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The process diary of film director Glendyn Ivin
Filtering by Category: Inspiration
After a 30 hour journey from Paris we arrived home just after midnight. Ollie went straight to bed to try and get a little sleep before starting high school today. He took it all in his stride and loved his first day... Cool kid!
(photos taken last week in Knole Park, Kent, England)
Actress and friend Ashleigh Cummings snapped in my backyard last week. Part of a long term photographic project we are working on.
Three giant chimneys drew us off the highway into Morro Bay. The 'three fingers' as they are referred to by locals belong to a disused gas plant that dominates the small harbour town along side the equally impressive Morro Rock.
Was great to watch the light change from late afternoon through till dark. To watch the colours intenisfy and shadows shift. Also had some great fish taco's for dinner!
My first 4th of July in the U.S was even better than I thought it would be. Nat and I ended up at a friends house in Pasadena where the Rose Bowl hosts one of the larger fireworks displays in L.A. It was a warm and very still night so when the fireworks exploded the smoke just hung in the valley air. This made the whole event even more beautiful. Huge, brightly coloured explosions were continually pumped into the massive cloud, diffusing the lights and explosions on a scale I've never seen before. It looked more like the birth of galaxies than cracker night.
Driving home across L.A from Pasadena to Venice Beach that night all of L.A was alive with fireworks. Racing along the freeway was like driving through one extended firework display. Stunning.
Synching up the first and and last shots of some of the great films. Surprisingly (or perhaps not) in many of the examples the first and last images sum up the entire story. It's like you really only need these two images and nothing in between to explore the ideas and the theme of the film. I also love just how beautifully enigmatic they are. Like the beginning and the end of a film is the time when you can be most poetic, lulling the audience in and out of the experience...
Thank you Jacob T Sweeney for taking the time... I could have watched a whole feature length of just these moments...
Full list of films below...
What can we learn by examining only the first and final shot of a film? This video plays the opening and closing shots of 55 films side-by-side. Some of the opening shots are strikingly similar to the final shots, while others are vastly different--both serving a purpose in communicating various themes. Some show progress, some show decline, and some are simply impactful images used to begin and end a film. MUSIC: "Any Other Name" by Thomas Newman Films used (in order of appearance): The Tree of Life 00:00 The Master 00:09 Brokeback Mountain 00:15 No Country for Old Men 00:23 Her 00:27 Blue Valentine 00:30 Birdman 00:34 Black Swan 00:41 Gone Girl 00:47 Kill Bill Vol. 2 00:53 Punch-Drunk Love 00:59 Silver Linings Playbook 01:06 Taxi Driver 01:11 Shutter Island 01:20 Children of Men 01:27 We Need to Talk About Kevin 01:33 Funny Games (2007) 01:41 Fight Club 01:47 12 Years a Slave 01:54 There Will be Blood 01:59 The Godfather Part II 02:05 Shame 02:10 Never Let Me Go 02:17 The Road 02:21 Hunger 02:27 Raging Bull 02:31 Cabaret 02:36 Before Sunrise 02:42 Nebraska 02:47 Frank 02:54 Cast Away 03:01 Somewhere 03:06 Melancholia 03:11 Morvern Callar 03:18 Take this Waltz 03:21 Buried 03:25 Lord of War 03:32 Cape Fear 03:38 12 Monkeys 03:45 The World According to Garp 03:50 Saving Private Ryan 03:57 Poetry 04:02 Solaris (1972) 04:05 Dr. Strangelove 04:11 The Astronaut Farmer 04:16 The Piano 04:21 Inception 04:26 Boyhood 04:31 Whiplash 04:37 Cloud Atlas 04:43 Under the Skin 04:47 2001: A Space Odyssey 04:51 Gravity 04:57 The Searchers 05:03 The Usual Suspects 05:23
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I was recently interviewed for the upcoming release of Gallipoli and the journalist was interested to know aboutt my End Of Days photographs he found here and here on Hoaxville. Afterwards I thought more about what my photos have been in the past and what I'd like them to be alot more of in the future. The End of Days series was about finding some space at the end of each shooting day. A moment of stillness after the intensity of shooting. A visual excuse to take a deep breath in and out. To reflect on the days events, what worked, what didn't and what needed to be done for the next day.
