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A daughter's camera confronts suspect in rape

by Philippa Bourke
Posted August 2002

Thoroughly modern films about women were just one of the unexpected delights of the Tribeca Film Festival this spring, setting audiences abuzz and walking and talking into the wide expanses of night that settled on Battery Park.

Take the scene in "Lovely and Amazing", in which an actress asks an intimate stranger for an inventory of her skim latte form. "That guy sure was right," remarked a man deep in thought several blocks from the screening. "She badly needed a trim," he added for the benefit of his female companions.

"She was at the bottom," director Nicole Holofcener says of the character Elizabeth, played by Emily Mortimer, in the delicate scene that screams from her second feature film. "It was like she had to get all the facts out, the ifs & the ands, like "you have beautiful ears ... but your neck is long, "before she could begin to move on with her life.

Elizabeth's baby boomer mother, African American young sister and another, a study in dysthmia by Catherine Keener, are all flirting with the bottom as they jar and clang their way through decor-lifted interiors; Los Angeles and the cover-girl tunnels of self-awareness that shrink them to 24/7 tailoring in the universe of the body.

Each emerges from near-brushes with fate and a lot of random proof of what's wrong with her world to find in the other a wake-up call from a bad everyday dream.

"Body image is definitely something I'm concerned with but it's really only a part of it," Holofcener said recently in New York. "The beauty thing is a concern but the focus was really the family and the way we learn to accept the one we've got in the end."

"Lovely and Amazing," together with a premiere showing of "Personal Velocity," an award-winning film by Rebecca Miller which tells three short stories of women, and a clutch of brazen, documentary films by women that were shot on DV, such as Alexandra Pelosi's "Journeys with George," turned the Tribeca program into a canvas for women filmmakers and somehow, more than its September 11th premise.

Women-directed dramatic features made in the digital medium gave glimpses of an art that often breaks the rules to accomplish much with a limited palette, while dispensing with the good, the girly and the gossamered to explore full-bodied characters who steer themselves in brittle storylines that come boldly close to women's lives now.

Departing from earlier American forays into digital video, no two films besides "Lovely and Amazing" and "Personal Velocity" could better demonstrate that digital video is nowadays becoming less of a mini-cult statement and more of a means to a convincingly cinematic end. Filmmakers, meanwhile, who have worked to make it look this good, sound like survivors as they hail its speed, intimacy and economy and bemoan its risks, pitfalls and frustrations.

"It wasn't like being real down and dirty at all. I almost couldn't tell the difference," said Holofcener, recapping her first experience of filming without film.

Making no bones about the fact that it was the economics of video (upgraded early in the project from DV to hi-definition 24 fps) that made possible her summer box office splash of a movie, she's willing to eat some of her words." I was afraid it would look like a soap opera because of that flat quality that video has. We're so accustomed to seeing soaps on tape that we equate the two."

There's no likening of this gently black comedy, or its split ends, to "Days of Our Lives," however.

"Fears about high contrast kept us aware of things that would come off too bright or too dark. Especially when you can't control each projector that will be projecting the film around the world. Some screen brighter than others, or worse, darker. So if you shoot a scene that's wonderfully moody and dark, there's the chance that it will look like an awful mistake."

Post-production was tricky and made manageable by a meticulous producer, Eric d'Arbeloff, who checked every single print, Holofcener said of "Lovely" which is a Blow Up Pictures production and Lions Gate Entertainment release.

"We had synch problems that to this day I do not understand. And with HD video being relatively new to us, we were often confused about why things weren't working as we'd like. Even people in the labs seemed confused and often we'd go around in circles trying to figure out why something was out of focus, out of synch."

Best of all, in her view, was the unexpected opportunity to "iron out a lot of the hand-heldedness," along with the fact that once they had blown up the video, she said "It expressed itself like film, more or less."

The director, who says she would shoot on DV in the future, is honest about her enduring preference for film.

She won't romanticize the digital camera set by saying that it put her actress-actress at ease for the body-take scene. Yet the camera, in the experienced hands of Harlan Bosmajian, allowed her to accomplish what may ultimately distinguish her thought-provoking movie from big studio fare: a visually blunt, sober and discordant take on the off-color aspects of feminine existence -- and a terrific rejection of things "chick flick."

