New Work from this Year

Work by the Tetrad completed in 2009/2010.

Black Horizon: Our first completed work pre-formation. It is the story of a breakup gone horribly wrong involving a femme fatale, a hitman, a man in black, and henchmen. B/W 16mm.

Invasion Radio: Our first real collaborative project after forming our collective. It is about a ham radio alien conspiracy theorist and his assistants and a mysterious disc that is sent to them. Color 16mm.

Retrato de Gente(Portrait of People): My first work on Super 8. A solo piece, it is a documentary about the lack of interaction between people in the city. The footage is juxtaposed with the sound of a family singing together. B/W Super 8mm.

B for Body/C for Canal: Another solo piece, it is a docufiction about children and their stories about a fictional dead body underneath a bridge in a canal. Color Video.

"Goner!": My second film on Super 8 in collaboration with Barbara Little. It is about a girl and her dissatisfaction with society and her reactions to it. B/W Super 8mm.

The Cops: Shot back to back with Invasion Radio, this is considered a light piece with the intention of multiple versions. This mine. Color 16mm and super 8mm.

-Carlos F. Enriquez

Between Personal & Autobiographical Films

I know it's strange to start off a post without a concrete idea of where you got a quote, but I once read somewhere that, it it might of been for either comics or film, it is always a bad idea for your first project to be autobiographical or personal. I found that idea kind of strange, as most people who make films or comics always do that first. Why? Because you do something you know about. Yet, at the same time, it seems too easy to do that. And it's even easier to do something that is directly about yourself. But does it make it bad? I think yes and no. But that's where the line is drawn.

In a personal film, you do a film about something that affects you or has something to do with you. It's usually an experience, point of view, an opinion, an idea, etc. The film can be about an entirely different group of people from you, the protagonist can be someone else, but what you put in is entirely yours. Rainer Werner Fassbinder is a good example as is Francois Truffaut. Both directors made films that dealt with ideas or experiences that were very close to them. For Fassbinder, it was about postwar Germany, his postwar Germany. For Truffaut, it was about his childhood experiences and relationships with women. Woody Allen and Federico Fellini fall into this category as well in that case. What separates these films from autobiographical films is their the directors detachment from the material. And thus, their acceptability is put slightly away from that fine line I mentioned.

Autobiographical films, on the other hand, are problematic because of how close they are to their subject. Granted, directors who these sort of films have the ability to bear themselves to the public, but the other task at hand is how important what they're showing about the audience is. In a fictional film, this would be acceptable as their experiences become accessible to the public in the form of a character that doesn't exist. When it is the director telling us about themselves, then the question is why? Why are we watching this? What do you have to say that is new or different, let alone important? In comics this could be interesting, but on film, I feel it is the amateur's initial idea. Perhaps this is why it is no longer a common occurrence. 

The day of the autobiographical film is over, but remnants of it still show up in spades on the internet in the form of vlogs. But that is a different matter all together. Now, the only situation left to deal with is the safety net that is being created by the personal film. It is becoming the first thing beginning filmmakers are turning to. And as it grows, the amount of personal information put in these films will grow. If this allowed to happen, then I fear that the personal film will become part of the pantheon of amateur work.

-Carlos F. Enriquez

Restraint & Cinema

Restraint- restraint is an easy enough word to define as a noun, but as a characteristic which can be held by a person or thing, it is a more vague notion. It's a subjective quality that works in tandem with potential and vision- restraint is the ability to have potential and choose not, a significantly different quality than the lack of potential or vision and therefore the inability to choose. In a CGI age, potential has become virtually limitless- plausible and possible have become par for the course when any vision may be realized by the digital wizards behind films. In an age where potential and vision have no restraints (noun), it's become more important than ever that filmmakers learn restraint (verb).

