I have officially decided to postpone my thesis screening to the fall semester. I have completed shooting after a very fruitful trip to Puerto Rico that yielded a great deal of captivating moments and stories that I think will add to the rich texture that is developing in the film. I feel that with the responsibilities I have taken on teaching this class over at Nazareth, I don't want to overcommit myself, nor do I want to rush in trying to complete what has been such an important piece of work for me. So I think it will be beneficial to take the summer to devote the proper time and attention to finishing everything. Hopefully, I will be ready to go early in the semester and everyone can make it to one of the screenings. I will certainly be posting more about that as I make progress.

Call it a rude a awakening, but a week ago, I was standing up to my waist in crystal clear salt water, warm enough to bathe in, under 80 degree temps and sunny skies the likes of which we rarely see in Rochester, and then, it was as if I was so suddenly and so cruelly plucked from my idyllic dream and dumped waist deep (or nearly) into a frigid, dank, icy, tundra. It couldn't have been more ironic, stepping off the plane just after midnight, wearing a winter coat and a hat with "Culebra, Puerto Rico" emblazoned on it, and I was greeted by a slightly more bundled up airport employee on the jetway with the a sudden flash of recognition. "Culebra!" he uttered with gusto, referring to the tiny island off the eastern coast of the main island where I sunned myself and danced about in sparkling aquamarine water a day earlier. "I'm from there!" he said. I eyed his still dark complexion and bright smile, as I passed him, feeling too sleepy and depressed to give much of a response. I smiled back as I mustered a mental picture of this seemingly mythical place that only a few thousand people are fortunate enough to call home and could not help but think, and you left that to come here?

It's funny how getting away for a week to a place like Puerto Rico can leave even a land of milk and honey such as Rochester lacking luster upon returning. In all candor, I must say, though it is hard to come back, this place, despite its many flaws, has been the only home I've ever really known, and it is where my family, and my wife's family resides, which would make it hard to leave permanently. But one can't help but dream of a bit different life in a place so unlike anything we have here.

The trip, by all accounts, was an absolute godsend for all involved. I felt extremely privileged to be there, and to have a role in bringing my mother in law back home for the first time in more than two decades, not to mention, the fact that we made the trip as a family. And of course, to be able to document the whole thing, was magical for me. There were so many moments that moved me and just left me with an  enormous smile plastered across my face at times, and other times, tears forming at the corners of my eyes. 

It could not have been more poignant when we arrived at the house where Lucy had grown up, and she took one look at it, turned away and said, "I think I'm going to cry", to which her nephew Jose, or as we all call him Tio (uncle) Chegui, embraced her and said simply, "Welcome home." It was a homecoming for him as well, coming from Boston to meet us in the place where he spent some of his formative years as well, growing up in that same house. It provided the opportunity for him to reunite with his own father, who he had not seen in a number of years. 

From the recognition of old haunts, to the surprise at changes that have occurred in intervening years, it was a journey filled with revelations and a renewed sense of connection to something they had long forgotten about. We parted ways with the island vowing to return soon, and not allow another decade or two to pass until the next trip back. 

Now comes the difficult work of sifting through all of that material to carve the rest of the story from its rich narrative texture. More to come soon.

After a month of tearing out hair, pacing around in front of my computer, and general anxiety, I finally managed to pull it together enough to finish a rough cut of the first part of my thesis project. Actually, to be clear, it was the editing process that caused the above symptoms. Spending most of your "free time" sitting in one place doing anything will cause that I suppose, but for some reason this process was more mentally taxing than most.

This week, we leave for Puerto Rico, to return to my mother in law's home town, Arroyo, which will be her first trip there since 1985. The house she grew up in still stands there, but much has changed around it. It's hard to know what to expect, but this should be the culmination of the project, and I would imagine it will bring back a lot of mixed emotions for her as well as the rest of the family. We'll be there for eight days, and if I get a chance to hook into the internet anywhere, I'll make a post, otherwise, I'll save it for when we return.

12 degrees out at last check, and typically blustery for this time of year, so I'd say a return to the tropics is just what the doctor ordered.

