J.M.E. PROVAN — OKAY, SO, WHAT'S A CINEMATOGRAPHER, EXACTLY?

Hello — J.M.E. Provan here. Welcome to my diary...those of you who actually read further down the last page than the link to Jason's director's journal, I thank you kindly.

Technically speaking, a cinematographer is the person responsible for the photography of the motion picture, be it film, digital or animated. You could say I'm the guy who deals with "Lights, Camera" and leaves "Action!" to Jay. But the technical answer is nothing more than the one you'll read in Webster's...hardly the truth.

Over the next several months – perhaps dozens of them – I'll wear many a hat, from the "writer" one I've got on now to the "producer" one I'll wear when we're finished and out there selling this puppy. And in between...well, I'd imagine that location scout, crew wrangler and color timer will be but a small subset of my cinematographerly roles to play. And don't get me started on the looming responsibility of making sure the right brand of beef jerky (Pemmican) makes it to the set in Tallahassee.

Okay, so, what's a cinematographer, exactly? Hell, I don't know. I suppose we'll find out together.

'Til tale's end,
— J.M.E. Provan, November 17th, 2006

Table of Contents

4/4/2007 — Entry II-A: When Gregor Samsa Awoke One Morning From Disturbing Dreams...

2/27/2007 — Entry I-I: Meetings Are Better Than Not Meetings
2/20/2007 — Entry I-H: Roll Call
1/26/2007 — Entry I-G: From The Mouths Of Babes...And Some Nice-Lookin' Dudes, Too
1/8/2007 — Entry I-F: Stock Answers
1/5/2007 — Entry I-E: 99 Bottles of Beer In My Stomach
12/11/2006 — Entry I-D: Why Not Dat Closure?
12/8/2006 — Entry I-C: Place Index Finger Horizontally Upon Lips, Move Up And Down, Hum
12/4/2006 — Entry I-B or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Rewrite
11/17/2006 — Entry I-A: The State of Things at the Start of Things

11/17/2006 — Entry I-A: The State of Things at the Start of Things

I suppose I just started off with a lie.

By no means is this the start of things — Jay and I put the business plan together in May. But the last two weeks have felt like a new beginning.

Had we stuck to our original plan, our first day of shooting would have been this coming Sunday. Yeah, um...it's not, now. But that's good, as we're in a more powerful place.

The script is so much better than it was...every new draft gets us closer to what it's really about, and it's starting to look like there's something hidden inside our little story that could be great...we'll find out soon.

Mitch is on board, which – like Blue – is glorious. His energy has shot us forward and really clarified what the endgame of this production is going to look like. Hard to imagine Tubes without him, now that he's here.

I guess this isn't all that informative or revelatory an entry, but it's odd starting in the middle. Hopefully this'll work out like Dark City, and you guys'll piece it together as we go along. If not, perhaps I'll throw in a dirty joke or some dancing girls from time to time. Whatever twangs your strings.

KIITP,
— J.M.E.P.

12/4/2006 — Entry I-B or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Rewrite

We had this great scene in the first draft of the script. I mean, it was something — this big hurricane breaks this building to pieces, right when our main character's in the second-floor lounge, and there's lightning and thunder, and there are screaming girls, and a guy gets smashed by a falling piece of concrete, and our main character – right in front of our eyes – develops this crazy psychological condition...

Cut it.

Then we had this hilarious scene in the third draft of the script, where our main character needs to use the phone, but he doesn't have one of his own, so his friend – this mailman – takes him to the trailer of these two teenage Korean twins, but these girls – typical sixteen-year-olds – won't get off their cell phones, and they won't even pay attention to our guy long enough to explain why they won't get off their cell phones, and he gets more and more agitated, and then, when he finally does get on the phone...

Doesn't matter. Cut it.

Oh, and I almost forgot: in the seventh version of the forty-four-page treatment we wrote after we threw away the fifth draft of the script and started from scratch, we came up with this really evocative and powerful scene in which our main character wakes up from a sensory coma brought on when he crashed a stolen Airstream trailer into the back yard of a Southern plantation, and he's got hospital scrubs and handcuffs on, and it's obvious that he's been through some seriously hard times, and he discovers that the Airstream has disappeared while he was out cold (the tracks lead into the woods), and rather than choose either of the sensible options – go to the house for help, or just run away – he follows the tracks into the woods, and...

...and that one, we kept. Because that's what our story is about: a man so proud and so scared and so fixated and so blind that he makes decisions that turn out, in the end, not to be in his best interests.

Just goes to show you, you shouldn't get too attached to anything in this life...or you might end up just like him.

I almost did.
— J.M.E.P.