Says Holofcener: "It enabled me to show what wasn't beautiful. And it wasn't... Beautiful."

Breaking the rules and filming outside of the box

Perhaps one who you won't hear stray from the Dogme-inspired ideals of DV and talk of its aesthetic is Gary Winick, pioneer of DV filmmaking in every sense and partner in New York venture InDigEnt, which has contracted to deliver 10 digitally made feature films with IFC Productions and which produced Miller's upcoming film.

The one backer who would reportedly lend an ear to her second feature project based on the novel she wrote and sufficiently loaded with domestic violence and self-mutilation against a backdrop of solitary quests for power and self-realization, Winick explains that on a couple of levels, a film like this one would probably never get made if it wasn't for DV

"DV is perfect because it's dealing with some very sensitive subjects and subjects that probably would be really hard to make at a higher level because of the sensitivity to these subjects and the marketability of these subjects.

"And then the other thing," he continued on the phone from his mixing studio this summer, "is that Rebecca really has such an unbelievable voice that she was able to -- once she knew she was making a DV -- to cinematically use the literal nature from her book, to translate it to DV."

In working three short stories into one film, which was shot on mini DV cameras for $150,000, Miller was also less likely to get the encouragement of a major studio, Winick added, with a laugh: "it's harder to market you know, and basically that's what works -- is one story."

In "Personal Velocity," which is narrated and carries a score, audiences are privy to the stand-alone inner monologues of Kyra Sedgwick's gruff Delia, a former high-school player who is on the run with her kids from a husband who beats her, Greta, played by Parker Posey, a Manhattan editor whose sudden success fuels ambition and the guilty desire to move on from a doting husband, and Paula (Fairuza Balk), a young woman who discovers her own wisdom in a bid to change the course for a destructive teen.

The stunning performances in the film have been noted, while Posey, who covers a lot of ground in heels and an executive suit, has spoken of the freedom afforded her on the set by DV. Sundance, accordingly, awarded the film this year with the Grand Jury Prize, while United Artists picked it up for distribution.

Also recognized was Ellen Kuras, who took a third Sundance cinematography award for "Personal Velocity," her second in the dramatic category, and was a collaborator with Miller on her first feature, "Angela," in 1995. But while Winick underlines the benefits of director and actors being technically freed by DV, Kuras -- who was also awarded for her DV work on "Bamboozled" and must be among themedium's true artists -- speaks of dramatic technical challenges and argues the same enigmatic, tactile imprint on the movie that is hers could likely be achieved with film.

"Personal Velocity" moves effortlessly through a series of looks that are rich with real-life textures and work to propell true-to-life stories and summon emotional depth with little in the way of pathos.

Sets and props are given more prominence than in a DV movie like the Pinteresque "Tape," set mercilessly in a motel room, while domestic settings seem particularly suited to a medium Winick notes often lends itself to a story dealing with a lower social class.

In the hazy caravan-like kitchen with Delia and her family, it's possible to feel the wax paper quality of her life, while on the open road with Paula, there's a gravelly metallic flatness and in the city with Greta, a stale set of indistinct ivy league interiors. The film, with its framed flatness and unfettered darknesses, looks and feels different to anything you're used to seeing in either DV or film.

Kuras, speaking from upstate New York (where the movie was shot), mentioned her affinity for short stories and described a lyrical and sometimes defiant approach to her camerawork. "I knew that creatively, my palette would be very limited. I just said, You know what, I'm shooting with this mini DV medium, I'm going to think of these as a short story and I'm going to try to make it look and feel like a poem. And that would be my way of saying anything goes. 'I'm making a poem so ... ' That means I don't have to form full sentences. That means I don't have to put periods where you're supposed to put periods at the end of sentences. That means I'm not going to do what everybody says you're supposed to do. I'm just going to do what I think feels right for the movie."

Each story - Delia, Greta and Paula - was designed to have its own look and feel by director, cinematographer and production designer. "We talked about the camera moves and how for Paula, we would be much more static than we would be moving around. We talked about Delia's being very hand-held and very frenetic," Kuras said.

"The thing that makes the difference between how Rebecca and I work and how other people work is that we basically make the movie before we even walk on set. I mean she and I know so well what we want to accomplish and what we want to do that we know what the shots are. We know what we're doing before we even get there, " she explained.

