What do we want?
Archive for January 2010
We’ve been writing and writing. What has all this writing accomplished? Here’s what we know so far.
to be continued
Holographic scenes are trembling moments of pure gestalt. Put them in a sequence and call that a movie. Perhaps an alternate sequence reveals more. If you play it backward you hear, “I buried Paul.”
I’m imagining a burst of experience that also has a whole story inside it, everything is there.
Won’t a series of holographic scenes feel repetitive, like we are saying the same things over and over again? What if the things we are saying in each scene are slightly different. One thing about people is their layered motivation. I don’t shoot you because I hate you, that’s like so totally impoverished. I shoot you because I burnt my toast this morning AND you’re a brutal serial rapist AND you remind me of my older brother who I loved but was killed in the war then my parents kept his room like a shrine AND my girlfriend want’s to get married though I don’t really love her AND I dreamt of red roses last night AND…
It’s the layers of motivation that give the story depth. They can be completely separate tracks, none alone sufficient to prompt action, but together – viola!
What the hell is xroll? What if it’s not a gimmick, but a central organizing principle? It’s thoughts and experience, something like the memories of Spotless Mind and the dream sequences of Brazil. There’s symbolism and layers of meaning, but xroll doesn’t have to resolve in the sense that everything is sewed up nice and neat, it just has to evoke. Resolution is an evocation, everything comes together and wham, there’s an emotion there. The typical Hollywood resolution is “Yippee, we won!” Think about Casablanca, that resolution was bitter sweet comradely cynicism between Rick and the french cop. Dude, layers of emotion, complexity.
A turbocharged vignette that serves up an emotional cocktail to nuance the next moment, flows from xroll. After Effects verite, magical realism in motion.
A plot is the structure that sequences events, yes/no? No – a plot exists however the events are sequenced. Humans have a strong temporal sensibility, even if the events are out of order, we’ll put them back in sequence. On second thought, yes – maybe a plot is a structure that sequences events, maybe what we call plots are just applications of temporal sensibility. This scene leads to this scene which leads to this scene… we’ll find a plot given enough chunks.
If we think of xroll as the spine of the narrative, then perhaps the actual traveling and scenes of same are extensions of it. Xroll contrasts to b-roll in that it’s central as opposed to peripheral. It’s what we keep returning to, the continuity. In ALM, are the sailing moments Xroll? The best part of the trip certainly, the core of the adventure. Why not?
Looks like a script is about to happen, the old index card shtick.
Holographic scenes… moments which taste of eternity, fragments that contain the whole. Xroll… the threads between the scenes, revelations of the underlying fabric of reality.
I’m skating the edge of confusion and rapture here. If the above sounds like blather, there’s a 50% chance it is.
One additional element you might want to address/consider in the objectives piece is the inclusion (or not) of open social. IMHO your content is so ripe for interaction in some manner. Only you know to what extent that should happen but perhaps your daring and decisive edits could include elements of crowdsourcing or social applications to submit ideas/reactions. It will be an acute balance as you are no doubt the virtual captain and it is your story. But you have the strength and the risk profile to be a proxy and protector of your girl, earth.
Making movies – I’ve discussed how much work is involved and how there’s not enough me to go around. I need to amp up 1) art / production and 2) fundraising and outreach. I am in the process of contracting two artists who have worked with me in the past, Jonathan Kelly and Melonie Steffes. Jonathan built 3D models for DOG (2007-2009), while Melonie constructed sets and props on location in Canada (2006). Together, we three will form an art department and manifest the rest of these movies.
Meanwhile, I’ve also been cultivating advisors and collaborators, polymaths all. Faisal Azam has generously re-imagined the editorial for DOG last summer and fall. Andrea Maio has been a savvy advisor for ALM, both from the story and fundraising perspective. Julie Constantin and I are exploring social collaboration and outreach for the projects, and she’s a funding powerhouse. Steve Elrick is a long time ally with great insights about expression and storytelling. Then of course there’s Jeff Gibbs, keeping it real.
I am pretty lucky to have all these folks, now I want to figure out how to bring them together and really tap their power. Is it a forum or what? I imagine resumes and portfolios too.
The last several ALM posts have been about clarifying DK’s journey, why exactly did he get on the boat? Is he really searching for sustainable civilizations or was there another reason? Why is this trip shrouded in mystery? Maybe he was really sailing off to commit murder, to make a remote rendevous with extra terrestrials, to perform a sacred ritual of summoning… with only the eyes of gods and satellites upon him. Why does he take this trip and why do we care?
He has a stated mission and maybe he is sincere, or maybe he’s obfuscating his true motives. Perhaps he is sincere and he achieves his mission, but maybe the achievement pales in comparison to an unexpected boon. If he is hiding something, is the secret mission ever revealed? Does he achieve his objective and what does his machinations have to do with the world at large? Does he even know why he is really going, or is he driven by sleeper programming?
It’s intriguing to dive deeper into a treatment, to treat the significant layers.
Whatever his reason for going, the mission doesn’t necessarily determine the outcome. It’s perhaps the difference between what he sets out to do and what actually happens that’s interesting. Someone wants something badly and is having difficulty getting it, having difficulty remembering what it is, changes his mind, get’s something better – the game has many variations. Deconstructing DK’s motivation is a worthy excercise, because there may be more here than even he realizes. BTW, it creeps me out in a fun way to view myself from a meta perspective, PKD style.
