The Year of Archetype: Day 30

Obligatory repeat of a tweet: The prospective Day -2 has been scrubbed because the actress involved is sick. And, for once in the history of Arc-related delays, I'm not worried. I am still shooting tomorrow, and I'll try to reschedule today (which probably will/would've only take[n] two hours or less) for a weekday before Day 1 proper on February 6. It's also for some footage that doesn't happen until later in the film. I planned it only because I wanted to wade out of the paperwork swamp. But I've already shot two shots, and tomorrow I'll shoot more.

I feel like an athlete in training. It's almost a sort of fear to spend a day without doing something related to the film. Given I overprepared, I'm spacing out what little I have to do over the next week. But I'm afraid of getting soft; of losing focus; of losing drive. I've talked about the tunnel vision of filmmaking before, and I need to keep it and not look back.

I've probably also mentioned the surreality of it all. Archetype will probably be made. This comes after six months of it being just an idea rattling around in my head, and a shot list, and some logistics to pin down, and something abstract to explain at auditions. And, like most majors things in my life - changing schools, moving to Chicago, graduating college - I always think I'm supposed to feel hugely different, and I never do. It's like the feeling when you're somewhere far away on vacation, just doing something normal, just walking around, and forcing yourself to attach some false gravity to it.

If I made Arc, mentally, into being as huge as its own ambition, I wouldn't be able to make it. Like how - like any film - I had to break it down from a boulder into pebbles to simply get a grasp of things I could do every day that, over time, would reconstitute a whole.

So yes, I'm not shooting today, and I'm fine with that. I'm shooting tomorrow, anyway, and a week from today is Day 1 of the shoot proper.

The Year of Archetype: Day 28 / Shooting Day -3

I joke about how the process is equal parts film-aching and filmmaking. If there was as much film-aching as filmmaking, I wouldn't be doing what I do. Sure, I piss and moan about little things, but in the end, I have what I can only describe as a voracious zeal for the whole ordeal, about telling a story in a method that's complicated in process to make cohere in the end.

I've been trying to avoid my old Rules of Filmmaking. One rule of which is that the more I suffer or have a hard time during shooting, the better the product. This mostly came about making my Production I final, which was an uphill battle and which turned out as one of the better things I've done with a camera. Contrast that to my Production II final, which was an ambitious undertaking but which I made with friends and mostly coasted along. The end product was extremely confusing, probably moreso a result of finally getting to use sound and piecing together a wordy plot that required a careful read-through of the script to follow.

So today is Day -3 because Saturday and Sunday are Days -2 and -1, respectively. Preliminary, short-term efforts before the shoot proper. Today involved getting shots of kids entering an elementary school in the morning and leaving at the final bell at the day's end. It's just a scene-setting device to frame the time a certain event takes. And something thematically, probably.

(And no, don't lecture me on the possible legality or ethic of anything. My parents claimed I was going to get either sued or attacked by a protective parent, despite filming at a distance never closer than 200 feet, and never zooming close enough to visibly identify any child.)

It was only two shots, really. Well, two shots on paper; I went for a few different compositions, focal lengths, all that crap. But now, at the day's end, I'm absolutely exhausted. It reminds me how, the day after my first day of Transmissions shooting, I was more physically sore than I have ever been, probably on account of having to move furniture, constantly change camera setups, and do everything myself.

This, though, shouldn't be the case. I woke up at the fairly-generous hour of 7:45 to stage outside the school by the 8:30 first bell. Sure, the windchill was -19 Fahrenheit, and I forgot gloves, and only a grand total of about ten to fifteen minutes outside resulted in losing all feeling in my fingers, following by the extreme physical pain of the thaw, then running my hands under lukewarm water for quite some time.

Later today I staged at a different spot and had to walk a total of about three-quarters of a mile round-trip on a rough trail through the snowy woods, all while carrying a camera that weighs probably about fifteen pounds.

None of that, though, seemed to equate to the dead-tired weight dragging on my eyelids. Maybe the prospective-ankle-twisting walk through the woods did me in, or being out in the brutal cold about an hour total. And, well, also taking my sister's dog on a half-hour walk.

Before I write what I just realized is the obvious answer, I could just posit that it could be sheer mental exhaustion leftover from Paperwork Wednesday, which was far more grueling than I imagined. I've also been reading the script these past two days, revising it here and there, visualizing the whole damn thing, thinking about the shoot and post. That's maybe a bit too romantic, as I mentally approach filmmaking from a more logistical and technical aspect; almost scientific. With regards to the latter, I think today's exhaustion was probably just the culmination of five cups of coffee spaced evenly through the day to avoid a caffeine crash, and said crash is happening right now.

