Half-Life of War

Half-Life of War - South Boston Korean War Memorial from Kyle Henry on Vimeo.

This summer, even as I was still finishing a feature documentary, I managed to squeeze in a short documentary for friend and collaborator Kyle Henry. His short "Half-Life of War" is a brief but powerful meditation on the ubiquitousness of war in our everyday lives. This week, Kyle has launched the Facebook page for the film.

Visit and like the page here.

When Kyle isn't directing, he is an accomplished editor and instructor at Northwestern University. His editing credits include the brilliant Where Soldiers Come From and the beautiful, emotional Before You Know It. This is not the first project that I have edited for Kyle, but I still feel honored whenever he calls me up for a collaboration because he has wowed me with his own work so many times. He raises my game every time we work together. Thanks in part to his teaching background, I think he is able to distill his direction in a very clear way even when he's experimenting and still trying to find the film.

This project is driven by its visuals and sound design. It's an experiment in pacing, composition and juxtaposition to try to arrive at both an emotional and intellectual climax. It was a new kind of challenge for me, one that I've always wanted to take on: Execute a purely immersive and experiential concept.

Check out the video above for a short-short idea of the tone of the film that Kyle recently posted to his Vimeo page.

Kyle and I would try different combinations of ideas and visuals, varying our pacing and re-combining pieces of footage that may not have seemed to initially go together until magically they do. I'm speaking vaguely about the process on purpose because the movie is not yet out and I think it's a great movie to discover and have catch you off guard. Maybe after its online premiere I'll talk in a little more detail about our process.

In the can

Can we still use that phrase, in the can? The state of film being what it is, you'd figure that such phrases will be lost to history soon, yet I don't know if there's a digital equivalent. It's on the drive. Not that hard drive - THAT hard drive!

Anyway, this is one of those Been-Awhile-Been-Busy-Oh-Man-Sorry-I've-Been-Away-Just-A-Quick-Update-Neglected-This-Blog kind of blog post. Maybe I shouldn't call attention to it at all, but February to November is a pretty big gap (assuming anyone noticed in the first place). 

Last summer I started work on editing a documentary feature, my first as editor. The director is Jesse Lyda, the producer is Jason Wehling. It's a documentary about the inner life of folk singer Ana Egge, raised by hippies in New Mexico and who draws on her personal life for her music. So personal that when she found her latest album being produced by the legendary Steve Earle, she decided to explore some long brewing issues within her family that had not been confronted in decades. This leads to some family strife on her pursuit of commercial success. 

It's an emotional journey and the most personal documentary I've seen about someone who has yet to be a household name. 

If you follow me on Twitter, you've seen me strongly advocate and stand up for Apple's much maligned flagship editing program Final Cut Pro X. At the time we started the doc, I think FCPX was on version 10.0.8. Maybe 10.0.9. I had just finished cutting a short doc with it and was excited about the possibilities of what you could accomplish on a feature doc. So, with Jesse and Jason's daring permission, I was given the opportunity to go forth in uncharted territory. 

It was a ride, and I pushed that version of FCPX to its limits. Version 10.0.x was not ready for a feature film. Not quite. But when Apple updated to 10.1, it changed the game. They cracked the code of how to make that app functional for such a large project. 

I loved the experience. It's hard for me to go back to a track based editor now. I can do it because the platform doesn't define my work or my abilities. But FCPX is a step forward in a new direction, a forward-looking direction, and proves we can break away from old paradigms and still get our work done. (Maybe even by 5PM ;).

I plan on writing more about the experience as we just recently finished color correction and sound mix (and yes - for anyone reading this and doubting you can take an FCPX project all the way through post, including Pro Tools and color in Resolve, and back again - you can; it's not 2011 anymore!). I've moved on to other projects, not all of them in FCPX, sadly, but I've stretched my skills by editing a documentary from start to finish. That is what I'm most excited and proud about. Looking forward to sharing updates on the film's life-after-post in the future.