10 Hours of Princess Leia

Here’s one for the ages. Always fun to play with friends - this time had some kids roped in too! Great job to Gary Mahmoud for co-producing! I’m such a nerd that many of the costumes came from my apartment and the Lobot headgear took a month to build. But filmmaking’s a sickness and I’m terminal. Enjoy!


 


 Filmed on an iPad mini using http://thepadcaster.com/ Turn your iPad into a mobile production studio! Thanks to great performances from: Michele McNally, Rob King, Dan Jamieson, Scott Bolohan, Alden Gewirtz, Laurence Cantor, Andrew Ginsburg. BTW, I'm Boba Fett and Gary is both The Emperor and Indiana Jones (also my costume - nerd!!)

Walter White Facebook Lookback - The Simultaneous Walt-gasm!

As they say, great minds think alike, but this is the first ever simultaneous "Walt-gasm" I've ever heard of!  So, the idea for a Walter White Facebook Look Back video may have occurred to the folks at Are We There Yet (that's us working with some very funny people) first, but alas we took a few hours longer to post our video.  Now to our astonishment, another Walter White Facebook Look Back video is out there and getting most of the press - by which we mean all of it.  Well deserved though in our opinion mis-directed.  Please enjoy the "Buzz Aldrin" of Walter White Facebook Look Back videos and it's ok to admit it, ours it a little bit better.

The Valencia Opera House

Once upon a time, before I stumbled into filmmaking (oh what a stumble), I was going to be an architect. I took a lot of math, calc, physics and art in college; I was going to transfer into an architecture program after two years but followed a girl into a BA in Art instead. But still, I studied architecture for a semester abroad in Copenhagen my senior year, and I planned to go for my M. Arch. after graduation. Why that didn't happen, and how I ended up getting an MFA in film at NYU (where I met Josh) is another boring story and not important here – the point is I've always had a deep interest in architecture, and I still do. And I always felt that my detour into film – and more specifically cinematography – was not necessarily such a sharp turn. Both film and architecture are experienced in four dimension, and each comes into existence at an intersection of both technical and artistic practice.

In 2008 I was hired to film the recording sessions and create promos for a new opera of Wuthering Heights at the Opera House in Valencia, Spain, designed by vanguard architect Santiago Calatrava. Calatrava is one of the two or three most visionary architects working in the field today, and this building has to be seen to be believed. More like an organism or a giant alien starship than manmade structure, it is part of a larger complex called City of Arts and Sciences, all of it designed Calatrava, and equally fantastic in its entirety. When you see it, it's almost hard to believe it exists in our world, and not in some science fiction film. None of this footage made it into the promos, so recently I decided to put something together which I hope reveals the Opera House in some of its outrageous splendor.

                                                                                                          -Peter

Valencia Opera House from Interstate Films on Vimeo.

Why I hate Christmas

Why I love Christmas

by Peter Olsen

I wrote this five years ago to the day, just for myself, and no one has ever laid eyes on it until now.  I guess it was just waiting for the blog to be invented:

December 26, 2008

How could someone who loved Christmas so much as a kid grow up to resent it so completely as a grownup? Actually, being a late bloomer in all things, I didn’t learn to despise it until recently. Before that I didn’t hate it, I just felt let down by it. It was depressing to me just for what it wasn’t, anymore: full of wonder, anticipation, joy, innocence – all the clichés – not to mention snow (even in Minnesota – thank you Climate Change!). But now it seems to be the opposite of all it’s purported to be and nothing better than a dark cloud of doom, anxiety, and unmet expectations that I still cling to, feebly, in the face of evidence to the contrary, and knowing better from experience, after all these years. I just survived my 47^th Christmas. And I feel like hell. Mostly because I know how good it could be. Used to be.

This year I managed to miss out on nearly every single one of the few things that make the season what it’s supposed to be: holiday parties. Office parties, open houses, the gatherings where once a year you get together with the people whose paths you cross throughout the year as a matter of course and for once you stop and step out of your everyday hunkered-down identity and seem to say to each other “Here we are again at the end of another year of this game we try to get through successfully (whatever that means) called Life but we won’t worry about that or gift shopping or taxes tonight it’s good to see you let’s have a drink and forget about all the rest and Cheers, I actually like you!

Why did I miss out on every party? Because I was trying to get the other stuff done. I was worrying about the GIFTS. I was pulling veritable all-nighters trying to get it all together. I happen to like giving gifts that have some meaning for both myself and the person to whom I am giving. It literally depresses me to think about giving something ‘gifty’ – the bar of scented soap or candle or ornament or whatever. Even though I know these things can be very much appreciated, it just feels empty to me. It says nothing about our friendship or relationship or the year that just passed or our hopes for the future. Not that it has to do all that but I feel it MUST have something to do with the two of US, giver and receiver, whoever we are.

So admittedly, I put a lot of pressure on myself which I can’t possibly live up to and never do. So why? And why give something to someone who you don’t really know? You can love someone, a second cousin you’ve known all your life, say, but still not really know their taste in music or food or literature. So what’s the point in trying to improve their life somehow with something material? Yes it’s the thought that counts but why waste time and money and resources (wrapping paper, Scotch tape, trees and landfill space, air quality) for a thought? Make a toast to them instead!

The only thing worse than giving a meaningless gift is receiving one. Not because I am disappointed to not get a great new ‘thing’ but because I just feel bad. I feel bad that someone has spent a lot of effort trying to figure out who I am and what I would like and I must be some kind of bastard for not liking what they thought I would like and going to a lot of trouble to find and buy and wrap it for me.

