roscoe day 4

Already the inevitable "When's it going to be done?" rears its head.

Merely another step along the way, the production phase, or "shooting" if you will, is the most obvious manifestation of one's intent to proceed towards a goal. But the goal - my goal - is not to have an end product, despite the desires and needs of the consumer culture. As Mike Chisholm has pointed out here (scroll down the comments), viewers may not care one jot how much trouble someone went to to obtain an image. All they care about is the power of the final product, whether it be a print in a gallery/museum, or a book, or online. Or more specifically, a finished film to watch. Because really, who cares about my process of becoming a more accomplished image maker? That's something internal to me, of no consequence, except what products I create along the way that are evidence of my process.

My goal is to find out what combinations of talent, personnel, and technology I am capable of.

"Roscoe" will probably be done when I finish working on it. Sharing will come slowly.

roscoe day 3

 

It's all over now, baby blue. But I'm going to rehash it for those of you who weren't here anyway.

Despite his hesitancy to participate in a local event, and even be photographed doing so, our trained professional gamely agreed to march in the Earlysville Fourth of July Parade. Maybe the scene is not in the script. Maybe no one would have consented approval. It was too good an opportunity to pass up.

I strapped on my vest, and used the Pilot to follow our Professor as he weaved his way across the street, through the parade, to try to find access to a locked office on the far side. On the first take of this cross parade move, as I was walking backwards in front of Craig, I nearly backed into a news camera set up on a tripod. That would have been a sight to see a camera and tripod go down with the operator of a fully rigged Steadicam. I got a last moment warning that directed me away.

At the far end of our progress into the parade, after passing numerous pedestrians and vehicles of various ages, one driver opined loudly, "Is he a Republican or a Democrat? Do I need to take him out?" At that point it became clear to me that the Professor, in his jacket and bow tie, looked much like an undeclared candidate.

All in all, some wonderful material that will fit nicely at the head of the piece. It would have been an entirely different thing if both characters had been in the parade, as I originally planned. This works better in fact.

roscoe day 2

Another great day shooting "Walking With Roscoe" yesterday. As always, lighting interiors goes on and on and on. Even I ran out of patience. Eventually we had to get moving. I'm very proud to report that I had told people we'd be done by 4 pm, and we got in the van and pulled away from the location - Barratt Woodworking - at 4:02 pm.

The initial nervousness has calmed somewhat, but it seems as if every day it starts over again. I'm running on only four or five hours of sleep every night (last night I awoke and the power was still off from the previous evening, so what have I got to worry about but not being able to get in touch with the crew and Gary about the oversight of calling all to the wrong location for Tuesday), and am still not familiar enough with this kind of work that each day's challenges don't throw me into a state of anxiety. Many variables that are mostly new. Despite that, once we get going, it's much like running a construction job where there are people coming at you all day long. Which lends a certain degree of familiarity, enough so that I eventually am able to get moderately comfortable in the environment.

What I am truly thankful for is the assistance. There really is no way of doing this sort of thing by yourself. My three previous artists videos were done completely as solo efforts - other than the artist subjects - but anything scripted really benefits from having others contribute their unique knowledge. It's wonderful to be able to ask people to work on a task and have them go to it while I go check on something else.

Roscoe day 1

unused location

Well well well... we got through the first day of shooting "Walking With Roscoe." What a relief. I think most of the anxiety has finally passed. There's still a lot of work to be done, but at least it now seems like there's a chance we can get through the majority of it.

Crew is fabulous.

Cast is working incredibly hard.

At times it really was fun. And in fact I do have things to say to the actors other than placement of them in the frame, but it's this that I've become quite particular about. I know by now what a decently composed photograph looks like, so know where people need to be in order for it to work.

Time to transfer some "footage". Which is yet another holdover of a term that is bound to disappear some day.

less than 1 week to go

During the summer solstice of 2006, good friend and collaborator Craig MacDonald and I travelled to Scotland for geneological reasons. He wanted to find information about family who had emegrated from the island of South Uist to the New World in the 19th century. Along the way we sampled the cuisine - if you consider haggis and neeps & tatties as such - the landscapes (seen here and here), and the inhabitants - many of whom seemed to be transplanted Brits. On the beach in Skye one morning, the midgies sampled us. At times I felt like the expedition photographer, occasionally straining for something other than a tag along role.

