to keep expression going...

...Is it better to keep "putting things out" and defining them as "done" and setting them aside to work on "new" things, in hopes that one will make new, better, different things each time? OR is it better to hoard and hold onto things and never release them until they are absolutely perfect. I am more and more coming to the conclusion that the first is true, because it seems to me there is only a small window for perfection, and if you decide to hold out and move on for a more perfect, safely thought-out perfection, you may have missed the boat. That kind of perfection is basically made of the same stuff as the ball of light you see after you stare at a light too long in church. One needs to keep productive and self-trusting in order to stay creative and keep the flow of expression going.

However, the hoarding technique naturally has its benefits. I keep finishing songs I started years ago, using techniques I wouldn't have tried back then, while keeping old sounds that i wouldn't necessarily use now. Cassavetes released completely different versions of most of his films. Raymond Carver went back and revised nearly all of his early short stories when he was much older. I'm not saying revision is a bad thing.

I am just proposing that perhaps at a certain point one must reach an inevitable 'hoarding limit' where a continuous 'doing' period becomes unstoppable.

In essence, it doesn't really matter. Every individual decision we make has a specific reason and an exponential set of ropes gnashing and pulling us in different directions. We enter productive and revisionary periods. We collect food and we hibernate. We eat and shit. We experience high tides and low tides, inhales and exhales.

makes do as such

"makes do as such"
http://www.mediafire.com/?nmu1imilzyy

this is an old 40 min. sound collage from 2002
created in one night in the first dorm room while kyle slept across the room.
this was my first year away from home and my mind was in the process of opening up. i was heavily listening to greenthink and clouddead at the time, which is probably quite inherent in the sound. but it has its own special flavor and a nice quiet little place in my heart.

download to enjoy. peace.

lost friends found

Alex DeGroot of Sonmi re-imagines "Lost Friends," to a beautiful effect.


Lyrics:

silent agony of trees lending fire to each other
honestly I've never found anything I've loved as much as matches burning violet leaves
we only use the tree trunks for the hollowed out inside
there never was a tenderness in which we could confide
or a holy mouth where we could hide
or a drifting bluff where we could die
i see stars in your lifeless eyes

touch my tender trapeze
feel my entropy
kiss me in the place that hurts
find another place to work

[different versions of this tune appear on 'bag my steel' and 'before the glacier'...cover at will, anyone out there]

the bubble shell people chain change

"By far, the best album for running around Lake Merritt" - Mike Bahl

that sealephant spillt white light all over my black book

new planes of life and experience.
more plots have been converging and separating, thankfully.
working to understand my lot in life by pushing myself further than ever before. pinpointing what is truly important, as well as looking for who is important in my life and figuring out what they represent to me and what I represent to them... Not even necessarily what we can give to each other, just what we are, in relation to one another.

Recognizing the strengths and weaknesses of your current self and moving on.
Finding truth.

We find deeper understanding every time we realize our mind is clouded. Often when I think my mind is clear, I realize later it was actually clouded, and vice verse often when I think it is clouded I later realize it was actually clear. Perhaps everything is perfect and drowning in blankets, and perhaps I am 2 excited for peaches, but I am never quite convinced. The decisions we make create millions of 'small shifts- like the ones in the atmosphere.'

Moments of depression are moments of non-learning. Moments of mania are the opposite. Neither are productive, at least they do not feel so until after they have completely passed, and you are able to make sense of everything. Life for me has been a game of forgetting and remembering, shelter and wetshock. Coming out of those oppressive, depressive states is always very ecstatic, similar to the end of a brain freeze.

the difference between bursting and blasting

Here is a bit of correspondence between myself and renowned film critic and Boston University Professor Ray Carney. I wouldn't normally post something like this, but it was already posted on his website In fact, the only reason I even knew that he replied to my email was because someone I didn't even know Facebook requested me and sent me a message about it. Anyway, I wasn't aware that he simply posts emails and replies publicly, but since it is out there anyway, it might as well be here...


