Art of the Edit?

> Couldn't disagree with you more, and you're the first person i've heard say that. I did enjoy
> the remake, but the whole point about the original was that you never knew who was the
> good guy and who was the bad.

Right back at ya! I think you always do. In both the original and the remake.

The only character who was a "reveal" was the second agent undercover with the police. Infernal Affairs never hid the fact that the Andy Lau character was working for the triads and the Tony Leung character was an undercover cop. Eric Tsang was evil and Anthony Wong was good.

The big difference is that Infernal Affairs had Andy Lau's godawful performance; pretentious Buddhist overtones in the opening which went nowhere; and not one, but two cutie Cantopop singers who couldn't act, playing two girlfriends with no character. Anthony Wong couldn't compare with Martin Sheen; Vera Farmiga left Kelly Chan and Sammi "I'm so popular I don't have to take acting lessons" Cheng in the dust; and the camerawork, editing and cinematography of The Departed were all far superior to the Hong Kong original.

In fact, if you're talking about moral ambiguity, the Mark Wahlberg character was a far more effective "bad cop" than anybody in Infernal Affairs. And Matt Damon made a far more complex character than Andy Lau did. He sold out the undercover cop, but he's so charismatic that you can't help but like him.

The one thing I hated about The Departed was the ending, which I couldn't help but suspect was something the studio forced on Scorsese. Scorsese had never had such a neat "evil is punished" ending until this film, and it just doesn't fit. Infernal Affairs was also more economical in its first act introducing the back story. The Departed's mammoth prelude was structurally unsound. I think they should have been a bit more brutal in shaving that down.

Just because it's a foreign film doesn't make it better. I saw Infernal Affairs in its original Cantonese and I'm immune to the "foreign-film seduction" factor -- it's not "exotic" to me. The Departed would have been disadvantaged for any viewer who's already seen Infernal Affairs and knows all the twists. But there's no denying which is better on a performance, human, scripting level. Hong Kong films just don't tend to have good acting -- it's all fast, fast, money-grubbing product. Singers try to act and actors try to sing, and there's little regard for creative quality. Infernal Affairs was a better film than most in Hong Kong, but it's quite overrated over here...especially that heinous sequel where there was no pretense at coherent screenwriting.


www.derekmok.com

You made some good points there Derek. Particularly regarding Whalberg's character. Needless to say the acting/camerawork etc is far superior.
I think part of my biased perspective is that i lived in Asia for ten years and really miss it. Movies are an opportunity to go back for a couple of hours. I also wrote my BA dissertation on Tian Zhuangzhuang's The Blue Kite, so am quite big on Chinese stuff. I don't watch much Hong Kong cinema (apart from Wong Kar Wai) and prefer films coming from the mainland, so i'm inclined to agree with your assessment of most HK movies.

I also agree that foreign films are not necessarily better, though i doubt you'd dispute that remakes rarely are.

Another problem i have is that i'm a hardcore Scorcese fan and have become accustomed to very high standards from him. Or at least up until the dreadful Gangs of new York. The Departed is a good movie, and i'm pleased his films are making money. It's a great shame that my favourites like King of Comedy flopped. I'd like to see him doing more smaller films.

BTW, what did you make of The Lives of Others, my personal favourite of 2007?

I say keep shooting and cutting till you have created your own style. Lots of times i see editors who wait for footage to cut instead of going out and shooting something their self and attempting to make it good.

The narrative and rhythm is most important to me and after over 250 training videos, commercials, and short docs, i just learned about capturing the true rhythm of a piece instead of just the music.

Sure directors, writers and dp's will all come into play thru an editors career and they will all give the editor great experience. However most of the apprehension that editors have come from lack of experience and experience in editing can come from make a total disaster. I mean if ya don't get it wrong once you are likely to miss out on a lot of personal style criticism.

Once you have screwed up a few (10 or more) things then you will be able to improve your self or realize that i cant do this.

Politics

Yes, you have to rub elbows and message those around you who can further your career, but be careful how you do it. Try not to be so agreeing. Sometimes what someone is looking for in an editor is a person thats willing to have enough passion about his/her work to have style preferences because some editors don't care.
i.e..... the dp has a vision of a scene you as an editor have seen some of the same scenes in your own editing bay. You might see what he is seeing but know that if this could be added you could make it more dramatic in post. The exchange and adoption of ideas is the strength of a production crew and it is what makes movies great.