Upon returning to our respective homes, Mr. MacDonald graciously offered to permit me to generate the itinerary for the next trip we would take together. Becoming something of a homebody who has an increasingly difficult time justifying using aircraft to jet from location to location for the sole purposes of vacationing, I briefly toyed with and proposed a trip starting in Trieste and heading north through Eastern Europe, maybe encountering Zizek somewhere along the way. That trip didn't happen.

In its stead, I proposed that we take the funding required to travel to some indeterminate point on the globe and apply that to the production of a fictional movie to be shot at home in Central Virginia. A script is in hand, and it seems as if the majority of the pieces have come together. Which leaves me with the primary question: can two men who have never met convince us that they are longtime friends? At the moment, not my department. And in fact not necessarily pertinent to the enterprise. The endeavor is a trip through our artistic sensibilities, and an anthem to the glory of process. It's the journey, not the destination, despite the overwhelming evidence that no one out there cares about the difficulty of the process. They only care about what they can see in front of their faces, which is the end result.

Every day is a new roller coaster ride. Such is the life of a "no budget", no name, movie producer/writer/assitant director/production manager/cinematographer/Steadicam operator. I'm calling this venture - while it's working title is "Walking With Roscoe" - our 2011 trip to find the lost dream. Every day I veer from terror about what I've gotten myself into, to contentment that whatever we capture will have to be good enough. It's now down to less than a week before we begin working with cameras, lights, and actors. People seem to like the script, so at least the worry about the value of the material is being held at bay for now. No doubt I could still extricate myself, but by now it's pretty much got me in its grip and the production is headed forward without too much input from me. There are still many details to define, but the beast is nearly breathing on its own.

old news?

Compare & Despair - as Stuart Smalley used to say. It's certainly easy to despair, these days.

The world seems to be ripping itself apart. Revolutions, earthquakes, nuclear meltdown, tornados that tear apart a third of the towns they touch. Is this the supposed evidence that Judgement Day is upon us? Only now we have to wait another five months until the final, total destruction of the planet.

Tornado victims cheer themselves with the thought that "The Good Lord will provide."

Meanwhile, it is said that prophet "Camping reads neither Hebrew nor Greek, the two main languages of the Bible, but insists his arithmetic is ironclad."

Matt Tutor, Camping's longtime producer "...thinks $100 million is a conservative figure for the money Camping has spent publicizing May 21."

from LA Times: http://www.latimes.com/la-me-rapture-20110521,0,1687317.story

in pre production

Looks like we've got a script and at least one of two actors. Here are some possible locations not too far from home, not close enough. I'm sorely tempted to make it so that we could shoot the entire project in the back yard.

Sorry to be so typically vague, but at least I know what I mean. At least, I think I do.

More as we progress towards the first fictional piece I've worked on in...24 years. Too long, that's for certain. No details other than a tentative schedule of early July.

"The Artist"

My intent with these documents is to get out of the way and let these accomplished artists - Russ Warren, Megan Marlatt, and John Evans - have their say.

Thanks to CLW for her editorial suggestions.

looking elsewhere

Where does the time go? Some work, a lot of reading and viewing, some Steadicam training, a little photography, very little writing. The effort to focus on anything other than the physical world immediately in front of my person seems to become more difficult.

Nonetheless, it feels as if a barrier has finally been broken in the effort to edit the video footage I've recorded with old friend and artist John Borden Evans for the third in a series of videos about artists displaying at the gallery Les Yeux du Monde. We recorded some interview material back at the beginning of March. The seasons have changed, the northern hemisphere has become brilliant green once again. Despite my appetite this year for the barrenness of winter, perhaps I needed to come out of that cocoon to develop some new ideas. The material has felt thin. It needed something to bolster it. Without looking at it directly, and while reading about other films, thoughts were sparked that head in a new direction. I know these things need to get pushed farther out there - somehow. That's what I'm after.

No deadlines are set. But some kind of completion is going to happen in the next week or two.

Ricky Maynard in Virginia

A rather fascinating exhibit is currently at one of our local museums, the Kluge-Ruhe space. Here is some info about this show of photographic prints by Tasmanian native Ricky Maynard. I'm not certain that he works exclusively with a large format camera, but Ricky did tell me at the show opening that his landscape work is often done with a "5 x 4." He spoke about the difficulties of working with a bellows camera in the frequent winds off the Southern Indian Ocean. The portraits of native elders from Queensland are fabulous images of people we rarely see in these parts, despite our cosmopolitan proclivities.

Most of the images in the current Kluge-Ruhe show can be seen here.

