Screening of Crimson Peak with Paul Thompson

All are welcome to the Cerilli Screening Room (Horace Mann 193) this Tuesday (October 24th) from 5:00-8:00 p.m. for a screening of Guillermo Del Toro's Crimson Peak, followed by a conversation with the film's video coordinator Paul Thompson. All are invited to this free event hosted by the Ocean State Film Society!

(Over the past twenty-plus years, Paul Thompson has worked on over 40 feature films, from Academy Award-winning films such as Room and Life of Pi to big-budget extravaganzas such as xXx: The Return of Xander Cage, Suicide Squad, RoboCop (2014), Resident Evil: Afterlife, and The Incredible Hulk (2008). He recently worked on Academy and Emmy Award-winning screenwriter Aaron Sorkin’s directorial debut Molly’s Game, and he has worked with acclaimed director Guillermo del Toro on The Shape of Water, Crimson Peak, and Pacific Rim. He has also worked on cult classics such as Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and Bride of Chucky.)

And, even though it has its critics, Crimson Peak is definirely worth seeing; as Sheila O'Malley describes it at rogerebert.com:

As in Pan's Labyrinth, Crimson Peak creates an environment where these high stakes can operate at full throttle. The visuals of Allerdale Hall call to mind German Expressionist filmmakers, as well as directors as various as Mario Bava and Hitchcock. But while "Crimson Peak" launches associations (Gothic/Romantic tradition, Hitchcock, Shirley Jackson, Murnau, Bava, Kubrick's The Shining, The Brothers Grimm, Jane Eyre), it's not just a tribute, it's a hybrid all Del Toro's own. The images themselves have tremendous power: A blonde woman sneaking through a dark house holding a candelabra. A black-haired woman stalking through an interior snowfall, carrying a tray of rattling tea cups. A man in his workshop creating toys that open their mouths to vomit silver balls. 

So come for the visual imagery -- and stay for insights into the prouction process that Paul Thompson can share with us in person! 

Film by RIC Media Studies Alum Soren Sorensen

We're delighted to announce that RIC Media Studies graduate Soren Sorensen's film, My Father's Vietnam, has been accepted by the Rhode Island International Film festival, and will have its world premiere this coming August 6th at 2:45 p.m. in the Paff Theatre at URI's donwtown CCE campus (follow this link to get advance tickets online).

Production for this film began with a 2006 conversation between the filmmaker and his father, Peter Sorensen, who enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1968, a year when American troop levels in Vietnam were growing at the same rate support for the War on the homefront was shrinking.

“For my generation, sons and daughters of the ‘baby boomers,’ enlisting in the military has always been a choice,” said Soren Sorensen. “So, 40 years later, the idea of enlisting during the Vietnam War, in a divisive political climate not unlike what we’re seeing now, seemed to me sort of inconsistent with common sense.”

He added, “I was a bit naïve.”

The film features the stories of two men Peter Sorensen served with who were killed in Vietnam in 1970. For first-time filmmaker Soren Sorensen, the production process—which included shoots in Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, and Washington, DC—was an educational experience and a chance to get to know his father better.

“I came to realize that guys like my father didn’t really have a choice,” he said. “The romantic hindsight fantasy of burning your draft card and going to Canada had consequences related to your family, community, and financial situation that made it all but impossible.”

Sorensen continued: “Add to that the World War II generation looming large in history and culture. I think people wanted to live up to their parents’ expectations.”

The filmmaker says the process gave him a deeper understanding of the military and strengthened his relationship with his father.

“How could it not?” he said. “When you fly across the country and interview a complete stranger in Arizona about his experiences in Vietnam and he says, as my father says, ‘I’ve never had a conversation like this before,’ you realize just how silently Vietnam Veterans have carried the physical and psychological burdens of that war.”

He added, “Not only do you learn a tremendous amount, but you also gain an overwhelming sense of respect and gratitude.”

Peter Sorensen, the filmmaker’s father and one of the film’s primary subjects, said, “The film is more than the story of a father and a son. It's emblematic of the deleterious and ripple effect armed conflicts such as the Vietnam War have on entire families and ultimately the nation.”

The production turned out to be a multi-year odyssey for Sorensen—who also produced, wrote, and edited the film—and Director of Photography Dan Akiba.

“Dan was the one who encouraged me to shoot the interview with my father in the first place,” said Soren Sorensen. “If it wasn’t for him, I might not have made the film at all.”
Featuring never-before-seen photographs and 8mm footage of the era, My Father’s Vietnam sheds new light on a disturbing chapter of American history that continues to deeply impact those who lived through it.