I think this is what I want more of in the way I approach photography. Not so much trying to 'capture a moment', more the photograph is the moment. A practice of trying to take time to ground myself and be present in that time and place.
Below: The beginning and end of Day 56 of filming Gallipoli (Mt Eliza beach).
Two heroes of mine punk rock singer Ian McKaye and photographer Glen E. Friedman discuss photos from Glens new book My Rules. Glen E. Freidman released one of my favourite photo books back in the day Fuck You Heroes. I'm looking forward My Rules.
And just cos… here is Ian McKaye belting out my favourite Fugazi song (and one of my favourite songs ever) Instrument.
I came across this wonderful episode of the BBC's What Do Artists Do All Day featuring the photographer Tom Wood. I new nothing about him but was so inspired by his photography and his straight forward, honest and down to earth approach to making pictures. His longitudinal studies of his everyday surrounds is really incredible. Reminds me to photograph the regular things around me. The modern ugly cars and buildings in my street. I love how these documents can take on more and more meaning as time passes, things change and what currently seems mundane may one day seem remarkable. Part 1 below...
A short and very beautiful observational docco (shot by a young Dean Semler) about group of kids killing time on their bikes in inner city Sydney 1976. Wonderful how it unobtrusively observes the kids who are surrounded by factories, drunks and boredom and how they escape through imaginations and fantasy. "S.W.A.T"
Who is documenting and I mean really observing and unobtrusively documenting Australian life like this these days…?
Thanks Damian for the link! It's quite similar to the film On the Waves Of The Adriatic which I listed below as one of my Favourite Australian Films of all time.
Rui is on the National Film and Sound Archives Youtube channel. There is some amazing stuff there!
Monster Children magazine asked me to write about my 15 of my favourite Australian films for their latest issue (#41). No easy task, I could have put so many different films in the list and I love way more than these 15 but in the end I had to narrow it down by using pure impulse. I just imagined if the last remaining vault of Australian cinema was burning down and I could only grab 15 films that meant something to me as a filmmaker on the way out, what would they be. In no particular order, the following 15 made it...
STORM BOY Maybe my favourite Australian film of all time. The beautifully melancholic story of the motherless boy, mothering a motherless pelican 'Mr Percival' and his Fingerbone Bill, the friend every child wants and needs. Directed by Frenchman Henri Safran, perhaps it was his european sensibility that gave Storm Boy such a unique spirit and energy.
PROOF For me, the early 90's was the golden age of filmmaking in Australia. So many of my favorite films came out around this time. Spotswood, Romper Stomper and Proof to name just a few were all made in grey old Melbourne and inspired me to move to here in 1993. I watched Proof again recently. It’s one of those films you can't help but keep watching regardless of where you come into. Hugo Weaving’s character is sad, mean and hilarious at the same time in every scene. The man is a genius.
ROMPER STOMPER Romper Stomper took me into a very specific world I knew little about: the skin-head culture in the late 80's of grungy inner Melbourne's Footscray. The film is raw, uncompromising and unrelentingly hand-held. I'd never seen a camera used with such visceral menace. Russell Crowe’s greatest performance. Hands down.
RUIN Soon to be released, Ruin is one of the best Australianfilms I've seen. Shot on a micro-budget in Cambodia, in Cambodian language, the film follows two lovers as they violently drift across the country. Kind of an Asian Natural Born Killers, but with more spirit, heart and poetry. Ruin will hopefully be released sometime in 2014 keep your eyes out for it!
LITTLE BOY LOST The first film I can remember seeing in a proper cinema. The film is a based on a true story about a little farm boy who was lost for two days and nights in rugged bush. It has a wonderfully old Australian look and feel and if I saw it again I suspect it would be quite dinky, but as a 6 year old I found it quite profound. I'm still haunted by some of the images.
