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Last Breath: camera department

Friday, September 3rd, 2010 by Andrew

We have just fin­ished our first pro­duc­tion week on Last Breath. It’s been a lot of hard work, but also seri­ously fun. A typ­i­cal day for me con­sists of me wak­ing up around 3:30 or 4:00 in the morn­ing, rid­ing with Matt and our gaffer Randy out to some obscure loca­tion, build­ing up the cam­era pack­age, spend­ing the day cart­ing the cam­era around, chang­ing lenses, wran­gling cables and pulling focus, then break­ing down the cam­era, pack­ing it back up and spend­ing what lit­tle evening remains dump­ing cards, back­ing up footage and charg­ing batteries.

Here is our pro­duc­tion camera:

production camera for "Last Breath"

That’s a Canon EOS 7D, mod­i­fied by Präzisions-Entwicklung Denz in Germany to accept PL-mount cin­ema lenses*. We’re shoot­ing the whole thing on prime (non-zoom) lenses for their char­ac­ter­is­tic sharp­ness and clar­ity that zooms can’t com­pete with; our lens kit con­sists of six Zeiss primes in the fol­low­ing focal lengths: (more…)

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ACing a feature: Last Breath

Thursday, August 26th, 2010 by Andrew

After a few months back home in Colorado, I have once again returned to Minneapolis—not to school this time, but rather as the first (read: only) AC for the fea­ture film Last Breath, a sort of post-apocalyptic road movie writ­ten and directed by Ian Hansing. Production starts tomor­row. By indus­try stan­dards it’s a tiny pro­duc­tion, but it’s still far big­ger than pretty much any film I’ve ever worked on, and all the depart­ment heads are really incred­i­bly on top of things.

Last Breath camera package, all packed up and ready to goIt’s a lit­tle intim­i­dat­ing being in charge of the cam­era depart­ment (read: being the cam­era depart­ment) for a real fea­ture with a siz­able crew and truck­loads of equip­ment rentals and all that jazz, par­tic­u­larly given that I haven’t AC’d any­thing in sev­eral months, but I’ve been get­ting my mojo back; label­ing cases, buy­ing a 100′ tape mea­sure (finally), and get­ting down and dirty learn­ing the film community’s own con­vo­luted pho­netic alpha­bet used for slat­ing takes (sim­i­lar to but not the same as the NATO pho­netic alpha­bet, it begins with ‘apple’ instead of ‘alfa’ and ends with ‘zebra’ instead of ‘zulu’).

I’ll be report­ing directly to cin­e­matog­ra­pher Matt Kane, who you might remem­ber as the übermen­sch who shot Discouraging Words, and I’ll get a chance to hang with a few leg­ends of the Minneapolis film world, so I’m pretty excited even though I have to wake up around 3:30 tomor­row for the long drive out to the loca­tion in time for the 5:30 crew call.

So expect to hear more about all this. In a day or two, if I can sum­mon the energy, I may give you all a peek inside those cases. For now, let’s suf­fice it to say that we’re shoot­ing dig­i­tal and I’ve got lots of toys to play with.

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Downloaders of the world, unite for good!

Sunday, July 25th, 2010 by Andrew

You may have heard of The Yes Men. If you haven’t, think of them as super­hero media hoax­ers, trot­ting the globe and deceiv­ing the media in an unend­ing cru­sade for justice.

Back in 2009 The Yes Men made a doc­u­men­tary called The Yes Men Fix the World. They are now being sued by the United States Chamber of Commerce—an anti-environmental, anti-regulatory, anti-government, anti-people cor­po­rate lob­by­ing concern—who are seek­ing to have every copy of the movie impounded and destroyed.

Here’s where you come in.

As a coun­ter­mea­sure, The Yes Men, in coop­er­a­tion with the fas­ci­nat­ing new film dis­tri­b­u­tion out­let Vodo, have released the film for free as a BitTorrent down­load. Get it here. Download it, watch it, and seed that baby like there’s no tomor­row. If you’ve got some spare cash to chuck their way (I don’t), swing by their store to make a dona­tion.

The Yes Men Fix the World is a deadly-serious film dis­guised as a fun-loving romp. Watch the movie if you want to see the remark­able story of how The Yes Men fooled the BBC into believ­ing that they were rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Dow Chemical, and what that meant for res­i­dents of Bhopal, India. Or if you pre­fer, hold on until the bit­ter end to see how they tricked mayor Ray Nagin and the gov­er­nor of Louisiana into wel­com­ing them as rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Somewhere in there is a cameo from Reggie Watts (Google him), and of course their Chamber of Commerce shenanigans.

BitTorrent is not just a way to watch leaked workprints of X-Men, it is an instru­ment of jus­tice. By seed­ing this file as much as pos­si­ble to as many peers as pos­si­ble, you are help­ing to ensure that these sur­real media cru­saders will not be silenced. Won’t you please help?

