It’s a shorter 90 recut of Videoblogging The Conversation, for the Nokia MiniMO competition.
They want 90 second mobile videos, inspired by your favourite movie scenes. Shot on phones or point & shoot cameras. The standard of entries so far is pretty so-so – a lot of you vloggers could clean up here… The prizes include a trip to the Cannes Lions Advertising festival at the end of the month and a bunch of video kit and phones.
The slowest series ever. In November 2007, I posted Part 1, arriving in San Francisco; in November 2008, I posted Videoblogging The Conversation; this year it’s Vertigo. And they were all shot in November 2006. Holy shitsticks, I’ve aged more in the last three years than this movie location has in the last 50!
(yes, my side of the screen is supposed to be silent)
this one has a bit of a story behind it.
5 years ago, we came out here to the Comox Valley for six months so I could finish writing a novel that i’d already been working on for a year.
it was about a young wannabe director who goes to America, visits movie locations and starts to lose the line between fantasy and reality. it was pretty funny – and I had a great agent – and everybody thought it was going to be a massive hit – and i fucking BLEW IT
i came back from Canada with the book unfinished and started working for my dad’s aluminium company. i blamed this on a car accident, which i said had stopped me writing. really though… (i’ve never admitted this before) i could’ve finished it if I’d just fucking knuckled down and applied myself. but there you go. 18 months and multiple thousand quid down the bog. RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
then we had Amy, three years passed. the aluminium company went bust, and i went freelance (same thing, more or less).
but before i got properly lost in freelance hell, i gave the book one last shot. i flew out to San Francisco by myself in november 2006 to revisit the movie locations i’d been writing about. the idea was that i’d write and videoblog while i was there – the sights and sounds would fuel a reimagining of the story – and i’d return with a vision of how to tie together all my unfinished fragments.
instead i just lost the line between fantasy and reality.
so these clips have been sitting unwatched and unedited on my hard drive – a bit too guilt-inducing to open – until now. life is a bit more back on track, we’re back in canada, i have a good steady job working for someone i like and i’m starting to feel like i can write again… so i reopened the box.
i haven’t looked at them all again yet, but i have clips from movie locations all around the san francisco bay area. if you like this and want more, let me know and i’ll hack some of them together.
i’ve also just installed the AddThis plugin, something i’ve been meaning to do for a while. so if you like a video, you can easily add it to a social bookmarking site like StumbleUpon or Delicious so other people can find it, too.
and the answer is Yes, this really was shot in Room 773 of the Cathedral Hill Hotel (map), formerly the Jack Tar Hotel, spinetinglingly unchanged 32 years later. and if you haven’t seen Coppola’s (and Murch’s) The Conversation, then what are you doing still reading this? you should be on Amazon or Netflix buying or renting it.
I’ve been meaning to post this all year, but I got too busy. Now I can’t wait any longer to share it with you.
Jay and Ryanne and GoGen and David and a whole lot of other people have inspired me recently with films of travels and faraway places. This is very different to the kind of quiet moments of beauty they observe & record – but watching theirs made me get off my arse and do something with mine.
I’m going to try to cut together more from this trip, maybe once a week – as part of my NaBloPoMo daily posting.
PS – Geek note – This wasn’t shot & cut on the N93, as the title card says, but shot on a tiny Canon Ixus/Powershot 900 pocket stills camera. Amazing. Gotta love those Canons for quality, low light & colour. (Cut on iMovie)