Sound Media Studies

When it comes to media, all of our human senses are related to the perception of frequency: the visible spectrum is that which we sense via sight, and the audio spectrum we sense via hearing. Taken together, they represent only two tiny patches of the total frequency spectrum,  and yet it's remarkable to consider that it's actually sound waves which we can hear with the greatest precision, distinguishing a wide variety of characteristics beyond frequency itself; the difficulty of programming a computer to recognize human voices using natural language is testimony to that (though Dragon may soon change everything).

Sound is also the first medium to become technically recordable, as well as the first medium to be broadcast. Sound recordings had been around for nearly 50 years before the first sound films were released, and voice radio predates television broadcasts by twenty years or more (twenty if you count any broadcast, nearly forty if you count only commercial, regular broadcasts).

Sound has been a pioneer in the digital and Internet revolutions as well, and that's easily understandable. If you take the CD audio standard of 44.1 kHz, this is only about 7% as much data as the NTSC television standard of 5.75 MHz, so it's no wonder that audio was compressed, stored, and shared long before even standard-res video (HD demands more than 3 times the data density of the old NTSC standard).

Sound, of course, was originally free and totally ephemeral; once spoken, sung, or plucked, it was gone. It then became a physical object, the cylinder and then the disc, sold to a mass public, and channeled through later forms such as the 8-track tape, cassette, and digital CD. But then, thanks to compression paradigms such as MPEG-2 audio layer 3 (originally designed to compress the sound elements of a video signal), sound became the first thing to fit through the narrow tube that was the pre-highspeed Internet; the rest, as they say, is history.

And yet, in most Media Studies programs and New Media books, sound seems relegated to a very small, supporting role. It's been naturalized, made invisible, save in its absence, as when talking about "silent" movies (which of course were never silent; before soundtracks they were nearly always accompanied by music).  And so I ask (dropping into a KRS-One tone), "Why is that?" And what should we do about it?

3D Movies: Always Just Over the Horizon

From its first appearance in 1922 to the current wave of films today, 3D has always been hailed as a great technical advance which would bring the cinema closer to its future as an all-encompassing form of entertainment. This future, alas, has always remained just over the horizon, and the reason is plain to see: it has always required special, add-on technologies that have made films more expensive to produce, project and view. This has led to cost, which has led to its being seen as a premium entertainment, which has prevented it from becoming more widely used. Doubtless the current wave of 3D will fade, but in the meantime, it might be educational to take a look at Teleview, the very first 3D system for the cinema, as nearly all of the technological elements -- and all of the hurdles -- were there are the start, nearly ninety years ago.

Basically, there have always been two methods of achieving the effect of 3D -- one, as with Kinemacolor, was an active method using alternating frames of the film for left-eye and right-eye views; such systems then required either a polarizing filter (with the projected images also alternating in polarity) or a synchronized, electrical shutter for every viewer (this was the method of Teleview, and seen in the diagram of the viewer above). Oddly, this is not only the earliest, but the latest, system: 3D television similarly uses alternating frames, along with a special set of electronic glasses designed so that each eye sees only the frames made from "its" perspective (at $50 a pair, they're hardly cheap).

The other method, the passive one, is to project both left-eye and right-eye perspectives simultaneously, and use either red/blue or polarizing eyeglasses so that the overlapping images are "sorted out" by each eye. This has the advantage of cheap, disposable means of reception, but the disadvantage that the image on the screen will be poor to anyone without the eyewear. While we often associate this system and its red/blue glasses with the earlier heyday of 3D in the 1950's, polarizing glasses were in fact far more commonly used, primarily because such films did not have to be printed on colored stock, or use color at all.

Today, converting a modern multiplex cinema to 3D costs about $300,000 a screen -- which, at some larger houses, would mean several millions of dollars. The practice has therefore been to convert only a few screens, which means that any film released in 3D will be on fewer screens, and even with a premium will make less for both the studios and the exhibitors. The dwindling economic returns of such a thing, especially in the current recession, have caused some studios, such as Warner Brothers, to pull out of earlier commitments to making films, such as the last Harry Potter features, in 3D. The jury is still out on 3D TV, and my bet is that, before too long, we will once again associate 3D, that magnificent technology of the future, with the past.