I have been working feverishly to wrap up logging tape and put together my edit script for the first half, give or take, to my thesis. I use such urgent language because I have been setting goals for myself to stay on task, and feel lately that procrastination has won out a bit. There are always other things to accomplish, but this task must of course be at the top of my list. 

I have completed a rough script, about 30 pages in length, which concerns me a bit, because I really want to manage the pacing of the film, and it is always difficult to "kill your darlings" once they have been given life. It always happens that the first cut is much longer than what I would like and I always manage to get it down to size. Since this project is much larger than anything I have worked on, it is difficult to access what I have until it is laid into a timeline. Normally, I don't even work from a formal editing script, but the volume of material necessitated it. At last count, I logged 160 pages from around 13 hours of footage. After a few weeks of intensive work, I am satisfied with where the project stands.

I have also been continuing work with archival materials from VSW's vault. I found a little gem called "What Do I Look Like to Others?", a training film, judging by the fashions, dating back to the late '60s or early '70s. I gravitated to it mainly for it's rather probing voiceover by Rod Serling. I have also been working with some elements from a film called "Exposition", which takes a somewhat experimental approach to documenting a World's Fair. Among other things, the central work that I am dealing with is a film called "Rape of the Earth", which I must give Dave Frassetto credit for pointing out, albeit at random. I have found this to be the best method for discovery in a collection of this sort. This film, as one might guess, deals with human influence on the natural landscape. One other notable item is some footage from Charles Lindbergh's first trans-Atlantic flight.

I am preparing to teach a brand new offering in the Art Department over at Nazareth (my alma mater), which I am working on developing a curriculum for. I am beginning to feel like there are too many irons in the fire, but as long progress is being made, it's hard to complain. The class is a video production class, but with a focus on how the medium can be used as a form of artistic expression. I know a lot of you have been involved in teaching in one capacity or another, so any input is welcome. 

I am nearly done with logging tape, just about ready to compile my edit script before this week is out hopefully. I want to give myself enough time to at least complete a rough cut of the first half of the film, which will take place in Rochester and act as a setup for the trip to Puerto Rico. 

I have delved into some of the earliest tape that I shot for this project recently, leaving the last material to log at the very end. I hadn't planned to do it that way, but in some ways, it is a nice little bookend to the process. I just went through the first tape that I shot, which oddly,  was done on Superbowl Sunday. My wife's parents had brought Grandma home from the nursing home, which can be a challenge since she is rather immobile and completely dependent on others to get anywhere. Try lifting 130 or so pounds of dead weight and you'll understand. These occasions always revolve around her since she in many ways is still the matriarch of the family. In Puerto Rican culture, and I imagine in many Hispanic cultures, the women tend to have a dominant role in many aspects of domestic life, and particularly the eldest women are revered. Donia Andrea, a title of respect for Grandma, is always the center of attention when she does visit, and so I took the opportunity to document this rare occasion since there are only so many of them left. On a night traditionally reserved for an American past-time, the traditions of my family's Puerto Rican roots permeate the event. Lucy serves up chicken wings and chips, but not without some arroz con habichuelas (rice and beans) to accompany them. Spanish music fills the air and during a half-time lull, the TV inevitably flips to Univision momentarily.  

Holidays are always a good opportunity to capture family together, preparing traditional foods, spontaneously breaking into dance, peppering the air with a mixture of English and Spanish, at times within the same sentence. This is how I spent last Easter, and the 4th of July. It is most interesting to see how these days, not typically associated with Spanish culture per se, become reasons to celebrate their traditions. It is not that they always set out with the intention of transforming everything inherently American into a Puerto Rican festival, but it seems that their every action is so infused with the culture, they cannot separate one from the other. 

As I reflect on the material that I have shot, I am both amazed at the amount of content I have to work with as well as disappointed by what I see as missed opportunities. It is of course, impossible to capture every aspect of a culture in one documentary of any length. There will always be those events that I failed to get for one reason or another, as well as those that I thought were going to be so crucial, which in the end don't make the cut. I always try to remember a sentiment uttered by another artist: "If you are in love with an idea, you are no judge of its value". For this reason, I try never to fall too deeply in love with any single aspect of my work, but rather treat each element with an equal dose of skepticism.

