Storyboards: "What Remains"

Attached find the storyboards for my digital video / installation -- "What Remains" ...

[Storyboards conceived by Jon Comeau, shot by Ben Baker-Smith, actor Jeff Vaudrin-McLean]

The storyboards themselves apply only to the single-channel digital video -- the installation will be slightly different, as it will incorporate multiple channels.








-jon

The sound of his voice

Have you ever been repelled by someone by the sound of their voice?

Art and Cinema

Is all art a form of passive-aggression?

******

Cinema is an overwhelming testimony to the narcissistic power of the
human ego -- an apprehension of projection.

Passive acknowledgment

When one says, "Only the present moment matters," is there not also a passive acknowledgment of [and possibly a wish for] other moments than the present moment itself?

When one attempts to rebel against an antagonist, is there not an acknowledgment of the antagonist's dominance?

One-Take Super 8 Event, Oberlin, OH

On April 4th, I will be one of the artists screening an unedited [I will never have seen the product before the night of the screening] reel of super 8 film in Fairchild Chapel on the Oberlin College campus.

For further information, see: One-Take Super 8 Event.

My film is entitled, "I love chips." I will also be providing a live soundtrack.

[Not a] Recommendation: "Pete Travis makes history."

Vantage Point, dir. Pete Travis, 2008. I mention this film not because this is a recommendation. I mention this film because it is the worst movie that I have ever seen. I am unable to fathom how this script got funding, which gutter they grabbed Pete Travis out of, or why they proposed to execute a film in such a haphazard fashion. This was the sloppiest, most disgusting excuse for a movie I have ever had the displeasure of sitting through. The film tells the story of a supposed U.S.-presidential assassination in Cordoba, Spain. This flimsy premise is told from around 7 or 8 perspectives over the course of the film - each time the president is shot [or around that time], the movie "rewinds" [and this is quote possibly the most annoying, agonizing gimmick in the history of cinema - I felt like I was sitting through a piss-poor version of No Exit] and we are brought back to approx. 20 minutes before the president is shot. Oh, don't worry, I'm not giving anything away. It gets worse. So much worse. Wooden acting - the actors look like they're just as aware as the audience that this script sucks. Poorly executed CGI. AND this is a movie about terrorism - yet the film refuses to take ethics into consideration - it's just like Pete Travis said, "oh, here's a movie, I made it yesterday in iMovie. I thought if I hired enough great actors and had them perform terribly for 80 minutes, it might make a splash - you know, art or something." Oh, Pete Travis... it made a splash for me. I threw up afterwards. [The worst part about all of this: he will get funding for another movie - asshole]

Manifesto

Correction: it would be great to miss the point, but I don't think I have. No, I've just sidestepped it into oblivion. And that's as inexcusable as missing the point out of ignorance.

A quote from a book that I'm reading, Rollo May's The Courage to Create:

"This courage will not be the opposite of despair... rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair... Courage... is not to be confused with rashness. The ultimate end of such rashness is... [getting] at least one's head battered in with a policeman's billy club... In human beings courage is necessary to make being and becoming possible. An assertion of the self, a commitment, is essential if the self is to have any reality... Paul Tillich speaks of courage as ontological - it is essential to our being."

I have certain methods of avoidance - most unconscious - that I am becoming more and more aware of as time passes. I believe that, in certain ways, the creation of an ambivalent manifesto was a method of avoidance. I said nothing - made no commitments - and so accomplished or received nothing. Is ambivalence another word for nihilism?

This semester, I propose to create a film in which I will display a courage to trust the image - a film in which I will commit action to my thinking and understand why I am making decisions - a film in which I linger over the image. Jeff Pence has mentioned "slow pans, long takes, dialogue, no heavy editing."

I also might mention: a less violent form of filmmaking. This is not to say that the film might not have violence - but that the formal aesthetic of the film does not involve a certain - warfare on the image.

More on this later.