‘What’ DK is going after implies ‘why’ – and that’s the basis of the story. DK is going after super powers, he is searching for sustainable civilizations, he is channeling wild wisdom. The ending comes when the going after is done – DK demonstrates enhanced power, he has retrieved artifacts from the future, he shares the wisdom… or he gave up, failed, found something better, changed his mind, etc.
I think a start and end is cool, that is we understand why DK goes and can evaluate what he gets, decide for ourselves whether he was successful.
Last night coming out of Sanshiro Sugata I and II, I overheard someone say, “the message was be nice to your enemies”. They missed the point, Sanshiro wasn’t being nice to his enemies, he de-enemized them, that was the triumph of Judo. That’s the essence of Japanese martial arts as portrayed by Kurusawa, not to vanquish your enemies but to transform them. Sanshiro’s strength is his power to transform.
It’s very the ending that we understand what Sanshiro has actually accomplished, and without being hit over the head with it. Lovely. A student becoming a martial arts master is a perfect vehicle for this sort of trip, what does he set out to do, what is the completion of his journey? Does he get the girl? Without question – after he gets himself.
Dan Kelly is on this journey of discovery, he’s off to become miraculous, he’s searching for sustainable civilizations, he’s just an average American with an FBI record. Whatever his journey is, it’s open ended. Perhaps he has a general idea why he is out there but he doesn’t know what he will find or how it will change him. ALM is his transformation, what he thinks he’s about and what actually happens to him. The premise is open ended, but at the same time we have to know whether he succeeded in doing what he set out to. We want to know his start and end points.
Andrea’s approach is to cut the interviews short and then just have DK summarize what he learned, fitting the pieces together as he goes. His process is interpreted, translated to flow as a story. After Effects verite. Whatever’s not relevant drops to the cutting room floor, or maybe we’ll flashback out of sequence for special emphasis. Essentially I (the director) take over the narrative, it’s about getting the audience inside DK’s head, his thoughts and experience. This sort of thing would typically get tied together with voice over… but wait!
If we want to make these meta observations, long leaps of intuition and connection, why not do it experimentally – xroll? Suddenly, xroll isn’t a contrivance, it’s a way to experience DK’s thought flow directly, or at least as translated to the silver screen. Beyond mere voice over – it’s visual voice over.
The guide’s voice is like glue that holds the disparate pieces together and makes connections. Xroll goes beyond the guide’s voice to create a visual and audio style or environment that tells us we are in thought space, a bridging mode, the spine of the narrative.
What if there were a visual structure, a visual reference that anchored everything back? It could be map based – folks would be expecting a map anyway so we could make the map mental but disguised as geography. Or imagine an interface or an idea web. Since film is linear, we use a linear design rather than a spatial web that has to be scrolled across. How are elements organized in linear fashion, what’s an effective system for that?
Duh, a plot. A plot is a linear structure for organizing information. Wow, 360 degrees in one post, phenomenal. A book (comic book) seems linear in theory but it’s not strictly linear in execution. We can open a comic to any page and jump forward and backward pretty much instanteously. Except in a social setting like a theater, this is increasingly the case with movies too. Forget about physically rewinding the VCR tape past the playback heads, that’s archaic technology. Now we can pop to anywhere on the timeline with a click, or jump between chapters. Movies are designed to spool from beginning to end, they are typically not designed to work as random access.
Another circle – ALM could be designed for random access. Xroll and holographic scenes support this. Even in traditional linear spooling, xroll is the scaffold for constructing the experience, it’s the spinal cord of a flashing, sparking neural network. There’s where the script starts, the central concepts adjacent, meshing and turning together. What are they? The great galloping thoughts of DK on his journey, the fundamental ideas that infect him along the way, he stages of his transformation.
When you love a lot of people, how do you keep the connections fresh? This is a quandary for me as I’m blessed with a large extended family. Blogs help me make big chunks of my life public.
With the explosion of activity on the net, ‘public’ doesn’t mean seen by everyone. The idea that privacy is dead is misleading. I can publish my life via this blog and 99% of humans will never know I exist. Only 25% of poeple on earth have access to the internet and maybe 50% of those read English. Only a tiny fraction of the remaining 1 billion will ever know about my blog, read one word of what I write.
Public really means available to my clan. Let’s face it, most of the folks who are willing to wade through this dross already know me. They are here because I invited them. My guess is that even with all my tagging and whatnot, most of my bloggees are going to have some RL connection to me.
Blogging is really for my extended family – that’s today’s insight – and I ought to remind the tribe of that. I fantasized that I was writing for a future world, for the crowds who will be showing up once I hit my stride as a filmmaker, world saver, visionary. Reality check – I write for myself and for the crowd of simulations that run in my head, my cast of precious and very personal characters.
What a relief!
introduction for character Dan Kelly (everyman)
Unless you’re totally evil or from another planet, you are probably concerned about the future of this one, our earth. It’s old news to talk about how much trouble we are in, so I won’t waste time doing so. Basically, we are screwed. The mutant marriage between governments and corporations is pulling the plug on the global life support system, pretty soon there won’t be enough food, water, air to breath, etc. As I said, this is old news.