Taking criticism is hard for all editors. I tend to fight a LITTLE first to see if the criticism is valid or its just general talent hating. I have a post in show and tell that is an example of taking criticism.

All in all KEEP SHOOTING and CUTTING. I forgot who it was but somebody had a signature that went something like " If at first you don't succeed keep f'ing it up till you get it right. "



I agree

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

On documentary editing- i've been noticing a lot of shows, including some feature films using less wide/establishing shots. i recall a Thelma Schoonmaker interview where she mentions something about estab shots being unnecessary. What was interesting, was watching a british TV show on home decor recently, and i noticed a lack of establishing shots, and it was interesting, because if they had added more of those close-ups, MCU shots (actually it's part of a house, so i don't know if you call it an MCU), the visuals could have been turned into a complete mess, but because the balance was done pretty nicely, the flow was maintained.

> On documentary editing- i've been noticing a lot of shows, including some feature films using
> less wide/establishing shots

Oh hell, yes. And I also don't think it helps that you're calling them "establishing shots" -- that's not the only function of a wide shot! But I think this is precisely why wides are being used less. On a talk show two months ago, a producer kept asking me to use a close-up in one of the comedy sketches. The problem was:

a) The close-up was wobbly and badly framed;
b) It cropped the comedian at the neck, so his entire body language was lost...and he was playing somebody with some kind of tic disorder and severe stuttering.

I don't know where today's producers got the idea that you can't see a performance except in a big, boring, TV-style close-up with the actors putting their hands firmly at their sides. But the close-up obsession is in full swing.

With another short film shot on DV several years ago, we held a screening in L.A. with other award-winners from the film school. One of the fellow winners, a producer, came up to the director afterwards and said, "Love your film. But you shouldn't have shot any wides because DV doesn't have good resolution."

Well, try shooting any narrative film without any wides!

With a misguided mentality like this -- "pretty pictures" are the only things that count, narrative beats, rhythm, perspective, shot variety and dramatic necessity be damned -- no wonder we're getting more and more bad filmmaking, especially in the promo documentary realm. Luckily bigger documentaries (eg. Discovery, History Channel) tend to have better producers who actually know editing. But DVD bonus documentaries are some of the worst culprits.

And while we're talking about Schoonmaker, I'll also bring up Wiseman and Kopple. Modern documentaries rely far, far too much on sit-down, lit interviews. Subjects rarely open up in that setting. I don't know why documentarians have lost the intuition to follow a subject around with a camera -- and not necessarily with the director/cameraman talking to the people. That beautiful "fly-on-the-wall" style that Kopple and Wiseman excel at. That's where you get narrative gold and true character revelations, when the subject isn't intending to be filmed. I worked on two documentaries where it was interviews, interviews, interviews -- 90 tapes and about 60 of them were staged interviews, including six near-identical ones on the main guy. I felt like going into a coma.

Documentarians these days are too obsessed with trying to get exactly what they had in mind before the shoot. So they keep directing their subjects, rather than allowing themselves to be surprised. Ugh.


www.derekmok.com

> a) The close-up was wobbly and badly framed;

Haha. I feel your pain.. I was working on a drama once, and I had this fresh grad producer who got it all wrong- I had a close up of the actress on an awkward side shot that i couldn't see the expression in her eyes... the reason why she shot it that way was because she was trying not to break the 180 degree rule, and man! it was a triangular dialogue, which meant that the camera could have been shifted onto the new established line of axis, so the actress would be better framed. And on that same episode, when the line was maintained, the camera was so much on the line, that the character was facing the wrong screen direction on another shot- and that defeats the purpose of the line of action.

I call it an "establishing" because that's the traditional name for the shot- to establish the spatial sense of the location. Although i may or may not use it in an edit but it is tougher refraining from the wide shot, as a lack of it can cause a sequence to appear claustrophobic. Too much close ups can be detrimental to the edit, and if it's a series of constant close-ups, a delicate balance must be maintained.. I remember the 2nd scene in Oceans 11, where this character walks into the casino, but there wasn't the wide, traditional establishing shot of the casino, so the room was introduced by a POV style tracking shot, which brought us more into the role of the character (in this case, it was a tracking shot from behind the character's shoes, so we get to see what he's seeing).

The close-up isn't necessarily a good thing, however, and many people get it wrong along with all other cinematic terms- like the 180 degree rule, extreme camera angles, lighting, cinema verite, jumpcuts, handheld shots, dutch angles, etc... Where I come from, it is no surprise to have my interviewees shot in an CU dutch angle and that makes sense to some producers. But in post, it looks like they were interviewing a dude with a serious neck problem and she couldn't keep her head straight and talk properly.

