Chrome

What color is chrome? There is a gel you can buy named 'steel blue' maybe thats the closest thing that I love to use for chrome. What ever the color temperature, CHROME pierces my senses in the most satisfying way. It stirs deep levels of satisfaction that I swear I feel in my muscles, in my core. The way color and light travel over chrome is one of the most beautiful things to watch through an eyepiece. When Chrome moves, it can be likened to sexual experience in the right light. This week I shot welding, fiery, flints, flames, blue heat, red hot heat on metal, sparks, metal being sheared, shaven, cut violently and burned and soldered. I went for blown out pixels and deep blacks in the metal. I let the fire fill the frames. I went extremely close on the burning metal and inhaled alot of it. I devled into the shine, explosive light.. light refracting everywhere. Most of it will end up on the cutting room floor as the network uses 60 minutes of hundreds of hours of footage. But, I'm not sad that alot of my glorious moments will end up on the cutting room floor. I loved being able to shoot it and be that close. Where as the rest of the masses only get to watch a few of those clips on their tv and they will be a good 15 feet from the screen. I'm not happy anywhere else this morning... as the job is over for the week; I wish I was shooting metal today.

I was in a custom motorcycle shop. Huge one of a kind metal machines. Bikes made from sheer scrap metal. Saws, blades, tools, fire, arching light coming from welding torches. ARGGGH..RAR it was great. Tatoos, rock n roll and fierce power, sheer ore and core.

The world is too soft for my taste today.

Bonding at Chile's

You either love the road or hit the road...
"Chiles", yes that cheezy American chain of "mexican food"... is often the most exciting find when on location shooting in shithole towns across this land. The Presidente Margaritas are good.. but, if camera operating at 630 am.. only one is allowed unless you really drink alot I guess. Bonding at Chiles is not my first choice way to relax after a 12 hour day shouldering a 28 pound camera (made for an engineer, not a cinematographer). Bonding with the crew is essential out of the set environment. If you avoid this .. it will inevitably get weird and it only makes work easier. There are things you don't want to reveal to your co-workers. It's ammunition and just because crew work is so intimate.. doens't mean you have to let people you barely know into your lives... but, I struggle with this.

Crews can get so intimate, its' creepy... how dysfunctional and close they can get.
Its' a side of the biz that is rarely like other fields.
There is an intimacy.. from "traveling between " worlds together that is ridiculous. To the point, you forge you have family, a lover , other close friends somewhere else sometimes. When the show is over and the dust settles and everyone is back to their lives.. there is often very little contact with most even though you went through all these intense experiences together. Sometimes, you dont' hear from people you completely "bonded with" at Chiles night after night" for six months. Crews rotate like roadies travel like carnes and circus freaks and bands in a way. We come together for the making of the show. Sometimes, for the arrrrrt, sometimes for the check, sometimes for the credit. Sometimes.. because it's just what we do and who we are and we can't do anything else but, travel and make movies and teevee.

I often don't know how I end up with some people at the table at Chiles (or Marie Calendars or TGIF's..etc) but whatever the chain restaurant.. the crew is my family for the time being. There is always the one or two I do really bond with and keep in touch with after the show. It is always a mutual and a reach across the void of being political.. to connect in a deeper way with someone.. This is sometimes more rewarding to me than the project.. and sometimes as rewarding as that moment when you peer into the lens , all of which makes the pain of spending your evening dinners in Chiles, acceptable.

Drinking two margaritas works.. or three and then excusing yerself to hide in your hotel room.. works well. There's always hours of youtube and the cell phone.

The Waiting Place

We camera people, the crew (aka, the invisible apparatus) travel to go to where the "show is". People who sit back in their living rooms or at their desk when they log on, and sit in a theater..with a big ol' popcorn and rarely realize this what our lives become to bring these images to them. This is the way of life for a filmmaker, like the carne and although I gufaw.. like the rockstar.

"If you don't like the road.. the biz ain't for you"; I was told ten years ago when I was in Big Bear, CA. I was a loader on a 2 milion dollar feature.. and thought I was really important. The job of a loader is the second most important on a 35mm feature.. it's true; but, underrated and underpaid. The film had a crack head as it's star. It was febuary night shoots in the mountains. It was friggin cold. I didnt' have the money then for pile and gortex. I was mid twenty something.. stupid style. I was loading 5279 into some Arri 35 mags very quickly in the middle of the night. I think in those days, I had my loading time down to under 2 minutes per mag and I was proud of that at the time. I had tension with the sound mixer on the show.. who had a substance problem when it was least appropriate to get f'd up. He took me under his wing in a way but he drove me nuts. He was an over the hill, soured, union, sound mixer with a serious pot problem. I remember he smoked up at least a few times a day (or night) in the darkroom no matter how many times I asked him to stop. No problem with weed but, the darkroom was not fair. I took my job as a loader very seriously, no matter how bad that movie was... and it was bad. It got hard to concentrate in there after he had been in there but, I never mixed up the stocks. Even though I hated the movie and violently hated Charlie Sheen who was staring in it; I learned to fight for what I needed on the road...

Travel comes with the work ..and when you sign up.. you sign.. up for travel and giving up your comforts. If you can't give up your creature comforts, get out of the biz. The older you get, the better you express and demand your needs. Traveling for shoots and production can like an addictive, bad relationship. It can be hard core one way and hardcore another. When home for months at a time during slow season or whether on the road too much in high season.. it's not easy. I venture to say assert that cinematographers often never feel at home in either place. Once you, the carne spend a decade living on crew after crew, you get antsy either way. When I don't travel for work in awhile, I do this thing where I miss the road and cant' wait to feast my eyes and stretch the muscles of my visual cortex on new terrain.

