Experimental Video Here I Come!

My first experimental video exercise assigned by my mentor Dana Levy will focus on my documentary about the Mizrahi family’s emigration from Iran as a result of the Islamic Revolution of 1979. I'll place between 2 and 3 minutes of audio from the interviews I’ve done on a timeline in my editing software and illustrate the story being told with old family photographs, maps, postcards, as well as scanned objects. For example, I plan to scan the actual chador Sharona wore to cover her hair after the Islamic Revolution. Dana wrote that the end result could be more interesting if the objects I use aren’t directly related to the story, but illustrate it in some way. I started scavenging Ebay for old postcards and other items that may be useful. I view this exercise as a puzzle where the images and objects are the pieces that fit together to help make sense of the story. I’m looking forward to thinking creatively and having fun with it!

January 2014 Residency Summary and Response to Critical Theory

Judith Barry, my advisor last semester, said, “When you shoot this film [referring to my documentary “The Mizrahis”] and it is released—hopefully it will be—you want it to be visually compelling as well as compelling on the level of the story. So the question is: ‘How do you get there?’”

            There are many directions I must pursue to develop my skills and artistry as a documentary filmmaker. I have to harness my energy and systematically tackle the challenges that lie ahead, but doubt has crept into my mind. Where do I begin? How will I get there? In my January residency critiques, faculty and students highlighted a number of areas for focus: work on your technical skills of lighting, sound and camera; analyze documentary and narrative films and study of the language of film; develop your directorial skills to bring out your characters’ personalities; write another treatment draft for “The Mizrahis,” paying attention to the visual strategies in addition to the narrative strategies; and the biggest bombshell, explore experimental film to inform your work. My ideas and themes are a steadying and driving force: I am determined to tell stories and create narrative arcs around issues of identity, displacement, culture, the Middle East, and family roots. The critical theory class on the archive helped me think of new ways of representing these themes and may provide an avenue through which I can venture into more experimentation.

            When I attended film school at the Center for Digital Imaging Arts, we were encouraged to work with crews, assume a specific role and carve a niche for ourselves as either a producer, director, editor, director of photography, sound engineer or lighting technician. I chose producer/director and editor – but the concept was to be part of a team. The notion of working solo on video projects is new for me and involves embracing many skill sets that I haven’t previously focused on. Nevertheless I have accepted this challenge and shot all my own footage in the Fall semester—but not without noticeable flaws that were pointed out in my critiques during the residency. Ben Sloat commented that the midtones and the shadows in the “Salad Stories” footage were great but the highlights were too blown out causing a loss of information in the texture. He also felt that the audio was overly resonant even though he did like hearing sounds in the background. Nuriko Suzuki noticed one of my shaky zooms in the “Salad Stories” footage, but this was filmed before my mentor advised me never to zoom. Deb Todd Wheeler commented that the salads at the end were shot beautifully but was distracted by one or two scenes that were burnt out. Interestingly, I discussed this with my mentor last semester, Michal Goldman, who said she liked the blown out window in one scene.

            Another area of discussion was related to my directorial skills and work with my characters. For my long takes with Sharona, the main character in my film “The Mizrahis,” faculty and students commented on her comfort level or lack thereof in front of the camera. My intention had been to layer audio reflections of her past life in Iran over scenes of her gardening at her home in Newton or selecting vegetables at a farm stand in Weston. Comments included: “She looked self-conscious in front of the camera,” “the sense of thinking didn’t come through and I wonder how you can pull that out more,” “I couldn’t connect with her—she maintained this containment,” and “I didn’t get the sense that she was far away from the bazaar [in Iran].” I’m not sure how to resolve these issues. Judith Barry has suggested that I take acting lessons to improve on my ability to work with characters. She said, “when you’re working with people you have to make them feel absolutely comfortable so they’ll tell you their secrets.” Michal Goldman has said that she carefully selects her characters by doing pre-interviews and assessing whether they can be engaging on camera. Given that I’m determined to tell the Mizrahi family’s story of emigration from Iran as a result of the Islamic Revolution, I’m faced with the challenge of bringing out emotion and animation in subjects who are not naturally engaging on camera.

            Judith suggested I continue to watch and deconstruct films to learn more about film language and techniques. Examples she gave include Steve McQueen’s film 12 Years a Slave for its visual conception and tension; use and lighting of dark space; framing of bodies and strange shot structure, and David Lynch’s Blue Velvet for its use of dark space. According to Judith, these filmmakers are very good at lighting people with dark skin, a challenge I have encountered in my filming of “Salad Stories” and “The Mizrahis.”