Apart from the flow, another contributing factor is how the film/show/program is going to be watched- is it a "look into" medium, like a cinema screen, or is it a "look at" medium, like a TV screen. In fact, I never do my edits on a computer screen, because the small display will eventually make the edit look choppy, because it takes more time to register the shot on a bigger screen.

DV/VHS/HD/DVCPRO50/Hi 8 has less to do with the decision to use a wide/close up. Sometimes it's better to cut to the wide, master shot, sometimes it's better to cut to a close-up. I have found, however, that on a series of fast cuts, paying attention to the changing shapes of the subject matter can matter quite a bit.

Two things that i find tough to work on, 1, is to generate a visual flow among inanimate or randomly shot subjects- on the fly documentaries and they'll shoot whatever they can see to use as a cutaway. The next, is rapid intercutting between 2 scenes- I find that takes quite a bit of skill to separate the two locations. The last time i tried, i layered two pieces of music to aid the visual jump between the 2 scenes, and to cut to a similar series of shots in one scene... although at the end of it all, i still felt it was a little messy.

Kopple and Wiseman? Enlighten me on the subject! I haven't been able to find a good documentary i can call a classic.

>>the close-up obsession is in full swing. <<

We've taken to yelling 'it's not about the camera!' at the TV here, especially during cooking shows. If you shoot or edit a cooking show, please, let us see what the hell they are doing. Stop doing blurred, whip pan, macro close bloody stupid arty shots. It's an INSTRUCTIONAL format.

>>I don't know why documentarians have lost the intuition to follow a subject around with a camera -- <<

Because of the massive cost of this method, I reckon. I agree about Wiseman - one of my absolute favourites - but his shoot ratio was out of control. He just sat around for weeks and weeks shooting everything going on (he was on film, right?) then used the mosiac method in the edit suite to filter the important stuff from the rubbish. Try getting investors to agree to that these days... yeah, I thought I might just shoot stuff for a few weeks then see what happens..

From memory he was at 200:1. Even on HDV that's hard to justify on paper.

Strypes - look for Wiseman's 'Titicut Follies', or 'High School'.

> We've taken to yelling 'it's not about the camera!' at the TV here, especially during cooking
> shows. If you shoot or edit a cooking show, please, let us see what the hell they are doing.
> Stop doing blurred, whip pan, macro close bloody stupid arty shots. It's an INSTRUCTIONAL
> format.

Oh God. Jude, I'm going to buy you a giant bullhorn and a cell phone for Christmas. You can then call 90 per cent of the producers I work for so you can yell this in their ear too. They watch the camera moves and ignore what the camera is actually shooting.

One producer goes so far as to encourage her cameraman to do "snap zooms" and "whip pans" all the time, for "impact". So I get tapes and tapes of the dude trying to get the movement "right" while the true content flies right by in front of my eyes...or rather, just outside of his wobbly frame.

That same producer told me to use "more crane shots" during an interview segment because she finds them "poetic". It's an interview on DV, my dear. Poetry doesn't come into it.

> From memory he was at 200:1. Even on HDV that's hard to justify on paper.

True, and some projects (eg. a making-of documentary on a movie set) don't justify this kind of shooting. But so many producers have told me they wanted "magic", and then they go and plan 90 per cent of their shoots on sit-down interviews. Where's the magic!? Up mine!? And then people don't realize the value of a roaming interview where you put the subject not under hot lights with a slick background and dead-still cameras, but in their element where they have real things to use, do and talk about.

And on Barbara Kopple, American Dream and Shut Up and Sing are fantastic. Harlan County, U.S.A. is considered a classic, but I think it's merely good, not great. Not enough meat in the storytelling, not enough specificity in perspective, not enough of a "way in" because it didn't really set up several characters to pay specific attention to. Get American Dream before it goes out of print, though. It's absolutely fabulous -- in fact, possibly the best film my old film school showed us, narrative or otherwise. Give me that over Ugetsu Monogatari any day.


www.derekmok.com

I have seen in a lot of cases where you can see the subject/s watching the camrera swing by on a jib. Subjects shouldn't have to watch the camera. The camera should watch the subject.

