Archiculture

I’m not much one to bitch and complain, nor am I one for regretting decisions, but I am at a point in this project where I am extremely discouraged.  I’m not at all to the point where I am questioning the need for the film, nor am I questioning my decision to participate in this film.  I am personally just exhausted with the teetering accusations and conflict surrounding the project.  As with any piece of art we have opened an idea up for public criticism, a concept that is both familiar and energizing to me.  I experienced this throughout my undergraduate education and think it is an amazing experience.  I suppose my discouragement stems not from the criticism but from the polarity of allegations.  As a 25 year old of absolutely no resource or power, I have found myself at the complete mercy of dozens of people all who have their own vision of what this film is and how it should be handled.   I feel not as though I don’t have a voice, but that I am in no position to use my voice.  I feel a bit like a flip-flopping politician, saying whatever it takes to please whoever my audience is at that time.  It is rough waking up without a backbone every morning.  For now, I just look forward to the positive impact that this film is capable of producing.

-ripped from the Interpol album Turn on the Bright Lights

I’m going to attempt to be brief with this post. It is a reaction/recollection of the experience to finally watch Archiculture begin to walk on its own. Standing in the Center for Architecture filled with 250+ people waiting around for a 2 minute and 15 second clip of video was a bit unnerving. It was a lot of energy to pull all these people out to see the first clips of footage from Archiculture. A documentary concept which we had been attempting to tell through photos, text, graphics, precedents, you name it, for the past two years. Now our footage could speak for itself. I had not experienced such a public display of one’s creative efforts since I left the confines of my own education. It was as if we the filmmakers were following the timeline of the students’ schedule, debuting a major piece of our own work in the same week as their midterms. It was a massive rush of filming, editing and preparation. One significant reality which became clear as the evening progressed at the debut was that in a documentary, as opposed to narrative, the people on screen can and were in the audience. Not actors but real individuals with their parents, friends and coworkers. We were finally able to share their moments, which we had been lingering over for weeks in the editing studio and they had only experienced once. Watching the room while the trailer played transcends my ability with words.

The response from those attending and those which were able to view it online, as it simultaneously debuted on Archinect.com, were overwhelmingly positive. Knowing we still need to push ourselves a lot further as filmmakers to maximize the potential of this film and that we are far from completion, we continuously look for any and all comments/criticism from each of you. For our own sanity and the project’s future, a lot of pressure was ridding on your response to this trailer. It is a critical point in the life of a documentary. One in which determines how funders and the public will begin to perceive the project. We only hope that it began to enable others to visualize the potential in such a film. We need all the grass roots awareness we can get for this to become a reality.

It scares me to think that the semester is already coming to an end and that consequently we are wrapping up the bulk of the production for the film. The thing that scares me the most is the fact that I find myself asking the same question that many of these students are asking, Where do I go from here? Do I give up the 5 years of study and 2 years of practice that I invested into the profession of landscape architecture? Is there a career for me in film? How will I find a job that will allow the flexibility needed to complete Archiculture. Am I turning my back to the profession of architecture if I do go into film? Don’t get my wrong, I realize that this is a reoccurring question that many of us will face for the rest of our lives, and honestly, I didn’t start asking myself until others started to ask me.

After giving this a little thought, I think I am prepared to answer all of these questions. As far as me turning my back to the profession of architecture, I feel that I can have a far greater influence on the profession with me behind the camera than I would have otherwise behind a drafting table/computer. I still cherish my 5 years of design education and feel that it is the most valuable investment that I have made thus far in my life. I feel that it not only prepared me for the profession of landscape architecture, but it also provided me with the knowledge and skillset needed to make this film. Archiculture is far from complete and its outcome can not yet be determined. There is another film in the pipeline and there are currently plans to do a few music videos and shorts. I plan to keep my feet wet in the architectural field by participating in a few design competitions. Beyond that, I have no clue what I will be doing.

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Writing from the road in New Hampshire. For our spring break we headed north into New England, where the remnants of winter are still packed high on the sides of the road. We are interviewing students in their hometowns and questioning their parents about their offspring. Yesterday was Central Valley, NY, today is Amherst, NH, and tomorrow is Connecticut with a brief pit stop in Boston tonight for St. Patty’s Day. Stories and photos will be up shortly.

