new camera

i got a new video camera. the first thing i did with it was turn it on, point it out the window, and then went and had my signature breakfast: two eggs over easy, home fries, dry english muffin with peanut butter, coffee. when i got back this is what happened. if you imagine a whistling wind in the background you'll just about have the day.

new work

as things seem to happen in my life, a seachange is in process. my architecture work is coming to a close while my film work is starting to bustle. this feels very very good to me. i sometimes wonder if i haven't approached architecture in the same way the george bush seems to have approached the white house: as a response to a difficult past event...a poor reason to approach anything. architecture school was extremely challenging for me and i suppose, in retrospect, i've always wanted to prove to myself that i could "do it" because in school i got the definite impression that i couldn't do it. in general, school seemed to communicate that message to me. what i find curious is that whenever i've tried to "do" architecture, i find myself in film. it happened as a kid, in high school, in college and in grad school. i would endeavor to create architectural projects and find myself dreaming in pictures. a common criticism of my architectural work was that it dealt in pictures, not architecture. i came away from those crits often wondering if i understood what architecture was at all. i do tend to think of buildings sequentially... you enter here, you go there, you see that, you do this... and i tend to like architecture that presents sequences of spaces, processions and especially cities (i liked urban planning a lot). the aspect of architecture that i dislike, viscerally, is all the regulation around it, the bureaucracy that attends most building projects, which, though i may be applying my own neurosis to this, seem to say, "you are bad for even thinking of this." it feels very much like my experience of church, actually, which involved a lot of rules that made no sense to me.

i can't claim that filmmaking is any better, especially in a studio format, where there are terrible pressures to make money, be successful, be glamorous, and climb the ladder. but, my sense is that as an independent, there is much more freedom (in architecture too, but the places you can practice without oversight are dwindling). i've been watching a lot of john waters films and i am heartened by the outrageousness and compassion his films present, despite their surface vulgarity, which i find hilarious and shocking, still! and, now, a teenage fantasy of mine is coming true: i will get to visit the starship enterprise and participate in the making of a star trek episode. this trumps all architectural possibilities! it turns out that not far from where i live there is a full-scale copy of the original star trek sets that are being used to create new original series episodes. it's astonishing to see how well the sets are reproduced, and i can't wait to see what a completely community driven production is like.

oh, and if you need a cinematographer, i've got a swanky new camera that takes gorgeous movies. ask me for references!

excited

i'm so danged excited about making films and i'm learning so much. i found a great website, lynda.com that has extensive instructional videos about all of apple's movie production software. it's been a great way to learn for me. i like watching. i've never been much of a manual kind of guy. i like to jump and get going. i've also been researching movie making equipment. more and more, movie making is done inside a computer and the camera is becoming a capture device that provides files to the computer. the essentials are still the same, but rather than have to spend lots of money on big sets, it's now possible with your average mac or PC, to build fantastic worlds and place actors into them realistically (see prior post). i've always wanted to make some sci-fi films, and it looks like i will be able to, spectacularly!

holy....

here's what you can do with a pretty cheap camera and a lot of software.

Filmmaking

a while back i decided to put my attentions back into filmmaking. the last time i really looked at what was possible on a meager budget was around four years ago. since conceiving a short film that i want to make in my new studio, and realizing that i was going to need some special effects to pull it off, i've discovered that filmmaking as i knew it four years ago (low resolution video) has been replaced by much more film-like technology (better cameras, lenses, software). i'm frankly astonished by what is possible with a personal computer, a relatively cheap camera and a good dose of imagination.

for instance, the last scene in my film will involve a man tearing down a wall, revealing a beach behind the wooden framing, wind, fog, sand and paper blowing about gale-force. a week ago i was contemplating building a frame wall on a beach, thinking about big fans, and a bunch of stage hands to toss sand. today, i'm thinking it'll be a lot easier and less expensive to do it mostly in the computer.

my first tip that things had changed was a short clip i found of a normandy invasion re-enactment created by three guys--three guys total--who in four days created a 1000-extra-looking scene that's stunning. a month or so ago i watched some of the making-of features included with the "lord of the rings" films. throughout i thought, wow, wouldn't it be cool to be able to play with some of the technology they are using. well, now i can.

