Brain Frame 8

Brain Frame 8 is tonight. 9pm this time, that's a first, also, a keg. I am not performing. I was planning on reading the rest of Recent Days at this show, but then I realized that it would be almost impossible to finish a 150-ish page book in two months at the same time as organizing another Brain Frame, and planning a performance. The stress leading up to Brain Frame 7 was almost unbearable and incredibly unhealthy. So, the reading and release of Recent Days will now occur in January, at Brain Frame 10.

I've reevaluated a few big goals in recent months. Ever since my third year at SAIC, I've been planning to apply for a Fulbright to Iceland. I've wanted to visit Iceland since I wrote a report on it in sixth grade. I would like to make a film there, and I think, if I really gave it my all, I'd be a good contestant for the Fulbright award. My plan was to apply this fall, and then next fall, perhaps from Iceland, apply for grad school.

Of course, when I made that plan, I had no idea that in the fall of 2012 I would be running a compelling, successful comix performance series, or that I would be getting paid to teach filmmakers I respect how to optically print their footage, or that I would be receiving more and more requests for design work, or that my social and creative community would be so alive with passionate ideas and productive energy. So, I'm not applying for the Fulbright. Not right now, at least. And there's a good chance I will apply for grad school soon, but I don't need to think about that just yet; right now, I'm committed to Brain Frame, to finishing my next book, to producing more films. That's more than enough.

It was my birthday last month. Thorne Brandt made this gif for me. Tyson and I traveled to California for ten days. I shot five rolls of S8, which you can see soon, if you care to. Mark invited us to the Academy to a private screening of a new 35mm print (with stereo sound OMG) of Water and Power. Pat and Beverly O'Neill were there, with George Lockwood, and Kate McCabe. I was giddy to meet Pat, seeing as he's one of my favorite filmmakers. He and Beverly know me from Facebook, and, incredibly, they were excited to meet me too. We all hung out on the roof and everybody sang happy birthday, and then we went back downstairs and watched House Fuck and The Mystic in the small screening room. It was the best birthday I've ever had.

Last night was the opening of Afterimage, a show featuring and influenced by the Chicago Imagists, at the DePaul Art Museum, open until November 18th. This sculpture is an exquise corpse cobbled together by Trubble Club, including myself. I painted one of the faces: the guy with five rows of teeth. There's a wall of books curated by Trubble Club, as well. It's a wonderful exhibit and you should go.

These are photos of me on a boat, filming a wedding with my Super 8 camera. The film footage in the above video is what I was shooting. The video was edited by the glowing bride. If anyone wants me to film their wedding on a boat let me know.

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REMAINING POINTS OF INTEREST FOR WHICH I DO NOT HAVE INTRODUCTORY PHOTO/VIDEO DOCUMENTATION:

1) One of my two jobs is as a project archivist at Kartemquin Films. Kartemquin is the social documentary production house that brought you Hoop Dreams and The Interrupters, among many other incredible films. The archivist team (or A-Team) has started a blog, and you can read my first entry here.

2) Hey, people in Hawick, Scotland, are you going to the Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival? Cause you should. I wish I could go. And, if you show up at the Tower Mill on Kirkstile at 1:45pm on Saturday, October 27th, you will witness the world premier of my film The Mystic. It's a digital projection, for which I apologize, but it's also the world premier.

3) Hey, what's up Victoria, British Columbia! Are you going to the Antimatter Film Festival? You should. I wish I could go. And, if you happen to catch the last screening of the event, at 9:00pm on Saturday, October 20th, you will witness the Canadian premier of my film House Fuck. On film! Somebody buy me a ticket from Chicago to Canada to Scotland and back to Chicago. Oh, wait, somebody buy me a passport first.

Untitled (Times For)

Ross and I had been joking about making an homage to the elusive, rigorous, and very very serious avant-garde filmmaker Gregory Markopoulos for ages. Markopoulos, who died in 1992, took all of his prints out of circulation in the United States in 1967, in order to create an 80-hour opus (structured in 'cycles') that screens partially (as it is completed) once every four years in the middle of nowhere in Greece.

