Zak Forsman
Major Contributor
SYNOPSIS
"I F*CKING HATE YOU" is the raw, whimsical glimpse of a young man's ill-conceived scheme to redeem himself in the eyes of his ex-girlfriend.
ABOUT THE PRODUCTION
This story was developed by Marion Kerr, John T. Woods and myself, Zak Forsman, by combining elements of two "half-ideas" into a unified whole. character was explored and discussed until the story emerged. no actual screenplay was written, no storyboards drawn up -- the experiment was to see what would happen if we instilled "radical collaboration" to the extent that the actors, director, sound and camera were mindfully attentive to the present moment; improvising to serve the story, allowing the scenes to evolve organically and following them to their natural conclusion.
SPOILER WARNING!!! SPOILER WARNING!!! SPOILER WARNING!!!
I F*CKING HATE BEHIND THE SCENES
SPOILER WARNING!!! SPOILER WARNING!!! SPOILER WARNING!!!
I F*CKING HATE BEHIND THE SCENES
WHAT IS 'A FILM BY SABI'?
Sabi by itself means "the bloom of time". It connotes natural progression -- tarnish, hoariness, rust -- the extinguished gloss of that which once sparkled. It's the understanding that beauty is fleeting. The word's meaning has changed over time, from its ancient definition, "to be desolate," to the more neutral "to grow old." By the thirteenth century, sabi's meaning had evolved into taking pleasure in things that were old and faded. A proverb emerged: "Time is kind to things, but unkind to man."
Sabi things carry the burden of their years with dignity and grace: the chilly mottled surface of an oxidized silver bowl, the yielding gray of weathered wood, the elegant withering of a bereft autumn bough. An old car left in a field to rust, as it transforms from an eyesore into a part of the landscape, could be considered America's contribution to the evolution of sabi. An abandoned barn, as it collapses in on itself, holds this mystique.
There's an aching poetry in things that carry this patina, and it transcends the Japanese. We Americans are ineffably drawn to old European towns with their crooked cobblestone streets and chipping plaster, to places battle scarred with history much deeper than our own. We seek sabi in antiques and even try to manufacture it in distressed furnishings. True sabi cannot be acquired, however. It is a gift of time.
Consider for a moment that perhaps Sabi can also be a cinematic aesthetic. Not a fixed set of principles or a rigid system of rules, but rather a creative flow -- part of the constant search and need for the natural expressive form of sound and images (to present themselves during the process of making the film). Sabi changes with time. It is an ever-evolving, whole-view approach to catalyzing, nurturing and capturing moments that are truthful in their own beauty, simplicity, structure and emotion, regardless of the complexities of production on an independent film. Sabi is an approach that seeks to create, capture and uncover transcendent moments in life that happen spontaneously and unplanned -- fleeting glimpses into something greater -- resulting in those hard-to-describe, perception-altering experiences as universal as art, music, emotion, poetry, cinema and life itself. If one was to consider this as an approach to making and experiencing cinema, then you would perhaps be encountering "a film by SABI".
STORYFORMING
Long before Heart of Now was shot, I had intended to craft a screenplay sans dialogue. That changed after a few key discussions. So here, we had the opportunity to take some of my ever-evolving principles and experiment with them. Myself, Marion and John met on two occasions. They came with an idea, a very specific scene. I came with an idea that helped put their scene (which became our ending) within a context. The pairing of the two half-ideas formed a structured whole. During our second story meeting John and Marion worked through possible motivation and objectives for their characters. I sat back and listened, taking note of what aspects of this story and their characters were the most compelling and appealing to them.
CINEMATOGRAPHY
This short was shot with two Canon HV20s with non-flipped 35mm adapters. To unify the form of this piece with its improvised content, I needed the camerawork to read as being just as spontaneous as the actors' performances -- as though the camera operators were in a struggle to keep up with the unfolding story. A key technique to infuse a "searching for the shot" quality was to monitor each camera without adjusting for the flipped image. This gave us a unique visual aesthetic that i'm sure will drive most people nuts, but it resulted in the momentary misframings and "panicked" corrections we were looking for. During pre-pro, I had considered shooting for B&W, but on set, inspiration took over and we made use of existing and supplemented color palettes to contrast the appearance of each character's world -- Carol's being more balanced but lacking in intensity, and Ron's being completely out of balanced and over the top.
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