I’ve not even had a chance to capture everything yet.  I’ll be doing that next week (right now I’m focusing on finishing up a rough draft of the Phelps’ doc, which I’ll post as soon as it’s done).  Expect some screen caps when I’ve actually captured the video.  From what I could tell though it should be good…except that the male actor had some issues.  He was a good actor, but he was sleepy and uncomfortable (he hadn’t been that close to a woman before apparently…which is surprising since he’s a good looking guy).  As part of this he had some serious issues remembering his lines.  On set it was pretty frustrating but I can understand why.  I mean, being in front of all of those lights can be pretty overwhelming.  I know I’m no good in front of the camera (which is why I’m not an actor).  This was also some heady dialog, so it wasn’t as easy to memorize it thought for thought (many sentences had multiple thoughts contained in them).

Kristen impressed me again.  She’s a really great actor and she has a real talent for film acting.  I’ve never worked with an actor before where I’ve had to give so few critiques to.  She did great on set and impressed me with how quickly she learned to smoke.  Before this she actually hadn’t smoked anything before so the experience was a bit new.  However she did great and managed to get past the coughing stage really quickly.

Finally I should thank my wife, as you can see from the pictures the set is pretty awesome.  It really creates a cozy atmosphere.  That was all my wife, she took charge of making it look great.  I was really hesitant to use our bedroom at first because I thought it would look bad, Rachel proved me wrong.

By and large I’ve noticed that the activism against the Phelps’ is actually much more hateful and violent than they are…though there are some notable examples.  A local gay rights group held a debate and actually moderated it really well so that both the Phelps and gay Christians got a chance to be heard.  They were actually glad the Phelps’ came because it got the debate going in a place where most people try to avoid such subjects.  Even better for them is that the Phelps’ say such crazy things that they actually push those that are on the fence off onto the side opposite of them.

Of all the types of people I saw there were only two that stood out when it came to civility…this was the homosexual activists and the Phelps’.  I obviously think what the Phelps’ preach is horrendous though I do have a respect for their fervent adherence to their beliefs.  The homosexual activists I have even more respect for though, because they were the ones the Phelps’ were attacking and they managed to be the most civil and intelligent about it all.  Most of the people in between acted out with violence and rage.  It was strange to see those who were being attacked take it so civilly, I would have thought they would have been the most likely to be hateful and violent, but I think they impressed everyone with how they acted.  Not to mention they didn’t further the stereotype of homosexuals and homosexual “enablers” that the Phelps’ have stuck in their mind.  They seriously believe everyone who is okay with gay people likes skat and they are all filled with animalistic violence and rage.  If more people acted civilly maybe they’d realize that gay people are people also.

Personally, I’m for the woman’s ability to choose, but I would never recommend someone get an abortion.  Nowadays it seems a bit archaic, I mean just look in the want ads and you’ll find hundreds of couples looking for newborn babies to adopt; Many of them even offer to pay for your cost of carrying the baby to term.  However, I think it should still be an option because previous laws have shown what can horribly go wrong if we legislate against it.  The documentary points out that the leading cause of death among fertile woman was botched abortions…that’s right, it wasn’t car accidents or violent crimes…it was botched illegal abortions.  The legislation said the doctor could only abort if the woman’s life was in danger, and even then they generally didn’t for fear that they’d be prosecuted for a bad judgement call.  It was interesting to see pictures of dead fetuses (why is it the Pro-lifers only ever show late term fetuses when most abortions are within the first trimester?) compared to the pictures of the dead woman.

I also think that on some level we shouldn’t legislate inside someone’s body.  This applies to what medicine or drugs they can take, what food they can eat, and whether or not they want to keep a fetus inside it.  Of course, I think you shouldn’t do hard drugs, people shouldn’t have abortions, and you should try to avoid trans-fatty acids…but I feel really uncomfortable when the government tries to make laws about what you can and cannot do with your own body.

One pro-life atheist actually said he thought most pro-lifers were crazy because they didn’t seem to value all life.  He said he thought a “true” pro-lifer would be anti-war, anti-capital punishment, and in general against using any violence.  I’m not sure if you would really need to believe all this, but I definitely think that many of the actions of the pro-lifers are hypocritical.   He also mentioned they might be better spending their time (instead of picketing abortion clinics) if they spent a few hundred dollars in charity to help starving kids.  He mentioned that would have a much greater impact on preserving life and would also be much easier, but most people bypass that for the glamour of the pro-life activities.  He also came to the conclusion that the reason pro-lifers are so strongly for that and ignore easily savable lives is because politicians have consistently used the issue to manipulate people.  I definitely think this could be true, I think many politicians and religious leaders have pushed the issue to the extreme because it’s an easy way to get more votes.