One thing that's sure about the biz.. is the "sudden" phonecall. And they come in.. once you work relatively consistently. POOF! There you are again.. back on the road. The excitement of the new place and the adventure wears off after that first "getting the kinks out" on set. The realization comes a day or two later than you are going to wake up and sleep every day for the foreseeable future at what becomes refered to as "The Hotel". The hotel becomes your only resting place, your den.. your place to crawl into ..to escape to.. away from the world. Your only protection.

I'm living in a hotel this week. Whether in the most beautiful or the most ugly part of the country.. hotels are roughly the same from IOWA to DC to FLA to New Mexico to Oregon.. America is one big corporate clone of itself with regional pathetic twists. This town is near a military base and very Republican. There is often simply comfort to the room after a shoot and or journey. The room inevitably develops a smell after day 2. The truth is probably that the smell was there when you first got there but, you didnt' notice it until Day 2.]
The room is your den /haven from the lack of control you have in your life when shooting on location and you dont' care.

The beer is good after day one but, pouring it into a hotel glass is a fatal error. Beer from the can is better. Not the hotel glass. The coffee mugs and glasses taste like "hotel". It is the same taste as the smell and the air and the colors your eyes breathe. . Blaise. Beige. Muted. The taste, smell and colors are the same. It is the color palette of waiting. The taste worse than cardboard. But, you embrace it and recognize it like an old friend.. and you accept it's shortcomings.

In the lobby, the 'Colbert Report' on big tee-vees. Fake paneled wood furniture. Browns and beiges. Carpet patterns that if you looked at them for more than a nanosecond would have a side effect of naseau. Perfumy soap that's more chemical than lard. The never ending white noise of the freeway and its arching wavelength and controlled decibels. The eternal hum of the auto heat/air. The overcheery but yet, so very, very nice bell desk college age gal... who is off for somereason you can't pinpoint. The USA TODAY that is complimentary. It's all so ugly, so American and it's all you have to crawl into to hide.

Where are you in this life when you are surrounded by these visuals.. and environment.. ? What to feast on? Dousing oneself into books, magazine, cable, You Tube and really anything that helps you forget where you are is the way of the bear in this situation.

The Waiting Place…
…for people just waiting. Waiting for a train to go, or a bus to come, or a plane to go, or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow, or waiting around for a Yes or No, or waiting for their hair to grow. Everyone is just waiting. Waiting for the fish to bite, or waiting for wind to fly a kite, or waiting around for Friday night, or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake, or a pot to boil, or a Better Break, or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants, or a wig with curls, or Another Chance. Everyone is just waiting.

Dr. Seuss

You awake in the night.. and wonder if you are alive or dead. You are in a nether-region. Neither here or there. There is no one you can call or reach out to at that hour. It is damp out. Trucks go by and the sodium vapor lights blare blurry though the checkered sheer curtains. You are in the waiting room. You go back to sleep and wait for the dawn. And you think how happy you are you brought your own coffee grounds.

Filmmakers get the HOTEL. The Coen Bros. Jarmusch. Mike Leigh's " Hotel" never got the press it deserved. Hitchcock. Godard. There is the memory of a hotel I once went to in downtown Hollywood for a seance.. on Halloween where Marilyn Monroe died. Everytime I drove past the hotel Janis Joplin dies in.. I think of her. The Standard, The Roosevelt, The Chelsea, The Plaza, The Hitlon, The Howard Johnson, The Comfort Inn, Super 8 Motels, The Days Inn, The Marriot... the waiting for Godot and the next thing.

LA is a huge waiting room. A hotel in a way. . And hence my unsure relationship of wanting to be on the road or not.

I prefer a bear den anyday..if in America .or really far locations from America.


Beige and highway and waiting till dawn. If only I had a camera.....this time.

Welcome to Rods & Cones

Welcome.

Another artist with a blog. *yawn*
So why do it? I guess I'd be so honored if you can me give me an inch of your time now and again.. because YOU are someone I really want to dialogue with about visuals.

I'm doing this blog ( a word that I think is unfortunate) in order to connect with other artists near and far with whom I often feel creatively disconnected from by the nature of my work. Cinematographers are like bears. We hibernate between projects and sleep alot between projects. We dream alot. We file alot of our ever flowing visions in a file cabinet in our visual cortex. When we awake, we jump up (usually @ 5 am), stumble through the pre-dawn woods, to the stream. There, we analyze the path of the salmon and then (in usually 24fps) (although this one would be nice in 72fps), we catch a fresh salmon from the stream with a viscious, skilled swipe. Sometimes we pause right before we strike and change our technique at the last minute. Depends on the fish.
Before, during and after this moment, we mingle with other species and compare dreams, visions and technique. We absorb it all. We retreat to our den after sometimes a bathing session in the stream. We go through a connection with other artists sometimes only when by the stream.

The rest of the time, we walk around having all kinds of visual epiphanies in various shades of genre, usually when there is no camera in front of us or on our person. Visions get lost into the abyss of memory and because they often do not fit in with the next or current project. There is no place to put them; the internet offers a space for these neuro-transmissions, otherwise... lost. I believe these types of moments can be the food, air and water for a filmmaker and the "stuff" that feeds visual artists.

I want to share with you seen and unseen fleeting moments from the set, the daily life and the inner world of a cinematographer. I hope you will share a dialogue with me and enjoy.. and participate. Sometimes there will be no visuals.. as so much of this is about the experience of the mind's eye.

(I'm also waiting to buy the D300). ;)