I'm no Luddite, mind you. I'm not anti-CGI, and I don't think CGI is "ruining movies". CGI is a tool used by filmmakers who choose to use it, and like a tool of carpentry, it can only ruin a piece if it's used incorrectly. Some pieces may need it more than others, and some may not need it at all. I consider the uses and non-uses of CGI today after completing my viewing of 2009's live-action remake of "Blood: The Last Vampire". The original film was an animated feature put out by Production IG in the year 2000, and it happens to be among my favorite anime films. With a total run-time of only 45 minutes (opening and closing credits included), the original "Blood" was a film which showed great restraint in many regards- the short length was reminiscent of a horror short story, giving you enough time and information to understand the world but ending quickly enough to leave the mystery and atmosphere intact, never allowing you to become comfortable within the fiction you have entered. Characters in the original film are few, and dialogue is sparse and economical- we understand characters through their actions rather than via monologue, narration, or flashback. This deliberacy- of the classic film mantra "Show, don't tell"- is more akin with Roman Polanski than Rob Zombie.

The original "Blood" was not just an exercise in good storytelling, however- the masterminds at Production IG made "Blood" one of the premeire vessels through which CGI could marry into the traditional cel-animation canon. Using digitally animated paintings first experimented with in Ghost in the Shell (1995) and Princess Mononoke (1997), "Blood" showed technical advancement which enabled it's animators to visualize the world of "Blood" in ways which animation could never had done before- the CGI is used cautiously but effectively, allowing for gentle pans, perspective shifts, and scenes of great crowds which would have simply not been possible by hand. It's the cautious and deliberate use of CGI which make the original "Blood" so exemplary in the world of contemporary filmmaking, but it tragically underlines the flaws of it's live-action remake, which is far less judicious in it's digital rendering and is ultimately symptomatic of the problem with far too many modern films.

The new "Blood" is a mess of a film in all too many ways, chief among them being the substance for which the title is named- for some reason, the considerable amount of blood spilled from slashed enemies is as CGI as can be imagined. Globby and in particle-effect "strands", the CGI blood (which is supposed to be no different than the blood in the veins of you or I) is unfortunately more akin to the CGI blood of Rob Zombie's "The Devil's Rejects" than it is akin to the gallons of colored corn syrup in classics like "Evil Dead". But why CGI blood? What's the point? What does it bring to the table? I can't imagine hundreds of man-hours developing L-system subroutines for liquid physics (I have no idea if any of those are applicable terms, but bear with me) is somehow easier than having Saya slash open a ziploc bag full of corn-syrup and dye. The computer synthesized plasma paired with 300-inspired slow-motion, cheap and ugly "magic smoke transformations" for the vampires, and altogether too much digitally enhanced wire-fu made for an aesthetically unpleasant film that didn't even have the decency to tell it's story properly. The flashbacks were forced in to tell a story that couldn't be shown (and didn't need to be, for that matter), the characters were elaborated upon to a degree at which all mystery was lost, and too many subplots distracted from the atmosphere that all great horror films need.

I'm not against CGI by any stretch, but please, filmmakers, show some restraint. Take a look at why "Blood: The Last Vampire" (animated) is so darn good and why "Blood: The Last Vampire" (live-action) is so darn terrible.

A Few Good Reads for Horror Fans

Sorry for not writing something more original this week, but I'll direct you to some really great reads to hopefully make up for it. We at the Tetrad Initiative are all fans of horror, but I must confess to myself being the most intense of the horror aficionados. Or so I would estimate myself, while my partners may disagree. A timid child, I never particularly liked horror movies at all- in fact, I was easily scared of virtually anything more intimidating than the mundane. Regardless, I've grown into an enormous horror fan due to my love of horror atmosphere and aesthetic, and I've seen all too many horror films due to the beautifully cheap rentals at my local Family Video store. Here are a few great articles to check out-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/nov/04/television-simon-pegg-dead-set

This is a nice little write up from Simon Pegg, star of Shaun of the Dead and zombie fan extraordinaire. In this opinion article he wrote for the Guardian, Pegg discusses the merits of traditional slow-zombies and argues for their relevance in an increasingly fast-paced horror world.

http://io9.com/5524998/what-sick-john-carpenter-moments-will-the-thing-prequel-explain

This is nice little interview from io9 with the screen-writer of the upcoming prequel to John Carpenter's The Thing. While most horror fans will remain cold and cynical about the 20+ year late sequel to one of the greatest horror movies ever made, this interview actually gives me some hope for the project. There's an intensity and passion behind the writer's words which make me think there may be some great love for this project. Let's keep our fingers crossed.

http://www.americanpopularculture.com/journal/articles/fall_2002/harper.htm

This one is an oldy but a goody. From one of my favorite journals of essays comes this decent gem about consumerism in Romero's Dawn of the Dead. Now, it's old hat, I'll admit. Everyone has probably read an essay about consumerism in Romero's magnum opus, and everyone also probably knows my pathological love for the film. But really, it's worth reading, I promise! This is probably the best essay I've read on Romero, largely thanks to the pedigree associated with the journal. Definitely worth checking out, whether or not you've read Romero in the past.