            Thematically, I have gravitated consistently to themes revolving around the Middle East, cross-cultural exploration, cultural hybridity, and food as a vehicle for dialogue. At the longer time-based screening, viewers were more focused on the content of “Salad Stories,” were curious about the individual characters and their stories, rather than on the technical or artistic elements. Ben Sloat envisioned the salad as a structure that exposes many other elements of culture and causes cultural collisions by bringing different backgrounds together. He also wanted to see multi-dimensions of each character so they’re not just sunny and positive. In my meetings last semester with Michal, she felt strongly that “Salad Stories” is a short film, so the cut I did for the residency was 10-minutes long. During the residency, opinions varied on where I should go with this project. Judith agreed that short is good given today’s viewers’ attention spans and the repetitive structure of making a salad, but Ben Sloat saw possibilities of it being a longer project. I have envisioned continuing to collect and archive additional salad stories, but realize the need to carefully conceptualize this project; think through the goals, artistic strategies, and possible benefits for the viewer; and play with the editing format to infuse the film with tension and make it less predictable. How should I balance the focus between the salads and their makers?

            Joseph Fontinha observed that my work makes overt references to domesticity and he cautioned me about doing so because it may seem like I’m glorifying domesticity. It is clear--themes of cooking that have traditionally been in the domain of women are prevalent in my work. Additionally, the work I brought to the January residency did feature women exclusively. However, I did shoot a male Kibbutznik making an Israeli salad who didn’t make the cut because the location was poorly lit. I explore domesticity because I’m interested in the domestic arts and I sometimes long for and idealize what I believe, perhaps falsely, was a simpler existence for women in the past. Pamela Drix concurred with my opinion and said that domesticity is a fascinating space to investigate.

            The most consistent comments throughout the residency revolved around moving away from the traditional documentary format into more video art and experimentation. Ben Sloat suggested I look at Shirin Neshat’s video work for its aesthetics and emotion. He saw the “Salad Stories” project as a multi-channel piece on 4 monitors or projections so viewers are physically moving around to watch everything separately, which would allow for different types of engagement. He feels that there’s something about the explicit documentary tradition that can be very passive for the viewer. Both Ben and Judith suggested I watch Chris Marker’s film San Soleil, which is a personal narrative documentary that goes from abstraction to representation at certain moments. Ben also suggested that I re-edit “Salad Stories” to show much more of the environment inside and outside the characters’ homes and the culture as I see it, and perhaps also include historic imagery.

            Cesare Pietroiusti also pushed me to think about video art and experimentation. He commented that the “Salad Stories” short was well edited and done nicely, but pushed me to think of incorporating the medium of film, like the technological devices of sound, into the story to add a whole new layer of meaning and questions. It struck him that during the 10-minute cut, the subtitles changed from Hebrew to Arabic and if he didn’t know either of the two languages, he wouldn’t have perceived a change in language. He saw the power in the subtitling that made him think something very specific that otherwise the film wouldn’t have told him. He found this the most interesting part of the film and called it “a moment of salad,” where something is mixing deeply with something else. He encouraged me to enlarge these moments and play with elements that are part of the video making language so they become intertwined with the story. Salads are a metaphor for mixing and confusion.

            Lynne Cooke suggested I introduce some reflexivity that will cut the familiarity of the framework I’ve set up and make it more participatory. She gave the example of Anri Sala’s film about his Albanian grandmother making bread, which has themes of continuity and family, but the illusion is broken at the moment when the recipe appears on the screen. Pamela Drix suggested setting up a performance piece where I invite someone to make a salad in a public space and film the event. The topic would then be about people’s reactions to an event that is not normally present in that kind of space.           

            Several readings and themes from Charles Merewether’s collection The Archive: Documents of Contemporary Art resonated for me and may help me move in a more experimental direction. In the class we had two assignments: 1) to pick one of the excerpts and discuss it; and 2) to create an archive. For the first assignment I researched The Atlas Group Archive, in particular Archive #17. In taking this reading at face value, one might think that Lebanon was riddled with post-war paranoia after the Civil War ended in 1991, and couldn’t even forgive the operator doing surveillance for turning the camera away to watch the sunset. However, it turns out that some of the documents in Walid Raad’s The Atlas are fabricated, which raises the question of the extent to which we can use this archive to build an understanding of this period in Lebanon’s history. The issue of veracity in art and filmmaking is an interesting one to explore. Is it legitimate to fabricate when information is missing or to make a point? Where is the line drawn between integrity and artistic license? The consequences can be benign as in Sarah Polley’s recent documentary, The Stories We Tell, which wove together Super 8 family footage with reenactments. She was unaware that viewers would have difficulty distinguishing between the two. At other times fabrications can be misleading and unethical. I wonder if the level of acceptance of fabrication is different for video art and traditional documentary.

