finding mismo's pace...

as mentioned in my last submission, one of the biggest challenges in editing motion pictures is getting the pacing right... unfolding the pictures before viewers to compel them to hang around for the next round of moving pictures...

in mismo, there are three distinct stories that make up the larger story... we are all the same... just different...

we have the viera family... made up of jorge, pedro, and anjelica... we have the 'quasi' bohemian family--made up of mitch and rachel... and the 'other side of the tracks' family... made up of toni, bella, and diego...

our rough cuts introduced the viera family first, 'quasi' bohemian family second, and the 'sketchy' family third... this is how the film ended too... but in the midst of taking the film from rough to final cut... many shifts were made within those separate stories... the scale tipped back and forth...

we wanted to give the 'parts' (i.e., each particular story) their due without undermining the whole... yet the 'whole' is only felt if it doesn't feel like three distinct parts... a risk you run in parallel storytelling...

during the rough cuts, we overexposed the viera family... we gave them too much time.. too early... at the expense of making connections with the other two story lines...

this makes sense... you often find the right pace by figuring out where the boundaries are first... where you've went too far... it's a great game of back and forth...

when it was unbalanced... it felt like three separate stories without a sense of wholeness... you need both... that disharmony sent us back to the editing room...

we eventually strung out the viera story further into the movie... and pulled mitch and rachel forward... and sprinkled in toni, bella, and diego... and once the movie gave proper attention to mitch and rachel... toni, bella, diego started coming in more... and then on the back end... toni, bella, diego have much of their story unveiled...

by the time the movie ends... all these characters have touched in ways that speak to their particular story and the larger too...

more than that... in the final scene... in real time... each character touches the other... sometimes physically but mostly in the labyrinth of collective decision making... and how we are affected.. and infected... by all the choices around us... even when unaware...

so bottom line... finding the natural balance... where both the part and the whole feels right and just... that's a story's pace...

and guess what... it's not a linear process... it's an exploratory process... back and forth... and if you are telling a parallel story... make extra time and space for yourself because the route may be ambiguous for awhile...

Pitching Our Short...

For the uninitiated, I should mention that Scary Cow is a community-based and financed movie production company that started up in January ’07.    Here we were in April and the rules had changed; instead of being assigned into a group, we now had to lobby the community to get participants.  My take was that there were lots of would-be directors, screenwriters and actors, but very few people with technical skills.  While Gino and I had attended the San Francisco School of Digital Filmmaking and were technically competent, we were also in the majority that preferred to write and direct.  It was therefore paramount that we enroll a great cameraman… someone with lights and sound equipment would come in handy too.

I was unavailable the night of the gathering to pitch our project to the crowd.  It was up to Gino, who, if you’ve read his bio you’ll know, is a university professor and an eloquent pitchman.  Off he went armed with postcards we created to hand out:

MISMO

The theme of public and private personas will be explored in parallel stories that will be developed in a non-linear fashion ~ think Crash, Babel, Magnolia, Amores Perros, Pulp Fiction.  The first 7-minute film will introduce the three main characters:
When Angelica talks about the man who provides her solace in the wake of her brother’s untimely death, she unwittingly feeds her psychologist's sexual fantasies. When the man betrays her, or so she thinks, Angelica spirals suicidally out of control.

Crew Needed: 

• Director of Photography   
• Sound Recordist   
• Script Supervisor    
• Editor 
• Location Manager
• Make-up/Wardrobe
  

Interestingly enough, this 7-minute film remains the core of MISMO… we just added a LOT more twists to the story.

finding a story's pace...

creating/editing a story's pace is one of the primary challenges of movie making...as a storyteller with motion pictures at my disposal... i look to create a biological and psychic ecosystem that sustains viewers...where you feel compelled to physically and socially collaborate in a larger story...

parallel storytelling movies...such as mismo...crash...amores perros...present filmmakers with an additional 'pacing' challenge...you have more characters than a typical movie...yet you are expected to sustain a story-consuming experience that parallels that of a typical movie with just a few characters...that is...most people want to see all the characters early in the story...

yet there is a finite and contracting sense of time when telling stories...stories as told...get narrower...not wider in expression...you are led to something...everything contributes to that something...but the story is always funneling...

so one has to be creative in getting everybody in...but not just in...but in at the right time...when it feels right...not just inserting characters in for the sake of getting them in...just doesn't feel natural...

how do you know when it's natural...we will look at that in my next submission...

In The Beginning...

The genesis for Mismo was a script I had written some years previous that was in the vein of a revenge chick flick. We had this notion that we could make a portion of it for the next stage of the Scary Cow contest. We were not going to make the first ten minutes, but rather build a short around one scene in particular that we thought was visually rich – it involved a suicidal woman and a lot of flower petals. One team member was pushing towards making the film Bergman-esque – slow down the pace of everything – which, to me, translates as painful and… well, quite simply, not my style.

Gino and I got talking one Sunday evening about what excites us about film and filmmaking. We discovered that we’re both huge fans of Alejandro González Iñárritu and more specifically of films that do not follow a traditional linear path. Amores Peros and 21 Grams are in both of our personal ‘Movie Hall of Fame’.

Our conversation was invigorated and we were inspired; we decided that we would make a movie with parallel storylines. My script had three characters; the problem was that one of them died at the beginning of the film. So, heck, we’d come up with another script. Meanwhile, we were in a contest and needed to move forward.