Scuttling around trying not to think about it – the end of the world as we know it. I got fed up with this 21 century duck and cover. Recycling, new light bulbs and donations to the Sierra club weren’t enough somehow. I wanted to get out into the world, learn and take action. Change my own destiny and maybe the rest of the world’s too.
We’ve been are our own enemies for at least 100 years, starting back when the father of public relations Edward Bernays got his start, training women how to smoke. I am talking about consumption, our shared madness. I’ve been committing suicide for the better part of my life, me and a few billion other people. We’re consumers. Can we find a way to really live? A better question might be, do we want to live? Can we find a way to enjoy the benefits of science and art without wiping out the foundation of our lives? Is there a sustainable civilization?
I decided to answer this question for myself – what would an excellent life feel like? I am not so different from other people, a civilization is made of individuals like me. Maybe if I found my life, I would find a tiny part of our collective future. Perhaps others could learn something from my search. I could bring a whole planet along with me, as I search for sustainable civilizations.
Options
Discuss postponing DOG to do ALM
Carl and Yves as mentors
introduction for character Dan Kelly (becoming miraculous)
During intense experience I often get a clue about my full potential, what I am capable of. If I get into a situation that calls for a little something extra then lo, something extra shows up. When there’s no other option but to tap into extraordinary energy, it’s always been there. I am going to call this extraordinary energy – magic.
Miracle making.
When I realized how much trouble the planet was in and assessed the task of healing all the damage, I realized that a miracle might be needed to turn things around. If we were past the point of no return on carbon loading, then the global life support system would crash and that pretty much means we’re doomed. I have an affinity for science, great stuff – astronomy, cognition, computers… love it. However, if I’ve got to go beyond science to save the planet, I don’t have a problem with that. If I’ve got to go with divine intervention, fine.
In 1976, after watching the first Star Wars I wondered where my light saber was. The feeling has never quite left me, even as I hit my 30s then 40′s and watched George Lucas dilute his vision in sparkle and schlock.
Over the years, my powers began to manifest. It started with healing – if I found a damaged body, my hands would tingle.
One day, Richard showed up in his wetsuit. He had been windsurfing near my house and injured his knee. I think he had problems with it in the past and had seen a doctor, so he was pretty distraught, “I know I am going to need surgery this time.” I asked him to sit down and share the food I had been making with another friend, Ann. He eased into a rocking chair and I brought him a plate. I felt the tingle. Richard was a professional massage therapist and so I was a little shy asking him if I could help him, but he cautiously accepted. We all sat around for an hour or so, eating and talking while I gently worked on this knee, following my intuition. Eventually he stood up and said that it felt better. He got in his car and went home. A couple of days later we checked in with each other. His knee was totally fine.
On a remote island, hiking at night, I discovered I could sense objects in the darkness, as if some kind of proximity radar had activated. It was an experience totally new to me, like growing another sense. I wondered how many other undocumented features the human body had.
One rainy evening I slipped off my friend’s fire escape and fell 12 feet to concrete, landing flat on my back. The impact was so intense that I involuntarily pissed myself. After lying there for a few moments, I felt compelled to move. Movement is contraindicated after a bad fall as spinal cords can be severed by broken bone, leading to permanent paralysis. Knowing this rationally, I ignored the calls of my friend Jon to “stay still, don’t move!” I painfully rolled over onto my stomach, got onto my hands and knees, and promptly passed out.
I had a vision. I was in a sort of control room, doing something really engaging and important. I felt both ecstatic and purposeful. Then, an annoying noise began to intrude. It was alien and at the same time vaguely familiar. It was a person’s name (what’s a person? what’s a name?) being repeated. I then realized that the name was somehow my name, that there was this other existence where that name belonged to me. My friend was back there, calling my name. I felt compassion for my friends who were very worried about me, perhaps I better go back and make them feel better. I left the ecstatic place and came back to consciousness with the friendly flavor of loamy soil in my mouth – I had buried my face in a little swirl of dirt and leaves by the floor drain. I told Jon I was back and asked him how long I had been out, he said about 20 seconds. Seemed like a lot went down in those 20 seconds.
I told him I was going to get up and he protested, he said an ambulance was coming. I asked him why and he said that his wife Laura had called 911 as soon as I had passed out. Now I was totally determined to get up and out of there, this was not an experience I cared to end in a hospital – and me with no health care! He asked me again not to move but I told him to trust me, I was alright and ready to get up. “I’ll help you” he said and I replied “No, don’t help me,” but he was having none of it. “I am going to help you!”
I slowly stood up with his arm on me, everything intact, amazing. I tried walking and that worked too, tho there was quite a bit of pain. We went back into their house and waited for the ambulance to arrive. I convinced the paramedics that I was fine and that I wasn’t going to ride with them. They made me sign papers and I headed home to a hot bath.
This incident was something of a demonstration. Did I slip off the deck by mistake? On a dark rainy evening, I tossed my body into the void, fell 12 feet down into darkness, missing iron handrails and push mowers by inches. I fit into a spatial keyhole with very little room for error and impacted flat backed on concrete, taking most of the impact on my coccyx. My head did not bang against the concrete, my neck didn’t break. I was up and walking within minutes and fully recovered within a month. I got xrays just to be sure and there were no fractures. Fluke, crazy luck? We make our luck.