Finally, one guy mentioned that there is a grey area.  He said that somewhere between when the 5 year old and washing your hands (which in the future might be washing away cells that could be cloned into complete living humans) there’s a point where death happens.  Some people believe it happens after the 2nd trimester, some as soon as the sperm hits the egg, and some even believe that wasted semen (i.e. masturbation) is killing potential lives.  What he followed this up with though was by saying that the first question we should be asking is what makes taking a human life a bad thing?  He postulated that it was because the human would generally have a desire not to die and we’d be going against that…but at what point does the baby have that desire.  I don’t really know what makes taking a human life bad, but I agree that we need to know what that is before we decide when it’s wrong to stop potential life.

This documentary has left me with a lot of food for thought.  I’ll definitely be thinking about this all for a while.

This whole documentary had been a big life lesson.  It was actually fairly difficult to be around the Phelps’.  They believe so strongly in something that seems so counter intuitive (though it wouldn’t have been 50-60 years ago) that you end up finding that sense of surety appealing.  They also know more about the Bible on average than anyone else I know.  Seriously, they spend most of their free time reading it.  They’re also nice people, they hold picnics and birthday parties.  They aren’t animals and they don’t promote violence (though they do use violent language).  Hell, Fred Phelps (the lead pastor) has a bunch of civil rights awards.  He helped get Brown vs. The Board of Education enforced in Topeka (I.e. integration in schools).

All this makes meeting them fairly confusing, and it makes my relationship fairly strange.  I hate what they stand for, but I don’t hate them.  They are trying as hard as they can to do what they think is good…they aren’t even harming anyone, just using words no violence.  I mean, they’re assholes in how they go about everything, but they still are people and I realize that.  I’ve actually seen more morally reprehensible actions from their detractors then them, I mean someone bombed there house at one point and I witnessed a lot hateful acts (more hateful then theirs).  The guy who filmed a documentary about them before me actually is one of them now.  That’s kind of crazy.

Now, to finish this I should state for the record I hate what they believe and want no association with them.  I don’t approve in the slightest about what they believe, but I also think people need to start realizing that even the Hitler’s of the world were human.  They all have human needs and emotions.  If we met them at a bar we’d probably like all of them before we got to know them too well.

It’s about a couple questioning how close they really are with each other.  I wrote this shortly after Rachel and I got married and had slowly been realizing that though I was closer to her than anyone else in my life there was still and unbridgeable gap between us.  The dialog about wanting the same brain actually happened in real life and is paraphrased in the script and the thought about how special it is to see someone in another car for a few brief moments comes from a dream I had.

In general I’ve found I like to take philosophical ideas and run with them in weird ways.  Sometimes it’s worked out, but many times it ends up being too much about the idea and less about the people coming in conflict with the idea.  This is a serious issue because the people are what’s interesting.  This script, I think, is one of my better attempts at combining people with ideas.  I  try to keep the idea in the forefront because it’s a short film and there’s not much time to waste, but I try to also make in dialog and character driven.  I don’t know, feel free to give me your thoughts on this.  I’ll be filming in a little less than two weeks.  Kristen Kohaut (star of LesPsych) will be the woman and it looks like Glen Pearson (a local theater kid) will be playing the guy.  It’ll just be myself and my wife as crew, but I think that will work better considering how scaled back this is from LesPsych (which was quite the production).  Anyways, here’s the script: Togetherness.doc

[See post to watch Flash video]

[See post to watch Flash video]

Ideas:
The mission statement for this film was “In a world full of so many uncertainties how can I really know anything about myself?”  From there comes the idea of an actress wrestling with her own identity and even the possibility she might not exist.  The whole film was meant to put up a facade, it really wasn’t a documentary and the subtitles are all completely wrong (in each instance what’s actually being said along another line from what is subtitled).  This film actually came out to about 24 minutes when cut like the script had it, it’s now down to 16.5 to give you an idea of how much was cut.  Some scenes was an introductory German narration about certainty, two other monologues original on either side of Amber’s final monologue, and the last part of Amber’s first monologue.  Other scenes were cut down also but none nearly as drastically as those four.  The film was shot on an HDV camera with minimal post-production effects.  Mostly some color correction and we replaced the video originally playing on the television in the second scene (with the woman who gets shot) with one that looked better.

This project made it into the Indiana Festival for Independent Film and Video

This also made it into the Short Film Corner of the Cannes Film Festivel

[See post to watch Flash video]

[See post to watch Flash video]