the joy of filmmaking
Over the past year I’ve tried my hand at filmmaking and I love it. I never thought I’d find a passion this late in my life but I have. I love being behind the camera. I ove showing people my vision. As a DP I’ve helped other people realize their vision and aid them bringing their film to life. As a director I’ve had to rely on others to get things done but the “hands-on” approach to production has helped me stay in control of my sets.
It is an uphill learning process. I think about where I was during my first semester and now, I’m halfway through my third semester and I’m still learning my craft and trade. Every day I try to learn something, I listen to everyone’s advice. I watch my videos and learn from my mistakes. Every shoot I try to do a new technique or use a new shooting style. I want to try and be my best every time. There’s so much effort involved and every film I make the crew grows. I am still in love with the experience. Even when the going gets tough, I get tougher.
Getting over the idea of “no matter how much you plan; something will always go wrong” is essential. I’ve learned that adaptability is one of the most important traits a person can have on a film set. It’s an uphill battle. Like I said, every day I try and hone my craft as a filmmaker. It’s perseverance that will help me overcome obstacles and produce great art from the lucid dreams of me and my friends.
hagazussa: a review
The other night I did that “thing.” The endless sound of “boop.boop.boop” while traversing the menus of all the usual suspects, Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc, then I jumped over to Shudder. My son recently paid for a subscription and gave me the login so I figured I’d explore a little. I was digging through menus of foreign films when one caught my eye. It was a German film I’ve never heard of, “Hagazussa.”
The film starts out setting up a relationship between mother and daughter. Right from the get-go, you can tell something is up. The young daughter Albrun starts going through puberty just as her mother is dying of the plague. This is where the film gets very bizarre. Her mother eventually euthanizes herself to end her life by exposure while Albrun sleeps. She follows her mother’s trail in the morning and finds her dead in the vernal pool of a dead tree.
The film fast forwards to Albrun 12 years later and starts the second chapter of her life. Now in adulthood and with a child she struggles to fit in the local community and tries to sell milk from the goats she raises. While being harassed by the local children, she seemingly befriends a local woman named Swinda who saves her from the bullies.
Swinda comes to visit Albrun a few times, once to take her to the local priest at an ossuary who explains how his mother and she are a curse and how he’s tried his best to end the Pariah. Her mother’s skull is returned to her and Albrun takes it home and displays it in a makeshift ancestral shrine.
The second time Swinda comes to visit she enters Albrun’ s house and visits with the baby. Swinda has a feeling of uneasiness as she looks around. She leaves in an awkward fashion.
the Third visit doesn’t go well at all. Swinda deceives Albrun into a mountain walk where she introduces Alprun to a stranger, an overbearing male who forced himself on Albrun while Swinda insults her and holds her down. She awakes from the shock of the ordeal and returns home to find her daughter still alive but all her livestock either stolen or slaughtered. To claim vengeance she places a dead plague rat in the local water supply before defecating on the rat into the drinking water as well.
The third act is mushroom induced insanity. The visual art style here is amazing, by using 9mm lens the amount of closeup detail in some shots (like the maggots in between the death caps and her toes while Alprun trips out are amazing).
Alprun travels to the village in the third act and sees a cart carrying plague victims. It’s unclear whether it’s Swinda and her friend but they are being carried off to the ossuary. She smirks and quickly walks back towards the forest.
While in the woods, she eats a death cap mushroom and begins to hallucinate. She hears her mother’s voice calling her into a glade and Alprun overcome with guilt drowns her own child in a hallucinogenic fever dream. She returns to her house to find her mother’s voice taunting her as the baby cries inside a sheet on the dining table. She opens the sheet to find the corpse of her dead child. What happens next if a fever dream of medieval hell. The baby is stewed and eaten in her weakest moment. After she walks out onto the mountain top, where the sun rises and she combusts on fire.
I will offer one more warning about this film. I’ve toned it down in my review, but there is a lot of sexual abuse in this film, physical and mental. By the end of the film, you understand you are dealing with a broken person. Depression does not excuse her actions in the film, and the cause of vengeance is never a pleasant experience for anyone involved, but there is a sense of retribution, crushed only by her act of infanticide, and her ultimate suicide.
The film is a very powerful horror and was cast brilliantly. The tone was dark, bleak, and showed the general xenophobia and religious obsession hasn’t changed much in a 1000 years, while still telling the story of a young girl who doesn’t get to fully process her trauma because of her need to survive as an outcast in her society. A majority of People rarely traveled more than five miles back then and this shows the microcosmic scope of a small town alpine German village, cut off from a world where the threat of plague looms thickly overhead.
