The Machine Speaks!

More Views Than I Thought... My Trailer!

2011-12-07T16:40:00.001-08:00

The existence of a feature film production in one's life takes up the space in one's brain completely. I wasn't paying much attention to my trailer for "The Forest Is Red" since I posted it online. I haven't been able to give much thought to promoting this movie, I'm a guy and therefore I guess have a 1-track mind, and I really couldn't fully engulf myself in that overwhelming task of... MARKETING... my movie.

The movie is about two days from 100% finished and so now I am starting to think about tactics, strategies, methods of attack and other militaristic terms that should not apply to the the process of getting your art film in front of people, yet they fit so well.

I went online and looked up my trailer on YouTube and Vimeo - a few hundred views. Makes sense, I really haven't promoted it at all (not to mention that I had taken it down before when I made a minor change to it and lost a couple of thousand views. Not that it matters because who cares, really) But then another posting came up, one done by MovieClips, a blog that posts trailers online. Lo and behold it was over 10,000 views on their YouTube page! A nice surprise. I guess I do care. Anyway, if you happened upon this blog by accident - take a look at the trailer. And then read this thing I wrote about the future of cinema.

The Press Kit Of My Movie!

2011-12-07T11:12:00.001-08:00

Okay, so Paramount and Universal I'm sure don't blog their press kits. But hey, what the hell. It's an indie. Every detail is shareable. So now that the movie is finally done, as we're about to start sending it to festivals, we made a little press kit for Withoutabox.com and to give around. Take a look!

By the way, the kit was put together by my good friend Adam Stroncone, an excellent graphic designer (motion and print) who did the title design for the end of the film, as well as designed our company logo and designed one of our props in the film.

The American New Wave - A Filmmaking Manifesto

2011-08-16T12:20:00.000-07:00

The American New Wave

A Filmmaking Manifesto

Shooting handheld is no way to start a revolution.

Certainly not now, 52 years after the French New Wave blasted into life with “The 400 Blows,” in which director Francois Truffaut introduced a new cinematic language that he subsequently developed, along with Jean-Luc Godard and other filmmakers, into a maze of mysterious roads, leading audiences seductively to some unknown, artistic conclusion that can only be arrived at after a lifetime of consuming exciting, fascinating, demanding art.

In the ’60s, shooting handheld was a middle finger aimed at the studio system. Shooting in the streets with small budgets and small crews was telling the establishment, “We are no longer interested in this benign entertainment you have created for us. We wish to make something better, something exciting that touches, challenges, and twists your soul, something you can understand and also not understand, something you can’t explain easily but that makes you smile, something that leaves you melancholy but inspired—something better!”

Today, in 2011, it is our turn to tell the establishment, “We are no longer interested in this benign entertainment you have created for us.”

I long for an American New Wave.

What is the American New Wave? When will it come? Who will ignite it?

To answer these questions, we must first understand what the French New Wave actually was. Was it about shooting handheld? Was that entire movement just a quirky new aesthetic? Let’s list other signatures of the French New Wave movies: long dialogues with the camera showing only one person; fast voice-overs; a sense of exuberance and life lust; New Wave Cool; moments of character-driven surrealism within realistic settings; A TOTAL BREAKDOWN OF THE TRADITIONAL STORY AND EXPLORATION OF NEW WAYS TO PORTRAY LIFE.

But none of these are the essence! Even the breakdown of traditional storytelling is not the heart of the French New Wave but still essentially an aesthetic.

The willingness, courage, and freedom to surrender to inspiration is, to me, the fire behind the movement. The culture of experimentation as an artistic force, the need to create something entirely new not because of some pompous desire to appear intelligent but out of a pure, unleashed love of cinema—that is at the heart of those groundbreaking movies that were made in France in the ’60s.

There hasn’t yet been an American New Wave. I believe that some of the American cinema of the ’70s, which is sometimes referred to as the American New Wave, is really an extension of the French movement, an inspired product of a European-led revolution. The American film industry, generally speaking, has always led in concise, streamlined storytelling but not in new approaches to the form. Occasionally a filmmaker emerges from the dust of the studio films’ CGI explosions, carrying the torch of the movement. But he is viewed as a quirky outsider. He is not the norm. He’s the one who got through and managed to do his own thing. The studio executives say: “From him we expect ‘weirdness’ because it’s what he does and that’s okay.” The spirit of experimentation does not exist as a culture of filmmaking in our society, but as an amusing, cute sideshow that sometimes makes it out to the mainstream for a quick breath before descending back into the deep, cold waters of the art house ocean.

What is the American New Wave?

What is it not?

It certainly is not the conveyor-belt slew of blockbusters we’re seeing in cinemas now. And after years of cheap cameras and cheaper editing systems, we are oversaturated with inexperienced filmmakers creating poor-quality products and calling themselves “indie filmmakers” while trying to imitate that very slew of big-studio storytelling norms with micro-budgets. The American New Wave is not those films either.

It also was not the independent movement of the ’90s, which, while inspiring many filmmakers, ultimately left a relatively minor mark on mainstream cinema, and not necessarily a positive one: the mark of “quirk.” A sad word representing a lazy aesthetic but that makes us feel indie-posh when spoken. It left such a small mark because everyone is searching for the high-concept reward, and the “quirky indie” is seen as a stepping-stone to the big game of obscenely expensive films instead of an end in its own right. Think about the “indie” successes of recent years. Manufactured, wall-to-wall cuteness packaged in sweet, whistling soundtracks. Quirk.

The call to action is as follows.

Talented, competent filmmakers—experienced within the mainstream industry—must revolt against the established mores if filmmaking is to have any sustainable future. The established mores say: “Huge movies with special effects, shiny breasts, and interesting deaths are what sell tickets. Artsy doesn’t.” The revolt’s tagline is: “Artsy is a dirty word. We just want great movies. Movies that stick in our heads, invade our dreams, challenge our thoughts, make us better. WE ARE NO LONGER INTERESTED IN YOUR BENIGN ENTERTAINMENT.”