phineas birthday party

today was phin's first birthday party!

new design

as with most things i'm involved with, there are many iterations. i like this process and get nervous when things move too quickly. i like a lot of time to reflect, absorb, integrate.

the design for the new building has gone through many iterations and i think we're finally at one that's going to stick. the picture shows the concept. the prior design was completely flat and i couldn't get past the overall size of the facade being too big for the street. the scale of the other buildings is smaller, more human. so, the idea developed into keeping some of the stepping, but making it symmetrical and also keeping some of the slope. the major change was pulling out the center, not unlike a good ol' fashioned new england church, giving the front some depth. i also played around with keeping the brick facade on the first floor, but it just has to go.

the design is somewhat traditional, but we're going to implement it in a new way with a rainscreen that will be made probably of wood. this is a kind of floating facade that has been a standard in northern european countries with weather not unlike new england's. the advantage of the system is that the cladding and the weatherproofing are separate and have an airspace between them that lets water drain out should it get behind the cladding (which it almost always does, eventually).

how do they find me?

one of the fun (and scary to some people) things about the web is that you can find out how people find you. for instance, people found this blog by searching for the following (ranked in order of frequency):

aloofdork.blogspot.com
aloofdork
boobs and biceps
how much land to feed one person?
parslaine
acres of land to feed
alisa dworsky
jonas asher" baltimore
timo elliot
amount of land needed to feed one person
barra homestead
boobs muscle biceps
boobs with biceps
dreamland movie theater white river junction
dumpster freebody diagram
hoop houses
how many acres to feed 1 person
how many acres to feed vegetarian for a year
how much land is required to feed one person
how much land to feed a city
how much land to feed a person
how much land to feed me
how much land to feed one family
how much land to feed one person
how much land would it take to feed a single person for a year
incongruency
land needed to feed one person
look at that faggot
matt bucy sea creatures
meaningless comparisons
number of acres used to feed a single person in one year
ratna pappert
regulating lines picture
strip club white river junction
matt bucy

the most pressing question seems to be how much land it takes to feed a person, family, city. now that i've included these search terms in this blog more people will find it as a result.

tracking

my epiphany of the day: life is like meditation. my mind constantly takes me away from my simple task: observing, staying focused, just watching. it takes me to far flung places that may or may not exist, away from the present and into the past or future. the same is true of my life. i have moments of clarity when my path is perfectly clear. then all kinds of things crowd into the picture, as if i were taking some kind of family portrait in which almost everything in my life, related or not, decides they're part of the family. the clarity dissolves and i end up spending all my time explaining what all the stuff is in the picture. so, those kernels of clarity... i say to myself, keep those at heart, keep bringing them to the front, keep tapping them on the shoulder and asking them to turn around and look me in the eye.

oh, and a candy heart poem... enjoy.

aristotle

first, i read a whole bunch of books on filmmaking. i've made a bunch of films, but i've never studied how to make them. so, i started with some lighting books. i never knew that the reason they used to say "lights, camera, action" was that the lights were turned off between takes in the early days because they put out so much heat. nowadays, with cooler, brighter fixtures, they're on continuously, for the most part.

next i read some screenwriting books. there are a lot of them out there, most of them geared toward someone who's trying to make a killing in hollywood. i noticed that many of them referred to aristotle's poetics. i tucked that in the back of my head.

next, i picked up, at the recommendation of a friend, david mamet's "on directing film". it's a short little volume that packs a punch. in it, mamet, with a class, create two scenes from two different dramatic situations. it's fascinating to see how it unfolds. mamet also talks about poetics.

so, i went and got poetics and read it. i now understand why so many books refer to it. it lays out the essential structures and relationships for western dramatic tradition. it's to drama what patanjali is to yoga, i suppose: a concise written account of a practice, in the case of poetics, drama.

now that i'm all loaded up with good advice from 2300 years ago, i better get to work making some stuff up!

building purchased

today was the day and things went smoothly. at about 4pm, my business partner and i purchased a downtown white river junction building that will become a combination office building and soundstage. it feels great to have the purchase behind us. we can now get to work.

