Human Carcinogen Journal Three

Hey all,
I spent a bulk of the day wrapping up an unscored final cut of "Human Carcinogen." AJ and I just sat down and watched it for the probably hundreth some time, but actually enjoyed it (possibly knowing it doesn't have to be meticulously scrutinized over now).
I am very happy with the final product in a weird kind of way. It was a strange time in my life when I conceptualized, wrote and shot the movie last summer. I had become upset with the toil of life...the least of all surprisingly in the work sense of the word. I realized that waking up and enjoying each day can become an arduous task for a wide assortment of reasons and all of my angst and confusion from the summer really show in the movie's tone. Being that the story has horror elements that were in the vein of "Creepshow" and "Twilight Zone," I find it interesting that it became personal somewhere between the shooting and the editing. It now strongly represent the oppressed mindset I subjected myself to at the time of creating it and is almost like a sad and frightening time capsule of a difficult time.
Anyways, the cut I exported today is going to my wonderful girlfriend/composer Hannah - who will wrap the 9 minute score she created to the beat of the editing. I hope it goes well for her. The movie's rhythm is slow and foreboding until the second half where the jumps and the gags come in. The score is communicative of both what's chemically going on inside Veres' charters' body and his mental awareness of it. There is a lot of noise in the movie: fruits of our most challenging work in the sound design department. The score provides a subjective understanding among the harshness of the character's physical reality.
I am hoping to have the movie fully finished by the end of January. I am going to be casually sending it to festivals all year round if the entry fees are manageable. The fall horror festivals will surely be the most appropriate.
Happy new year's!

Human Carcinogen (by Nick Detisch)

a skeleton in a machine
barks three laws
through a broken mandible...



I.
you must become strong
because life has made you weak
work until your veins
protrude effortlessly from your muscle
work so that you don't think
think only as a machine thinks
(pound metal into concrete
sift dirt from imbeded pipe
operate rotary tool)
remember that work is only work
when life has left you idle
work is life
be humbled by your dependency

II.
remember only the things necessary
to operate efficiently
the past is idle and therefore weak
the information for your existence
is blueprinted and stockpiled
measured out and executed
hazardous thoughts are only found
in long term memory
you are the product of the present
never follow your own orders

III.
respect your predecessors
they will replace your obsolete future
the young refuel the world
so argue with your co-workers
not over superiority or power
but out of concern and compassion
you must not have any pride
because you are but a piece
of a large and complex generator
you are vital but nothing special


...a void listens to these echoes
it consumes them and they are lost
a red mist of chemical excrement
floats through the abyss
the machine blood evaporation
of a working day gone by

a slave can't find strength to think
but thoughts eventually find him
like dull, stray radio waves
telling him the somber truth:


"it's dust and heat
and desert-dry nothing
that thing inside
you ain't even alive!"

Artistic Affection

One thing I really like about making movies is the ability to capture, on a synthetic format, a moment in time that cannot ever be duplicated or recreated. When I was shooting the last half of Human’s Lib, I was in a beautiful area of woods on an overcast day. The way the gray clouds kind of twirled through the white ones held all kinds of wonder and magic that I would never see or feel again. They reminded me of the skies over Knox, Pennsylvania that for some reason never look as beautiful anywhere else in PA. We were about to move on from that location to go deeper into the woods, but I stopped Cairon and AJ and told them that I really needed to get that shot. I framed Cairon and the clouds so that I could always remember the way those clouds looked. Every time I look at Human’s Lib, I remember the feelings I had when setting up that shot. That’s the kind of magic that I cherish when making movies.

Journal 2

Day 2

I woke up at about 7:45 and headed out to Wal-Mart to get some Duct Tape to mount a few props onto the car's dashboard for the shoot. The day required shots of a stressed Mike going home for the evening...and being oblivious to a rapidly emerging disease. Chris was needed for special effects...which included an hour or so of prosthetic work. After an unexpectedly late night of taking his girlfriend to get the new Harry Potter book, he slept right through his ("Batman Begins" Tumbler-shaped) alarm clock and was woken up by one of my phone calls. It didn't matter much, because Veres was running a little late as well...but luckily everyone got it together by about 10. He created a puss-emerging (notice I avoided using the adjective "pussy") , crimson boil which came out very close to how I envisioned it. Chris also brought a simple, but effective apparatus consisting of an empty, College-issued mini Axe bottle and short tubing to pump up the boil. It worked well minus a few snags in the tubing. Chris thought it out as a heart pumping out of the skin, and it looked very close to just that. I shot a behind-the-scenes interview with Chris as he enjoyed his morning cigarette on my side porch.

We got going about 45 minutes behind schedule, which was scary because three out of the four of us needed to be done by 1. By a little after 11, we were ready to go. We marked out a route of where Mike would be driving and got things rolling. AJ was in the passenger seat getting the bulk of the footage and Chris and I were in the back -- Chris to operate his apparatus and me to get some additional footage. Being that I had never taken the camera into my new car, I didn't realize that it was capable of allowing a shot I envisioned for "Pagan Rd." three summers back but couldn't get due to the space restrictions of a Chevy Malibu (I can't wait to finally put this shot into a movie!). AJ and I decided to have Mike drive downtown as to avoid background trees. For theme reasons, we didn't want much nature in our shots, but we quickly remembered that it's Erie Pennsylvania and there are trees everywhere you look. We actually ended up shooting on the same expressway that we used in the "Waiting" music video we shot over Christmas...which looked much better this time around because it was lit by the afternoon sun in clear skies.

We came back, watched the dailies and were very pleased with how everything looked. A couple of the shots looked very nice in some settings Matt found that make things look film-ishly textured.

Well, about half of the movie is done. Only one day is left...and it's gonna be the big one.

"Human Carcinogen" journal one

7/14/07

I guess the start to any good movie journal is the description of what went wrong…

Today I scheduled to shoot the first sequence of the script, which consisted of about 8 to 10 shots of Mike’s character Tom ending a long day of work at a construction site. Sound easy enough? The first thing we forgot was a powder to cover Mike’s arm with (it is very significant to the second half of the movie). Hannah went out of her way to buy some baking flour which she quickly drove over. Then Matt realized Mike looked too clean to have just finished a day at a construction site, so the most logical thing was for Mike (along with Adam and Chris, who were standing in as extras) to roll around in some dirt!

Anyways, AJ and I set up a track of plastic tables to dolly a wheelchair on and it ended up being rickety. We decided it was too much of a bother to try to work with, so we used Matt’s monopod as a steadicam and got some decent shots that way.

Then came the bugs and the dust storms. Shortly after Chase arrived, we started getting attacked by gross, green-shelled beetles. Then a large cloud of dirt, blowing from the big mounds dug up by the construction workers, completely engulfed the entire site. Chase put two and two together and screamed, “What is this, The Mummy!!??”

I wish there was some kind of a big conclusion to this story, but the rest of the day went by very well. The footage looks awesome and I’m really excited to keep shooting.

Thanks everyone for helping out!

Nick