his friends (read: former employees of kim's music and video) to "live off their girlfriends' money" and whether or not this is feminist/emasculating or just a quirk in this particular social group permitted by artistic, creative men attracted to similarly creative, driven women.
More on all this later. the cat's knocking ornaments off the christmas tree.
Monday, December 21, 2009
Friday, November 13, 2009
They're not a real pet. They don't know how to love.
in the style of ss specifically this & this.
H: i am thinking "oh that sucks, i hope she's alright. (insert excuse to not hang out after work). Let's just hang out another time."
me: the excuse has to bear all of the clever and cool?
Excuses for H. to avoid meeting with an unsavory fella after work:
1. after work's not going to pan out.
let's just hang out another time
Hannah: ooh thats good
i am too busy skindiving with nurse sharks
i am too busy completing my online course in open heart surgery
i am too busy calculating the angle of incidence it will take to launch a rocket off my roof
I am too busy saving a whale. not all of them, just one.
tonight's not going to pan out. my living room is full of wet cement, and, you know, time is of the essence
me: I'd love to see you after work, but I have to walk my sea monkeys. they get ornery.
H: hahahaha and no one wants that
me: no. especially if their habitat is encased in slow drying wet cement
H: life is hard for those little sea monkeys
me: they're not a real pet
they don't know how to love
contribute if you please.
H: i am thinking "oh that sucks, i hope she's alright. (insert excuse to not hang out after work). Let's just hang out another time."
me: the excuse has to bear all of the clever and cool?
Excuses for H. to avoid meeting with an unsavory fella after work:
1. after work's not going to pan out.
let's just hang out another time
Hannah: ooh thats good
i am too busy skindiving with nurse sharks
i am too busy completing my online course in open heart surgery
i am too busy calculating the angle of incidence it will take to launch a rocket off my roof
I am too busy saving a whale. not all of them, just one.
tonight's not going to pan out. my living room is full of wet cement, and, you know, time is of the essence
me: I'd love to see you after work, but I have to walk my sea monkeys. they get ornery.
H: hahahaha and no one wants that
me: no. especially if their habitat is encased in slow drying wet cement
H: life is hard for those little sea monkeys
me: they're not a real pet
they don't know how to love
contribute if you please.
Friday, November 6, 2009
stressed tv bunny sings the blues
Can I even blog now, while everything explodes inside?
Loneliness of the oft-unoccupied associate producer. While we run four hours overtime or the monitor ceases to function or we’re faced with a subject who simply cannot answer an interview question in a complete sentence (and past tense, if you please) I’m castrated in the antechamber, surrounded by, in short order: three curling irons, two and a half untasted ice teas, some seventeen shades of foundation and mattifying powder, two grips, one PA, and an uncharged cell phone, on the other end of which likely exists the answers to all of our catastrophies.
My experience in production can be assembled and easily digested through a series of clichés (notably: hurry up and wait, don’t count your chickens, Murphy’s law, too good to be true… & c.) So far, MD season 8 has followed the latter- relatively engaging, well informed subjects, hospital PR the likes of which – ready for another cliché—dreams are made of, relatively exciting locations, relatively accommodating and livable hotel rooms. Keep the explosions to a minimum (dave, don’t pull the monitor off the bed by the cable!) and we’ll present thirteen to seventeen tapes at the end of each ordeal, which chronicle the gorgeous moments everything went right (no matter how many takes it took.)
Our last full shoot this season has been a perfect opposite perfect storm. Of course it’s in New Orleans, where everything runs opposite anyway. Before we left, Dave asked if we were up for the challenge. The morning of, my anxiety alarm clock essentially electrocuted me. But at that point, everything seemed marginally under control. Sure, two of our subjects were unintelligible, and the others were threatening legal action or changing flights the day of departure. But we had locations and had a hospital and more or less had a show, so it seemed.
And we do have a show, more or less. After a $135 lunch (why is my credit card being declined?) and a major monitor malfunction (of course you wanted to spend $500 more on equipment rental!) we’re more or less only an hour behind schedule- producer Dave seems almost satisfied (we’ll see, as the night progresses) and everyone had lunch! On time, no less! Less is more? The hotel is sad and old, the car’s too small, the location might be cramped, the hospital harried… but we’re making headway, making television, powering through, keeping our chins up, noses to the grindstone (cliché cliché cliché)
Today I did my first producerial thing (an interview, with a subject I preinterviewed and was entirely responsible for!) and didn’t fuck up too badly- Dave did have to chime in a few times, but considering it’s my second ever Legitimate Contribution To An Episode, I am glad to have had the opportunity and (cliché) am keeping my fingers crossed that some of my subject will make it onto the show.