Filmmaker Michael Jacoby Talks To New England Post About 'The Undesirable'

[From New England Post]
Two weeks ago, the official end to the policy known as Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT), which banned gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military, was perhaps seen by some gay rights supporters as too little too late. For those supporters, however, it was a victory nonetheless. Others, specifically the current field of Republican presidential nominees, see it as quite a significant setback.
Rick Santorum, one candidate who’s been unhappy recently with the level of media coverage he’s been receiving, called the repeal of DADT “social experimentation” and “tragic.”
“Sex is not an issue,” he said at last month’s GOP debate in Florida to rapturous applause. His comments came after several audience members booed Stephen Hill, a gay soldier serving in Iraq who submitted a question about DADT via YouTube.
“We would reinstitute that policy if Rick Santorum was president,” Santorum said of himself in the third person. Given Santorum’s poll numbers, it’s not likely that that day will ever come.
For filmmaker Michael Jacoby, the repeal of DADT means a happy ending for his latest documentary, The Undesirable. Currently in production, the film tells the story of Melvin Dwork, a WWII Veteran who was tossed out of the United States Navy’s Hospital Corp in 1944. The phrase “undesirable discharge” hung over Mr. Dwork for almost 70 years until his record was cleared earlier this year, another happy ending for Mr. Jacoby’s film.
Mr. Jacoby, whose previous effort was Ten More Good Years, a film about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender aging issues, talked to New England Post this week about progress on The Undesirable.
NEP: When did you get the idea for The Undesirable and what's your connection to Melvin Dwork?
MJ: I met Mel fifteen years ago when I first moved to New York City from Los Angeles. I got a job working at a little restaurant in the village called Pearl Oyster Bar. At the time it was a tiny restaurant with only counter seating—sort of like working behind a bar. Because there was so much face-to-face with regulars, I got to know Mel. He came in quite often and had a lot to talk about. We eventually became friends and now consider each other family. Throughout the course of our relationship we learned more and more about one another and it didn’t take long before I learned about Mel’s life as a young man. When he told me he had served in the Navy as a Hospital Corpsman I had a ton of questions for him. My grandfather was a Marine during WWII and I learned quite a bit about that war through him and his storytelling. Because I am gay, I had always wondered what it must have been like for gay service members at that time. Most men who survived The War returned to their families proud, victorious and honored. Men like Mel, undesirably discharged for being homosexual, had to return to their families and either come out to them at a time when no one did such a thing, or decide to lie about it. Mel told the truth and found that his family did not care. Most men were not so lucky. Since his discharge in 1944 Mel has been trying to clear his record. Nearly 70 years later he can finally say that he is as honorable as any of the service men or women that he served with.
NEP: Was Mr. Dwork always interested in the idea of having part of his life immortalized in a documentary film or did he take some convincing?
MJ: Mel had no problem with the idea of being in a documentary about his life. We had been talking about trying to make a narrative film for some time, but eventually settled on a documentary format. Perhaps one of the reasons Mel was so open to the idea of being in a film is because he helped inspire my last feature documentary, Ten More Good Years. He knows that if I set out to make a film it will happen. It isn’t just talk. He wants his story to be told in order to inspire others so that they may “right the wrong” and set their own records straight. I think he is confident in my ability to make sure that happens.
NEP: How much of the film have you completed and how is fundraising going?
MJ: I am currently shooting all of Mel’s interviews. This is the easy part. I have been fortunate enough to find a sound stage in New York called Pirate Audio to shoot Mel’s interviews in. I had done some voiceover work there in the past and they were kind enough to offer me an incredible rate for use of one of their studios simply because they were very engaged by the story. Making a documentary independently is very difficult if you cannot find people like the guys at Pirate or are not able to raise the cash. I am raising money now via a non-profit arts organization here in NYC called Fractured Atlas. Any money donated to the film is tax deductible as FA is a 501c3. FA then follows exactly how I spend the money to make sure it is going strictly towards the making of the film. Now, saying all that, I have only been able to raise about $2,500.00 so far. I need to raise about $200,000.00 to make this film from start to finish.
NEP: Did the official repeal of DADT increase interest a bit?
MJ: The repeal of DADT did indeed raise interest in the film, I think mainly because the repeal of Mel’s own “undesirable” status to “honorable” status by the Pentagon happened just one month prior to the DADT repeal. The Associated Press broke Mel’s story the Friday before the repeal of DADT and it quickly became their biggest story with over 200 news outlets picking it up. I think it was natural for reporters to put the two stories together even though they had nothing to do with one another. The timing seems to have been nothing more than a coincidence. These stories did drive people to my website and I can see that views of the trailer skyrocketed. While I have had plenty of positive comments and request for interviews I have not seen an uptick in tax deductible donations. (sad face)
NEP: What can people do if they want to donate?
MJ: If your readers wish to contribute to the film they should visit the website at www.TheUndesirable.com and click on one of the donation buttons. They will be taken to the Fractured Atlas secure website for online contributions or given directions on how to make contributions via mail. All donors receive credit in the film and depending on how large the donation is there are gifts involved, as well as more prestigious credits.
NEP: Your last film, Ten More Good Years (2008), did really well at festivals and aired on Sundance Channel and Logo. I think people imagine that filmmakers who achieve critical and popular acclaim like that are just suddenly "in a club," meaning making a living off your art, in the film business, no looking back. Talk a little bit about the experience of Ten More Good Years and how it met or surpassed your expectations.
MJ: Despite the critical success of the Ten More Good Years it most certainly did not translate into big money. I did license the film to three networks, the two you mentioned and one in Canada. That money went to pay off the debt I incurred while making the film. I decided to retain all distribution rights in order to make more on educational and home sales. I was relatively successful with those sales but have since licensed the film to educational distribution companies in the US and abroad and just last week licensed home use sales of the film to TLA, a distribution company that focuses on LGBT content. It’s too difficult and time consuming to try to market, distribute and make new films all at the same time. Despite knowing that there is little to no money in making documentaries I am here doing it again. As with Ten More Good Years, I know this is a great story. I know people will want to hear it. The main thing that TMGY did for me is I now have something of a reputation as a filmmaker and I do find it easier to get people to listen to me and take me seriously. I’m hoping to partner with a network to make The Undesirable and am currently working on getting pitch meetings together. I’m crossing my fingers for HBO.
NEP: How has your life been changed by TMGY?
MJ: Ten More Good Years changed my life in many ways. While making a film like TMGY I became immersed in the story. It took nearly four years to make that film from start to finish. It’s was a bit like writing a thesis. I became somewhat of an expert on the issues. It affected my life so much that I have recently considered going to graduate school and getting a Master's Degree in Social Work so that I can work with and around older LGBT adults. I love LGBT history and I love learning about the men and women who paved the way for me so that I can be the open, honest LGBT person that I am today. If I can’t seem to make a living in film in the next year or two, I will most likely go for the MSW. Either way, I’ll be very happy.
NEP: What have you been working on since TMGY?
MJ: Following TMGY the producers at In The Life, an LGBT television series airing on PBS, asked me to come in and consider working on a couple segments for their broadcast. I produced one called The Written Word and another called Aging In A Safe Environment. Following that I directed and produced a short narrative film called With This Ring that was just selected to screen at the 26th annual Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival in late October, early November. The film is an “Official Selection” placing it in competition for Best Short. With This Ring is a cautionary tale of gay marriage and something a little different than viewers might expect. It was a lot of fun to take a break from documentary and work in a more controlled environment; something I hope to do more of.
NEP: In an ideal world would you make a living as a documentary director?
MJ: In an ideal world I would love to work as both a documentary director and as a narrative film director. Documentaries satisfy my desire to learn about a specific topic and narrative films satisfy my desire to work with a larger crew in a more organized setting. Both types of film are so different, yet from one you can learn a lot about the other.
Mr. Jacoby lives and works in New York, NY and hopes to have finished The Undesirable in 2012. For more information, please visit: www.TheUndesirable.com.
(In the interest of full disclosure I feel I must point out that I composed the original music for Michael Jacoby's 2008 film, Ten More Good Years. My work as a film composer however does not affect my work as a journalist in any way, shape or form.)