flaming mops / ice chunks

this is what my driveway looks like today. crusty, dirty, partially melted snow muck. i thought this particular bit of it was intriguing.

i've been more or less a workaholic the last week, preparing to purchase the building that will become, in part, the movie studio. the prior owners have mostly cleared it out and it's looking mighty tasty. i can't wait to get my hands on it. i'm not sleeping all that well, worrying about all the little details that have to be attended to before the sale can close.

on top of all that, there was a fire in my big building. thank goodness a friend happened to be in the space when it started and managed to put it out before it did much damage (not much means around $10,000 to $20,000!). it's amazing what a little fire burning for about two minutes can do. crazy. advice: do not store mops anywhere near hot water heaters.

i've continued my home-brew-film-school, watching at least one movie a night and consuming yet more movie-making books. as the date nears for the studio to be mine, i'm seriously contemplating what exactly it is that i will make. i've never quite had this opportunity before, and i'm very excited to allow my creative endeavor to expand in my 3000 or so square feet. i'm also particularly interested in what other people might be interested in doing in the space.

get real

houses, studios, babies, faeries, films

in less than two weeks i'll be purchasing the future studio building for dreamland, the vision for which has shifted dramatically over the past year but now seems to be stabilizing in the form of a filmmaking soundstage that can be used for events as well. this weekend, the radical faeries are coming up to white river junction for their annual meeting and will be staying at our place. gabriel and i have been working hard the past few days to get our shower project done. we tiled all weekend. we started the project a year ago! tomorrow, gabriel and i are travelling to boston to see the moms and the boys and catch a matinée (and maybe get a couch). meanwhile, other projects are on hold, such as the house i was trying to buy and the purchase of the land across the street, both of which have been tangled up variously. i am working on drawings for my parent's house in california, which is a simple but dramatic reworking of the windows and some interior partitions. i'm also working on a house for two friends in new hampshire. and soon, very soon, i'll be working on the graphics for white river indie films, which will be showing fourteen independent films at the tip top at the end of april. it looks like a great slate this year.

winner

the results are in. people like the facade design pictured here. i concur. i like the large areas of color. the next step is to figure out how to make those areas of color happen. they could be made of stained natural wood, or untreated wood of various species (it wouldn't be so vibrant), or possibly cement-fiber board, which is durable. i saw a building in los angeles that was done with fiber-board. it's pictured here, too.

dreamland design

before


after

i've been working this weekend on new designs for the dreamland theater and office building. my business partner and i already went through a round of design and permitting but we decided the project was too ambitious, with a third floor, an extension off the front, and significant rehab of the interior. so, we're now playing with a less ambitious scheme, and i'm finding it's a lot of fun to work with just what you have. limits are the source of so much creativity.

so, the top picture is how the building looks today. the bottom is a model i've been playing with. because our budget is limited, our radical move is going to be to re-skin the front facade and change the shape somewhat. i'm leaning toward bright colors. power poles are ubiquitous in white river junction, so we decided to use them for decoration as opposed to spending near $100,000 to have the power buried.

i'm curious what you think. there are 27 different and flavors of this in a web gallery located here. take a look. let me know what you like.

if you're curious about the materials, we're thinking we will strip the vinyl exterior and replace it with additional insulation sealed with a rainscreen over which will go decorative natural wood, stained or untreated, or alternatively painted or stained cement-board. the first floor street level will be mostly glass curtain wall for retail or public-oriented businesses. the theater/soundstage is out back, down an alley. haven't got to designing that yet.

dreamland website

for anyone interested in staying abreast of developments at dreamland, i've just put up a really simple website. eventually, it will list events and describe what and how you'll be able to use dreamland. you can also sign up to be on an email list.

www.dreamlandwrj.com.

soundstage

i had a great meeting today with jane applegate, who will be the executive producer for dreamland. the concept for dreamland has developed in an exciting new direction, just minutes ago. time will tell if it sticks, but we were thinking about the decor for the theater, what kind of theme it might evoke, and how it might operate not only as a theater but as an event space. and then it occurred to me, partly because i'd been thinking about where i might be able to shoot scenes with sets the past couple days, why not make the space a bona-fide mini-soundstage? most of the elements would be more or less there anyway: lighting, sound, video projection, some staging, and a big open floor with tall ceilings. so, i'm running with this idea. the picture is not the space, just inspiration. lovely, naked, functional space.