The Year of Archetype: Day 26

Now where were we?

A countdown is rather pointless, since I should concern myself less with counting down numbers than making sure every last detail is in place. Still confirming with a few remaining people and I only had to rejigger the schedule three times, each time rather minutely.

Each day I just try to X off a few items on my actually-named "Big List" of things to do before H-Hour on D-Day. I need to come up with a far better name than that; far too ominous. How about just "February 6, 2010"? Maybe even scratch that, since I'm doing some preliminary shooting this weekend for some TV newscasts, albeit with my old Canon GL2 to make it look kind of grungy. This is the Transmissions-style future, after all. No brands, no consumerism, no flatscreen LCD TVs, no Hummers, no Oreo cookies, ad nauseum.

I am, however, Going Rogue and shooting two guerrilla shots this Thursday all by my lonesome and with my Canon XL H1A, which I haven't touched in over a month.

No lie, though: Every day involves about three hours of e-mail responses, paperwork, and then all other hours spent playing $20 videogames, which I buy on pretty much a weekly basis. Sure, I have some idle, semi-worthwhile thoughts about how videogames are much more cinematic, and how movies are much more like games (case in point, my mom said she liked Avatar because it was like being in a videogame - I responded that I can have this experience without spending $250-$400 million dollars). Archetype, however, is far too restrained and without the requisite action to provide further commentary on this thrilling topic.

I suppose I can let everyone peek behind the veil. Today I e-mailed my AD to call two people who've yet to respond to my e-mail query about availability. Then I called Justin and asked the same thing. Probably after this blog post I'm going to the grocery store to get a $100 bill (as a "prop" for the gun sales), some grape or cranberry juice to serve as "prop wine," orange juice for "prop orange juice" for the duration of the film, and some spaghetti and sauce for the one scene as "prop dinner."

Little things like this that, were this production budgeted about a hundred-thousand times more than it is now, I'd have some lowly PA to do it. But here I am, about to back out my car on the shoveled-by-myself driveway and brave the still-icy roads to do some menial work. But I'm used to it. Right now, director/producer/overlord or not, it's my job.

JDK Radio 010: Night 2

Download or stream off drop.io.

1. Radiohead - Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box
2. !!! - Must Be the Moon
3. Prodigy - Smack My Bitch Up
4. Daft Punk - Da Funk
5. Soulwax - NY Excuse (Nite Version)
6. The Juan Maclean - Give Me Every Little Thing
7. Annie - Heartbeat
8. Chromeo - Fancy Footwork
9. Friendly Fires - Skeleton Boy
10. The Knife - Neverland
11. LCD Soundsystem - Beat Connection (Album Version)
12. Royksopp - Follow My Ruin
13. DJ Shadow - Midnight in a Perfect World
14. Justice - Phantom Pt. II (Soulwax Nite Version)
15. Junior Boys - Last Exit (Fennesz Mix)

Mux044: January 2010

Two new tracks and a lot of old favorites.

Download or stream off drop.io.

1. Frightened Rabbit - The Modern Leper
2. Black Kids - I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You (EP version)
3. The Joggers - Wicked Light Sleeper
4. Jay Reatard - I Know A Place
5. Radiohead - Bones
6. Vampire Weekend - Giving Up The Gun
7. Spoon - Out Go The Lights
8. The Kills - Black Balloon
9. Hot Chip - Made In The Dark
10. Los Campesinos! - Sweet Dreams, Sweet Cheeks
11. Cut Copy - Bright Neon Payphone
12. Camera Obscura - Let's Get Out Of This Country

In consideration: Nearing the end of the road

SXSW passed on Transmissions.

The tally: 19 rejected, 2 pending; 21 total.

• Ann Arbor (Michigan)
  
• Austin
  
• BendFilm (Oregon)
  
• Big Bear Lake (California)
  
• Charlotte
  
• Chicago International
  
• Chicago Underground
  
• First Take (Georgia)
  
• Landlocked (Iowa)
  
• Maine
  
• Midwest Independent (Chicago)
  
• New Directors / New Films (New York)
  
• New York
  
• Rhode Island
  
• Sacramento
  
• Sausalito
  
• Slamdance
  
• Stony Brook (New York)
  
• Sundance
  
• SXSW (Austin)
  
• Toronto

19 rejections:

• Austin
  
• BendFilm (Oregon)
  
• Big Bear Lake (California)
  
• Charlotte
  
• Chicago International
  
• Chicago Underground
  
• First Take (Georgia)
  
• Landlocked (Iowa)
  
• Maine
  
• Midwest Independent (Chicago)
  
• New York
  
• Rhode Island
  
• Sacramento
  
• Sausalito
  
• Slamdance
  
• Stony Brook (New York)
  
• Sundance
  
• SXSW (Austin)
  
• Toronto

2 pending:

• Ann Arbor (Michigan)
  
• New Directors / New Films (New York)

Also, the Minneapolis-St. Paul festival announced they're accepting submissions. The entry fee is $50, though, and at this stage, I'd rather spend $50 on Archetype than wad up the same $50 and throw it in a hole.