Phish Bassist Mike Gordon Tells New England Post About Another Side of In

[From New England Post]

If you've ever listened to Mike Gordon’s 2003 album Inside In, you've probably never thought to yourself, “This music would be perfect for an interactive multimedia installation.”

While most of the folky, psychedelic self-consciousness that Phish’s bassist summons is well worth revisiting when you’re in the right frame of mind, the funky 70s grooves and throwback slow jams will likely not remind listeners of art museums, galleries or the paint-splattered loft spaces of Velvet Underground’s New York.

Still, with guest appearances by Béla Fleck, Vassar Clements and Col. Bruce Hampton (ret.), among others, it's a memorable listen.

Inside In is a fulcrum of sorts; one point of a three-work constellation. The other two are Outside Out, Gordon’s 2001 full-length feature film, and Another Side of In, a collaboration between Gordon, artist Margorie Minkin (Mike's mom) and electronics engineer Jamie Robertson.

Another Side of In is made up of Minkin’s painted Lexan sculptures, sounds from Inside In Gordon lifted and looped specifically for the piece, light and perhaps most importantly, the intervention of a willing participant.

The latest exhibition of the piece will be at the Charles River of Industry and Innovation through December 23. Mike Gordon’s been a busy man lately—Phish’s recent benefit concert raised $1.2 million for Vermont residents affected by Tropical Storm Irene. But he was nice enough to answer a few questions from New England Post about the Another Side of In.

NEP: With the interactivity of an installation like Another Side of In, pictures, recordings, even videos, don't really do much to explain the experience. How would you describe the work to someone who's never experienced an interactive multimedia art installation?

MG: Interactive means that you are making a friend with the piece of art. You're relating to it as if it's another living creature, it reacting to your movements. My mother’s torso shapes make that easy to imagine, whereas the sounds provide a more abstract kind of character for those new friends.