High paid stars must lead the revolt by producing and appearing in groundbreaking projects featuring unique storytelling voices, experimental spirits, and made by high-level professionals. Otherwise, as studios take less risks and spend more money on fewer films, annual output will shrink to maybe 10 giant-budget films and a thousand dreadfully made low-budget indies, mostly made by inexperienced filmmakers, that no one will ever see. It is a wise career move for successful performers to invest work and money in the American New Wave, developing a landscape in which more, smaller, better movies take over the mainstream. Today’s stars eventually fade, making way for new stars. If only a few big movies and a thousand small, bad ones are made per year, where will these stars get their creative satisfaction—and their paycheck?

Nicole Kidman, at the height of her career, took a cool creative risk and appeared in an insanely strange film called “Dogville” by Lars Von-Trier. Imagine: What if the norm was that excellent, famous actors spearheaded cutting-edge storytelling by appearing in and/or financing smaller, one- to three-million-dollar films that support experimentation, authorship, and real originality?

What is an American New Wave film like?

An American New Wave movie is one in which the conventions of storytelling are manipulated and experimented with freely, but while maintaining a certain rhythm, pace, and amount of crowd-pleasing aesthetics in order to not alienate the audience. It is crucial to communicate and not alienate. Challenge the viewers, but don’t break them. Make them enjoy the challenge. That is exactly why experienced filmmakers must partake in this movement. Because the novice independent filmmaker, aside from the rare magnificent exception, does not know how to control his work—how to create something very different yet communicate aesthetically to larger audiences. The revolution must begin inside the system.

INDIE SHOULD NOT MEAN, “MADE BY RECENT FILM-SCHOOL GRADUATES.” INDIE NEEDN’T MEAN, “MADE VERY CHEAPLY.” INDIE FILM SHOULD NOT BE MADE ONLY BY FILMMAKERS WHO AREN’T ABLE TO FIND WORK IN THE MAINSTREAM INDUSTRY. INDEPENDENT FILM IS A STATE OF MIND. AN APPROACH TO STORYTELLING AND TO DREAMS. INDEPENDENT CINEMA COMES FROM AN INDEPENDENT MIND. A FREE MIND. AN EXCITED MIND. AN EXPLORING MIND.

Why is all this important?

Because as a culture we are becoming desensitized to art. We click on a blog that shows us 30 spectacular photos and we skim through them quickly, with dead eyes. Art has become so accessible that we see nothing special in it. Mainstream music has long ago become a parody of its own absurd lack of mystery and television is drowning in quickly edited, corporatized nothingness featuring lackluster “real people” living a network-induced pseudo drama that doesn’t even serve as genuine entertainment in our lives. We watch, and forget. Watch, and forget.

But we still love movies. And if they continue being as uniform and uninspiring as they often are in the current mainstream, we will become desensitized to those as well. And our industry will crumble, as theaters will screen nothing but reality TV in 3D. And maybe that’s just the natural progression of things. But I love great movies, and I want them to be made, and I want, dare I wish, to make them.

Having said that, allow me to be clear: I love and admire the great big-studio films, and have no desire for them to go away.

They just can’t be the only thing out there.

Filmmakers: we must all be courageous, ambitious, and wide-eyed, and we must start making legitimately interesting movies.

TRAILER! The Forest Is Red

2011-08-15T08:11:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone,

This is the trailer for my new film, "The Forest Is Red." I just locked picture on the film a few weeks ago, and next week we are finally starting post sound! Which means that in about two months, the movie will be completed, which I am very, very excited about. Excited because I get to move on with my life, excited because I can stop pouring every cent I make into the movie, but mostly because I can start taking this thing to festivals and to see what the movie can mean for my career and the career of all the others who have done good work on it.

Anyway, here's the trailer. Enjoy!

Trailer: "The Forest Is Red" from David J on Vimeo.

New Music Video for Daniel J.

2010-11-30T22:14:00.000-08:00

Hi Everyone,

Here's a little music video I just made for my brother Daniel's new song - it's a song in Hebrew called "מכת המסגרת" (it's kind of untranslatable, but it refers to feeling slammed down by the system, by the man, by the type of life that society forces you to live) - Daniel recorded this song for an uber kick ass rock album he made for the Israeli market, called "A Thousand Walls" (אלף קירות in Hebrew.)

For the video, there was basically almost no budget at all. So the concept, based on that, was to make it all about Daniel's musicality and basically just have it all be a high-energy performance video. Since he plays every instrument in the song himself, as well as having recorded and mixed it, I decided to just shoot many shots of him playing and singing the song in the studio he and his band (Against The Wall) use to rehearse and record, along with a few shots showing him recording the music, and then do a fast, energetic and intense edit. DP Tony Ditata and myself (and no other crew members) went over to the studio with a 7D and two little lights, and spent the day getting our ears shredded to bits as we shot take after take of Daniel playing the guitar and drums.

My dad brought hummus for lunch, Daniel's friend Boris was on hand for a few hours for moral support, and that was pretty much the crew. Sometimes it's fun to just make something, armed with almost nothing at all but enthusiasm.

The Forest Is Red - The Camerawork Approach

2010-10-21T09:49:00.000-07:00

Now that we wrapped our 22-day shoot of "The Forest Is Red," I have time to recollect some impressions I've had, lessons I've learned, and anecdotes I've accumulated during this production of a very low budget feature film.

