Moving right along, we’re holding auditions for the supporting roles of the film, in Downtown Portland.

Interested in auditioning, or know someone who might be? Fill out our handy online form, and we’ll be in touch.

Yesterday I wrapped up a teen filmmaking workshop at Northwest Documentary Arts and Media. The content of the workshop itself wasn’t very different than the teaching that I do in my normal life as an artist in residence at the Northwest Film Center, but this workshop was actually produced solely for the purpose of capturing footage of myself as an educator for The Adults.

One of the major themes of the film is my relationship with young people in contrast to Peter’s, as well as—though I hate to sound immodest—the fact that I’m pretty damn good at teaching kids. That means shooting the beginning few days of the type of class in which I (and students) shine: a week-long filmmaking intensive.

“But wait,” you (and a lot of other people) ask, “why not hold a one day workshop, if you only need a few minutes of footage?” It’s a valid question, and I considered that option, but the moments that I want to capture on film are the ones in which young people are opening up and expressing themselves, talking about the films they want to make and the stories they want to tell. That process is a difficult one, and without the promise of actually being guided through the production of that film on the back end, there wouldn’t be anything keeping them at the table. Even though I only need a day or two of footage, the students need the promise that a real film will come out of the process for them to be motivated to participate.

Taking cameras into one of my existing classes was out of the question, since introducing a camera crew would jeopardize what I’m trying to do in the classroom. The participants have to know what they’re getting into off the bat. And utilizing the facilities of the Northwest Film Center wasn’t an option at all, since I am essentially offering a version of a class that I already teach for free, which would be unwanted competition.

So then we tried to go to another nonprofit. At first, it seemed like Northwest Documentary Arts and Media would be a perfect partner: they have the space, they offer classes already, but none in narrative work, and their executive director Ian McCluskey is a huge supporter of the film. When I presented the idea to their board, it seemed like a slam dunk. One board member even asked “why wouldn’t we do this?” I explained that the ONLY possible snag would be if a parent objected to the broader content of the documentary, which I then explained but added that it had absolutely no bearing on the workshop, and that as far as the kids were concerned, it was just a class. But it didn’t matter; from that point on every discussion was about whether the students would be “harmed” or “exposed”. There were two emergency board meetings held on the issue before they determined that they couldn’t include it as one of their programs. Luckily, Ian had the ability to provide the space as a (highly subsidized) rental without getting board approval, but without the partnership of the organization, there was no marketing. That meant that recruitment would have to be cobbled together from Craigslist posts, Facebook status updates, and word of mouth. In addition, since the workshop was not part of Northwest Documentary’s programming, we were not included in their insurance, so we had to buy our own.

When the first day of the workshop rolled around, I was expecting a maximum of five participants. Instead, I got eleven of the brightest, most charming, and most enthusiastic teenagers I’ve ever worked with. We had a great workshop, and the footage we captured is fantastic. Anna was able to zero in on several of the touching moments that reveal themselves when a group of young people are encouraged to express themselves.

Extra special thanks goes to to Ian McCluskey and Julie Gliniany for supporting this project and putting up with us in their office for an entire week. For the footage we got, I promise it was worth it.

It’s 2:00 AM, and I’m watching the same clips over and over. It’s the video of the callback auditions for the parts of Andy and Peter, and I worry that I’m becoming numb. It’s been months since the callback, and haven’t contacted any of the actors, even to let them know that we are behind schedule. I’ve been terrified of even looking at the tape.

Exploring personal territory isn’t new for me, I’ve been doing that for my entire career. But talking a topic to death is very different from reproducing events; deconstruction makes the confusing things more intelligible, reconstruction throws all that confusion back into your face. Here in front of me is Peter, with all his maddening flaws and contradictions, channeled through an actor whose job it is to understand who Peter is better than Peter ever did himself. And here is young Andy, a child actor reading grown up words that makes the contrast between the two starkly apparent.

My job is to make a decision, but doing so forces me to identify exactly what it is that I want to say about these two characters. Are they in love, or are they willing (or maybe trying) to destroy each other? And maybe more importantly, am I ready to hand that decision over to actors who didn’t live through it?

Meanwhile the shoot dates come closer and closer every minute, and everyone is waiting for me. I know I have to make the hard choice and commit. But for now, I’m going to look at those clips one more time.

Andy presents at ITVS

Last weekend I headed to San Francisco for Queer X-Change, hosted by ITVS. They asked me to write about my experience for their blog, which I was honored to do. Below is an excerpt. Read the entire post at beyondthebox.org.