NEP: Originally, if I'm not mistaken, there were 20 individual painted Lexan sculptures accompanied, with the presence and movement of spectators, by sounds and light. What was the process behind selecting and placing portions of the work for exhibition, five pieces in the case of the Charles River Museum version?

MG: My mother chose the five pieces, based on providing a variety of visual and auditory experiences, and ones that can blend together nicely when activated. There is something nice about a small exhibit, since you get to know each one more intimately. It's like playing music in an arena versus a club... both approaches have cool aspects.

NEP: For those unfamiliar with your 2001 film Outside Out and 2003 companion album Inside In, how would you describe their relationship? Was the record a collection of ideas, snippets and fragments of unfinished songs from a period of many years or did you sit down, decide to make a record, write it and record it?

MG: I had recorded all of the soundtrack for the movie myself, including the sound effects, music, production sounds, and ambiences. It was particularly cool to mix and match the roles of those categories—like using the sound of a washing machine as a song texture. I took the background sounds and score music and created the album from the movie. This involved spending a few months with film music, adding lyrics and song structures that would stand alone. The original tracks were used, with new parts overdubbed.

NEP: Another Side of In includes looped portions of sounds culled from the record. I know some artists feel like projects are never finished, they're just abandoned. Was it fun to get under the hood of that record again? To what extent did you know exactly where to find the sounds that might best compliment Another Side of In?

MG: The nice thing is that some creative fun goes into sound design for movies, and for albums, but in this case the backgroundy textures that one might not be conscious of hearing are given the spotlight. There were considerations about finding sounds that would mix together—some more ambient, some more rhythmic, etc., and searching for the kind of abstraction in sound that would allow each piece to grow into it's own character. My mother listened to each sound for the time she was working on the piece that would accompany it, and as the collection came into fruition, we discussed what we needed more or less of.

NEP: Your mother, Marjorie Minkin, created the painted Lexan sculptures in the exhibit. In you artist's statement, you say your artistry has always been inspired by your mother's. Can you describe how?

MG: We had a neighbor who used the expression, "anything within limitations," and my mother said she hated that concept—that limits are to be pulled and stretched. I was inspired how she would find a new medium or approach and then spend a decade or so trying countless variations on a theme, stretching every limit possible, from colors to opacity to layers. I was always so proud that the concept of mom to me was a woman in a room with several hundred gallons of iridescent paint and twenty foot canvases, or warped layerings of plastic.

NEP: I think people tend to dismiss work like this, interactive multimedia installations, without having an understanding the history of conceptual art. I'm thinking of Marcel Duchamp who began to work with ideas like interactivity, mixed media, recycling found objects, etc. about 100 years ago. Growing up around your artist mother, you must've been aware of conceptual art in a way most children are not. Does the work of specific conceptual artists inform Another Side of In or does the work flow simply from a place of open-minded creativity?

MG: For some reason, I fantasized about multisensory installations and spaces my whole life. I wanted to build an enclosed room with prerecorded media that would appeal to all the senses at once since being a young child. Growing older, I refined my tastes and grew to love abstraction, and the kind of simplicity art like this can have. I've also been involved in many kinds of interactive experiments in the live music setting, so making art interactive appealed to me. What didn't appeal to me is a lot of the interactive shows I saw when I started researching the field—especially when there is a latency that makes the experience feel disconnected. You have to feel like you are directly causing something to happen immediately, and if you do, it's a cool feeling.

NEP: Why do you think practitioners of some styles of art, music, dance, etc. seem to have no shelf life, while others struggle to gain traction outside of very small, cliquey communities? Do you think technology (Internet, smartphones, etc.) is changing this?

MG: We couldn't have predicted that Phish would have become so successful, and it would take volumes for me to attempt to guess why, though I have some guesses. One could read "The Tipping Point," by Malcolm Gladwell for a dabbling into the subject of why some things get popular. I'm sure new technology will both change the way art is created and the way it's experienced, and things are getting more interactive with touch screens and online schools. Creative people are having a field day, regardless of which ones become popular.

NEP: Phish just played its first show in Vermont in a long time, a benefit for Tropical Storm Irene victims. How are things in Vermont at the moment and what can/should people do if they want to help?

MG: Even assessing the damage will take a while, never mind all the mending. People can donate through phish.com by finding links to our Waterwheel Foundation, and volunteers are needed to help at cleanup sites.

NEP: What are you working on now? Are there any other mother/son collaborations on the horizon?

MG: I have fantasies for some intense variations and enhancements of our show. ASOI v. 9.2? I'm currently working on some music writing and recording projects, with various people, and for various outlets. I'm also looking forward to my next film project when the time is right.