I began to make my luck in earnest, to train my power decisively. I knew that if I told folks I was traveling around becoming magic, they might not get it. So I came up with this idea of searching for a sustainable civilization. Basically, one formula for healing the earth would be to replace the current status quo with something more humane and balanced. It might be a good idea to figure out what that looked like first and then I could cause it to be. This would be my cover story, but the main objective was to open my channels of power, to activate all my undocumented features. etc. If saving the earth was going to take a miracle, I would become miraculous.
introduction for character Dan Kelly (time traveler)
Yes, another movie about how much trouble we are in. It’s also about how we got out of the trouble. If you remember the future as I do, you’ll know that we almost didn’t make it. Did I mention that I am a time traveler? Actually time refugee is a slicker fit.
Anyway, we almost didn’t make it. Looking back from the future, it’s much easier to see just how precarious the present is, but of course it’s not so obvious if the now is all you’ve ever known. At the risk of sounding optimistic, I think the human race learned a valuable lesson by going through this, so in the after-future we won’t likely make the same mistakes we made in the pre-present.
To simplify the tenses, I’ll just refer to the present as the past. So how did we do it? We found our survival by looking for it. Folks just got bored with killing themselves and decided to try to find a little life. Some walked, some rode bicycles, some let the wind blow them hither and yon. They were like backwards archeologists – instead of searching for past civilizations, they went searching for future ones. The theory goes like this – since we decided to survive – then we would. That implied there was a way to survive, and probably the seeds of that way were scattered all over the place, just waiting to sprout. If folks found those seeds, then they could extrapolate what the seeds might grow into. Viola, the future. That’s how time travel works, btw or at least did work back in the day… that is, right now.
Let’s relive your ‘about to be’, discover what has almost happened and reenact a search that so many have yet to make. A sailboat I think and an inland ocean. I will be your guide of how we survived, how we didn’t cook the planet nor allow ignorance and greed to prevail – as it so ominously threatens to do so AT THIS VERY MOMENT, again, even though that may not be totally obvious. I am catching you at your most receptive, cause when the shit starts to hit the fan, there won’t be time to watch documentaries, you’ll be too busy building dikes and fending off looters. So sit back, relax and enjoy the show.
Who is this character Dan Kelly, ALM guide? Why is the audience intrigued by his journey?
Based on my discussion with Andrea, I can’t assume the audience will understand my assumptions and motivations regarding ALM. The 900 lb gorilla in the room is me, this project springs from my own crazed mind. Andrea’s golden nugget – the audience doesn’t need to agree with me, they just need to be able to get me, to find me plausible.
It’s easy to forget just how weird a cat I am. The audience might not believe I am for real, so the project provides context. It’s helpful to step back and think of myself as a fictional character that has to be introduced to the audience. Rather than flooding the screen with a DK fest, I like the idea of providing just enough character development to intrigue and maybe vex a tad. Who the hell is this guy?
There are two objectives for ALM, to establish rapport between my character and the audience, and to present a pragmatic magic primer aka Terrorist Training Films TM. The pragmatic magic can be integral to the character development, or it could happen incidentally without ever being named, just oozing across. That’s a key question – do I put the magical agenda front and center or allow it to suffuse the project, giving it to the audience by osmosis? For the character Dan Kelly magic is an underlying rhythm, a given. He brings it to the fore only occasionally, either through his musings or by getting kicked in the ass by the big boot of circumstance.
These are worthy distinctions because initially I didn’t think much about my own role in this, I had the idea that I would somehow be this ghost collaging the insights of others. I was just one of those others, a host. Now I see that the whole thing is driven by DK, his choice to go in the first place, his decision where to stop, who to see. Why? What’s he about? What makes him do this? If we don’t know, nothing makes much sense.
I am test driving different versions of the ALM guide, just to see what pops. So far they are…
ALM guide, becoming miraculous – out of the closet about the true nature of ALM, provides ‘evidence’ of magic, no shame.
ALM guide, time refugee – a science fiction enthusiast, slipping into iconic characters as a way to speak about the unspeakable, “you’ve seen it in movies, now live it – THE END OF THE WORLD”
So the guide discussion is this – how much DK is enough?
2.1 Objectives common to both projects…
2.3 Objectives of ALM
2.3.1 convey the main character (premise / starting point) to establish rapport. He becomes a compelling guide / proxy for the audience (get inside his head)
2.3.1.1 snafu
2.3.1.1.1 life support system threatened
2.3.1.1.1.1 suicidal status quo – centuries in the making
2.3.1.1.1.1.1 -> empires/colonies -> industrial revolution -> consumer culture ->
2.3.1.1.1.2 ignorance on purpose – it’s not an accident, ok?