Has anyone seen Loving Jazabelle or the Blue/Red/White series.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

cooking shows? i remembered when i started editing, i had to do one of those, but i absolutely loved the jamie oliver style- tight editing, close-ups, handheld shots, etc.. And i was lucky then, that i had decent cameramen who knew what handheld shots should be like (slight movement, NOT wobbles). That was fun, although admittedly, it is getting too excessive.

Man, i hate it when producers start going "oh, pan here, tilt up there, zoom out here...". And i've met one producer who was so obsessive about camera movement that she seemingly had no idea what the program was about, and it was just camera movements one after another, with meaningless shots. Then she'll try to plaster everything together with a VO.. God. That was one hell of a bad experience- I think the one of the worst feelings in the world is going home after a hard night's work and feeling real empty inside from a bad project.

This is getting to be one hell of a superthread! And thanks for the recommendations, especially on the documentaries.

I'm still trying to figure out what are some of the ways to tell a story especially on documentaries, when the subject moves around on location, or when i have like 1 interview and a whole chunk of random shots. Should i attempt to build tension like in a narrative? And how should hooks be created, visually?

> when i have like 1 interview and a whole chunk of random shots.

Put on your Eisenstein hat. Shots are random until you put them into context. There's no such thing as a "good cut" until it's in with other cuts that work. We'll use the classic example of the lion statues in The Battleship Potemkin -- on their own, those shots are just cutaways of a location. In the context of the story, they become images of God mourning what has passed.

I cut a music video years ago where I had to take 70-odd hours of documentary footage and make it into a story:

[www.derekmok.com]

In certain ways, this is even more fun than a narrative. In narrative film, shots are more planned, so their meanings tend to be fairly fixed. In documentary, you can make images tell a story or convey a message they were never intended for.


www.derekmok.com

that's what i love about documentary editing. I love drama too... Thanks, i'll take a look into the video when i get back into office. I'm just realizing that using traditional camera shots used in scene openings and closings (wide shot, etc), can add a sense of closure/opening to a 'scene' pieced together from otherwise inanimate cutaways. What other elements do you usually watch out for? I know we usually rely on feel, but is there a way we can put them into words or techniques?

Unfortunately, whatever one thinks of his politics, I believe Michael Moore has temporarily ruined documentaries at the present, with his style of egomaniacal self-insertion, low-brow humor, and ad hominem insults, as well as bald-faced fakery. It's like the hair-metal of documentary.

On the other hand, you have the Maysles brothers. Just watching ten minutes of Salesman or Grey Gardens, and my faith in the documentary form is restored.

Just dare Michael Moore to try to make a film without ANY voice over... or ANY music. And have it rip your heart out. Man, were the Maysles brothers geniuses...

Michael Moore has his schtick, but I don't believe he's "ruined' documentaries. First of all, I don't see anybody trying to do his thing. Second of all, I think he has his usefulness -- he's not the well-balanced, journalistic-minded documentarian. He's a town crier who gets your attention, and he ellicits extreme responses, which I think is good for sociological discourse -- it's hard not to have an opinion about him. And whether we agree or disagree, it raises the debates.

That said, I watched Sicko two weeks ago and thought it was one of his worst films. Though I shared its opinion going in, the film actually made me believe less in its thesis because many parts felt fake. And I could feel the manipulation. All films manipulate; bad films either fail to manipulate, or they show their tail while doing so. Sicko did. And yes, too much music, and the voice-over didn't work well at all this time.

Michael Moore may not be incapable of making a film with no music and voice-over. It's just he doesn't allow himself (or his editors?) to try. The best part of his best film, Bowling for Columbine, had no voice-over -- the school shooting. But he's not alone. Modern producers all overuse music.


www.derekmok.com

"Michael Moore has his schtick, but I don't believe he's "ruined' documentaries"

Yeah, he hasn't ruined them for all-time, but unfortunately, his style is in vogue right now ("Super Size Me", anything by Robert Greenwald, or any "news" special on the Fox Network for that matter). It's the propaganda approach - formulate thesis, then compile data, then conform data to prove thesis. And do it with a facile, cheesy, audience-baiting aesthetic.

"he ellicits extreme responses, which I think is good for sociological discourse...it raises the debates."

Respectfully, I think it does the opposite, unfortunately. Yes, it does bring up debate, but by LOWERING it (to my mind). The debate becomes, "who can lie with footage better?" Which is great for fictional narrative, utterly corrupt with "documentary". Again, it's basically the Fox News approach. Now, one can argue, well, THEY'RE doing it with great effect, so the antidote is to do the same thing with the other viewpoint. But, to modify the old "two wrongs don't make a right" trope, I just don't think telling two opposing lies makes a truth.