I have to keep reminding myself of another cliché- it’s not brain surgery. We’re not saving lives, just making tv about people who do. But when you’re locked outside the action with a dead cell phone, trying to keep silent and watching the clock click towards overtime, it’s hard not to feel professionally impotent. It’s these moments that I am glad cigarettes cost $5 a pack anywhere outside of New York, that diet cokes are part of production costs, and, mostly- that I care enough about this show (MY JOB) to get so worked up over it. Get ready for the monster cliché- I’M TOO BLESSED TO BE STRESSED- but modified for the situation- I do what I love and it’s making me grey prematurely and I don’t think I could have it any other way.
Loneliness of the oft-unoccupied associate producer. While we run four hours overtime or the monitor ceases to function or we’re faced with a subject who simply cannot answer an interview question in a complete sentence (and past tense, if you please) I’m castrated in the antechamber, surrounded by, in short order: three curling irons, two and a half untasted ice teas, some seventeen shades of foundation and mattifying powder, two grips, one PA, and an uncharged cell phone, on the other end of which likely exists the answers to all of our catastrophies.
My experience in production can be assembled and easily digested through a series of clichés (notably: hurry up and wait, don’t count your chickens, Murphy’s law, too good to be true… & c.) So far, MD season 8 has followed the latter- relatively engaging, well informed subjects, hospital PR the likes of which – ready for another cliché—dreams are made of, relatively exciting locations, relatively accommodating and livable hotel rooms. Keep the explosions to a minimum (dave, don’t pull the monitor off the bed by the cable!) and we’ll present thirteen to seventeen tapes at the end of each ordeal, which chronicle the gorgeous moments everything went right (no matter how many takes it took.)
Our last full shoot this season has been a perfect opposite perfect storm. Of course it’s in New Orleans, where everything runs opposite anyway. Before we left, Dave asked if we were up for the challenge. The morning of, my anxiety alarm clock essentially electrocuted me. But at that point, everything seemed marginally under control. Sure, two of our subjects were unintelligible, and the others were threatening legal action or changing flights the day of departure. But we had locations and had a hospital and more or less had a show, so it seemed.
And we do have a show, more or less. After a $135 lunch (why is my credit card being declined?) and a major monitor malfunction (of course you wanted to spend $500 more on equipment rental!) we’re more or less only an hour behind schedule- producer Dave seems almost satisfied (we’ll see, as the night progresses) and everyone had lunch! On time, no less! Less is more? The hotel is sad and old, the car’s too small, the location might be cramped, the hospital harried… but we’re making headway, making television, powering through, keeping our chins up, noses to the grindstone (cliché cliché cliché)
Today I did my first producerial thing (an interview, with a subject I preinterviewed and was entirely responsible for!) and didn’t fuck up too badly- Dave did have to chime in a few times, but considering it’s my second ever Legitimate Contribution To An Episode, I am glad to have had the opportunity and (cliché) am keeping my fingers crossed that some of my subject will make it onto the show.
I have to keep reminding myself of another cliché- it’s not brain surgery. We’re not saving lives, just making tv about people who do. But when you’re locked outside the action with a dead cell phone, trying to keep silent and watching the clock click towards overtime, it’s hard not to feel professionally impotent. It’s these moments that I am glad cigarettes cost $5 a pack anywhere outside of New York, that diet cokes are part of production costs, and, mostly- that I care enough about this show (MY JOB) to get so worked up over it. Get ready for the monster cliché- I’M TOO BLESSED TO BE STRESSED- but modified for the situation- I do what I love and it’s making me grey prematurely and I don’t think I could have it any other way.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Monday, August 24, 2009
voila! mon truite!
via tiny art director thanks steph
The last of my fish left over from the 100 hours shooting in poughkeepsie have passed away. But the film is swimming quickly upstream, rocketing its way toward picture lock and post... hopefully in time for a very exciting festival deadline.
walk the fish movie dot com
Friday, June 12, 2009
truth hurts
Post secret is SO emo.
But sometimes, they hit the nail on the head.
I am/would be this gal.