The Year of Archetype: Day 19

I guess it's appropriate that I've recently marathon'd Lost, given Archetype itself has fractured and turned into a bunch of little puzzle pieces. Nothing amiss or whatnot; just the usual slog of pre-production and, now, the massive coordination of everyone's schedules and the expected reconfiguration based on who is available when.

As I've mentioned to a bunch of people and have probably referenced on this here blog, I oftentimes have to step back and remember the most important thing isn't my shot list, or my schedule, but the story. In a commentary on one of the Ocean movies, Steven Soderbergh mentioned that, when he's wearing several hats during production (namely, serving as cinematographer in addition to directing), he tries to ground himself by reading the script once a week.

Unfortunately, it's something like that that reminds me I'm not paying anyone, that this project isn't the only thing going on in these people's lives, and that one of the greatest obstacles is my own laziness pulling me down. It turns me into an overt apologist when I'm doing something like today, in which the Day 1 call time is between 7-8 a.m. on a Saturday. At least we'll wrap shortly after lunch which, as producer-director-treasurer, is perpetually On Me and will undoubtedly be the greatest production expense. (Not that I'm complaining. It's really the least I can do.)

It's weird when I have to mentally remember making my student film Framework in trying to remember what it's like working with a cast and crew. That was my most robust production, in terms of people involved and, well, money spent on food. Transmissions, obviously, had its own filmmaking lessons that directly translate to Arc, but doing something alone is different than having to coordinate the same thing with five different people. Baby steps, really, given two projects from now I'll potentially have scenes with extras numbering in the hundreds. But that's far-future, and right now, I need to concern myself with the near-future of getting everyone together and making sure they're with me on wanting to tell a story as best as possible.

The Year of Archetype: Day 17

It's not hard to realize I co-exist on two polar opposite ends of a line. There's the insecurity and the doubt that ripples through most of these Archetype-related posts. So let me indulge in something opposite that: the pure, unrestrained ego that years of public schooling has taught me to repress.

Disclaimer: If you already think I'm an egotistical asshole, just stop here, lest The Haters hate a Hater.

Archetype is going to be a great film. Probably capital-G Great. People will watch it fifty years from now, and since I am a brilliant writer and director, they will find new things about it buried within its layers for decades to come. It's both a universal statement about human nature and a sharp critique of the modern times as filtered through the lens of allegory, of using The Future as a plot device. And I'm the only one who could've written it.

I'm going to make good on years of performing exceptionally well on standardized tests; of choosing art over science to study in school; of going to Columbia over MIT. I'm going to be the greatest director of my generation. I want my films to be Number One on year-end best lists; to win awards; to get referenced in pop culture like how even the high-brow 2001 is referenced.

Modesty, clearly, is an easy front. Like how I can talk down Transmissions when, really, it's severely misunderstood. Archetype will draw attention back to my debut, and it'll get the attention it deserves; that, like Archetype, it can stand up to the rigors of deep analysis while also, clearly, offering on the surface an entertaining narrative.

I know what I'm doing. I've known it for over ten years. It's how I can watch a film and know it's nothing; how I can watch Lost and, while entertained, know it isn't going to last much longer than ten to fifteen years. How every criticism I say about Avatar or Inglorious Basterds is something the director was too stupid to even consider. How they don't have the raw brainpower of someone like Stanley Kubrick or Terrence Malick or me.

I know I put up a disclaimer but those who have been disclaimed are reading anyways. Fine. I'm not going to apologize. This is the way I see things sometimes. This is the kind of attitude you need tucked away to embark on something like Archetype; the kind of attitude that makes it impossible for me to just shut up, forget all this, and rot away behind a desk in some office until I retire and die from old age, instead of realizing how untrue that is for me and how I'd rather shoot myself if it came to that.

And the beauty of all this, that I've downplayed for so long: if Archetype doesn't take off, it'll still be a great film, and it won't be the end of me. I'll make another film. And if that goes nowhere, take a guess what I'll do after that. A man doesn't spend fourteen years of his life plotting his future without coming up with ways to keep the dream alive no matter what.

