Community

"What we do might be done in solitude and with great desperation, but it tends to produce exactly the opposite.  It tends to produce community and in many people hope and joy.”

Junot Diaz 

Horizons

While we've been haunting our locations for Galore, refining sequences, doing light tests and conducting rehearsals, DOP Stefan Duscio has been getting to know the landscape, the light and the strange horizons of Canberra intimately. Here are some glimpses of the landscape as seen through his camera. Every time I look at them I feel a sense of deep, unwavering confidence that everything in this crazed film is going to be just fine...

Vitti/Antonioni

On Reflection #5

End of Week 5 of pre production for Galore. We found a way to distort time so that it, at once, went incredibly slowly, and swiftly at a speed that was beyond belief.

We rehearsed and wandered and let the sun crease our skin.

We took photos and examined faces in different lights. We made up scenarios and improvised endlessly mesmerising variations of the slight emotional powerplays of kids in their late teens.

We watched the sun set over and over. We hiked hills and sat by rivers. We spent impossibly long days doing technical recces, examining shot lists, plans, schedules and storyboards.

We got elated.

We got slammed.

We felt we were making progress. We felt we were going nowhere.

We found the perfect dog and the perfect Corey, Ari and Dewati. We ate bad hotel food and stalked the shopping centres of the far southern suburbs.

We explored locations, fossicked through the belongings of the deceased and we found objects to covet and things - like a strange typewriter test full of cries for help concealed between the lines - to fear.

We played music written for our film and music we want to include in our film. We also played a hell of a lot of shit, and sang Patrick Swayze's 'She's Like The Wind' over and over.

We missed our families and sent love to our siblings, partners, kids and friends...

And through it all, life was sweet.

Freedom

"I really think most of what we call cinema is not cinema. It's really film theatre or, even worse, illustrated literature. The object of the film is the story and the characters are just technical people representing something. Most cinema is comic books. In my opinion that is not real cinema. Real cinema is much closer to music. Music doesn't represent anything, it is just something that will convey feeling. It doesn't mean anything. I hate the idea that film is actually telling a story! The great part of film is to make you feel, not by the narrative. For example the first shot of "Silent Light" is cinematic. The light itself is beautiful. In literature, that does not exist. You can just write, "The sun came up." The beauty in my film is the sun itself. You don't have to recreate it. In cinema, the story and the photography are the same thing. It's not like, "I don't like the story, but great photography." The photography is the film itself; it's not a vehicle for the story. I don't want a story and then you illustrate it, in a way that there will always be a division between form and meaning. I think in art, form and meaning are the same thing. In that sense, music is the most noble of arts, because it does not permit you to separate the music from the meaning. When cinema is true, it is a language in itself - that is why it is an art. I hate the idea that a good film is a good story, as Hollywood people say. That's not letting cinema be totally free."

Carlos Reygadas

On Reflection #4

It's the end of week 4 of pre production for Galore.

We tested smoke. We tried on shirts and pants and shorts and undies and singlets and bracelets and hats and sweaters and shoes and slides and dresses and swimmers.

We tested wind. We looked at performances, we talked, we improvised, we watched stuff, listened to stuff, thought about stuff.

We tested ash. We debated and haggled. We planned and blocked. We storyboarded and photographed and rewrote and revised.

We bonded and laughed and questioned and answered. We printed and bound and stapled.

We packed. We took off in cars and headed north. And through it all, life was good.

Anything for Anna Karina

Fame

''If by the grace of God I become famous, half of that fame will belong to Granada, which formed me and made me what I am: a poet from birth and unable to help it.''

image: me, a lifetime ago, siempre pensando en ti, granada

words: Federico García Lorca

On Reflection #3

End of week 3 of pre production. 

We tested artificial medical procedures. 

We balanced colours.

We discussed rooms and yards and curtains and hair and shoes and skateboards and light and schedules and cars and sparks and fireworks and darkness and silhouettes.

We storyboarded stunts.

We researched skating and music and bedrooms and illnesses.

We planned rehearsals.

We made mixtapes.

We celebrated the midway point of pre production with paella and beer and tiquitacas.

We got anxious. We got excited. We got inspired. We bought stuff and sold stuff. We looked at endless pictures and listened to new compositions. We made countless phonecalls and had countless conversations about the shifting changing madness that is pre production. And, through it all, life was good.