Sleepless part 3

An ode to my old lover, the summer. Oh, fickle and passionate soul mate, you shall be missed.  

The cardinal cause for boredom I've been experiencing so bitterly lately, certainly arrives from the sense of impotence regarding rewards. Even the things I do right turn to shit. Even the things that should reward me financially, cause nothing but trouble. Nothing pushes you further into debt than knowing that eventually you will get a lot of money ... And then you don't get it. My most calm financial status is having no money and expecting none. That is me at my most ethereal. Because what I am really good at is making the most of what I've got. When I do shop, is for unique, expensive things that I then continue to use for a very long (and oddly rewarding) time.

I have gotten all where I am going to get with photography in this place. Certainly, I could shoot exotic, overwhelming portraits if I had traveled to overwhelming, exotic places, and the scenes of city life would shoot themselves if I lived in London or New York. I have been missing that wildly, even got very close to purchasing a city life lens (or Fuji Fix Fine x100 or however that little darling was called, which would serve as the same.) I wonder - is sliding into movies a natural path for a person who lives in a small town in the midst of pretty rural area?

I haven't done these things yet. Like always, I had to get myself into a painful boredom phase (luckily, it only lasts for about half a day and this was very conveniently on the last day of General's absence and the first day of period, so it was really truly disgustingly bad case of it), before I unscrewed into a wholly new ambition. And suddenly, if predictably, whole new parts of my brain come into action.

How does one make a movie? How does one make a good movie? (Is this sounding awfully like the first few times normal people have sex? It had to be perfect, though it's usually kind of awkward ... And then slowly you get to the phase when it comes natural and it's good BECAUSE it's odd and unpredictable?) 

Like all great arts, you only need three things to get things moving: the tool, the the canvas, so to say, and the message. Then, to get things done, you need a system, practice and a lot of good spirit. 

Everything else is there to make things easier and will catch up with you over time.

Like I said, I am really good at managing the most of what I've got.

And also, I am very fast learner, self taught, and very quickly the things I do become very embarrassing to me - by the time they are published, I know so much, I really could have done that a lot better. This is in my opinion the vital blood flow of progressive creativity. Upgrade. My favorite exhibitions are always the Opus Magni...thingies. (Fuck me if I can put that in proper Latin form halfway down the first coffee...) Opium Magnum? That sounds very wrong on many levels.

Anyhoo - the collections of art displayed as chronologically created - what someone did at the start and what someone did at the finish with decades spanning in the midst. Paintings especially can make for a good show regarding this. Also books, but books vary wildly whereas painting styles, if observed systematically, show a sharp red string. 

I have done books. I loved every single one of them, making them, except for the Trips scenario, which continues to be shameful and abusive. Still, even that one was great fun while collecting the material. My mind will always look out for stuff to fit into that project, though it had done that even before they fucked up my love for travel and research. The future project will be a leap in style, if I manage to pull it through, and probably won't be as pleasant as Gorgi, though likely more critically acclaimed. (And it won't be me who takes credit, so there's a nook right there. I just want to see that book exist. It doesn't have to have my name on it. My first ambition as a ghostwriter.)

There is plenty illustration stuff I do will continue to do. And also all kinds of photography, obviously. I still haven't sucked in enough wow factor to satiate my nerdy soul.

So. Movies. The industry of film making, the ultimate entertainment industry, is probably the most rewarding and the most saturated with wannabes. If you think any retard with a cell phone can be a photographer (and their own star model), you should see how many little creeps with daddy money are making features. 

The main problem isn't the fame market, though. I am waaaaay to early in the ambition to even worry about that yet. I am now at the stage where I am learning how to pace myself during the process. I'll explain. 

My very first idea for the experimental movie was the story of a traveling girl, collecting fragments of her soul. This would be very slow, very meditative, very beautiful. I could do that almost like a long music video. I've downloaded 15 gigs of ambient sound effect from car noise to frogs in the evening, so I'd never even need an audio recording session. HOWEVER. Even just looking for the necessary actress spawned attention of people who want to play along and this inspired ideas and in turn invoked bigger ambitions. But getting ahead of myself, with the scenes and with the sets and with the props, is very dangerous. Without mileage, the only thing a newbie gets to rely on is well shaped system, and if there is too much of everything, the system will be a mess. It all all right to just get everyone together and play by ear and cut out the parts that you think are great, but that's still a mesh up, a music video material. Full length feature requires a whole lot of painstaking attention to detail - particularly technical detail. Which I only imagine how you get. I have never tried getting it. And it would be frustrating to fuck up a good project out of sheer ... Well, 

Sleepless part 2

FRAGMENTS OF PAST SOULS

Mireille travels around to places that against all odds are very familiar to her and in each she finds a shard that ultimately assembles into her image (like a doll). People in this story speak an unintelligible language or mutter. She is a passionate, free-spirited world traveler. She smokes, she photographs, she has sex, she even has to steal one of the shards from a museum.