When we began, my intention with this movie was to shoot lots of footage fast, planning to edit energetically and wildly, and to "stylistically" not care about how the film looks, in a way - in other

words create a dirty look that with the right edit would feel very cool. Kind of like "Pi," for instance. Night scenes? Just get what you can and push it far later so that you can see. In other words it's all about the story, the characters, and the edit. A typical way for an editor to think, I suppose, when trying to make a low budget film, where the only goal is: finish what you're starting. But this was not motivated by what I thought is really the right way to show this story - it was motivated by how I thought I'd be able to actually get this done with a tiny crew in a short period of time. I was confident that I could make it cool that way - but still, this creative intention was motivated by practical concerns.


Steadicam operator John Hockenberry on set

But then came the first day of filming, and something happened. Organically, we shot precise, well thought-out, strongly composed shots. By organically I mean that these shots were what felt right on set. We also had operator John Hockenberry on a Steadicam on our first morning, with whom we got some really nice footage of our lead character rushing through the streets of Astoria. Definitely not cheap, down n' dirty looking material waiting to be edited in a fancy way.

The problem now was that we just set a very high standard for ourselves. Our first day's footage looks very good, and so now we must continue shooting to that standard. But can we keep that up on a low budget and for 20 more days?

Another thing that happened on that first day, is that the acting and chemistry were so good between Devin Harjes and Virginia Robinson, his elderly boss who does not always treat him kindly, that we took a scene for which we had a whole bunch of coverage planned, and just shot it instead in one simple two-shot, with perfectly good results.


Nicole Sudhaus shooting a scene in Nathan's apartment. ©2010 The Forest Is Red

And so to summarize, two things happened: 1. We set a high standard for the shots, and 2. I realized early that the story, acting and characters are what will make this film, and not fancy editing. This is a very strange thing for me to become aware of as a director, because as an editor I am used to thinking in terms of "let's shoot this scene in a way that is fun to edit." I've always done that on short films I've made. On this film though, I quickly began to think differently. I basically forced myself to remove the virtuoso editing plan from the table. I stepped far outside of my comfort zone.


Afton Boggiano, Dora Sacer and Daniel Jakubovic ©2010 The Forest Is Red

Of course, I still shot a few scenes in a "this-will-be-fun-and-fancy-to-edit" sort of way. But only when they were called for by the story and energy of the moment.

These two new realities we faced actually worked very well together: because we shot only the exact coverage needed, we could take the time to make sure we get the shots to look right.

Now that the madness is done and I can look calmly at the footage, I believe we made the right choice. Weather it will all cut together nicely and be interesting and entertaining is a whole other question which I'm sure to discover as I edit. But for now, I'm glad we took the more controlled, precise, artistic approach that we did.

The Forest Is Red - First Four Days Of Our Film Shoot

2010-09-24T19:29:00.000-07:00

Jam in the big city. From "The Forest Is Red"

Yesterday we shot our fourth day of principle photography on "The Forest Is Red." Immediately when we began on the first day, the buildup of stress and anxiety in my stomach from the weeks leading up to the shoot evaporated and was replaced with the simple enjoyment, thought, and fair amount of work associated with any filmmaking experience.

Shuo Zhang and David Jakubovic.
©2010 "The Forest Is Red.' Photo by John Schmidt

Shooting a low budget, independent feature film is similar in some ways to shooting a properly budgeted, bigger studio film. Mainly in that you wake up in the morning, shoot some scenes, go and watch the footage, have a beer with the cast and crew and go to bed. The main difference is that the table at the bar is significantly smaller when you're shooting a low budget indie. But while the crew is small, the ultimate images are the same size on a low or a big budget film, which simply means, I guess, that they needs to look as good as possible. In the planning phase prior to shooting, I knew that the small (and therefore less costly) size of the crew allowed me to comfortably add a few days to the shooting schedule in order to have a bit more time to shoot each scene, and this has been useful: we are able to spend time getting each shot right.

Devin Harjes as Nathan.
©2010 "The Forest Is Red"
Photo by John Schmidt

This has been kind of a mantra for us so far on this shoot: spend the time to get the shots right. Even a "simple" close up - not just a complicated Steadicam shot. It's a small film and we want it to look great. We don't want to rush through a series of decent shots. We want to get the strongest, most solid images we can within our means. Because of this, I have to think in terms not of getting lots of coverage to have options in the editing room, but of getting the right coverage, the right shots, to make the scene. Being an editor has always been very useful to me on shoots I directed but has also been the occasional drawback: while I know what I need from the scene because I know pretty much how I'm going to cut it, sometimes I like to get extra coverage in order to be able to have more fun in the edit. But I am forcing myself not to think like a "modern-day," fast-paced editor on this. In this film, while some scenes will still give me a chance to "show off" and have that kind of high-pace fun I like to have when I edit, many other scenes are about the acting and about the story. And because we spend time on just the shots needed for the scenes and not much more, we find more meaning in the images, the images somehow feel more important, have more weight. It's a wonderful way to work - it's the high-budget way to work, where time is spent perfecting each shot, but on a very low budget.

Dora Sacer. ©2010 "The Forest Is Red."
Photo by John Schmidt

So far I am very pleased with the images, some of them are quite beautiful. The performers all look fantastic and New York looks great in 2:35 wide screen. The performances have been excellent so far and I trust they will continue to be so. In the first day we shot scenes with Virginia Robinson, a brilliant actress who told fascinating tales of entertaining soldiers in Italy during the war, and of touring nationally with Vivian Leigh. We shot 6 scenes with her. Because her timing was so sharp, quick and funny, I was able to simplify the coverage of the scenes tremendously - the dialogue that had the most shots planned to cover it ended up just being a single two-shot of Virginia and Devin Harjes (playing the lead, Nathan) with no cuts and no camera movement, and it works well. I like when happy surprises like that happen. You plan on spending an hour getting a few angles and then realize on set that it is absolutely unnecessary, because the actors are perfectly good in the scene and it is more entertaining to stay on the two of them and just watch them perform, than to cut back and forth.