[if you need a good (free) BitTorrent client, I rec­om­mend Transmission (Mac) or µTorrent (Windows)]

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Posted in Rants & Raves, Reviews | No Comments »

Another TV interview

Monday, July 5th, 2010 by Andrew

Back in May I was inter­viewed about Discouraging Words for the cable access show Filmmaker’s Studio. Not my best or most coher­ent inter­view, but in my defense I hadn’t slept more than about twenty hours in the week pre­ced­ing the interview.

Anyway, the show is embed­ded below:

[YouTube]

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Posted in Discouraging Words, Filmmaking, News, Personal Projects, Press Releases, School Projects | No Comments »

The Ultimate Badass

Monday, June 7th, 2010 by Andrew

Who is the Ultimate Badass? There’s got to be someone—one person—out there who per­son­i­fies the mean­ing of that phrase, right? Who is that per­son? I was dis­cussing this recently with Matt and we arrived at a poten­tial answer to this ques­tion. We may be biased because the name we arrived at was that of a film direc­tor, but try as we might we couldn’t come up with any­one who even comes close to the bad-assitute exhib­ited by Werner Herzog (maybe Zeus, but we’re talk­ing recent his­tory here).

Below are a few true facts about Herzog. Chuck Norris has got noth­ing on this guy:

  • Fitzcarraldo and shipIn 1982, he hauled a 340-ton steam ship over a Peruvian moun­tain because he didn’t like spe­cial effects.
  • Klaus Kinski fired a gun at him (three times), but missed.
  • He promised his cast that if they all sur­vived pro­duc­tion on Even Dwarfs Started Small, he would leap into a cac­tus. He did. And not some half-assed cac­tus either; one with long, sharp spines (one of which remains embed­ded in the car­ti­lage of his knee).
  • He told Errol Morris that if Morris ever made a film, he would eat his shoe. Morris made Gates of Heaven, and Herzog boiled and ate his shoe in front of a live audi­ence at the UC Theater in Berkeley. (See the fan­tas­tic Les Blanc doc­u­men­tary short Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe, excerpted below)
  • He saved Joaquin Phoenix’s life by lit­er­ally pulling him from the wreck­age of an over­turned car, then van­ished with­out explanation.
  • He has made a film on every con­ti­nent (yes, even Antarctica).
  • He was shot in the stom­ach by a sniper with an air rifle dur­ing a TV inter­view in 2006 and didn’t even stop talk­ing (“It is not a sig­nif­i­cant bul­let,” said he).
  • He once walked from Munich to Paris (not on the roads; in a straight line through fields and forests).
  • He once stopped an inter­na­tional flight from leav­ing the air­port in Lima, Peru by step­ping out in front of the plane, result­ing in a stand-off with police.
  • He never uses sto­ry­boards (they encour­age men­tal laziness).
  • On loca­tion for Aguirre, the Wrath of God he was swarmed by fire ants and stung approx­i­mately 150 times. The day’s pro­duc­tion was not halted.
  • In 1982, he rode a 340-ton steam ship through rag­ing rapids in the Amazon jun­gle because he didn’t like spe­cial effects.

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Posted in Filmmaking, Great Directors, Rants & Raves | 2 Comments »

Post-CIFF notes

Monday, May 24th, 2010 by Andrew

Me with Vvinni outside the Atlas Theater in Cheyenne

Discouraging Words had its first western-states screen­ing on Saturday as part of the Cheyenne International Film Festival. I want to thank fes­ti­val orga­niz­ers Alan O’Hashi and Michael Conti, as well as all the good peo­ple who came out to the pro­gram. I was par­tic­u­larly amused to hear from a num­ber of peo­ple who are inti­mately involved in the Wyoming polit­i­cal scene who told me that we got the char­ac­ters exactly right.

Some peo­ple at the fes­ti­val have expressed inter­est in pur­chas­ing DVDs. Check back here in exactly two months—that’s July 24th—for more infor­ma­tion about how to get your hands on your very own copy of the movie. If you would like to receive an email when the DVD becomes avail­able, just leave a com­ment on this post and I’ll be in touch.

There will be screen­ings in Colorado this sum­mer, although noth­ing is set in stone yet. If you would like to arrange your own pri­vate screen­ing for friends, fam­ily, neigh­bors, pass­ing strangers on the street… please send an email to screeners@​discouragingwords.​com.

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Posted in Discouraging Words, Filmmaking, News | 1 Comment »

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth…

Saturday, May 1st, 2010 by Andrew

…And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings…
…put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

Picture lock.

Posted in Discouraging Words, Filmmaking, News, Personal Projects, School Projects | 1 Comment »

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