Needless to say, I loved it and have recommended it to some of the more voracious horror fans I know. There’s not a lot of spoken languages so the subtitles (for those of us too uncultured to learn German) aren’t always present on the screen. The work is very visual and the soundtrack makes the film twice as unnerving as it would be without any ambiance or soundtrack. It’s worth a second watch if you can stomach it once!
the Joker 2019 retrospective
I love when a film comes around and makes everybody think. There are so many questions with this movie, the first of which is “Should I go see it?” The answer isn’t so easy. If you’re one of the people that wouldn’t go see a horror film because there are certain ideas or images you just don’t want imprinting, I would skip it, but if you are a film buff who loves character studies I’d rush out and see it right away.
A friend who generally hates comic book films told me this may be the best one he’s ever seen, as far as the genre goes. I think I’d be hard-pressed to find a better film based on a comic that came out recently, at least since “Road to Perdition.”
I’ve been a fan of the DC comics mythos most of my life. My son and I have more phone conversations about comics now that he’s in college than anything else. It’s always been a part of our lives and a hobby we still share. The Joker has always been a fascinating character to me, and as soon as we finished our first viewing he looked over to see the reaction on my face. We both enjoyed it very much.
it starts off like you are watching “Taxi Driver” and the rollercoaster just begins to ascend slowly around you. About forty minutes into the film, the coaster finally drops you down fast and hard before pulling you back up to the top to throw you down and make you gasp again. In the end, it reminds you it is a comic book movie and that’s a scary fact. The film literally pulls you in so hard you can’t stop. It’s the train wreck you couldn’t turn away from.
I’m not going to spoil the film. I’m not going to tell you “you have to see it” either. Everyone needs to make those decisions for themselves. I also don’t want to debate over who was a better Joker. Have you ever tried to explain why a certain actor was your favorite “Bond?” It almost always boils down to opinion and there’s no wrong answer. I feel the role of Dracula, James Bond, Robin Hood, Joker, etc should be analyzed on the merit of the individual acting the part. Joaquin Phoenix did an amazing job. He created a character familiar yet wholly unique to himself and the film.
Film is an art form and should be treated as such. I think some critics are judging too harshly. It’s certainly not the worst film out there depicting violence. Is it a comic movie? Yes. Is it a kids movie? No (Do not make that mistake). Is it a film people will be talking about until something bigger comes along? Yes.
Blog 1: Personal career goals
[oct]
I’ve been a member of the service industry for so long now I hardly put much thought into an education until my son applied to college. I worked in restaurants and retail, reaching management in both fields, but felt unfulfilled and bored with my life. I thought long and hard about what I’d be happy doing for the rest of my life, and I can tell you, it wasn’t working in a restaurant or selling clothing.
I decided to sign up for college in the absence of my son being home, going off to UHart himself. Middlesex Community College was right in town and convenient. I applied for financial aid and became a student after seeing their media department. I thought, “I really enjoy editing video” and had dabbled in it a few years back, producing a number of low-budget YouTube videos. I wanted to see how I’d do on the college level and thought maybe I can turn this into a career.
Since I’ve been in school (nearly at the close of my first semester now) I’ve changed my idea of the future and what it holds for me numerous times. I thought about working for ESPN or WWE, I’ve thought about producing my own films, I’ve thought about cinematography and what it means for my future, but most of all, I’ve learned to believe in myself, and my ability to create.
If I were to limit myself, thinking about career goals, I think the answer would change weekly. I am open to opportunities and experiences, and don’t limit myself in those departments. I love producing my own films and would love the freedom to do so. If other opportunities to gain experience or to gain capital arise, I generally don't turn it down. I believe in working hard to get what you want, and what I want is to just be an artist for the first time in an artistic life. I’m currently having more fun with my second lease on life than I ever expected.
Blog 2:
why ben Affleck is the best batman
[nov]
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After Daredevil, there were people calling for the head of Ben Affleck. It was so atrociously bad, most Marvel fans had a bad taste in their mouths until the Daredevil reboot on Netflix in 2015. That being said, Affleck certainly had his work cut out for him, tackling such an iconic character and household name as Batman. So, in honor of long-winded rants, we’ll cut to the chase. Here are five reasons, Why Ben Affleck is the Best Batman!
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The Fight Scenes. Despite the use of CGI and other Hollywood tricks, actors have been more keen on doing their own stunts and being involved in the fight choreography. Affleck is no exception, and it shows, especially in Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice. The fighting is much more involved than the prior three Batman films and Ben Affleck definitely kicks more @$$ in the current DCU than Keaton, Clooney, Kilmer, and Bale did collectively. The scenes of onscreen action with him demand your eyes stay focused on every movement like a Shaw Brothers Kung-Fu Film.
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Bruce Wayne. Many actors have portrayed Batman over the years, this means playing Bruce Wayne too. In the past we’ve seen actors like Adam West and George Clooney don the cowl of the caped crusader. Although there may be plenty of lines you remember either actor delivering in their respective roles as Batman, you’d probably be hard struck to think of them as Bruce Wayne. Micheal Keaton (disclaimer, I’m not discrediting him) played Bruce as a somewhat reserved and timid hermit in his private life, exploring human sides of the character. Affleck approached the role differently. He’s an older wiser Batman, one we haven’t seen cinematically until Ben. He is older and jaded in the films, and his sense of justice is tipping slowly into his angst. He’s stoic, and a logical thinker who is having a moral crisis in the film. Nobody does “Bruce” better.
