The Importance of Starting
Working out ideas for a handful of talks coming up in the next month.
I’ll be speaking on music technology at Cal Poly this Thursday before heading across the Atlantic to do an afternoon session for the ArtEZ conference in the Netherlands. Then Rian and I are going to hop over and do a joint masterclass at the National Film and TV School in London. Who knows what kind of shenanigans we’ll get up to? Not I, is all I’m saying. I definitely don’t know.
I’m gonna be in Europe for a while before coming back to speak at Hallmark (?! - yes, that Hallmark), so hit me up east-siders (that’s what we call Europe, right?) if you wanna chat or if you have an idea for another class I should come talk to.
And the other (finished!) Mountain Goats video that Rian directed.
Just in case you haven’t seen it in a few days.
Last week I posted this photo printout of John Darnielle. If you’d like to see the (tragically unfinished) music video the print is from, look no further.
Back in 2006 when we shot the Woke Up New music video for the Mountain Goats, I wanted to also make something for my favorite song on the album, “Wild Sage.” So I shot John Darnielle singing the song in front of a black background, turned the footage black and white and high contrast, and printed out every frame of it on 8x10 paper. I then took these stacks of paper to Cape Cod and began to animate them as stills, shooting with my Canon 5D. It took much longer than I thought, and my vacation was over before the video was shot, so I took them back to NYC intending to finish the video there. I never did. So this is all there is.
The printouts somehow ended up in my cousin Nathan’s possession, and seven years later he found them stacked in a box and asked me what these thousands of bizarre photos of John Darnielle’s face were for.
And I said “oh yeah, that thing. I should upload it to Vimeo or something.”
John Darnielle by Rian Johnson
I somehow ended up with hundreds of these prints on old-school laser printer paper from an unfinished video project.
At one point, I was going to turn them into wallpaper, but lets be honest, the last thing I need is a hundred Johns watching over my shoulder while I’m writing music.
All of the featurettes I created about how we scored Looper will be on the BluRay, along with a load of other awesome stuff. Directly from Rian:
We’re out on DVD/BLU in the states on 12/31!
Some great extras on both versions, but the blu will have 17 deleted scenes versus just a few on the DVD. I didn’t count it up exactly but I think it’s about 40 minutes of stuff. Also included is a commentary track I did with Joe and Emily, Zach Johnson’s animated trailer in glorious HD, and Nathan Johnson’s vignettes on creating the score. We’ve also hidden a student short on there again.
I recently read a saying about civil engineers that I love:
Anybody can make a bridge that stands up, but it takes an engineer to make a bridge that can barely stand up.
Rian Johnson is an engineer.
LOOPER is an easy movie to appreciate for a regular audience, but it carries a special power for someone who spends most of their life thinking about and making movies. This is a film where literally every single scene could break the entire movie if handled slightly differently. The plot, themes, characters, world, tone, and yes even the make-up all run across a tightrope the width of a fishing line. Rian Johnson and his creative cohorts giddily bounce back and forth across this razor blade tightrope like kids on a trampoline.
It’s incredibly hard to make a good film. Every filmmaker knows this, and I think it’s natural for us to try to minimize the difficulty-setting when embarking on a new production. We try to design films that work even if we don’t get them perfect. If we were talking about food, Hollywood turns every cut of steak into a burger, puts cheese on every burger, and puts bacon on every cheeseburger. And in a practical sense, this is smart. How can you rely on perfection in a process where so many things can and will go wrong? Where so many forces knowingly or unknowingly conspire against you. So when I see a film like LOOPER it makes me take a step back and realize that it’s possible to set yourself an impossible task and still achieve it. LOOPER is Armstrong on the moon; it’s Amundsen at the South Pole; it’s Obama in the Oval Office.
So Rian, I just want you and your whole team to know that I know what you did. And I appreciate it. And it inspires me. Thank you for LOOPER. Thank you for taking the difficult path, and my compliments on making it look so effortless.
HERE WE GO!
Tonight we’re finally in theaters. Just wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who liked, reblogged, tweeted or followed us for their curiosity, kindness, and support over the past few years. From myself and the whole family that put this thing together, we love you guys. Hope you enjoy the movie.
At last night’s midnight screening at the Arclight in Hollywood I got to live the dream.
Rian dressed up in disguise as an Arclight usher last night to introduce the midnight screening of Looper.
Those Brits have some EXQUISITE taste!UK reviews one-sheet.
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