March 12, 2003

More movie talk. Out of curiosity I watched "Queen of the Dammed" last night on HBO. I read Anne Rice’s vampire books in the 80’s and enjoyed them but the trailer for this set off warning signs for me. So I figured I’d wait for it to get to cable and now it’s there. Well, I’m glad I didn’t spend money on it at the theater. I guess if your interested in the subject matter it will be of some interest. I just have to say that one of the things that I liked about the books is that the vampires are cool and sexy. Many of the vampires in "Queen of the Dammed" look plain ridiculous. I caught a glimpse of Claudia Black, from Farscape, as a vampire at the end and she looked stupid. All of this comes from a guy who wants to like this stuff. I even made a vampire movie myself – "The Nosferatu." It’s a modern version of the classic silent film. I screened it at Jump-Start with the music performed live in November 2000. It was my first attempt at making something narrative and was, I thought, somewhat successful. Since then I’ve edited it from 40 minutes down to 30 minutes. I was about to call it done but I was inspired by films and filmmakers at this year’s Sundance Film Festival to try something different with my films. I noticed that I seemed to be trying to tone down my ideas and kind of force them into something I felt looked like a “movie.” At Sundance I saw people who were making films and taking risks and those risks were what lead to their success. I was particularly impressed with a film called “An Injury to One.” It was a documentary made like a beautifully designed book or magazine. It had big bold images and text and had lots of visual repetition. It combined what I love about visual design with storytelling. It was the kind of thing that I dreamed up doing when I only had access to Photoshop. I thought that I would take a bunch of 35mm photos and scan them. Then I would create magazine like layouts that could be animated to make a film. So now, thanks to the magic of DV and Final Cut Pro, I’ve re-captured all of the footage that I logged 2 and a half years ago and I’ve started re-cutting “The Nosferatu.” I’ll let you know more about it as it progresses.