The struggle

Since I began production on this film, I've struggled with its form, how to piece it together, how to make something fresh, coherent, and bold. I've wondered how it could unfold, how to make each image and sound a surprise to the senses. How to resist the temptation to make an easily digested work.

Well, I've noticed throughout this process that I didn't quite know what I had. Last month I even shot a new beginning, thinking that the film needed to lunge into David's (this film's guiding force) world so to speak. Except of course that this film is a reflection on the filmmaking process at times and that David, who is also a filmmaker, might be directing me as much as I him. Having gone through over thirty tapes so far, logging minutes here and there, I finally found a coherent beginning, one that even matches some of the so-called "second unit" work I shot last month in and around the same neighborhood where this new beginning is. And they work together as a piece.

I've been working on and off, finding myself frustrated and scared at times, others content and wistful. For every few times I get discouraged, I am paid back by viewing sequences which remind me why I kept making this film in the first place. It's hard to say now where this film is going because I still have 60 or so hours left to log, but it's beginning to make more and more sense, filmically, now. To think that each tape could be in a plastic bin right now, or that I could've finished a year ago, is irrelevant. I am finally, finally, working.