COMPLETED: premiering Tuesday, June 24, at 8:15 pm
[project diary] [production still] [movie clip]
Ravi Jain
Jamaica Plain, MA
USA
project title: Cyberlounge
producer: Ravi Jain
director: Ravi
Jain
writer: Ravi
Jain
cast & crew:
Steve Garfield - camera
Stefan Economou - score (unconfirmed)
tagline: 72
straight hours of non-stop video, sound and film screenings at an art gallery
situated in a Boston subway station.
treatment:
The Green Street Gallery
resides within the Green Street station of Boston's subway system, on the
Orange Line. It is one of many art venues participating in the 2003 Boston
Cyberarts Festival, a bi-annual art event that began in 1999 and which showcases
uses of technology in art.
For the this event,
the Green Street Gallery will open its doors for 72 hours straight for a Cyberlounge.
Visitors to the gallery will be invited to spend time with a variety of video,
sound, and interactive art. Additionally, selected artists will present their
work in a VJ format over the 72 hours. The gallery will not close during this
time. Typical art galleries and venues might provide an evening for such an
event, as an aside, but never a full day, much less three full days without
a break.
My film Cyberlounge‚
will not just document this event but will also be an actual work in process
during the event. I will transport myself and studio into the gallery as ongoing
element of the Cyberlounge. Participants will be encouraged to interact and
contribute to this organic document. Over the course of this 72 hour gallery
event, visitors can watch a feature film being sculpted.
With the advent of
digital filmmaking and home editing apps such as iMovie, this is not the radical
concept it might have been five or ten years prior. The immediacy of content
creation is ubiquitous in this blog happy society we live in. Therefore, there
won‚t be as many barriers between myself as the filmmaker and the audience
as contributors.
I will be on-site
in the gallery for as much of the 72 hours as possible. My home and studio
are a 5 minute bike ride away, so I'll be able to zip off for catnaps (though
I‚ve found sleep deprivation to fuel creativity!) I will have one or
two camera persons staggered over the course of the event to approach full
coverage.
The structure of the
film will follow the 72 hour event in a linear fashion. While I would love
to be able to include both a shot of the opening of the gallery and the closing
72 hours later, the rules of this competition prevent that. I choose to start
the narrative two or three hours into the event, so that I may cover the final
closing of the gallery and still have two or three hours to include that shot
in the final piece and finalize and output the full feature.
A key on-camera person will be the gallery founder and director James Hull,
who founded the gallery in 1997 as a means of showcasing artists who might
not fit into the criterion established by traditional galleries. The official
mission of the gallery states:
"To move contemporary
artwork into contact with a wider and more diverse audience, to redefine the
term 'Gallery' by opening non-commercial exhibition venues in existing pedestrian
traffic patterns and to educate people outside of contemporary art's traditional
audience and encourage them to experience today's art."
Hull is an enthusiastic
player in the Boston art scene and has situated the gallery at the center
of a number of off-beat events. One such event, the Mad Dash solicits 150
artists to donate 150 works of art that are hung and available for purchase
at a price of $150. Hopeful buyers wait for hours outside for the moment when
both entrances are open and the aforementioned mad dash‚ begins. Only
a tag next to the artwork need be grabbed, so there is no danger of art work
being torn asunder!
The half dozen or
so participating artists in the 2003 Cyberlounge will also be key characters
in the film. Rather than showcase their work in this film, I aim to concentrate
on the artists themselves. As the mission of the gallery aims to attract pedestrian
traffic my goal with this film is to attract an audience that may not be in
tune with current trends in contemporary art practice. To assist with that
goal, the participating artists will communicate their philosophies and motivations.
The visiting public
will be a key presence for the film and I will incorporate as much of their
input as possible. Jamaica Plain is a community with a rich history that has
undergone tonal shifts over the last century and a half. It‚s gone from
an aristocratic summer retreat in the 19th century to working class neighborhood
in the early 20th century to the present day student/family mix. The impact
of art on the community is of persistent relevance and a gallery situated
smack in the middle of daily life (the subway station) makes more inroads
than others. The unique aspect of operating an art gallery within a subway
station begs to be explored and examined.
What drives the audience
to come see this event?
Is this what they expect from this gallery?
Who are those that come in the dark barren hours of the middle of the night?
Are there die-hards who try to gut out the entire event?
Is this the only way to attract people to see art? Will art galleries inside
laundromats, supermarkets and gas stations be next?
Does art and commute intermingle successfully?
Is the final full extent of the event greater than the sum of its parts?
These are some of the questions I hope to address in this film.
I welcome the challenge
imposed by this competition and I take it as a sign that a 72 hour ongoing
event will be occurring in a timeframe conducive to this competition. I believe
that there are certain projects that just deserve to be done and I choose
my projects if I feel I am the best person to realize them.
This is the case with my film Cyberlounge.
statement of style:
My stylistic approach
for this project would be non-fiction documentary, though the line between
mockumentary and documentary is thin and tenuous. So much of present day American
actions and reactions are loaded with references that one need not inject
irony for it to be present. Adulation is a close cousin to parody. So while
I take my role as a storyteller seriously, my means may often embrace the
goofy.