What do I love about Christmas? I love the dead quiet of a heavy snowfall, when everything outside is the same blue-grey color, except the Christmas lights. Everything is diffused in the snow and the sounds are muffled, the scrapes of a neighbor shoveling the sidewalk, the whine of someone’s tires spinning on the ice, the thunder of the plow scraping by. I love when such weather is barely navigable but people come out anyway because they’re Minnesotans and they know how to get around in this stuff and there’s so few other people on the roads anyway. And they want to be warm with their friends. They just have to make it over to our house and not slip on the ice on the front steps (the glacier that salt cannot erode…) and throw their coats on the bed and we’ll slip that mug of glogg into their hands their cheeks will be rosy and the smiles bouncing off one another (“whew your nose is cold on my cheek!”).

White Christmas at the Olsen house 2013

And I love that my cousin Renee told me how much she loves that seemingly useless, generic, could-have-been-for-anyone trinket I gave her last year, and how useful it’s been.

The End

Not quite a Scrooge-caliber transformation, but … Watch this and if it doesn't overwhelm you with Christmas spirit and make you whimper like a little girl as I did, then your name must be Ebenezer. Ebenezer before this happened:

PANHANDLER PARTY

First you watch, then we talk...


So last Spring, Gary Mahmoud from the "Urban Dictionary" and newly re-titled, "Max Danger" shoots, is hanging out in my office as he's wont to do (the guy's got some idle time - he's an ACTOR) and he says "I've had this idea for a while about a comedy short on a Subway where there's a normal panhandler, then a stranger one, then it gets progressively more insane - eventually like circus midget and Mariachi band insane."

How could I say no?

What followed was one of the most logistically bizarre and technically difficult shoots I've ever been a part of.  Producer Aida Artieda should as usual, be sainted.

We outlined the idea based on his script - seven panhandler vignettes, eleven cast members, ten people shooting video on iPhones using (in theory) the same professional video app - Filmic Pro, and one location sound guy with wireless mics on seven different people and a giant shopping bag with his gear shoved inside looking way too much like an "if you see something, say something" moment.  It was a stealth shoot of the highest order - nary a permit to be had.  Sorry MTA, you just wouldn't understand, and as one wise man once said "it's always better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission."  

We did neither.

Gary and I rode the train to time out the beats.  We recorded sample audio with wired and wireless mics to test for interference.  But we knew that on this budget, we would NOT be able to rehearse until the day of the shoot.  Meaning we'd get what we got and make the best of it in the edit room.

To his credit, Gary assembled an amazing group of actors and crew.  In this situation, one person with a negative attitude could have completely derailed - pun INTENDED -  the process.  But everyone came to have fun and work hard.  Both vital ingredients on a shoe-string like this.

So about a month later at my office over pizza and beer, we found ourselves stuffed in a room doing a bunch of walkthroughs, placing videographers (iPhoneographers if you want to be a total nerd like me) in rough positions and timing out the beats of the different vignettes.  It was clumsy, and sloppy and quite obvious that it would bear almost no resemblance to the real experience.  One thing that did work was the timing.  Aida and her brother called out action to a stopwatch seven times from opposite sides of the room, as each panhandler began.  I think that might have saved the whole thing.

Did I mention this was late August and hot as balls on the subway?  I almost blocked it out, but DAMN~ that didn't make anything any easier.

We trudged to the Union Square 4 train and kept loose formation.  But while we didn't want to draw too much attention, we needed to all remain in visual contact as well, lest we get on different trains or miss the action call - or any of the millions of things that could have gone wrong.

Miraculously, none of them did.

Train pulls up.  We all hit record on all ten cameras - we're rolling now.  All the crew climb onto the same Subway car and take positions.  One car to the left, half the cast in script order - one car to the right the rest.  Train pulls away with all of us and….Action!

I'm going to pause a moment to mention one thing.  I always believed and still do that Gary as the officer who breaks up the party and then finales the whole thing would have been better as a uniform cop.  Gary's concern was with a last name like Mahmoud and a background in politics (you don't even want to know…) he'd be arrested for impersonating a police officer, legally/figuratively sodomized in court and then incarcerated and literally/brutally/repeatedly sodomized in a prison shower.  I never saw this as a legitimate risk as long as he wore a costume and no actual firearm or badge.  Of course it wasn't me taking the risk.  I will say that during one of the four takes we shot, some real uniform cops took note of us and though we all rushed off the train in a mass "abort mission" call, we thought we were goners for the rest of the night.  His Fred Dryer as Hunter impersonation gets the point across just fine.

Back to the shoot.  We filmed ten angles of four different "takes" of Panhandler Party over the course of two insane hours.  The timing worked better on some than others. The subway riders were almost always raucously into it.  I could hear myself saying, "As long as the cameras didn't all simultaneously fail, we got something here."  Only one camera failed on one of the takes and it was me holding my iPhone upside down by accident.

Back at the office over more beer, and a serenade by our Mariachi band we pulled all the footage off all the phones, copied it and copied it again for safe-keeping.  Something about having forty takes, separate audio that needed to be sunk together and 200 minutes of footage for a three-minute short should have raised instant concern.  That's a lotta stuff and a lotta work.  More than we'd even know.

But that was still way ahead of us.  With bottles raised, the dulcet nylon twang and four-part harmony of the band took us all in its sway - and for the moment the world was ours.

