Real: Documentary of a Superhero

So, after years of intermitient writing and thought, Real: Documentary of a Superhero is, for all intents and purposes, done (the "all intents and purposes" inferring that, yes, there's still a little technical stuff to work out). It's been a long time coming, but it's so nice to see the film playing on my little Final Cut window. For a time, I thought I'd never see it happen, but there it is; there's Jake Lamb running around in too-tight tights, perpetuating his sub-par heriocs and atypical life-views.

I'm really happy with the way it came together, as happy as someone who has watched the damn thing a hundred times can be. There comes a point during editing wherein the editor becomes"numb" to any effect the content may have (especially if that editor is also the writer, director, composer, colorist, etc...). I still like it, love it, even, but I'm looking forward to seeing what effect it has on other people, because honestly, I don't know anymore. I think it works as a short-film, but I lost the ability to judge my own work somewhere around the 73rd time I viewed it. I've reached the point where upon viewing the movie, I no longer think about "story beats" or "comprehensive flow." Rather, I'm concerned with whether or not the sky should be a darker shade, or if some shakers should be added to the background audio. Boring stuff, is what I'm talking about.

But, come Friday (my last major editing day!), I'll be burning the movie to DVD and getting ready for the first screening on Saturday morning. I'm looking forward to it; hopefully watching it with other people will be like watching it for the first time. Maybe I'll be able to see it from a fresh persepctive, energized by the surrounding audience, most of whom will be seeing it for the first time.

And hopefully that damn sky will be the right shade of blue.

Do it?

Now, with the winter break coming to an end in a duo of weeks and school just around the corner, I'll be having more responsibilities laid upon my plate. School, work, funny twitter updates. All are important, and need a devotion of time.

But there is one thing I continue to think about as it percolates in the back of my mind, one thing that "haunts" me, for lack of a better (and less spooky) word: just finally suiting up and making "REAL".

I would change the script. In the time since frist writing it, I've had a better idea for the projects execution. An idea that would make the short film both a stand-alone work as well as a teaser for a possible full length project. And it would be more condensed and less "bulky" than the script I've had up-till-now.

But should it be done? Would it be wise? It'd take a bit of an investement. Not too much, but the camera rental would be considerable, as would be retrofitting the suit, since shooting it in motion is much different than shooting it in stills. Heck, I had to digitally edit the outside "underwear" to make them more yellow in some of the shots. Damn faded Fruit-of-the-Loom. Such calm, muted colors...

Anyway, it's something to think about, and something I will think about. I have someone in mind to play the "superhero", someone I've talked to and (at face value) seems to be a VERY good fit for the lead character of Michael Barnes (sadly, I had to think of the name for a minute... it's been far too long).

Will it happen? I don't know, but time will tell. As well as my bank account, the quality of the script, the commitment of the actor, the other performers, personal assistance, my work schedule, my income, my class grades, camera avalability, location commitment...

Costume/Suit

I'm still in possesion of the super hero suit I made for my on-hiatus film, "REAL". It's sitting somewhere in storage, and would be gathering dust were it not for the plastic bin it's been haphhazardly shoved into. It's all there; the boots, the mask, the goggles, the catchers vest that acted as body armor, the pants, the gloves. A full-blown superhero costume.

I still want to make "REAL" sometime, and hopefully I'll get the opprutunity. I better too, or else I might do something stupid.

I follow Citizen Prime on Twitter, and if you don't know who he is, here's breif bio on him: http://www.azcentral.com/12news/news/articles/citizenprime0430-CR.html. Basically, he's a real-life superhero, who patrols the streets of my hometown (Phoenix). He focuses more on doing good deeds and charity work than actual crime fighting, which is probably a good idea, as most people do not have the years of self-defense training and deep-rooted spirit of vengeance that would be reccomended if one were to take on armed thugs.

I've found myself thinking, if only once or twice, about the viability of doing something like that. Sure, it's in some ways childish, but I think we've all had those desires to make more of oneself, to do something fantastic in this often dreary world. Even if the reality of the situation would be more ridiculous than fantastic, I'd be lying if I said it's a thought I hadn't entertained.

I'm sure it'll remain just that though; a thought, a flight of fancy. I'm far to responsible to put on that suit and do anything that would be considered rash. But we've all had those thoughts, and to deny them would be to deny an essential part of being human: the desire to do something amazing, to do something that few, or none have done.

The only difference between me and most others is that I already have the suit.

Notes

  I'll be moving in a few days to a nice little place on the east side of Phoenix, close to my favorite hiking spot (Squaw Peak) and my Church.  I couldn't be happier, though the close time proximity of the move is making me pack things quickly and efficiently.  And like always, I'm finding things that I had forgot existed as they lay gathering dust in the corners and cubby holes of my room. 