She rates and photographs coffee? She writes her stuff in a notebook, although she also owns an iPad and other modern things. There’s a scene with her charging all her gadgets.

POTTERY SHARD - from a broken pot in an old remote farmhouse: fits as a heard in the hole of torso. This is how the story stars. She is drinking coffee in the uphill trekking cottage and her friend comes to join her. Rain stars to fall and they kiss in the ruined house doorframe. Then they explore and she fits the shard. He already knew what this was about.

CURTAIN WEIGHT - in a posh old hotel: the head of the doll. She stops and even though the hotel is quiet, the bar waiting for the end of an opera show, she asks if she may charge her batteries and places her gadgets all over the room, creating a sort of installation or a flower over the old, dark tables. They pretty much all point at the curtain weight and as she collects her things before the crowd hits, she steals the curtain weight as well. 

PART OF A PHOTO - from a road house stop: eyes fit on the face. As she hitchhikes, she meets a nice guy, a lonely businessman in the making, and after he buys her dinner in a nice hotel, they hitvthe room to have sex. While she showers, he reads her notebook, intrigued by her plan. After sex, while she is sleeping, he reads more and offers to drive her to her next imagined spot, just to see what will happen. He agrees, when he sees that it is in fact pretty much her in the photo, that her theory is correct. 

THE WIRE - that holds a chain mail in a museum together: that wire ties the limbs. She gets it by spooking the overseeing student by kissing the student and the girl shyly runs away. Later, though, the girl catches up with her and asks if she may take a photo of her first girl kiss. Mireille takes one better than the phone and asks for the email to send it, thus sharing future info. 

BIT OF DARK WOOL - she find in a bunch of rocks on a shepherds pasture: her hair. This is in a Scottish-like landscape.

she already has some of the limbs, but she finds

A HOLLOW BONE - in an amphitheatre ruins: her left forearm. She imagines herself a gladiator, losing the arm as the shield broke under a blow. She enacts this with a friend.

 Mireille is a wandering soul. She is really good at this. She even looks like someone who has the world in reins, herself in check and luck under her thumb. She is young, but not a child. She is very lovely, but not kitchy. Her face is very easy to look at, although it usually the things she is looking at that truly draw attention. see, she is a collector. We do not really yet know who or what she collects, but that much is clear. Her movement, although spontaneous and well perceived, has just this one constant.

Changing location, pace, even seasons and means of travel, we get to follow her as she meets various new and old characters - curiously, energetically, carefully or mysteriously, and at times sexually or slightly criminally (but only a little.) we start to notice that among other reasons for travel, she is drawn to certain places for reasons even she is only vaguely comprehensive of - and almost always at those places she collects and object that she finds particular in some way. We begin to notice, along with her (though this is no longer a surprise for her) that no matter what the object (or shard) originally was, it is a part of something she is putting back together.

By the end of he whole story, we get to notice she has, having gone practically all over the world or whatever, gathered enough to create a clearer picture: be it a doll or a plaque or a statue, it is an almost too obvious portrait of her. We begin to realize that she is collecting pieces of her past lives, with all the hints of their quality, into her soul as a whole. Even as the story ends, even if the doll is far from being finished, we can see that this is an excellent reason or leitmotif for a wandering soul to wander. She may even leave behind, including this life, enough for her next incarnation to repeat the adventure. 

Locations of shards, past life and companion

(in no particular order)

- an old ruined country house (a shard of pot), with Snufkin-alternative

- a road-side stop cafe (eyes from a photo on the wall) in some remote area

- something from a museum that requires stealing

Sleepless part 1

Partially, because one of my teeth is acting up (my teeth always hurt a little bit, one way or another, especially if I eat veal), or partially because I have been watching movies in which people are unable to sleep, I can't sleep. This is unfamiliar territory for me, who usually passes out around ten and dreams full throttle until at least five if not half to seven. But a hotel bed, outlandish silences, biorhythm slightly off kilter and a heavy dinner (had to try EVERYTHING) have me up at two. General is cross, because of course he can't sleep if I am not sleeping. My otherwise gentle snoring is his "the world is alright" sound. 

