Too Many Things, Too Many Things, Too Many Things.

What kind of film am I making? I often don't know how to answer this question. That and "What is it about"? I can't answer that either. I can give a general overview of the so-called-synopsis, but I can't tell you what it's about. Because if I did that, it would a) ruin the discovery of your work of finding the "meaning", and b) it would mean that I know what it's all really about. It's a mixture of both. Of course, I wrote the damn thing, so I know what I want it to be, right? Right and wrong. I know what I don't want Nicotine to be. It's probably because of my negativity toward independent films made by skinny-jean wearin' twenty-something year old hipster "filmmakers"; the mumble-core movement of ultra-shoe string budgeted dramedies about the poor deadends of after college life and the random pretentious nothingness found in their conversations as they look for meaning. 

Why do I show so much resistance to that well defined culture of films and filmmakers? It's not who I want to be. It's not a thing where I try be different for the sake of distancing myself from that, then in doing so I suddenly conform to something else. It's because I don't like that kind of stuff. It's too easy* to make that I think, it's too easy to find a group of friends and make a movie; what with the kind of cheap equipment and editing software people have at their disposal. Anyone can make a movie now.

Of course we're shooting on the Canon 60D DSLR, which could put me into a whole new category. I was very hesitant with going the DSLR route, to be honest, but ultimately the price and versatility of the camera convinced me to do it. Of course there are small drawbacks. One early-on drawback became something very interesting to me. When I read a filmmaking book in Junior High there was a section about how you should never use the zoom function on your camcorder because it takes the "film look" away and tells your audience that it's video. This seemed stupid to me, and then I started using the zoom function on my dad's camcorder. Why was this terrible? Shortly after I saw Robert Altman's Short Cuts for the first time,  I fell in love with that function. It's technical manipulation no doubt, but suddenly the empty would-be still frame turns into something more mysterious. What's the drawback I speak of? The zoom is manual on the 60D, versus automatically adjusted like on my previous camera, the XL1s. This was annoying at first, but because I love the feel and weight of films from the 70's, the zoom function, being mostly manual, had a much more human touch to it. You could feel the operator slowly zooming on something; for moments at a time it would be smooth, then stop for a split second, then maybe move in faster, then come to slow finish. It was rough, something that I know I want with Nicotine. 

What do I want Nicotine to be? I've spent a lot of time on what it won't be, that I can't properly answer what I want it to be without sounding like a pompous ass. But honestly now, I want Nicotine to be a story about the abruptness of bullshit, I want it to be about how anyone can manifest a behavior that isn't necessarily at their surface. We're all capable of anything really, but we're each defined by the choices we make in life, so much to the point where to do something out of the norm might feel and seem very odd, so we hold back. This might seem like a poor excuse to not have parameters for who the individual characters are in my film, but it's not. I guess this is why I can't give a solid answer for this question, because I have too many ideas for what I want to be, that I can't figure out what it is. Well, we haven't started shooting yet. When we do, and when it's finished, and when you see it, then we can figure out what it is. 

*To say making a film is "too easy" is oversimplifying it and not giving credit to the filmmakers that work very hard to make what they are passionate about. While I dislike certain films and genres, it doesn't mean that I don't respect the process. I do, and I congratulate anyone that gives life to an idea they have. It takes a lot out of you, mentally and physically.