I think 70-80 minutes is also a good idea.
also video is good--especially if if we ever get it to be blown up, that always looks great, the contrast between S16 and HD.

i'm going to slave over an edit to try to get to you by fri, sunday at the latest--i'm hoping.

can you send me yours? i really want to see it.

Miss you,
K

So I do think that it shouldnt just be them talking about the movie, but yes a mix of them working/living and talking about the movie. i would love it on 16, but I know they are going to fuck up and it will be expensive, i think it should be on video... we'll see. but doing doc on 16 with no money is hard, especially with how bad these people are at acting and how intermittent their intersting quirks are.

Then about making it just over 60 minute (like 70 or 80) i think is a great idea. Filming one or two more good scenes that we write now (im thinking buffoon in the forest) is a good idea. Shoot manuel, always a good idea.

So yes. a mix of the two is good - making it more structured/better/new scene/ in contrast to doc - maybe finishing on doc - and maybe the doc can have to do with the Dam they are building (which would be a good parallel - like globalisation is flooding the thing, but just through a transnational energy program, not global warming) but the dam i think is only going to start being visible in 2010 or something.

so yeah. ill try to send the edit tommorow

<3

Could there be a sortof combination of the two, if we wanted? Where if we decided to make this sort of movie about a movie thing, we'd have the doc footage of them talking about the film, but when we cut into the "storytelling," it would be super structured and narrative. Like a condensed, followable version of what we shot/what we could shoot. In this way, Manuel could still structure the story into a 4 day act or something, but it would beway shorter/tighter since we'd have a lot of air time of the doc discussing the goings on to make the movie. But i think for the audience it would be more interesting for them to still be watching a narrative film that we made instead of just sortof abtract poetic bits.

What if we filmed the doc bits in 16mm? I guess that wouldn't leave much room for error.

I'm also just wondering what kind of potency their stories are going to have. What if we had the documentary portion focus less on the villagers talking about how Big Hug has changed their lives, but rather just another format we, as the filmmakers, are using to inspect this weird community. And then we will have this nice footage of them in their real lives, doing the things they do, which we could stylize, if we even want to, and contrast that with this cheesy/overdone short story we are trying to convey in Big Hug, with Manuel still providing songs as breakers.

i'm not sure, i'm going to think on it, and start making an edit. Can you send me your edit ? I have finalcut 6.0, so not the newest version.

itd be a doc/musical/epic short wound up.

I had a long talk last night with my two friends about festivals and what not, and they've gotten work into venice and sundance and sxsw, but they were saying that 60 minutes is the new minumum for feature length films, that its pretty acceptable, which i couldnt believe. Thats even shorter than a disney movie!

Idea 1. meta doc/narrative
Leave the narrative totally abstract, just peripherally relating to the flood. Split it into 'poetic' chapters with manuel introducing each one. at the end of each one have a character from it in hd doc format taking about the movie and their experience (like domingos in the middle of hoeing his fields in the sun, wipes his brow and goes into talking about how he hosed nour in the tank) finish with the screening for the town. this way we have way enough good 16mm footage really beautiful stuff. and i htink it would be an easy solution to make a really charming good feature. real meta

idea 2. linear narrative - main characters=buffoon/patricia
make a mix of my edit (all bad shit cut out) with your edit (restructure to make more sense). Then when thats done we see what we could film - 3 or 4 key scenes with the buffoon and pat that we write from scratch. This way the spectator has something to relate to and we can build up to the final scene. Since theres so much yapping in the movie (people talking incessantly about stuff that doesnt really make sense and isnt so funny) these parts could be more quiet or poetic in some ways, but writen so they still push the narrative forward. This is still with the idea of manuel singing, and fininshing on a grand note, like donkey/pat/buffoon on boat, or something else.

BIG HUG

SUBTITLING--i've found some really good fonts i've downloaded online over the past few weeks

GILGAMESH/ATRAHASIS EPIC:
"I cannot live in your city"
"How did man survive the destruction?"
-Mythmakers at work, changing a local river flood into an ocean deluge
"She was surfeited with grief and thirsted for beer"
"From hunger they were suffering cramp"
Black sea deluge--Ten cubic miles of water poured through each day, two hundred times what flows over Niagara falls..The Bosporus flume roared and surged at full spate for at least three hundred days"

Structure--DAY ONE / DAY TWO / MORNING OF DAY THREE / HIATUS of 6 months (where we need to emphasis "global" disaster/ DAY FOUR (judgement day)

Ill post the outline i've been working on soon--it mostly applies to the footage we've already shot, but i've included areas where we should dub extra dialogue, and also have it in a structure where it would be necessary for Manuel to act as a narrator/chapter divider.

OK~ TTYLZ