Have we really been fighting for Islamic rule?

The preliminary count from Iraq's election confirms that the main Shi'ite coalition will dominate the new Parliament. The next PM of Iraq will be someone who wants Islam to be the official religion of Iraq, who wants the Koran to be the main basis for writing a Constitution, who will take directives from Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani when writing the nation's laws, and who will be very close to Iran. Considering the celebrations and self-congratulations of neo-cons and other Bush supporters about how well the Iraqi election went, it's time to ask if we've really been fighting for Islamic rule throughout the Middle East all along, intentionally or not.

-- via Plastic

But it was first found on the Christian Science Monitor, which adds (which was NOT quoted in the Plastic snippet):

However, Bayati says he doesn't expect the emerging government will be dogmatic. For instance alcohol, which is forbidden in Islam, will probably remain legal. It's that degree of flexibility that holds hope that while Iraq's Shiites will be the dominant force in the emerging order, they won't impose rules on Iraq's divided population that could lead to more conflict.

"We're a majority but we have to be careful that we don't create other problems, like political isolation or breed more terrorism,'' Jaafari says.

Comment: I'm particularly curious as to whether Isalmic Economics will play much of a role in the emerging Iraqi economy and how that will effect the flow of oil.

Inter arma, enim silent leges

Inter arma, enim silent leges - In times of war, laws fall silent:

The United States has a long and consistent pattern of unduly restricting civil liberties in time of war. Time after time, we have panicked in the face of war fever. We have lashed out at those we fear and allowed ourselves to be manipulated by opportunistic and exploitative politicians. We did this in 1798, when we enacted the Alien and Sedition Acts, during the Civil War when Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus, during World War I when the nation brutally suppressed all criticism of the war and the draft, during World War II when we interned 120,000 individuals of Japanese descent, during the Cold War when we humiliated, abused and silenced tens of thousands of individuals for their political beliefs and associations, and during the Vietnam War when the government engaged in an aggressive program of surveillance, infiltration, and surreptitious harassment designed to "exposre, disrupt, and neutralize" antiwar dissent.

-- Geof Stone, part of a series of blog entries regarding the suspension of liberty in war. posted on Professor Lawrence Lessig's Blog .

Read it and be doomed to knowingly repeat history forever.

HD workflow note for music videos or short short films:

Videocraft rent CineAlta's for $1700 a day for a 'production kit' consisting of HWDF900 head, HDVF20 viewfinder, a Canon 8-128 HD lens, batteries, mattebox, and a 20+ HD tripod (a very nice heavy duty tripod). They also do 'three day weekends'. You pickup the camera on Friday and return it by noon on Monday abnd you only pay for ONE DAY. So you're effectively paying $560 a day for a HD camera. Nice.

They're also getting in a new J-Series player which plays back HDCAM. It features DV-out via firewire and does on-the-fly downconversion. It should rent for $500, which is around the same as a 1200A ProHD deck.

So, shoot on the CineAlta at a price-point which is CHEAPER than the Varicam (which is $1200 a day for the head only) and you capture a DV-OFFLINE via the deck. You do your edit in beautifully transcoded DV on your stock standard FCP HD/Express suite. You then go to Videocraft recapture off the HDCAM master tapes for an uncompressed HD 4:2:2 finish using an Avid Adrenaline (RT HD). Its around $700 for the dry hire.

All up, that should cost you $2900 for an uncompressed HD finish (excluding stock) A little more expensive, overall, than the Varicam but the quality would be superior in some ways. That said, Lemac did us the Varicam + Deck for $2000 for two-days. Always push for deals.

But at $2900, you could consider Super-16mm or, if you're really crazy, 2-perf 35mm aka Techniscope. Actually, its not that crazy, there are plenty of Australian MV's shot in 2-perf.

[film geek note, American Graffiti, THX-1138, all but a few of Sergio Leone's movies were all shot in 2-perf, and Goddard used 2-perf whenever he did 2.35]

Client Stories #398

Client: "You want a coffee?"
Me: "Sure!" [places order]

15 minutes later, the Client comes back with coffee and sandwhiches:

Client: "We bought you lunch so you don't have to leave!"
Me: "Gee, thanks!"