PANHANDLER PARTY
Bag Lady - Jane Aquilina
Jabari - Rob King
Tracy - Jen Kwok
Tracy - Nick Cobb
Businessman - Andrew Ginsburg
Ringmaster - Sean Allison
Mariachi Band - Mariachi Aguila y Plata
(Aguileo Ramos, Rigoberto Ramos, Leopoldo Juarez)
Cop - Gary Lee Mahmoud

Produced by Gary Lee Mahmoud, Josh Apter, and Aida Artieda
Written by Gary Lee Mahmoud
Edited by Josh Apter
Assistant Editor: Rishi Gandhi
Sound Recordist: Alan Kudan
Audio Post Mixer: P. Dennis Mitchell
Color Correction: Alex Grybauskas
Camera Work:
Elyse Brandau
Rishi Gandhi
Justin Hoch
Josh Hyman
Dan Jamieson Rodgers-Cromartie
Dan Katz
Jaime Ordonez
Lauren Potter
Jessica Solce

Looking for Mr. Coffee

This little (and I mean little) film just got into it's first festival the other day and I thought it would be cool to post it here.  Not only to sing the praises of it's editor, the very bearded and quite dangerous Tim Moyle and the vocal talents of Gary Mahmoud and his lady-friend Bonna Tek, but because this film is a great example of a story that I thought was zigging, when it was actually zagging.

I set out to shoot this as no more than a lens test with a set of loaner Zeiss primes - the same I used to shoot the Urban Dictionary series.

First, a confession.  I LOVE percolator coffee.  More than French Press, more than Clover coffee (thanks for fucking that up Starbucks) more than just about any other method.  But I don't love waiting for it to brew in the morning in a semi-catatonic state.  So before I go to bed, I set a timer to automatically turn on the percolator at 6AM and voila, my coffee is brewed by the time I stumble into the kitchen with any one of three screaming children.  Someone once said they were so tired in the morning they needed coffee just to be able to make coffee (I stole that one immediately, BTW) and so in presetting my percolator, I've become the cleverest man I know.  I'm the Sir Edmund Hillary of Mount Cleverest.

Now, My friend Leslie has an incredibly sexy bakelite percolator, and I have a standard Farberware plug-n-perk.  I thought a funny idea might be to see what happens in the morning when the percolator is alone, brewing quietly - what are it's thoughts, it's dreams?  I decided for the sake of this test that it's fantasy was more or less the coffee equivalent of late-night Cinemax.

And so the footage was shot, the lenses performed beautifully and the project was shelved while life rolled in like an avalanche.  Then one day Tim - a former student - who had cut a different project in class with equal skill, asked if there was anything he could dig into.  The rest is milk and sugar - except this:

He made a movie out of the footage that not only did I not intend, but that I never even saw i the footage!  To my further discredit, everyone who's seen it also sees it the way Tim did!  So it only goes to show that you can plan something, shoot something and think you have a simple story about two percolators getting interrupted while having hot-brewed quickie-sex, when what you really have is some nit-wit drinking coffee ejaculate while the satisfied percolator sits and laughs, waiting for his next victim.

Tasted like coffee to me, though now that you mention it, a little heavy on the cream...

Looking for Mr. Coffee or The Dirty Dream of Your Coffee Machine or What your Percolator's Really Brewing

Director - Josh Apter

Editor - Tim Moyle

Farberware - Gary Mahmoud

Coffematic - Bonna Tek

On F-words and Perfect Circles

One sunny Spring day when I was in fourth grade, our class was in the home stretch of a  project involving Amarican Indians (which apparently could be said with much less of a PC red flag going up as when I write this now).  Some of us made miniature clay pueblos from the sticks and mud by the creek, others fashioned arrows or spears - more out of an interest in pointy, hurty things than a concern for historical accuracy - and others wrote stories about life in the time of the Native Americans.

That's about all I remember on the class assignment front.  Memories that old come in a hazy collage of bell bottoms, bad haircuts and spontaneous erections.  In fact --

Oh, FUCK!!

That's how abruptly and clearly this moment lives on -

Sam Tyler striding into class with his beautifully painted Pueblo figurines, proud grin eager to share -- and then his foot catches the rug, whose duct-taped corner finally breaks free after years of neglect, to fulfill its destiny which is clearly to trip Sam Tyler, and send his figurines crashing to the floor.  They explode into dust, Sam's face a twisted knot of horror and shock.

"Oh, FUCK!!"  He screams.  Then he realizes, looks up, and scans the room.  He covers his mouth, as if more filth and random expletives will keep shooting out if he doesn't.

But it's too late, it's out there - and our collective nine year-old ears bleed.  

Not like I hadn't heard the word.  But to hear it spoken with such immediacy and authority was completely new.  This wasn't the four-letter, dirty word, "guess what this means" kind of use.  Not at all.  Sam Tyler, poor figurine-less bastard, gave context and life to this linguistic bomb, this king of all swears  (you saw A Christmas Story, so you know how bad it is).  He used it not to giggle about birds and/or bees, or to stick his toe in the risky waters of "going blue,"  No, Sam Tyler saw months of hard work and the thrill of presenting something beautiful to his classmates, slip out of his hands.  What else could he say?

CUT TO:

One snowy Winter, few years later, my family went on a vacation and this word again reared it's ugly head.  My cousins, my sister and I were all set to bunk in the basement of a rented cabin.  The adults - as I understand so clearly now - wanted an entire floor between their lives and ours.  Closing a door and saying, "good night" was like flipping a switch in a stretch limo, like seeing the thick glass partition rise, shut tight and divide generations for a few sacred hours.

