A couple of weekends ago, I tried something new. I made a film. Well, I didn’t do it by myself, but I was part of a team of around 13 people that made a seven-minute film in only 48 hours. It was part of the 48 Hour Film Project in Detroit.
We met at 7pm on a Friday in Detroit and were assigned a genre (Sci Fi), a character (Jason/Janice Strawberry, realtor), a prop (an award), and a line of dialogue (“Take your time.”). All of these things had to be included in a final film that we turned in at 7pm the following Sunday.
It was a pretty crazy 48 hours. I was the producer, and my great friend and frequent creative collaborator Sam Merciers was the director. I would guess that we each got about 7 hours of sleep over the whole weekend, but it was completely worth it. I had more fun than just about anything else I’ve done all summer long. I experienced some of the same satisfaction I experience as a performer when a lot of hard work and preparation comes to fruition. There was also the exhilaration of improvisation from being asked spontaneously create something that is at once artistic and appropriate and technically sound.
In the end, I am extremely proud of what we created, especially considering we had never made a film before on any schedule. We got to see it on the big screen (or at least a big screen) at the Main Art Theater in Royal Oak, MI along with an audience of around 500 people. The experience reminded me forcibly of the feeling I get at the premiere of a new piece I’ve written. I hope it goes well, but it might completely bomb, and worst of all, it’s completely out of my control at that point.
For your consideration: Download.
Tonight, we’re going back down to Detroit for the awards presentation. I’ll be sure to post back here with the results.
Here are a few pictures of us during the production:
If we deploy enough gear, we almost look like we know what we're doing. We didn't really have a compelling plot reason for shooting at SCENE, but Tim Lane was kind enough to give us permission and the place and the art just looks so dang cool, we couldn't pass it up.
Emiliano and Matt (left) are composing and recording the score. Ben (top right) is editing the audio recorded on set. Corrina (bottom right) is working on a logo graphic for the credits.
Despite spending a week or so being nervous about Saturday’s John Corigliano masterclass, I think it went pretty well. I presented Falling up the down escalator, a saxophone quartet that H2 has recorded. The format of the masterclass was very different from the one John Adams described on his blog last week. Corigliano was not interested in his or anyone else’s opinions about the music. “That’s meaningless,” he said. He wanted to demonstrate to us what musical material people were able to observe and retain after one hearing. After all, in most situations, that’s all anyone is likely to hear a new piece of music.