2.3.1.1.1.2.1 we’re supposed to stay stupid – school, culture, food, jobs, religion
2.3.1.1.1.3 toxic training makes consumers culpable
2.3.1.1.1.3.1 individual impact multiplied by billions
2.3.1.1.2 healing prevented (deliberate)
2.3.1.1.2.1 sustainable civ already exists in fragmented state (indigenous species) but
2.3.1.1.2.2 entrenched powers keep future artifacts obscure and scattered
2.3.1.1.2.3 acquisition and assembly discouraged (there are no options)
2.3.1.1.3 oh and BTW, we’ll need a miracle
2.3.1.1.3.1 carbon past point of no return
2.3.1.1.3.2 invisible opponents
2.3.1.1.3.3 trained to go insane, each of us our own enemy – soldiers attacking their own supply lines and themselves
2.3.1.2 our choice
2.3.1.2.1 decide to thrive
2.3.1.2.1.1 with rigorous persistance most anything is possible
2.3.1.2.1.2 find out what we really are
2.3.1.2.1.3 notice and question self imposed limits
2.3.1.2.1.4 live our bliss
2.3.1.2.1.5 identify (equate survival) with a robust global life support system
2.3.1.2.2 spread the love
2.3.1.2.2.1 do yourself first, then bring others along with shared techniques, knowledge, resources
2.3.1.2.2.2 vigorous practice of art / science to inspire and translate
2.3.1.2.2.3 build and celebrate community
2.3.1.2.3 find a way
2.3.1.2.3.1 pay attention
2.3.1.2.3.2 have an idea
2.3.1.2.3.3 start anywhere
2.3.1.2.3.4 have fun, have an adventure
2.3.1.2.3.5 repeat
2.3.1.3 becoming miraculous
2.3.1.3.1 simplicity rather than convenience
2.3.1.3.2 discovering the body’s undocumented features
2.3.1.4.3 presence
2.3.1.3.4 beyond what we know
2.3.1.3.5 that which does not kill me… big adventure
2.3.1.3.6 feel it into being
2.3.1.3.7 ecstatic evidence
2.3.2 illustrated guide to post consumer pragmatic magic, or becoming miraculous
2.3.2.1 objectives don’t have to be revealed to the audience, they just have to be achieved. ALM never needs to explain that the point of the project is to show the audience how to become miraculous, it just has to do it. this is just the story of one man who thinks he can become miraculous and how he goes about it. one does not have to believe it’s possible to want to watch. he’s insane, how interesting. it doesn’t have to hold itself out as a manual for magic making, even though that’s exactly what it is – a terrorist training film. it can also hold itself out as a magic manual in a sort of tongue and cheek style, hiding in plain sight.
2.3.2.2 definition of miraculous and magic
2.3.2.2.1 is the magic only in my head then? is it a shared reality or private hallucination – that’s the question the audience asks. Dan – first we imagine the subtle energy, then we feel it… what’s the difference? first we have an idea, then we work towards realizing it… what’s the difference?
2.3.2.2.2 Miracles are not uncommon, they are the norm. Western folk are indoctrinated to ignore and even to deny them. If evidence of magic is presented, it must fit into a impoverished box which removes the very components that enable – participation. My experience of reverence is a connection to the experiment – I am this too. I am inextricably tangled in the test.
2.3.2.2.3 remember, we say demonstrate, we say illustrate. that’s doable. Rewriting the accepted definition of miracle does not cut it. What folks want to see is a suspension of physics, or the manifestation of an entity that is not easily cataloged by Darwin. What is proof to the documentary audience? Personal accounts? Recreations? Graphs and charts? An excellent question. When we say illustrate, what do we mean?
2.3.2.3 what’s miraculous about ALM? what did i do or experience that was miraculous? how did I invite magic?
2.3.2.3.1 connection to wilderness
2.3.2.3.1.1 this experience is available to those who can slip the default conditioning. it is perhaps a gift in these strange times to be able to feel the earth, be present in the wild places and ‘get it’. It’s pure feeling, a heady cocktail of emotions – elation, reverence, acute perception, open and available, power. For those who don’t know, can’t know, it’s a joke, a cliche. Thier scoffing laughter is zombie conditioning, keeps us all from knowing what we are, the sound of self loathing. Instead, allow robust joy to well up inside and perhaps laugh maniacally – like a mutant ape who has busted the lock on his cage, or chuckle gently – at the wonder of being anything at all, even just alive.
2.3.2.3.2 opening to the moment – release of temporal conditioning
2.3.2.3.3 men who ride mountains – discovering extra capability
2.3.2.3.4 my tribe is everywhere – expand and celebrate
2.3.2.3.5 beyond my self
2.3.2.3.6 risk alone
2.3.2.3.7 human and hobie and wind and water = one
2.3.2.3.8 miracles are repeatable, verifiable. reality as experienced by a flexible consciousness
2.3.2.3.9 strange things happen when communing with a planet sized entity that is your own personal starship. the very components of my body are of earth origins
2.3.3 open the process, share the process
2.3.3.1 songwriting and composition – lyrics about the journey
2.3.3.2 not only where are the artifacts but how to recognize and document them DIY. Distributing the on desire approach (crowd sourcing)
2.3.3.2.1 letters, drawings, audio, video
2.3.3.3 video remixes
2.3.3.4 ttf – having your own direct experience, trusting your own direct experience
√
2.1 Objectives common to both projects…
2.1.1 completion in 2010 OR new funding and remake
2.1.1.2 if new funding and remake, some version of the original becomes a fund raising vehicle, proof of concept, extensive previsualization etc.