But there was a catch - a mouse was loose in the basement.  We heard it, we SAW it and in a mass thumping exodus to the living room, we called on our parents to protect us.  

Somewhere in the house was a mousetrap.  Again memory selects the facts but not the context.  I just know I watched my father sitting on one of the fold-out cots in the basement.  He carefully strains to set the spring-loaded --- SNAP!!! 

Right on his thumb!! 

"AHH, FUCK!!!"

And that word again.  Perfect.  Sharp. No other word to describe the surprise and pain on the man's beet-red face.  He looks at us kids.  Our hands over our mouths like Sam Tyler before.  Suddenly, the doors of discipline are blown off.  How could this man expect us NOT to use a word that he just used (so perfectly) himself?  "Never say that word, ok?" he said as he shook his hand out climbing the stairs.  He used to say things like, "Do as I say, not as I do," but suddenly that once meaningful dad-ism lay dead, snapped in a trap that can never be reset. 

CUT TO:

One Summer night - a few weeks ago.  My wife and I, now with a brood of our own, come home late carrying our two youngest like snoring potato sacks and our 8 year-old a teetering zombie in the kitchen.  Like he's waiting for permission to collapse right there on the floor.

I put our two year-old in his crib.  He's a light sleeper but I think he's still down.  Should he wake up, I'm looking as another hour of feeding and singing and rocking and not doing all the grown up things I need to too before work in the morning. 

I lay him down - still asleep.  I tiptoe out of the room - almost there.

And because my ankles are these ridiculous old hollow chicken bones, on the last step out of the room one of them cracks - POP!  And I close the door behind me knowing what's coming.  I sigh resigned at the inevitable and walk into the kitchen as I hear it - the plaintive bleat of my little boy - killer of all gown-up time.

"AW, FUCK!!"

And my groggy son is still standing there.  Though not so groggy anymore.  The circle now complete, and I am Sam tripping into class and my dad nailing his thumb.  It's too late.  It's out there.  I haven't the heart to explain or excuse the word, but I wonder what he makes of it.  Now he's sure it's as bad as he thought, and as I walk him past his brother's room (who ironically fell right back to sleep) I lean in to him and whisper, "You probably shouldn't have heard that." 

We both laugh a guilty, giddy little laugh and a threshold is broken. 

I tuck him in and think of Harry Chapin, who could've written a great song about f-words and perfect circles.

This one comes close enough:

Holy franchise finale, Batman!

Some thoughts about The Dark Knight Rises, having just seen it this afternoon on a long-overdue, Summer-time work-hookey treat. If you haven't seen it yet, you must have as many or more children than I have, but maybe you want to read something else...

Just to get it out there first, TDKR (I can't pull that off) is everything a huge blockbuster ought to be - and in many ways much more. I expected to not like it and most of what I heard going in was tepid at best, but in the end I couldn't imagine leaving the theater wanting any additional explosions or gunshots or bizarre plot twists or exposi-montage (that's not a word) flashbacks, or seat-thumping bass-heavy sound design. It's escapist entertainment at its broad-strokiest and I thank it for taking me out of the white noise of real life so thoroughly for a decent two and a half hours (more if you count the previews! Side note after "The Hobbit" preview my friend sitting next to me says straight to the screen, "Just take all my money now…")

 So just a few things I remember thinking while watching the movie:

• Bane comes off as a dime-store Lord Humungus and makes me miss Heath Ledger. 
• The flashback shot of an unmasked Tom Hardy for two seconds was more effective than that fleece-wearing blow-pop in the other two hours. 
• Liam Neeson says the word "Taken" during one scene and I can't help A) thinking of the "Taken 2" preview that played before the movie and B) feeling like it was intentional. (Side note #2, same friend turns to me after said "Taken 2" preview and says "Taken 2: Return to Taken Island.") 
• The soldier on the 59th Street bridge being named "Parker" was not an accident. Spidey!! 
• New York, can't phone in a cameo as Gotham - it's just too New York dammit! And is not the best place to stage lots of buildings and bridges exploding - not sure there will ever be enough time to make that ok even digitally. 
• Someone should tell Anne Hathaway that her safe-cracking glasses look a LOT like cat ears when they're flipped up. 
• Mentioning the Bat's auto-pilot feature that many times does two things. It makes you aware that it's not working and Batman is screwed, and it makes you realize that it's actually going to work and that he's not screwed. 
• Alfred mentioning his European vacation cafe fantasy does two things. It lets you know that at the end of the movie, the vision will come true (hello Syd Field!) and and it makes you think "Inception" might break out in the middle of a Batman movie.
• Even fleece lollipop Bane deserved a better death then a point-blank hit from the Batpod - which until I just looked it up I thought was called the Batcycle - which is actually one of the lamest rides in the entire history of Batman.
• In retrospect, Matthew Modine should have stayed home. If Gordon told you to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you? 
• I thought because of the lack of blood, maybe Matthew Modine just passed out and peed hisself. 
• Bane must be on a liquid diet? Protein shakes? Wheat grass smoothies? Cannot figure out how the dude eats… 

In spite of the above, or maybe because of it, the movie really stuck to my ribs. I welcomed Christian Bale's raspy Batman voice (which he uses when he's talking to himself as batman!) with great enthusiasms, and the expertly engineered, character-development-free script by the Nolans kept me glued to my seat long after the urge to pee reached almost incontinence levels (fine, I peed myself right after Matthew Modine).