I am intimate with
the subject matter, being an artist who works with new media, so there will
be no time required to get to know‚ the subjects. I will be able to jump
into the content and structure from the get-go. The people surrounding this
event will drive the narrative and the film. I‚m curious as an individual
to hear people's thoughts and opinions about this gallery and the role of
art in the community.
For a possible influence
for this particular project, I point out S. R. Bindler‚s documentary,
"Hands on a Hard Body" which chronicled an annual truck giveaway
event at a truck dealership in Texas which required individuals to stand as
long as possible with a hand on a truck. The sheer inanity of the contest
soon faded as age-old competitive sub-dramas emerged amongst the individuals
chronicled.
There are great dramatic
narrative structures that exist in every day, regular life. Add to that a
unique venue hosting a unique event, and you are bound to get a wide palette
of interesting individuals. Consolidating the resulting moments that these
individuals inhabit and coalescing them into an engaging document is the challenge
of the documentary filmmaker.
I place great emphasis
on composition of shot, drawn from a foundation of study in photography. I'm
of the belief that a viewer should not be overtly aware of the camera, thus
I'm mindful of techniques such as zooming or changing focus.
I also strive for
an economy of shooting - the less footage to log and edit, the better. I take
a sculptural approach to digital filmmaking in that I will lay in some sort
of wireframe track, such as text or a read through. As individual scenes are
shot and edited, I can incorporate them into the full work. Thus, I can view
the film even when the filming hasn‚t been completed, with the read-throughs
or text tracks substituting for scenes not yet filmed. One can still gauge
the pacing and structure and make important decisions before production has
stopped. Thus, scripting, shooting and editing can all potentially inform
each other.
I've always thrived
while under a tight deadline. When time is of the essence and one is forced
to be decisive, one develops work with a more urgent, intuitive quality. Give
too much time, a project will linger and lag. Bring on the challenge!
I will be shooting on mini-DV and editing on an Apple workstation with Final Cut Pro.
timeline:
May 7
3:00 am Production begins - external night shots, interviews with first attendees
5:00 am Sunrise - external shot, first trains/subways shot, interviews
7:00 am Morning commute, interviews with commuters
9:00 am Interview with James Hull
10 am - 6 pm Interviews with artists, attendees (2nd unit production)
7pm - 9pm log first round of footage
10 pm ˆ 11 pm Artist Interviews
May 8
12 am 24 hour mark - interview die-hards‚
(sleep break)
5 am - sunrise, coffee run
6 am - noon Interviews with artists, attendees
12 pm - 4 pm Log second round of footage, make Rough Cut #1
7 pm - 9 pm Lay down music tracks with guest musicians in the gallery
10 pm - 1 am Interviews with attendees and artists
(sleep break)
May 9
6 am - 10 am 2nd unit pick up shots
10 am - 4 pm Rough cut #2
4 pm - 7 pm Final interviews
8 pm - 11 pm Log and capture, Rough cut #3
May 10
12 am - Closing of Cyberlounge captured.
1 am - 2 am Final cut created
3 am Film is shipped from South Station Post Office in South Boston (24 hour
Post office)
4 am - 4 pm the eternal sleep
director bio:
Ravi Jain's work employs
emerging and unconventional media to explore, develop and extend a spirit
of adventure. He embraces collaborative input as a key element to his projects.
Technology and media intertwine with personal nostalgia.
Jain customized his
own undergraduate degree at Oberlin College, combining Computer Science, Photography
and Film Theory into a unified discipline. He followed this degree by working
in the then blossoming industry of interactive design in Boston. For three
years, Jain lived and worked in Stockholm, Sweden, enmeshed in an environment
with a progressive Œearly-adopter‚ approach to technology.
Jain returned to Boston
to pursue a Master of Fine Arts degree at the Massachusetts College of Art,
in their Studio for Interrelated Media (SIM) program. One work developed at
this time is an ongoing performance based work that sees Jain intent on pioneering‚
new forms of transportation. A resulting multimedia installation, The Museum
of Transportation Pioneering,‚ was the winner of Boston's Bromfield Art
Gallery's 2001 Solo Show Competition. A Flash-enabled web distillation of
this work resides at http://pioneer.ravi.nu
Another work developed
during Jain‚s MFA pursuits explores identity construction on the Internet
through a web sitcom based on Jain‚s own life. Three Abreast: The Web
Friendly Sitcom!‚ was launched in 2002 and was recently selected as a
finalist in the South by Southwest Festival Website Competition. The site
(http://www.three-abreast.com)
is currently on hiatus as Jain prepares an extended edition for relaunch.
Jain lives in Boston
and works for the public television history series, American Experience, developing
interactive content. Additionally, Jain will be teaching at Northeastern University‚s
Multimedia Studies program during the 2003-2004 academic year.
cast & crew bio:
Trained in both field
and studio production at Cablevision, Steve Garfield produced many live and
taped shows for broadcast. Steve ran both studio and field camera for numerous
shows over a 15 year period. He directed the annual International Festival,
Chamber of Commerce Auction and many outdoor concerts.
Steve recently completed
a two-month project as a Producer at WBGH in Boston where he produced over
100 video segments for the 2002 auction. That involved, writing scripts, creating
shot lists, producing field shoots, developing edit lists, and recording voice-overs.
His most recent video production is a music video for the up and coming Boston band The Adam Ezra Group.
score: 18 out of 30 possible points
[project diary] [production still] [movie clip]