2.1.1.1 if completion, then quality (hits personal aesthetic, key collaborators thumbs up)
2.1.2 expansion of post production team with dynamic and effective work approach, tuned workflow, ideal gear mix and just enough knowledge
2.1.3 success
2.1.3.1 accepted 3 oscar qualifying festivals 2011
2.1.3.2 awards / recognition for innovation/experimental, visual impact/effects, story
2.1.3.3 vehicle for future funding, collaboration, career
2.1.3.4 500,000 views in first 6 months after release
2.1.3.5 favorable reviews and appreciation by relevant players
2.1.3.6 spanish or chinese subtitle versions
Good Earth, have you been reading the recent posts from http://ondesire.com and http://holyboners.com? I have – and they are beginning to spin out of control. Some sort of fugue state is being entered into here, so many eggs are cracking wide I expect there’s one heck of a mega omelet on the horizon. I haven’t even done my review of Cameron’s Avatar in 3D or last night’s dinner with my favorite Africans. Let’s get this sorted out right now.
The Questions
What are my objectives for the two current projects?
What’s my plan to finish them / take them to the next level?
The Answers
I’ve got a mission, so let’s start there, Activating global consciousness to steward and expand the wilds. It’s a good mission, and one would expect my current projects to be in alignment. How then do these two movie projects support my mission?
1.0 Mission
1.1 DOG
Daughter of God is my most ambitious narrative project to date. It’s a surreal exploration of how picturesque and hilarious a crippled global life support system can get. The backstory also explores colonization and exploitation on a planetary scale. With this project I model my theories, channeling the answers to the questions that Fia asked last night – who benefits from the demise of an entire planet? Follow the money, follow the extraction of wealth. Who’s targeting all the world saviors, whose running this prison?
So Daughter of God is a vehicle for piercing the veil. It’s a way of figuring some things out, of playing with the story. Ah, there’s an insight.
What if the story has fragments, alternate eddies and branches? What if the edit is actually scrambled up to suggest alternate possibilities, variant explanations, visions beyond the existing narrative where all the backstories intermingle and cross pollinate? Y’all getting this? That’s how we rebuild the edit, with intersecting time lines and outcomes. Moments that suggest, fragments.
That means that the best moments are extracted and then interwoven as flash sidewise or parallel possibility, while remaining perfectly ordinary, like brushing teeth. Little diversion this, but worthy.
In summary, DOG supports the mission by being a way to better understand what might actually be going on in RL, suggest in ways like the i ching, never the same movie twice, ya get me? Got cha.
1.2 ALM
Seeking the artifacts of a future sustainable civilization is pragmatic action. No external authority is going to assemble our optimal existence and conveniently implode. We are responsible, I am responsible. The future surrounds us, fragments of annihilation and transcendence for the taking. We choose what we gather, I choose. That’s ALM, humans taking responsibility for our collective destiny, one Dan at a time. An adventure of autonomy and connection, of becoming miraculous and capable of planet saving. A hero’s journey waiting for each of us.
It’s about me, as Andrea pointed out, and my reinvention disguised as a sailing trip. Is it universal? Does it translate beyond boats and big lakes? Only if folks share my starting point. They don’t have to agree, they just have to get me. Stepping back, I realize that I am a character in this story.
The Dan Kelly character has a premise, aspirations, a costume, a budget, skills, assumptions, experience and a history. What do we need to know about him so that we can travel with him, suspend our disbelief, make his joy and pain our own?
He is a treehugger, an artist, a science fictionary, a warrior, a lover, a mystic, a caretaker, a technologist, a dreamer, a visionary. My character needs to be introduced to the audience, my character wants something badly and is having trouble getting it, my character undergoes a transformation. Don’t we all?
In summary, ALM supports the mission because it’s about what happens when WE decide to thrive. As my glorious destiny relies on the repair and care of the global life support system, I must become capable of healing planets. I must discover and eventually implement sustainable civilizations. If these epic outcomes are beyond the scope of my present self, then I must purposefully transform and become miraculous. That is the journey worth taking, the true and vital journey of ALM, common to all.
Epilogue
Many folks will find the premise crazy, so I’ve got to make a solid case that my character actually believes that he can develop extraordinary abilities and has ‘evidence’ to support it. Then even if they think my character is crazy, they’ll go on the journey with him. This crazy character will venture out to become a super hero and the surprise ending will be – maybe he was not so crazy after all.
The audience attitude might begin with ‘the poor delusional fellow is captivating’ then gradually progress to ‘wait, maybe he’s making sense’ and finish with ‘whoa, where do I sign up?’ It’s a cognitive hack for extracting folks from the suicidal hypnosis of dominant culture. Start them off with the idea that they are watching a crazy person running amuck, then give them cause to question that premise and in so doing examine their assumptions about what it means to be rational in a culture bent on apocalypse. Wonko the Sane lived outside the asylum (and he got his movie made).
I scanned and posted the audience feedback cards within a week of the Evening of Exploration, but over a month went by before I read and sorted them into categories. Why did it take so long? This question triggered a small crisis – Am I loosing momentum on the ALM project? Do I have a plan? What have I accomplished in the 3 months since the end of the trip?