Another situation where I've been finding it wonderful to just stay on someone, in a different way, is in Dora Sacer's scenes. In her role, even though it's a large and important supporting role, she doesn't speak much. Everything is in her face, in her eyes. And you can just stare at a great close-up when the emotion is powerful. Some camera coverage can sometimes be important in scenes like these, with no speaking, because it's easy to get lost in a powerful face when you are shooting the moment, and sometimes you might not notice if it's lingering a bit too long. In cases like these you need to know you will be able to make a cut if you need to shorten (or lengthen) the moment. So in one particular scene with her, one in which the performance is indeed powerful and all in the emotion of the expression, I shot a couple of extra angles. I think this will end up making the scene more powerful because the need to shoot these extra couple of shots brought out some very good images.

David Jakubovic and Nicole Sudhaus between takes.
©2010 "The Forest Is Red." Photo by John Schmidt

Tomorrow we shoot a scene in Bond Street Studios in Brooklyn - it's a photo shoot scene, with Nicole Sudhaus and Omer Barnea. One of the few scenes Nathan is not in. In order to make this scene feel different from the rest of the film, I am trying two things: first, it will be the only dialogue scene shot on steadicam (John Hockenberry on Steadicam) and secondly - I am purposely avoiding planning the shots for this scene in advance. I rehearsed the scene today (our day off) with the actors, and tomorrow, John Schmidt (DP) and I will figure out how to shoot it on the set. We have a general idea of it but we will figure out the actual blocking there. The reason for this is that I feel that the spontaneous spark that will hopefully arise on set will add to the different atmosphere I am trying to create with this scene - different from the rest of the film.

Devin Harjes on set.
©2010 "The Forest Is Red." Photo by John Schmidt

Thank you for reading. Till next time,

David Jakubovic

The Filming Begins Tomorrow. Holy Crap.

2010-09-19T20:03:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow we begin shooting "The Forest Is Red." A 22-day shoot. I've edited films in the past where I was on location for five weeks, and one that filmed for eight weeks, and I've always found the constant flow of dailies amazing - "do they never take a break???" is what the brain automatically asks and of course - it's only natural to wonder about that when you are getting tons of scenes delivered to the cutting room at a pace that often feels like a series of real life jump-cuts.

But now I get to experience that madness from the more intense and stressful point of view of the director - more intense and stressful because the comfort of the editing room - where you sit, relaxed, on a large, leather chair, and drink your cappuccino in air-conditioned pleasantness, sheltered from the real-production-world except when you go visit during lunchtime - is gone! Hello, 22 days of independent film production in the full sense of the word. This should be - exciting, fun, stressful, eventful, interesting, exhausting, and hopefully not TOO humbling.

The past few weeks have been filled with rehearsals, location scouts and a whole lot of organizing. Devin Harjes, playing the lead role of Nathan, has been practically living in the character for several weeks now, and this is not an easy character to live in. There is a lot of angst and social discomfort associated with this role, and he's been doing powerful work in finding, feeling and projecting the inner life of it. I have never seen such intense dedication from an actor. It's quite amazing. And entertaining - he shows up to rehearsal already in character. I see him from my window walking down the street towards my building - clearly in character.

The rehearsal process is extremely important to me. I try and go over every scene in the film at least twice with the actors, and those scenes which are impossible to rehearse properly in advance (a big fight scene, for example) I discuss and explain to everyone in detail before we go shoot. The reason is that I find it painfully wasteful to spend time on set rehearsing and discovering the scenes/characters, when all of that can easily be done beforehand. Especially on lower budget films with limited shooting time, the time on set, to me, is valuable and should be used only for execution of ideas that we already came to without the expensive crew and equipment laying around waiting. If any great ideas suddenly emerge on set that change what we've planned - that's fine, but because we have planned well, it is easy to change things in the last second. The last thing I ever want to deal with on set is discussing characters' motivations and backgrounds. Those discussions and the rehearsal process in general are extremely important work and should not be done with the stress of a crunch. I realize, however, the many times directors spend hours rehearsing scenes on the day of the shoot, and I believe this can lead to great, fresh results as well. I so far have preferred to not do that. Perhaps one day I will try that method as well.

"The Forest Is Red" photo by John Schmidt.
©2010

Location scouting has been a very cool experience. John Schmidt, the DP, arrived here from LA a couple of weeks ago, and we spent days wandering through the city finding spots to shoot. Late last night we walked around the financial district a few times - a really great area to shoot at night because it's almost deserted, yet impressive and large-city-ish. We spent five hours a few days ago walking through Central Park picking locations. Having only directed shorts before, I never had to find such a huge amount of locations for a project. Not being able to afford a location manager, we just did it ourselves. A fun way to rediscover the city.

Anyway, that's all I have time for right now. I will write more as the shoot progresses, I'll post pictures and experiences. Ciao,

David Jakubovic

"The Forest Is Red" Begins Shooting In Four Weeks.

2010-08-23T21:56:00.000-07:00

In four weeks, principle photography of "The Forest Is Red" begins, and I think it's time for me to stop wondering why I am doing this to myself.

For the past four months I have worked on an insane amount of editing projects, working 16-18 hour days every single day, week after week, month after month, in order to make sure I have enough money to shoot the film. It was the most overwhelming stretch of work I have ever had in my life. But in the end of it all, I've made the budget - possibly at the ultimate cost of a year of my life, but what the hell. We get to shoot a feature film now. That is why I am doing this to myself. Exhaustion is not an option! Besides, that twitch in my lower lip vanished after I slept properly for a couple of nights in a row. So did that twitch in my upper eye.