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Ben Affleck Doesn’t need to be Batman. At no point was stepping into this role about becoming a Hollywood star. Ben Affleck has acted, directed, and won two oscars. Affleck himself compares the role to Hamlet. He believes in his quality of work, and is a long time fan of the character. He could’ve continued along his current path of “Hollywood Darling” with his virtual keys to the kingdom, but instead chose the Dark Knight as his next role. To quote Ben “Batman is the f***ing coolest.”
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The Dark Side of the Dark Knight. Affleck hasn’t been afraid of his role as Batman, this has taken some of the film purists who have no sense of the comic by surprise. Batman is older and jaded, especially compared to Christian Bale, who played a naive, youthful Batman dealing with his existence in a world that fears him. In the current DC cinematic universe, we see a Batman, much closer to the comics, who has embraced his intimidating presence, striking fear into his enemies by the invocation of his name alone.
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Frank Miller. If you haven’t read Miller’s “the Dark Knight Returns” there’s a lot of cinematic goodies you may have missed in Batman v Superman. In fact some shots were directly set up to mimic his comics. Frank Miller positions Batman in the center of a gritty universe that has never quite excepted him. This is where Affleck’s Batman clearly drew it’s inspiration. Even Batman’s suit when he fights Superman is a throwback to one of the most iconic moments in Miller’s entire Batman mythology, and you know what? Affleck nails it. His performance is perfect for the Batman of the comics. If you pine for the days of Batman in jams surfing, I suggest Adam West, but for the comic connoisseur, there’s Affleck, who didn’t have to go through a gauntlet of revisionist cinema to make a character fit. Ben Affleck simply fits the character.
blog 3:
a learning
experience
[dec]
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Over the past semester of College, I took a class called “Careers in Media.” I didn’t know what to think walking into the classroom. On my first day of college, this was my first class! I was nervous, and the oldest in my class by a long shot. We took our seats and the professor welcomed us all to class.
As we went over the syllabus I began to sweat. My thoughts began to swim. I thought to myself, “My first day, and I’m already in over my head!” I had never heard of “MLA format” or any of the other things that were coming out of the professor’s mouth, as good as Greek to me. We went around the room and introduced ourselves, and that’s when I really felt inadequate. Some other students had already, formed their own businesses, won awards for film production in high school, produced their own movies, and most importantly, had prior training on software/hardware I’ve only dreamed of. I went home, excited and nervous, wondering what my next day of class would bring.
It was on this second day, I learned a piece of very sound advice from the professor. He said that in this industry, “if you don’t know how to do something, never say, ‘I don’t know how to do something.’ Instead, say ‘I’ll learn.’” Over the next few weeks, I tried on those shoes, and I liked the way they fit.
I learned how to do what I couldn’t. I watched YouTube videos on MLA format, I learned how to set up and put away my camera, like a disciplined military man cleaning his gun in boot camp. I learned how to improve my filming by spending dozens of hours shooting video. I learned how to use Premiere to edit. Using the basic tools given to us to cut film, and digging through folders of effects and transitions, I learned what they do. I learned how to use my iris properly in any condition. I learned what “is” and “isn’t” pleasing to the eye and imagination on film. And oddly, I also learned a lot about myself in the process.
I learned a lot about what I am good at and what I need to improve. I shot footage of my front yard and backyard until I was confident enough to just go out and film. Then I learned how to improve my audio. Now, I thoroughly enjoy the process of filming. Being behind a camera was something I never thought I’d ever enjoy, but the opportunity to do so has given me a new passion.
In my first college class, Careers in Media, we learned what is expected of you in the job market, we discussed where to go to find jobs and even how to keep them! We learned how to network, and we also had multiple guest speakers who were more than willing to share their experiences too. But I don’t think that these were the most useful pieces of information I’ve learned while under the tutelage of the professor. First, of course, was the pearl of wisdom about “Learning” what you don’t know, and never saying “I can’t.”
The second is a pearl of wisdom I received in response to one of my questions. We were discussing a former student who had become a successful YouTube travel guru. He got his start filming inside the old abandoned asylum close to my home. I asked “how did he get permission to shoot in there? The cops will throw you out!” The professor replied “He didn’t get any permission Ben! He just did it!” I don’t think the professor realized how profound this was. I rolled it over and over in my head for two days, thinking about how jealous I was. How many times had I wanted to go into the asylum for the sake of urban exploration?
Now, I’m no longer conflicted, and I never waste an opportunity to film anything. I go out into the wilderness, I walk the streets, I set up tripods in graveyards, and I run around in the woods at night, trying to get that perfect shot. I have no fear with a camera in my hands. I’m a digital warrior recording the battles of real life.