A 2 part video about Ricky's "Portrait of a Distant Land" project can be seen here and here. Interesting to see a large format landscape photographer go about his work. Turns out, he works mostly with an 8 x 10 Ebony, and does all his printing in a wet darkroom.

no intervention needed

what the world needs now

Is more cat imagery for the internet. Glad I can oblige, here at the end of our winter season. Much precipitation during the last 24 hours, fortunately none of it frozen.

Megan Marlatt & her paintings

Continuing my video examinations of artists exhibiting at Les Yeux du Monde in Charlottesville, VA., I've created this piece about painter and professor Megan Marlatt.

My thanks to Megan.

pond in "the forest" pt. 2

Several weeks later, it appears as if winter has indeed loosened its grip.

Tech note: this photo comes from a 25 year old Nikon 24mm lens on a Canon 7D body. The Nikon glass, with an adaptor, is a lot less expensive than current models of Canon lenses. But this was purchased primarily for use as a video device, an example being the previous entry.

Man From Harlem

This guy can play!

Gary Lettan plays and sings. You can find him at:

customcarpenterdesign.com

nothing's changed

Being rather out of the loop musically, it's only last night that I first heard this song by James McMurtry. It dates from 2004, some years before the current problems of the world were quite so obvious. Of course it's a simplistic analysis of what was going on at the time. It's only a song. But the raw pain, and complexity of the situation presented is something that few writers of music seem willing to go anywhere near.

An English version, of sorts, is here. Thanks to Dave Leeke for the reference.

CAN'T MAKE IT HERE ANYMORE

Vietnam Vet with a cardboard sign
Sitting there by the left turn line
Flag on the wheelchair flapping in the breeze
One leg missing, both hands free
No one's paying much mind to him
The V.A. budget's stretched so thin
And there's more comin' home from the Mideast war
We can't make it here anymore

That big ol' building was the textile mill
It fed our kids and it paid our bills
But they turned us out and they closed the doors
We can't make it here anymore

See all those pallets piled up on the loading dock
They're just gonna set there till they rot
'Cause there's nothing to ship, nothing to pack
Just busted concrete and rusted tracks
Empty storefronts around the square
There's a needle in the gutter and glass everywhere
You don't come down here 'less you're looking to score
We can't make it here anymore

The bar's still open but man it's slow
The tip jar's light and the register's low
The bartender don't have much to say
The regular crowd gets thinner each day

Some have maxed out all their credit cards
Some are working two jobs and living in cars
Minimum wage won't pay for a roof, won't pay for a drink
If you gotta have proof just try it yourself Mr. CEO
See how far 5.15 an hour will go
Take a part time job at one of your stores
Bet you can't make it here anymore

High school girl with a bourgeois dream
Just like the pictures in the magazine
She found on the floor of the laundromat
A woman with kids can forget all that
If she comes up pregnant what'll she do
Forget the career, forget about school
Can she live on faith? live on hope?
High on Jesus or hooked on dope
When it's way too late to just say no
You can't make it here anymore

Now I'm stocking shirts in the Wal-Mart store
Just like the ones we made before
'Cept this one came from Singapore
I guess we can't make it here anymore

Should I hate a people for the shade of their skin
Or the shape of their eyes or the shape I'm in
Should I hate 'em for having our jobs today
No I hate the men sent the jobs away
I can see them all now, they haunt my dreams
All lily white and squeaky clean
They've never known want, they'll never know need
Their shit don't stink and their kids won't bleed
Their kids won't bleed in the damn little war
And we can't make it here anymore

Will work for food
Will die for oil
Will kill for power and to us the spoils
The billionaires get to pay less tax
The working poor get to fall through the cracks
Let 'em eat jellybeans let 'em eat cake
Let 'em eat shit, whatever it takes
They can join the Air Force, or join the Corps
If they can't make it here anymore

And that's how it is
That's what we got
If the president wants to admit it or not
You can read it in the paper
Read it on the wall
Hear it on the wind
If you're listening at all
Get out of that limo
Look us in the eye
Call us on the cell phone
Tell us all why

In Dayton, Ohio
Or Portland, Maine
Or a cotton gin out on the great high plains
That's done closed down along with the school
And the hospital and the swimming pool
Dust devils dance in the noonday heat
There's rats in the alley
And trash in the street
Gang graffiti on a boxcar door
We can't make it here anymore

Music and lyrics © 2004 by James McMurtry

stage 4

corner

More to  come, 180º from this spot.

untitled

pond grassA beautiful gray day - a fabulous walk in the woods

still in winter's grip

pond in "the forest"

apropos nothing whatsoever

winter market