Another Side of In will be at the Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation through December 23. Thanks to Jon Fischer Photography for the images.

New Short Film From Derek Dubois At 13th Annual Pawtucket Film Festival This Weekend

[From New England Post]
Fallout, the new thriller from Rhode Island independent filmmaker Derek Dubois, will be included in the 13^th Annual Pawtucket Film Festival this Sunday. While the official schedule has not yet been released, Dubois told the New England Post that the screening will indeed take place on Sunday at 4:30.
Derek Dubois was kind enough to sit down with the New England Post for this short conversation.
NEP: Are there things you want people to know about Fallout before seeing it or would you prefer they just sit down, let the lights dim and enjoy the show?
DD: With Fallout I definitely prefer the latter. There are certain ambiguities about the relationship between the main players and the nature of the conflict that I think are designed to roll out when they do. Fallout is a thriller. Dim the lights, crank the sound. That's all you need to know.
NEP: Did the idea for the Fallout screenplay come from somewhere specific or was it simply a case of a genre you felt like tackling?
DD: Believe it or not Fallout was inspired primarily by two films I'd seen in very quick succession: Anton Corbijn's The American and Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain. While these films are very different on the surface both center around very quiet, internalized male protagonists. If you look back at my previous films you'll find, historically, that I've often been far more concerned with female characters - they always seem much more complex and richer to me (maybe it's my feminist-film theory background). But on the heels of these two screenings I really wanted a straight no-frills genre plot but populated with an introspective male character that forces the spectator to really dwell on contemporary American masculinity and what the expectations of being "the man" in that scenario entail.
NEP: What films inform the screenplay and visual style of Fallout?
DD: Since Fallout is my first exercise in pure genre, I really wanted to play with the best of the best. This is a film whose entire time-span is relegated to one very small location: a fallout shelter. The central question became: how can we transmit that intense claustrophobia onto the audience without boring them? We found our answers in several disparate places: The setting is very inspired by something like Ridley Scott's Alien. One of those locked down locations that'll make your characters stir-crazy. But we chose to often keep the camera moving (albeit subtlety) to consistently put new information into the frame.
Funny enough, we stole our framing setups from The King's Speech. One very interesting thing I had originally noticed about that film was how inventive (and daring) it was in breaking with traditional framing designs. Speech often weighed their characters to the wrong side of the frame generating tons of negative space. We felt that approach was perfect for inspiring the right atmosphere during the uncomfortable interactions between our two main characters.
NEP: Talk a little bit about the production design and sets.
DD: Production Design was by far the most rigorous element of any of the stages of filmmaking. We instantly knew that shooting in an actual fallout shelter (if we could obtain access to one) was impossible because there would be no room for camera setups. So the crew's original discussions led us to consider scouting for a "mill basement" or something that was already practical for us to work with that would look like a Fallout shelter. I was never sold on that idea and secretly began construction on a set in my family's basement - not knowing if I could pull it off. I designed it so that each wall of the four-wall set would be entirely removable - thus permitting total visual freedom. I have absolutely no construction abilities whatsoever but over the course of two-months things slowly began to take shape. If you become a fan of Fallout on Facebook you can see a time-lapse photo album that charts the building of our little set. But excuse me, I have to go, my family's been on my case to start ripping it down.
NEP: Other than Pawtucket Film Festival this weekend, where else can people see Fallout?
DD: Fallout has thus far been accepted to three festivals. This coming Sunday Fallout will play on the opposite side of the country at the 2011 SoCal Film festival. Also, we were accepted into the 2011 Shockerfest Festival, which is an interesting genre-specific festival (horror and sci-fi), that airs it's films on a local cable station to a potential audience of 1.5 million people. Finally, as of last week, we have released the film online. Anyone interested in seeing Fallout can simply visit www.derekdubois.net to view the film in full.
NEP: What are you working on now?
DD: Now that Fall has arrived I'm back at the head of the classroom leading a new group of Rhode Island College students in learning the joys and wonders of film analysis and, for the first time, screenwriting. I'm also hoping to put down the camera for a little while and try to sell a feature length script. I'm shopping around a horror-feature entitled Miss Diagnosis with several production companies at the moment.
(In the interest of full disclosure I feel I must point out that I composed the original music for Fallout. My work as a film composer however does not effect my work as a journalist in any way, shape or form.)

Art and Hoax

Recently I had the pleasure of speaking to Michele Meek, a Rhode Islander whose C.V. is far too long to collapse into a single introductory paragraph. To give you an idea of what I’m talking about, the above image is Michele teaching English to Buddhist monks in Thailand in 2006. When she’s not teaching, studying or overseeing NewEnglandFilm.com, which she started, Meek writes about cinema, food and travel. She most recently presented her new paper, Art and Hoax, at last month’s Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference in New Orleans.