I could not imagine a better way to spend a rainy Friday afternoon and I could not imagine a better way to end this post than with the possible theme to the U2 scored Batman musical, "Batman - Turn off the Dark Knight."

Good tune, but you may want to close your eyes- it ain't pretty...

Hello, my name is Bill...

Please go see "Bill W." an amazing documentary about the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, now playing in theaters in NY, LA and cities all over the country.  Here's my rambling reason why -

How many times do you go see a movie, only to have completely forgotten it by the time you get home? Hell, I'm so conditioned to the disposable, assembly-line, Hollywood horseshit that the notion of being truly entertained, or gratified, or enlightened, or educated, or shaken up  - as this film shook me up (and down) - that I hardly know how to recognize the fleeting phenomenon when it hits me.

Now, this isn't something Peteandjosh do everyday.  We're far too jealous and petty to celebrate the work of other filmmakers.  It's so much easier to bask in the schadenfreude of a shitty review about a film you have baseless contempt for than it is to just experience art for what it is and what possibilities it may hold - 'cause if you try hard enough, even the worst offenders of copycat, second-rate sequel-cinema have something to offer.

But you hardly have to try at all to get what "Bill W." has to give.  It's a story that flows so confidently through a life so complex that in the hands of lesser filmmakers it could easily have become a soap box of twelve-step slogans or worse still - a simplification and lionization of a man who was a true hero for insisting throughout his life that he was mo more than a common drunk.  

I'll admit, I know the filmmakers behind the work.  The directors and the editor and their assistants spent the better part of two years tuning this machine in the corner office of Manhattan Edit Workshop.  They were the first real film to cut amidst the daily chaos of my school, and though I had some anxiety around our ability to accommodate them, over time it became an easy fit and they became more than just tenants - they became easy team to root for.  

Kevin Hanlon (Co-Dir/Producer) and Patrick Gambuti Jr. (Editor/Co-writer) screened the film in a few stages of its evolution to my students and welcomed the feedback that followed - sometimes mixed but hopefully always constructive.  To bear occasional witness to a process as sacred as story, for a story as sacred as Bill W. is an experience I won't soon forget.

Then, yesterday, to walk a group of students to the Quad Cinema and treat them to a proper screening of the finished film, followed by a discussion with the film's director - well, I'll just say that sometimes the day job shows its perks more than others.  

Bill W. as a film is boldly honest and intimately emotional, deftly cinematic and genuinely entertaining.  While leading you through an epic journey of Bill Wilson's lifelong struggle with alcohol and with himself, his failures and victories both as a person and as the somewhat reluctant leader of an institution as momentous as AA, the facts never overpower and the man always shows through.  Perhaps one of the most interesting things I left feeling was that while AA members may have an obvious interest it this movie, it's appeal requires nothing more than a desire for a solid story with great characters - a simple want  for a movie you'll remember long after you get home.

The Padcaster?

I was going to start this post by apologizing to my blog for nary a word in almost four months.

But that would not be the whole story…

A few weeks ago, I composed an epic-comeback of a new years post, a tome to end all internet tomes - apology included and everything!

Then, with the twitch of a pinkie, the post was cleared.  Then in all of Blogger's autosave glory, the cleared field of utter deletedness was saved.  No more post.  No more tome.

Took a few more weeks just to get over that one, and I almost threw it in until last week - a busy one where I shot a 20 camera music video (an FCP experiment), pulled the trigger on a new feature film project with Pete (more on that later) sold my old camera and bought a new iPad.

The new iPad may not seem petandjoshmakemovies-related, but it is.  And here's how.  Since 1993, I've been desperately trying to force video to look like film.  Not an easy task, considering the flat, soap-opera wonder that was analog or digital video, but at $200 per minute to shoot 16mm (not to even bother with the cost of 35) it was just not going to work.  I'd never be able to improvise and experiment with a film camera burning through that kind go dough.  So we got our telephoto lenses and zoomed all the way in and barely made our backgrounds fall out of focus.  The 53rd Calypso was our first attempt to shoot video for film, and thanks to the good people at "filmlook" in Burbank, you could almost fool some people.  NOTE: The dean of NYU at the time thought I shot on 35mm film, so it couldn't have looked that bad.  Here'a a washed out trailer that's about fifteen generations off the original.  If nothing else it was Edward Norton's first film ever (dude wasn't even SAG):

Peter despised video, and I agreed with him, but the difference in cost was simply a no-brainer.  So, on we went though the DV revolution, and the 35mm lens adapter phase and even shot more film here and there too - 

Cut to eight years and over twelve films later and we might finally have something real.  I'm not saying the DSLR craze is totally justified, but it's hard to deny the results.  The whole Urban Dictionary series is being shot on a Canon 5D Mark II and I'm still amazed by the look.

Now enter the iPad3 - the New iPad as Apple calls it - and we suddenly have full 1080p High Definition video in a device that's not only a camera, but an editing system (iMovie & Avid both have iPad Apps) and a method to distribute your finished work to Youtube or your blog or twitter or all three at the same time!  Complete vertical video integration all in a convenient serving tray…

So I can't resist trying to push the iPad and see what kind of film-like results it can achieve.  Completely by accident, I began shooting, cutting & distributing interviews with the iPad 2 at a convention I attended in  Las Vegas last year.  It was quite an eye-catcher and resulted in this video:

Since then, I've been working on a simplified video rig for the iPad.  I figured even with the crappy camera in the iPad 2, it was still worth it as an all-in-one interview machine.  I called the little movies "Padumantaries" and dubbed the rig, "The Padcaster."  Needless to say I am overjoyed at what Apple unveiled a little over a week ago.