As we follow the students through the long hours leading up to their midterms and prepare for own own substantial review in the form of our trailer debut this Friday, sleeping accommodations have grown hard to come by in Higgins Hall. Most of us who have attended an architectural program remember the long days turning into night, turning into day again, and those few crucial hours spent sleeping in preparation for the looming review for mental clarity. Whenever these crits grew closer all the furniture in the school of architecture became a battle ground for students jockeying for a space to rest. Strict schedules were sometimes devised and territorial rights were negotiated between studios for those quiet/semi-dark locations to sneek in a couple hours of numbing silence and rejuvenation. In our hopes of limiting our impact upon the “normal” progression of the studio environment, we have purchased our own air mattress which enable us to negate our sleeping footprint. At this very moment, 5Am the day before midterm reviews, a student sleeps on a couch outside our office. I turn around to sleep for a few hours on ours.

In the three extremely short months that I have spent on the Pratt campus, I have grown incredibly close to the sculpture pictured below. The piece, titled, “Rat sitting on his Laurels” is a personal favorite, and I must admit that when I walked to the office on Friday to discover that this bronzed rat had disappeared I felt like a part of my day was missing. Can anyone tell me the new location of this rat?

courtesy of Global Jet via Flickr.com

Yesterday we left our production bubble at the School of Architecture and took a field trip into the city to capture some urban shots. It was our first time venturing out of the safety of Brooklyn to the hyper active urban context of Manhattan to do extensive outdoor public shots. Before arriving in New York we spent a decent amount of time researching the constantly changing permit requirements. David event wrote a brief blog about the concept of just grab and go style filming most think of when shooting a documentary. We had read accounts of people having no problems with public shooting and others loosing whole days of footage from confiscated tapes. It seemed that each situation was a concern with how much disturbance you were creating which meant how big of a production you were and how lucky/convincing you were when the authorities approached you. We only have two 5lb digital cameras and a couple of nice tripods. Not much to really obstruct the street, cause a seen or imped the the normal economic flows. We are also not a Hollywood film with millions in investment or with the potential of making millions off the image of the city.

The question this raises is who determines these rules for “permission” to shoot and when can a city revoke one of its citizens the ability to record public space? The who in this case is the City of New York Mayor’s Office of Film, Theater and Broadcast. They set the bar for applications. The process to get a permit to film costs nothing directly, but it does require a couple hours of your time on their computers, filling out forms for the exact shooting locations and a one million dollar certificate of liability insurance. We decided to wing it yesterday and film on the fly without any formal permission except our Pratt ID’s under the disguise of student filming. To our surprise we did not have a single issue. We shot inside Grand Central, on the medians of Park Avenue, on the steps of the monument at Columbus Circle, in the middle of Broadway in front of the Flatiron Building, a block from City Hall, and from the walkway on the Brooklyn Bridge. There was even one point when we were filming in Bryant Square Park at the peak of a super-busy, warm March weekday lunch, when the man next to us was told by a guard to stop feeding the pigeons. We had a laugh at that one.

from the Made in New York Incentive Program by the MOFTB

What this does bring up is the context of creative commons and who ultimately controls the rights to the image of a city. In the 70’s when New York was a rugged, edgy urban collage of ethnicities and districts the city begged for its image to evolve. Was it the image projected from such films as Taxi Driver or Dog Day Afternoon which helped scare investment further into the expanding exurbs. How much power does film have on the image of a place? Even today the recent article New York City as Film Set: From Mean Streets to Clean Streets by John Clark from April 2006 of the New York Times, questions this. He cites David Thomson as saying, “There’s been a sea change. I can remember well into the 70’s films where there is the terrific sense of New York as being this adventurous place… Those films really had a sense of how jazzy and exciting it was to be in New York. I can’t think of the last film I’ve seen that had that feeling.” Has the city merely turned into a Disneyland of Times Squares for others to travel to and take their photos in front of? The “I’ve been there syndrome”. Has it gotten to the point where the city’s image has become synonymous with film, to the point where the two are inseparable? How does this impact future treatments of the city in film, specifically Manhattan, as it continues to become a place where the working class can no longer afford the cost of life. How does this image impact our architecture and dynamic urban life? It already feels to me to have become a wealthy playground which my filmmaking lifestyle can no longer afford.