  Amongst the neat little trinkets (an Ash from Pokemon figure!) the useful (high-quality drawing pads) and the unexpected (a Cosmo magazine.  Where the HELL did that come from?) I'm finding something much more interesting: my old notebooks.  

  The books themselves are not the point, rather the writing inside them.  It's an interesting experience to go back and read what you had written years ago, and it's more interesting to see the change that has happened to you in the time since.  Looking back, I hardly remember being the person I was when I wrote the material.  It is said by many great sages that you are the person you are now, the person you were does not exist.  This idiom could not be more apparent than when looking through past musings.  

  I found lyrics (some amazingly mushy, even by my standards) but most of the writings consisted of hence-forth abandoned concepts for films.  Films that, at the time of writing, I had every intention of making.  Budget wasn't so much of a concern (I'd find a way to create a dilapidated post-apocalyptic shanty town, how hard could it be?) my only concern was making interesting concepts, and "moments" (I would say characters, but... my priorities were placed elsewhere at the time).  

  I don't want this blog to become too much like my last (and first!) entry, so I'll end it here.  I just thought that having this little portal to a past self was interesting, since that person by all accounts no longer exists.  It's like seeing something I shouldn't be seeing; the ruminations of a specter.  Someone I knew very well, and someone whom I know nothing about.  

Which is why I took all of those notes and threw them away.  

  

As It Was

So, this morning I awoke to a surprise. My camera and all included equipment had sold on ebay for a nice sum (though not as much as I would have liked, I am accepting of that fact in this economy). I was relived to have sold it, but as with most things of this nature, it's bittersweet.

I won't bother you with the reasons why I'm selling the camera, I'll only say the reason is not solely economical (though yes, it'll be nice to pay off my bills for awhile). The reason(s) are varied and personal. Instead of sifting through them, I'll let this likely rambling blog post serve as a memoir of my times with the camera and the experiences related. I would post this on my twitter (twitter.com/timsenzee) but "Sold my cam, it's bittersweet, lol also it's raining and im bored" just doesn't have the same emotional resonance of which I am hoping to accomplish here.




For years now, I've been striving to be a filmmaker. I have memories, like all aspiring filmmakers, of making movies with my friends when I was younger. My "partners in crime" were Cody, Cody, and sometimes Andrew (but mostly Cody... the first one). We started filming ourselves "skateboarding" (the word "skateboarding" will not be written without quotations, as that might give the impression that what we did could somehow be seen as an actual representation of that noble sport). After growing tired of shooting ourselves attempted a trick, and the required follow-up of "man, that was so close, you almost landed it..." we realized we could expand our film horizons by adding in "plot" (remember the quotations around "skateboard"? Same thing here).

We started off shooting what most inspired young kids start off shooting: ridiculously complicated scenarios. Make a nice little short about two friends off on a neighborhood adventure? Hell no. Why do that when you can make an intergalactic space adventure with your parents waterbed doubling as "Cardashian Slime Pits" and the condiment bottles in the fridge used for as much bodily fluid as necessary?

Escaped convicts set loose on small town suburbia, aliens invading and killing our little friend Andrew, the story or a nerd (me) trying to get into a club, but stopped at every attempt by the violent bouncer, kung-fu epics in the back yard, and wandering samurais looking for vengeance. All this sprouted from our fertile minds (fueled by late night viewings of Starship Troopers and Star Wars) and was executed, however humbly, by maybe $10, a Hi-8 camera, and lots of imagination.

It's been said a band cannot be considered a real band unless they've recorded material on a 4-Track. I say you're not a real filmmaker lest you've recorded on a Hi-8 camera. We put Cody's Hi-8 through a lot of use. I believe we broke our little Hi-8 midway through one of our productions, so left without a camera and eager to move on with filming, what did we do? We got Cody to steal his bigger brothers camera. The show must go on.





One (myself) might wonder where the tapes of these "productions" could be found, but most of them are lost to time and banished to memory. For whatever reason, we were always very low on Hi-8 tapes. So, when we wanted to make a new project, we usually just said "screw it" and taped over our last filmed endeavor. And why not? Sure, our last one was alright, but our next one will be better.

Maybe losing those tapes was for the best. As many can attest, the taste of nostalgia is very sweet. And like fine wine, it only gets sweeter as long as the bottle is left closed.

Flash forward a few years and dozens of theater trips later, and the desire to create films only grew stronger. I felt like my years of watching and discussing films with friends was like some sort of "crash course" film school, and that I was ready to take the next step.

So I bought a camera, a computer (iMac) and Final Cut Studio 2 and started thinking up a good first short. And to be clear, this wasn't just a sudden decision. I saved for quite a length of time to get the camera, and with the grace of my father, was able to get a little earlier than expected. I'll never forget the feeling of seeing that big box arrive at my house. As I will never forget the feeling of seeing that big box leave my house.

