7: "The Boogie" | Home #3

The Bronx has a really bad stigma.  When someone outside of New York thinks of The Bronx, typically it's gunshots, murder, fire, crack, bullet holes, knife fights, dirt, grime and poverty.  And maybe the Yankees.  Sure, The Bronx went through a bad time.  But that doesn't mean that it's stereotype is the ONLY way it can be portrayed.

Considering the bad rap, it's still proud of itself.  The obvious things: birth of hip-hop (and probably doo wop); championship baseball; toughness.  And no matter what ANYBODY says, The Bronx has the best pizza.  And bakeries.  And delis.

It's a borough that's not afraid to get it's hands dirty.  Matter of fact it's not afraid of anything.  We'll die before we back down.  And even though it's a mainly segregated place, there's something of a camaraderie. A brother and sisterhood.  No matter what it's still HOME.  To me, at least.

This film isn't offering a healing of the wounds.  It's merely a portrait.  Small bits of things pieced together to create a mosaic of The Boogie Down.  After making this film I was reminded that The Bronx wears it's scars pretty well.  And the people wear their scratches like a badge.

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Much like the other two films in this micro-series, I used a scratch texture I created...from scratch.  For more of an explanation on that, click HERE.

For "The Boogie", I had my clamp light on a dimmer and pointed it up through the glass table/green cellophane/scratched acetate.  Then I just randomly played with the dimmer and used this footage as a background plate.  Here's the raw footage of what I mean:

It yielded some really nice results.  I wanted it to feel like summer and this footage definitely added some "heat":

The building shots were taken in the South Bronx where the elevated train passes through.  I took slow motion footage on an iPhone 6.  Some raw stills from the footage below:

I did a little stop motion animation for the vinyl record bit:

I also did a bunch of very crude hand drawn animations with a ball-point pen.  I used a technique called "straight ahead animation" and the way I went about it was REALLY down and dirty.  I used my phone as a lightbox (mad guerrilla) and drew really small drawings.  It was a fast and cheap way to do what I wanted but I wouldn't recommend it if you're a perfectionist.  There's a lots of hoping and praying involved that it will work:

Here you can see these little pieces applied to the scene:

I've been shitting all over storyboards with this "HOME" series.  And this film was the final shit.  I really can't stress enough that pretty storyboards can be a giant waste of time.  I hastily scribble through storyboards.  About half way through production I got rid of them altogether:

Ripping up those boards was really freeing.  This isn't a narrative.  It's a portrait.  Not having to worry about what shot went after another gave me tons of latitude in the edit.  And I was able to paint a picture and present some kind of feeling while being mindful of the sense of place.

Simply put, I winged it.  And it felt really good to do that.  Filmmaking can be really structured and confining if you're not careful.  By the time you get to the edit, you can be very hesitant to try a different arrangement of shots and scenes because that's not the way you planned it in the beginning.  A film is a journey and an evolution.  And the act of making a film is no exception.  So, if the end result might not be exactly what you originally pictured but the feeling that was intended is holding true, what's really wrong with making it up as you go along?

This film might not be the best of the bunch in the end but it definitely opened a door to a new approach.

6: "Caverns" | Home #2

I'm one of the few people living in New York City who actually enjoys taking the train. If I need a mojo recharge, I jump on the train. There's no denying there's a special vibe going on underground (and above). It's really fascinating to me that you can walk down a staircase, go underneath the street, and there's a vast world that connects the entire city. It's like a whole other place with it's own code of ethics...written and unwritten.

In this "Home" series, I'm trying to create an aesthetic for each of the three films using a particular shape. For "Caverns" it was the obvious choice (to me) to use circles. Amidst a sea of straight lines (tile squares, rails, tracks, steel beams, platform tiles, stairs, etc.), the bright colored circles that appear against black signage seem really prominent.

Some examples:

I thought it was important for the color palette to resemble the colors of each train line.  Otherwise, it wouldn't be distinctly New York's train lines. I'm pretty sure every train line color is covered in these two pics:

To get a circle with some real texture, I just took some photos and video of one of my clamp lights during the shoot for the entire "Home" series.  I had shot a bunch of textures all at once.  Here's the main element I worked with for "Caverns":

Personally, I think the star of this film is the audio track. These were all real sounds I recorded on an iPhone 6 using the Voice Memos app. I rode around the city for a few hours on various trains in 3 different boroughs to collect all the sounds I needed.