Monday, May 25, 2009
tarnished goldfish
Took a week off work to sleep on the floor in Poughkeepsie, producing a short for a professor friend with a bunch of newly minted Vassar grads
Rather than make call sheets (oh, there's plenty of time for that, ladies&gents!) I wanna talk about FEEEEELINGS
(I ALWAYS want to talk about feelings. This is nothing new.)
It is a positive adrenaline shot to be back in production mode after almost exactly a year on hiatus. There's something wonderfully raw about academic indie film making, although The Fishbowl doesn't neatly fit into either category. Technically this isn't a film school movie, because it's not being done through the department and we've only 2 undergrads working with us. It's not quite independent, because we're still keeping our fingers crossed that the dean's office/department will reimburse some/all of the costs. But what is independent, and what I love most about independent film, is the spirit of all of the participants-- everyone's doing this out of the goodness of their hearts and the love of the medium.
James Roehl has written a modest, sincere script that reminds me what's hidden and lovely about being in your midtwenties and being able to appreciate that. He wrote The Fishbowl based on his weekend at RISD a few years ago and workshopped it in Kathleen (my one true professor love)'s class last fall. When it came time for picking narratives, his only got one vote, and it wasn't his own. As the year wound down Kathleen, still touched by sincerity in the face of student film's bombastic, bloody endings, resurrected the idea. James found his one remaining copy of the script, under his bed and muddied by footprints, and together they resurrected it and got eight of us together for a week to make a little movie that could.
My forever partner in crime Katie has been lassoed in as assistant camera, but has been acting as a phenomenal AD for the past 2 days. From day one (literally, freshman year when we both showed up as prospective film/psych double majors and discussed this in the elevator) I've always had Katie as my creative sounding board. Now it's double happiness to have her here to hang out and make art for a week, because emotionally we're on the same playing field-- we've already sorted out the post grad world, and gone through the emotional tumult of being freshly graduated and scared shitless and numb as a coping mechanism because the rug holding everything we knew had just been yanked out from under us. As the only two such folk for whom the rug pulling did not transpire THIS MORNING, it's nice to have a metered, reasonable ally whose company I can safely say I enjoy more than almost anyone else's.
Oh man, the day after graduation. I think I just cried a little bit for a solid week. I can't even imagine how the rest of the crew is even functioning well enough to MAKE AN EQUIPMENT LIST or CONTACT POUGHKEEPSIE PUBLIC TRANSPORT when they've moved 4 years of their lives into their cars for the night, postponing the uncertainty for just one more week to make this movie. There is comfort in the familiarity of production, it breathes a certain way and you get used to the rhythms. Hopefully we can keep everyone so busy that at the end of the week their heads fall off and they can just then remember that the world is mighty uncertain.
Kathleen deserves her own blog entry or an entire blog of adulation because she's such a person. I'm not even sure how i'm processing everything that's going on here but in the span of a year we've gone from an incredible professor-student relationship to something that's not as clearly defined but marvelous in its ambiguity. Such a person. such a person. Fascinating and endlessly impressive and definitely the type of woman I was praying for when she came to the Junior film screenings at the end of 2007-- I wanted to write her an email then and say- HI can you teach me how to do this as a lady? I learn from her every day, and the staying a lady part most of all.
I'm going off an emotional deep end, which means I should go back to menial tasks like finding suitable costumes and scheduling trainrides. My late night concern at this moment are our animal actors, the four goldfish we got today for the shoot that'll have to brave the metro north to come home with me on Friday. As yet unnamed, in the tank at the Petco they were brilliant, actually golden beans. Now they just look hungry and tarnished. We got 4 to have 2 backups/stunt doubles "should anything happen" over the week. I'm hoping they perk the fuck up before their star turn on wednesday.
MORE ON THAT LATER!
Rather than make call sheets (oh, there's plenty of time for that, ladies&gents!) I wanna talk about FEEEEELINGS
(I ALWAYS want to talk about feelings. This is nothing new.)
It is a positive adrenaline shot to be back in production mode after almost exactly a year on hiatus. There's something wonderfully raw about academic indie film making, although The Fishbowl doesn't neatly fit into either category. Technically this isn't a film school movie, because it's not being done through the department and we've only 2 undergrads working with us. It's not quite independent, because we're still keeping our fingers crossed that the dean's office/department will reimburse some/all of the costs. But what is independent, and what I love most about independent film, is the spirit of all of the participants-- everyone's doing this out of the goodness of their hearts and the love of the medium.