Subject: bursting through concrete

Dear Professor Carney,

Hi. I'm Wes Tank, I'm a filmmaker from Milwaukee. I first came into contact with your work four years ago when I was writing the screenplay for my first feature film. It was Cassavetes on Cassavetes, and it changed everything for me. We spent a little over a year shooting the film, and shot nearly 60 hours of footage. I was revising it, going in new directions and keeping it intuitive every step of the way (this proved very difficult as I found out that change made some people very nervous and sometimes paranoid...I wonder if this was the case on Cassavetes' sets). I have been editing for over six months now, and I am just beginning to find the structure.

I recently read The Films of Cassavetes: Pragmatism, Modernism, and the Movies, and it has changed everything again. Your work is incredibly inspiring. Your writings contain the same combination of true sprawling open-endedness and eloquently dire and explosive precision that Cassavetes' films contain. I have also become exposed to so many inspiring films and filmmakers that I would have never heard of without your online recommendations. Thank you for doing what you do.

I'm curious...what are you working on now? I hope the comprehensive, all-art-encompassing, creative biography is still in the works. From what I've read it sounds amazing.

Lastly, I want to mention that I have been seriously looking into Boston University for grad school after I finish up my film. I have a BFA in experimental film production from UW Milwaukee. My fiance wants to get into Tufts to get an MA in Law and Diplomacy and an MS in Nutrition (food systems and society) so it seems like a step in the right direction. I'm planning to go into Film Studies so I can teach the films of Cassavetes, Tarkovsky, Herzog, Mallick, and others. while making my own. Do you often take on graduate students as a professor at BU? If you do, I would be interested in the possibility. I feel that I could learn a lot from you.

Thanks again, and all the best to you,

Wes

PS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLiMhXkpOXY (Trailer for my film...its kind of old and has less and less to do with what the final product will be, but gives you somewhat of an idea. It looks better if you click 'view in high quality' right under the player. If you click on 'stumblesome' you can see some more recent short experiments i have been doing with video.)

RC replies: You might enjoy and benefit from Boston U; you might not. I just can't say. That would be true of every university. The best thing is to come to an Open House (several take place every year) and then do the same thing I would tell anyone in your situation thinking of attending any university in America: Take time and talk hard with the faculty, not in a group but one on one--hard, hard, hard. By hard I mean: refuse to indulge in "small talk" or "chit chat" or "cocktail party talk." Refuse to do that. Get them in private, off to the side, and ask hard, specific, focused questions: ask them what films they have made and how you can see their work; ask them to send you a copy of their syllabus for the first class you would take with them; ask them what films they like, and -- if they name some work you know -- quiz them about why they like it and what it does to them. Don't let them try to avoid answering. Don't let them give you vague responses. If they do, you can be sure they are frauds. If they do, you can be sure they will have nothing to say in class of interest. If they don't want to have this conversation with you, if they say they are too busy, that's the way they will be as teachers. Also keep in mind the obvious: I am not the Department. Many of them hate and despise me and my work, many of them hate this web site, many of them love Hollywood movies, many of them dislike filmmakers like Cassavetes or know little or nothing about independent film. That's just the reality -- See page 101, the boxed material at the bottom, for more on that subject. Read the last five or six paragraphs in particular. Finally, for more background about the program go to the menu at the top of this page, where it says "Boston U." and read the material on that page too. Good luck! May our paths cross (I don't come to all Open Houses, but I am at a couple of them each year.) If you come here, I do have many grad. students in my courses. But keep "blasting" (that was Cassavetes' word to me--harder, tougher than "bursting!") through that concrete!!! Blast away! It's the only way to go!!! Love, Ray

P.S. All of the above quizzing can be done by email or on the telephone. And be sure you look at their films or read their essays. That will reveal their minds, just as my writing (here and in my books) reveals mine. Every potential student should do this before spending a hundred thousand dollars or more. You'd kick the tires on a car. Quiz, cross-examine your future faculty. Beware of salesmen and salespitches!