And this is what Pete and I shot on the iPad 3 with the latest "Padcaster" prototype,  a 35mm lens adapter and some other goodies too.  A little test on the first day of Spring and some good news for people like us, who've been desperately trying to force video to look like film:

Finally, since my last deleted post was going to end with a resounding bang of the Who singing "Won't Get Fooled Again," I can't help but sign off with this one.  It's just the same but absolutely, insanely and amazingly different.

DORIT-O-FACE!

Any film shoot that results in me eating my weight in snack-chips deserves a post.  First the commercial, both versions, actually:

At the beginning of 2011, peteandjosh vowed to stop complaining and get shooting.   Not to break our collective arm patting ourselves on the back, but a teaser pitch for the "Max August" comedy series, two outings to the Boundary Waters for "The Singing Wilderness" documentary, and three episodes of the Urban Dictionary series  (L-Bomb, Premature Evacuation, and Dorit-O-face) ain't half bad.  You should have seen us before day jobs/wives/fiancees/kids/student loans/mortgages/car payments/the lead-dense push of age on our souls - not that either one of us would trade any of it…

Originally titled, "Doritogasm" this short always had dual agendas  - to function as the third of three Urban Dictionary shorts (that we plan on pitching as a series of interstitials) and to serve as an entry in the "Doritos: Crash the Superbowl" competition.  We did one a few years back that you can see HERE, but this year we decided to really get in it to win it.  Trying to come up with an appropriately sophomoric idea for the Crash the Superbowl entry, I thought maybe I'd see if the ol' Urban Dictionary had any Dorito-related insights.  Three clicks later - blam! - Doritogasm (look it up, it's there!) 

You see the idea - hopefully simple enough, slapstick enough and Superbowl-y enough to get us somewhere to the final round.

If you agree, follow this link and leave a comment.  If you're on a smart-phone, don't bother.  It just routes you to a dead-end intro video.

Version 1

Version 2

BTW, Changing the title from Doritogasm to Dorit-O-face, was a last-minute suggestion by a few friends with some actual commercial experience, and my non-football-watching wife who is uncannily always right about everything (she's reading this while I type…)  The idea being that the simple suffix "gasm" could set off a Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction-esque backlash that might knock it out of contention simply for sexual semantics.  

And we wouldn't want that, would we.

Next stop, Indianapolis!  (That's where the Superbowl is this year, not that a trip to Indianapolis isn't kind of like winning a prize.)

- peteandjosh

Finally, since there's no place to acknowledge the amazing people behind the scenes and in front of the camera, I want to give them all a shout-out right here in this blog post.  It might get loud, so make with the ear plugs:

Dorit-O-face

Starring (in order of appearance)

Matt Thomas - Tyler

Gary Mahmoud - George   

Iris Flick - lady at table

Michele McNally - Dr. Stinkenkrantz  

Aida Artieda - Lab Helper

John Schlirf - Lab Helper #2

Tom Behrens - Exam Room Doc

Spencer Morin - Exam Room Doc #2

Mike Baez - Subject #1

Other Awesome Exam Subjects:

Joe Cozzo

Chris Beier

Estelle Bajou

Tiziana Guarini

Justin Kirck

Taylor Zito

Ragini Bhaumik

Carlos Arce

Producer - Aida Artieda

PA - Dan Jamieson

THX - Faatima Qureshi

The More Things Change...

So I had this great idea for a post titled, "I haven't had a Woody like this in 12 years!" about my reaction to seeing "Midnight in Paris."  Maybe I'll write it someday, but for now I'll only say that the best thing the movie did for me was make me optimistic about his next one - a feeling I have not had in far too long for a filmmaker I admire as much as I do him.  I still think he's got one or two masterpieces brewing, I just hope I don't have to wait another decade to be proven right.  Hear that Mr Konigsberg?  More Misdemeanors and less Barcelonas - stat!!

Now to the crux of the biscuit.  I've been going through some old photos - prints mind you, not just jpegs - and out comes the NYU batch, complete with old friends, bad hair, worse behavior and the origins of peteandjosh.  Hard to forget hanging out at a post-screening party in our first year and I ask Pete if he'd like to shoot for me next go round.  He asks if I'd shoot for him, too.  Thus was born a 17 year-long friendship/co-conspiratorship/co-directorship - and the old married couple jokes just keep on coming…

Here's back when we could pull the ears off a Gundark -

So, sometimes the peteandjosh thing is easy like breathing.  Sometimes it's, well…

Case in point,  Kaaterskill Falls  -   Shooting a feature in 13 days over three months with no money, no crew and no script - I'm still amazed we all lived through it.  There was one night though - and this when people shot on film cameras with large detachable compartments to hold the film spools called magazines - one night when at around 4AM, something just snapped.  Peter was holding said magazine, having just loaded it with unexposed film, and I was doing what I do best - pushing and pushing.  He was flat-out exhausted, I was uncharacteristically annoying (quiet down, anyone who knows me at all) and I just crossed the line.  There was a shot I wanted and Pete was just too tired.  Don't remember what I said, but I remember knowing it would be better for everyone if I just backed off. 