James Roehl has written a modest, sincere script that reminds me what's hidden and lovely about being in your midtwenties and being able to appreciate that. He wrote The Fishbowl based on his weekend at RISD a few years ago and workshopped it in Kathleen (my one true professor love)'s class last fall. When it came time for picking narratives, his only got one vote, and it wasn't his own. As the year wound down Kathleen, still touched by sincerity in the face of student film's bombastic, bloody endings, resurrected the idea. James found his one remaining copy of the script, under his bed and muddied by footprints, and together they resurrected it and got eight of us together for a week to make a little movie that could.
My forever partner in crime Katie has been lassoed in as assistant camera, but has been acting as a phenomenal AD for the past 2 days. From day one (literally, freshman year when we both showed up as prospective film/psych double majors and discussed this in the elevator) I've always had Katie as my creative sounding board. Now it's double happiness to have her here to hang out and make art for a week, because emotionally we're on the same playing field-- we've already sorted out the post grad world, and gone through the emotional tumult of being freshly graduated and scared shitless and numb as a coping mechanism because the rug holding everything we knew had just been yanked out from under us. As the only two such folk for whom the rug pulling did not transpire THIS MORNING, it's nice to have a metered, reasonable ally whose company I can safely say I enjoy more than almost anyone else's.
Oh man, the day after graduation. I think I just cried a little bit for a solid week. I can't even imagine how the rest of the crew is even functioning well enough to MAKE AN EQUIPMENT LIST or CONTACT POUGHKEEPSIE PUBLIC TRANSPORT when they've moved 4 years of their lives into their cars for the night, postponing the uncertainty for just one more week to make this movie. There is comfort in the familiarity of production, it breathes a certain way and you get used to the rhythms. Hopefully we can keep everyone so busy that at the end of the week their heads fall off and they can just then remember that the world is mighty uncertain.
Kathleen deserves her own blog entry or an entire blog of adulation because she's such a person. I'm not even sure how i'm processing everything that's going on here but in the span of a year we've gone from an incredible professor-student relationship to something that's not as clearly defined but marvelous in its ambiguity. Such a person. such a person. Fascinating and endlessly impressive and definitely the type of woman I was praying for when she came to the Junior film screenings at the end of 2007-- I wanted to write her an email then and say- HI can you teach me how to do this as a lady? I learn from her every day, and the staying a lady part most of all.
I'm going off an emotional deep end, which means I should go back to menial tasks like finding suitable costumes and scheduling trainrides. My late night concern at this moment are our animal actors, the four goldfish we got today for the shoot that'll have to brave the metro north to come home with me on Friday. As yet unnamed, in the tank at the Petco they were brilliant, actually golden beans. Now they just look hungry and tarnished. We got 4 to have 2 backups/stunt doubles "should anything happen" over the week. I'm hoping they perk the fuck up before their star turn on wednesday.
MORE ON THAT LATER!
Friday, April 24, 2009
GOIN 2 FESTYVUL BRB
OH HAI
IN 3 HOURS CLYDE AND I ARE LEAVING FOR
NOT PACKED NOT PREPARED NO CLEAN CLOTHES TO WEAR FOR THE WEEKEND
IN 3 HOURS CLYDE AND I ARE LEAVING FOR
NOT PACKED NOT PREPARED NO CLEAN CLOTHES TO WEAR FOR THE WEEKEND
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
cubicles.
Working from home is significantly less delightful when you make the realization that all of your favorite grainy snacks, for which you'd run out for a quick distraction, are off limits, and the only snacky options are fruits, vegetables, or meats. NOT FAIR, JUDAISM!
At one point, this was meant to be a filmblog. In its first iteration, it was solely response papers for my cinema verite class (which, in hindsight, may have been one of the most incredible educational opportunities I had at Vassar. Thanks, Jamie Meltzer, where ever you are!) Then for a hot second it was a proper bed of lies- whenever I went out and pretended to be Noseprint Pictures, a concept that I now realize was woefully underconstructed and unrealistic to anyone who had actually EVER WORKED FOR A FILM PRODUCTION COMPANY.
But, in the interest of killing time on the clock, a filmy anecdote with photos, and a general update.
RIDING TALL won the Best Student Documentary award at the International Family Film Festival. !!! IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING was also playing, which is mega exciting because one could ostensibly 'plex my Vassar movies. I didn't get to go, because that was the weekend of the cruise/funemployment... but when I returned to Puerto Rico, there were several emails and messages waiting for me, highly suggesting I attend the awards banquet. One of the other emails announced that
RIDING TALL had been accepted to the Connecticut Film Festival, along with another of Clyde's movies (New Uke City), Katie's movie (Black Ice) and some stuff from ben and brian (I am so setting up a Ben and Brian tag because as soon as they get to NY, I'd be over the moon to work with them again.)
