Horses

Our movie is interesting, but I’m afraid it pales next to Equestrian Sexual Response, which features both a horse birth and a horse studding scene. On Sunday morning I found myself in Riverside watching the latter scene being filmed. I will not post any pictures from that particular set.

In Riverside, however, I had the opportunity to talk at length with Les Blank, the documentary filmmaker best known for Burden of Dreams, his chronicle of Werner Herzog’s, eh, complicated production of Fitzcarraldo. Blank has also made countless films about small cultures and areas of the United States and elsewhere, many of them about food and music, and all of them (at least that I’ve seen) delightful, unpretentious, and accomplished.

We’re still a ways off, but Santa Ana Winds is shaping up now as a visually flexible production, and buzz words like “documentary-style” are being thrown about in discussions. Given the limitations of LAX and the nature of our story, we’ll be flying around trying to convert a fabricated event to reality as best we can.

I didn’t talk with Les about our film, but we did discuss the logistics of shooting Burden of Dreams in the Amazon: how did he get his 16mm film, how did he get it developed, how did he do sound, how did he know what to shoot. Somehow his film misses nothing of importance—besides, of course, the original scenes that starred Mick Jagger and Jason Robards rather than Klaus Kinski; Blank was in Cuba and unable to shoot–while still drawing a clear and powerful narrative out of a miasma of problems in South America. I don’t want to use the word “inspiring” or anything like that, but it sure makes our task seem a lot easier.

Incidentally, Les is at work on a film about Richard Leacock, a king cinema verite/direct cinema (whatever your preference) documentarian who shot Flaherty’s Louisiana Story.

I have little else of significance to say and I feel like I need to post a video or picture, so I give you this:

Crewing

AFI is a “conservatory,” which always makes me think more of prodigious musicians or gifted actors and actresses cavorting with dalliance and grace—not exhausted filmmakers battling mud and hail in the incredible choreography it takes to isolate and capture a moment of reality.

AFI’s structure encourages learning from your talented cohorts and their struggles and triumphs, which is what the bulk of the “Santa Ana Winds” team did for Unrest this past week. Stephen served as their UPM, Will was the gaffer, and yours truly did a little bit of everything in helping the team recreate the turmoil of 1986 Manila. In return, we get the fine services of director Christy Rubenstein, producer Marie Pineda, and cinematographer Kevin Cannon on our own film—they are some of our closest friends and collaborators and will be essential come May. We also share an editor in Brian Wessel, but he’s not essential.

Below are a few awful photos I took from set.

–That’s Kevin with the spot meter. Will is over his shoulder.

–2nd AD Michelle sits below a bit of authentic Filipino (Tagalog?) graffiti

Nordberg

A surprisingly thrilling feature of living in Los Angeles is the televised freeway chase. Surely this has been covered in better detail elsewhere, but the first time I caught a late-night high-speed chase on the news I was captivated by:

1. The clear disapproval of the late-night anchor, annoyed that she was staying at work to ramble on about the tedium of a car chase, which is mostly discussing–
2. The uneventfulness of both the chase and the commentary, which consisted of mainly–
3. LA-speak for the myriad highways that connect the county, which is really what’s so exciting about the chase–”Oh, he’s getting on the 605!” “405, at this hour, you crazy?”
4. The way the police handled both the chase (helicopters! Tire-puncturing strips!) and the disappointing end, and
5. The Internet feed I watched of the raw footage, which included the cameramen in the helicopter cursing their equipment and the futility of the operation.

All this made me sad that I was too young to remember OJ Simpson’s low-speed chase, which I have since revisited on YouTube and is even less exciting than I remember it.

These, however, hold up great:

Simpson’s best non-football work, however, was in the NAKED GUN films, where the Zucker Brothers and Jim Abrahams applied one of their linchpins for great comedy—the straight man—memorably to Simpson.

However I’ve given him more attention than he deserves, so here’s Robert Stack from AIRPLANE! doing much the same thing. Best part of this clip: how none of the extras react to the ass-kicking around them.

An Award Winning Team!

The Santa Ana Winds Team has officially been selected to receive the Fujifilm Grant! We are honored to be the recipients of such a prestigious award given the competitive selection process and the numerous other qualified candidates.

The award includes:

• A generous amount of Fujifilm 16mm film 
• Processing donated by FotoKem
• Lighting provided by Mole-Richardson Lighting

On behalf of the Santa Ana Winds Team, we thank the selection committee and the vendors involved in creating this grant. It will help us bring a story that we all passionately believe in to the screen for everyone to enjoy.

Since this is my first post on the site, I should probably introduce myself. I am the producer of Santa Ana Winds and a second year producer at the American Film Institute that loves to watch and make movies. Feel free to read more here, or simply keep checking back on our site for new information about our project and our team!