On the other hand, said Client also gave me a bottle of The Macallan - 12 yo. Its a legendary whisky and I'm looking forward to trying it. I'm developing an expensive palate for Scotch after drinking Johnny Walker Blue (probably the only blend I actually like). Glenfiddich 12yo is now my 'tabletop' Scotch for regular drinking...

I need to buy me some Oban.

Rushes and the Art of Auto-Compression

Its been remarked (by Coppola I think) that a movie will never be as good as your rushes but never as bad as your first cut.

Perhaps that's why I'm always scared when I watch the "rushes" of something I've directed (or shot, as I used to do) for the first time. I'm always worried that they're going to 'look' (in a broad sense, including performance and storytelling) like crap... and that is all to which the resulting movie will ever amount.

Now, I'm not talking about dailies, and perhaps Coppola wasn't either. Dailies are useful and allow you and your crew to make adjustments and change your plan of attack over the course of a shoot. Problems can still be fixed; performances can be finessed; story points made more clear. I'm a problem-solver, its part of what I love being on set, and rushes are a key component of that. However, I get frustrated when I can't solve something and I get really cranky when I can't even conceive of how to solve a problem...

Which is why when I watch all the rushes back-to-back for the first time, usually to log the footage and confirm print takes, I invariably find the process depressing. There's a crushing finality to what you've got - what you are watching are your raw elements and that is what you have to work with. Its like 'Well, I screwed that up and that up... oh, and that too'. And it takes a while for a wholistic vision to emerge - the creative problem solving of editing hasn't sunk in yet.

This is why I prefer to watch the complete rushes by myself. Its an intense experience, and I get super-sensitive. There's nothing worse than watching a performance and thinking 'hmm, I hope I pushed for another take of that, cause that was 90% of the way there' and then find that you moved onto the next shot. If you've managed to get a bit of a roll-in, its bad when you hear some really dodgy direction you've given the talent. "Oh man, why did I say that? Of course she was going to react like that!".

On set, I find that I'm working instinctively and unable to over-analyse performances. I can (and must!) be able to do simple adjustments to help the actor find a scene or become real... but when you decide that 'wow, that's gold' its an instinctive reaction... A least in the experiences I've had, which have not 'benefitted' from immediate playback of the video tap. Not that I think watching back performances in the environment of a set would be completely conducive to a getting a good feel of a performance; it has to be something you react to emotionally when you're in 'the zone' of a take. Y'know, that space that directors go when they're watching a movie unfold before them. That weird world where you're paradoxically suspended in a singular moment and accelerated through all the possibilities of what you're trying to make. For me, the ritual and rhythms of a set allow me to enter that 'takezone' - and I'm not sure if watching back a take after its been shot would allow me to enter that space. Instead, I'm concerned I'd become 'distracted' with that kind of hypercritical self-censorship which Cassavetes always wanted to avoid.

Hindsight is, however, the worst form of bias - and the easiest thing to do is criticise the performances you've managed to capture. The real trick is knowing what would have worked to change those performances at thetime. Its very easy, particularly for non-directors, to criticise a performance and immediately assume that saying something like "I want you to not think about your lines" to an actor would work. Or simply pointing out the problem would be useful. Being aware of problems is easy, knowing what to do to solve them is the real craft of directing. There are NO hard and fast rules when directing actors - like everyone, they're unique people who react differently to different things. One actor may respond favourably to a direction like "I want you to not think about your lines" while their co-star may become self-conscious with the recursiveness of thinking-about-not-thinking-about-their lines. One of the hardest things to learn is how to deal with different actors... to suss em out... to work out how you should direct them... what gets them in the moment, living beat-by-beat.... There's problem some people out there who have a knack for it, but I'm not one of them. Its not my strength as a director.

Which is why, as depressing as watching rushes are, I find thats its one of the most invaluable experiences you can have as a director... its like watching your shoot back and being able to assess take-by-take your actual craft, or lack thereof, of directing on set. You can see if your directions actually made a goddmn difference to the performances. Maybe that is why I don't like watching back rushes? Because I'm afraid of what I'll see? At the same time, its that very fear which keeps me wanting to make films... I'm driven by my own self-doubt. Fucked up.

Wow. Thats the most gratuitous piece of blogging I've done in a long time. Sorry guys! :)

[Edit 2 of this - I really should proof read before I post!]