The Year of Archetype: Day 16

Last July I was working on three scripts: Decade, Meridien K - both of which I still plan on finishing and, thus, won't discuss their plots - and Meds, a semi-comedy about health-care reform.

One film, clearly, is missing from that list.

I guess it might've been a number of things that created Archetype. Maybe splitting my workload across three vastly-different scripts burned me out and Arc was my rebound. Maybe I was more upset than I care to admit about the total festival failure of Transmissions and as a crude twist decided to write its sequel. The reason I'm thinking about this is because, last week during auditions, one of my prospects asked how I came up with the idea of the film, and I drew a total blank.

And, now, thinking of the same questions, it's still something I can't, for the life of me, remember. I must've just plucked it from midair.

I think I might've already Gone Upriver with Arc. But that's expected. That's normal. While some hate it and try to avoid it, I always embrace the sort of tunnel vision associated with filmmaking. You eventually absorb the story until you can effortlessly improvise as one character or, miraculously, quote from the prose of the script certain things. Like how, just meeting with an actor, I had to recall the line that Drake "wears a suit despite the cold" for his first appearance in order to justify something.

And it's with this tunnel vision that I have to look back and realize that I've already been working on Arc for five months. That's probably why, now that the gears are in motion, it seems so surreal to be shifting into production. Furthermore, it's not some epic short (see also: my ridiculously-ambitious student films) or even Transmissions (which was arguably hardest to finish the pre-pro for), but a months-long commitment, a stepping stone toward my ambitions of, god forbid, doing this for a living.

So maybe I should stick with this tunnel vision, and tell this story a day at a time, and not pull back and look at the big behemoth of ambitions and expectations I've made this to be.

The Year of Archetype: Day 15

You can't always be the nice guy in filmmaking. This is why directors usually hire someone else to do their dirty work, to hand out rejections, say Sorry in, usually, as nice a way as possible.

Unfortunately, in a small production, I invariably end up doing a lot of things I'm not supposed to. So I've made my casting decisions and am about to dispense them. For the people who didn't get the big parts, I sort of sheepishly offer them the consolation prize of playing a smaller part, though within that subset, only a few have lines, and some only appear onscreen for about two minutes in the whole movie.

I just envision these weird, will-never-happen scenarios, like a scene with Drake and an actor who read for Drake but didn't get it, and how they'll be trying to, like, out-act each other or something. You can clearly tell how much thought I've put into this.

I guess all of this is probably just a mental diversion because, with the cast yet again (prospectively) rounded out, this movie will be made. The eternal sloth in me translates that to I have to make this movie. It's just the way my diseased mind can't shake the lingering possibility of total failure at every possible turn. I hope I can shake that before I do any major groundwork building up to The Chronicle. Another bad habit - thinking more about the far future than the present.

A running theme of these blogs is working myself into a frenzy and then calming myself down, all in the space of a single post. Maybe I can just blame the blog, and how my little flourishes to try to sensationalize this, to sex it up a bit, could really be dragging me down. Or the opposite - making good on years-long attempts to believe in Catharsis.

Either way, here we are now: on the brink of a second All Systems Go for Arc. Then it's month-by-month, shot-by-shot until it's all on tape, then hunkering down for the long months of post. Just like it's always been, right?

JDK Radio 009: RIP Jay Reatard

About two weeks after I called Jay Reatard the most prolific songwriter this side of Bob Pollard, he's found dead in his Memphis home.

While Jay recorded most of his life, he seemed to come out of nowhere with 2006's blistering Blood Visions, almost immediately followed up by the Singles 06-07 compilation, and then the rare 7" singles compiled as Matador Singles '08. The man couldn't be stopped, and evidenced by yet another album last year, the sound-shifting Watch Me Fall. So for most, there's his legacy: Four albums in four years.

This is the first time a contemporary musician I've enjoyed has died. And in his prime, at that. Sure, recently his band quit, but I doubt that would've stopped his ceaseless output. Whatever happened, whatever the cause (and honestly, I don't want to know because that's not what's important), all I know is there won't be any new Reatard material. Well, that is after I imagine the thousands of demos he probably recorded get released.

I've compiled a few of my favorite Reatard tracks spanning all his albums. And, like the best of Reatard, it's short and fast: fourteen tracks clocking in at 33 minutes, 54 seconds.

Download or stream at drop.io.

