In a fun moment in Das Boot, the enlisted men sing along to a recording of It’s a Long Way to Tipperary

This clip is pretty complicated:

• Das Boot is a movie about a German WWII U-Boot crew
• the song is British and became popular during WWI amongst the soldiers. It’s associated with WWI
• …but it was also a popular song
• the song is about being homesick
• because it’s British, it’s annoying to the officer who is party-line Nazi, who clashes with the captain during the story, playing to the anti-war theme of “the people who make wars (politicians) are not the people who die in wars”

After hearing a lot about how awesome Mad Men is we finally watched it. While the Art Direction is indeed good, there’s some major problems with the show:

• The acting is not very period – it reeks of contemporary cable drama. I realize the challenge of getting actors to act like people in the 1960s, and even that it may not be desirable, since the audience might not be into it.
• The writing is a bit overconfident: Some of the history jokes and flourishes the writers add are incorrect in stupid ways:
  • Flourish example: A long “brilliant” speech declares advertising is about telling people they are happy, and that everything is alright – but even an incredibly stupid advertising person could tell you that this is the EXACT OPPOSITE of what advertising is about. The basic message of all advertising is “you could be MORE HAPPY THAN YOU ARE NOW with this product.” Nice try, nerds!
  • Anachronism joke example: “There’s no magical machine that duplicates things” or something – making reference to the audience that there are not yet copy machines. Ho ho weren’t things primitive then! But actually there were ways to duplicate documents – they were called mimeographs.

PROBLEM: importing an Adobe Photoshop file into Final Cut Pro looks like a flat image. That’s bad. It’s supposed to be a sequence, so you can play with the individual layers!

SOLUTION:

• open the file in Photoshop
• Re-save it, exactly as it is, using “Save As…” — make sure the Layers checkbox is on!
• delete the file in Final Cut Pro and re-import it. If this worked, the icon should now be different, and look like a sequence.

This was printed in Star in August 2009, before the show was on. On page 65:

Shaun Sipos: ROLE: DAVID BRECK:

Spoiler Alert: David is the bad boy son of the original Melrose’s handyman, Jake, played by Grant Show. Shaun, 27, has previously appeared on the series Shark and Complete Savages.

Oopsie! That was a lie – he was actually the son of Michael, also a character from the original series. Maybe it was an intentional misdirection?

The problem:

- different takes: you have footage of someone saying a long speech, but for whatever reason you don’t have a completely usable take with the entire speech. This could be because the actor dropped a line, or stumbled over part of a line, someone could jostled the camera, or another camera issue, or there could be a technical issue with the sound, like a dog barking in the background or a sampling problem where the sound cuts out. You have to stitch together two takes. But how?
- speech too long: you have a good take, maybe only one, but the speech as written is just too long. The audience may lose focus when they watch the scene. You may or may not need to cut some of the middle of the speech. But how can you integrate the two or more pieces of the take left over?

Solutions:

Use Multiple Angles:
Your basic editing, you’re cutting between cameras for the same speech. If you only had one camera, it will of course be for a different take – with a consistent performance from the actor you can cut the sound from one single take into another if you have to in order to avoid differences in sound quality. This obviously requires some advanced planning since you’d need to have shot this when on location in the first place!

Cutaways: while the speaker’s audio continues, cut to:

• a reaction shot of the listener. This is pretty much covered under “multiple angles”: the footage you took of the other actor, listening while the person is speaking. Since their mouth is not moving, it could well be from another take and they could therefore be reacting to a different line, so be careful it makes sense! Reporters do this all the time; sometimes faking the reaction footage of themselves after the interview, as famously depicted by William Hurt in the film “Broadcast News.”
• a photo of the thing the person is talking about (especially for documentaries – like the “Ken Burns Effect”)
• an object in the same venue as the speaker – for example, the dialog is in a cafe; you show the napkin dispenser… or one that could plausibly be there, if you didn’t film it originally (pickup shot road trip!). Good for developing atmosphere.
• a totally random other shot – this has to do with Eisensteinian theory of continuity, but basically you pick something that the audience can relate on some metaphorical level to the situation or dialog or character

If none of that is going to work, you’re stuck with a shot of the speaker. So we’re down to:

Dissolve into same shot:
Cut for sound, omitting some footage between two takes — that is cut the dialog so it sounds good, and then adjust the video. The simplest non-jarring transition is a dissolve between the two takes. Popular in documentaries.

Mirror the shot on the next take:
This is similar to the dissolve except it lets you cut between two takes of the same shot. I saw this in The Aristocrats (2005), directed by and I think edited by Paul Provenza. He took a shot of a comedian talking, and cut directly to the same shot that had been flipped on the vertical axis, so left is right. If the shot is done slightly lopsided, or especially if you mirror AND zoom the shot a little, it looks like a different camera.