SS: How did you come to write about the marketing of Exit Through the Gift Shop in the first place?

MM: My husband actually wanted to see the film, so he, my brother and I all went to see it at the Cable Car Cinema in Providence in May 2010. I've seen a lot of documentaries throughout the years, but this time, I was totally surprised. Unlike most contemporary documentaries that tell you what to think, this film made you think. On the surface, Banksy is exposing the contemporary art world as a sham. Yet there is another meaning to be uncovered about the documentary genre itself and the struggle between subjectivity and objectivity, truth and interpretation, auteur and subject. Perhaps even more ironically, Banksy profits from both his art and the film, again blurring that line between art and commerce.

After seeing the film, I was hooked. And after researching their strategies for reaching an audience, I knew it was worth further study.

SS: How did you end up presenting at the SCMS and what was the experience like?

MM: I've been a member of SCMS for several years, and last year, I attended my first conference in L.A. Of course, anyone can submit a paper for the conference. I've presented numerous times on panels at writing conferences, film festivals and at universities as a guest lecturer. Still, I was anxious since this was my first academic presentation. Ultimately, it went well, and I did feel prepared to answer questions that came my way. But I've long since learned that you can't know everything, and it's all right to say you don't know something. In fact, that's much better than pretending to know something you don't.

Since I'm relatively new to academia, I decided to propose something that was more industry-oriented and related to a subject where I had some expertise—so I proposed a paper for the panel Arty and Indie in America. Since I had seen the industry from both sides as a independent filmmaker and a reseller (I had run BuyIndies.com, a community to buy and sell independent films, for nearly a decade), I felt that I had a unique perspective to bring to the subject. The paper I presented "Art and Hoax: The Viral Marketing of 'Exit Through the Gift Shop'" discusses the unconventional (and remarkably successful) distribution and marketing strategies behind the film.

SS: Can Art and Hoax be read online anywhere?

Not yet, although I'm happy to send it to anyone who is interested in reading it and providing feedback! I'll be editing and expanding it over the next few months, and then will submit it for publication. Ideally, it will find a place in one of the peer-reviewed film journals.

SS: Tell me a little bit about NewEnglandFilm.com, its history and your involvement, past and present.

MM: I started NewEnglandFilm.com in 1997. I was finishing my MFA in screenwriting at Emerson College and working at a magazine in Boston and had the idea to start a magazine for the regional film community. But then I realized how expensive print magazines were. So my husband (boyfriend, at the time) recommended I start it as a website, and I figured I'd do that until I could switch it to a print publication. But when I saw how successful it was online -- so much more interactive and timely then a monthly print publication -- there was no going back. Eventually, we built out other features in addition to the magazine like the industry directory and most recently, the online film festival. There's a timeline at http://newenglandfilm.com/news/archives/04august/timeline.htm where you can see the progress through 2004 (I guess I need to update that!) Anyway, I still oversee the site, but I do have a small freelance staff to help out at this point.

SS: You're a Ph.D candidate in English at URI. When you began looking at programs, was that an easy decision for you or were there several other disciplines on the table like, say, Film?

MM: There are so many factors that go into a decision like this. Since I had already gotten a Master's in writing, I had more of a head start with an English Ph.D. And since I have a family, I wasn't really willing to move anywhere in the country which also limited my options. And then there's that little matter of only being able to go where you actually get in. But ultimately, I am interested in both literature and film and hope to write a dissertation that reflects that.

SS: Was there a clean transition from your interest in screenwriting to your interest in academic writing or does one inform the other and vice versa?

MM: I'm honestly not sure there's a logical transition between any of the things that I do. When I look at my C.V. even I wonder how (or why) I've packed in all of the disjointed things I've done. That said, I've always taught -- filmmaking, screenwriting, and writing. And of course, I've always loved to write, and over the years, I've written poetry, fiction, and screenplays, in addition to writing blog posts and magazine articles. Still, in my opinion, there's not much in common between writing a screenplay and a piece of journalism and a poem -- except that every word needs to belong. Each type of writing, I approach differently. With academic writing, I find myself thinking much more critically. In journalism, you can be lazy and make generalizations like "It's getting harder for independent filmmakers to distribute their films." But in academic writing, you can't state something like that without knowing how it's getting harder (what are the numbers?) and why it's getting harder (what are the forces causing the industry changes?). Or maybe you're supposed to do that in magazine writing too, and I've just been doing it wrong all these years.

SS: In addition to film and culture, you've written quite a bit about food and travel. Are there any subjects you haven't tackled that you think you might want to explore in the near future?