I didn't.  I couldn't.  I wanted the shot.  Pete warned me to stop.  Fuck the shot, it's late and we're spent and it ain't gonna happen.  I kept going just to test him.  Then, with a look I've never seen on his face before or since, he uttered a phrase that's since become a shorthand joke for us, but at the time was the purest, most sincere, heartfelt threat I've ever received,  "Josh, I'm gonna take this magazine and smash you in the face."

We wrapped right about then and my face escaped un-smashed.  But it was a side of doing what we do that's not all fun and lollipops and creative light bulbs going off.  It's hard work sometimes - filthy with conflict, argument and worst of all just a lack of ideas.

Jump to Summer 2011 - ten years and many projects later.  We find ourselves shooting our second Urban Dictionary piece, "Premature Evacuation - when someone takes off after a one night stand."  The first day was shot in an ultra-swank suite at the Waldorf Astoria, though we had to tweak the script to make this suddenly available location in any way relevant to the story.  We had tons of room, not too much to shoot and walked away feeling pretty slick indeed.  Just maybe we know what we're doing by now…

Not so fast there guys.

Second night of shooting - 115 with the heat index.  By the time the AC units in the microscopic and quite filthy apartment we shot in finally started cooling, I'd already sweated salt deposits in my shirt.  We could barely move, let alone shoot, let alone squeeze the seven of us in there.  It was hot and late and the inverse of the Waldorf.  Nothing meshed, good takes all hard fought, and the coverage we needed slowly crawled along thru the thick sauna pushing back at us.

Then, with two shots left, I describe a move I think will help do a lot of narrative heavy lifting - right after this one.  Pete says, "Yeah, we're not doing that."  He's got the makings of the look - the 4AM, Catskills, have-mag-will-smash-face look.

I don't push it, instead help with the current set-up.  Bide my time.  Then, while passing him a beer, I take the camera and show him the move I'm thinking of.  It's not bad.  We try it.

Made the whole night worth while, if'n you ask me.  Not that it's the most amazing moment of cinema in the world, but it's the right shot for the scene - a woman realizes she's not waking up at home, and definitely not alone.

You tell me…

So the conclusion of this long, rambling mess of a post (I'm making up for writing absolutely nothing for almost two months, so bear with me) is maybe just that the more things change, the more some things actually change?  

Pete and I walked away from that night - easily the worst conditions we've had in ten years - with the instant retrospect needed to laugh it off.  The Waldorf, it was not.  But we got the shots, and no one's face came close to getting smashed.

Shit, man - Carlos Santana says all this and more without a single word, so I'll leave it for him to take it home this time.

NOTE: I actually have no idea what he's singing about, but it definitely says Summer, I'm pretty sure he mentions something about friends (one theme of this post, I guess) and it's always felt like one of the perfect end credit songs of all time.  I dare you not to feel a hard cut to black at 1:17.

I want to thank you all...

For optimum results, play this song and stand on your head.  Because sometimes the world is completely upside-down.

Now, peteandjosh aren't wont to rant and bitch about career frustrations (hard to tell when we've made exactly three pseudo-public statements on the topic) but I was reminded by Pete yesterday of an old joke between us.  It involved an extra section we planned on putting in the credits of our movies.  After the standard "Special Thanks to," for the friends and supporters of a particular work, we added "No Thanks to" for those who's active discouragement actually caused us to question our creative ideas and abilities - a condition historically cured by a quick trip down Knob Creek.  There's also a "Fuckyouverymuch" section reserved for a special breed of industry douchebag.

A movie producer (or his 22 year-old assistant) just read a screenplay of ours and upon passing on it said the following, "I really loved it, but it's too much like the film, 'Win Win'."  Thus continuing the never-ending cycle of totally incomprehensible reactions to our work.  This same producer read (and passed on) another script Pete and I submitted about six months ago with a similar response - loved the writing, but it's just not the right size.  

As if these things come in widths…

Now, I've not seen, "Win Win," but most of what I read suggests that it's a solid movie, with amazing performances.  So I'm left wondering, "What's wrong with it being like Win Win?"  Of course, my first response is, if you really love it why not just leave it there and stop adding conjunctions that ultimately contradict your initial reaction?

What's a guy to do?  Rant and bitch, I guess.  Just maybe this hit me at exactly the wrong place and time, maybe Sidney Lumet's recent passing stirred up some unexpected Peter Finch in me, maybe it's that the industry shit list (I used to actually keep one) is becoming a mile-long scroll of resentment-bile that does more to feed the fire than extinguish it.

Look, it's not like we're gonna stop writing them and shooting them and making them.  We'd just prefer not to die of old age before a broader opinion of our work rises to meet our own.  Visual of peteandjosh flexing our screenplays in the mirror?

So to the distributor who considered our film, "Kaaterskill Falls" and said, "I really loved it, but I wouldn't know what to do with it," and the potential manager who reacted to a screenplay by saying, "Loved it, but what if the kids in it were actually aliens?" and the entire wall of festival rejection letters from years of submissions (do you really wish me luck in the future?) I dedicate this song from 4:10 right on to the end.

NOTE:  I first heard this song browsing CDs at Brigade Records, a tiny trade-in store which rode the northern tip of what used to be known as Little Italy and is now doubtless a John Fleuvag.  I was 25, and as a typically self-absorbed 25 year old, thought this album was written exclusively for and about me.  It's nice to know that fifteen years later there are still a few lines that fit.

Enjoy the Fireworks!