Thank goodness someone came up with this– it’s an idea that’s been in my brain for a decade.

I’m so glad I don’t have to invent it now!

OJ: hey what is that japanese New Years lucky bag word?
BRAIN: lucky bag word?!
OJ: nevermind google search helped me
OJ: fukubukuro

Fukubukuro, or “Mystery Bag,” is a Japanese New Year’s Day tradition during which merchants sell sealed bags of various items at a substantial discount, often as high as 50%. Shoppers may get some great deals on the contents of these bags – even if they don’t know what exactly they’re buying.

BRAIN: oh right
BRAIN: like a grab bag
OJ: yeah
BRAIN: we have that at Obon
BRAIN: except since it’s so americanized I never knew the japanese name for it… (plus I hadn’t done it for new years)
OJ: there is something in singapore called a “lucky dip”
OJ: which is a raffle thing
OJ: you buy a ticket (5 or 50 or whatever dollars), get a draw and a number

OJ: Japan celebrates NY on 1/1 correct?
BRAIN: yes
BRAIN: you have to clean your house
BRAIN: and have friends over
BRAIN: with a lot of food available
BRAIN: generally there’s some enka awards on TV

OJ: interesting, so similar to some of the chinese traditions for lunar new year
BRAIN: what happens for that?
OJ: lots of diff traditions depending on rural village
OJ: common ones include: big meal, or vegetarian meal
OJ: clean house
OJ: pay off debts
OJ: eat oranges or pineapples (pun on words)
OJ: “lucky money” / “red envelopes” from married people to kids (nieces/nephews also)

BRAIN: related: I found out recently what you do with your daruma after the eyes are filled in – you burn it at the temple at the end of the year
OJ: oh… interesting
OJ: i want a Hello Kitty daruma but i won’t fill it in or burn it
OJ: unless hmm, i had extras
BRAIN: so what, she’d just be eyeless forever?
OJ: yah
BRAIN: so so sad
OJ: well u fill in one eye?
OJ: or you hae one with both, but don’t make a wish
BRAIN: what!
BRAIN: a free ride for HK daruma?!
BRAIN: wtf, that’s even worse!
BRAIN: you commie!

Halfway through I’m at Macy’s and there’s a ton of people made up like the Neanderthals from the GEICO commercials. They stay in character, just going about their business shopping (I can’t recall any clerks who were Neanderthal-Americans), and occasionally being loud about being discriminated against in a Cro-Magnon-centric world. Although I don’t think we’re supposed to use that phrase anymore.

The phenomenon is so awesome it’s hard not to giggle constantly. I tweet that it’s happening (I used Twitter in my dream about GEICO!!), before talking to an elderly woman in a wheelchair, being pushed by a relation. They are both Neanderthals. I both play along and try to get her to break character, making a comment about picking up something with her feet — I’m not sure if she’s turning into a chimp, or I’m just stupid, or if I’m baiting her deliberately — she almost breaks character but does not.

Later my friend Jackie and I sneak into a big party on the roof of a hotel downtown… it turns out to be Tom Hanks’ birthday party, and Richard Branson is there with a cloned triceratops.

Tom Hanks is sitting with a friend at a small table while everyone comes up and wishes him happy birthday (he looks young!), and when I do, he seems to mistake me for someone else because he thinks we may have met before. Either we actually have met before and I’m fuzzy on it or I capitalize on his confusion, because I give him one of my MOO cards with the little weird images from my films on it.

LATER as I’m awake, I realize the GEICO mascots aren’t actually Neanderthals, they are early modern humans, just “cavemen.”

SUMMARY:
Roomites: there is nothing remarkable about this particular bad movie. You are just revealing your own sparse cultural exposure.

“The Room” is a real bad movie. It now has a hipster following that are amazed that a bad movie exists. There are heavily-attended screenings of this movie. They have DISCOVERED THE BAD MOVIE. Congratulations!

it’s not that I don’t go see bad movies, or even revel in them – the annoying part is the notion that this movie is somehow special. Where were these jerks when the grindhouse movie theaters were shutting down? The UC Theater?

They are dilettantes. Fuck them in the eye.

At some point, someone will tell you about The Room! And how it’s so bad! You have to see it! I lost count a while ago.

Hey: there are lots of obscure movies you should see, young thing. Actual good movies deserving of your evangelism! and great “bad” ones like “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!” Decades of cinema, waiting to be seen… but you likely won’t, because all your retarded friends won’t be doing it. So go get an ironic tattoo of a kanji you can’t read and get out of my face. Or write me a check.