"The Forest Is Red" is the story of Awkward, socially dysfunctional Nathan, who writes strange poems, buries jam in the park and converses with the voices. Voices that fight for his attention and demand his subordination. On his daily, semi-hypnotic journeys through his alienating, colorless city, he searches for companionship and happiness. He thinks he finds it when he meets the girl he loves - but to whom he never speaks. This surreal, magical and philosophically charged tale examines the life of an outcast as he struggles to blend into a world where everyone searches for their own uniqueness.

We are shooting the film under the SAG Ultra Low Budget agreement. And here is something I've learned - and this is maybe a "d-uh" statement for some of you but nevertheless: when your project is SAG, you attract higher quality submissions - "higher quality" meaning actors with more experience. It makes the project appear more serious. Going SAG involves some paperwork, it can be a big pain in the ass in some ways, and costs you a bit more money (not a ton, but some) but I decided it is worth it. Casting properly is the most important thing you can do in order to make a good film (that and a good sound mix.) You see so many hundreds of resumes and headshots that your face might spin off your neck. But the more attractive your project is, the more great talent it will attract. An attractive project in a casting notice is described by an intriguing, short synopsis such as the one above, and an attractive project pays its actors - union or not - at the very least SAG minimums like $100 per day. Offer that, and you will find some fabulous actors. We spent a little bit of extra money to rent a casting space as well ("Actors Alliance," in Manhattan) because we decided it was important to have a professional appearance when first meeting people who are going to work hard on our project. You can still opt to use very few to no SAG actors - but at least you have the option.

I can barely believe we are shooting in less than a month. It feels like nothing is ready, though many things are indeed prepared. Some locations are locked, DP's ticket to New York is purchased, casting is done. I am working feverishly on shot lists, I am about to begin the search for exterior locations, and rehearsals begin tomorrow. I have been having a tremendous amount of help from my co-producer Nicole Sudhaus, who is also playing one of the major roles in the film (note to anyone making a feature film: have a competent co-producer - don't do it alone - it is extremely difficult to do it alone.)

Our casting process was a challenging one because the roles in this film are anything but ordinary, and required finding some extraordinary, and extremely specific talents to fill them, and that we did indeed find. One of the roles was so difficult to find that after seeing 50 people without getting close, we brought on a casting director to help. Pete Konczal, a DP I've worked with a bunch lately as an editor, introduced me to casting director Amy Gossels from

Some of the excellent members of our cast are:

Devin Harjes

Nicole Sudhaus

Kathy Deitch

Dora Sacer

Afton Boggiano

Kara Addington

Omer Barnea

Virginia Robinson

David Austin

And others.

So if you happen see our tiny crew running around the city shooting, please stay out of the shot :)

Cheers for now!
David

PS
AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Fun of Experimentation In Short Films.

2010-08-13T22:07:00.000-07:00

I just finished one of the stranger projects I've done.

The purpose of short films, I have always believed, is experimentation. But first we must define what experimentation means in a film-making sense. When shooting a full-length film, the intention is to attempt to sell it, in other words the filmmaker is making a project intended for the commercial arena - regardless of how artistic, avant-garde, personal or offbeat the film may be.

When making any film, we use various artistic techniques to communicate ideas - but when making a film intended for commercial distribution, the filmmaker must have a clear idea on how he wishes to communicate his ideas - he must have his techniques mastered, to a certain degree, in order to create a professional piece of film. Otherwise, he is wasting his or his investor's money. He is using the feature film to experiment, instead of having tried his techniques before. The place to try these techniques, to experiment, is the short film, that which is not intended for commercial distribution beyond the festivals. The short film is the filmmaker's laboratory and it is where true, creative experimentation can happen. Failing or succeeding on a short film should be the exact same thing: both result in tremendous learning value, a value we take with us when attempting the bigger project - the feature film.

Allyson Sereboff and Ammar Daraiseh on the set of "Touched"

With "Touched," the experiment was in the communication of the story. The question I asked myself when scribbling down its script was: how vague can I be, yet still create an emotional response, and still have the story understood at some level - and of course still be entertaining? I wrote the piece with purposeful holes of background, holes of detail. We do not know the exact background of the characters, we do not understand their precise relationship, but we feel some things, we are given glimpses, we are given a window into a strange relationship.

The project was unusual for me in that I wrote it in two hours and shot it three days later. I am a stickler for planning, rehearsing, carefully preparing shot lists. None of that happened here. I did not have the luxury of working in my comfort zone, and because of the speed of production I left the shoot having no idea if it was any good. It was a very strange feeling, and strangely free. No strings were attached between my brain and the ultimate quality of what this film might be. But when I sat down to edit, I discovered that the footage did indeed have an interesting mood, and that a fun little short can be prepared from it.

David Jakubovic and Ammar Daraiseh

There is something wonderful about working with a tiny, professional crew. The freedom of one's student days returns, but with experienced hands. There is very little stress in these shoots, only a raw, creative vibe.


Allyson Sereboff in a scene from "Touched"

The film stars two fantastic actors: Ammar Daraiseh and Allyson Sereboff. John Schmidt was the DP. The music was composed and performed by my brother, Daniel Jakubovic. I directed and edited. It was shot in San Diego on the only rainy day in the entire decade, probably. I will now begin submitting it to festivals and see what happens.

Ammar Daraiseh in a scene from "Touched"

Some Thoughts About Editing Live Concerts

2010-03-06T08:32:00.000-08:00

I recently had the privilege of editing several amazing, one-hour live concerts for Tori Amos, David Gray and a joint show of Ringo Starr and Ben Harper (and the Relentless Seven.) These are part of a wonderful PBS concert series called "Live From the Artists Den" and will air as part of its next season. As I worked on it, some thoughts occurred to me about the art and craft of concert shooting and editing, along with some threepenny philosophy about the matter.

In the past, I've had a strange relationship with editing live concerts. They have been stylistically challenging to me, in the sense that I often want to push the envelope creatively with the approach to the edit, but the mailman doesn't accept the envelope - excess creativity is not always possible or required for several reasons, and I will elaborate.