I am being haunted by the idea of a no-budget movie that also stars a location (like a city .. or a building in my case. Like a castle.. With a museum in it.. ).. I have never done a project of that magnitude before, mainly because it is probably not possible to do it completely alone. From how I perceive it, if you are going to make a full fledged movie, you need at least three things: a face an audience can't stop staring at, one that will make everything else in the background seem important ... A simply, relatable, but an inviting, original story with a little bit of a sexy or perky twist ... And a certain amount of focus. 

Haunted, I say, because I think I know almost exactly of the kind of movies I would want to make (and working on Redeeming Isobel had me getting very close to writing a logical, consecutive stage play, so that's similar..) I have already done a music video. I have a camera. I can edit. I know almost exactly what sort of scenes I would take (using the approach I appreciate in my fond-of low or no-budgets or movies that actually appear to be such, because they are a peephole into a very intimate happenstance (I am thinking The Station Agent, although that movie is based mainly on the overwhelming performances of the actors). 

So what would the story be? Not "Isobel", that one is a judgmental drama. I don't want that. I would want something that would also appeal to universal audience, as aiming at a Slovene audience would be like aiming to shoot your own knee. (As pleasant as it would be productive.. ) Right now I really want to go out and go to the bar and walk around, exploring as the heroes and heroines of Lost in translation and Dual do, but of course a) General would never allow me to walk alone at night and b) I am at a spa. There is nothing to explore, the bar is closed and people would be spooked if they met me. ... So that is certainly something I would want in my story. Night shots, especially moving ones, with lots of false light, are very appealing.

There would have to be a girl.. Not a surrogate for the audience and not exactly a heroine .. But I don't know who or what just yet. Somehow I would prefer to make a silent movie or a movie in which you don't really understand what is being said (like a new language?) .... hm.... than Slovene language, which isn't really all that listenable. I know that it would have to be a little bit adventurous and would want to involve at least one form of Snufkin, because the scenes where a wild child comes to meet the heroes of civilization, usually at the edge of the forest, and they are as close as siblings as they are as lovers, is present in almost all of my stories..

So... What. A crime? A mystery? A survey? A road? This, right here, right now, is the perfect place and time to write a timeless screenplay. A beginning of a great idea. Tremulous, probably, as all things I take on involve a whole lot of passion … but really fun nonetheless.

 -------------

I wonder if I would ever want to rent a digital camera as opposed to shooting everything via Marki... Though the scenes I have noticed being done just so appeal to me. But I am not sure if that is because I just happen to really love Marki. 

The plan was to write dad's autobiography this winter... I still plan to do that, even though he is fighting me (and mum is kind of jealous). I have been reading three different bios these past few weeks. One written about an admired man, another about a disdained man and the third about a bad man who did good stuff. As Fidi would say it:" You don't need to be good to be great." As experimental winter projects go, I still insist it is a good idea. 

But as beauty projects go.. Summer stuff, but perhaps even a little bit of winter idyllic... 

Hm...

Hmmm......

Okay, think. 

It's 3:3o.

Which movies do I like, considering the way they are done?

Station Agent

No

Lost in Translation

Luther 

Looking for Richard

Miami Vice

Which movies, done the same way, I hate?

Before Midnight

Boys

What do I love most about that kind of footage? Faces. Scenery. Details. Close-ups. Partially blurred frame. Light. The fact that the music and acting speak instead of the dialogue. 

There is a notion that I would find difficult to put in a book, although I really want to. It involves pretty much all of the things I wrote about (ranted about) this past hour. It would make for pretty much an amazing movie. But it is ambitious. I am not sure ambitious (and in a way hence expensive) is a good idea for a first movie, which would almost certainly never screen anywhere, yet alone pay back in any kind, shape or form. 

That's the spirit. 

 

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The first step (of about fifty thousand of them) of making a movie, part two.

There are big pluses and big minuses about casting Ape as the lead. Big pluses are: she is mesmerizingly handsome. She appears to be of thoroughly mixed nationalities. She wouldn't have to be paid the extent of our non-existing budget. She would be perfect for the role I have in mind.

Minuses: she is busy. She is far away. She is dark skinned and the retarded population of my country and this continent are subconsciously vary of non Caucasian features and wouldn't necessarily relate ... Thought that also makes for a big plus. Considering the story. My next choice would be Ivory Flame, but that's just because she is ginger and very pretty. I have no idea how she would act.

