And…

…we’re back! Well, almost. Give it a couple weeks and all of you lovely readers (Mom, Dad, and the other fella) will be getting more updates from us. This place has been quiet for too long.

Until then, we bid thee adieu. Sweet dreams, gentle readers.

AFI Top 100: Citizen Kane

How do you review a movie like Citizen Kane? In almost any list you check, it appears very near or at the top as the best movie ever made. The idea that there can be a #1 film seems a bit flawed, but it’s enough to pique one’s curiosity. We both went into this film expecting something akin to It’s a Wonderful Life on steroids.

And, in a way, it was. Citizen Kane is (to mightily truncate the plot) the story of a man’s life, and his search for a little peace in the world. Created by first time director Orson Welles in 1941, the film was revolutionary on many fronts. Although Citizen Kane received good reviews from critics, it was a box office flop (barely making back it’s budget, much less turning a profit). The film was virtually forgotten until it was released in Europe in 1946. There, it began its steady arc towards being remembered as a “Great Film”.

But enough background info. To avoid the risk of being completely out of our league with this review, we’ve chosen to keep the questions simple. Here we go:

Did you like Citizen Kane?
Most definitely. While some of the plot devices were a tad cryptic, the overall story is captivating. It’s hard to believe Orson Welles is only 26 in this picture…the sheer power of his acting makes it impossible to look away from many of the more dramatic moments. The overall look of the film was a real treat as well.

What stood out specifically?
First and foremost, the dialogue. While many older movies feel as if you’re watching an endlessly rehearsed play, Citizen Kane’s dialogue moves naturally, with people interrupting each other, obscuring lines, and giving the feel of improv. Here’s a great example.

As with all black and white movies, lighting the scenes is everything visually. The cinematographer on Citizen Kane took black and white to an art form. You watch just one scene, and you know every nuance of the lighting was carefully planned, like a painting.

Will I like Citizen Kane?
That depends. Do you have advance tickets to Transformers 2? Have you seen Twilight multiple times? If so, this film isn’t for you. However, if you’re even casually interested in filmmaking as art, you’ll eat this movie up. Plus, don’t you want to know what people mean when they say “Rosebud”?

Sum up this movie. Now.
Citizen Kane is a landmark film that isn’t easy to digest, but that everyone should try at least once. While we can’t say we enjoyed this film more than all other films, we can say we were captivated by it. It’s brilliant.

AFI’s Top 100: Lawrence of Arabia

Night 1:
So Nate and I decided to start going through AFI’s (American Film Institute) top 100 movies of all time. The idea is to get a grasp on some of the classics and compare  their direction styles, cinema-photography, acting—you catch my drift. We were both surprised to see how few we’ve actually seen. Our first: Lawrence of Arabia, coming in at a respectable #5.  We’ve heard a lot of talk, but neither of us has seen it…this should be good.

Let me say before we go any further: this movie is LONG! Very LONG; the running time is 4 hours. So don’t jump into it unprepared (like we did).

We made it through 2 hours our first night. And we enjoyed it. I loved the long camera shots! One scene at the beginning of the movie went 4 minutes without cutting or changing angles…we would never get away with that today. Another thing I loved was the epic shots with the tent cities and all the horses and camels. There wasn’t CGI back then – all the elements had to be built and put in to place just as you saw it. Pretty cool. Time consuming!

But what is up with all the eyeliner? Peter O’Toole (and others in the cast) looked a bit like Captain Jack Sparrow’s albino lovechild (in Nate’s interpretation).
Like many old movies, it had an intermission about half way through, so we took the hint and decided to finish the movie another night.

Night 2: Both of us were excited to see the rest of the film, as the first half had impressed us (especially for it’s time). Sadly, the second half began to fall apart quickly. (I’m not just saying this to be different). They tried to change Lawrence’s entire personality in just a couple of scenes. He went from daring and adventuresome to whiny and egotistical, seemingly out of nowhere. The story got weird as well; there was a scene where he gets beaten and raped by a bunch of guys (you don’t see it—it’s very dubious and discrete—but it’s definitely implied) and then decides to give up his marauding ways and live a quiet life, only to change his mind a scene later with a vicious killing rampage where he “leaves no prisoners.” The second half for both Nate and I seemed rushed, (and it’s 2 hours long!!) confusing, and ultimately, disappointing. However, you should judge it for yourselves. It has often been called one of our (if not the) greatest films in history, so rent it and give us your opinion!

Wrap up: First half was epic and captivating. The second half was a disappointment and left us wondering why it was on AFI’s top 100 list. (# 5 for that matter). Either way, it was a good experience to sit down and watch. Next on our list: Citizen Kane.

Delved From the Archives

One of the most important bridges from script to film is the storyboarding process. We utitilized storyboarding to get our ideas for different shots and lighting on the Myst Audtion Project, but we both wish we could’ve done more. Any project we tackle in the future will definitely be storyboarded throughout the process.

Anyways, here’s a few storyboards from The Audtion Project. Thanks to Rick for his help.

When Life Gives You Lemons…

6:45 am: Who Brought Muffins?

So Saturday was crazy. We got up at the crack of 6am, met at a predetermined location, and piled into our collective vehicles. There was a lot of optimism among the Delve Team members.

7:30 am: The Mountains Sure Are Perty!

We had planned everything to a tee. Our team knew where they were supposed to be, at what time there were supposed to be there, and when to move on. The race wasn’t to begin for 2 hours, so we had time to get interviews, traveling footage, and some timelapse stuff.

9:15 am: Go Time.

Radios…camera…ACTION. Eli was on top of the mountain, ready to shoot the start of the race. All the rest of us were waiting impatiently at the Nordic transition. 2009 was a record year for the PPP: over 3,000 athletes participated (more than double the previous year). Needless to say, there was a lot of adrenaline flying around.