Tracks:

1. Night of Broken Glass
2. It Ain't Gonna Save Me
3. See/Saw
4. Screaming Hand
5. Hammer I Miss You
6. My Shadow
7. Nightmares
8. Always Wanting More
9. Before I Was Caught
10. Turning Blue
11. Trapped Here
12. Not A Substitute
13. Oh It's Such A Shame
14. Nightmares (Demo)

The Lost drinking game

(Note: This applies for my current series progress, in which I'm currently halfway through season 4.)

Take a drink every time:

• Someone points a gun at someone
  
• Someone knocks someone unconscious
  
• The "whooshing" noise accompanies a flashback or flashforward
  
• The musical score blasts some dischordant trumpets for seemingly no reason
  
• You see a Dharma Initiative symbol
  
• Ben fucks someone over
  
• There's a development in the Jack-Juliet-Kate-Sawyer love quadrangle
  
• Locke does something to piss off everyone
  
• People "make a deal" based on someone's "word"
  
• Someone declines to explain something by saying it will make sense later
  
• Sawyer calls someone by a nickname
  
• A dead person appears
  
• Every time an episode doesn't start with a "Previously on Lost..."
  
• Someone tells a lie
  
• Hurley says "Dude"
  
• Desmond says "Aye"
  
• Ben gets hit
  
• A fistfight occurs and, magically, no one has hard feelings about it afterward
  
• An extra appears that has not ever appeared before and has never said a line
  
• A new Dharma station/hatch is visited
  
• Someone runs through the jungle
  
• It rains

That might be far too many criteria. If the game was followed, you'd be dead of alcohol poisoning within twenty minutes.

The Year of Archetype: Day 12

The auditions process goes both ways. While I comforted myself with the snide resolve that I had The Power when they were reading, it's now a role-reversal when I ask these actors if they'll accept the parts and, by extension, the commitment to the project. I, now, have no Power.

On paper, or briefly mentioned, it sounds enormous: a shoot stretching from January through July. Then I try to ratchet down the actual level of commitment involved; other than the crew, most of the cast just has to work two or so days each month. It's not so much that it's Archetype > personal lives as personal lives > Archetype. Barring the fact that actors might take this very Seriously and spend a lot of time creating their characters, it's really an infrequent thing. Albeit over a long period of time.

So this is where another round of Nerves kick in, namely because of the rather nasty surprise of getting my "first cast" locked and having not one, nor two, but three of the main actors having to drop out because of (I grudgingly admit) legitimate reasons in which they couldn't be part of the whole project. Dead-horse-beating when I say better to know now than have someone on a shaky commitment start the project and drop out in the middle, leaving Archetype truly Fucked barring my ability to perform some magic, coherent rewrite that'd solve all problems.

I guess I should leave this unfinished for now, given I don't want to be too much a tease about knowing who I want to cast as who and not telling them yet. I want them to finish the script and sort of know what they're getting into. And once I offer them the parts and if - by god - they say Yes, my next set of worries is locking down days with my sister during which I can invade her and my brother-in-law's and brother-in-law's brother's house at some ungodly morning hour well through the day for shooting, in which I'll have so many rules - no loud television, no loud talking, no excess movement on the creaky floors - that I might as well ask them to stay somewhere else each weekend chunk of shooting. During which I not only hijack their house but kidnap their dog for inclusion in my little movie.

Mux043: Hypnosis

Here's a six-track mix with some long tracks that I've been wanting to include in muxes for some time. Little did I know that, when combined, they'd create some sonic field that has a tendency to sap my conscious reasoning and send me into a sort of trance. Hence it's title.

Download or stream at drop.io.

1. Boris - Farewell
2. Boards of Canada - Music Is Math
3. Massive Attack - Dissolved Girl
4. DJ Shadow - What Does Your Soul Look Like Part 2 (Edit)
5. Fuck Buttons - Sweet Love For Planet Earth (Non-Album Edit)
6. Radiohead - Everything In Its Right Place

The Year of Archetype: Day 10

I can feel myself slowly turning into a luck-freak. First was last post's fringe paranoia about possibly having to combat weather after crafting a meticulous schedule. Now, after my three lead roles, for separate, legitimate reasons, couldn't commit to the project, I felt like covertly stashing several rabbits' feet in my pockets and furiously rubbing them while auditioning four actors yesterday. The gesture, however, might've looked odd to an outsider's perspective.

So yesterday went extremely well. It started off haphazardly, given my AD came down with something and couldn't make it. We've done all our auditions as a tag-team, in which I usually get the task of communicating all the stuff about characters and plot and - if I'm feeling saucy - themes, and she gets to lay down the logistics of the shoot and make sure what these people are getting into. Fortunately, all four prospects yesterday were really easy to talk to.

