The buzzwords of the cosmos...
This kind of filming is what we at 1430 would do if we were the types who left our apartment. As it is, we are free from describing reality as a 'web'- or any other term that would then need to be quarantined in quotes lest its Ice-Nine crystalize the soft folds of our grey matter. In the same way I am sure 'FlyBoy' here (we imagine he is alluding to the 'on the wall, wouldn't I like to be' variety) is interesting in a face to face convo about as long as it takes you to realize that he actually does see in graphs and talk in angles.
Being Guerilla, and filming reality as it pretty much happens is getting harder every day. Sure, technocracy provides us with minuture mikes that we can place on trees just ahead of where we think our subjects might wander, and with cameras as small as the hand that wields them, but it has also cluttered up reality to such a degree that its almost impossible for even the most underground filmmaker to escape being commercial.
Take last night for example. We we out capturing a normal scene between two normal people- our daily bread. We'd zeroed in on this couple a few weeks prior after capturing a fantastic moment in the park (they had just left her sister's birthday party, blah blah, the web begins to catch the light) and now follow them whenever we have the chance. In time, as usual, they've grown even blinder to our presence and we've been 'sitting on their sofas' for a few weeks now.
Of course, when you work like we do, letting reality dictate the shape of the story, you never know what is going to make the final cut when the time comes to edit. We didn't know if what we were filming last night would be chaff or the heart of the matter itself. We work blind in the moment, and in the studio our hindsight is 20/20. So our only concern during filming is that the story grow naturally until we decide to harvest. But these days that growth keeps getting disturbed.
As you probably noticed this summer, the big image companies, the beers, the fast-foods, the super clearance warehouses, have been paying kids from the city to do "impromptu" live commercials. You've probably seen a group of them jump into some routine as you got off a bus or out of a train, some kind of choreographed chant and dance announcing the new price of some new thing to pile on the wagon you're dragging to hell with you. And of course, as with any minion, you can hardly blame the kids themselves, they are just the messenger. Thus the total robot voice created by the blend of their voices is made truly hideous only by the life that creeps in via their city accents, the indominatable spring of their teenage calf muscles.
Anyway I'm pretty sure these kids get paid extra if they can get themselves recorded by any outside source. I mean, when is the last time you saw a local news crew "reporting live from the scene?" There you go. So although my crew and me might be pretty much invisible to the average person walking down the street, these kids can spot what we are up to, and they're always jumping into our shots, like they did yesterday.
But yesterday was interesting because finally, after our serene street scene of the couple on a walk, our fine web of mikes, the three angles of our cameras, were disrupted by red-and-yellow-clad 'Mad Savings 'Til Thursday Crew,' the argument was (I suppose inevitably) made by some of our members that the kids themselves should be the subject of our efforts. Yea yea, obvious enough, they form a part of reality too. So anyway, I make the appropriate hand signals and we keep filming them after the Mad Crew finishes their step-inflected sales pitch.
This decision ended up paying off pretty well, but it brings me again to another way the world seems to have gotten commercial. I mean, why the fuck am I guerilla filmmaker anyway? I mean sure, some of the facial expressions and the actual word choice made by the people we began to film surprised me, as always, and then there is the constant thrill at the fact that its 'real,' but besides that, I mean, for chrissakes, I could have written the script of what we ended up filming. I could have done it typing with one hand and with my dick in the other- which is of course the exact opposite of my filmmaking ethos.
Anyway I'll just run through what happened quick, just to prove my point. So the girl we had singled out from the crew for 'some reason' decided to hitchhike home, and even accepted a ride from two scary looking truckers. Of course they don't take her home and instead drive out to the country where the co-pilot begins the requisite sexual pressuring. (When you see the short, you will see how disgustingly cliched every fucking word from his mouth was) Anyway, they pull over so the driver can try to help pin her down, and when he gets out the driver side she slips free of the co-pilot and gets out the door screaming. And of course, as you'd expect, there's an Amish farmer there with a pitchfork in his barnyard who comes running, and soon enough its a WWF battle between the Two Black Middle-Aged Truckers and the Amish Father and his 18-Year-Old-Son-Who-Hasn't-Even-Begun-Shaving, with all the women, Amish and Ad-Dancer alike, clutching together and soundtracking with screams.
