Wednesday, October 14, 2009
a little closer
subtitled roughcut in hand. aside from music licenses and some audio that needs to be replaced, i feel excellent exhausted. i missed the sundance deadline but am thinking i can make slamdance. it's a big thing, getting this far. it's not that you find out that moviemaking is easy, but you find out that it's doable. a trite and profound understanding.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
pang'ono
it turns out editing is not a hugely bloggable process. monotonous and neverending. i've come to think of it as railroad building. tie by tie until the playhead can make it from beginning to end. or else like chiseling a sculpture - when is it finished? - out of a block of stone.
as of 530 friday night, i have an assembly edit. 105 minutes or so. which is probably about right, i think, for an 85 minute (or so) final cut. a small miracle since it's been a lot of one-handed editing (the other hand holding my daughter). i continue to swing back and forth between emotional extremes a couple times a day - from pondering appropriate red carpet attire to crying softly into my pillow.
another two weeks of fussing over details and i'll be content to call it a rough cut.
as of 530 friday night, i have an assembly edit. 105 minutes or so. which is probably about right, i think, for an 85 minute (or so) final cut. a small miracle since it's been a lot of one-handed editing (the other hand holding my daughter). i continue to swing back and forth between emotional extremes a couple times a day - from pondering appropriate red carpet attire to crying softly into my pillow.
another two weeks of fussing over details and i'll be content to call it a rough cut.
Friday, August 21, 2009
first images
1. Kisswell Mandala as Innocent
2. Moureen Kabambe as Loda
3. Innocent and Loda
4. Hestings Magwede as Solomon
2. Moureen Kabambe as Loda
3. Innocent and Loda
4. Hestings Magwede as Solomon
guerilla
After looking at all of the footage, I'm in that wretched despair/soaring thrill place where the project is more important to me than breathing. Which is a threat to my sleep patterns and my parenting. Mostly it seems solid. But we shot LP and LP, it seems, can be unreliable. Some video gliches and audio dropouts. One forum-supported hypothesis is that this could be a matter of playing back LP footage. Hopefully that's what it is because with another camera or deck, the footage might actually playback without issue (PAL equipment, anyone?). Another, perhaps more plausible explanation, is that the footage is simply flawed because of sketchy equipment and expertise. In which case, we are looking at looping and reshoots drawn out as able over many months.
Trying to disclose the extent of our challenges without coming across as totally amateur and hasty, I'm a little hesitant to share all of the dirty details. We shot everything in ten days. We had a car for four of those days. We lit our night shots with car headlights and energy saver bulbs hooked up to a car battery. There was no props department. No production design. No script supervisor. Grips? Please. No PAs even. We had no control of our locations and had to sneak our scenes into bustling real life (ever been to a Malawian bus depot, bar or outdoor market?). We had no monitor or headphones to check audio, which came from the camera and a shotgun mic. Our transportation department was a bicycle taxi. All this on top of a colossal cross-cultural experiment involving a first time director, first time crew and first time film actors.
In my mind, we nailed our movie in spite of all this and we accomplished what real films do without the very necessary tools of real filmmaking. But actually, no. That's an impossibility. Still, our film will be what it is - which is something very different from any standard of low-budget film - and, with a little luck, that thing will be unique and that thing will be great.
Trying to disclose the extent of our challenges without coming across as totally amateur and hasty, I'm a little hesitant to share all of the dirty details. We shot everything in ten days. We had a car for four of those days. We lit our night shots with car headlights and energy saver bulbs hooked up to a car battery. There was no props department. No production design. No script supervisor. Grips? Please. No PAs even. We had no control of our locations and had to sneak our scenes into bustling real life (ever been to a Malawian bus depot, bar or outdoor market?). We had no monitor or headphones to check audio, which came from the camera and a shotgun mic. Our transportation department was a bicycle taxi. All this on top of a colossal cross-cultural experiment involving a first time director, first time crew and first time film actors.
In my mind, we nailed our movie in spite of all this and we accomplished what real films do without the very necessary tools of real filmmaking. But actually, no. That's an impossibility. Still, our film will be what it is - which is something very different from any standard of low-budget film - and, with a little luck, that thing will be unique and that thing will be great.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
the beginning
It has taken me a long time to figure out how to talk about this project. What it is. What it is to me. And, also, who I am. This past February, I went to Malawi with my family - wife and two daughters. I went without any real agenda aside from a few writing projects. Those aside, I had the goal of finding a way to embed myself within the community, to try to get to know people and to become known to the people in Balaka, the town where we were living. I started off playing pool, learning Chichewa and wandering from bar to bar. Slowly I began to meet like minded individuals - writers, artists, actors, TV cameramen. I had a vague idea for a small character drama and after a couple months, I could no longer ignore that Balaka had everything necessary for a small feature film. All that was missing was a little glue to put the pieces together. It had to be small. It had to be relevant both to the Malawian reality and to my own interests and ideas. Also, it had to be in Chichewa, a language I was only just beginning to learn.
In April I banged out the script and, paranoid about the arrogance of going to a new place and presuming to capture anything at all Malawian (vs Malawians acting out my first impressions of Malawi), I sat down with Sam Kanyama Khwiya, one of Malawi's preeminent playwrights, who, serendipitously is from Balaka and happened to be working on my wife's research project. We worked the script into something that felt real and interesting to both of us and then began translating it.
