JULY 4 2009

GANZFELD - (German for “complete field”) is a term used to describe a particular phenomenon of visual perception. Deep-sea divers experience a Ganzfeld at certain depths. Robbed of any point of reference, someone experiencing a ganzfeld feels a sense of infinite space or space-less-ness. Because the mind flinches in the face of so much emptiness, a Ganzfeld often induces hallucination.

Leaving at 6am for Hamilton Montana, just south of Missoula. We've rented a fire-watchtower for five days. I thought I might start a little record of what has been going on, as life often moves so quickly and producing a feature film is such an enormous task, it can become an intense blur. So this is Ganzfeld:

Daniel Mejia and I were brainstorming ideas for another movie and came up with this: a couple living unhappily in the city solve their tumultous marriage by moving out to a fire watch tower in the mountains. The catch is that they don't live Together. Each lives alone in the tower for 3 months, overlapping for only an hour or day. They begin to leave scavenger hunt materials for each other and thus begin to communicate to each other much deeper messages than the petty concerns of city life afforded them. They lead each other on adventures in the woods, trying to teach each other what they feel the other needs to understand most deeply about themselves and each other.

The scavenger hunt idea made me think of Brian Torrey Scott right away as a director. I've worked with brian on more than a dozen plays, videos and experimental performances. The Scavenger Hunt idea fit really well into his interest in Pataphysics, and generally his whole aesthetic. Brian has, since, created an outline of scenes which we continue to augment as we learn about the characters. The structure of the film Brian has created to resemble the Ganzfeld Experiments. I was aware of the ganzfeld experiments, but my interest has always been as a sculptor: how the Ganzfeld relates to the body. Now the film has more of the Ganzfeld Experiments within its logic. We talk about "the target" and "The reciever". Brian's idea to structure the film this way has allowed to the film to hallucinate about itself.

After auditioning 35 amazing women, we found Amelia Lorenz, to play...well...Amelia in the movie. She is fantastic and incredibly brave to be leaping into this adventure having only just met Brian, Dan and me.

Originally Ganzfeld was going to be a short in a feature of 3 shorts, directed by me, Brian and Michael Gilio. This was the best story though, and Dan and I felt it deserved to be feature-length. Michael is now advising and co-producing the movie and I am acting and producing. Oddly enough, Michael's most recent feature, currently in pre-pre production in Hollywood is called (originally) Big Hole, and though the name has been changed it takes place in the same chain of mountains we are going to film. Odd coincidence. I am bringing the script of Big Hole to read on our trip. My first collaboration ever was on a train made of paper in first grade with Michael. We made a little door that opened and closed on a boxcar.

Jason Webley also is helping us with production which is really generous considering he is currently busy celebrating his 11th anniversary of entertaining the world as a traveling musician. There is no one like him.

Ellen Fulton is also helping us. I've known her since High School and I am excited to have caught up with her now as adults. She is an attorney and mom and all around genius of all things as far as I can tell.

The money for the movie was successfully raised with a silent auction of some drawings off this website, actually. Very handy. I'm happy to see my artwork somehow paying for itself, or begetting more of itself.

Anyways. its the 4th. It is war out there on my block. I need to do my laundry and pack for our 6am departure. Oh, and I have to put together an email list of industry people to publicize A THING AS BIG AS THE OCEAN! which is up for Best Narrative Feature at the WoodsHole Film Festival. We open the festival next month, so we have to get our ducks in a row....

July 1 2009

We have been improvising scenes this week and the characters and the movie are starting to have a life of their own. The arguing feels so real sometimes, when it's over I get the "its only a dream" feeling of relief. It is great fun. Originally we were to film the movie in order, but because we are shooting our first big scenes in Montana, that means starting with the last scene first! This was a difficult idea to accept, conisidering how processed based we are, both for content and character developement. (hence the full-on rehearsing all this last week). But to further solve the problem for both the plot and the rapport between Amelia and I, Brian decided to write the last scene. So now we have this sort of target to funnel all of our action towards.