PMVeltri

The Films of The 1940’s

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 00:49:33 -0500

For the last two years or so I’ve been lost in the films of the 1940’s. When watching older films it can be hard to see passed the wartime propaganda and sometimes your eyes hurt when they cut from a wide shot to a medium wide but it’s amazing to see how well so many of these films hold up over time. Take a look at the films currently playing at the movies, how many of those will film geeks still be talking about in sixty years? Not very many. When you get past Casablana(1942), Citizen Cane(1941) and a few Hitchcock movies you can get into some really good stuff that gets lost behind the iconic films of the decade. Pick any John Ford movie but start with The Grapes of Wrath (1940). If you haven’t see the Maltese Falcon (1941) catch that and see what film noir you can but don’t get lost in the darkness. There were many other films made in the forties worth looking out for. Here’s a short list:
Sullivan's Travels ( 1941)

To Be or Not to Be (1942)

The Ox-Bow Incident (1942)

Gaslight (1944)

It's A Wonderful Life (1946)

Roma, Citta Aperta/Rome Open City (1945)

The Bicycle Thief (1948)

It’s almost time for me to jump forward to the 1950’s and get lost in the films of that decade but before I do there’s a few more films from the forties I have to track down. Then I’ll be moving to the 1950’s: Huston, Cukor, Kazan, Wilder, Fellini, Sirk, Kubrick, Lean and may others wait for me. I’ve started working on the list of films from the 1950’s. Who know’s how many years it’ll take to make it through the best films of the 1950’s.

Culture Days - Retiring the Jacket

Mon, 5 Sep 2011 00:21:23 -0400

We’ve been trying to put together a local screening of ‘Measuring Tape Girl’ but it’s taken us a while. We finally have one thanks to Culture Days. Our screening of ‘Measuring Tape Girl’ is on Sunday, October 2nd at 3pm and 4pm. It will screen at National Film Board of Canada in Toronto.(150 John Street Toronto, Ontario).

http://www.culturedays.ca/en/2011-activities/view/4d86424d-54bc-4f5a-b1a7-6a994c4a89be

Over the last year and a half I’ve worn a Measuring Tape Jacket at film festivals to help promote our film ‘Measuring Tape Girl’. It’s been a crazy adventure in marketing and blatant self-promotion in a few different places around the world but I think it maybe time to retire the measuring tape jacket. I’m pretty sure this is the craziest thing that I’ve done and I don’t regret it but it’s time to move on. There’s been a big learning curve for me when it comes to marketing and I’m still only at the beginning of understanding how much I don’t know about many things but I’ve learn a few things. The most important thing I’ve learned is that you can’t do what everyone else is doing and that you have to have a story to tell. What I end up doing with that knowledge still remains to be seen. A clear sign that we’ve done at least some web marketing for ‘Measuring Tape Girl’ is that a distributor of measuring tapes from China has sent me a several sales emails because they have somehow been convinced that I am involved in Measuring Tape distribution in North America. It makes me smile whenever I receive an sales email about a chinese companies wide variety of measuring tape.
I was never really comfortable in the Measuring Tape Jacket. It make me feel like I didn’t belong. I felt like everyone might be looking at me and judging me. Which was the whole point. I was asking to be judged. I was asking people to walk up to me and give me strange looks. Becoming a visual metaphor for one of my films was a challenge. It forced me to stop hiding in the shadows and become a sales person instead of a filmmaker. It is difficult for a filmmaker, a painter, a photographer or any artist to become a sales person. One of the hardest lessons to learn is that how you market and promote your art form is just as important, if not more important than your actually art form. I know many artists will disagree but if no one knows you’ve made a film, who’s going to show up to see it? I struggle with this any time I have to talk to a group of people about my films. The difference between now and several years ago is that I can almost stand in front of a group of people and not sound quite as nervous as I used to. Maybe that was the whole point of my Measuring Tape Marco adventure. The difference between the old me and this newer version, is that I can now take off the Measuring Tape jacket and feel comfortable in my own skin. I accept myself for who I am and I’m ready and willing to continue learning and growing as the years go by. The whole point of ‘Measuring Tape Girl’ was to make a film that had no camera tricks, no fancy transitions. Just words, one person talking to the audience with no where to hide. Last year I was hiding behind the Measuring Tape jacket and I let it speak for me. I’m going to have to stop finding places to hide, though I may end up hiding behind the seats at the screening.
I would like to thank Culture Days for making a this event possible. It’s amazing that volunteers have created this movement to raise the awareness, accessibility, participation and engagement of all Canadians in the arts and cultural life of their communities. If it was up to me every day would be Culture Day.