I run auditions a bit differently than most, I imagine - no monologues, no shop-talk about acting experience, and script readings are usually a sort of afterthought. It's really a meeting to see if someone seems to have the right attitude to be part of this project. That they're someone I want to work with for somewhere in the neighborhood of seven months. That, god forbid I get ahead of myself, I might be able to use for future MPC ambitions (read: films). So over the course of yesterday, I spent a great deal of time talking about music (derived from one prospect's comments that my background muzak - The Muxtapes - had some solid tracks), (related) Pitchfork, Lost, the obsession with western civilization of being as successful as possible while as young as possible, dick jokes in Funny People, and a gamut of things relating to the presence of Rinna at the auditions.

And, yeah, they read, and everyone was really good. So, fingers crossed, I hope these people can commit and I can stop biting my fingernails over whether or not another delay is on the horizon.

This is enough of a wad of text for a Sunday morning. Tomorrow's Topic of the Day might include Jesse Broman's renovation of the basement of my sister's house, which serves as the lair for Ridley Kraid, and which, now dressed up beyond looking like a crummy basement dungeon, looks far more livable than my original script imagined. Guess I'll have to rejigger the shot list. But by now, I should be used to contingencies.

The Year of Archetype: Day 8

I already have the analogy for all of my pre-Transmissions work: Shouting into a cave that turned out to be empty. Hell, I think the same could be said of Transmissions with regards to its less-than-stellar (read: shut-out) festival performance.

As for Archetype, it's sort of at the point where I white-knuckle know this film will be made, but some things just keep failing to congeal. The cast is always shifting except a few rock-solid, can-commit people (propers to Justin and John and, if you're out there, Jim). So I think it's like putting my ear to some railroad tracks, knowing the train is coming but I don't know exactly when.

That last paragraph had far too many italics.

Tomorrow I have one two three four FIVE auditions. I've always joked that days with X auditions are like X first dates in a row. Granted, I have the back-up of Maria my indispensable AD, but she's talked to the people and I'm just some ivory-tower director, knee-deep in paperwork and going in blind to talk to people to see if I want to work with them over seven months. Exhilarating, exhausting, and intimidating. The same could probably be applied to the interviewees. Specifically, I'm reading four guys for Drake tomorrow, but also considering them under the umbrella of many minor parts, some of which are prominent but don't even speak. There's another Claire audition, which has been proving almost trickier than Drake to cast.

This is all underscored by the nagging, perpetual delay caused by casting, given that all the other logistics are Go for the first month/six days of Arc shooting. Not that I'm jumping the gun; half of the six days are spent outside, and given the frigid topside temp and yesterday's snow, I want to shoot in early February and hope that I don't get cockblocked by evil sky-demons. Reminds me of shooting Framework, my far-too-ambitious Production II final film at Columbia (which, miracle of miracles, I actually made before realizing how extraordinarily confusing it was), the bulk of which was renting cameras and painfully hauling them back to the dorms, only to get my planned weekend of shooting constantly rained out, with the long-running, dead-horse joke that if there is a God (s)he clearly didn't want that film to get made.

Today I have more to do than shuffle around paper and halfheartedly prep for tomorrow. There was another casting change and I have to rewrite some additional scenes I wrote that utilized a specific talent of the actor that I thought'd work well with the plot. After a Week of Nothing (and, really, so far a Year of Nothing), going back into the writing process will seem like a reprieve.

The Year of Archetype: Day 5

Another actor was uncertain they could commit to the full duration of the project. That makes three, which was for all my core cast. Cause for alarm, certainly, but my AD talked me down off the this-is-the-end-of-the-world ledge last night. I spent a lot of yesterday thinking about scrapping Arc and writing a smaller film from scratch, somehow using all the props I already bought. Funny, then, that Arc started out as a project in which the logistics were simple. I only thought I'd have trouble with the dubious legality of shooting a few specific scenes that involve breaking laws. It, typically, bloomed into something far more ambitious, to the point that one early draft had the B-storyline take place at the University of Minnesota because JS could possible get me the access; I scrapped it because, hell, even I'm not dumb enough to try to bring guns - even fake ones - on a college campus.

Regardless, Maria ran another craigslist ad and we'll run some cast prospects through the meat grinder this weekend. Again, I'm trying to remind myself that my former picks for the cast were based on one mere craigslist ad, so lightning can strike twice with regards to casting this film. It's just hard having visualized this film for many months, getting a cast that I thought was a lock, and having my own let's-shoot-this-over-seven-months plan basically backfiring on me.

