CHASE! a documentary

[Eric T. Jones]

A Production Journal entry:

"31 December 2006-
Well, it's that time of year again. Yes, the end of the year.

Richie elected to squeeze one last movie out of the year of 2006, which was only slightly more eventful than 2005 in that we got some projects unfrozen and quickly released (The Last Fight Movie in the Universe, SCHEDULE). My new favorite of the films I've made, "N", was quickly finished in a day when other projects are still spending months in halted production.

He wanted to film a chase scene... actually, a practice version. Which was fine with me until last night, when he sent examples that finally confirmed to me what I think of chase scenes: they're boring, and repetitive. I wanted to experiment with improvisation and long takes, and he refused to pre-plan the film we made today. It would be improvised on set.

As it turns out, our cast members, Kevin and Sean, had also seen "Children of Men", and the three of us were crazy about the idea of long takes shot documentary-style. "Children of Men" is the first time I could say shooting documentary-style actually made a movie realistic. Not so much here.

It was a very fun shooting experience due it its unrestrained nature, but I think I'd puke if I saw the finished product, titled "CHASE! a documentary". Yes, there are interviews. And cameramen are captured in-shot, as both Richie and I were operating our own cameras. Not to mention highly unsteady camerawork.

There were conflicting viewpoints on the manner of shooting: Richie pointed out that I could call "CUT" and ask the actors to repeat their actions, shooting from another angle. I personally felt we had gone too far to make this like anyone else's chase video, like the many on YouTube.

We blew around 30 minutes' worth of tape on this, but I'm not wasting that much computer space! I'll wear down those tapes for only the takes I'm using, as I have more important things to use my hard disk for."

[Eric T. Jones]

Another Production Journal entry:

"4 January 2007-
If "CHASE! a documentary" ever gets released, you won't hear about it from me. That's my take after workprinting the raw footage on VHS. Why I workprinted it:


-Computer space is precious. For "Visions", it hogged my external drive, and I still didn't get a satisfactory middle sequence. Since there really isn't space to waste anymore on my hard disk or my external, uploading everything is out of the question. Especially for a film that we deemed garbage even when we were shooting it.

-Sifting through the original DV tape to find the right clips would wear it down and garble up potentially useable footage. It's much safer to sift through a workprint copy, however worthless the film may be.


I'm taking this as a second documentary editing exercise, after "Visions"... possibly even practice if I'm motivated enough to attempt a recut again. Taking advice from film school, I wrote very, very rough notes down that are garbled descriptions of each of the takes, in addition to a very rough transcript of the interview. This gave me a perspective as to how much of the footage we shot really isn't useable... and even worse, isn't remotely funny.

Afterwards, by a very, very rough edit from the VHS copy of the raw footage to Digital8 tape, I'll see if it's structured good (enough) then do a final edit on computer using only the "good" footage. "CHASE!", finally, will have a private funeral- I mean screening- attended by the cast and crew involved. That number is four, myself included, so very little people will have to suffer through this abomination.

Well, Richie predicted the film wouldn't be released days before we filmed it, when it was always intended as a one-day affair and an exercise for a future chase scene project. I probably ruined it with my stylistic intervention, but personally, I preferred trying something new that had a chance of not working, as opposed to yet another static-angled imitation of every other chase scene that would die on YouTube, and probably guarantee even less viewing of our other films (if that's even possible).

Every bad movie is a good learning experience."