12/8/2006 — Entry I-C: Place Index Finger Horizontally Upon Lips, Move Up And Down, Hum

Hear that sound you're makin'? That's how I feel.

Script Revision + Crew Hunt + Look Research + Contract Scrutiny
+ Too Much Coffee = (refer to entry title)

My next project is going to be called Nap.
— J.M.E.P.

12/11/2006 — Entry I-D: Why Not Dat Closure?

It just occurred to me, as I typed the capital "I" at the beginning of this sentence, planning initially (no pun intended) to type a different sentence, that some of you may be wondering why I seem to be posting to my production diary more frequently than the other two fellows. Because I'm the webmaster, that's why, and access is power. For all you know, all the entries in all the production diaries are mine — Mitch and Jay could be but smoke and mirrors, carefully wrought for your deception and ultimate doom by my hand. Moo...moo ha ha!

But they're not, 'cause I don't have the time for that. The webmaster part is true, however.

What I was originally going to say was: I (there's where that capital "I" would have come in) may have lost some of you with that last sad-sack entry. And those of you whom I may have lost were lost because I didn't accurately declare to you in advance the nature of this production diary. It was a simple advertising error, really; I can't say it wasn't predictable. Allow me to offer an analogy:

It's December of 2001, and you're waiting in line to buy a ticket for A Beautiful Mind on opening weekend, hoping upon hope that Ron Howard will finally screw up and have a flop so you can convince yourself that he's a human being and not an alien-technology-powered hit-movie-making machine. Whilst you wait, a preview for Scooby-Doo appears on one of those new-fangled, wall-mounted plasma displays they're just starting to install in theater lobbies. This preview indicates to you that Scooby-Doo is going to be a streetwise hip-hop extravaganza, complete with a bumpin' OutKast soundtrack, fly girls and your favorite Scoob/Shag duo, shakin' their weed-addled Mystery Machines in a sweet-ass club that looks an awful lot like a spooky amusement park. Being "krunk" at the time, you make a mental note to do exactly what you're doing right now (waiting in line for tickets) when Scooby-Doo opens in June of next year.

Fast-forward six months — having arrived an hour early to secure the seat in the exact geometrical center of the theater in order to enjoy the optimum stereophonic effect of Scooby-Doo's R&B score, you munch on Junior Mints in relative solitude, pausing every few minutes to scrape chocolate off the back of your diamond-studded front teeth. The film begins, and you settle back into your creaky seat, sugar high in full tilt, already envisioning the sideways ballcaps and monochromatic tracksuits, your eardrums jonesing for that first phat "BOOMP" of a downbeat, yes, yes...no...no, no! What? What is this? "This is downright cartoony," you say as you stand. "Scooby's computer-generated! They wouldn't be able to afford that in the 'hood! And they're wearing the same clothes they used to wear in the 70's! Even Velma, and turtleneck sweaters are most certainly not 'street!' Wait a minute...that's not a club that looks an awful lot like a spooky amusement park...that is a spooky amusement park! And I can already tell who the villain is going to be, and it's only three minutes into the movie! What a crock! This is just like the show!!" And just like that, you pick yourself up and tromp out of the theater, never to lay eyes on Scooby-Doo (or its sequel, Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed) again, never to know that the last sentence you screeched out in the theater is absolutely correct, and if the preview had just indicated that to you in the first place instead of trying to carve out a demographic by misrepresenting the film, then you could have left your diamond-studded teeth at home, come to the theater, sat down, eaten your Junior Mints much more easily, and seen Scooby-Doo for what it was, which was a pretty good movie.

The analogy now complete, I offer you this explanative truism about my production diary: I have vowed not to sugar-coat anything here, but rather to tell it like it is. Whatever I'm experiencing at the time – amusement, exhaustion, elation, itchiness – will find its way to these pages. I should have told you this upfront.

I hope you'll forgive me. If not, I can always screen my VHS copy of Cocoon and have a good cry.

I love you, Ron Howard.
— J.M.E.P.

1/5/2007 — Entry I-E: 99 Bottles of Beer In My Stomach

Let's just say it was a fine holiday.

I'd like to welcome myself back into the fold. "Thank you!" No sweat. I'm excited at this moment, because this movie is going to be awesome. In fact, I'm forcing myself to keep this short, lest I run at the mouth (fingertips).

The next few entries are going to center around more technical stuff (gotta make good on this "cinematographer" designation at some point), but first, one quick writer's suggestion: never ever never write a long-form treatment in which you describe the sentences that the characters are saying. This is really just a bad script and will do nothing but confuse your readers, making them think that you don't know what you're doing, even though you do. When you get to the point in your treatment where the story works and the beats of the scenes are blocked out, write the screenplay and save yourself many awkward, agonizing conversations.