There are hordes of Malawian actors. Most are involved in community theater, taking NGO and government messages about AIDS, the environment, gender, etc to the villages via drama. So, I taped a couple scenes with some actors I had met - Kisswell Mandala and Alick Gaisi - and, afterward, I remember feeling a kind of panic. Because I had absolutely no excuse not to make the movie. It was to the point that if I didn't do it, not only would it always be an overpowering regret, but I would be unable to complain, the way we film people do, about lack of opportunity, material, collaborators, etc.
Jenny and I sat down and figured out how much we could stand to loose (given that we couldn't stand to lose anything) and I posted a plea for help on our family travel blog (Where is Malawi?). A few friends, old and new, volunteered some additional money and suddenly I had script, budget, location and principle actors. Talk about a snowball picking up speed. Next, I wandered down to the Catholic mission TV station and enlisted a couple cameramen. Then, I met with different drama groups and held auditions.
Everything was in place. Except...the goddamn equipment. Malawi is a tricky place. What electronics are available, are not cheap. I ran around the country meeting with various people but came up empty. Finally, out of nowhere, the Goethe Institute, a German NGO that liaises with the German cultural office, offered a camera and mic. Free of charge. We're definitely not giving Michael Mann a challenge in terms of being on the cutting edge of digital filmmaking, but again, there were the pieces, all lined up.
The story, which my advertising brain seems summarily unable to spin into a catchy paragraph, follows Innocent, an orphan who lucks into a marriage with Loda, a girl from a good family. But their first child, Thokozani, dies and their life savings are stolen through the abuse of a cultural tradition. Their efforts to make money come to nothing and Innocent is forced to stand aside as Loda gravitates towards work as a bargirl (different from a prostitute, but close enough). The plot is a little difficult to discuss because of how different the Malawian reality is from America's. Also, because I really hope we managed an honest look at some difficult issues and didn't fall into the exploitation trap. Life's tough in Malawi. Most people's lives are defined by what you can build and what you can grow. Especially without education, a man's worth is frequently tied to how much he can lift, while a woman's is tied to how attractive she is to men. It's an exchange economy where everything is in play.
So, after a week of rehearsals, we shot the movie. Nothing I can write will capture the intensity of it. I will just say that even if no movie comes from the footage, everydollar kwacha was worth it.
This blog is an effort to capture a little of the road I've been down and a little of the road leading forward. Because as far as the project has come, the end is much, much farther away.
In April I banged out the script and, paranoid about the arrogance of going to a new place and presuming to capture anything at all Malawian (vs Malawians acting out my first impressions of Malawi), I sat down with Sam Kanyama Khwiya, one of Malawi's preeminent playwrights, who, serendipitously is from Balaka and happened to be working on my wife's research project. We worked the script into something that felt real and interesting to both of us and then began translating it.
There are hordes of Malawian actors. Most are involved in community theater, taking NGO and government messages about AIDS, the environment, gender, etc to the villages via drama. So, I taped a couple scenes with some actors I had met - Kisswell Mandala and Alick Gaisi - and, afterward, I remember feeling a kind of panic. Because I had absolutely no excuse not to make the movie. It was to the point that if I didn't do it, not only would it always be an overpowering regret, but I would be unable to complain, the way we film people do, about lack of opportunity, material, collaborators, etc.
Jenny and I sat down and figured out how much we could stand to loose (given that we couldn't stand to lose anything) and I posted a plea for help on our family travel blog (Where is Malawi?). A few friends, old and new, volunteered some additional money and suddenly I had script, budget, location and principle actors. Talk about a snowball picking up speed. Next, I wandered down to the Catholic mission TV station and enlisted a couple cameramen. Then, I met with different drama groups and held auditions.
Everything was in place. Except...the goddamn equipment. Malawi is a tricky place. What electronics are available, are not cheap. I ran around the country meeting with various people but came up empty. Finally, out of nowhere, the Goethe Institute, a German NGO that liaises with the German cultural office, offered a camera and mic. Free of charge. We're definitely not giving Michael Mann a challenge in terms of being on the cutting edge of digital filmmaking, but again, there were the pieces, all lined up.
The story, which my advertising brain seems summarily unable to spin into a catchy paragraph, follows Innocent, an orphan who lucks into a marriage with Loda, a girl from a good family. But their first child, Thokozani, dies and their life savings are stolen through the abuse of a cultural tradition. Their efforts to make money come to nothing and Innocent is forced to stand aside as Loda gravitates towards work as a bargirl (different from a prostitute, but close enough). The plot is a little difficult to discuss because of how different the Malawian reality is from America's. Also, because I really hope we managed an honest look at some difficult issues and didn't fall into the exploitation trap. Life's tough in Malawi. Most people's lives are defined by what you can build and what you can grow. Especially without education, a man's worth is frequently tied to how much he can lift, while a woman's is tied to how attractive she is to men. It's an exchange economy where everything is in play.
So, after a week of rehearsals, we shot the movie. Nothing I can write will capture the intensity of it. I will just say that even if no movie comes from the footage, every
This blog is an effort to capture a little of the road I've been down and a little of the road leading forward. Because as far as the project has come, the end is much, much farther away.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