That's my offering for the week, I'll try to throw up something totally original next week.

- David Mitchell

The Tetrad Initiative Salutes King of the Hill

Whenever I bring up King of the Hill in conversation, I tend to be met with a fairly lukewarm response- amongst the hordes of educated, liberal, upper-middle class white artists who make up a significant portion of your average art school, my mention of King of the Hill tends to be met with some variation of "Isn't that just white-trash Simpsons?" They couldn't be much more wrong, and "ignorant" doesn't even cover it.

King of the Hill was born in a peculiar time and place- January 12th, 1997 on the typically conservative Fox network, but was the brain-child of Mike Judge- creator of the highly controversial early-1990's MTV series Beavis & Butthead. Alongside former Simpsons writer Greg Daniels, Judge created the fictional town of Arlen, Texas (clearly, NO connection whatsoever to Garland, Texas where Judge had previously lived) and it's many colorful characters- propane (and propane accessories) salesman Hank Hill, his housewife Peggy, and their boy (who ain't right) Bobby and niece Luanne, along with neighbors Bill, Boomhauer, Dale & Nancy, and Kahn, plus a whole host of others. The intro to the pilot begins with Hank and his friends working slowly and diligently on determining the problems with a truck engine, and then begin to discuss their love of Seinfeld, a show about nothing. Cue the title sequence. This first scene would kick off a 255 episode run over 13 years, and while that scene meant to imply King of the Hill would be a show about nothing, it failed to deliver on that promise.

While the Simpsons and, yes, Family Guy love to revel in the cartoonish and absurd, King of the Hill grounds itself in to a muddy, brutal, and loving realism. Hank is oblivious and sometimes acts without thinking, but he isn't even in the same league of oafishness as Homer Simpson or Peter Griffin. While the Simpsons and Family Guy devote scenes to Homer getting repeatedly bit by rattlesnakes or Peter getting into fights with giant anthropomorphic roosters, Hank's role on King of the Hill is that of any real working parent- he goes to work, he spends time with his family, he works on projects around the house, and when he has time, he spends it with his long held friends. And while Homer has been choking Bart Simpson for 21 years now and Peter has been farting in Meg's face for longer than I'd prefer to say (really, has this show ACTUALLY stayed on air?), Hank has been trying to raise his son Bobby with all the moments of embarrassment and pride that any real parent should hope to have. But that's the kind of show King of the Hill is- it isn't about hill billies or rednecks or "white trash" as my upper-middle class peers might attest, it's about blue collar, real-world Americans who live and breath their lives and take pride in their job, home, and family.

Though King of the Hill was cancelled in September, 2009 after it's 13th season, 4 new episodes went unaired. Join the Tetrad Initiative in celebration of one of television's most realistic shows by watching the remaining episodes, which are syndicated this week on local stations. The episodes run from the 3rd to the 7th, so sorry to those who missed last night's episode. All four members of TI are KotH fans, and we may someday reflect back more on the care and love that went into such a great television series.

- David Mitchell

New Work Coming Up

Aside from our documentary excursion we had at C2E2, there will be other film and video projects from the group (or within the group in my case) coming up as well. In terms of group projects, I am currently working on a Super8 project mainly involving Barbara Little about social disillusionment and its reactions. As for my own solo projects, I am also working on a video about children and myth making and an animation about different types of lightning. I have other future projects that I have planned for the summer, but I'd rather start working on them before I post anything about them. I know I should be posting the next installment of my essay on restrained cinema, but I feel like I haven't posted anything about what I am doing. I guess to make up for that I'll post this link to my first work in Super8: http://vimeo.com/10971341

-Carlos F. Enriquez