Linear Vs. Non-Linear

Sun, 31 Jul 2011 10:50:58 -0400

Do we start the story at the end? Or do we start the story in the middle and build our way back to the beginning? Are we being creative when we use a non-linear narrative to tell a story or are we hiding the fact that our story is boring? All good questions. Non-linear story telling is not new, it’s been around for some time but our new reliance on using a non-linear story to escape story structure is getting a little annoying. Do we really need to start at the end and then jump forward and then jump back. In some ways we’ve forgotten how to tell a story. A long time ago stories would have endings. There would be a beginning, a middle and an end. It seems that not ending a story is a strong trend that shows no sign of ending. The general idea is to leave the ending open for a sequel or to use false endings that leads to another battle or conflict. Sometimes the story can spend so much time tying up loose ends that it can feel like there are ten to twenty endings. I have a deep seeded love for stories with a clear ending. It makes me smile when a story can be told without tricks and false endings. When a non-linear story helps reveals characters or in some way reveals what the story is truly about I also smile. There is a tendency to use a non-linear story as a stylistic choice, instead of using it for a narrative purpose. As wonderful as a properly constructed non-linear story can be...Please give me a beginning, a middle and an end. When we’ve reached the cathartic payoff please end the story.

The Films of Sidney Lumet

Fri, 29 Apr 2011 14:16:08 -0400

Sidney Lumet has always been one of my personal deities. His work has always been ground breaking, emotional powerful but at the same time approachable. Sidney Lumet redefined so many filmmaking conventions that it is amazing how overlooked his work has been. Modern day filmmakers sometimes think of transitions to flashbacks, low angles to build tension, lenses and depth of field being used to define characters as clichés. When Sidney Lumet used these letters of the film alphabet to tell stories he was defining the film language as he went. It’s easy to look back now and consider something to be simple and dated unless you look at his films knowing that this was the first time someone used a frame by frame transition to move into a flashback. Only then can you appreciate the simple elegance of Sidney Lumet’s filmmaking. Here are just a few examples.

‘12 Angry Men’ was basically shot entirely in one room. As the film progressed Sidney wanted the room to get smaller and smaller. The film starts with wide lenses and then the lenses get progressively longer, flattening out the room, making it seem to be more claustrophobic. The camera height also changes throughout the film. The camera starts at above eye level, then moves down to eye level and ends up below eye level for the last 3rd of the film. Simple or at least it seems simple when this film gets explained to you in film class but it’s affect on the audience stands the test of time.

‘The Pawnbroker’ uses quick cuts that last only a fraction of a second to move from the present to the lead characters past. The film uses a “flutter cut” technique which uses very short shots from different scenes to transition back and forth seamlessly. This innovated and extended a european film editing technique that we now consider to be a normal transitional element. A simple answer to the flashback that redefined film language in the 1960’s.

In ‘The Fugitive Kind’ different lenses are used on main characters to represent their way of seeing the world. Longer lenses with less depth of field are used on Brando’s character Val Xavier to give him a dream like quality. Brando’s character walks around with his head in the clouds and he is shot in a way that represent that. The lead female character is forced to deal with the harsh realities of life, so throughout the film she is shot with wide angle lenses. As she falls in love the lenses used to shoot her slowly changes to the same long lenses used to shoot Brano’s character. Controlling the the use of lenses and depth of field is an elegant way to define characters.
Most filmmakers major concern is covering the scene so they can cut the performances together. Finding a way to use lighting, lenses and performances to come together in a way that completely supports the story is something else. Sidney Lumet is one of the pillars of filmmaking who helped create film language over a long career of story telling. I hope to find the time to revisit a long list of his films over the next few months.

Memories of Memory Triggers

Sun, 27 Feb 2011 13:35:50 -0500

My obsession with Memory and how it works has been with me for more than a decade. I walked away from my fixation on memory a few years ago and moved towards stories focusing on self-doubt and self-acceptance. I seem to have fallen back down the rabbit hole of memory obsession and have restarted my research. The main trigger for this was the grant applications I’ll be working on, which ask questions about your films background and the research you’ve done. To fulfill some of the requirements I’m going to have to restart my memory studies and take better notes this time. The strangest thing happen on the road back to memory research, as I stood in the library isles, I was struck by memories of looking though all these books years ago. I could see myself piling up twenty books and taking them to a table to evaluate which ones I might take home with me. As I google searched around I remembered most of the pages I was sent to. I had some very strong memories of my past research into memory. All the questions came back. Who would we become when we forget who we are? Are we the sum of our memories and choices or is our fate predetermined? When it comes to memories most books don’t have answers, instead they provide you with theories. The books are full of ideas that take guesses on how our minds work. They come to conclusions on what the role memory plays in the development of our personalities. Answers that lead to more questions. In the end the sad truth may be that my strong obsession is based on fact that there isn’t a clear answer to my questions. Some projects take you days, some take you months but as a filmmaker most projects take you years. The process of grant applications and preproduction can take two to three to five years. Longer in some cases. A lifetime of prepping for projects that may never get made. For the next little while I’m lucky enough to be able to create new memories about my obsession with memory. Being able to look into your obsessions and to then be able to revisit them over the years is a gift.