I don’t get excited about the Academy Awards like I used to. This year was especially bad, because (believe it or not) I have not seen ANY of the movies that were nominated in any of the most important categories. Seriously. I hesitate to admit this publicly, but we’re all about sharing here, and the most recent film I saw was RENT.

So, even though I cannot speak intelligently about the Oscar winners this year, I’m hoping you folkds can fill in the gaps. Let’s have a look, then, at a few of the winners I care about:

Picture: Crash

Director: Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain)

Adapted Screenplay: Brokeback Mountain (Larry McMurtry, Diana Ossana)

Original Screenplay: Crash (Paul Haggis, Robert Moresco)

Animated Film: Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Wererabbit

Foreign-language film: Tsotsi (South Africa) 

Best Actor: Philip Seymour Hoffman (Capote)

Best Actress: Reese Witherspoon (Walk the Line)

Okay, I’ve actually seen the Wallace and Gromit film. Wouldn’t have missed it for the world. And I actually had the Crash DVD in my hand in line at the local Movie Gallery a month ago, before settling on something else at the last minute. And, unlike many men out there, I will admit that I would’ve seen Brokeback Mountain if I could’ve found anyone to go with me. Ang Lee is one of my all-time favorite directors. I met him once, saw his student film. I’ll have to tell you about that sometime. Paul Haggis is a longtime TV writer who also wrote Million Dollar Baby.

So, what do you think? Should Crash have gotten it? Who was snubbed? Am I a total poser? Click on the link below to let me have it – intelligent discussion is a few keystrokes away.

I recently gave Dakota a call and we discussed the general story arc of the documentary. Much like a news story, we really didn’t know how things would turn out until we got back with the footage in-hand. It’s a throwback to my days in radio broadcast news. 

We talked about how the general story arc is much different from what we originally thought it would be. We went into the project knowing that the big event of the weekend was the knighting of Sir Gabriel, so we made efforts to focus on him throughout the weekend. It was totally unexpected that he left the camp to go to his girlfriend’s art show in Kansas City shortly after he arrived. So I left Dakota and Ryan behind at camp and accompanied Gabriel on the drive to KC.

That turned out to be a really smart idea, as it gave us some good footage to balance out the "ordinary" life with the sort of Dagorhir life and persona. From that point, Dakota came up with the Weekend Warlords title, and we figured the doc would be a contrast: Here are these guys/gals who lead everyday, maybe even mundane lives that the viewer could relate to, who become knights, kings, etc, on the weekends. They can slip into this sort of alternate reality/power structure where they are revered, respected and related to on a whole different set of principles.

Our perception changed yet again after we watched all the footage we got from the weekend. This was inevitable, as the two cameras were rarely in the same place at the same time, and we often interviewed different subjects. One thing was clear — the battles, although interesting, are not nearly as interesting as the characters. So we pinpointed a few different story "arcs" that would follow these characters that we can weave together, amidst the overall framework of the battles. Among them are Aster and Mystic and the hows/whys of what they are leading, and Gabriel’s quest to become a knight.

Knowing how things go, I fully expect this to change as we start putting these together, seeing what works and what doesn’t, and letting the structure of the film flow organically from the pieces as they are assembled. This weekend, I will post a short edited section and deconstruct it to illustrate the progress. 

The process of separating the footage into individual clips and labeling each one gives me a chance to review exactly what we have. From a media management standpoint, it also forces the editor (me) to put the clips in some sort of organizational structure so that he can easily call up the necessary clips without searching and re-viewing them over and over.

Now, as much as I am in love with FCP and think it’s the best editing system I’ve ever laid my hands on, I have to admit one simple, undeniable fact: the Media Manager sucks. I can’t even begin to describe how it is lacking in intuitiveness and ease of use. So, in my case, I created a series of categorized folders:

1) Interviews – This is for the generic talking-head interviews with the Dagorhir participants, and we have a lot. I didn’t bother pulling out individual quotes yet, but I did try to listen to the bulk of each interview and include careful descriptions in the clip names of what that person covered.

2) Beginning – This is the footage that we shot of people arriving, unloading their cars and trucks, packing their gear up, and setting up their camps. There’s great stuff here, including a knight on his tractor.

3) Battle – Loads of clips in here. Dakota shot some terrific battle scenes, with a few really funny bits. Surprisingly, this is NOT the bulk of our footage.

4) Special Events – There were a number of special events during the weekend — special tournaments, a baby shower, a feast, etc. All that stuff went in here.

5) Knighting – The event that everyone was looking forward to, the knighting of Sir Gabriel. Since a lot of our story revolves around him, there is some good stuff here. This was a night event, and a bit tricky to shoot, but I’ll get to that later.

6) Gabriel – A special folder devoted to the off-site footage of Gabriel that I took – his visit to his girlfriend’s apartment, her art show, the car trip into Kansas City.

After looking at all this, I called Dakota and we compared his notes from when he sat down and watched all the footage a few months ago. But I’ll save that discussion for the next post.

I know I promised a clip, so I’ve pulled out this cute clip of some kids beating up on someone twice their size. Click the picture above to enjoy, or you can follow this link.