i've always had a feeling that white river could be home to some small independent film production. a number of filmmakers live and work in the area. it also serves my desire to have the space be a creative place, rather than a consumer driven thing. so, coming to dreamland will invite you participate, create, join in, and experience. when you enter, you'll be not only witnessing some kind of show or event, you'll be in a space that's infused with creative energy and tools. i think this is pretty cool. it will also allow me to spend money i would have otherwise dedicated to decor on better lighting and other studio gear because the decor will be "soundstage." the bar will be "kraft service."

camera envy

i've been drewling over this camera for the last month, ever since having used one to shoot documentary footage for a friend in new orleans. i'm promising myself i will not even think about buying one until i have a project worthy of the price. it's not a super expensive camera, as they go, but more than pocket change. you could buy a decent used car for the price.

the picture quality is stunning. having worked with standard video for years now, my first shoot with this camera knocked my socks off. i'm used to what is now called standard video, in which approximately 480 horizontal lines of picture make up each frame. by comparison, 35mm film, which is what is used to shoot most motion pictures today, can resolve in the range of 2000 to 3000 lines (however, according to a paper i just read, by the time it's printed and projected in a theater the resolution drops to somewhere in the 700-800 line range). this camera, the sony pmw-ex1, resolves about 1000 lines, which by comparison is apparently better than what you'll see at most movie theaters. hot damn! the color quality is half that of more expensive broadcast cameras and a quarter that of the most expensive (as in $200,000!), but if you're in a situation where you need higher color fidelity, the camera can output it via cable to a recorder or computer, a really nice feature.

i'm also used to video looking, in my opinion, like hell, especially when outdoors in high contrast situations. back when i shot film in my still camera, super-8 and 16mm cameras, i could usually manage to keep the sky, faces, even shadows, within the range of the film, meaning each of those areas would have some tone. with video, i've always grimaced at having to choose what to let go, shadows or highlights. this is mainly because i use cheap video cameras, and don't spend much time with lighting, but it's also partly the result of the narrow range of electronic image gathering. this new camera, to my delight, had adjustable response curves and several presets that allow you to set up the camera to respond much more like film so that the sunny side of a face, for instance, doesn't bleach out but maintains tone at the same time the bicycle in the shadows of a tree is still visible. hot damn, again.

okay, one more thing: this camera seems to have a real lens. what i mean is that the usual three controls, focus, iris and zoom, each have physical rings that you can turn to adjust manually, which makes shooting, for me anyway, so much more enjoyable. i'm not a fan of automatic.

there are a number of other manufacturers making similar cameras today. i can't vouch for any of them, but from what i've read and seen on sites comparing them, this camera has lots to offer for very low budget independent filmmakers. now, if i can crank out a script that i feel is worth shooting, maybe i'll get one.

dreamland

soon, downtown white river junction will have a new venue for movies, music and other laudable entertainments (no, not the wrap, our infamous strip club that burned down a while back). this is the back door, soon to be the stage door. in about a month, i will be purchasing, along with a business partner, a downtown building and converting the back 3000 square feet into the dreamland theater. the plans are by no means set in stone, but the concept is to create a space in which almost anything can happen that requires projection, amplification, lighting and an audience, all of which excite me! i'm hoping for lots of experimentation. i'm very excited to be able to use the space myself for projection of my movies and god knows what all else, maybe even some performance. there will be a bar that will serve a variety of beverages and food so that coming to dreamland will be sort of like going to a giant living room with creature comforts and all your friends. i've been scheming with a variety of people about producing programs at dreamland which will vary from indie film to indie music to indie theater. indie seems to be the key word. the space will be able to hold about 130 people sitting and more standing. during the day i'm hoping the space will be used as a community auditorium where lectures and presentations can be made. we are sorely lacking a place for this kind of thing in downtown. the rest of the building will be renovated as office space, some of which is already leased and some of which is available. talk to me!