((Speed of Sound)) Diary Part Three

Part Three. Post-Production.

Based on my therapist's suggestion, I went to Whidbey Island to go camping. My brother lent me all the camping gear I needed. I bought a magazine. It was a Discovery magazine with hammerhead sharks on the cover. I also brought some food and booze and a toothbrush. I drove out to the ferry and made the trip, about sixty miles from my house.

It started raining when I got to Whidbey Island. When I got to the national park where I was going to spend the night, the rain let up for a while, long enough for me to pitch a tent. Making the tent was pretty much slapstick comedy. There were too many parts. I wanted to make a simple teepee and get my nature on. 

I wondered off, along the ridge that overlooks the sound; solitary and aimless, feeling crazy.

((Speed of Sound)) Diary Part Two

Part Two. Pre-Production and Principle Photography.

"Thinking it over" often means you're either waiting for your intuition to appear or waiting to see if it changes. Saying "think" is misleading, since it isn't a rational process. If it were, someone might say "thinking it through," like it was a plan. In January 2013 I was thinking it over. Whether to make the movie David and I had been planning, Speed of Sound.

I was relying on David for psychological support. 16 speaking parts. 32 locations. 2 weeks. 65 pages of script. 70 scenes total. And I still thought feature films had to be made with expensive cameras I'd never seen before, with armies of people working on them, who spoke a secret Hollywood language that called clothespins C47's. David was the first person to encourage me to make a feature, and had experience acting and producing in them. He was a warm and creative friend. He was irreplaceable.

At the end of January, my intuition hadn't changed and I decided to make the film on our original schedule. I divided the work David would have done for separate people and approached two friends of mine, Chy Chi and Erica Karnes.

((Speed of Sound)) Diary Part One

It's just about the one year anniversary of shooting Speed of Sound, I'll be posting the year-long production diary here in three installments.

SPEED OF SOUND Production Diary by Brian Perkins

Part One. Before Pre-production.

I spent most of 2012 working on a project called You Poor Thing, which was supposed to be my first feature. It was a psychedelic monster movie that had some metaphysical ideas and film noir elements, and was going to be potentially so scrappy and lo-fi it could be shot on our phones. At first it was going to be shot in Milwaukee, then in Portland.

It was an eccentric project for sure. The script was a mess, a loosely-knitted patchwork quilt of diverse influences. Ghosts and monsters appeared in it, filmed with lots of color but also with a documentary quality. That's what I wanted, anyway. It was myself (in Seattle) and several others in Portland, a small group of creative people but inexperienced film producers.

When David Fetzer told me he was moving to Seattle, the news was fucking delightful. 

Ben Driving to Port Townsend