And for an example of lowering the level of the debate... in "Fahrenheit 9/11", at one point, during his utterly disingenuous 'Bush hangs out with the bin Ladens!' segment (wherein he fails to mention that Osama is utterly opposed to the rest of his family), Moore uses footage of Bush walking and laughing with men in turbans. However, as an otherwise glowing review in Al Jazeera pointed out, this section made Middle Eastern audiences laugh. Why? Because they could see that the footage was of Bush walking with Kuwaitis (who wear different headdress styles), not the bin Ladens. The footage was a complete lie. And the thing is, Moore knew this. But he realized, most Americans wouldn't know it, they'd just see "hey, those guys have turban-like things! It's bin Laden!". In this way, Moore was using racist iconography to his own ends. He KNEW, simply put misleading V.O. over those images, and boom, illusion complete... Bush walks, laughing, with terrorists!

I am NO fan of Bush, but as an editor, and a human, I felt dirty. I just think these things are too important to misuse the magic of film in the service of an intentional lie.

Fortunately, I think that Michael Moore's day has passed.

The debate becomes, "who can lie with footage better?"

Hasn't that always been the premise of docs anyway. I remember watching a doc put out by national geographic that talked about coral reefs being depleted. Mind you this was about 15 years ago. It was a really pushing at getting law makers to pass laws that could save them. According to the doc we were going to loose half of our coral reefs in 20 years. To me that means 50 percent. WOW, here it is 15-16 years later and here cone another nat-geo doc saying the we have lost over 17% of our coral reefs over the last 20 years. Thats not 50%.

I think there will never be a doc that evenly distributes the info. How ever there are multiple docs on the same topic in most cases. Pro or Con when a particular piece of info keeps being brought up in every other doc you see on the subject, then thats probably true.

I thing one of the most under rated docs out there is " Loose Change 2nd Edition " especially the parts on the pentagon. His explanation on what happened to the planes that hit the world trade... That was a bit hard to take with the crazy math as part of the explanation. A very compelling doc thought.

I think that the only reason people dont respect it as much is because the movie is free to watch on google. I would be willing to bet that if there was a well funded marketing campaign attached to it it would have been really big.

The style they introduced i thought was very nice. Maybe a bit too much music for Mok but it was the music that i think had an impact on the intensity and rhythm of the piece. Right from the beginning the music grabs the viewer.
The voice over was great. It wasn't what you would expect but with the music it was a nice duet. The VO was at points choppy but as a whole very nice. I liked the literal bombardment of things to question. Yes, it could be coincidences but they did a good job with the over all thesis that all of these things could not have just been by chance.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

"I thing one of the most under rated docs out there is " Loose Change 2nd Edition " especially the parts on the pentagon. His explanation on what happened to the planes that hit the world trade... That was a bit hard to take with the crazy math as part of the explanation. A very compelling doc thought. "

Loose change just like Michel Moores films, is based on incorrectly interpreted facts.
Moore knows this very well, the makers of Loose change may not have.
Nonetheless, neither represents the truth.

And you can rent it in the video store now as well.

Can't find Kopple or Wiseman at my local store. might have to get them in from amazon.

You know, a while ago, working on a drama piece, I came across this scene that wasn't going anywhere due to bad acting... Try as I might, I had 2 bad actors in a dialogue, and neither of them could deliver, and no matter who i cut to, it was just bad acting, with no other visuals to really play around with. then i realized, that the essentials to tell a story, relies not only on good acting (de niro in taxi driver), pacing and imagery (eisenstein's the battleship potemkin), music (countless filmes)... So they all have to work in tandem, in harmony and the less you have in one aspect, the more you need going for you in the other areas to make a scene work. Seems theoretical, because it is... Which in this case, it could have been a good area to inject additional elements to hook a scene.

Your local store doesn't have Shut Up and Sing? The thing was released something like half a year ago...sounds like not so great a store.

American Dream:
[www.amazon.com]
(Amazon lists the director as Cathy Kaplan. It's Kopple's co-director on that one.)

Harlan County, USA:
[www.amazon.com]

Shut Up and Sing:
[www.amazon.com]

Kopple also directed the narrative feature Havoc, which received bad reviews.