For the speaker announcements, I held my phone up to the speakers inside the train cars and at each station platform:

I also recorded sounds of every train entering and exiting the station. I made sure to go to a station that has local trains stopping there as well as express trains flying by:

I wanted to cut the audio so it sounded like choppy bits of a subway ride experience.  Like this:

And this:

I drew a very basic storyboard and used it as a guide for the audio edit.  The order really couldn't be random. It needed to feel like you embarked on a ride and had a destination. Once again, my boards aren't pretty. As long as the story flows and the energy is there, the drawings don't need to be beautiful.

Here are some stills of the final result:

5: "Manhattan" | Home #1

Thousands of films, books, poems, plays and songs have been made about New York City or, at very least, utilize it as the backdrop.  It's one of the truly great muses in contemporary art over the last 100+ years.  So many iconic movies and shows have been created that feature New York.  I mean...just look at a few:

This film is my (very) humble addition to the list.

I grew up in The Bronx and spent lots of time in Manhattan.  The older I got, the more I wanted to be there.  I'd jump on a train and be there by myself sometimes.  It's hard to encapsulate the vibe I get just by being there.  I'm definitely not the first and I certainly won't be the last to feel that way.  So it's only fitting that I return the favor and make a film about Manhattan.

I didn't want to make something we've seen before and it needed to be something unique to my native experiences.  So I wanted to show Manhattan when it's not really in it's full glory.  No makeup on.  No parades.  No Times Square on New Year's Eve.  No Rockettes.  Just the city and me.  I can remember many times walking down a rainy street at night.  The sounds.  The smell.  The grit.  The emptiness.  Something we rarely see in movies.  It's some of my best memories of one of my favorite places.

If you live in New York or have spent any significant amount of time here, you'll know that even at it's worst it's full of wonderful surprises.  I can't tell you how many impromptu fireworks shows I've witnessed.  And it definitely ain't the 4th of July.  Or crossing a bridge, usually by car, and seeing the sparks from a train floating into the East River while it's crossing a neighboring bridge.  Or suddenly 7 cop cars or fire trucks are darting down the block creating a light show.  To me, this is Manhattan.

I've loved it the most at night.  Only the lights define it.

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Each film in this "Home" series will feature a shape that makes up the foundation of it's aesthetic.  For "Manhattan", it's squares. All three films were shot at once using a glass end table, aluminum foil, and some hardware store items.  Some pics of the setup below:

I wanted to make my own scratches and grit.  To get this gritty texture, I scrubbed acetate sheets with sandpaper, smeared black paint all over it, then wiped the paint off just leaving it in the crevices:

I placed the acetate textures I made on the table top.  Then I shot the light in various positions against different parts of the texture.  Other times, the lights were pointed at the crumbled aluminum foil and I moved the foil around to get different light patterns.  In some cases I did stop motion animation with the clamp light itself, as in the scene with the police sirens:

When it came time to animate, I basically cut these photos into squares and made all kinds of lights out of them.  Window lights, bridge lights, car lights, police sirens, etc.  Here's an example of making a bridge from one of these squares:

Here are my storyboards for "Manhattan".  By looking at these, you wouldn't think I went to art school for 6 years to learn how to draw.  I don't believe in doing pretty storyboards.  For me, a storyboard's primary purpose is to layout the flow and energy of the story.  Spending time making well drawn panels is, to me, a giant waste.  Especially if you're the only one who needs to look at them:

Another running theme through these three films is this overlay of film scratches.  I didn't want to just slap some scratchy film over top.  That would've been pretty fuckin' lame.  But I thought it would be cool to use the film scratches as the rain animation.  Surprisingly, it worked really well.

Here's the film texture I used:

And here is some finished art with the film scratches skewed to look like rain:

Thanks for reading :)

THE AREA 52 PLAYGROUND

I intend to do a lot of shooting for these films so I made a very basic setup for shooting in our home office. My "animation stand" is a sturdy wooden folding table.  I've got two clamp lights on dimmers and a piece of duvetyne to block out any unwanted light from outside.

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I got the best cheap camera I could find to shoot with.  It's a Samsung NX3000 Mirrorless digital camera that came with two pretty basic zoom lenses.  I'm sure a real photographer would classify it as a piece-of-shit but for my purposes it's perfect. The images are better than my phone or scanner would ever capture.

I also have this nifty tripod that allows me to angle the central column so I can shoot parallel to the animation stand.  I've also got a separate mount in case I decide to shoot with my phone instead of the camera.

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These are some of the tools and supplies I work with.  I conveniently live two blocks from an art college and there's a good Art Supply store there and a discount store across the street.  Discount store items are good for experimental films because if you fuck up, at least it didn't cost an arm and a leg.

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