Markopoulos's 1967 film Himself as Herself is [from the Harvard Archives] "based loosely on Balzac's Séraphita. The film consists of a shimmering, nearly plotless evocation of gender identity in flux, and it contains some of Markopoulos’s most haunting, densely interlaced images." It is also a particular favorite, and the film that Ross and I always dreamed of ripping off.

So, then I was asked to take part in the Chicago 8 Film Festival's 'Bride of Super 8' screening. Participants receive one roll of Super 8 Ektachrome. They shoot anything they want, editing in camera if at all, and return the roll undeveloped to the festival. Everyone sees their film for the first time on the night of the screening.

The films at these screenings generally fall into one of two categories: home-movie footage of dogs and camping trips, or general abstract fucking around. I thought it would be extra funny to present an incomparably overambitious film in the same context.

We planned out every scene and shot sequence in Untitled before beginning the shoot, and it took us five days (spread out over three weeks) to complete the roll. Each scene took hours to set up and get dressed for. The second scene (rolling on/with the carpet) was especially tricky, because we weren't sure if the camera movement we worked out would translate in the finished piece. That motion is copied (then repeated) from a single edit in Himself as Herself, when the whole film goes upside down for a moment. The staircase sequence is a reference to the moment in Himself as Herself when the main character, wearing this weird veil and representing both his masculine and feminine aspects, meets himself through cross-cut editing on the platform of a lush staircase. That's why Ross and I are in drag after that sequence, because we've crossed over the gender binary.

Because this entire film was shot in camera, and we wanted to make it without help, one can imagine the logistics that went into each take - I'd shoot a couple frames of Ross, we'd switch, he'd shoot, switch, etc. This was particularly trying during the staircase scene, since we single framed two seconds (36 frames) and had to have our fingers touch in the finished sequence; there's a penny taped to the wall high up behind us, and each time, before opening the shutter, the cameraperson would direct the actor in precise placement of their finger over this penny in the eye of the camera. This and the drag sequence were shot in my apartment building lobby. I'd like to thank my neighbors for humoring us.

At the end (when we become one, and, conversely, when we are seen together in a shot for the first time) we put the camera on a wheelchair, tied ropes to the legs, and looped them around poles in my basement. This was our way of fashioning a dolly that would require no additional hands, and maintaining the integrity of our 'pure' filmmaking experience.

Brain Frame

I am organizing a comix reading event at the end of this month. There will be slideshows, soundtracks, and a spaceship. I am reading along with four dear friends.

BRAIN FRAME: A PERFORMATIVE COMIX READING
THURSDAY, JULY 28TH, 8PM
AT THE GALLERY FORMERLY KNOWN AS HAPPY DOG
1542 N MILWAUKEE AVE, 2ND FLOOR

Sara Drake
Lyra Hill
Nick Jackson
Ian McDuffie
Otto Splotch

Otto and I drew this flier this weekend, and printed it using color copier color separation. We brainstormed (pun intended) the image and then took turns drawing it, first penciling and then inking. I'm totally flattered that you can't tell it was drawn by two people, because I think Otto is so good at comics. It's also great that Nick let us put his number on the flier, because he doesn't have a website for us to link to.

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My friend Sara Drake, who will also be reading at Brain Frame, is currently trying to raise money to travel to Cambodia this fall, and teach comics to young women. Sara is a dedicated, intelligent, warm and talented person and is the best candidate I know for this job. Please help her out:



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Josh Mabe and Jason Halprin, more friends, are also preparing an important, exciting venture: Chicago 8: A Small Gauge Film Festival. I'm planning on submitting to this festival along with several fantastic filmmakers I know. Josh and Jason are talented, tasteful individuals and master film technicians. Help initiate a hopefully annual cultural event:

Garden of the Gods

This is another roll of Super 8 I shot on my camping trip in March. This area of southern Illinois is called the 'Garden of the Gods' for the strange rock formations.

