Did you hear that?
I’ve been working quite a bit on Episode 10 these past few days. Seems like I always have to work a lot herder on the shoots that I screw up on. We shot this episode the morning after the gala party of our film festival, and we were not at our best. I got snookered by the seemingly perfect glow from the floor-to-ceiling windows in our location, and did not bring in any lighting at all. Big mistake. Improper mic placement didn’t help much either, as the room was much livelier than my sleep-deprived ears were able to detect. I knew the transition sequence in the temple were ringy, I wanted it that way….I just was not prepared for the amount of ring I picked up in the office location. I felt dead so that the room sounded dead, the rest is just not pretty…..
But that’s okay, really…..we are not going for cinematic excellence with ‘Dreamer,’ we are trying to spur a conversation. The Rabbi’s comments for episode 10 are so spot on that I can only be grudgingly pleased with the episode as a whole. Oh, sure — a more film-like look would have been better, and my shoulders are still burning from the hours I spent re-lighting the thing in post. I really wish I had set this up where I could have more aye contact with the good rebbi, who is an absolute joy to work with, and the audio is just dreadful. But still… the core issue could have not been framed any better: Does anyone hear from God anymore or not? If you think you are hearing from God, are you crazy?
To be precise, our title character is not ‘hearing’ from God. We were careful with this, and have held to our plan of Robert Cohen simply seeing things in his dreams that lead him to the conclusion that God might be involved somehow. Since he does not believe in God, he tends to believe that his family history of mental illness might be at work. Since everyone he talks to brings their own bias to the conversation, the field is wide open. What do you think – is God just a fairy tale for people who want to have some kind of meaning to life? Feel free to join in this conversation any time — episode ten will be up this week, and we will be bringing all our characters together in the story soon. This challenge is not for the faint of heart — if you are willing to face the though questions, we’re willing to work with you to help find some kind of answers. Feel free to make comments here, on our NVentive YouTube Channel,. our Vimeo uploads, or of course our series headquarters at blip.tv/nventive. Let’s have fun with this….
Oh….and for those of you who read the last post, and know something of the bad haircut…..we’re going to have to wait a while before we shoot anything new with the title character. 😦
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