Wiseman is a lot tougher to find because he has little commercial market. Filmmakers love him; the public is like, "Huh?" I saw some of his work on projected film in film school. Try this:

[www.zipporah.com]
[www.zipporah.com]
[www.amazon.com]


www.derekmok.com

oh come on you cant just make everything up. There are certain things that have truth to them in both Micheal Moore films and Loose Change. The same applies to films that completely contradict them.
If someone made a film that completely supports George Bush, there is just as much twisting of the facts. If they make a movie to boast how the insurance agencies / healthcare providers have done a better job here than in other countries then they will twist the facts just as much.

I don't know of a doc that doesn't.

What's even funnier is if you watch something as radical as loose change and then watch a film made to completely contradict loose change you find that the 2 films in some areas supports the other. That is where the truth is.

I have always thought that the ken burns style of doc was even better than those done with all video. they seem to be more engaging in some manner. I think its the VO's and soft music changes.

China on the March and Only One New York was good i saw these a while back.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

Oh good one Derek - I've never been able to buy any Wiseman stuff here. Not even on eBay.

Was it him who went a bit mad and made a ten hour doc on the world at some point? I might be mixing him up with another insurgent somewhere.. maybe Peter Watkins..

Yeah - Peter Watkins - Resan (The Journey) - 873 mins! That's nearly 15 hours. I haven't seen it. Actually, I don't know that it was ever completed.

I would recommend 'Culloden' and 'The War Game' by Watkins.

The War Game was commissioned by the BBC and then hidden on a shelf for, I think, 30 years, because they got too scared to broadcast it at the time.

Both films are very interesting studies of the concept of truth in documentary. Documentary does not equal reality.

Mok do you know a good website that centers around surprisingly little known film/doc makers. I am not to good with names but want to learn more on who's who. So i can contrast styles.

BTW i saw a chinese movie called ' The Eye 2 ' WOW x10
That was probably the best editing i have seen on a horror flick. It made the story line so much more intense and at times tastefully frantic. excellent use of sfx also.

i am about to try my first 1hr movie. i plan to film it 3 times. A friend of mine suggested that i do it first as a 15min short then expand it to 30min then make the 1hr version. This is not the process i had envisioned but for some reason it makes sense.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

> i plan to film it 3 times. A friend of mine suggested that i do it first as a 15min short then expand
> it to 30min then make the 1hr version.

The problem with that is that by the time you get around to the second version, it'll probably be stale. I'm more of the "Finish the work, learn, move on" school.


www.derekmok.com

on the first one. I should just go thru it and cross my fingers that it was right. I mean i am using my own money. I have done shorts but i am guessing this to be a much more difficult thing due to length.

We do have a script and actors for the 6 character parts. i am acting as a preditor with to geeked camera guys.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

Shooting a film 3 times seems quite a challenge... 1, as derek mok mentioned, it will grow stale- i'm used to working on a project for a short period of time, practically living it until i know every nook and cranny of the shot and storyline. Then after that, i move on... how i'll ever do anything 3 times is absolutely unimaginable. 2, you need to decide on the best length for the story- with 3 different lengths, you might just wind up with 3 completely different films. 3, the story line needs to be fairly tolerable to carry off all the elements cohesively, and i strongly believe in the old saying that 'whatever doesn't add, subtracts'...

here's a pretty cool page that has todd hayne's 'superstar:the story of karen carpenter', which was a pretty cool piece of indie film.
[illegal-art.org]

Bad video store? it's more like a pretty bad piece of governing- [www.wired.com] I'm not a fan of censorship or government regulated content, but i live in an almost totalitarian country, and it makes me almost sick to pick up a DVD with the "board of censorship" sticker on it. Cool webpages though- I'll probably order it after i'm done with my final cut level one exam. Any idea on the curriculum or what to study for the exam?

Any idea on the curriculum or what to study for the exam?

if u can afford it take a class for it. it covers alot.


it will grow stale- i'm used to working on a project for a short period of time

Have you ever seen a movie where it starts off with like this obscure steady camera style. this is the first 30min of the movie. The actors are somewhat dry but pretty good.
Then the next 30min becomes a quick cut exercise and the actors are more in character.
by the end of the movie it feels like there were 3 camera crews, 2 sets of actors, 2 directors.

i just dont want that feel and i think by doing it at least twice on the first time, one ruff short and one full makes since. you always do it better the second time.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

haha. can't afford to take a class for it- i might, for level 2.. besides, how much can you remember in 3 days?

Say, did anyone watch Zhang Yimou's 'Temptress Moon'?