My very first experience shooting a live concert was in Israel, when I was 17 and my brother had his Bar-Mitzva party. A famous local singer, Margalit Tzanani, who was a friend and colleague of my father, went up to the stage and sang a couple of songs, my dad played the saxophone and my brother got up and played the guitar (I guess he was in his own Bar-Mitzva band and he wouldn't have it any other way.) I had a little Hi-8 video camera (a now long forgotten video format) and I filmed the show. TERRIBLY! I thought I was being so clever, moving the camera to the beats of the music and showing off my filmmaking "skills," but the result was a shaky, nearly unwatchable recording of a music performance in which you felt the (bad) cameraman more than the performers. I really did not know what I was doing.

My first professional project that contained live concert footage was a 10 or 12 minute show I directed and edited for Coca Cola in 2006, starring R&B artist Ne-yo. The concept of the show was a live performance in a club in front of a group of excited fans, inter-cut with moments from an interview we did with the artist as well as a sit-down we arranged after the show with actual fans, who got to ask him questions and have a conversation with him. My approach to shooting the concert, which is what made the project exciting to me, was to shoot the performances with a kind of low tech, hand held, documentary feel, and to then edit it in a high-energy, slick music video style. To achieve this I had Ne-yo perform each of the three songs we featured three times (a very interesting thing to do in front of a non-film-savvy audience, by the way - I think they may have been a bit weirded out by the idea of seeing each song three times but were excited to be part of a shoot with their favorite artist) and that way I maximized our 4 or 5 cameras by getting a good amount of coverage. The result was a very stylized edit and a show that was fun to watch for 10 minutes - but I wonder if this style could hold for an hour, for a real, full concert. Or would it get tiresome? When does it become less about the musicians and more about the filmmakers? At ten minutes, it's a beautiful symbioses of performer and filmmaking style. But at an hour, would it be too much? I would not attempt a full concert in this style. It would be pointless. Besides, it is a rare live event where you could have each song performed more than once. That is a bit more of a music video shoot setup, where you do each song many times and get various angles. Usually the concert happens once, and you must capture it as interestingly and efficiently (the latter being more important) as you can.

What is interesting about the filmmaking aspect of a live concert, vs. the viewing aspect of it is this: unlike a film or dramatic television show, the viewer could care less about the filmmaking qualities of filming and/or editing a live concert. Essentially, you could go on stage with an out-of-focus, 10-dollar camera with a half-broken lens, stand on a vibrating platform and dance while you're shooting. As long as the viewer is a fan of the artist, the viewer will have fun. An editor friend of mine mentioned to me a DVD concert of an artist she and her friend love. My editor friend, noticing the edit, thought it was the most horrendous concert edit she had ever seen, and it was very distracting to her, and lowered the project's value for her. Her friend, not an editor or filmmaker, but simply a fan of the artist, LOVED it.

Now, that said, there are of course certain expectations of quality when displaying a professional production of a concert video. Naturally you would not go and shoot a concert with a 10 dollar camera and air it on prime-time television. And this is where the difference becomes evident between the ability to simply enjoy a crappy production of a good concert, and something more than that: I believe that if a concert is special in its filmmaking and production aspects, it is more memorable.

We all remember Nirvana's marvelous MTV Unplugged performance - but if all we had watched was a bootleg video of that same show, shot badly, without the luster of the nice colors and lighting, without the nice crane and dolly moves, without the great close ups of Kurt Cobain, without the nice, well-flowing, seamless live cutting between the cameras - I believe that we would certainly still enjoy the show because the music is great, but would we remember it after all these years? I doubt it. I think we remember it because in addition to the concert being great, there was a just something special about the production. We could watch it today and relive the greatness of it, perhaps recalling to ourselves a memory of the first time we saw it. Not so with a homemade-quality video. That Unplugged show had a look, a vibe, and we carry that as the memory of the show we watched, carry it with us as part of our artistic memory or cultural language or something lofty like that.

Why do we all have an image of the Woodstock festival in our heads, even if we were born years after it took place? Because the film of it has its own special "look." We would recognize it immediately. We do not really remember random YouTube videos shot by fans at concerts. We might enjoy those, but we remember productions into which thought went. Thought, imagination, honest creative effort. And what we remember has some kind of positive impact on us. And that positive impact is, well, I guess a good reason to do stuff.

And so - now that we have established a legitimate reason to take pride and care in how you approach the professional production of a concert video, I would like to speak a little about an aspect I have now experienced quite a few times, and that is the editing of live concerts, and the fine balance between creativity and simplicity.

Last year I was hired to edit a couple of videos from the American Idol live tour. One for Adam Lambert, and one for Kris Allen. I believe this was the first time I had done a live concert since the Ne-yo show three or four years earlier. In that time since the Ne-yo concert, which to remind, I approached very stylistically, and the time I sat down to edit the Kris Allen video, I had also directed and edited many music videos, in which of course, one allows oneself to have loads of fun with the editing. My head was therefore programmed by habit to approach the live concert video in the same way I would approach a music video: make it as awesome, visually, as possible.

NOT SO MUCH THE RIGHT APPROACH!

In fact, a really dumb approach, as I realized a little while later. As I began editing. I started with some highly stylized dissolves and superimposes and long fades in and out of black and some vague imagery that I managed to find in the takes - start mysterious, then slowly introduce the fact that it's Kris, and then start using the bigger wide shots... and so on. Oh, and of COURSE - I made it black and white. Because it was so artsy and cool and if it was a music video I would have tried that look on those particular images, they seemed ripe for that look. In other words, I was trying to get creative. I sent my first 30 seconds to the producer, just to make sure he was cool with the direction. When he called, the conversation went something like this:

PRODUCER: "Uh... I just saw the first 30 seconds.