I have been busy logging tape over the last couple of weeks, just finishing going through some footage I shot in August. After hearing the stories from my wife and her sister about the car rides they took as kids to their parents' old neighborhoods in Rochester, I knew that I wanted to go back there and experience it along with them. It had been a number of years since their last trip to Weld and Woodward Street, Hudson Ave., North and Scio Streets. In their day, these neighborhoods were poor, at times violent, with drugs becoming a growing problem. But they were nothing compared to what they are today. Many of the houses and buildings they remembered have been torn down, or are abandoned and neglected. If anything, drugs and violence are a bigger problem now, with poverty having grown as well.

Yet they did not lament the fact of change, even negative ones. To them it is just that, a fact. Sprinkled throughout the struggling spread of homes and businesses are those places that have been kept up, and the people who have stayed. They stick out even more amongst the depressed state of things around them. We stopped the car at one point and step out into the street and are greeted in Spanish by a woman who had just stepped out of her front door. She is hidden behind a mesh of fence, but my mother in law Lucy recognizes her immediately. Both she and my father in law, John, knew her from their years living here, though it has been more than a decade since they have spoken. She lives in the house where Lucy had last lived with her mother and several sibling before she was married. The house is a bit rundown and surrounded by rustic emphemera stacked about the yard, but in better care than some in the area. They converse in Spanish through the six or seven foot tall steel gate. She passes a few herbs from her garden over the top for us to take to our own garden. Her friendly demeanor reminds me of the people in Puerto Rico, the older generation that Lucy has spoken of, who always welcomed everyone, no matter who you were.

They spot another familiar face across the street and strike up a conversation with her. Then we are all invited inside the gate's confines to view the additions and subtractions to the house over the years. They reminisce for a bit, then make their extended farewells, the "Puerto Rican goodbye" as my wife often describes it.

We travel to the spot where my wife's parents first met. Only one of their original houses at the location still stands. My wife and I both have come to these neighborhoods in our jobs covering news stories, usually bad news. Shootings, stabbings and fires are common here and much of the area is worse for wear. It doesn't seem to reflect the positive memories that John and Lucy often speak of. But to them, this is just a sign of how time changes things, sometimes for the better, and sometimes not. 

Our encounter with the two old friends does remind me that not all is lost here. I think of our impending trip to Puerto Rico and what we will uncover as Lucy revisits a past that she tucked away more than two decades ago. It is bittersweet at times to revive bygone days in this way I suppose, and often,  it leads us to avoid a past that might otherwise edify our present.

I just wanted to finish up on my discussion of process that I began in yesterday's post (see below).

As I shoot, I try to spend time periodically logging footage, which is a tedious and time consuming task. Its importance to my process is immeasurable however. It involves a lot of playing and stopping tape, transcribing sound word for word, as much as possible, and making notes of the images as well. This does two things for me; first, it offers me the opportunity to review footage to find elements that I may not have noticed while concentrating on shooting, and second, it provides a detailed record that I can reference later by timecode to quickly evaluate and locate elements that I want to use in the final piece.

Up to this point, I have logged over 100 pages from the interviews and other material I have captured on over 10 hours of tape. I typically shoot a ratio of somewhere between 12:1 and 20:1. That is, for every minute that ends up onscreen in the final edit, I have shot between 12 and 20 minutes of raw footage. I have been working a bit more loosely, experimenting with things that may not make it into this film at all, but that I could use in the future, so I may end up shooting over 20 hours for a 45 minute to 1 hour documentary. I have heard of filmmakers who shoot on the order of 40:1 or more, which seems insane, but in the end is all about what works for an individual. In all, this is a lot of logging, but as I go through, it is essential to the process.

Once all my footage is logged, I go through all of my logged material and highlight any material that I think might be useful in the process. Initially, I try not to be overly discerning because once I have done this, I normally ignore anything that is not highlighted. Next, I highlight, in a different color, all of the elements that I think are important, and likely would work well in the final piece. This is not to say they all will make it in, but I go through with a more critical eye, evaluating the raw material for its inherent value to the narrative. Finally I go through once more, this time usually with a red pen or marker, and underline all of the most salient points, the things that I think must absolutely be in the film. These are the points that are at the heart of the narrative that I will build everything else around.