So now, with some prospective prospects a few days away, I just have to white-knuckle it and spend these enormous globs of free time prepping Part 2, maybe even Part 3, and watching far too much Lost.

The Year of Archetype: Day 4

My player-hating of Avatar has become almost comical now. Especially since I just read that the film has grossed over $1 billion. Yikes. That's a lot of money given that only a handful of films have ever made that much. Especially given Avatar has only been out for 17 days.

I don't think it's a huge stretch to assume or claim that I don't think I'll ever make a movie that'll gross that much. It's just not in my set of ambitions. Watch Avatar and it's pretty obvious how it achieved that, or, hell, watch Terminator 2 or any James Cameron movie and the blueprint's right there. Avatar has the advantage of a non-R rating, and coupled with an enormous marketing budget and a worldwide release (it's already the highest-ever grossing movie in Russia) and costlier ticket prices for IMAX or 3D films, making that much money is expected rather than wondered. That, and its story is in such broad strokes that pretty much anyone can get behind its message except Dick Cheney.

And, building on - my god - two blog posts worth of continuity, it has that whole Lowest Common Denominator factor built into it.

Now I'm going to veer into some esoteric territory, so if you have no idea what I'm talking about (and probably only about four people will be able to follow), feel free to stop and go about your morning routine.

It's making me think about The Chronicle. Specifically, it's a set of films that will, invariably, require a great deal of money to make. Hell, anyone who's glanced the Wastelands Black screenplay knows that production design alone will cost a pretty penny, if only because of the vast number of setpieces in vastly-different locales. I have to think about balancing mass appeal and my rigid standards, since the movies have to make some money so that I can finish out the series. Same how, if The Fellowship of the Ring tanked, The Two Towers and The Return of the King probably wouldn't have been made. And it's a bit terrifying knowing that everything similar to that has played it safe and kept its appeal wide-open for everyone, whereas The Chronicle is like a contract with the viewer, in which the viewer is asked to trust me to tell the story my way, and along the path they'll learn how to best watch it. It's kind of like The Wire that way; disheartening to know that The Wire was on the verge of cancellation for most of its run, probably as a result of this methodology.

Anyhow, that's all far-future; or, at the soonest, a decade away. It's odd how I predictably think more about a different project than the one I'm currently working on. Maybe not odd, given that the logistics of Archetype occupy most of my lucid thought, and when I drift, it's mostly Chronicle thoughts. I'm not thinking about shot lists and schedules for Ages; just the imagery, and the ultimate fantasy of sitting in a dark theater and watching it play up on a big screen.

The Year of Archetype: Day 3

Something I forgot to mention last time: Regardless of all anxieties, I need to keep reminding myself that Archetype, ultimately, will be easier to make than Transmissions. If nothing else, I'm having someone else/certified doing the sound mix, and everything relating to audio was more than half of Transmissions. And getting that to work took a few months of groping in the dark and pressing random buttons on my pirate copy of Cool Edit Pro.

Today's really cold. Not surprising, given it's January. Makes me slightly worried about my Day 2 schedule, which is entirely outside, and which, if I find a new Drake within two weeks, will take place at the end of the month, which is usually the coldest time of the whole year. Of course, the first thing I think about is how the cold drains batteries, and only afterward I think that everyone might be, you know, miserable and uncomfortable and borderline-frostbitten. I don't think my simple note of "Dress warm!" on the schedule will absolve me of all guilt and/or ill will among my unpaid crew.

Yesterday I watched two films on totally opposite ends of the easy-digestion tract: A Woman Under The Influence and Terminator 2. The former was extremely uncomfortable because how real it felt, and the latter felt really forced as a sort of Lowest Common Denominator fare. It, of course, furthered my James Cameron player-hating, given I "liked" it the first time I saw it - at a friend's house when I was in first grade, it being my first R-rated movie, like eating some forbidden fruit. It made me think about how, making Transmissions, one of my greatest concerns was making a film without thinking about the potential audience. Like that would ruin it the same way that reading reviews about your own work can; like getting rejected from 18 film festivals and counting could possibly alter my own aesthetic.

It's on the same level of concern as making sure I get the point-of-view right (caution: there will be some continuity of themes in these here blog entries). I spent enough years in peer-reviewed film school to know when to take advice and when to stick to your guns. Transmissions was easy: I had ultimate control; no one else even read the script before it was done. There are a lot of hands in the Archetype cookie jar, and it's all about finding that balance. So sorry, mom, that you found the script confusing, because I'm not going to change it to cater to you.