ME (waiting to be showered with praise:) "Oh cool, what did you think?

PRODUCER: "I don't like it.

ME: "Oh.

PRODUCER: "You're trying too hard. You're making it into something it isn't. Just edit the concert. Don't try to make the footage into something that it's not.

My knee-jerk reaction to this conversation was "that's so silly because it looks so cool!" And mind you - it did actually look cool. The question, however, is not "does it look cool," but rather: "why is this concert video trying to look like a music video?" Two very different genres. Now - one can of course take the more stylized approach. But sometimes there is no need to. The fan just wants to watch his artist perform a song. This wisdom only appeared to me the next day.

Right after the conversation with the producer, I sat down and recut the first thirty seconds. I approached it much more traditionally, with the thought, "I am editing the concert and not trying to make it something it isn't." And lo and behold - it was fine. It was a concert. The producer was happy, and I continued, thinking "it's fine but... it can be so much more entertaining!" After sleeping on it, I realized it could not actually be more entertaining, because it was just as entertaining as it needs to be. The edit is good, the timings are good, it's energetic, fun to watch. What more do I need? Do I really need fanciness? Do I need black and white? What for?? It is a concert video of an artist singing. And that's all it is. And it's very good just like that. For it to be something else, it would have to be shot with the intention of becoming something else. My Ne-yo video was shot a certain way in order to be edited a certain way. My first instinct of forcing Kris's footage into a new style was incorrect.

But one still does need to find a way to be creative in the edit of the video, right? Of course. And this is where the nuance enters and makes the process, and the product, fun.

I am a stickler for rhythm, and "suffer" from a mild OCD about cuts being perfect rhythmically when I edit - music, dialogue, it all must be perfect (the fact that I watch it again after a few months and realize it is not perfect at all is irrelevant!) This is why I would prefer to never edit news. It would drive me insane to just stick whichever images I have together really quickly and throw a voice-over on them and worry only about the message and not the style. Within the context of editing a concert, I try to keep the rhythm perfect and interesting, ever changing and engaging, I try to keep it as exciting as possible by cutting at the correct moments to the correct cameras, I speed up the edit and slow it down as much as I feel is necessary to flow with the music and keep the experience fun, emotional, pretty, or whatever I want it to feel like at every given moment - and that is enough. That's all you need, and if you do it very well, it will make the concert more the pleasure to watch.

But - in addition to that, occasionally I will inject an overtly creative edit, one that calls attention to itself. A sudden extra fast sequence of images to enhance a musical moment, is an obvious example. These are perfectly fine to use, but judiciously. In a Tori Amos one-hour concert I cut, there was a moment where she sings the lyrics "Remember, remember, remember..." and it sounded to me as if she is echoing herself. I just had to dissolve back and forth from her close-up to a slightly wider medium-shot, and then back to the close-up, on every "remember." Three quick dissolves. I just had to! Because it's fun and it works. To introduce a little moment of extra-creativity like that can increase the production value as well as add entertainment value to the show as a whole. Suddenly the viewer is reminded, "this is a concert but it's also a film, and it's totally okay to have fun." Tori repeats the "remember" lines several times, but I only did the effect-sequence twice. First time for "cool" effect. Second time for "ooh, let's see that cool again," and that's it because by the time it gets to the third time, I preferred that the viewer plays the effect in his own head rater than sees it again.

Editing World War 2 in HD

2009-11-13T12:25:00.000-08:00

This Sunday night, a show airs on the History Channel called “World War II in HD.” I was one of the editors on this fascinating, and very challenging show to create. Now that I’m done, and have a little time off to reflect, I would like to share with whoever is interested some thoughts about the interesting creative challenges that went into this show, from an editing standpoint.

The ten-hour series follows the experiences of twelve real American characters who took part in the war. Using something like 1,500 hours of raw, unedited footage, almost all of it shot in color during the second world war, we created reenactments to stories that these characters have told in either books, letters or diaries. I worked on five of the ten episodes. A lot of the footage was shot during battles. The footage is incredible, infuriating, stunning. I am not used to seeing World War 2 in color. It makes it all even more disturbing, even more alive. This material demands great respect, and herein lies the main editing challenge.

Making the real unreal

It is extremely easy, with great up-close footage of blasts, carnage and fast-moving planes, to create high-energy montages with exciting music, that are simply “cool” to look at. These are the types of films I used to make when I made films for the air force: cut to the beat, high drama, adrenaline-filled, fun. “Kick-ass stuff.” Not only is it easy to execute, but for an editor who works on the ninth year of the 21^st century, who is used to fast-moving movies and music- videos, it is also very tempting. But it also doesn’t work. Not for this material. As an editor with a strong background in action scenes, a love of cutting music-videos and a natural inclination to often treat scenes with a rhythm and a high-energy style, it was surprising to discover that the “kick-ass” approach, which works so well in fiction, simply does not work with real footage from world-war 2.

On the other hand, to create a full scene such as, for example, the Omaha Beach scene in the opening of “Saving Private Ryan,” you need the full scope of footage that they recreated for that film. If you watch that scene, you will notice it is actually edited slowly. My natural inclination, when faced with a lack of footage, tends to be to cut quick, kick-ass, exciting - in other words to do something so that you don't notice the lack of footage. In this show, some events we were telling stories about did indeed have an enormous amount of footage, whereas sometimes were faced with an event that was just not covered with as much footage as "Saving Private Ryan" had. But a fast, high-energy approach, in other words a "treated" approach, needed to be balanced very delicately with another, more careful style.