Each athlete was assigned a group with a different start time, based on whether they were in a team, what age group they belonged to, and their skill level. Greg Salciccioli (the hero of our film) wasn’t set to begin until 10:20, so we had plenty of time to catch the other athletes doing their thing. This early footage was great; the crowd was into it, and the athletes were feeding off the crowd.

10:24 am: Derailment.

The first leg of the PPP is the Alpine stage. Racers start about 150 yards from their skis. When the whistle is blown, it’s a madman’s dash to see who can get to their skis first. We caught this part (beautifully) both with Eli’s camera, and with the headcam Greg was wearing. They were off!

Greg was one gate into the race when his contact lens floated off his eye, completely blurring his vision. He caught an edge (a fancy way to say he went out of control), and veered into the path of scores of weekend warriors. He went down, just as another skier slid his ski across Greg’s right hand, instantly severing the tendons and cutting to the bone. Blood was everywhere. Thanks to adrenaline, Greg made his way down the mountain, and down to the transition area.

We were waving him in when we saw the blood. It was bad. Really bad. None of us had ever seen a laceration that deep or severe before. And we knew that our plans had changed. Nate took his dad to the hospital, while the film crew regrouped. We needed a Plan B.

10:45 am: Providence. Redemption. You get it.

Thankfully, Greg’s close friend Dave was also participating in the race. Isaac and Tyler jumped on the snowmobile, raced down the Nordic trail, and found Dave. Without alarming him (hopefully) too much, we let him know what happened, and that he was our man. Amazingly, Dave got on board, things fell together, and the rest of the race went as smoothly as we could have hoped.

The footage we got was epic, in spite of our early setback. We look forward to putting the rest of the pieces into place, so you can enjoy the end result.

To check out more pictures, click here.

PPP Update

Well, the Pole, Pedal, Paddle is over…and we all learned a lesson: regardless of how much painstaking planning goes into a project, life will throw you a curveball. A huge curveball. But more on that later.

I just wanted to let everyone know that we were at PPP ‘09, we did film it, and it will be epic. We’re taking this next two week period to go through our footage, and decide what kind of story we’ll be telling. We’ll have more updates soon…

Oh, What Could Have Been…

You would never know it from watching our Myst Audition Video, but there was something very special to us that we had to leave out…the island castle of K’veer. Planning and building took up many precious hours, but in the end we just had to leave it out.

Imagine a dramatic fly-by of the D’ni lake, out over the orange water, and past the massive monolith of K’veer. Sounds good, right? It did to us too. The lake was going to be created by pumping water directly into the cave. We even bought a florescent dye that made the water glow orange when lit with a UV light source.

To create a miniature like K’veer, you need modeling foam: the kind Weta used in LOTR’s to create the Minas Tirith, Minas Morgul and Orthanc. The problem, however, is cost: $2,000 per 8’x4’x3’ block, and each block weighs 400-600 lbs! It took 6 guys to move just one block…and we’re all really really ripped. ;)

After a little research we found a company named General Plastics (near Seattle) that manafactured this stuff. Thinking myself industrious, I called them and explained that I was a young filmmaker in need of some help with a project. After a week or so a guy called back and said he had two blocks of foam that I could pick up (evidently they set some aside every year and donate them to schools etc.). I hitched on my trailer, jumped in my truck, and headed north (10 hrs round trip). When I got there I was shocked to see that the two blocks were full size 500 lb. monsters! They had just gifted me $4000 worth of foam (I still don’t know why but they ROCK!).

We found the drawing of K’veer in the Book of Atrus, and Nate took that concept and created a scaled blueprint, which was used to start carving the island out of foam. Our thought was to use your average wood axe, take a good squint, and chip away at the foam block. Surprisingly, this worked fairly well.  Once we had created a rough shape, a sander created the details. After hours of scribbled math equations and clogged nostrils, we had our base model. Andy Carillo (a man of many talents) came over and started the delicate work of carving out the doors and windows. Then things started going wrong…

(1) The dye we used to create the glowing water turned out to work only in small doses. We tried making several hundred gallons glow, without success; it wasn’t bright enough. Then (imagine our surprise) the Forest Service decided they weren’t happy with us pumping a thousand gallons of dyed water into the cave.

(2) The water truck we were going to use to pump the water in cost $400 to rent for the day, and because it was winter here in Oregon it had to be a heated water truck (to keep the water from freezing).

(3) Our airbrush guy, who was going to take K’veer from a foam island/castle into a perfect rock fortress (with all the detail fit for a D’ni Lord), kept pushing his date further and further back.

It came to a head when we had the rest of the Audition video complete; all that stood in our way was the K’veer sequence. After assessing the monetary cost and delays to production we realized (much to our pain and anguish) that we were going to have to let our dreams of a D’ni lake and K’veer castle fly-by be laid to rest. However, we wanted to share the pictures and story with you because it deserves to be seen and heard. (Maybe it’s just our way of saying good-bye to the project.)

Tonight’s Forecast: Massive Brainstorming, Light Hail

Get stoked, because tonight’s our initial planning session for the PPP ‘09 documentary. Getting all the shots we need is going to be a bear, as there are 5 specific events that take place sequentially, so planning will be key. As luck would have it, we’ll be the proud bearers of 3 press passes, which will allow us to sidestep the crowd, and stay directly with the athletes. This will ensure you see every hair-raising, bone-crunching, pride-crushing, gasp-enducing shot we can capture. Good stuff.

We’re also excited to bring Tyler Roemer on board (who’s lovely mug you can see above). Depending on how many cameras we can get ahold of (we’d like 3), Tyler will either be shooting motion or still photography. Can’t wait to see what ideas tonight’s brainstorming will bring. Watch out for hail.