There is a crack in everything

...including my ass -- which, by the way, I cordially invite the condescending horsetwats at the Apple Store to give a big, sloppy tongue kiss to.

When my system crashed, those unhelpful fuckwads promptly informed me that the only option open to me was to erase my entire hard drive and reinstall the operating system software from scratch.* Thank Oshun I chose not to listen to them and find someone who could restore my shit. X amount of thanks to Tom at Organize-It Software for rescuing all the film-related work (and the porn) stored on my computer from disappearing forever... and at a pretty reasonable price too!

*Did I mention that what caused me to crash in the first place was the fact that I installed one of those security updates Apple is constantly pestering me with, and they denied that it was their software update that caused the problem even though people all around the country experienced the exact same problem at the same time when they installed that damn software?

Fuck 'em.

Anyway, my purpose today is not to waste precious energy ranting against the utterly wack, but to hail the eerily efficient. Denis and Koko are busting major ass in Lagos, and I'm actually feeling a little bit left out being back here in the States. Of course, it's not as if I've been sitting around twiddling my thumbs and watching "That 70s Show" reruns all this time or anything. I've been handling a lot of logistic issues, mainly acquiring all the equipment and props and other creative stuff we need.

It's quite daunting, really... Actually, that's why I haven't written in a few days. I didn't want to come on here whining about how hard all this shit is. But then again, maybe that's what I should be writing about - the challenges of low/no-budget filmmaking.

Anyway, so far I've gotten most of what I need. All I need now is a good shotgun microphone and perhaps a waveform monitor. Oh yeah, and a 16:9 anamorphic converter, too. Other than that, we're looking good and I'm pretty excited.

Did I mention that my girl Lauren is going to help out with wardrobe and stuff? Bless her big, stylish heart.

I'm feeling more confident about the idea of shooting this thing myself, too. I'm not the most experienced DP, but I've been studying and working on it. One of the good things about coming from a background in comics as I do is that I'm already pretty visually-oriented and my conception of storytelling has always fundamentally revolved around frames and panels. But being a director of photography entails a whole lot more than that... It's about designing an overall look for the film. I've been thinking a lot about that. And that of course means that I've been looking at a lot of Christopher Doyle pictures.



There is a crack in everything... That's how the light gets in - Leonard Cohen

Christopher Doyle - who shall henceforth be referred to on this page as The God of Cinematography - is definitely my favorite contemporary lensman (with Malik Sayeed coming in a close second) and his complete commitment to simultaneously mastering and submitting to the power of light is an ethos I am adopting as a guiding principle for myself on this project.

Of course, I can only dream of achieving visuals anywhere near as rich and romantic as his (for one thing, he doesn't shoot on video like I'm doing) but I'm taking a cue from his spontaneity, his willingness to build a scene from the ground up based on the space and the light available to him rather than imposing a preconceived vision onto the available resources.

(I really hope this is making sense... I'm actually a bit drunk as I write this (yeah, I know I said I was teetotalling now, but... Shit happens)(actually, inebriation is one of the ground elements of Doyle's method, so I might be on the right track here). In my mind I want to compose this grand tribute to Mr. Doyle, but I'm a bit too drowsy to really commit to it.)

(But then again... A picture is worth a thousand words, right? Well, just look at the damn stills of his work and tell me you can't see what I'm talking about!)

-Christopher Doyle filmography

-One of his extremely hard-to-find books of photos

Hmmm... Just realized that I haven't offered an mp3 today. I'll make up for it later (if it really matters... which it probably doesn't).