Tune in next time, when your humble narrator reveals to the uninitiated the importance of the number 7217... and/or bores everyone to death.

Ra-cha-cha,
— J.M.E.P.

1/8/2007 — Entry I-F: Stock Answers

The world of Tubes is one in which the characters have drained their own lifeblood by blaming their circumstances on other people. As a result, calamity abounds, as no one takes responsibility for anything.

This creates a strong visual direction for the film. It tells us we're not going to use a lot of color. It tells that our image shouldn't be perfect. It tells us that there will be areas of blinding brightness and deep, bottomless dark. And it tells us that, while our story is distilled and fictional, it's not all that far removed from modern-day reality.

Which puts us squarely in the realm of Super 16mm film. Here's what we ruled out and why...

Video — Though there are a number of nice, affordable-but-still-high-end cameras out there these days (Panasonic VariCam, Thomson Grass Valley Viper FilmStream, etc.), none of them yet match the tonal range of good, old-fashioned film. The blacks (colors, not people) on video are murky and thin, while the whites are testy and volatile. Our film takes place in the contrasts between things, so without that necessary visual tool, we'd be sunk. Also, unless you severely manhandle them, video images are still too clean for our gritty, nasty world. Lately, great things are happening on video – like Superman Returns, shot on Panavision's Genesis digital cinematography system. But take one look at a darker digital movie – Apocalypto, anyone? (shot using the same system) – and you'll start to recognize the pitfalls.

35mm Film — This was an easy one. 35mm film – still the standard and still used to shoot the vast majority of Hollywood projects, despite the doomsayers who claim it's dead and that the Age of Digital is upon us – is too fantastical and too clean. There's no sense of reality with film this nice; the stories exist in detached universes, much farther removed than we want ours to be. And it has the same low-grit problem that video does, especially with the newer film stocks, whose grain is so fine that it might as well have none. This would be a godsend to some productions, but not ours.

16mm was and is used often for documentary projects – March of the Penguins, most notably to a modern audience. As such, it has a visual history of reality that will sneak its way into our film without the viewer being aware of it. It has all the same deep light-and-dark properties as 35mm, but since it uses less than 1/4 of the image area, the grain comes back into the picture (literally!), which will give us the grit we so crave. Super 16mm, which expands the image area horizontally by eliminating one row of the sprocketholes that run down each side of a filmstrip, gives us a widescreen frame...and voilá! There's our look. (Not to mention that it's cheaper and makes life a hell of a lot easier for the camera assistants.)

But which film to use? Kodak and Fuji are the main games in town, but between them, they manufacture fourteen different 16mm color negative stocks, not counting B&W and reversal (or older stocks you can still find for sale). Well, before I put you to sleep, we looked at them all and chose one: Kodak's Vision2 200T 7217 (and thus is last entry's "cliffhanger" resolved). It's a beautiful stock with a neutral color balance, smooth tonal extremes and a desaturated look. Perfect for us.

All that just to select the destination for all these crazy images we're going to create!

My job is sweet.
— J.M.E.P.

1/26/2007 — Entry I-G: From The Mouths Of Babes...And Some Nice-Lookin' Dudes, Too

So, like Jay said, we had the table read on Wednesday. It was awesome.

It's funny to hear other people say your script out loud. It's like you didn't even write it. Which is nice, 'cause I feel like all we've been doing is writing it for the last nine thousand years. Give or take a week.

I kinda wish we'd done it earlier, 'cause it made me feel like the movie was real for a couple hours, there. I mean, it is real, but that's easy to forget when you're in the thick of it.

We've made some significant changes, post-reading...the ending of the film, for one. This might have frightened me a week ago, before Jay told me that Peter Jackson's King Kong writing team threw out the entire first third of their script and started over, five days before they started shooting.

I find myself strangely at ease, now. Think I'll go brush my teeth.
— J.M.E.P.

2/20/2007 — Entry I-H: Roll Call

"Jay?" "Here."

"Jon?" "Here."

"Mitch?...Mitch?"

You may be wondering about the strange and sudden absence of a certain smiling gent from the website and, indeed, the project. We wonder about it sometimes ourselves.

Mr. Mitchell Goldman will not be producing Tubes. It just didn't work for him right now. Nothing contentious about the split — 'bout as amicable as a split's ever been, actually. But a split it was, ne'ertheless, and that's all there is to say about it.

In other news, Jay and I have not left the project. Jay tried, but I chained him up in the rat-infested basement of my apartment building and forced him to start drawing storyboards. He claims he's hungry, but I remind him daily that nobody calls them "sated artists."