I’ll admit, I was skeptical when I was invited to the Queer X-Change, an event aimed at encouraging emerging LGBT directors to produce for public television. My own film, The Adults In The Room, seemed like a stretch for public television, both in its content and its execution. Worse, I had become wary of the effort that’s required to even be considered for ITVS funding. The Open Call process, while rewarding for the films that make it through, is arduous and time consuming. I wasn’t sure if I had it in me to try again.

But when you get an invitation to attend something like this, you don’t hesitate. You pack your bags, burn a ton of DVDs, and get excited. [read the rest]

This Saturday, June 20th, The Adults will be presented and discussed in two cities at once. We’re this close to being overexposed.

In San Francisco, I’ll be presenting the film at Queer X-Change, an event presented by ITVS intended to increase the visibility of queer filmmakers in public television programming. The Adults is one of only four projects being presented, so I’m quite humbled and excited. Unfortunately, this event is not open to the public, but if you happen to live in San Francisco, you’re welcome to buy me a beer afterwards.

Meanwhile, here in Portland, director of photography Anna Farrell and producer James Strayer will be at Light and Shadows, an multidisciplinary art show held annually on the summer solstice, to present rough cuts of scenes from The Adults and lead a discussion about the project. They will be joined by dozens of visual artists, writers, and musicians for what promises to be a fantastic evening, and I’m quite jealous that I can’t be there.

Read more about the Light and Shadows event here.
Read Willamette Week’s coverage of the event here.
Read more about the New Oregon Interview Series here.

For all the quirks in its construction, The Adults actually utilizes one of the most traditional tools of documentary filmmaking, and one that I have very little experience with, the hand held, verité-style camera. One of my concerns about the finished product is that the more mediated techniques that have worked in my previous films, such as re-enactment and symbolism, will create an uneasy conflict when juxtaposed with footage that is perceived through it’s presentation to be so “direct”.

Bonnie Kyburz is an Associate Professor of English at Utah Valley University, and is therefore my favorite person with whom to bat around lofty ideas and play the devil’s advocate. I had an online chat with her last week to share my concerns about how we are acknowledging (or not) the presence of the camera in The Adults, based on the scene “Talking About Sam”.

Bonnie Kyburz: I like the way the trope of the “friends at dinner” scene plays out. it’s nonfiction, but it’s so clearly also aware of itself as a cinematic trope. You’re so fucking meta.

Andy Blubaugh: So why do you say that? Because this is one of the things that [director of photography] Anna and I are struggling with. What is it that you see what makes it aware of itself?

BK: The fact that you are creating a film, writing and shooting and composing … and you use the “friends at dinner” footage as part of that process rather than as polished product, exclusively. You incorporate a polished convention not as polish but as part of the messy process of composing.

AB: Right. The film acknowledges itself SOMEWHERE, it has to. But the question becomes, where? For instance, that scene is cut in a way that is impossible, the “second camera” would be seen.

BK: I’m not sure you need to position that awareness in a particular place and/or time.

AB: You aren’t? I’m worried about losing the trust of my audience.

BK: You’re a filmmaker. You articulate from within the grammar of film so it makes sense that you think through that lens, even about things that are “extra-cinematic” But i get that you worry about it being “too precious,” and that’s very, very smart. This is perhaps why the friends’ criticisms — at dinner, on the porch, the Dan Savage bit – works so well.

AB: You mean because it’s humliating? or, causes humility?

BK: That, and your whole demeanor — your visual aura/ethos, speaks humility, so form and content — inasmuch as we can know that your image betrays your actual humility – works together organically.

AB: But isn’t the issue of trust important even if what’s being said makes me uncomfortable? I’m still asking an audience to wonder, “did the camera just happen to catch this?” I mean, of course, it couldn’t have. So by not revealing the entire mechanism (the second camera, or a boom pole), am
I being deceitful?

BK: No, I don’t think so. We know it’s staged, but i think that somehow your silence, your presence, all together w/ the complexity of the subject — it works. And to answer your question, it’s not deceitful. And because of the subject, we GET that you are being cautious of and respectful about the delicacy of the narrative and its subject (both and together). Reflection happens in recursive processes … best when it’s social. So what if you staged a conversation; it’s still a conversation that happened. Was it scripted? Does it matter? It’s your reflection.

AB: I’m worried that without the context of my previous work, audiences might be thrown for a loop. Or, worse, irritated by being jerked around.

BK: Your other films work so well, and this one uses many of its methods
and this layering of lenses is pretty hip especially in its steampunk ways (the tape recorder shots always kill me) so it’s fancy and pomo but not in a flashy way. it’s more humble (back to that term).

AB: I read that as “fancy and porno,” which I was looking forward to asking follow up questions for.

BK: HA! Perv…

In introducing the key players for The Adults, I forgot the ones who have been with the production the longest; my interns.