P.P.S. An afterthought: I just re-read your note to me and now am thinking that you are almost certainly wildly over-qualified for the program. Though it varies from year to year of course, most of your classmates will not have made films or even know very much about filmmaking. Don't faint but, based on what you tell me, you're actually better qualified -- with more film experience at least -- than many of the faculty you'd be taking courses with! You actually have experience with writing and directing a feature film. They don't. I could be forgetting someone of course, but I don't think a single one of them has made and released a single feature film -- ever -- at least nothing I've ever heard about or seen screened in my years here. In other words, you've wrestled with narrative issues and organizational problems and editing concerns they themselves haven't..... You could teach them a thing or two.

The larger and more important question to grapple with is why you feel you need to be a student again? What's the pull, what's the fear, what's the need? Most of the greatest indie filmmakers in America (Robert Kramer, Mark Rappaport, John Cassavetes, Tom Noonan, Elaine May, etc. etc.) never went to film school at all. So I'm asking an emotional as much as a technical question: Why do you need this certification? Why do you want to be a student sitting comfortably in a classroom rather than a creator struggling out in the world? The first is easier, of course; but is that the right reason to do it? And wouldn't the hundred thousand dollars (or more) that you will have to spend on your film school tuition be better spent making a movie? You can learn the technical stuff in six weeks by apprenticing yourself to Rob Nilsson or Tom Noonan or Caveh Zahedi. Why this need for school? (Click on this link to open a window to some more thoughts about the function of film school, and its being unnecessary for many students.)

things are different now

Welcome to this possible future, present, and past.

Everything is converging and separating. I declare the throat of this blog [nothing] to be hereby open. This nothing [is] to be exclusively vehement behemoth no more. Why? Because everything is converging and separating. At this point, it is okay to bring everything and nothing together in one place so that it may disseminate. It is okay.

So, if you're out there God, fanbase, or if I am dead... This is now the place that Things will be posted, i.e. all music, video, writing, events, for free download, stream, or reading. Posts will happen on an often basis.

If you look all the way up, and then to the right, I've posted several full albums for download. More are on the way. Track-listings for Making Decisions and Fly Kids are on the way. Lyrics for Fly Kids on the way. Artwork for all albums is on the way.

And one by one, the ghosts go away and memories stay.


for stars, here is a song about a slowed moment that happened about a year ago, described in its title, right before everything shifted:

"as the rope snapped and the mattress flew from the truckbed onto the highway"
http://www.mediafire.com/?n2nz1i1jzvz

Two Minutes, Eighteen Seconds Before the Apocolypse

Driving to work today, I realized that my belief in our personal power to influence the government (I'm referring specifically to voting) compares to my belief of whether or not there is a God.
Coincidences and turns of events in my experience cause me to feel something existing, controlling or at least influencing everything, whether that force is completely chaotic, cyclical, or following a benevolent or at least narrative time-line with fire and dragons at the end. Popular culture and close friends tell me that I must vote because the popular vote makes a difference, but others say it has no influence whatsoever. The way I believe and feel about politics is malleable, much like my metaphysical beliefs and leanings. I vote because maybe something exists. If it doesn't, hi-ho, into the black hole we go.

It seems the financial problem is much more telling of what letting existential abstractions and distractions like credit run our lives than debates are. We're selling mortgages for houses built on invisible sand. I don't think a debate can be real without more voices being heard. Its not so black and white.

of souls

impetuous hippopotomus

vehement:
1485, from M.Fr. vehement "impetuous, ardent," from L. vehementem (nom. vehemens) "impetuous, carried away," perhaps from a lost present middle participle of vehere "to carry" (see vehicle). The other theory is that it represents vehe- "lacking, wanting" + mens "mind."

behemoth:
1382, huge biblical beast (Job xl.15), from L. behemoth, from Heb. b'hemoth, usually taken as plural of intensity of b'hemah "beast." But the Heb. word is most likely a folk etymology of Egyptian pehemau, lit. "water-ox," the name for the hippopotamus.

Kipp Zavada's BIRD MESS

cake and ice cream

short conversation between between wes of milwaukee and will of boulder, ghost appearances by jacki and kyle. note: this was the least interesting part of the conversation, but the only part that was filmed.

"Bush Declares War"

Shawn, Wes, Kyle, Graham
Washington D.C.