CRS and the Instant Pleasuredome

Seems in the intervening years, I mis-remembercated the actual Billy Joel song that I remembered so vividly in my previous post, "Sadness or Euphoria."  In my defense, both tracks are from "Songs in the Attic," both songs are pretty awesome, but now that I think about it, it's much more likely that an intimate mix-tape between high-school sweethearts would contain a valentine like, "You're my Home."  Sorta makes me want to borrow my parents' car and head to the William Jeanes Library parking lot...

Here endeth the brief Billy Joel-a-thon.  Siegfried and Roy on guitar to open the song are free...

Sadness or Euphoria

So I'm scouting a location for an upcoming shoot.  It's set in a big post-production facility, and the people there were nice enough to let the cast - Gary, Michele (both of L-Bomb infamy) and our newly cast Adam (infamous in his own right) come in and take a tour, ask questions and generally get a feel for the environment.  Next, the plan was to grab a quick drink/bite and rehearse the scenes for rewrites.

We never really made it out of the bar.

Not that it wasn't productive.  We talked about character backstories over drinks and got to know one another better - always good to do.  And the plain truth is, I trust these guys.  So as it neared 8PM and our window for rehearsal started closing, we were fine just bullshitting about movies, music, a little Schwartzenegger-related politics and horrible iPhone reception (hard to believe, but it's true - they suck).  

Some highlights:  Michele had never seen a picture of James Taylor not bald.  Adam just bought the first TV of his adult life.  Gary admitted that he really liked Billy Joel.  And at the mention of Mr. Joel, I had an instant overpowering memory of one of his songs;  A live cut of "Summer Highland Falls" from the album "Songs in the Attic."  Yes, it's opening lines are among the most over-used yearbook quotes in the history of the educational system and yes, I first heard it on a mix tape my high-school girlfriend made for me, so the pang is built in.  But the pang was undeniably there.  

Now, it's been a long time since I actually heard the song.  I recall a kind of unfounded, "damn this was written about me!" relevance, and the moment when the bass kicks in making my head tingle.  But that was then, and then was a lifetime ago.  Was it all glorified memory of youth and love and time and place?  I wasn't sure.  I did suspect however, that this track would be like the old friend you see every few years but no matter how long the absence, the conversation picks up right where it left off.   

So after saying our goodbyes and while walking home, I did what any self-respecting, smart-phone carrying techno-dufus would do.  I YouTubed it.

Billy's Long Island accent, horrible 1977 hair and the old friend living in that song were right there to greet me.

If this finally makes me an honorary FLID (look it up), so be it.  If you never cared for Billy Joel, this may not change anything.  Just don't tell me the guy couldn't write a song.  Anyone who makes me feel the two above-mentioned extremes simultaneously can't be all bad.

The Ackbar Bow

My friend and I used to joke about getting our careers off the ground. Achieving "escape velocity" was the term he used - the idea being if we worked hard enough and made consistently solid work, there'd be a point at which the spacecraft (our aforementioned careers) would not only blast off (fortune and fame) but would break free of the earth's gravitational pull, thus finding a comfortable orbit (no more day jobs!)

To put the analogy to bed, sometimes I feel like a delayed shuttle launch.

Then there are times like last week's shoot, where the opposite is true and everything just clicks.

Backstory - my friend and I are making a short teaser for a TV series pitch. As our little project ballooned into a fifteen-person, multi-location machine, he started a new job and became almost completely unavailable. So with an impending panic attack as my co-pilot, I reached out to a few friends and colleagues and did something I don't do often enough. I asked for help. It was the best thing I ever did.

Suddenly, there were prop and wardrobe lists, make-up artists, contact sheets, call times, passenger vans, locations, rental pickups and this thing started to get very real. In the final week leading up to the shoot, we were moving like binary Neo at the end of the first Matrix - all calm and invincible, but without the horrible acting.

In trusting the skill and talent of others, I could relax (as much as I ever relax) and focus on the story we were trying to tell, concentrate on how best to tell it. We made both days with plenty of time, and had I not lost my car keys (an inevitability I attribute to turning 40 on our first day of shooting), I would have walked away feeling almost guilty for having such an excessive amount of fun.

And yes there were technical problems and personality conflicts and certain ideas that killed on paper just didn't sell when real people replaced written words and the usual amount of feeling like the film was shooting us as much as the other way around, but somehow it was happening. One funny idea cooked up two years ago at a party was becoming a physical thing with characters, structure and personality.

So I took a breath and did a little "Ackbar bow." I guess I felt the situation called for it. Now, since just about every emotion I've ever had can somehow be traced to one of the Star Wars movies (just the old ones, not the CGI turds), I'll explain.  There's a scene in the final battle sequence of Return of the Jedi, not the idiotic teddy bear fight on the ground, but the complex space battle taking place around the death star. The rebels are grossly outnumbered, face insurmountable odds - yet they continue to fight. One lucky pilot (depending on how you look at it) kamikazes right into the bridge of a massive super-star destroyer - disabling its navigation systems and sending it slowly careening into the death star in a cataclysmic explosion. Finally, a victory for the little guys! The rebel leader, everyone's favorite ambulatory lobster, "Admiral Ackbar" watches the scene and just bows his head. Overcome with emotion, relief, possibility, exhaustion, he just has a moment to take it in.

If it makes any sense, I felt a twisted kinship with the Admiral as this project came to life. I took a breath, had my moment of possibility, and for a second felt slightly farther from the earth's gravitational pull.

In living color here, for all you rebel scum...