From there I will begin to lay down the sound of the narrative, and as I move through this and the story begins to take shape, I will start to write and experiment with my own voice in the piece, supporting the story that each character is telling.

As I continue on with this process, I'll share some of the stories that have come out during shooting and I'll have more to say about the shape that the story is taking.

I have been going back through some of the footage shot for my thesis this past summer. I wanted to say a few words about my process before I get into the content. This project actually grew out of a short I did during the summer of '07 for a week-long workshop at VSW. I had been working in documentary for a while and was encouraged by the instructor, Wendy Smith to make a more personal film than I had been planning on. My work typically involved allowing the subjects to tell their own story in their own words, quite literally editing my own voice out of it. The film that I ended up making during that workshop was called Arroz Con Gandules, in which my mother in law makes a pot of rice (the title is Spanish for rice with pigeon peas), a common dish from her native Puerto Rico. During the course of this 7 or 8 minute short, my mother in law discusses not just the preparing of food, but the culture that this grew out of. People who who saw the short responded to the rich character of my mother in law, but to my surprise, they also responded strongly to my involvement. The rapport that I had with the people in the doc was directly related to my relationship with them, and it was a very different approach than I had taken before. 

It wasn't until I traveled to Puerto Rico with my wife back in January, and spent time taking photos around the island while visiting various locations, including Arroyo, the town where my wife's family came from and where her mother was born, that I knew I wanted to do something more with this. There were so many stories there that I wanted to tell, and since her mother had not been back in more than 20 years, I knew that this was a trip that I had to make again with her and document as part of my thesis. 

The initial planning involved an outline of elements that I knew I wanted to capture, from the issues that I wanted to cover and the principle characters that would be central to the story, to the visual elements that I knew would be important to telling that story. I spent the spring working from that outline, and interviewing my mother in law, Lucy, my father in law, John, my wife Norma and her sister Andrea together, as well as their uncle, Hector, who is the younger brother of Lucy. My interviews, tend to be more conversations than covering a list of questions. I keep notes nearby, but rarely look at them during the actual interview. There are no pre-formulated questions. I don't want anything to distract from the discussion that I am engaged in with the person I am interviewing. This is of course complicated by the fact that I am responsible for operating the camera, however this trade off is necessary considering that having a second person working with me would change the complexion of the response that I am getting from my interview subjects.

I also spent quite a bit of time this summer shooting events of daily life to capture some of the visual aspects to help tell the story. I follow the traditions of many of the Cinema Verite filmmakers like the Maysles, or Direct Cinema, as in the tradition of Frederick Wiseman, with a bit more of personal involvement in the process, as with the work of Ross McElwee. I am guided by the instincts that I have developed shooting news for the last seven years, reacting to the situations, looking for moments, finding the visual cues, close-ups and cutaways that will allow me to create an atmosphere in the final piece that fits with the environment in which I am shooting. I also look for these things that will allow for edit points, developing sequences and cutting together sound in a way that will move the narrative forward without disrupting the visual flow of the piece. 

I'll continue this post tomorrow with a few thoughts on my process of logging tape and developing an editing script that I use to build a timeline.

Had the opportunity to get into the film vault once again and this time I vowed not to get caught up in the organizing, moving, labeling or otherwise managing any aspect of the films collected there. I just wanted to screen something and take in that glorious glow of projected film. It's amazing how much is taken for granted today, to be able to pop a DVD in and instantly view a film without so much as moving from the couch to change a reel, or adjust focus, or god forbid, splice a broken section. Not to mention the fact that we can do so with a 60 inch plasma screen (or for most of us, likely something much less extravagant) without the 50 foot throw necessary to blow up a projected image that large.

So I grabbed a stack of cans, and headed for the deserted media center. I threaded the first one through the projector, started that baby rolling and... wait a second, what the hell is that awful buzz coming from the left speaker? Spent a half hour checking connections, trying different cables, no luck. Oh well, at least if I pan all the way over to the right, that speaker will be fine, right? But what is this crackle? Alright, well, I can screen Thanatopsis with no sound. It's really about the images anyway, just to get me in the right frame of mind. Perhaps it's having trouble with the mag sound strip on that film. I'll try another. No dice. What the @#?&**! is going on here? So I grab headphones and plug into the projector with just enough cord to awkwardly sit beside the door to the projection booth and view from the back of the room. This tactic gets me through Frank Film. I discover that the sound knob on the projector was turned up too high. That gets rid of the crackle. 