SCALENE FILM

SCALENE FILM

A bi-monthly double feature night for films that refuse to rely on an emotional shorthand, and thus creating an experience that is more active for the viewer than the passive, fast-food way we are used to seeing films. These are uncompromisingly humanistic films that, to quote Ray Carney, "bring us back to life." These films exist outside the world of traditional narrative exposition, fantastic moral pushing, cutting edge negativity, funny violence, and cutesy nostalgia that characterize current 'hollywood' and 'indie-wood' films, yet they lack the gimmicky self-indulgence that currently characterize films as "experimental." So, as they reside in limbo, below hollywood and even indie-level distribution, yet outcast from experimental circles, SCALENE FILM's mission is to help introduce them into the collective consciousness.

The FILMS:

APART FROM THAT www.foreignamericanpictures.com
THE BED YOU SLEEP IN www.jon-jost.com
FINALLY, LILLIAN AND DAN (featuring filmmaker Mike Gibisser in person) http://www.inmanfilms.com/main.html
IN CLAMATORE
SLOW DAYS http://www.focusmedia.hr/adp/

And Many More...

Logo

scientific lab report for untitled music project

"when the moon bellows out loud and you are beneath it, alone with your brain, it is possible to experience every known emotion in the span of only a few minutes. however, you never know which one is coming next." - kyle

8/5/08

PURPOSE

a living, visual, radioactive experience for the ear
that feels unpredictably open-ended- that is, violent and boring and haphazard and imaginative, or grotesque and uncertain and 'dream-like', with extreme amounts of focused clutter, containing moments of cold and warm divinity, stupidity, dirt and distortion, and is as sloppily intricate and stumblesome and infinitely big and small as life is. Its about the way the brain and the guts collaborate and organize their world. a series' of unending questions, a search for personal and emotional 'truth' without knowing what it looks, sounds, smells, tastes, or feels like

The specific sounds will not be characterized by a superficial genre, tradition, shorthand, or specific 'sound' but will instead be guided by an internal, intuitive flow of energy, group discussion, personal gut instinct and quiet deliberation- in collaboration with the tools we have to work with and our abilities to express ourselves with them.

METHODS

The only rule is when you make a rule, you have to break it, and when you find yourself falling into a pattern you have to break that, and when we start to have a 'sound' we have to break that.

Collaging and re-collaging field recordings, samples from everything we can get, repeated group and solo improvisations, repeated group and solo rehearsals, extreme amounts of layering voice and texture- songs built from hundreds of different bits- snippets of stolen moments from all the different times and places of our lives, focused suspension, casual and non-casual song-writing, songs sung in the kitchen while doing dishes, memories, dreams, visions, lots of percussive sounds mixed with beats, changes, rhymes, riffs, ambiances, choruses, noise, noises, sounds, verses, empty buckets of suppressed memories from the backlog of several selves moment continuing…

Poster 1

phone call

i needed to call you because i can't tell you how angry i am about this. i shouldn't have called i know because your head- i should have written it down - i'm going to write it down and then throw it away. but while i've got you - my kid - he's just, he's really not seeing enough time out there - i know you have a lot of kids to get out there - and i know you just want to win - but goddamnit its just killing me to go out there and watch him play and not ever see him play at all out there. its unjustified. i think its unjustified, his lack of play. your son, and your son is seeing some serious time, of course. its unjustified. we paid the same money for the camps, the same money for the tournaments as every other kid. the summer ball leagues, we paid for all that. well your son sees plenty of time. where's my son's time? where's all that time? where does it go, where does all that time go? what is it with you? i didn't call you to argue, i just wanted to say it would be nice if he saw some time tonight, for the relatives. not for me, not for him even. i'm not the type, no, i'm not the time to leave through, the type to live through somebody else, especially not a fuckup like my kid. and i'm not confronting you, but. his mom and i just split. yeah, a month ago. he's a sensitive kid, he's taking it hard, and a little bit of extra playing time wouldn't kill you. the guy is good too! he's tough on the boards, can't handle the ball worth shit but the kid hustles! he's scrapping on the floor for every loose ball and he's tough on those boards, you know that. can't handle the ball but he can shoot. i know that you can't talk right now and you don't have the time to listen to this, so that's why i'm just writing this down right now and you can read it if you want. otherwise i'll just throw it away.

