Today I received an email from the National Film Board of Canada. It seems they have started a new socially conscious content website.
"We are compiling media about cycling issues and social change - in a dossier called Critical Mass: Wheels of Change. I saw your short doc on Youtube (Put the Fun Between Your Legs: Women Who Ride) and loved it!! I immediately thought that this video would make a great addition to our Critical Mass: Wheels of Change dossier."
This is very exciting because this is first hand the future of filmmaking and relaying ideas to the mass public, best of all it is completely participatory.
The most integral aspect of documentary filmmaking is getting to know your subject(s), really getting to know them. Spending time together, without cameras, gaining trust, forming relationships. Roman Safiullin did this when he shot his film, Outside Orlando. The story goes back two years ago. We had shared an intro to production class at the University of Central Florida. He saw my attention to detail in my editing and it stuck with him when a year later he asked me to edit his Documentary Workshop film about the homeless of east Orange County, FL.
Roman began volunteering with a group of young people whom I and my friends started called East Orlando Food Not Bombs, a horizontally structured anti-war, anti-racist, anti-sexist and anti-capitalist organization dedicated to the redistribution of food with the mantra "Food is a right, not a privilege" This is where Roman met his subjects and spent time with in their camps in the woods surrounding suburban east Orlando.Completed in the Spring of 2007, the run time is 7 minutes as screened at the UCF end of the year film screenings.
I was a little worried about moving to New York. Would I be able to settle in? Would the pace be too fast? Too much? As I type this in a cafe in the lower east side of Manhattan I have to say that I feel as comfortable as ever. I feel like I live here already.
This is my best friend Matt. We grew up together on the same block in south FL. We are walking through Williamsburg Brooklyn.
In the summer of 2007, myself and a creative partner of mine, Roman, where brought on one of the first Master of Fine Arts feature films to be made from the new program at the University of Central Florida. Director Danny Daneau, while in pre-production, approached us in hopes of creating a web-based episodic documentary series to be aired on the production's website.
Roman and I spent two days driving from our home Orlando, FL to Kanab, Utah, a small town in southwest Utah. Upon arriving we spent about a month with the crew in the Perry Lodge Hotel where we all slept and lived, and our two locations, the Heritage House and the Paria desert. This is the largest project both Roman and I have ever encountered, with over 50 hours of footage we face the challenge of honing in on the themes of the footage and creating short episodes, keeping an audiences attention to continue watching as the series develops. This is something independent feature films are utilizing in the marketing stages of filmmaking and is certainly the future of film marketing.
We are currently finishing up with post production with an expected premiere early July. You can see a teaser trailer here or on the production website.
It is terribly difficult to try and describe myself without explaining the music I listen to. We listen to music because of the emotional connection made between listener and sound, much like the emotional connection made between two people. But can this be substituted? Like thousands of other introverted, quiet, shy and emotionally wrought individuals around the world, The Smiths have struck a chord deep into our hearts and minds. People often do not understand the unbreakable connection to this music, Morrissey's poetry, Marr's riffs. It is even troubling for me to express with words. There is no denying the importance of this band in my life, since I started listening five years ago, it has truly shaped the individual I am, for better and for worse. I have no regrets.
It was fall semester, 2007, when I was first introduced to a filmmaker whom I immediately came to be informed, influenced and relate to. His name is Ross McElwee and the film was Sherman's March. McElwee had set out to film a documentary about the route General Sherman took through the south during the civil war and too see how the south is still effected by it. What happened along the way changed the film entirely, McElwee began to film the women he had met along the way and documenting the failures of his love life. This struck me because of the way I felt, and still feel, about the lack of a relationship, a companion even, and the toll it takes on my ability to express creativity.
During this time I was in search of a topic, an idea for my documentary workshop film. After seeing this film in class and once again later that night I knew I needed to make a film that explored my feelings about the south and how empty I felt. The next semester I set out to make my film, The South Lost the Civil War. I traveled with my grandmother to the Mississippi Delta, the flattest area of Mississippi with roots in rich cotton plantations. My grandmother was born there, raised and attended college, but left for Florida when she married soon after college. Our family had owned slaves there and my feelings toward this have always been filled with guilt and shame for the south. Upon visiting and shooting my film, a greater confusion and isolation engulfed me. Unlike Ross, I had met no one of my age, let alone female.
UPDATE
I found some clips of Sherman's March on youtube. First is the first few minutes of the film, followed by a segment entitled This is Pat.
During my four years at UCF, I became sort of the unofficial video documenter of an organization I belonged to, Students for a Democratic Society. When I begun to hone in on documentary filmmaking my junior year I had all of this footage at my disposal.
This film, Zoned Out, documents the trials and tribulations of a radical student organization and their fight for free speech on their college campus. The film is 35 minutes, the longest film I had ever made. I hope you enjoy.
