The wind is blowing gently through the reverse side of the blinds. The blinds tap ever so slightly against the window pane, virtually inaudible. He sits staring off into the distance, back against the bed post. The room moves unnoticeably around him. He is in the zone. Thinking. A bead of sweat rolls down his face. He catches it on his tongue just before it reaches the bottom of his lower lip. He continues to stare out into nothing, nowhere. His fingers rattle. Almost as if in an attempt to reestablish that they are still connected to his hand. He glances down at his feet. His right foot wiggles, slowly. Still connected. The clock strikes 3 a.m. Another bead of sweat rolls down his face. This time he does not catch it. It splashes against his bare chest. He winces, slightly. The poison has begun to take hold. His eyes move in the direction of the empty glass sitting next to him. His heart begins to speed up. He is unphased by the sudden increase. He breathes in and breathes out. In and out. His hand reaches for the air. It pauses as if grasped by the hand of another. His eyes stare up at no one, nothing. His hand begins to recline downwards. His heart slows. He never blinks. His hand continues downward. He breathes in. His hand rest at his side. He breathes out, never blinking. His heart stops. He never blinks. His eyes stare off into nowhere, nothing.
I showed my short film "The Dead Pass Swiftly" a few short hours ago. I'm both happy and mad at the response. I'm excited because I got the opportunity to show my hard work to an audience. After the fest was over, I got the occasional "good film," "nice job," I liked your film," etc, but the comments, though appreciated were bittersweet. Although I do realize the contest was rather open-ended in the types of films it chose to display, I'm not at all convinced that all three films that won deserved their awards. My film definitely had the strongest story out of the bunch and for it not to get recognized as such, I'm a bit deflated. More than that though, I'm also saddened by the lack of support I received from the black students at my school. I invited a host of people to come and frankly they didn't show up. For whatever reason (and I hope the reasons are good) they DID NOT come. I'm mad because I show my support for others but when it comes to something that I ask they dropped the ball. This problem is not new to the black community though. Support is lacking and has been lacking within the black community (at least on a large scale) for some time now. I find it rather sad that we don't come out and support our own.
When I say support I don't mean telling me that you hope the film does good or you wish me luck. That's not support. Support means getting off your ass, coming out and showing your face at the event. Spike Lee faces the same dilemma within the black community. People don't realize you can't and should not always wait for his movies to come out on DVD. The way the studio measures his success is how well he does at the box office. So yeah, you might actually like Spike but by not actually going to the theater when his movies come out, you're hindering and lessening the amount of money studios are willing to give him because people aren't going to the theaters. I'm hurt because I really wanted black folks to attend. To be honest, more white people came out that I invited than did black people. Not to say that I didn't appreciate their support but there's something to be said when your own race supports you. I didn't and I don't feel like blacks on this campus share a sense of community when it comes to our own. There are many reasons for this, but I'll spare your eyes the strain of reading all that I would have to say. I will say that this problem is bigger than the lack of support that was shown tonight though. Much bigger. The support is lacking within the black community as a whole. Something has to give because this shit has to stop. It's frustrating folks to be quite honest...
Not to take anything away from the "films" that were entered into the festival though. Jesse Berger's film "The City Green," that won top honors of the night, was well deserved. The cinematography in the film was excellent. Jesse is a great up and coming as well as established director coming up through the ranks. I refuse to give any other film that won the least amount of acknowledgement though, period. Story wise, I felt like my film was the strongest in the fest, but when you have people that don't understand where I'm coming from...what can you do? It sucks folks, to be quite honest I'm upset about how it went down. I put in a lot of hard work on the film and to have it ill received it's a bit disheartening. I feel like the film was written off because of some of the language that was used. I used the word nigga in the film a few times, but that was true to my situation growing up and current. That's how people I know speak. It just is. Not saying it's right, but that's the way it is. When the word was first used I heard a few of the white people in the audience gasp or immediately whisper to one another. That in and of itself let me know that they didn't and possibly wouldn't understand the film. I guess it's an issue of ethnicity. Different races having different interpretations of one another and that sort of thing. It's an issue that's been brought up on more than one occasion from some of the greatest human beings to ever live and I'm sure I'm not the only person that's ever or will ever be stung by the race thing.
One good thing that's coming out of this is that I'm hungry again. A lot more hungry than I've been in awhile. I have to get better and I will. I really want to prove that a black film with an all black casts can be universal, influential, and important to all races. Back to the woodshed. All aboard the Train To Midnight.