Experiment #3

Purpose:

Intensive character development as a means of honest, collaborative expression between actor, writer, and director. The final product will be a continuous video document of the progression and development of the characters.

Methods:

Each character is developed separately, between writer, director and actor, through discussion, script, and improvisation. This process will begin with a character biography that the writer and actor will pass back and forth to develop together, starting with a blurb and a questionnaire.

Actors are strictly forbidden from talking about their characters to other actors. If two characters are supposed to have a relationship, that relationship will have to be made organically, in character, through improvisation and rehearsal.

All 'unessential' elements are removed from the world of the story, to allow for all focus to be placed on the two main characters.

The function of the camera will be to capture the development of the characters as unobtrusively as possible. An outline will act as a map for the story, and all scenes will be filmed sequentially, through the use of multiple takes, improvisation, looping, and filming when the actor is unaware he or she is being filmed. When on-set, actors will be strictly forbidden from being 'out of character' to anyone but the director, who may need to communicate direction to the actor. In other words, the atmosphere should be extremely focused on the work, and only the work during shooting. Actors should 'be' the characters until a previously scheduled wrap time.

At wrap-time each day of shooting, a 'decompression' session will take place, to bring the actors out of character and back to themselves. This part is very important. Doing something unrelated to the work for at least 30 minutes after wrap is highly necessary in making this process work.

All Real Men Yearn

This is the day that you reinvent what it means to be an audience.
The audience inside of you. Your inner-self, your inner being.
It is the 'personal' audience that lives within all members of every 'personal' audience; and that 'personal 'audience, which is everything, is not everything.

These are the sounds of the blanket when rubbed upon by a foot, and these are also the sounds of a man screaming who lives inside the foot. Inside of that man is a community which also lives inside of his foot, which is also the man himself, who also lives inside his own community. He also has his own brain, and is also everything, which is not everything. Thus, he is everything and he is not everything, which also makes him everything, every time.

But he must know.

The people inside of him will never grow old, they will never grow young. They will only grow.

the sleeper must awaken

an image is of itself- not necessarily connected to a sound. light passes, there are layers.
sounds can be taught to move, to be useful in telling a story, as wells as pleasing on the ear. bits of conversation, noises, tones, sent through different channels, slowly, quickly.
film pauses. overlaps. interuptions and tangents.
get as close to your experience as physically possible. look at your life, examine everything, be open to attempt and to be attempted.

when i go outside every day i see films, i see pictures. i hear soundtracks. they follow me, hounding me like ghosts. only when i hit record do i feel relief. i write this now so i won't forget it tomorrow. expressions and inspirations are ships that pass in the night. they come and go as they wish, and lead us where they will. it is important that they are sometimes let go, and sometimes captured, like different sizes of fish, so they can inspire us later when we return to them. record different conversations, or even scenes, separately, assign them to different channels, overlap them subtley. images all but disconnected from the sounds. give nothing to simbols, unless they occur within the natural makeup of the given day.

interview w/shepherd express for cracks

SE: There are a lot of actors listed in the cast. Who plays what?

WT: Tim Chrapko: Alan, the observer
Jason Hames: Michael, the neighbor
Tracy Doyle: Ann, sister of Alan, falls prey to Michael
Everyone else: Book club/Cult members.

SE: The process outlined on the website appears to be pretty elaborate. With so much going on prior to the opening curtain, don’t you run the risk of putting in al lot of work that won’t be all that apparent to the audience? The design of the project aside, precisely how much different has the experience of this project been than others you have been involved with?

WT: I consider this project to be more of a theatrical experiment than a cohesive play. Cracks in the Floor was originally launched as part of Insurgent Theatre's Workshop- which has always been more about helping its actors grow than anything else - so from the beginning, the play has lent itself to being more about the 'process' and exploring a new way of working than the finished product itself. Because we choose to work a way that is radically different than traditional theatre, we hope the finished 'product' is something that hasn't been experienced before.

