WHERE THE HEART LIES ... Johnson, Hyten, Golden & Bullis

Mark.... you and your giant fest threads. You are definitely the king of hype :)

I haven't posted in here yet, so I just wanted to stop in for a minute (before I get sucked in too:) ) and wish you guys good luck, and tell you that I'm looking forward to it.

Later,
Jason
 
Thanks for stopping by Jason. I'm really looking forward to your film now that you've shared some info with me. Just noticed the banner, too, and really like your image choice.

I'm off to Virginia tomorrow morning for a forensic shoot. Gonna have to get Tim's butt out of bed to take me to LAX and that's probably the biggest challenge of the trip.
 
matt garrett and I wrapped our lovefest shoot yesterday...I officially release him to you! Best of luck, gentlemen!
 
Mark Johnson said:
Oh, we're editing Zak's short? Cool. I can't wait to have fun editing your short, too, Zak.:grin:
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Gramma grammar grammar.
You lawyer, you.

Virginia, huh? That's quite a jaunt across the country. Be sure to wave hello when you fly over the midwest!

As for shoot dates, nothing permanent. Working on that this week, though. You'll be the first to know. -- Also, has anyone here seen No Country For Old Men? I'm curious to hear reactions to it (and it's surprise ending!)

kyle
 
There's a thread here with a lot of discussion regarding the film. I went to see it with Blaine and Tim shortly after it opened. We absolutely loved the film but were somewhat bemused with the ending. Subsequently we've gotten more comfortable with the conclusion, but still feel that it was the weakest portion of what otherwise was almost a perfect film. I know there's been some spirited debate over the ending but I'm curious now to see how it and the rest of the structure compare with the novel's construction. I guess I've got to go to Border's. .....
 
Mark Johnson said:
There's a thread here with a lot of discussion regarding the film. I went to see it with Blaine and Tim shortly after it opened. We absolutely loved the film but were somewhat bemused with the ending. Subsequently we've gotten more comfortable with the conclusion, but still feel that it was the weakest portion of what otherwise was almost a perfect film. I know there's been some spirited debate over the ending but I'm curious now to see how it and the rest of the structure compare with the novel's construction. I guess I've got to go to Border's. .....
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Me, too...or Amazon
 
Alex and I had a long discussion about it. We ran into an older gentleman outside the theatre who had seen it four times, just to try and figure out the ending.

The conclusion that Alex and I reached was vague, but provided a bit of closure.
I suggested that the theme of the movie was greed. Greed seemed to play a pivotal role in the film as every character seemed to really WANT something they didn't really need. -- The most obvious symbol of greed in the film was the bag of money. However, did you notice that the boys who walked past Llewelyn on the U.S. and Mexican border wanted more money for the jacket and the beer? There is a prime example of greed. Another one I caught was when Anton bought the button up shirt off of the little boy in the end. The boy originally didn't want any money, but eventually accepted it and argued with the other boy about who got what share.

Then Alex brilliantly concluded that sheriff Ed found the bag of money in the vent at the crime scene and kept it for himself so that he could retire. It goes to show that even the town's finest can be greedy and selfish.

To take it a step further, I assumed that the ending left the AUDIENCE wanting more. I wanted to see Anton get an air-pressurized stick of metal blasted through his forehead... but I didn't get my wish. I WANTED to see Anton lose... but I wasn't given that pleasure. Perhaps this is a deeper, bolder example of the movie's theme.

Either way, I thought the ending was brilliant and thought-provoking. Props to the Cohen brothers for putting everything on the line. They knew they risked losing several moviegoer's respect and went ahead and did it anyways.

