I managed to make it out to the Brooklyn Botanical Garden the other day (it's Free on Tuesdays you New Yorkers!) and I really have no excuse since I literally live across the street. The sky was beautiful (pre-Hurricane Irene) so I thought I'd take my camera along. I did a little HDR using a simple version of Photomatix on the photo of the statue. Yes, that's corn at the BBG in the 2nd photo.
And I couldn't leave without subjecting M to a portrait on a tiny bridge.
I managed to find myself surrounded by a room full of talented filmmakers last night when Alexandra Roxo organized a Women in Film career night at G.E.M.S., Girls Educational and Mentoring Services, a much needed organization for girls in NYC who, through different circumstances, found themselves caught in the brutal commercial sex trafficking game. There turned out to be more speakers than girls there, but hopefully our messages of 'You can realllly do this too if you want' came through to those girls that might be interested. Each of us were able to briefly tell our stories and what it is we do. I found myself really wanting to make them FEEL that this is hard, but possible. No one in your family has to have done anything in film before, you don't have to go to film school. You just have to have the desire and the perseverance to keep working towards it, to keep asking questions, wondering and paying attention. And I'm sure most of these girls have had to overcome more difficult tasks already.
I must say it was fun and inspiring for me to sit and listen to my colleagues. The vibe was warm and encouraging and the interests were varied. Afterwards, there was dinner and a bubble blowing contest (amongst some of the filmmakers, not the girls mind you). All in all it was an excellent night.
A run down of the wonderul women there so maybe you masses of people following me can also be inspired:
These were taken a few years ago near my old apartment on a snowy night with my ol digital Olympus EVolt500
I was sprucing up my hard drive today and came across some old photographs and thought I'd play a bit with photoshop again. There's something about old photographs that I respond to (No, these aren't ACTUALLY old...they're from 2009 maybe? But they're also not Hipstamatic. Thank you.). There's something in the format of old photos. There's something in the grain and desaturation and in the impromptu snapshot. The framing isn't perfect; one couldn't see the final product of their efforts until long after. There was no deleting a picture that wasn't perfect. Pictures reflected people who weren't smiling perfect smiles, there was less than perfect exposure, and there was a real documentation left after all of it. I remember taking these pictures and the one I like the most now (the first one of the handles in a bus) is one that I was very frustratingly trying to get in focus while the bus bounced down the street hitting more bumps in the road than it was missing. It's a good reminder that everything is relative, right? The right photograph presented in the right medium in the right instance can make all the difference.
Well, my apologies for my absence. I have been dooooing things I swear.
1) My Sony F3 came in to Abel Cine early so I was buying that (and dealing with convincing the bank to let me have access to MY money. Ugh.) With many thanks to Mark Schwartzbard for tips and DBA/ EIN details. It is a fantastic camera and I am really really happy with it so far! I'm eager to keep playing with it so if you have any projects you wanna do LET ME KNOW!
2) The first part of July was spent navigating the 7 day short film I shot "TIED UP" with Jose Venutolo Directing, a project of Brady Kirchberg origins. We had a lot of, ahem, things thrown at us...an eastern European building super who started carting our equipment off premises and eventually cut the power to the apartment we were shooting in - a nice, reasonable man ha...lost actors and lost locations. Some of the wrenches thrown were par for the course, some seemed to require superhuman patience and ingenuity. Nonetheless there are always lessons learned, we persevered, and we wrapped at about 430am on a Friday morn with some really great stuff!
Brady and Jose are working on the editing already and the plan is to head to NICE DISSOLVE for post. The producer set up a demo session with them last week and their facilities are pretty great! They're tucked away in a rather booming side street of Bushwick. While the studio itself is small, the package is extensive. We'll be using their DaVinci Resolve suite with real-time playback. I'm looking forward to it. Here are some quick stills from the TIED UP footage:
3) Other updates include Beach going! My fantastic friends and I headed to Jacob Riis for a much needed cool off! Beach, snacks, beers and vodka slushies are good for the soul.
4) This is probably obvious, but I love Netflix. More specifically Netflix Instant Play. I watched "Carnal Knowledge" (1971) a few nights back and it is a gem I knew nothing about. The cast alone is reason enough for you to watch it. If you love relationship analysis and gender studies then you've got yourself a golden ticket here. Jack Nicholson, Arthur Garfunkel, Candice Bergen (Yes, she was a full blown sex symbol in her day. For those of us that only grew up watching her in Murphy Brown this is fun to see), Ann-Margaret (wowza), and Rita Moreno power pack this film. The style of Mike Nichols' direction (The Graduate, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - so he has some experience with this genre :) adds an element of flash without taking away from a strong cast that can carry a heavy film and still come out as a bit of a comedy. Here's the original NY Times review from '71 (I also love the internet):
There are many great scenes, but this is definitely one of the best:
Another film I saw during my absence on the ol' blog was "Bad Timing" (1980) on a recommendation of a friend. Another astute, but slightly more abstract, relationship study starring Art (he lost the -hur by this point) Garfunkel (Some say this film might have helped end his acting career as his character is pretty dark here. I mean it's not like HE'S ACTING or anything here people. Guffaw.) and Theresa Russell. Harvey Keitel also plays a key role as a suspicious detective. This Nicolas Roeg flick needs 2 watches at least.
It's definitely not my favorite of Roeg's, but it's engrossing and fun to decipher. If you like Roeg's structure in general, it seems one would like this films as well. Theresa Russell gives a really great performance, but I grow tired of female characters (which is of course not her doing) that long to be free while having a connection with someone sans being controlled by them. Yet, they keep succumbing to the "need" to please said person and so do what they know they cannot sustain. They stay. I suppose this is one aspect that makes the film engaging, though many times it just seems a byproduct of the desires of the writer.