And it is exactly because the footage demands great respect. Because it is real, it cannot be made to feel too much like fiction. While we’re creating a movie-like style with this real footage, it can’t go too far. It cannot feel like a Rambo movie, even though a Rambo movie might be great. Because then it becomes strangely unreal. Even though it’s real footage! So I find that I need to sometimes let footage play, just let it happen, and resist the temptation to "do" stuff to make it more exciting. But on the other hand, the battle scenes do need to get edited in an exciting, film-like way. This very thin line between documentary and film-like treatment was something that myself and the other editors thought about often. To me, it was a very interesting, constant balancing-act.

So how do you find that right balance? For me, it was by keeping enough elements in the edit that feel real and uncut, even though these elements might be within a scene that is cut fast and exciting. In a battle scene, staying with a shot sometimes after the action is done – something I would very rarely do in a fiction action-scene, because it would feel rhythmically wrong to me (of course, I am generalizing like crazy right now) – helps because it creates the feeling that something is happening after the moment we just saw. Something real, not just an actor letting down his guard after he finished the action of the take. This creates the sense that the action continues. No one is yelling “cut!”

Comedy

In a strange way, this show presented another challenge to me that I find present when editing comedies – a genre which, due to the challenge I am about to speak about, I do not love editing (though I love watching.) When cutting comedy, if the scene is funny, or if the take is funny, it is funny once. Maybe twice. When you edit, you watch the same moments many times, and it is always difficult to be affected more than once by the material. Therefore, you must constantly try and remember, almost intellectually, the first reaction you had to the material. So that you “know” that it’s funny, even though it isn’t instinctively funny to you anymore. The solution to this it to constantly screen the material to new people. Through their reactions, you experience the scene anew.

With "WWII In HD", I found a similar challenge in terms of the initial shock to the fact that this is real footage. Every time I saw a shot for the first time, I had some sort of gut reaction to it, which I don’t have in the same way when first viewing dailies of a film or of most other documentaries. Usually, when I first view material I am going to edit, I look at it in a certain way and start building an idea in my head of how I will approach the cut. With this footage, there was the added sensation of “whoa, holy crap, this is insane stuff because it’s real.” That reaction obviously only happens once. But in that once, you can look at a shot for a long time. While editing, my inner-editor takes over, that internal musician that says “time to cut here so the rhythm is exciting, so it's not boring.” But to the viewer who views a comedy for the first time – he will laugh, even though I won’t after seeing it several (thousand) times. To the viewer seeing a man running through the woods, chased by snipers, it will remain fascinating even if I stay on the shot longer than I would in a staged scene. Because it’s real. Because that man is still running, even after he left the frame, even after the camera started shaking, even after the camera panned over to nothing in particular. That man is still running for his life. The viewer knows that.

Historical Accuracy

Another great challenge was historical accuracy. We made every possible effort for the show to be as accurate as possible. I’m sure that here and there a gun blasting off a ship is from a different part of the ocean (even though it’s the right ship,) but that’s not a big deal. For every scene I had to cut, I was given a script, and I would then go into our vast database of footage and start gathering images for my scene, with which I can recreate/represent the story being told by the character (by the way, a whole other challenge here was to do one’s very best to not use the same footage in different episodes, since all the editors were using the same database while working on different scenes and different episodes.)

As I was gathering footage, I would always call our resident historian, a brilliant dude with a computer in his brain who would look at my footage and say, “yes, you can use that” or “no – this ship is incorrect – see the number on it? It was in a different battle on the date where your story is happening.” Then he would go and show me sources to prove it’s true. Amazing. So we constantly had to check ourselves and make sure we’re using the right planes, the right guns, the right ships, the right soldiers – can’t use Marines if we’re with the army, that sort of thing. Many times it would be frustrating when we would find the perfect shot! And then we were told we can’t use it because of a historical detail. But this makes the show cooler, no doubt.

Personal Fascination

I grew up with World War 2 as a very present subject in my family. Especially on my Father’s side. His mother was in the camps, entire family obliterated. He was born very soon after it was over. When I think about this war I think about the Jewish Holocaust. Plain and simple. I’m well aware of the rest of the war and that many people died all over the world – but to me the war is the Holocaust because it’s so present in my history and in the collective history of most Israelis. And so, suddenly I was brought face to face with so much footage from everywhere, so many stories from all over the war, battles in the Pacific, all over Europe, even Alaska. There was just so much of it. It adds to it a scope in my head. A scope I always knew about and was aware of, but now it is much more vivid.

Living with these images for a few months was not always easy. I had no nightmares but there were moments of such disgust that I had to take a walk and rest for an hour. A lot of the footage is dreadfully hard to look at. Two images that stuck to my mind are one of a soldier getting hit as he storms the beach at Tarawa, throws his hands up and falls into the water, dead. Another is a Japanese woman at Saipan who races to a cliff, looks around, and jumps to her death. Due to the fact that the show is told from an American perspective, it only gets to the Holocaust later in the show (since the American soldiers arrived at the camps only at the end of the war.) I thought I’d manage to avoid dealing with any of those images, and almost did, until in my last few days I had to do some work that involved the liberation of Dachau. That was a little draining. But you know what is weird? And sick? Just like the rest of the footage, after staring at the same images, dreadful as they were (and they were) I still somehow became somewhat desensitized to them the more times I saw them.

The footage, I will say for the 10^th time, is fascinating. And it’s interesting what catches your attention. Sometimes, as I searched for footage, I would find something unrelated and just begin watching. On one of my last days, I stumbled upon footage of Eva Braun, as I was trying to confirm that some shot I wanted to use was indeed her. And there was a whole collection of images of her. I just stared at it. Here’s this stupid little idiot, living the care-free life and sleeping with Hitler, while the world is burning.

The show was produced for the History Channel by Lou Reda Productions, and most of it was directed by Matthew Ginsburg. Here is one of the promos History made for the show. This one has been playing in cinemas. I'm having trouble making the youtube embed wide-screen. If it's playing weird for you, you can go to the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsFSPYytSL4