Topic #4: Influencial Works

First of all, I owe you, fair readers, an apology. It's nigh inexcusable that this be my first blog post in almost a month, and I hope our writer and director - and sound designer, no less - have kept you company in my stead. Chalk it up to procrastination, confusion - I would hardly call myself a successful blogger in general - and a swarm of projects that hit me all at once in the latter stages of January.


We've received a great deal of positive feedback on the teaser for Separation Anxiety, which warms our hearts immensely. It gives us hope that we're making a film that can truly strike a chord with a vast audience. A couple of people have actually asked me what influenced us in terms of previous movies and works of art to shoot it the way we did, to write it the way Jeremy's written it, and so on, and so I thought our next blog topic should be something a little more...accessible, perhaps.

Glass City, on my end at least, had more influences than original ideas, to some extent. The film was loosely based on stories I had lived or experienced vicariously through friends of mine, but certain images, lighting setups, turns of phrase, plot sequences, and themes were unintentionally cobbled together from a dozen of my favorite movies and shows. Cole, after viewing Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (my #1, in case you were wondering), told me that he understood so much more about me after watching it, and I'd argue it's a must-see for anyone who wants to dig a little deeper into the John Klein psyche. I'd also argue it gives you a bit more appreciation of, say, the Toledo montage in Glass City or the argument prior to the bridge. Again, it's unintentional, and in my opinion, understandable. It's the result of a first-time filmmaker falling back on what he knows and loves.

So, here we are. Separation Anxiety. Jeremy will surely have plenty to say about what influences drove him in his screenwriting, but I believe the trailer looks as good as it does because, for once, I was acting on original ideas and instincts. We all were. I didn't think of looks from other movies; I simply took the words on the page and lit them. That is a true testament to Jeremy's ability as a writer. The themes and visuals were already there, not in a shot-by-shot format but in a beautiful sense of feeling.

That said, I still want to talk about a few of the works that have influenced me, because they will always have a stamp on my own work. So, without further adieu...


1) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (dir. Michel Gondry): Has there ever been a more truthful film about the nature of memory and its effect on our relationships? Has Jim Carrey ever given a more bruising performance? Has any film in recent memory committed so fully and wonderfully to its ideas and themes? The wonder of Eternal Sunshine - as well as another work down this list - is in its ability to mold a very sci-fi concept to a very universal series of thoughts and emotions. We believe that these characters exist. We know them personally. We wish they would understand how not right for each other they are, yet cheer for them to realize how perfect they are together. Pay special attention to the scene in the bookstore near the end: as all the book covers around Joel and Clementine vanish, as they reminisce in regret about their failed time together before she finally disappears, I dare you to find a more perfect scene in any movie of the past ten years. The handheld cinematography in this film, now a staple of mine, has ruined me for other directors who eschew the strategy. Even Cole hated me for it...until he saw this film.

2) Garden State (dir. Zach Braff): Okay, it's flawed. It's too quirky for its own good, it has several technical errors reminiscent of a film student's first masterwork, the plot doesn't have the stakes to back up its melodrama, and it's largely based on elements of Braff's life. Weird how much that sounds like Glass City, don't ya think? But I digress. It's also a wonderful portrayal of how solid dialogue, smartly written characters, brilliant yet unobstrusive cinematography, and a strong independent spirit - Braff wrote, starred, produced, and directed - can make a cult classic out of the slightest material and a movie I still watch when I'm feeling down to this day. Its compositional influence can be felt all over the Separation Anxiety trailer. And its perfect soundtrack, I would argue, inspired us to make sure every movie we ever do has music just as fitting. Anyone who's heard Glass City's soundtrack would wholeheartedly agree, I think.

3) LOST (TV series, prod. J.J. Abrams): The best series on primetime, period. No show blends character and concept more vividly. No matter how shark-jumping the plotlines or how mythologically dense and confusing the show gets, the scripts are always firmly rooted in the characters. This is the sci-fi I want to do someday. Ep. 1x04 "Walkabout" and Ep. 4x05 "The Constant" are must-sees for anyone who appreciates terrific, visual storytelling. Did I mention it's also the most beautiful show on TV? Guess it pays to set a show in Hawaii. I would argue that the WHOOSH sound in the Separation Anxiety trailer during shifting time periods was influenced by LOST, but I leave that to our sound mixer Jordan to speak on. Maybe I just like to think so.

4) The works of Claude Monet. Art historians have said that Monet's Impressionism was a precursor to the moving image. Stare at the Waterlilies series for a good ten minutes and try not to think you see flowing ripples in the water. Stare at the sky in his paintings of Paris and tell me the clouds don't skirt across the sky. His use of light and color to create definition, rather than sharpness, is probably why I don't mind an out-of-focus take now and again and why I prefer saturated higlights to monochrome imagery. In my opinion, color simply makes you feel more. And the lack of it can be equally striking when juxtaposed with it. Even in color-correcting our B&W short Rendezvous, I added a tint of blue to the image. It felt colder, sadder. Much of the way I shot the Bangladesh documentary Strong Bodies Fight (see the opening shots of my reel) came from those thoughts and images.


There are a dozen more, to be sure - the cinematography of Janusz Kaminski, Roger Deakins and Conrad Hall; the Matrix trilogy and Citizen Kane; the very architecture of Chicago - but I'm more interested lately in crafting works that don't directly reference anything. When creating shot lists, I would always have a list at the top of the page of films I watched for visual references. I've stopped doing that of late, and the four projects I shot over the past two weeks felt different from anything I'd done yet. It's great to know where you've come from, but sometimes it's better to wonder where you're going.

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The Art of Sound

Hi everyone, I'll keep this quick. While Cole, John, and I have lots to say about film making and the respective parts that we play in that process, we know that we are incredibly lucky to be surrounded by many talented artists, each an essential piece of an amazing jigsaw puzzle. From time to time, we'll introduce you to some of them and have them share some of their experiences working on Separation Anxiety. That brings us to our first guest blogger. I'm pleased to introduce you to Jordan Fehr.

Hello all, Jordan Fehr here. I am the Sound Designer working with Glass City Films on Separation Anxiety and I have been asked to say a bit about what I do here on the production blog.

First of all, Sound Design is both a technical and creative field, and a Sound Designer can be responsible for everything except the compositional aspects of the film's sound. The term is also now used in Video Games, Theatre, and other multimedia projects.

Anyone who has worked in film or watching some special features on a DVD with unfinished scenes knows that with our current sensibilities, that raw footage is almost unwatchable. It seems boring, flat, and fraught with mistakes. More than 50 percent of this is usually the audio. We are so used to polished film sound, where every little sound in the scene is closely controlled, that when we hear the sound from just the set, it seems cheap and bad. That is where Post Production Audio comes in. We receive the film after it has been edited, and both edit the production audio from the set, and add lots of new sound to sweeten what is there but also add sounds that SHOULD be there, but are not. Backgrounds are put in to establish time and place, Foley is added to sweeten human movement and interaction with objects, and SFX and SPFX are added for other things that make noises, or to enhance the film in some other way. On a large Hollywood movie, all the various roles that I fulfilled when working on this trailer would be done by an entire team of people.

Doing Sound Design for a trailer is a bit different than working on an entire film, because there is a lot more music and dialog, with usually no space in between, and the point is to hit them hard and fast and make your audience feel something without getting the whole picture. The trailer for Separation Anxiety came to me with pretty good production sound, and some great local music. I spent more time on the dialog and music edits than I did on anything else, because there were not a ton of SFX and Foley that needed to be done in the trailer. Dialog is the most important thing, and the music provides that much needed emotional push so those were the focus. SFX were added on scene transitions, when text comes up on screen, or to enhance something in a subtle way, like the fireworks or Bai and Jess laughing.

If I did my job right, you probably didn't notice the audio all that much, but you felt something from the trailer, and you believed that these scenes actually took place, instead of thinking about a movie being made. If you are curious about Sound Design, there have been some great DVD features about it in the past 5-8 years. I recommend the featurettes on Wall-E, King Kong and the Lord of the Rings Special Editions.

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