I didn't feel the earthquake.

i've always been really into "false narrators," "unreliable narrators," narrators that interact with the characters in unexpected ways.

as for the score, i've been thinking half-recognizable mashups, but not dance tracks or obvious juxtapositions. kind of mash-up as mood music.

maybe one of the videos is half or three-quarters as long as the others, but loops in such a way that its content continues to "work" with everything that's going on on the other 2 screens. like how dark side of the moon plays twice or three times over the course of the wizard of oz. i need to watch that again w/ the pink floyd soundtrack actually.

the movie could keep starting over with a different title. and different characters.. but similar action? like an evolution of drafts

retelling family stories, maybe could solicit additional stories online?

=oceans, vacation (not sailing, but wading into the surf, encountering the infinite data space)
=looking out a window, people watching, friendly surveillance-- creating narratives for strangers; cars passing by on the highway, etc.
=that feeling when something's not quite right all day and you eventually realize you're dehydrated

thinking about narrative in terms of an installation. AIDS-3D did a thing about aliens invading earth only to discover man has vanished into his own technology (http://www.aids-3d.com/speculations.html). seems like sculpture, wall pieces, etc. could be presented as artifacts from a series of events. still thinking about the micronation idea, maybe the story centers around a micronation that is 7 years old. a nation of one, (7yrs because all of the body's cells replace themselves by then) maybe i'm trying to push too many ideas together, or maybe i'm coming at this with too much of an emphasis on "the idea" altogether, but i think that's a way of keeping the whole thing on its rails, if it can always be traced back to a narrative of some sort, even if only very abstractly.

in terms of the screens, is 3 too ambitious a number? i do think 2-channel video is such a well-worn form where the juxtaposition is super apparent.. also, how to decide which screen to put what content on? i don't think there should be an obvious distinction (i.e. screen 1 is close-ups, screen 2 is exterior shots, and screen 3 is animations) but might make sense to have some kind of thematic guideline so that screen 1 is slightly more emotional, screen 2 is more judgmental, screen 3 is kind of bored and easily distracted. i like the idea of giving each screen its own personality. it also reminds me of this contemporary anxiety over news sources. like people who say that they watch fox news and msnbc so they can get the full story or something. thinking about that symbiopsychotaxiplasm film as well, with 3 different camera crews all with slightly different assignments in shooting the same action. what made that interesting was the human element and ideas of collaboration, dissent. there wouldn't be any of that here exactly, so what would be the dramatic tension btwn the screens?

it could be interesting to position them as kind of news networks of the future, with the ability to peer into minds and predict events, and the propensity to display information in kind of a cut-up, spastic pastiche. like how eventually mainstream culture begins to repeat the avant-garde of the previous generation. i don't want to get too orwellian, though. and i also don't know that i want to set it in the future. it should be set right now. or in some imagined now, but not explicitly an alternate reality. actually it could be cool to have it be somewhat documentary. and also to function as a "behind the scenes" of its own making at times. like asking the actor's about their family lives one one screen while another plays a scene they're in? could be interesting to start mining news sites for plot points, especially yahoo! news human interest stories (those 3 or 4 that show up on the front page.) like today those are: car designs that flopped, swift's dress malfunction, 'brain-eating amoeba' kills two, student arrested in bomb plot. they're always kind of sensationalist like that, mixing total fluff pieces with real horrible shit. all about getting someone to click the page. i should start keeping track of those definitely.

=face upward in prayer and the crackling sound of a train announcement

i'm in love with the routine (some routines) once i get it started. might make sense to have the action of the movie work in repeating cycles with alterations. although it shouldnt be obvious that it is a cycle. at least not on the first viewing. but some kind of structure would be good. like how the 3-act dramatic narrative exists as such a trope of the film industry, i could just invent a different type of formula. maybe it could incorporate ideas of rising and falling action, climax, resolution, etc. but in a different order? but probably would be better to just start fresh. gotta keep thinking about this. was thinking recently while painting a shed: how it feels so good to work so hard, maybe it's something we've lost evolutionarily like people say. painting that shed, making clothes, (maybe i could make costumes for the movie? don't want to take this line of thought in too literal a direction though..)

also been thinking about a theme or idea for the narrative. maybe it should be about how all of a human's cell's regenerate every 7 years or whatever the number is, making them a completely different physical entity. it's about the soul or something that it can't really be about, but it tries to be.

my family should be in the movie. was re-reading this ryan trecartin interview (http://www.viceland.com/int/v17n11/htdocs/ryan-trecartin-596.php) and getting into the way he emphasizes collaboration. i think developing an interest in non-narrative or non-traditional screen-based work a few years ago led me to back away from movie-making in general and also collaboration.

unrelated: was thinking that it might be interesting to pay a group of kids an hourly wage to play, and video them. how it would change the dynamic of their play once it was work..

also: in the installation, the sculptural elements could be somehow related to/featured in the video rather than purely auxiliary

=wind in my hair in the backseat
=various cityscapes
=skydiving, scuba diving, sleeping

maybe start with a fight between two old friends, (use segments from different movies/tv shows/whatever else to make it seem as though characters from different sources are in dialogue).. even configure the screens such that the characters seem to be looking at each other, reacting in real space. feeling that getting lost in my head / over-thinking vs. field-based experimentation / "just doing it" is a big theme in my life lately, specifically in regards to my relationships with people. feeling that you are going crazy (But then getting caught up on "i can't be crazy if i'm cognizant of myself going crazy"), not remembering things correctly, memories colliding with little fictions you've created for yourself. The Future-- thinking more than doing, simultaneously living an exciting, productive future life in my mind and being [at least in relation] unproductive in present reality. not sure how to depict this kind of thing, don't really want to fall back on abstract wishy-washy "mood video".. somewhere maybe a slideshow of still photographs, with some short videos in between like on a digital camera. even a video of "fauxtographs" (i think someone on vimeo tags them that way at least) where they meant to take a picture but took a video instead. maybe get together a collection of flashback sequences from a bunch of different places, especially student films(?) run through a catalog of the different techniques used: sepia tone, waves, b&w, what else..?

=screeching wheels
=getting stung by a bee
=throwing something in the fire

write a narrative (kinda) script and then "shoot" as much as possible of it from found footage, playing out on three screens spread across the room, with three different soundtracks. this will have to be synchronized very precisely to be the most awesome. add self-made animation and additional footage when necessary. but the line btwn appropriated and made should be VERY blurry. might be fun to think of filming stuff as doing it as quickly as possible, or maybe in a very uncomfortable setting. like get in touch with strangers (free actors like that dude lexi had for frankenstein) and give them scripts, shoot it like an amateur cause i am. write the script as a blog with open comments? start doing this soon? use pop music. what should be the subject? maybe somewhat diaryistic, esp. if i'm doing it as a blog thing.. a combination of dreams and reality. my life. half-remembered things from my childhood as they come to me, trying to relate them to current shit. try to do it as a daily thing but in the video don;t worry abt differentiating btwn the days. write very casually. don't reread what you've written, don't delete unless it's "WRONG" in a way i can justify (like typos.) don't write for an audience, but that's inevitable. maybe the only way to do this is to have it be an anonymous blog? but i would kind of want to tell people about it, open up the process of making this thing to criticisms and suggestions, etc. what kind of stuff will i write about? maybe it'll start relatively meek and then get more into depth/"the real me" as i get more comfortable with the process? at the top of every post i can list some images that have collected in my mind throughout the day. not everything has to be connected but it is anyway. not erasing that last sentence is part of this new project.