This kind of collaborative planning, instead of a one-sided approach, is what enables the flexibility on set, the opportunity to make changes as the need arises, she says. "People who don't plan get themselves so worked up when they actually get to the location that they're so frantic to get something in the can that they're out of their minds ....

"So you know even, the adage 'either you have time or you have money' -- it doesn't apply. Because I've been on these big movies where you have money. You still need to plan it.

Kuras recalled the "synchronous" making of "Angela," a very independent and "wonderful little gem," and the beginning of a mutual understanding between herself and the director. "We both admired each other's intellect and way of working. She and I, you know we still have that. Something about how we both prepared to make a film. It's how we both describe in visual terms what we want to see in a film and the dramatic points of the film. And that carried over to when we were doing "Personal Velocity.'"

Yet when first approached by Miller to work on the DV project, Kuras had to think twice.

Almost the first thing she wants to talk about is the raging contention among cinematographers over unpaid work in post-production, which for DV can be extensive. But more to the point, the headaches attached to the use of the mini DV camera for a cinematographer are considerable. In the end, a desire to work with Miller no matter what along with a strong script won out.

"My first reaction was, Why not shoot in Super 16?"

Knowing in advance she would be working on another project during post production and arming herself, Kuras strategized to apply principles usually confined to film to the use of the PD 150 camera, breaking with tradition in numerous ways.

Focus, like the enemy, was her first concern. "It's very difficult to verify exact focus and when you don't have exact focus, when you're blowing it up to 35 on the big screen, you can see every little variation in focus. So you have to be dead on.

"Everybody said, 'Oh you should shoot in this particular format ... and mask off the frames,' or "you should shoot with the anamorphic attachments' and I just said, You know what, I am going to have so much time and effort to put towards the focus that I'm just going to put it in 16 by 9 format and I'm going to see what I'm getting."

She took an innovative approach to the problem of contrast in mini DV. "I decided to use smoke as a way of in the interior of decreasing the contrast.I mean people didn't normally think of doing that. Because they just thought, Oh well it's mini DV you just go and point and shoot. But they didn't really think of applying the same principles of film in cinematography to video. "

But perhaps where she really broke out, was in the lighting techniques she has honed over 10 years with John Nadeau's assistance on design. The film in places has an unabashed darkness. "I wanted to make it dark. I wanted to get a little defiant. It's sort of like in mini DV, people don't expect it to be dark. Like in certain films, it's really dark. Where you can just about see what's going on. When she takes him into the motel room. That was really dark and that was one of the places where I said, You know what, I could've opened up on the camera and made it brighter.

"But it wasn't like that, it was dark. It was dark in there and unfortunately you're more aware of the darkness in mini DV because you're more aware of the video noise because the camera is striving to look into the darkness. "Cause you feel that electronic impulse. Unlike in film where it's more subtle, or if you underexpose it, you see the grain. You know I tried to do that in 'Bamboozled' too. It's just everybody says, 'Oh it's so sensitive, it sees into the darkness.' Well not really, I mean it does, and it does have a sensitivity to lower light but what it wants to do is, it wants to take that image and make it brighter. It doesn't want to see it as it is. That's why they have night shooting functions on those cameras. So that it doesn't try to expose it as if it's a day thing."

Contrary to what some would believe, it is quite possible that the same looks achieved in "Personal Velocity" could be gotten on film, in Kuras' opinion. "I think we could've gotten a similar look if we had shot with Super 16, I really do. The only difference would be shutter changes. Which is much more expensive to get in film. You can replicate that. But it's much more expensive. It becomes an obstacle process. You know when you change the shutter speed, and you slow it down to 1/15th, or 1/6th, or whatever you're doing it, it smears the image so much. But in film that's a little bit more difficult to do because what you would do is you would shoot it at 6 planes per second, then transfer it at 6 planes per second, and then jump it back onto film."

Far from singing the praises of DV, the leading cinematographer isn't in its awe. But just a little rankled by it, she's piqued enough to take it up."You know, you're constantly trying to fool the camera and make it look something somewhat cinematic."

"It's a real challenge to try and fool these cameras into doing what you want to do."

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