Finally, after a week long hiatus from the rest of society, I've finished the trailer to my film "The Dead Pass Swiftly." I'm super excited about how it turned out. My buddy Dave Brown gave me a lot of good advice about how to go about editing the trailer. I was a bit apprehensive (actually, it was more than a bit) about some of the suggestions. In the original, I had short snippets that included commentary, but Dave didn't think that the commentary was necessary. He mentioned how powerful imagery can be. I wasn't trying to hear it. I kept the commentary until the very last minute. It really didn't fit in with the scheme of the trailer so, with tears, I cut it out entirely. But, I'm super excited about how well it turned out. My first trailer for one of my films! It's like March Madness in February. I can hear Dickie V in the background "The excitement BABY! America are you SERIOUS!!!" The film was scored by a friend of Dave's. Sadly, I cannot remember his name (if you're reading this you have my sincerest apologies) but I hope to work with him on future projects. He's a really talented composer. Hope you all enjoy the trailer as much as I enjoyed putting it together :) Good fright and all aboard the Train To Midnight.
Hello passengers. I trust you had a good sleep in Love Lost. It seems as though we are a few passengers short. I suppose they are lost in the town of Lost. Woe to those lost in the town of Lost. For they will surely wander the streets trying to find a way...to nowhere. As the conductor is tossing logs in the engine, allow me to tell you a story. A story of horror. I watched "Apocalypse Now" (directed by Francis Ford Coppola) yesterday in my Religion and Film class. In all honesty, at first, I thought the movie was rather boring. Though I do like war movies. Black Hawk Down and Saving Private Ryan (just to name a couple) are two excellent war films. In all honesty, I didn't realize how much I loved the film until the end. The plot of the film is for Captain Benjamin L. Willard (Martin Sheen) to hunt down and kill a fellow American soldier: Colonel Walter E. Kurtz (Marion Brand0). As a side note, a young Lawrence Fishburne takes the role of a 17 year old soldier. He gives us definite glimpses of the Fishburne audiences will come to know and love. Kurtz is believed to have gone insane and has sustained himself deep in the jungle as king of a tribe of "jungle dwellers" as I call them. The movie is set during the time of the Vietnam War. The irony is that though the war is going on, Captain Willard is sent on a dummy mission as a scape-goat to kill an American soldier all for the fact that the army wants him dead. The voice over dialogue in the film is of extreme excellence. Martin Sheen gives an excellent performance as well.
What I most like about the film...is Kurtz. In the beginning, Kurtz is established as this insane figure who's completely broken from the U.S. Army and, because of this, needs to be terminated. Coppola takes us on a journey through the horrors of Nam, deep into the heart of darkness (in relation to the novel by Joseph Conrad of the same name). When Captain Willard finally catches up with Kurtz, the audience is introduced to a far more introspective being whose reflections on society has caused him to seek a greater good, but also to delve deep within himself to manifest the darkness within. A darkness which he refers to as "The Horror."
It was in this that I found a sort of serenity. The words of Kurtz resignated a truth that I discovered through the eyes, lips, and heart of Kurtz. It isn't I that am evil, but it is the Horror within myself, within every individual that makes us evil. I would juxtapose that Horror next to the original sin. It takes something, something deep inside of human beings to be able to perform the actions that Kurtz performed. The ordering of the killing of thousands/millions of innocent individuals. But, in retrospect isn't that what religion has done. Haven't many died in the name of and against religion? Though Kurtz calls this evil, this will to destroy "Horror", couldn't that evil, that Horror, also be called "The Goodness" or "The Light?" At one point, Kurtz even utters, "You have no right to call me a murderer, you have a right to kill me...you have a right to do that, but you have no right to judge me..."
For my killing, for those that I have murdered...you have no right to judge me. What I see, those that I have destroyed...though you do not understand and may never understand...you have no right to judge me. It would be well served to say that if Kurtz is a murderer, then we are all murderers. At some point in our lives, we have killed someone. By thoughts unwritten, deeds undone, and goals unachieved. I once heard a minister say, "There are certain people who can only get saved through the sound of one specific person's voice." Not because God could not save them, but because he ordained someone to go through similar circumstances so that that man's testimony would save him that was lost. If that man, having given up on himself and thus life, never testifies than another could never be saved. Thus that man is a murderer. That goes for anything in life. We are all assigned specific tasks in life. Whatever that might be and if we do not carry out those tasks...we are all murderers...."The Horror...The Horror" Alright passengers, I think the engine is warm. It is time that we exit the town of Lost. Let us journey deeper into the jungle. We shall arrive at the heart of darkness someday, or eternally wander the chambers of sorrow. All aboard the Train to Midnight.
Time to slow the train a bit. We've arrived at the station in Love Lost. It is here that I shall write my first, but probably not last, take on the infamous four letter word LOVE. No idea what this word means. I try to stay optimistic about it but the truth is, sometimes (more often than not) I feel totally incapable of following through on what that word actually means. I'm not like most people though. I don't fear love. I fear the repercussions of what love means, but I don't fear love in and of itself. Sometimes, when I sit and think about love, I feel I'll never really know what love, true love, is. And, what is TRUE love and who came up with the concept that all love couldn't be true love? I'm digressing now, a tactic used in the procrastination of punching these keys and writing out how I really feel about love. Funny thing happened yesterday. I was watching a video of a woman. And the video showed the woman in a compromising state under the "control" of a man. It was in that moment that I viewed women as nothing more than a thing. A thing that had to be controlled. Not exactly inhuman but not fully human. Like they're here to be controlled by men. Even with the independent women of the 21st century, watching this woman, this one woman being compromised by a man really struck a chord in me. In combination with an essay that I studied in my Film Studies class, I watched a woman, which is especially common in today's society, being controlled under a watchful gaze of both the male and the audience. In a term called fettishistic scopophilia, used by Laura Mulvey in her essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," the male, afraid of the real threat a woman poses because of her lack of the phallus (a penis), men tend to break the woman down into parts so that the woman is no longer seen as a WOMAN but rather a piece of meat that the male is able to mold and shape into anything he so pleases. To bring my argument back to center, while watching the video, my perceptions of women and love turned into this blah of a portrait that circled around the idea that love does not exist. Rather there is only submissiveness to the man and through this, and this only, can true love (or a true heterosexual union) exist. I say this because if a woman poses a threat to a man, the only way a man can TRULY love a woman is if he is able to assert his dominance over her and loom over his prize like a hunter would his kill. Love. I hardly know you and yet I know you well. Like strangers on the dance floor we twirl in intimacy never once stopping to ask who we are, then, as strangers on a train we depart never to see one another again. Love. Alright passengers, it seems the conductor is a bit tired. We'll have to remain in Love Lost for the night. Surely you do not mind for I see some of you have brought your female counterparts along for the journey. Be careful, do not wander the darkness, for there are many dangers that lurk within the streets of Love Lost. If you are afraid, take my hand. We shall walk the streets of the Lost...together.
Good night guys and ghouls. I had to open with the infamous line from "Tales from the Crypt." So, I have good news and I have semi-bad news. Let's start with the bad news. As I stated in my post yesterday, I'd been having some trouble transporting the video for the Hip Hop Aids Fashion show from my computer onto a dvd. The footage kept glitching around 8 minutes. Sadly enough, I had to "kill my darlings." Shout out to Berger for blogging about what the line means. I'll give the simplified version. "Cut the fluff." The only sad thing was that the "fluff" that I cut wasn't fluff at all, they were two good bites I used from interviews. The dvd burned successfully after I cut the two bites though. I switched around a couple of the interviews to increase the fluidity. I can honestly say that I'm satisfied with the final product. I sprinkled some tear jerker music throughout the video to increase the level of intimacy with the audience. We'll see what happens on D-Day (aka Friday) though.
The good news is I've FINALLY been able to get back to work on my short film "The Dead Pass Swiftly." After a two week hiatus, I'm back :) I'm super excited about the project. Even though I've been away for two weeks, I'm bringing even more knowledge about film and editing to the table. I'm confident that this will only make the film that much stronger and thus more potent. For the next month or so, I'll be in my lair (aka The Studio) editing. I'm excited to see the finished product. I got a guy named Dave Brown that works here at the college helping me with the audio. He'll be helping me fix some of those annoying hisses that sometimes accomodate video when using an external mic. He'll also be helping me score the film. The film has an urban feel, but I've gotten into jazz as of late, specificall John Coltrane. I'll try to find some way to combine both the urbanity (if that's a word) and a more soulful (jazz) feel for the music. I really want people to fully emerse themselves into the film. After all, that's the hope for all filmmakers. That for a second, maybe a brief moment, that the spectator forgets themselves in the physical only to be reawoken on the screen. Excitement baby!
I've put together two scenes so far. I have to tighten up the scenes that I've edited and link them into the sequence that I've begun to form. It's a really time consuming process, but I wouldn't trade it for the world. It's my passion. Looks like I'll be burning the midnight oil yet again tonight. A small sacrifice in the greater scheme of pushing my art forward, peace.
I love film. Everything about the filmmaking experience from start to finish has a special place in my heart. Film is the medium that alows me to hold a mirror to society in hopes that, for better or worse, they see something of themselves within my art. I'm a grounded individual seeking to do more good than bad in this world cause in the end those are the people who are truly remembered.
