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.

The last project we collaborated on was three of the four short films in Kyle's hilarious, touching, provocative omnibus film Fourplay. You can order Fourplay from Vimeo. Here's the trailer:

Fourplay - Trailer from Kyle Henry on Vimeo.