My second assignment, to construct an archive, helped me conceive of new ways of harnessing my ideas into art forms. I drew from Christian Boltanski, who reconstructed and memorialized the past using traces in Research and Presentation of All that Remains of My Childhood, and Ilya Kabakov’s Sixteen Ropes, which created meaning out of garbage. I conceived of an archive using the contents of the Singer sewing machine I inherited from my Turkish grandmother. In using wooden clothespins to hang thimbles, fabric swatches, thread, string, needle packets, and my grandmother’s recipes and photographs on a clothesline, I was beginning to tell her immigrant story as a young teenager who left Turkey between the two world wars and ultimately settled in Canada. In writing the drafts of my treatment last semester for “The Mizrahis,” it has become clear that, for me, this film will also be about my longing to know about my Turkish grandmother’s past and the realization that much of this information is lost.

The main goals for my Spring 2014 semester should be to move in the direction of experimentation, further develop my understanding of the language of film, and work on my camera and editing skills. As my current advisor Stuart Steck outlined, I should find a language of my own that combines elements of experimental and conventional filmmaking. I’m not ready to become a video artist, but I would like video art to inform my work as a filmmaker and help break the predictability and monotony of the traditional format I’ve been wedded to. While I expect to be engaged in experimental video exercises, I would also like to find the time to further develop “The Mizrahis” documentary treatment and figure out a pragmatic shooting and editing plan for completing this project for my final semester in the LUCAD MFA program.

           

Works Cited

Merewether, Charles, ed., The Archive: Documents of Contemporary Art. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006.

Analysis of Mise-En-Scene

 
For this exercise, I deconstructed segments of the "Salad Story" footage I shot in Israel this past summer to analyze the mise-en-scene--characters, locations, lighting and costumes.

Point of View (POV)

 
This was an exercise in Point of View (POV), where for the most part I show Sharona's viewpoint as she engages in the process of making Persian rice. The piece de la resistance is the tadiq, the crusty potato bottom, which is usually reserved for esteemed guests.

The Long Take

For this exercise I did one long take without cutting, where I followed Sharona, a character in my Iran documentary, shopping at a farm stand. I researched steadying options for the camera, and purchased the Opteka Steadyvid Pro Video Stabilizer system. I’m still mastering how to achieve static and dynamic balance using the system, but it definitely helped smooth out the movement of the camera as I followed Sharona.

Follow Up to Preproduction for Salad Trials

This summer, I shot six salad stories in locations all over Israel—the Northern Negev, the Lower Galilee, and Tel Aviv.  As I reached out to various individuals to ask them participate, my pool of possible subjects changed; one person was away for the summer and another preferred not to participate. I found the experience challenging but I learned a lot.  As I encountered obstacles and faced problems, I consulted with and was guided by my mentor, Michal Goldman.

Michal appropriately summarized the goal for this film: “A salad is a perfect metaphor for the film you’re setting out to make: it’s a mixing of all kinds of different ingredients that still hold their taste and yet, if the salad is well-made, end up making something all-of-a-piece.” She provided me with a useful approach to the interviews. She advised me to “stay close to the salad” with questions that have interesting implications but address the process of making a salad. For example, “Who taught you how to make the salad?” and “Where did you buy the ingredients?”

Here are short descriptions and screen shots of the individuals I filmed:

Merav—a secular Jewish woman living in Kiryat Tivon who works as a manager at IBM in Haifa;

Hadas—a modern Orthodox Jewish woman from a Yemenite and Iranian background, living in Mitzpeh Hoshaya, a religious community in the Lower Galilee;

Hannah—a Jewish artist living in the heart of Tel Aviv, who emigrated from Germany with her parents and sister in 1933;

Hillel—a retired Jewish Kibbutznik, living on Galon, a secular Israeli kibbutz in the Northern Negev;

Amira—a Muslim Israeli woman living in the town of Kefar Romat-Haib in the Lower Galilee;

and Abby—an Israeli-American food columnist and author (Breaking Bread in the Galilee), living in the moshav (settlement) Alon Abba in the Lower Galilee.