Your thoughts? -- Also, I'll refer to the thread on the boards that was made specifically for this movie from here on out. I don't want to tarnish this thread any more than I already have (especially with that 2girls1cup garbage).
Peace and love.

kyle
 
Hola from Charlottesville, VA

Hola from Charlottesville, VA

Just touched down in Charlottesville, Virginia. Tomorrow we shoot footage for a big collision at a rural railroad crossing. I am accompanied by Chris Real, who many of you will remember from the Threading The Needle days. Chris is a motorcycle expert who shares the same office/workshop with us for our forensic business. He provided the nifty trailer with fridge and beer for our shooting TTN and he often works with us on cases that require some special expertise since he has all sorts of helmet-cam rigs and the like. In this case he built a special dolly that we will be pushing on the railroad tracks that allows the HVX to shoot from the height of the locomotive engineer's position (about 10.5 feet above the rail for seated view). The dolly is pretty ingenious and I'll post some photos tomorrow night hopefully (assuming we aren't rained out). He's also adapted the mast to be able to shoot from the back of his truck so we will no doubt be using it for various projects in the future.

Anyway, regarding NO COUNTRY, I am interpreting the ending as showing that Tommy Lee Jones has finally accepted that the brutality and pace of "modern evil" has defeated him so that he's essentially "ready to die" (and join his own dad). This is not conventional Hollywood plotting so it feels incomplete and unsatisfying. Especially when coupled with Chigur's rather bizarre outcome. In that regard, to me, the crash was evidence that his life truly was ruled by chance and that there really isn't any coupling between his evil actions and his outcome. By the thinnest of margins he escaped (likely only to be caught in fact) and he remains symbolic of the brutality and unpredictable "bad things" that accompany modern life.

That's my thumbnail take and it isn't intended to be complete or profound. Just what I take away to try and make some sense of it. I found the Tommy Lee Jones denouement to be quite good and reasonable while i struggled with the Chigur storyline. I guess I wanted that bastard to really get splattered in the end and felt cheated when he got away (even though his escape would likely be temporary given his condition and the facts of what just preceded).
 
Washington Dulles - after midnight

Washington Dulles - after midnight

Jeez, what a brutal trip this has been ... We've been all over the state of Virginia and were finally flying home exhausted BUT we both fell asleep in the terminal and the friggin' plane took off without us. Now we're stranded and have to spend the night here to catch a 7 a.m. flight in the morning. Sheesh. luckily there's a good wireless connection.

Anyway, I thought I'd post a little about this project because it has been pretty interesting. As many of you know, we make our bread and butter from shooting forensic projects mainly for cases involving big transportation disasters. Well, we are working on a train collision and got permission to shoot on the location where the collision occurred. This is actually something we do pretty regularly -- maybe 6 or 8 times a year for train crossing cases alone. Anyway, we often are asked to create a re-enactment of the view from the locomotive and most of the time the lawyers who hire us are unable to get a court order allowing us to shoot from a locomotive. Thus, we either have to give up that shot or figure out a way to get a camera over the tracks at 12 or 13 feet.

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In the past we've many times actually flown into a location and stopped at a Home Depot or Lowe's to get a 12-foot ladder and enough cut wood and parts to build a really rickety makeshift dolly. I can't tell you how many times we've done this and it always sucks with the footage having to be massively stabilized etc. This time Chris designed a simple version that ships in its own crate and can be assembled in the field.

So, we ship it the week before and then pick it up at a trucking terminal using a pickup we borrow or rent. At the scene we slap it together and raise the HVX to the required height:

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We had some issues with the track guides (which kept hitting the metal brackets on the lower rails called "frogs") and we had to sweat out the weather. However, we got the shots and will now be able to stabilize the footage and composite it into the view we shot from the locomotive (above).

Pretty cool. Kind of a McGyver-style approach.
 
Wow.
That's a hell of a little rig you've got there.


By the way, you're going to laugh at me... but this is all making a hell of alot more sense to me now.
I had no idea you did forensic video work for a living - so the other day when you posted this:

Mark Johnson said:
Just touched down in Charlottesville, Virginia. Tomorrow we shoot footage for a big collision at a rural railroad crossing.
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I thought..."MY GOD, these guys are really going all out for this LoveFest entry! A freakin' train collision!! How is anyone going to compete with that??"
:)
 
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Luis Caffesse said:
Wow.
I thought..."MY GOD, these guys are really going all out for this LoveFest entry! A freakin' train collision!! How is anyone going to compete with that??"
:)
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Hahaha!!

