Monday, June 13, 2011

Corrections

Whenever you speak in a live recording format, there is always the chance you may say something out of context or forget a vital piece of information. For me, I have at least one major fuck up per episode that I wish I could take back. Recently there were two glaring statements I made that I need to correct.

The first is on Episode 19, Hangover part 2 and Tree of Life, when I stated that the cinematographer of Tree of Life, the extremely talented Emmanuel Lubezki, performed as a steadicam operator on his films. As my friend and working AC/DP Alberto Mojica pointed out to me, this simply is not true. Lubezki performs much of the handheld camera work himself and uses other people to operate the steadicams. However, he does pull focus from a wireless remote for many of the steadicam sequences.

A second glaring mistake I made is when I claimed on Episode 20, The Brooklyn College FIlm Festival and X Men: First Class, that Brooklyn College needed to create a separate Best Documentary Award for the festival to celebrate the numerous non-fiction films students produce. The problem with this suggestion is that there already is a Best Documentary category and it was won this year by the heartfelt film Deconstructing Your Mother, directed by Ja'Tovia Gary. When I made the suggestion on air, I was making a statement about the nature of documentary filmmaking in general and how it differs greatly from narrative filmmaking, unless of course your are Werner Herzog, but that's a different blog post. When people critique documentaries, they are often quick to allow for obscene camera zooms or poor image quality as long as the overarching storyline tugs on the old heart strings. That's fine, as I am a huge fan of direct cinema, cinema veritae and other forms of non-fiction films. Yet, at the same time I feel if narrative films are to be judged on harsher terms for their formalistic elements, such as sound quality, editing pace and image quality, then narrative and documentary films should be screened and judged with only the other types of films in those categories.

Thanks again and I'll talk to your soon.

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