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JOURNAL

The process diary of film director Glendyn Ivin

Filtering by Category: If not here then where?

R.I.P HARRY SAVIDES

Glendyn Ivin

I'm a bit late posting about the passing of the late, great cinematographer Harry Savides who passed away last week. Such an inspiration. He shot so many great films but I think my favourite is Gus Van Sant's Last Days. The film is so beautifully shot. I remember seeing it with my Dad in a near empty cinema Kino in Melbourne when it was released years ago. I was so blown away by it's minimalism, beauty and poetry. It's become one of my favourite films. I left the cinema in awe, speechless. My Dad turned to me as we hit the foyer and said in disgust "Don't you ever make a film like that...!". Double speechless...! So whenever I think of Harry Savides, I think of Last Days and when I think of Last Days apart from fathers 'advice' I think of this very simple but stunning scene...

After watching the above clip, watch how they shot it below. Something wonderful about watching a small crew work in unison. I often wonder why they didn't lay all the track for the dolly and then remove the front pieces as they dollied back, and not have to relay and level on the fly. I like to think that not even Gus Van Sant can afford all the toys all the time and they only had a few lengths of track in the (small) grip truck. A perfect example of how necessity particularly in film making are nearly always the mother of invention.

Harry Savides, genius!

6 Comments
categories If not here then where?, Inspiration, Of Interest?, Video

A TERRIBLE THING

Glendyn Ivin

I live a few blocks from where 29 year old Jill Meagher was recently abducted (and then raped, murdered and buried in a shallow grave ). It's a terrible thing that has shocked our suburb of Brunswick, the city of Melbourne and the country as a whole. I visited a candle light vigil on Friday night at the baptist church just a few meters from where Jill was last seen alive. The vigil was set up in response as a man was arrested and charged with Jills rape and murder. Almost a week to the day after Jill was last seen alive. Today (Sunday), I marched silently with 30 000 people down Sydney road in an emotional show of support for Jills family and friends. A sombre yet powerful display of a community making a stand against violence. In amongst the shock and sadness of the march there was something quite affirming about it. It was nice to know we live in a place where this kind of act can bring such an emotional and supportive response from 'strangers' on mass. Despite everything thats so wrong about this horrible crime, I came home from the march feeling there is way, way, way more good in the world than there is bad.

Above: the corner of Sydney Road and Hope Street last Friday night.

R.I.P JILL MEAGHER

 

2 Comments
categories If not here then where?, Photography

Duende

Glendyn Ivin

Last week I was in New Zealand casting for a commercial. I met a 17 year old girl who had the word 'Duende' freshly tattooed on her arm. Later, I googled the word and found it's meaning fascinating. A wonderful word which goes some way towards describing the indescribable. The elusive, beautiful darkness we are drawn to in music and film and all art in general. I never knew it even had a word to describe it.

Australian music artist Nick Cave discusses duende in his lecture pertaining to the nature of the love song (Vienna, 1999):

In his brilliant lecture entitled "The Theory and Function of Duende" Federico García Lorca attempts to shed some light on the eerie and inexplicable sadness that lives in the heart of certain works of art. "All that has dark sound has duende", he says, "that mysterious power that everyone feels but no philosopher can explain." In contemporary rock music, the area in which I operate, music seems less inclined to have its soul, restless and quivering, the sadness that Lorca talks about. Excitement, often; anger, sometimes: but true sadness, rarely, Bob Dylan has always had it. Leonard Cohen deals specifically in it. It pursues Van Morrison like a black dog and though he tries to he cannot escape it.Tom Waits and Neil Young can summon it. It haunts Polly Harvey. My friends the Dirty Three have it by the bucket load. The band Spiritualized are excited by it. Tindersticks desperately want it, but all in all it would appear that duende is too fragile to survive the brutality of technology and the ever increasing acceleration of the music industry. Perhaps there is just no money in sadness, no dollars in duende. Sadness or duende needs space to breathe. Melancholy hates haste and floats in silence. It must be handled with care."

All love songs must contain duende. For the love song is never truly happy. It must first embrace the potential for pain. Those songs that speak of love without having within in their lines an ache or a sigh are not love songs at all but rather Hate Songs disguised as love songs, and are not to be trusted. These songs deny us our humanness and our God-given right to be sad and the air-waves are littered with them. The love song must resonate with the susurration of sorrow, the tintinnabulation of grief. The writer who refuses to explore the darker regions of the heart will never be able to write convincingly about the wonder, the magic and the joy of love for just as goodness cannot be trusted unless it has breathed the same air as evil - the enduring metaphor of Christ crucified between two criminals comes to mind here - so within the fabric of the love song, within its melody, its lyric, one must sense an acknowledgement of its capacity for suffering. [via wiki]

1 Comment
categories If not here then where?, Inspiration, Photography

JUST THE BOYS

Glendyn Ivin

Just spent the coolest few days with my son Ollie (9). Rather than me fly down to Melbourne for the weekend, he flew to Sydney (unaccompanied!) and we had a fantastic boys long weekend. We have never hung out together for such an extended period of time where it's 'just us'. Went to Luna Park while the sun was out and spent the last day or so days indoors out of the heavy rain. Watched Hugo and Real Steel (which was surprisingly good, much better than that trailer makes it out to be and beautifully shot I thought!). Interestingly even though they are very different films, both are very good stories of ten year old boys reconnecting with their fathers/father figures. And they both feature robots! I photographed Ollie in the reflection of the triple glazed glass at the gate lounge while waiting for him to board his flight home to Melbourne. Felt very weird handing him over to the flight attendant and seeing him strut off down the flight bridge. Such a cool kid. The apartment seems a little empty tonight.

 

4 Comments
categories If not here then where?, Photography

BEDSIDE

Glendyn Ivin

Spent a few hours sitting with my Dad in Gosford hospital yesterday. He was much more together mentally than last weekend, but far more frail overall. At least we were able to have a chat. Topics covered as he drifted in and out included. Forgiveness and regret. What constellation 'heaven' might be part of. About how it seems he decides on whether a film is good or bad  by how much swearing there is in it. How big a mouse has to be before it's a rat. And how his illness might be in some way related to the fact that no-one in the hospital will give him strawberry ice-cream (the only food he seems interested in).

Kind of pleasant in a weird way. And perhaps some of the better time I've spent with my Dad over the last decade or so.

5 Comments
categories Development, If not here then where?, Photography