Process and Practice: Life and Times - Episode 7

Episode 7 was our first attempt at making a feature film, and for this we wanted to be in conversation with arguably one of the greatest American films ever made, Citizen Kane.  Our early experiments looked a lot like filmed theater. (Citizen Kane, interestingly enough, was also made by people who were primarily theater artists, working for the first time in film...) But we made many tests of different ideas, played with camera, editing, lighting, and eventually came up with a form for this project that suited both our love for theatrical play, costume, and acting -- and was also cinematic in its structure.  Here you can see some of the steps in the evolution of Episode 7 and the various technical work-arounds we came up with for problems we encountered along the way. (all tests are in reverse chronological order)

As we came up on the dates for filming, we began to test more practical technical issues -- such as how to work the back screen projection.  We needed to get enough light on the actors without getting light on the screen, and we wanted to know if moving background video worked.  It not only worked -- it was super fun.

In this test, we played with making a home-made iris effect with some foil and a pin and placing it in front of the camera.

In this test we were joined by a few more of the company to try a section with more characters in an extended flashback.  Silent movie style also started to bleed here into film noir, which became another source of inspiration.

In this test, Ilan Bachrach helped us figure out the mini-crane we had just purchased for the filming.  Also played with different amounts of Vaseline on the lens and explored what that did to the image.

This test we were again in search of an old Hollywood aesthetic (and figuring out whether to use either white or black backdrop).   We also played with moving backward and reversing the footage here, an idea which didn't work for Episode 7,  but became part of the plan for Deutschland 2071.

In this test, made during a long holiday break -- Kelly and Pavol worked to figure out the camera, editing, possible filters, and playing around with ways that the movie could look more filmic, but still be theatrical and encompass elements of process.  They filmed both sides of the camera -- both acting and directing -- to see how this project could be both of and about filming.  Some of this (though not exactly this idea) did end up in the final Episode 7.  

This test we tried a lot of things -- deep focus, green screen, flashbacks.  This is maybe the test that tries most to ape Citizen Kane, but we were reaching for things we didn't exactly know how to do.  We decided during this test that we actually could not use the in-camera audio, because our camera's microphone was not good enough, and we just made way too much noise filming.  It was clear that all the dialogue for this project would have to be recorded and dubbed separately.

This was the test where we realized we were biting off more than we could chew by filming outdoors.  The sun and wind made everything that much harder. We decided after this test to move everything indoors to have better control of image and - we hoped - audio.

Our first test, made in Berlin during a residency at the Hebbel Theater.  At first our idea was to do the whole project as sung text in single long extended takes without editing -- much like theater.  As we progressed, we had to admit that this was going to be a lot harder to realize than we initially imagined, and we eventually tabled this idea until we got more experience with the camera.  The idea to work with sung text in long single takes was finally realized in Episode 8.

Our first filmed test using some of the text from Episode 7.  The inspiration for this test came from watching the work of filmmakers Jean Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet on Operai, contadini.  This was just an early idea we had that we would like to work out in nature and get out of the theater -- which we finally accomplished in Episode 8.