This is one of those exciting blog moments where I have to grope around for a bit. Flashback!
October – December 2009
In early October Hello World and I returned home with about 30 hours of HD video. During the next two weeks I converted the video, shot a visual inventory and edited Evolution, the repair and packing sequence. I sorted, cleaned and stored all the gear. Hitching a ride back to Brooklyn with my brother Steve on 10/20, I settled down to catalog the video and post excerpts to the ondesire blog. Was there a feature length documentary lurking in there somewhere? In theory, a methodical review of the raw material would allow major themes to percolate.
Watching the video and seeing all the folks who supported ALM started me fantasizing about throwing a big party. I also wanted to introduce more of my Northern Michigan tribe to the project and expand it’s audience. I imagined organizing an event around a rough cut of the movie and including structured feedback both to foster interaction and create a sense of participation. I was planning to return to to Northern Michigan for Thanksgiving anyway, maybe a month was enough time to plan an event and cut a rough…
The Evening of Exploration was born!
Turns out that 1 month was not enough time to become familiar with all the footage, edit something coherent AND organize / promote a public exhibition. I dedicated a lot of energy to getting the theater filled – repeatedly emailing the scattered tribe, blogging, creating enticing imagery and composing press releases. To expand and diversify the audience, I invited Gretchen Eichberger to present choreography and the ukulele duo Saldaje (Melonie Steffes and Shawn Anchak) to play music. The price I paid for a nearly full theater was less time for editing.
Sweating bullets that the bumpy NYC to Chicago Amtrak ride would ding the stack of sata hard drives humming at my feet, I finally found a decent introduction – only four days before the Evening. My brother and sister helped me hash out a protocol for audience feedback in the rental car from Chicago to Beulah. Over the holiday, I grappled with the stark realization that my rough cut would NOT be the kernel of a coherent structure, but rather a smorgasbord of loosely connected ideas.
The Evening was fun and I reconnected with many excellent people. My original objectives were achieved to varying degrees…
Celebrate those who helped with the project
Seeing themselves onscreen often makes folks excited. Just being invited to a special event is nice too, especially if there’s food and interesting art. I could’ve done a better job of recognizing the collaborators if the movie had credits and / or if I mentioned specific names during my introduction. Basically, that didn’t happen because I ran out of time.
Connect regional folks to the project, build community support and awareness
It’s been over a month since the evening, so if I am planning on following up and consolidating this audience, I had better do it in the next couple of days. The evening did facilitate a productive feedback session with Steve Elrick. Also, a fantastic new friend and ally has appeared as a direct result of the Evening’s intense promotion. Andrea Maio is a film maker who missed the Evening but tracked me down after. We had a blast hanging out and she has since decided to relocate to Benzie County. I’ll be linking to her blog as soon as it’s up. Finally, Susan Koenig wrote an article about the Evening that may or may not have appeared in the Benzie Record Patriot, I’m still waiting to hear.
Get some structured feedback
I threw a variety of material at the audience, curious only to know what stood out, what made an impression. My feedback protocol wasn’t all that rigorous because the editing had barely begun. The responses were useful, the same five moments were mentioned by 52% of the audience. Several folks disregarded my instructions and offered detailed advice about editing and some even felt compelled to trot out their personal angst… awesome! I am so grateful for the responses, the only people I have a beef with are those that didn’t bother to fill out cards – like my brother and father. Geez, relatives can be a real pain.
Deadline motivates
Setting an intense deadline was both good and bad.
Rather than taking that the time to move methodically through the video, I was forced to slam together disparate fragments just to have something to show. This deferred the real edit process by a month. As the Evening got closer, I felt very scattered and struggled to let go of my expectations. I fretted that telling a disjointed story would actually deter the audience from following ALM’s progress. Key elements of the event were scaled down or abandoned because time was tight.
I am only now recovering from the trauma of promising a little too much. Deadlines are productive only when matched to specific outcomes well within the range of the possible. Deadlines can have an element of risk, they can stretch our identity and push our personal envelope – a little. Finessing the balance between what we are and what we want to be is the art of the setting deadlines. It’s wise to take an inventory of variables first – how many new things will have happen at once? Even for a turbo charged polymath, attempting more than 2 new things is asking for trouble.
The Evening would have been a better if I had conceptualized the event as presenting ‘selected excerpts’, rather than promising a ‘rough cut’. The problem was in my own mind, most folks don’t know the difference between selected excerpts and a rough cut anyway. Crazy expectations caused me to wig out.
December 2009 – January 2o1o
I whiled away another 2 weeks in Beulah before renting a Hyundai and returning to Brooklyn. Once back, I bit the bullet and dropped $2000 on 20 x 1 TB hard drives for cloning my archive. I need about 6 drives more to finish, but at least now I can travel with ALM. I finally tallied the feedback results and posted some comments. Andrea suggested a new tack for the project that I like. I’ve been reorganizing the blogs in preparation for the next push and feel the power flowing back. So maybe I am not groping anymore.
I’ve finally gone through the response cards from the Evening of Exploration and tallied the results. Admittedly, asking for ‘the most memorable moment’ was not a very rigorous approach to feedback but then the Evening of Exploration was about more than feedback. The primary objective was to gather the Northern Michigan arts community together and introduce them to the project. Also, setting an intense deadline was intended to amp up my post-production process.