That is one hell of a rig. Chris did a great job building that thing. -- I hope he wasn't too pissed about the green splintered wood we stored in his garage =)

kyle
 
I've always found it a little hard to feel for the people who get nailed at a railroad crossing. I mean they're train tracks. They don't just appear out of nowhere. Regardless of the flashing lights, you should always look. I don't know, just seems like one of life's more easily avoidable "accidents."
as a medic, I've worked a couple of car vs train and a man vs train. Guess who won.
 
That is one hell of a rig. Chris did a great job building that thing. -- I hope he wasn't too pissed about the green splintered wood we stored in his garage =)
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Chris says he actually used some of that wood for one of his projects, so he was glad to find it.

It's 3:37 a.m. here and by our calculations, our luggage is arriving in Los Angeles right about now (we missed our plane). Tim was going to pick us up at LAX so we've alerted him to get our luggage instead. I figured that if we didn't have Tim there it was highly likely that it was likely somebody at the airport would recognize the PortaBrace bag revolving around the baggage carousel unclaimed as likely having something nice.

Tim and I were supposed to fly to Seattle for a music video shoot at 6:30 L.A. time, so I'm hoping he can pick up the HVX and fly out as planned while I catch the first available flight after I get into L.A. Man I am getting tired of being on airplanes this week.
 
Wild Imagination Films said:
I've always found it a little hard to feel for the people who get nailed at a railroad crossing. I mean they're train tracks. They don't just appear out of nowhere. Regardless of the flashing lights, you should always look. I don't know, just seems like one of life's more easily avoidable "accidents."
as a medic, I've worked a couple of car vs train and a man vs train. Guess who won.
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Yeah, we're very aware of that sentiment and I will grant you that there are plenty of stupid people in the world who do stupid things at railroad crossings. However, I've seen plenty of instances where the driver has some significant extenuating circumstances on their side. In this case, for instance, the driver was turning off of a busy highway in icy conditions to go down a rural road where he had been called to do furnace work for a family. His own son was right behind him and when he turned onto the road there is less than 60 yards before reaching the tracks. At the point of turning onto the rural road there is obscuring foliage that allows only 60 FEET of view down the tracks so there is absolutely no opportunity to see an approaching train. The father turned onto the road and tried to leave room for his son behind him, who also had to turn off the highway. It appears the father slid onto the tracks on the ice inadvertently and then tried to make it across when he saw the train, to no avail. The train crew admitted not blowing the whistle because they could not see the truck (given the same foliage) and all of the trees/bushes are on the railroad property where it is supposed to be clear to allow oncoming motorists to see far enough to at least have a chance to be aware of an approaching train.

We see a lot of cases like this where there are terrible visual obstructions and no warning lights or gates. It is sad that the U.S. doesn't have an active plan to eliminate grade crossings like Canada. Anyway, the big majority of cases we've worked on have not involved people trying to outrun a train or people who make no effort to look. In most instances you have people who simply aren't as careful as they could be with conditions that make even small errors of judgement fatal. It reminds me of hunting and firearms. I was raised to treat EVERY gun as loaded - even my toy plastic ones. My father would not allow me to point ANY barrel at ANYONE and to this day that behavior is automatic. Unfortunately, most people don't get that sort of upbringing and they wave their empty rifles and shotguns around without regard because they KNOW they are empty. Every safe hunter knows there are times when human error or mistakes happen and a gun THOUGHT to be empty was loaded with tragic results.

You are like me in that I am sure you stop at EVERY railroad track because of what you've seen. Nevertheless, because of the relative infrequent passing of trains at rural crossings, many people are conditioned to expect crossings to be clear. This is bad behavior and I don't excuse it, but I do insist that railroads should keep their approaches clear because even less than careful motorists are owed an opportunity to see down the tracks.

Thanks for your comments, though. I used to ride with an EMT friend in Kansas City and I recall some amazing nights involving bullet holes, heart attacks and gonzo drunkards gone wild. One night I was holding the bag of Lactated Ringer's Solution (at least that is what sticks out in my mind) when they applied the paddles to a poor guy in arrest and somehow I got a jolt of electricity through the bag that scared the pee-woddeny out of me. Pretty funny.
 
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