A frustrating couple of days, I'm eager and keen to finish The Dusty Mirror but find myself working on the music videos. I now know the feeling of being made to promote music by working at things like this, even though I barely work commercially (merely hope for success), and have no task masters; yet my own drive pushes me to do my best, and always towards new ground.
I'm beginning to feel like a film maker. Watching Star Wars: Rogue One yesterday, and North by Northwest, made me observe the lighting, angles, calculate shots and layers; all automatically, as a result of my recent filming and video work.
A side note: Rogue One: the best of the universally poor 'new' Star Wars films. The best part of every story is not knowing what will happen in the end, and the lack of this is why all 'prequels' are terrible. The only thing worse is the 'remake', for the same reason, except that a good film (nobody remakes a flop) is dragged through the dirt and soiled by association. The only thing worse than a remake is a 'reboot', which is a remake without imagination. Alas, all of the 'new' Star Wars films are all of these three things, and Rogue One manages to be all three in one film! Idiotic though it is as a story, the action parts at the end are good. The final battle is by far the best part, on par with war films like Where Eagles Dare (and more shallow).
Many recent films, such as this, fall prey to casual racism and sexism. We cower in shame at Hollywood's early days where black and Chinese parts were played by white actors, or even male actors played female parts. Now, female actors routinely play male parts (most of these action characters are clearly male in attitude and style, merely looking female), and black (less so Asian) characters play white parts excessively, making exactly the same mistake as 100 years ago. This is response and reaction to that earlier shame.
I digress.
I compiled most of the final music videos yesterday, but 'Norman Bates' remains. I felt the need to make a full video, so have spent today doing this. I'm limited in some things. I'd like few more slow zooms and fades. My camera wobbles when the lens zooms. I've used an old time-lapse of some sunlit clouds, darkening them for a storm, and spent yesterday trying to record a film on television as though seen in a rainy puddle at night. This involved making a 50x50cm tray from aluminium foil, painted black, and placing it in front of the television in a dark room.
It looked better than I thought in some ways, worse in others. I became fascinated more by the odd patterns, in a grainy film that didn't really look how I'd intended. I have, in this film, started to use a wider range of camera settings, and I'm starting to see flaws in everything. This is good; a sign of progress. Beginners struggle, then after a while things seem to be working fine. The next step up is to think that everything is bad; this is the first sign of becoming actually good at something. This feeling never really goes away. Being satisfied at any creative work should be a hard battle.
In other news I had an email about my old game Arcangel, the game which was 'published' and distributed across the world without my permission or any payment, the game that drove me to the brink of suicide and pushed me into a new direction of avoiding publishers or help from anyone - for life. The worst aspect of the Arcangel debacle isn't my lack of control, or the loss of a game which I'd put my life into for 2 full years, but that it was a flawed and incomplete game, gifted to millions of people in bad condition; and badly received. Perhaps I should be glad it wasn't a hit, given that it was stolen from me, but to have a creative work stolen, seen by millions of people, and be an unfinished horrible mess, is a worst of all worlds. Well, I can't face that game, any more than David Lynch can face Dune. Though, he is wrong, as he can fix it if he wants (I pray that he will), and he was paid for his work. For Arcangel, I got nothing.