The project was a wonderful opportunity to learn how to use my fairly new Canon XA10. Unfortunately the learning curve impeded the shooting quality even though I was somewhat familiar with the camera, had read the manual, and had played around with the settings.  I made adjustments to the f-stop at each location but was often battling bright sunlight streaming into a house. During one shoot, everything was set up and the salad was being prepared when I realized that there was something off with the camera settings—each time my subject transferred cut vegetables to a bowl, the motion was blurred. I tried troubleshooting on the spot. Only later did I discover that I had inadvertently reset the camera when I was adjusting the exposure (the disadvantage of a touch screen!). I decided to shoot at 60i to achieve a television cooking show feel over a filmic look, and I used an external Rode NT3 mic to optimize sound. We turned off air conditioners and fans, in spite of the extreme heat. I was equipped with a small LED light attached to the camera, which created some depth. I realize now that there were inconsistencies to my thought processes: on the one hand I chose a reality TV show look in my camera settings, which ideally uses a three-point lighting set up, on the other hand, I was striving for a verité feel that uses natural light. The latter is obviously easier with the absence of a crew. When I shot at midday, it was very difficult to capture the landscape of the surrounding area because of the bright sunlight and haze.

Shot structure proved to be another challenge. I did try to manipulate the camera and zoom in when possible. Without a second camera, however, it was difficult to shoot cutaways and close ups. The absence of a second camera diminished my ability to properly capture the salad preparation process. Ideally, I’d like to have someone else on camera shooting from the moment we enter the location because so many important nuggets are lost when the camera is not rolling.

I also struggled with composition and framing. In some cases, because of lighting and camera angle issues, the individuals did not prepare the salads where they normally do in their kitchens. As part of the set up, I asked the subjects lay out the ingredients in advance before shooting began.

The most difficult challenge was connecting with an Israeli (or Palestinian) Arab. I realized that it was important to include Arab perspectives after reviewing the critiques of my Iran doc from the residency. I had to step out of my comfort zone and start approaching friends to arrange for me to meet someone. Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting from dawn until dusk, proved to be another challenge because it fell during most of my stay and only ended a week before my departure. I learned that it would be too dangerous for me to go to the Palestinian village near Tel Aviv to meet with a woman who was reputed to be a good cook, and the only way to interview her would be for her to come to my friend’s. I was surprised to learn that my liberal Kibbutznik friends weren’t connected to any Arabs. After talking through options, my good friend and author Sagi Melamed (Son of My Land) connected me with his friend Zachy, who arranged for me to film his wife Amira.

I struggled between controlling the content of the interviews and letting the subjects take the lead. I developed a set of questions in consultation with Michal, but found it difficult to juggle my roles as a director of photography and producer. Some talked more than others and one person shared her personal history in great detail. Three subjects chose to make a chopped salad of tomatoes and cucumbers—the most popular salad in the country. In my blog post on July 19, I wrote that some call this “Israeli salad” and others “Arab salad.” Michal commented that “in Israel/Palestine even salad is politicized” and this is worth exploring. Merav who made such a salad called it “salad.” When I tried to push her to label it, she stuck to calling it “salad.”

While I learned a lot, my overall feeling about the experience of shooting the salad stories was that the planning and filming processes were too rushed and intermingled. Before my next visit, I’d like to have a longer and stronger preproduction process based on a thorough examination of the footage. I’ll definitely use the footage I have to cut something together—possibly a fundraising trailer, maybe something more. I’m meeting with Michal this week to plan the next step.

   

   

First exercise: To recut an existing Hollywood film into a new story

This exercise proved to be quite challenging—and many more hours of work than I anticipated. I had a digitized copy of Mel Brook’s Young Frankenstein from a previous work project that I decided to use. I struggled to come up with an idea. First, given my documentary inclinations, I used footage from the film to create a travel log of Transylvania from the 1930s, the period of the Young Frankenstein story. I patched a few clips together and realized I’d need to embellish the cut with outside photos and information. This cut would lack a story arc and dialogue. Then I decided to work on a horror cut of the existing story, stripping it of all comedic elements but maintaining the story line. Neither of these were sufficient to fulfill the objectives of creating a new story, cutting new dialogue, and restructuring shots.  The version I ended up with does tell a different story, in spite of unavoidable continuity issues. I’d love feedback!