GODS IN OLYMPUS

'Gods in Olympus'

Here I am with my pinky of the left hand broken and casted for a stupid fall in the attempt to catch a bus. When something like this happens it is always an excuse to make a sort of balance of your life, pros and cons, and why this thing happened...

I like to say that the gods in the mount Olympus are good or bad to you if you make them angry or happy.

Well, in my case it is very interesting that it happens in a moment in which I have to go back to Los Angeles to work with my editor Annette Kash, to finish 'bollezzumme'. Now, by cause of this small accident, I cannot go to LA maybe for other 3 or 4 weeks.... a small disaster!!! Probably the gods are angry at me because I have been jerking long enough with this editing and I agree with them. 

I have written on this blog that it takes me always a long time to digest the material that I shoot and consequently to finish the editing. It is absolutely a long painful process. Sometimes it could also be pleasurable but, have no doubt, it is a sort of masturbation. Go back in the blog and check 'the creative process' post.

I am crying for help. Help to understand why it takes so long to deliver the ending of this project. The few people, mostly in New York and Los Angeles, who have seen the edited cut, did like it, the photography, the music, the sequence of the scenes and of the characters, each with their own suggestions or personal agenda, of course. But why I cannot grab the bull by the horns and finish and show the final product and move on in promoting it, selling it, distributing or participating in festivals or whatever? I know that some of my friends are disappointed and my investor is disappointed while others are just curious to see what I have done with my life in these last thirty months, two and a half year....!

This is a blog open to the world. So comments, thoughts, insults, compliments are allowed and welcome. Give me some interesting contribution, some kind of help, e. g. a kick in the ass.

I also have a very personal question that I am unable to answer: How much of myself I have to say, tell, present, show....?  Is this a film about Genova and its Historical Center, or is it an excuse to talk about me and about what those streets and alleys and squares have inspired me? Where is the balance between the stories that I collected, the places I show, and their meaning for me? My friend Garret who has been helping me in many capacities and different moments, since the beginning told me: 'Be personal and poetic'. Thanks Garret because when I am lost I think about those two words. 

I know also that I am writing those thoughts in English, excluding who does not speak or read or write in English. Since the beginning of this project my goal has been to show Genova (and myself ...?) to the English speaking world.

Example: shall I write Genoa or Genova? Let's start from this simple, stupid, banal question. How do you prefer me to identify my city, in Italian or in English...?

Thank you. Until the next of my masturbatory thinking.

Ciao and grazie.

TECHNOLOGY

Up with technology ...!!!

Everybody realizes that in the last few years we did experiment  an impressive acceleration in technology. I am referring to the one applied daily to our normal life such as communication, i-phones, Skype and many similar gadgets. It is not uncommon to see toddlers playing with electronic devices with a shocking familiarity. All this advancement in technology is very useful, for example, in the process of editing a movie. As a matter of fact there is an incredible difference in the way films or TV programs were edited once and now.

At the beginning of my exploration of the business field, I loved the smell of the editing room: the film in itself has a special odor, the moviola was an impressive big object requesting attention and respect, now it is an obsolete piece of junk. The editing process was long, excruciating – and fun! Well, even now it is fun but is totally changed. There is no smell in the editing rooms now, you can only hear the very low sound of computers purring while doing the job. It can be much faster, much easier  and realize complicated special effects with the touch of a few miraculous keys... if you know what you are doing, of course. The problem is that sometimes technology freezes, does not respond to your commands.  It simply goes nuts. That is the situation in which you have to be lucky or to know somebody who can fix it. Years ago while I was working at one of my last collaborations with Femme Productions, we were working at the sound design in one of the most celebrated and expensive sound houses in Manhattan. We were in one of these moments of technical transiction from film to video, from beta to mini DV, from mini DV to HD .... We lost one entire day how to figure it out how to transfer the data. Why I say that? Because my editor in Los Angeles, Annette Kash, had to face a similar situation in the simple process to transfer, or to create an icon, apparently those two are different processes, of the main hard drive with all the film in it. Anyhow Annette managed to go trough it and now she is happy, getting familiar with the material, expecting me to go to Los Angeles ASAP to finish the last cut and the post production.

This moment is very exciting because I can see the light at the end of a long, long tunnel.

Sorrisi until the next letter, Michele Capozzi