It's Monday of the final week of prep for Dangerous Writing. I've started to work with a producer/assistant director lately. It has required me to let go of a lot. Which is a good thing in many regards. Where it is difficult is that Dennis is a working AD and when he works on commercials he is MIA. Something I respect for sure, yet I sit and wait to see where we are with but a few days to go.
I've been drawing storyboards and assembling gear. I re-read the script the other day and gave some thought to transistions. This morning I walked down to the waterfront to shoot some stills from the Hawthorne Bridge. I discovered that the shot I had in mind is a bit flat and that shooting over the actors toward the bridge is a better idea. Or I may shoot through the willows on the bank for an even greater departure from formalism.
Audio has been a big concern and I'm doing a little more than crossing my fingers. I've hired someone and am turning it over to him. I'm trusting an awful lot to others on this one. I've discovered that someone with my resources can't make very ambitious films without trusting in others. I would rather be in control, but that's just a fantasy anyway.
I've got a lot of set dec to do as we failed to hire an art director again. I have a lot of art experience, but I am taking on a bit too much by doing it.
It's been hitting me the past few days that I'm asking a lot of myself on this one with or writhout trusting others. We're shooting ten minute takes on a jib arm mounted on a dolly with the camera supported by a bungee rig. I'll be operating camera while Jordan pulls focus, directs photography and manages media. I'll be directing fourteen people in the opening scene. Fourteen people that I want to be alive and in the moment, improvising as well as hitting marks and saying lines. I imagine that I will have eithteen cast and crew asking me questions at once. I welcome their questions, yet fear the limits of my bandwidth. I'll have to choose my battles and let go.
A side note: last week I worked on wrapping the stage for Untraceable. While we were accounting for the lights and cable and loading the trucks bound for California, the sets were being struck. There were piles and piles of windows, set walls and wood. Over the course of the week much of the sets came down. It gave me cause to become conscious of the enormous impact that a single studio film has on the environment. I also thought a lot of the excess gone to in order to create illusions of reality. As I've watched films since then, including Spiderman 3 with my son and his friend, I can't help but see the sets and the artificial light, the green screens and the translights. I got a bit jaded about the whole movie-making enterprise -- a bunch of people that make a tremendous amount of money to spend a lot of money to create entertainment for our uninspired consumer culture. To top off my disillusion with filmmaking, I had dinner with an old friend of mine that has done very well for himself in the business world. He told me he would help me get into the same business if I liked. But you know, even if I could make a few million dollars over the next ten years, I would be ten years older. Ten long years not doing what I love. And that's no way to live at all.
Rich in spirit,
Signore Direttore
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