It was all so cliched that as we rode the truck back into the city our crew fell once again into the old argument of whether the scientist inevitably changes his experiment by his mere presence. Some more sentimental members even brought up moments from their own lives, which hadn't been filmed and seemed to break the rote pattern of reality and blah blah blah, I am sick of it.
Being Guerilla, and filming reality as it pretty much happens is getting harder every day. Sure, technocracy provides us with minuture mikes that we can place on trees just ahead of where we think our subjects might wander, and with cameras as small as the hand that wields them, but it has also cluttered up reality to such a degree that its almost impossible for even the most underground filmmaker to escape being commercial.
Take last night for example. We we out capturing a normal scene between two normal people- our daily bread. We'd zeroed in on this couple a few weeks prior after capturing a fantastic moment in the park (they had just left her sister's birthday party, blah blah, the web begins to catch the light) and now follow them whenever we have the chance. In time, as usual, they've grown even blinder to our presence and we've been 'sitting on their sofas' for a few weeks now.
Of course, when you work like we do, letting reality dictate the shape of the story, you never know what is going to make the final cut when the time comes to edit. We didn't know if what we were filming last night would be chaff or the heart of the matter itself. We work blind in the moment, and in the studio our hindsight is 20/20. So our only concern during filming is that the story grow naturally until we decide to harvest. But these days that growth keeps getting disturbed.
As you probably noticed this summer, the big image companies, the beers, the fast-foods, the super clearance warehouses, have been paying kids from the city to do "impromptu" live commercials. You've probably seen a group of them jump into some routine as you got off a bus or out of a train, some kind of choreographed chant and dance announcing the new price of some new thing to pile on the wagon you're dragging to hell with you. And of course, as with any minion, you can hardly blame the kids themselves, they are just the messenger. Thus the total robot voice created by the blend of their voices is made truly hideous only by the life that creeps in via their city accents, the indominatable spring of their teenage calf muscles.
Anyway I'm pretty sure these kids get paid extra if they can get themselves recorded by any outside source. I mean, when is the last time you saw a local news crew "reporting live from the scene?" There you go. So although my crew and me might be pretty much invisible to the average person walking down the street, these kids can spot what we are up to, and they're always jumping into our shots, like they did yesterday.
But yesterday was interesting because finally, after our serene street scene of the couple on a walk, our fine web of mikes, the three angles of our cameras, were disrupted by red-and-yellow-clad 'Mad Savings 'Til Thursday Crew,' the argument was (I suppose inevitably) made by some of our members that the kids themselves should be the subject of our efforts. Yea yea, obvious enough, they form a part of reality too. So anyway, I make the appropriate hand signals and we keep filming them after the Mad Crew finishes their step-inflected sales pitch.
This decision ended up paying off pretty well, but it brings me again to another way the world seems to have gotten commercial. I mean, why the fuck am I guerilla filmmaker anyway? I mean sure, some of the facial expressions and the actual word choice made by the people we began to film surprised me, as always, and then there is the constant thrill at the fact that its 'real,' but besides that, I mean, for chrissakes, I could have written the script of what we ended up filming. I could have done it typing with one hand and with my dick in the other- which is of course the exact opposite of my filmmaking ethos.
Anyway I'll just run through what happened quick, just to prove my point. So the girl we had singled out from the crew for 'some reason' decided to hitchhike home, and even accepted a ride from two scary looking truckers. Of course they don't take her home and instead drive out to the country where the co-pilot begins the requisite sexual pressuring. (When you see the short, you will see how disgustingly cliched every fucking word from his mouth was) Anyway, they pull over so the driver can try to help pin her down, and when he gets out the driver side she slips free of the co-pilot and gets out the door screaming. And of course, as you'd expect, there's an Amish farmer there with a pitchfork in his barnyard who comes running, and soon enough its a WWF battle between the Two Black Middle-Aged Truckers and the Amish Father and his 18-Year-Old-Son-Who-Hasn't-Even-Begun-Shaving, with all the women, Amish and Ad-Dancer alike, clutching together and soundtracking with screams.
It was all so cliched that as we rode the truck back into the city our crew fell once again into the old argument of whether the scientist inevitably changes his experiment by his mere presence. Some more sentimental members even brought up moments from their own lives, which hadn't been filmed and seemed to break the rote pattern of reality and blah blah blah, I am sick of it.
posted by M.N.V.L. Local 1430 at 2:48 AM
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