We're also in the Ivy Film Festival-- Clyde for New Uke, myself for RT, and we got an incredible deal on a hotel in Providence, so we're going to have a romantic weekend getaway to Brown. The beauty of this festival lies in the numbers. There were 350 student films submitted. There were 31 films selected. 3 of those were documentaries. What are 2 of the 3 documentaries? Mine, and Clyde's. The third one is from RISD kid who went to Uganda to shoot child soldiers and an orphanage. Memorize-you-saw-it is totes going to kick our vassar asses to the curb... which should make for a more pleasant carride back to NYC, as I am fiercely competitive, especially with Clyde, and no matter if he wins or I win, I'm going to be unbearable.
Speaking of Clyde, we went to see Adventureland on Sunday, and caught the cameo of our "friend" (and I use the term very loosely, we had him on set for one day and he was pleasant and professional) Dan Bittner. Man, I am obsessed with linking today, aren't I? In any case, it was a sweet, nostalgic film, and Dan was solid. Then, these pictures reemerged from second semester senior year, and I was reminded of my greatest art directorial accomplishment-- the cubicles.
We needed to build a set on the soundstage as a requirement for Ken. The easiest one, Clyde decided, would be the FBI office. Unfortunately, we didn't have any tools. Or any real building experience. And it was snowing. like, a blizzard. I think this was in February, because after the shoot, I ran off to go to the Magnetic Fields with Ali. But then again, when wasn't it snowing last february? Which is less than conducive to running to three art stores, a fabric store, and the hardware store. Part of me seems to remember Gracie tagging along, but that also seems incorrect. There were several moments wherein we tried desperately to make our plans to build these less abstract, using various props to illustrate the positioning of the walls. This was ultimately a failure. We had NO IDEA how to build anything, I was lying my ass off at this point as I'd never actually built anything in stage crew without explicit instructions. We didn't have any tools. It was snowing. We were about to spend $$$ at a hardware store for supplies we weren't sure we needed. In any case, we assembled a lot of junk, including 1x3s, took it all to the sound stage, and then found canvas stretchers that worked far better. The burlap was a bit too thin to block light, so we "reinforced it."
At this point, my hair was either really short, and I can't imagine it was, or it was terrifically long and wound around my head like a demented Heidi. I assume the latter. In any case, Sean Gilmore came to the rescue with a full set of tools (including an electric drill! Who knew you'd need such a thing in college?) And at around 5 AM, clyde and I finished painting the set, left the dressing for the next morning (at 9, I seem to recall) and crawled home. The most impressive part of the whole endeavor was not that we managed to create an office out of nothing, with my feigned technical expertise and borrowed tools, but that in painting four walls with three coats of paint (someone had painted them magenta, which does not cover easily) Clyde did not get one drop of paint on himself. He looked immaculate.
I, on the otherhand, was thoroughly dappled, and completely mystified as to how he had avoided making a similar mess. Maybe it's because I attack all physical activities like a 5 year old.
So, these are the cubicles. Cubicle story is now recorded for posterity. the next time I had to build cubicles (which was probably 2 weeks later) my car nearly blew off the road, lifted by an enormous sheet of foamcore. But that's a story for another day.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Discerning art critic
Melissa's going to hate her face in this one but the lighting is WEIRD so I sort of love it. It's grungy like the gallery space
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Neo Con
LOOKIE HERE it's miss melissa and some art!
(check out aakash's show at 17 Frost, appt only during the week and several more events forthcoming, or so I hear tell)
(check out aakash's show at 17 Frost, appt only during the week and several more events forthcoming, or so I hear tell)
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Monday, January 5, 2009
Hiding on the internetz
Melissa asked me ALL NIGHT not to make public these videos. So i'll only make public the one in which she asks nicely.
Clyde and I came up with a great new vengeance film (as rapey vengeance films are his favorite sort.) It will be the tale of a passionate moviegoer who flies into a rage when people chat during his pictures... and then he kills them. It will be not so subtly based on that guy who shot the other guy during a screening of Benjamin Button in Philly, and also all of the random stabbings that occured in my movie theater at home in New Jersey.
We're going to call it Man Down In Front.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)