Llama Man: Documentation

Here are some photos documenting the making of my final film for the semester. Most of them are from the super 8 shoot, which happened in early March in the Chicago Forest Preserve and on Montrose Beach.


Mark and AJ helped me out with this part, AJ working the camera and Mark helping me get my costume on and off and move stuff around.




At first we were having a really difficult time as it had rained the previous day, so these big fields we were in were very muddy and my stilts got caught in the ground. This is a disaster for anyone who knows how to stiltwalk; because you have no ankles or toes on the bottom of your 'feet', you must keep in constant motion to stay balanced, and that is impossible if your legs are glued to the ground.




We finally had to find places for me to walk on concrete drains or paths, with a natural background to make it appear as though Llama Man were walking on the grass. This is why, in the film, you'll see that his feet are cut off in several shots.




AJ did really well considering he didn't know that much about film or shooting film. We'd frame shots together and then I would yell at him through my mask how many seconds I wanted him to roll. The time was around lunch, and there were lots of working men on their breaks, eating in parked cars and watching us.




Llama Man must have looked really bizarre to them, especially since this girl kept emerging from behind the mask. I would wave at them in costume as often as possible, and usually they were good sports about it and waved back. A couple cops stopped to ask what we were doing, if we were shooting a horror film. I said yes because I didn't really want to launch into the whole explaination.



The shoot for the 16mm stuff was way different and much harder. Most of the time was spent constructing the set.


My crew could not have been a better group of people. They were all very patient and supportive and I owe them eternally for it. Here's Zaven, my camera man, on the dolly at probably around three in the morning:


Thanks guys!

For My Psychopomp

There is sound in this clip, and it's kind of quiet; I suggest you turn up the volume on your computer and also click the 'high quality' (HQ) button on the viewer.



Here it is, my final film for the semester and what I've been working on like a demon for the past three months. It's screening tonight for the first time. The word psychopomp is one that my mother brought to my knowledge, during a discussion of my film. I was telling her how I wanted to make a movie not only about my recurring childhood nightmare (you know, llama man) but how my relationship with that narrative and the character who inhabits it has changed. "He's turned into something like a muse," I told her, "he's like a conductor between my unconscious, which is where I think a lot of my creativity comes from, and my waking life, bringing me ideas."

Psychopomp literally means 'soul conductor' and refers to those people or things that act as escorts to the afterlife. In Jungian terminology, it means the mediator between conscious and unconscious minds. I dedicated this film to Llama Man, who I've decided is my personal psychopomp in the Jungian sense, and the dedication doubles as a title. (This is also why he shows up in the first pages of Night City, as a welcome committee.)

For My Psychopomp was shot on 16mm and Super 8 Tri-X film stock. All the stuff outside is Super 8.

Spring Break

This is an edit I made of three rolls of Super 8 Ektachrome footage from my spring break camping trip last March. It's the first film I edited with tape splices, on janky plastic super 8 rewind arms in a small dark room. I like it.

Face Test, Documentation

I spent much of Wednesday night in the shooting space at school, exposing my first 50-ft roll of Super 8 film. There was no real cohesive structure to what I shot, and definitely no narrative thread, but it was really fun and assuming nothing terrible happens, I've very excited to see the finished product.



My friends Molly Gilbert and Nick Jackson helped by letting me impose upon different parts of them a variety of faces, eyes, mouths, and holographic glasses. I drew on them with white out, eyeliner (liquid and pencil), lipstick, and ballpoint pen while we passed a digital camera around to whoever's hands were free.



Most film runs at 24 frames per second, but Super 8 runs at 18fps. I shot at this speed, as well as 9fps (for sped-up playback) and 24fps (for slightly slow motion, as well as a richer image). I also did several seconds of stop motion shooting, taking one frame at a time to animate Molly's creepy fake eyes and Nick putting lipstick on with his tongue.

I'm crossing my fingers hoping I didn't under- or over-expose. If it comes back from the lab alright you can all look forward to seeing it up here soon.