MM: I don't think I've written about the space program -- yet! No seriously, there are many subjects I haven't tackled. I simply write about the things I love -- mostly film and travel. My blog TheRhodeLessTraveled.com is an outlet for the lighter writing I enjoy. For both NewEnglandFilm.com and my blog, I only write about things that stand out -- I'm not in it to pan anyone, so if I go to a restaurant I hate, then I don't write about it. Since I'm fairly picky, this makes it so I often have nothing to write about.

I'm still not quite sure where my academic interest will lead me. I have an article being published in the upcoming Tennessee Williams Annual Review about the feminist subtext in the 1956 film "Baby Doll," which is obviously much different than my conference paper on "Exit Through the Gift Shop". But ultimately, I'd like to somehow leverage both my industry experience and academic training to create a study that would be useful for a more general filmmaking audience. Also before starting the Ph.D. program, I was working on a book in the genre of literary nonfiction about my experiences living in Paris for a year, and at some point, I'd love to make time to finish it.

SS: What's your dream job and what are your plans for after URI?

MM: I don't think I can say that I have just one dream job (maybe that's my whole problem). I'd love to be a serial entrepreneur since I love creating something out of nothing. On the other end of the spectrum, I would love to be able to write and teach and somehow make money doing that. Basically, I'd like to do something I love (and change what that was as I wished) and be paid well for it -- but who doesn't?

For more information on any of the above, please visit www.michelemeek.com.

The Song Remains the Same

Today, March 8th, at 2:00pm in Horace Mann 193, Dr. Jeffrey T. Nealon will give a talk entitled: The Song Remains the Same: Classic Rock, Cultural Studies, and Post-Postmodernism. Dr. Nealon, a professor of English at Penn State, is the author of Double Reading: Postmodernism after Deconstruction (Cornell, 1993), Alterity Politics: Ethics and Performative Subjectivity (Duke, 1998), and The Theory Toolbox (with Susan Searls-Giroux, Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), an indispensable introduction to reading cultural theory. We’re very happy to offer this brief preview of the event.

SS: What’s the gist of your presentation?

JN: The Song Remains the Same is a critical account of the continuing ubiquity of 1960s-70s “classic rock” in American culture. I’m trying here neither to celebrate nor to denounce the commodity called classic rock, but to try to understand its continuing and singular place in American cultural life – and to think about whether its unprecedented continuing popularity suggests any changes in what cultural studies theorists have to say about the fraught relations among contemporary American cultural production and economic production. To anticipate my conclusion, I argue that classic rock’s longevity is both a symptom of Fredric Jameson’s famous understanding of postmodernism (in shorthand, the complete collapse of cultural production into the logic of economic production and vice versa), but that in addition the continuing reign of classic rock as a cultural commodity also shows us the emergent logic of something else: not necessarily something “new,” but a different, more intense mode of production/consumption that I’ll call, for lack of another word, post-postmodern.

SS: When you refer to the "commodity called classic rock," do you mean solely rock music of the 60s and 70s or do you include current popular acts who reproduce a classic rock aesthetic in their music?

JN: Just the 60s and 70s, really.

SS: Regarding Jameson's understanding of postmodernism, what stands out to you about classic rock over other popular musical forms born in the mid-20th century like Country or R&B?

JN: Well, for Jameson postmodernism is the complete collapse of the logic of cultural production into the logic of economic production (innovation, symbolic economies, affect all get folded into economic production, rather than functioning as something 'other'), so all popular music on Jameson's account functions according to that paradigm. For me, the distinction or uniqueness of classic rock is its longevity as a cultural commodity -- 17 yr olds still listen to The Doors, and there's still a popular radio format dedicated to that genre of 40-year-old music. But 17-year-old country fans don't routinely listen to the country songs of the late 60s (e.g. Tammy Wynette), and there's no widespread "classic country" radio in every American media market. That's the thing that's hard to explain about classic rock from a cultural studies point of view -- its longevity as a youth cultural product.

SS: Is it oversimplifying to state then that the reason for classic rock's continued ubiquity, as opposed to the relative obscurity (in pop cultural terms) of "classic country" or "Americana," is its profitability during the 60s and 70s? In other words, reproducing today the aesthetics of that era, as a means of making a profit, necessitates the inclusion of its most commercial components.

Well, there are plenty of profitable cultural operations of the 1970s -- from The Partridge family to the pet rock -- that were plenty successful in their day, but nobody today thinks of them as "cool." Think Boudieu, cultural capital: it's partially classic rock's commitment to "authenticity" in the face of a commodified world (what, for example, "Satisfaction" and "Stairway to Heaven" have in common) that makes classic rock such an enduring cultural commodity. That and what's changed about capitalism in the meantime, which is mostly what the paper is about