I’ll do a more rigorous evaluation of the Evening and it’s objectives later, but for now let’s look at the responses. Of the 86 cards, there were about 131 different moments mentioned, including advice about editing and other random critique. Let’s keep it simple and concentrate on the top 5 moments, which are mentioned in 52% of the total responses. The top five break down as follows…
Homegrown
I haven’t spoken with Chris and Tanya Winkelmann of Homegrown since November and I’m excited to let Tanya know that she stole the show. Some might think that organic food is old news, but the Winkelmanns’ story illustrates that it’s not, that education about the integrity of our food supply is vital. Tanya and Chris’s story is not only about edible education, but also “action instead of just thought or talk”. Indeed. Of the top five moments, Tanya’s interview grabbed 1/3 of attention.
Cherry Pit Spitting Monolog
The cherry pit spitting monolog came in second with mixed reviews. Several folks objected (strongly) to me talking with my mouth full! Love it. My intention was to break up the heavy ponderings with a little visual comedy and emphasize rather than minimize the cherry pit spitting. For the record, I don’t think I actually thought this through on location – I was just having breakfast and doing my usual on camera update. I had happened to put some wild cherries into my porridge.
The critical feedback helped me realize that I am not communicating how much work the Search for Sustainable Civilizations was. I ate while filming because there were only so many hours in the day and finding a way to combine two activities was a boon. I have to give more context – during the cherry pit spitting breakfast I was totally worn out and sore from sailing the day before. It’s not that I want sympathy from the audience but based on the almost angry comments about proper manners folks don’t get that my choices were constrained, that I was wiped out. Most of the positive comments focused on the content of the monolog, which is encouraging.
Hello World Evolution
My new filmmaker friend Andrea described the Hello World evolution sequence as my sparkling personality showing through. I am pleased that it worked for the audience because I put some solid time into the edit – I think it reflects my pleasure as an editor. It’s got several elements that I like – maker ethic, comedy, excitement and an epic feeling thanks to Gustav Holst. I actually see it as something of a placeholder for a more polished sequence, so it’s really encouraging to know that it’s getting high marks already. As a side note, the rest of Andrea’s comment goes like this, (paraphrase)… “in contrast to the Hello World sequence, your actual on camera monologs don’t really reflect how charming and funny you are in real life.” Gotta love that gal.
Ritch Branstrom, Adhoc workshop
Ritch was actually mentioned for more than trash art, so I broke the comments referring to him into categories. He made it to the top five for all the mentions of junk artist. Some folks also wrote about his energy or how well comes across as a character. Frankly as cinematographer and editor, I’ve got to take credit for his on screen vibe… through the magic of cinema, I made him seem like an amazing guy – another triumph of art over reality. Kidding! Ritch really IS amazing, honest.
Ray Minervini
Ray Minervini made an impression on folks with his “cities are designed for cars and not for people” line. That really seemed to resonate. Ray was really able to paint a picture with words and folks got it.
| healing through food, homegrown, mission, children sick, chemicals in food, action instead of just thought and talk | 22 |
| breakfast and spitting cherry pits, hate the old, fear of nature (naive I) musings reached a rhythm of their own, timelessness of wilderness, cherries “into the wild” – scared (not enjoyable to see even a handsome man with mouth full of oatmeal I) (humor overwhelms the deep point you are trying to make I) (the spitting again and again was an insult to audience I) | 13 |
| gear packing and boat repair | 12 |
| Rich Branstrom – power, builds things from trash, influences others | 11 |
| Ray Minervini cities designed for automobiles and not for people, parking lots, building permits | 10 |
| Rich Branstrom – energy is pure, like his energy, medium for power in the world (cut it I) | 7 |
| monologs, rambling went on long enough to be memorable, long winded | 5 |
| the end – poetry incarnate, laying in the grass | 4 |
| extensive and specific advice on editing | 4 |
| practical interconnectedness of all things, (men who ride moutains) | 4 |
| big wave day, totally on (men who ride moutains) | 3 |
| interviews | 2 |
| earth from space | 2 |
| dan eating | 2 |
| mir space station | 2 |
| to exist is totally up to each of us, sustainability | 2 |
| going forward or turning around, terrible accident | 2 |
| more overarching narrative, where did you go and why? | 2 |
| larry – humans are renewable resource | 2 |
| like to see route outlined, don’t expect your audience to know the geography of michigan | 2 |
| me and gwen at bird bath | 2 |
| interviews at schooner festival | 1 |
| recycling | 1 |
| opening sequence, short statements | 1 |
| water | 1 |
| need more interaction between interviewer and interviewee | 1 |
| north manitou quiet | 1 |
| choose a design and stick to it | 1 |
| face of the horse (deer) Rich Branstrom | 1 |
| straight talk about how we live on the planet | 1 |
| dan yawns makes audience yawn | 1 |
| less eating when you film | 1 |
| find people who don’t know you and don’t smoke weed for outside perspective | 1 |
| i suggest you study documentary | 1 |
| flame fluttering | 1 |
| (offered help and collaboration on the project) | 1 |