The Year of Archetype: Day 2

Every day I (try to) do something relating to Archetype. Usually something small, only an hour or two, so I can check it off my list and then get on with whittling away the rest of the day's hours, counting down to whenever it is that the actors confirm that they want the parts offered to them so that I know everything is Go. (Considering, of course, the total surprise that my pick for Drake, the co-lead of the film, is moving to LA and, thus, can't play the part.)

But yesterday I did nothing. Rationalized as a New Years' Day off or something. In reality: playing a lot of n+, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, and Guitar Hero Smash Hits on my Xbox; watching a movie and a half (Bob Le Flambeur [which has some of the most terrible editing, 1955 or not] and Saving Private Ryan); reading Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow and still being completely confused or exhausted by the breathless, indulgent prose, all while eying the three unopened books I own, imagining they are much more entertaining; laying on the couch with eyes closed, hoping sleep will come and claim a few more hours so that it'd be closer to turkey-and-stuffing dinner. For the latter, my aunt, uncle, sister, brother-in-law, dog-in-law, and brother-in-law's brother's dog came over.

I guess I'll sidestep and mention something about Saving Private Ryan. Right now, my greatest fear is accidentally watching a great movie and subconsciously trying to emulate it while making Archetype; being influenced, that is. I've arranged my Netflix queue top-heavy with shlock (like The Hangover) to manually avoid this, and watching SPR was in knowing that I have major qualms with the movie insofar as to consider it "safe" for not puppermastering my own style. I mainly watched it since I've been playing a lot of Call of Duty lately. COD 2, specifically, which rips off SPR and Band of Brothers to an enormous, unashamed degree. Case in point: the D-Day sequence, which, despite taking place at Utah Beach instead of Omaha, manages to have your character get off the boat, get "shell shocked" and have the audio sound underwater and your vision get all shaky-blurry while you look to a lander aside and see all the men coming off get torn up by German MGs and then set on fire. Sound familiar?

By as for SPR itself, that movie is an exercise in total undisciplined filmmaking. Sure, at the time, it was justifiably shocking, in terms of, at least, sheer gore and advances in Shaky-Cam (TM) technology. Part of the latter was what, when I was a kid and saw it in the theater with my mother, made me realize for the first time that a director was making choices about the film.

But now, in retrospect, so many films have come after it (and, in the same year, the vastly-different and gore-less The Thin Red Line) and copped its style that now it seems like gross war-porn. Coupled with a sentimental John Williams score, it seems almost exploitative.

And my biggest problem: The total lack of a coherent point-of-view. POV is always one of my chief concerns when making a film; Archetype takes rigid place from Ridley Kraid's limited POV, and I wrote thousands of words of documents to myself regarding the carefully-weighed POV of Transmissions, which, spoiler, doesn't take place from Kraid's POV.

But SPR: I always chapter-skip the first scene, when an aged Private Ryan finds Captain Miller's grave. The camera pushes in for a close-up of Ryan, and then it goes to D-Day. But we're then, mostly, with Cpt. Miller and a POV always on the ground but with seemingly everyone. To suggest chaos, I guess, but the opening scene implies that the film will be from Ryan's limited POV. But Ryan wasn't in the beach landing at Normandy. And, worst of all, the film is bookended by Ryan scenes, so the POV is already horrifically fucked. It takes a sort of swinger's Anything Goes approach, sometimes even taking place from the German perspective.

I guess I can be guilty of enjoying the war-porn, since if it wasn't rooted in WWII, it'd get a hard NC-17 rating that would be the death knell to it making any money. That, and my own plans for future war movies don't get to that level of gore, since, if nothing else, I want just-guns warfare so you can keep track of who is where and whatnot.

Back on track: Wondering about today's Archetype doings. I hope to do something with Maria, my assistant director, and run some of my lines with her for my benefit. It's somewhat intimidating that I'm the least-qualified actor in the cast, in terms of resume, even though I know Kraid inside and out. We'll probably also watch some of The Wire, which I plan on marathoning since I got seasons 4 and 5 for Christmas, completing my collection. I guess, somewhere along the line, Archetype had its mandatory Wire influence. Something along the lines of having only source music, grey morality, and trusting the audience's intelligence, though I eschew The Wire's - beating a dead horse here, I know - POV of 3rd-person omniscient. I plan on rocking out 3rd-person limited for the lion's share of my filmography. Old War being the exception since, well, I wrote the first draft in 2003 and there's a dream sequence that, I swear, will be the only dream sequence I ever shoot.

Now I suppose I'll ride out the rest of this mux I'm listening to before I get back to SPR, and a prospective day of talking shop and talking nonsense about Arc and whatever with AD Maria.