Most of my experience comes from directing film acting, which is more commonly naturalistic. But I prefer not to differentiate the two forms, because to me, acting is representation. In films, I like over the top acting, in theatre I like subtlety. But really I like both styles of acting in either medium. Actors are always representing human life in some shape or form, because they can't escape their own bodies. The main problem with theater is the stage. And the seats. And the lights. If I had my way it would all be done in living rooms or on the landing decks of aircraft carriers.

SE: The process of working with each actor individually on their respective characters sounds interesting. Could you tell me a bit more about this? Is this an attempt to get more organic characters appearing onstage?

WT: I love actors but I don't believe in the different 'styles' or 'schools' of acting (method, meisner, or otherwise)... We've studied these in the workshop, and I always found them impossible, and deceptive. Of course I let actors get to where they need to be- however they choose to get there- but I always stress that the more we conform to a pattern, the more we tend to lose life. People constantly contradict themselves in reality, so why not when they're acting? I want a character to break an actor's style, because if an actor ceases to lose his or herself, then the performance feels ingenuine. Emotions turn on a dime, which keeps the actor and the audience member in the present tense.

No one will want to work with me if I say this, but it seems absurd when an actor wants to make sure they understand everything in a piece, or when they want to rewrite something in order to better articulate a piece of improvised dialog better. The unknown can be difficult for some actors to deal with. We could revise what we say forever and still sound like we don't know who you are. Here I am, infinitely revising what I'm saying in this email. I want to see that struggle in my work because it exists. This play needs to be made without script, because I want to see the actors find their characters in that chaotic thought process. Acting is vulnerability, because the sensitive viewer is paying attention to the smallest movements that make up a person.


SE: In the story a voyeur gets drawn into the lives of the people living below him. This could potentially be an interesting social commentary. The culture emerging from new media and technology has us all becoming voyeurs. Pocket cameras have become ubiquitous as they have melded into mobile phones. The internet allows society greater access to peer into the lives of strangers. How are the bigger aspects of the themes being covered in CRACKS manifesting themselves in the production? How does the process inform on this theme?

WT: When I go to see a play, I am immediately turned off when I feel constantly reminded that what I am seeing is a performance. When you break down those performative elements, and put real people on the stage, the audience transforms into a crowd of eavesdroppers. As audience members, we are watching a person watch another 'play,' which the audience never sees. In the book club scene, almost all references to the actual book they have read are dropped, rendering the direction of their comments ambiguous and therefore potentially commenting on the play they are acting in.

While your last question is well thought out, I would prefer not to discuss the social implications of the play. I feel interpretation is always at the discretion of whomever is experiencing the piece. If twenty people see one of my plays, they see twenty different plays. I genuinely appreciate every interpretation, including yours.

what do you see flying there?

"simplicity without gaudiness"

we went to springstead and burned a house down.
we shot a lot, most of which probably won't be used in the film.

2 new trailers coming soon. they will be the first and probably the only to go online.
money doesn't make films.

WINTER LIGHT

EXPERIMENT #2

CRACKS IN THE FLOOR

Lab Report

2.3.08

PURPOSE:

To explore spontaneity and impulse as a means of expression, while keeping that expression held within the context of specific guidelines, rules, or disciplines, in hope that through limitation the expression will gain strength. By giving free reign within a strict syllabus, the goal is both parts growth for the actor and an overall emotional truth for the story.

METHODS:

Each character should be developed separately, as a collaboration between director and actor. The actor will be responsible for coming up with the basic inner-workings of the character and the director will be responsible for helping that character grow into something will support the piece as a whole. I.E. If two people come up with the idea that their character is passionate about volleyball, that is less interesting than one character who is passionate about volleyball, and another who thinks that people who are passionate about sports are idiots. The point is, both actor and director will bring something to the table, and through discussion, an agreement will be reached that will support the whole of the production.

In order for this method to be effective, it is important that the director discusses and rehearses with the actors individually before they are brought together as a group. No acting should happen until the actor has a solid idea of what they are portraying. That doesn’t mean everything about them must be known, but the what-makes-a-person-what should be in place, the situation should be set for the subject to evolve.