I view a very amusing Saul Bass short called Why Man Creates. Then I go to re-screen Report. Kennedy has been shot, and I'm in the sequence in which the motorcade is going by with short sections being played back repeatedly, while the start of each repeated shot is advanced methodically a few frames forward each time when suddenly, a calamitous crash comes from behind me. I nearly jump out of my skin and bolt from my seat to the projection booth to find the take up reel flapping and the rest of the film severed from it now on the floor. I shut off the projector and dejectedly inspect the damage. A jagged tear right through Jackie. A repair will be necessary. A frame or two will be lost. I suppose that ironically, this is one film that a few frames could go and no one would actually notice. 

I attend to this and then with some trepidation trudge on with Gasoline: More Run for Your Money. I'm hopeful for some useful moments or at least a shot or two that might work in a compilation film, but mostly it's just bad acting and some useful facts on how to get better gas mileage. I take notes on that and move on. Now for the curiously titled, Tumbles, Mumbles and Bumbles. I should have known better. A poorly produced sports blooper reel, complete with a mind numbing music soundtrack and a goofy voiceover track. I stick with it through the third ski jump fall and nix that selection. The afternoon is nearly a bust when I head back to the vault for one last try. A shiny can with a small reel marked "Lindbergh". Turns out to be some silent footage from Charles Lindbergh's original trans-Atlantic flight, and subsequent Mexican voyage. This at least holds some interest for me and brings about some ideas. So the day was not a total loss. Despite all this, it truly is a joy to have the screening room to myself and have the opportunity to blindly sift through what might amount to something truly worth searching for. 

After last night's showing of Persistence, I attended the workshop given by Daniel Eisenberg at the U of R this afternoon. I must say that I normally am less apt to sit through an afternoon of experimental film than most any other genre, though Eisenberg's work certainly defies that pure delineation. There is so much work out there that passes itself off as experimental, and not in a good way. After viewing the film last night however, and having had the opportunity to hear some explanation of the thinking behind the work from the artist himself, I was much more willing to further explore his work and hear more about his methods.

It was interesting to hear his perspective on source material, his utter reverence for the subject matter, above his own personal concerns. I have embarked on the process of my thesis in a very different way, moving from a method in which I attempted to remove myself from the work, quite literally, to a storyline in which I play a central role. I am still sorting this out, but having listened to Eisenberg's perspective, I think there is validity in both.

One of the more salient points in the discussion stemmed from Eisenberg's introduction of the oral history vs. the traditional historical documentation. His films hinge on this principle of using the oral history to find the story, giving, as he puts it, "a real place" to the mind's image. The use of archival material reflects this in a different way than it perhaps was intended to originally, whether taken from documentary, newsreel or military footage for instance, he provides new context, finding and preserving moments of humanity that might otherwise be lost. This is paramount to his own personal feelings of the subject matter at times, allowing his audience the freedom to draw their own conclusions, not hemmed in by an overarching agenda set forth by the maker.

At the same time, the voice of the maker is always present, which is evident in the way that the material is assembled, and certainly in the choice of the materials that are drawn from. Eisenberg spoke of using materials in such a way that the generational aspect is present, in the sense that when the material is reproduced, there is evidence of that reproduction. The archival footage is re-shot, re-cropped, optically printed repeatedly, changing the look and thereby leaving the makers imprint.

I'll leave this post with perhaps the most important point that was made during today's session. Mr. Eisenberg posed the question that is on the mind of most, if not all artists, and that is "by what authority do I have to speak?" And isn't it true that we all question at one point or another whether or not what we have to say is valid? As he also mentioned, it is a lucky few who could claim not to have pondered that query. But it is by making work that each of us have elected to answer that call, whether the work is highly regarded and lauded for its poignancy, or maligned as a failure, it is our purpose as artists to find a way to communicate whatever it is that drives us to create.