I am thinking of the exact scenes from movies that I think are unique (and exactly what I would want): in Scott's Robin Hood, there is a moment, shot almost entirely in deep dusk, when the men are planting the seed. The music is perfect and the whole shot is just excellent. In Eat Pray Love, in the beginning, the lead char is having fight with her BF and she's making the bed and the air is full of dust. I liked that a lot.

I would need a stronger computer, because mine edits movies extremely slowly. But whatever. You don't go into stories like these thinking what you could do only if ... You make gems with what you got. Of course we would certainly need a better mike and original score. And not to divorce, because projects like that take A LOT out of people ...

And fuck me, but I think I really will have to go to the dentist (even though I said I will never do that again ... Like labor, I guess?), because this is getting annoying ... First thing Monday, then. 

Where was I?

Oh, right. Budget. 

Many starter movies, that come through and people grow fond of (which I imagine is 50% of movies, other half being movies with messages) are very cute and intimate - and then the second ones are done with more money and not so cute and so intimate. I don't know if it has taken me 35 years to realize I want to be a movie maker, but it is something I have never tried, so let's try. 

I also know that by making a movie, I could make a great movie ABOUT making a movie. So, two movies. Especially if we drove around from set to set. Which we would. 

That would make for one heck of a road trip. If I had any kind of budget. But a camera and a car are a very good start.

To test this, I would have to shoot a couple of scenes that would fit in the whole later on, but would also stand alone and it would show if the idea works IRL at all? ... 

It helps if you have twenty-five years of experience is a photographer beforehand. You own the understanding (and ultimately taming) of light is almost half the victory.

Okay. So, the scene that I would shoot for the Lakmus test (not Litmus, how I've been mistakenly saying it for the past decades. Thanks, Drej, for remedying that one.) would be this:

Sitting somewhere very pretty, under a tree or some trek stop or outside a very quaint cottage pub or something, our heroine would see that the alternative to the Snufkin character would emerge from a country road or forest path to come join her. She would grin and wave and he would do the same. The chemistry between them would be hard to define, as there would be some sexual attraction, but almost none of the desire for a consistent relationship. They would simply be in tune, two otherwise completely different people. 

       They would eat or drink something of simply move on. Preferably, it would start as a sunny day and then get rainy. Thought I have a hard time making rainy cheerful. I would have to learn that.

       Anyways. They would continue on their road together for a short while. At some point, they would gravitate towards an abandoned house, a very nice old house, very small and on a very romantic location. This house would mean something to the heroine. (Probably, for working purposes, called Mireille or mire or Mi - no pun intended, Tove. Or Tove, fuck it. ). By looking at her face or their exchanged glances, you would begin to suspect this is where she or her parents were born or something. They would descent/climb to it and start to search it. Though slowly. It's possible that even at the broken door frame, especially if it started to rain by then, they would pouse and made out for a long while. 

         But Mireille would start to go through the ruin methodically, even at times flashbacking or something, to the forlorn objects. She would less search and more remember items. Except this one shard from a broken pot. She would pick that up and as Snufkin-alternative would join her, she would produce a small pouch with similar shard, put them out on a broken old table and arrange them. We would see that, although originating from completely different objects, different ages and different uses, slowly and surely the things she collects on her travels are coming together into one complete sense. 

Mum bought me this purse, this nice looking lady purse, so I wouldn't look lik a hobo. Now I look like a hobo who stole a Birkin. If I walk too quickly, shopping mall guards start to call after me.

Couple of portraits of Alexander Skarsgård, in which he isn't giving us the Blue Steel

... i. e. his usual (though probably on demand) retarded underwear model look.

And I have no idea why I am posting this now. Probably sad, cause Sarah Kennedy didn't win BINTM9. And it's very, very early.

... or as I've realized, Interview magazine has some really good photoshoots. Examples follow: (Emma Stone and Anne Hathaway...)

Two more days 'till General returns....

Am so bored I just knitted a sweater.

Though knitting after a year is one thing. Knitting with a kitten in the room is something else.

How do you know someone in the house is working with pastels (chalks)?

Oh, you know.

Well, my insomnia streak from last Friday has finally been broken. It's one thing keeping yourself perpetually under-slept and giddy, but after a gruelling menial labour with dad and a silly Chinese dinner with sis, that's another story. I made it until eleven last night, then passed out. Now I'm myself again :P