Reimagining

As some of you may have heard, we have a show coming up at Monkey Town on Dec 6th. This has involved a lot of work.

From our end (the other end being the band Oliphant) we are presenting 4 videos. 3 have been shown before and 1 premiere. The work comes from the location. Monkey Town is an impressive space. 4 giant screens (one for each wall) in a room where the audience sits around the walls, with a performance space in the middle. I have seen a few shows there, and the usual M.O. is to have all 4 screens playing the same thing. There is a logic to this since each audience member will have one screen behind them, and therefore cannot see it. However, I think this approach does not properly utilize the space. I mean, you've got these 4 GIANT SCREENS.

So, we are repurposing the videos. And by we, I mean me. That's OK I enjoy it. Luckily I had lots of help in the generating ideas phase. We aren't adding to the footage we already shot, so we need to find ways to take advantage of the 4 screens with videos that were meant to be shown on one screen while keeping in mind that each of the 4 screens will not be seen by 25% of the audience.

It has been fun, and I am aided by the pieces that I directed making liberal use of split screen. I guess I am the DePalma of SPINE. Which makes Cory=Scorsese, Kristen=Coppola and Allen=Landis.

I am finishing up the DVD burning tonight, and we should find out on Sunday if it all works as planned. Because, where the hell are you going to test this out?

SAVE THE DATE for Allen, Brent, Cory & Kristen

Hi All!

SPINE has a new project in the works that will be making its debut on Sunday evening, DECEMBER 6. Yes, DECEMBER 6 is the date we are asking you to save.

SPINE in collaboration with Oliphant will present Common Fictions, an evening of video and live music at Monkey Town in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. You can expect a couple SPINE signature videos along with the New York premiere of Reframed, and the world premiere of Tidal, both directed by Brent Felker. Peter Wise of Oliphant supplies the score for Reframed and Oliphant is creating a live original soundscape for Tidal as we speak.

Bring your friends and enjoy the unique Monkey Town venue which houses four screens (ideal for our 4-channel video installations), a full bar and an amazing (seriously the food is outstanding) menu by chef Ryan Jaronik. Food and drink will be available before, during and after the show.

More details and info to come, but please save DECEMBER 6^th for us.

We would like to take this opportunity to welcome Allen Norvick to SPINE as our newest co-director and children’s programs coordinator. He’s an actor and writer who hails from southern California. He is a long-time friend of ours and we are so happy to have him with us here in New York.

For more SPINE news please check our NEW & IMPROVED website www.spineart.com we’ve updated the bios, links, and gave it a few other nips ad tucks.

For up-to-the-minute news on SPINE plus exclusive videos and photos, please FAN US on Facebook. Once you've become a fan you'll be the first to know about shows, classes, impromptu showings and SPINE recommendations. So stop by and say hi!

Take care,

SPINE

Revisiting

It is odd going back to a piece you think of as "finished". I am currently reworking "Reframed" for our show at Monkey Town (Dec 6th, catch the fever!). Now, when we presented it at the Berkshire Fringe Festival back in July, we knew that there would be further changes. As they say, films don't get released, they escape. We needed to show it, so it was done.

Now we need to show it again, and in a different format. At the fringe there were 4 screens which could all be seen simultaneously, at Monkey Town there will be four screens, but at opposite ends of the room, so you can only see 3 (really just 1 and parts of 2 others) at a time. To convey the story of the piece, we need to mix it up a bit.

This entails creating what is essentially a different screen. Which means going back through all the old footage. Editing is like sculpting. You begin with a large chunk and whittle away until the piece is revealed. We ended up shooting at a 15:1 ratio, so for every minute of screen time there were 15 minutes of footage shot. The end result is a 13 minute film on four screens which gives us 52 minutes. Cut down from around 9 hours of footage. Every cut, every shot that was included at the expense of another, was done for a reason. At this point I don't always remember why I did things. 3 AM decisions, cuts made after trying 10 different things, requests and suggestions from other SPINE members, all these things are more or less opaque now.

So when I dig into the piece, I have to trust that those decisions were correct as I muck about and try not to mess it up. Almost like I'm working on someone else's film. Once it is finished ("finished"), the choices I am making now which are based on half-remembered choices made months ago will become codified, canon. Then I get to make the trailer.