And as for third-party populace, we're casting now. So if you wanna be in Tubes, send in your headshot. And if you think you don't wanna be in Tubes, you're only fooling yourself, so send in your headshot anyway. Hell, send in your Mom's headshot.

Jay's gonna think I'm on crack when he reads this. But since Mitch is gone, I guess I'm kinda like the Producer, now, so I have the power to fire Jay and exile him to Michigan. So he'd better keep his sarcastic trap shut.

It's become apparent that I need to get some sleep.
— J.M.E.P.

2/27/2007 — Entry I-I: Meetings Are Better Than Not Meetings

People often say things to me like, "You work from home? That's awesome!" or, "I'll tell you, that's the way it's going," or, "Man, I wish my commute were only ten feet long."

Well, it is awesome, and I do think that's the way it's going, but after working by myself for most of last week and then having a meeting yesterday at a prospective crew member's apartment, and after feeling – when I walked outside – like Marty McFly when he first experiences the year 2015 in Back To The Future Part II, I can tell you first-hand that man, you don't wish your commute were only ten feet long.

Not every day, anyway.

You might think you flourish in your little hole, but getting out into the world is what it's all about. I've got another meeting scheduled in a couple of hours, and, later on this evening, I'm going – brace yourselves – to a lecture.

I'll bring back a HoverBoard for ya.
— J.M.E.P.

4/4/2007 — Entry II-A: When Gregor Samsa Awoke One Morning From Disturbing Dreams...

A few things have gone down since last I wrote.

And "since last I wrote" is a long while — so long, in fact, that one of the fellows who auditioned for us the weekend before last called me out on my delinquency. Well...alright, point taken, but at least someone has been visiting our website often enough to notice. And regardless, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Perhaps I should resort to a little old-fashioned organization to keep this entry under control:

1. My Jobby-Job — As you may have read on the main Diaries page, I am no longer the cinematographer for Tubes. You may find yourself saying, "But the name of his production diary is friggin'...why am I continuing to read this!?" And I wouldn't blame you. But I did say I'd be wearing many hats. I just got to the "Producer" hat a lot (lot lot) quicker than I had anticipated.

As it turned out, we just couldn't find anyone for that position who was as passionate about Tubes as we were. This is vital, as we couldn't have the production be overseen by someone who was less than 100% into it. And we found a great cinematographer — Mr. Skip Roessel. Skip has been shooting industry films for twenty-five years, specializes in Super 16mm, film noir and effects work, and is an extremely cool guy with an awesome apartment. Some highlights of his career include the Blue's Clues television series and the 1984 drama Vamping, starring TV's Patrick Duffy. Did I mention he has an awesome apartment?

So, no big loss for the production. Skip's gonna shoot Tubes better than I would have, anyway.

2. Auditions — I blew this revelation in the second paragraph, but we had 'em. We're still having 'em. Jay's probably going to say a lot more about this, but I'll just mention that our first round of folks blew me away. There is an incredible amount of untapped talent out there. We found actors that I'd be comfortable with in every role, save one — you'll find an explanation for that statement here. We'll be holding call-backs soon, and I'm quite excited to see these people in the roles we've been imagining for so long.

3. The Izz-art De-pizz-artment — I think we finally have a configuration that's going to stick.

Long ago, we had a chap who was really interested in the the production designer position, but our pay schedule didn't work for his life at the time. Then, we were referred to Alexis Kaloyanides, who was great and who worked with us for a while, but who ultimately ended up on other jobs during our pre-production period. Then she pointed us to Christina Christodoulopoulos, a ten-plus-year production design veteran, and she looks like she's going to be with us for the long haul. Plus, as a bonus, Alexis is still going to work on the show as our art director, and she's worked with Christina before, and they love each other, and the whole art world of Tubes is just going to be an overflowing bucket of rose petals and candy.

Yay.

4. A Toke From The Cash Pipe — I don't know how much one is supposed to say in one's production diary about such things, but we have a big, awesome investor meeting coming up that may very well make the fundraising portion of the Tubes The Movie, LLC's development a bittersweet memory. More on this in a couple of weeks...

5. My Numbering System — I had a nefarious scheme planned for how I was going to number and categorize these entries, but taking into account my occupational shift, I've decided to change it. So this is the first entry in Chapter II...I'll let you suss out the rubric.

To anyone reading this (Mom), I hope all is well in your world. Feel free to e-mail me with questions or comments, and I'll address them if I can. A special shout out to JR in Connecticut, whom I've been thinking about a lot lately — you'll get there.

Take care, all.
— J.M.E.P.