ALBY MANGLES WORLD SAFARI 1 My Mum took me to see World Safari, not in a cinema but at the local RSL. A projector was set up, and Alby's adventures flickered on a fold out screen on the stage. World Safari (I, II and III) are rudimentary and clunky, but filled with a true sense of adventure. They gave me a curiosity for the what was out in the world, and for independent, bare bones film making.
CUNNAMULLA I distinctly remember sitting in Carltons Cinema Nova in the year 2000 thinking Dennis O’Rorkes portrait of small town Australia being a devastating different portrait to the one the Australian Olympic Commitee were sending out for all the world to see at the same time. Rough as guts racism, bored as bat shit youth, the film shows just how wide the divide is between city and country, rich and poor, black and white. All through the unflinching lens of O'Roukes 4:3 framing. Uncompromised filmmaking!
ON THE WAVES OF THE ADRIATIC A beautiful documentary shot over five years in the late 80's, early 90's in and around Melbourne’s then pre-gentrified suburb of Brunswick. The film follows three mildly intellectually disabled young teens killing time picking through rubbish tips, riding BMX bikes and killing snakes. Kinda sounds like Harmony Korine's 'Gummo' but this film is far from Korine’s fabricated reality. It's astonishly honest, raw and human. I have it on VHS which seems appropriate (I want a DVD copy so bad!). I can't find any link to any clip or even an image of this film online. It's like it never even existed. A misplaced masterpiece of Australian cinema.
CANDY Candy is one of handful of films I could say I truly, madly, deeply fell in love with when I first saw it. I went and saw it multiple times in the the cinema. Just to spend time with it. I’m a hopeless romantic and there is something hoplessley romantic about this tragic junkie love story that got under my skin and it’s still there.
DOGS IN SPACE I was obsessed with girl who was obsessed with this film and by default I got obsessed with it to. The first time I visited Melbourne I tracked down the Richmond house where the film was shot. It was a pilgrimage that helped solidify my love for Melbourne and I moved here soon after. The end sequence where they cut around the house and all it’s empty rooms still pops into my head often. That sequence and the film as a whole has influenced alot of what I've done on screen in many ways.
LAST RIDE My list, my film. My road movie featuring Hugo Weaving as a guy who takes his ten year old son on the run through the deserts of South Australia. Making this film was dream come true and many have said it's Hugo's finest on screen performance. I tend to agree.
PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK Probably the scariest film I've ever seen. Have you been to Hanging Rock? It’s a really weird and eery place even without the 19th Century private school girls wondering around staring at frill neck lizards. The directors cut is way better than the original and surprisingly shorter. (check out this great comparison between the original and the directors cut)
PRAISE So worth seeing and in particular for Sascha Horler’s killer performace as obsessive Cynthia. I remember sitting in the dark at the Nova, jaw on the ground watching her have sex while scratching the eczema on her chest. Such a beautifully raw character. Sascha Horler totally committed to it and I'm a huge fan till this day.
VAN DIEMANS LAND This bleak, minimalist and unapolgetically art house imagining of the escape of irish convict Alexander Pearce and his mates. Don’t watch with friends on an empty stomach. Humans taste a little like chicken apparently. History Core!
RAZOR BACK When your 13 and living in a small town in country NSW, Razor Back is a really important aspect of your life. Partly because you know people who go out hunting pigs for real. But mostly because the idea that there really could be a giant feral pig out in the surrounding bush brings your imagination to life. This was my JAWS!
THE BOYS If I could choose any of the films in this list as the film I most wish I made, I think it would be this one. There is something so hypnotically menacing about this film. It's tone just grabs you from the first frame and doesn’t let go. I saw it with a girlfriend at the Greater Union on Russell Street and she didn't speak for a few hours afterward. Speechless, literally. Creepy.
Entering that very precious stage of early pre-production where it's not too busy, there's time to do what you need, to catch up, to think out loud, to listen to music, to watch movies, to leaf through reference books, to shove ideas together, to plan, to suggest, to dream. I've moved into the Gallipoli production office and for the next week or so I'm the only one on my floor. It's so bloody wonderful to have this time and space because very soon it's all going to fill up and disappear... But right now, this is the bit to cherish.