Once the parameters are set, we will begin a number of experiments, which will be filmed, and reviewed by actor and director. Discussion will take place. The experiments will be repeated with differences (and surprises). Some experiments will work on scenes that exist in the play, and some will be strictly for character building.

As the experimental process continues, the writer/director will be thinking of the big picture. At a certain point, the what-will-be-done will be revealed, the play will be on paper, and rehearsing the play as a whole will begin. Again, during this time there will be some room for experimentation, as this is an exercise in following one’s instinct and growing as a result, not in how well one can memorize something that once was off the cuff, One point of caution: to remember, and for working in this way is to avoid and go deeper than anything that borders on phony naturalism.

ACTS OF BALANCE

Clamatore 3 goes into full production next week.

At this point I feel a clearer vision for the film than I have felt over the entire long process (more realistic even than when I was writing the script). Much time to myself with lots of quiet thought and meditation and walking everywhere has brought me to this place. It is a place of solidarity and quietude, a head-space that feels calm and open, yet fierce enough to allow me to strike when I need to.

We will have more breathing room this time, more time to shoot and think, so I am planning on using that time to experiment. Filmmaking has to be about spontaneity on the set, much more than rehearsing a prepared script.

In Clamatore has been such an intensive learning experience, much different and more challenging than film school was. I now have a much better understanding of the process of the way I want to make films, and an idea of the amount of time it all takes, and the way you change over that time, and how that effects where the film goes, etc. I know now that I cannot simply make another film, I have to completely redefine the process based on everything I have learned from In Clamatore. I've spent so much time coming up with new ideas for what will be "the next film" but only now am I beginning to realize something needs to change in the groundwork.

Every film is a scientific experiment; I plan to approach them in this way from now on. We did an experiment called Siblings, which had some success. I wanted that to have complete spontaneity, so we went about shooting little films in my apartment with no script, briefly discussing what the scenes would be about and who are characters were beforehand. This created a certain amount of uncomfortable humor (largely due to the subject matter) but at times it seemed obvious to me that we were improvising, and thus it occasionally lacked truthfulness. I hate phony naturalism. But this was only an experiment, and I wanted to try it just to see if anything could be accomplished out of basically nothing, and something was accomplished. It was a funny, realistic awkward comedy that had 5 ten minute episodes.

I ended Siblings because I wanted to start a new experiment from the beginning, and I wanted to go deeper into character than we went with Siblings. And I did not want to act in whatever it was we did next, mainly so there would always be someone to hold the camera. In Siblings we always had an actor holding the camera, and when one character would exit, and then they would hold the camera, and the other one would enter. Holding the camera became kind of like a right of passage, you weren't allowed to act until you held the camera first.

After Clamatore 3 is shot, I'm going to be directing my second experiment, which will take the form of a play called Cracks in the Floor, through Insurgent Theatre. They approached me with a story idea that they wanted to use improvisation for, but that they needed someone to direct and guide the improvisation. The method of working was up to me, so I said sure. I feel like this experiment will be invaluable in my quest to find a way to write screenplays that are conducive to getting real, organic performances from people. I feel like it has to come from within the performer, but they need something in order to have a reason to go there. Slick lines on a page are not enough for everyone. I am in search for the perfect balance.

Current Work

IN CLAMATORE is halfway completed with principal photography, and the third of four shoots is less than a month away. I have edited short "sketch" cuts of the first two seasons, as well as a trailer for each. I am waiting to do serious editing until we are finished shooting.

Because the film takes place over the course of four seasons, and my insistence that we wait to shoot until we are deep into those seasons, there has been a lot of time for contemplation in between shoots. In early November, we shot 5 episodes of a an improvised TV show called SIBLINGS. This will be followed up by a short feature with the same cast and method of working, but a different premise and set of characters. I have written several treatments for future films to follow up In Clamatore, and am currently working on another feature length screenplay that I hope to have finished by this summer. A 16mm short based on a play that I wrote is also in the works.