Anyway, with my new found equipment and opportunity, I needed a project. Luckily, a project presented itself. On MySpace (heh) there was a short film contest to promote the new game "Stranglehold." The short was to be short in the vein of classic John Woo Hong Kong action flicks. Remember what I said about my friends and I shooting only ridiculously complicated scenarios? Well, some things never change...

The short was called Bandage. It was to be under five minutes long, and it starred myself as the title character (covered in bandages from some past injury. A plot device made up due to the fact that I didn't want to show my face in the movie). The character (name unknown. Not important!) is washed up on the bank of a canal, wrapped in bags. With a knife, he slashes his way out and gathers himself on the nearby sand. Pulling out a picture of a woman, he lets it drop after a moment of mourning.





Then the killing starts.

Out of all the films we shot, I have the fondest memories of this one. Something about it was just pure. Cody and I (and Josh, and my Dad and everyone else who helped) were just having such a blast with it. Here we were with this new equipment, making something that was actually, for all intents and purposes, pretty damn good. We shot it in our office late at night, so no one would bother us (the first of many past-midnight office shoots) and staged a fairly cool action scene in the lobby.

We must have scared the hell out of some poor maid though, because about an hour into shooting, the cops arrived. It must have been divine intervention, because despite the fact that we were carrying VERY REAL looking guns, and running around an office building at 2 in the morning wearing dark clothes and trench-coats, the cops didn't do much else than say "be more carefu." Really? I was almost disappointed. Come on guys, you've given me the start of a great story to tell my friends, and now you're gonna end it with THAT climax? "Be more careful?" At least confiscate something, threaten us. Hell, I felt more intimidated when I got pulled over for speeding. You're doing it wrong.

Anyway, suffice to say we didn't win the top prize (some guy with the help of his french commercial production company took it) but we had an extremely fun, memorable experience.





I remember the day after finishing the intensive shoot for Bandage, another contest came up for the game Assassin's Creed. So, after shooting and editing intensively for three days with probably eight hours of sleep altogether, why not immediately start the process again?

Cody and I packed the car and headed off to Flagstaff to take advantage of the great wilderness there. Our mini-medieval epic was to be about an assassin tracking a target who should not exist in the time period (at this point, little was known about the game Assassin's Creed, so we were guessing what the game was about. We guessed wrong).

Anyway, after getting some AMAZING shots (and carrying 200lbs of equipment up a mountain), the worst thing happened: torrential down pour. We got rained out of Flagstaff, and had to retreat to the shelter of a nearby Taco Bell (not the first time) and re-think our plans over a burrito and Baja Blast. Unfortunately, the short was never to be finished, but it only further cemented our habit of filmmaking; a habit that would grow in the years to come.

A number of shorts followed; Haste for History, the story of a young man entering a foot race for the chance to own a valuable antique once in Mozart's possession. Merc for Hire, a series of shorts I had grand ambitions for, but only the pilot was ever shot (twice). I would go into the details of the story, but it's... convoluted. Basically, it's about a start up company that specializes in solving difficult videogames for pay ("difficult videogame" being a dated concept these days). It was like Ghostbusters, if the ghosts were replaced by rage inducing videogames, and if Bill Murray and company were replaced by people not nearly as funny as Bill Murray and company.

I was always disappointed to some degree with the scale of our short films. What I saw in my mind, what I knew I could accomplish if just given the opportunity was so grand, so beautiful, that I knew it wouldn't fail.


But I never quite got there. Not yet.


I still have a large file of concepts for stories, both big and small. I look at them sometimes and, in a moment of self-aggrandizement, I think, "damn, that really was good."





While selling my cameras and equipment would seem to symbolically be the end of my filmmaking ambitions, I assure you (and myself) that that isn't the case... I don't think. I don't know what the future has in store for me or my friends, but if I were to come into a few thousand dollars, I would surely consider renting an HD Camera and shooting my LONG talked about film, REAL. But that was the problem. I talked about it for too long, and was unable to make any progress. Life is pushing me in a different direction right now, and who knows where it will twist and turn. If it passes back into the filmmaking realm, I'll be right there with my clapper, friends, script, and a case full of Red Bull.

If you made it to the (near) end of this long blog post, I truly appreciate it. Either you're a close friend, or someone who just genuinely enjoyed my prose and found the stories engaging (yeah right). Believe me though, it could have been ten times longer. I passed over the stories about nearly getting mugged for the camera equipment (twice), run ins with hobos, scaring people in Tempe while dressed as a superhero, hiding from Walt the groundskeeper while locked in an office at 4am, and many, MANY ingenious solutions to getting the film effects we needed while working on a shoe-string budget.


It was a blast.


After I sold my camera and equipment to "Ewokman" on ebay (screen name given, to protect identity, but mostly because "Ewokman" is a great name) this is the message he sent me:


"Just let me know when you get it shipped out with the tracking numbers. I will say that I'm very excited about it, I'm kind of jumping into film making for the first time, so I hope it works out for me."


I hope it does too, brother.