I met Joaquin Lizarraga and Martha Early as students when they were in high school. I helped Martha hone her first feature screenplay, and I was an advisor on Joaquin’s senior project, an ambitious zombie movie.

I owe a huge debt to them for the work they’ve done so far, and a huge apology in advance for the work I’ll be asking of them in the future.

You can read more about them on the crew page, here. Want to join them? Apply for an internship here.

On June 20th, I’ll be headed to San Francisco to attend a panel on queer content in Public Television, and while I’m there I’m hoping to snag a few interviews for The Adults. Our meager budget won’t allow us to fly our fantastic crew down with me, so I’m looking for eager crew members in the Bay Area that would be willing to help out for a day. At a minimum, I am in need of a camera operator familiar with the Panasonic HVX, a good sound recordist, and a gaffer, as well as leads on rental deals.

If you live in the area and would be willing help out, shoot an e-mail over to acb@andyblubaugh.com.

Among the difficulties in making The Adults In The Room is the fact that Peter—the man that the film is ostensibly about—is not willing to appear on film or be interviewed on the record. His hesitance is completely understandable, but it creates an enormous challenge to us as visual storytellers.

Anna Farrell, Director of Photography for the documentary portion of The Adults, has been helping me to craft an aesthetic system that will suggest the presence and importance of Peter’s periodic phone calls in my life without falsely claiming to represent the real man. Stylized re-enactments have been a cornerstone of my earlier works, but it is difficult to know how well this solution will work in the longer form of The Adults.

I got together with Anna before our shoot on July 5th to discuss the difficulties inherent in this project over a refreshing iced tea at the new Albina Press on Hawthorne. We were toying with the idea of using something—perhaps just a hand picking up a phone—to represent Peter.

Andy Blubaugh: My problem with the idea of showing Peter’s end of the phone conversation is that it feels like that Peter either should either present or not, completely. It’s almost like the maid in a Tom and Jerry cartoon, you can’t see anything but a pair of legs.

Anna Farrell: or like the nanny in the Muppet Babies!

AB: exactly!

[Laughter]

AB: But I think it is important, that he doesn’t have a voice, an opportunity to represent himself, it seems unacceptably false to suggest that he’s there at all.

AF: Right, yeah

AB: The, idea of shooting only my end of the phone conversation, and only until the point the phone connects, feels to me like a way to acknowledge to the audience…

AF: …that he is not fully participating.

AB: Yes, and that you are only getting access to Peter through the filter of me, and my experience.

AF: Right

AB: This is why I left in the jump cuts in the interview with [Multnomah County Deputy District Attorney] Kirstin Snowden in Scaredycat

AF: Yeah

AB: I didn’t do any b-roll. But I left the cuts in to acknowledge that I was chopping her up a little bit, acknowledging that I was only showing you what I wanted to show you.

AF: Well, the fear that I have with Peter being totally absent for the documentary portion, is that the audience is going to grow attached to the actor in the narrative portion. And I don’t know how back and forth the final edit is going to be…

AB: Very. The two will be very interwoven

AF: But everything else is like directly parallelled…

AB: and then it breaks down.

AF: Exactly, and then it breaks down, so then the actor is bearing more weight in the narrative.

AB: Don’t you think that once that if the audience is allowed to see the actor as an actor, out of character, that will help?

AF: Maybe. I think it will ease the responsibility of the actor by being allowed to be a real person constructing a character, but I do think that it is hard once you have introduced an image in a talking moving person of Peter to go back to accepting him as just a conspicuous absence.

AB: Right.

AF: So I agree Peter’s absence makes him is a much stronger character with what we have to work with, but now I’m starting to feel like it is a little bit strange because he is embodied in the narrative part of the film.

AB: Right

AF And it makes me wonder: is that going to be carried over? And it could be carried over in in a good way, in a positive way. But if not…

AB: Right.

AF In the absence of the real Peter, they are going to imagine the actor playing Peter as the real Peter.

AB: Well, I don’t think you’re wrong but I don’t see a solution.

AF: Yeah.

AB: I mean, without falsifying something or actually exposing his conversations, which I said that I won’t do.

AF: I think the solution is that Peter has to be absent from the documentary, but I think there’s a tricky path in the editing with the fact that we are providing a body for peter in the narrative. There is a face, and a personality.

AB: Right. And in the documentary he is, he is, he is a configured void.

AF: uh-huh

AB: And we experimented with that visually in the trailer, having there be no body to Peter He’s only a void, but I just didn’t think it would possible that we could maintain that.

AF: I think that could work for a short in a feature it would be annoying.

AB: Or maybe In the end Andy just goes to Peter’s house, and someone else answers the door and says “Peter? Oh my, Peter’s been dead for 300 years…”

[Laughter]

This is very overdue, but please join me in welcoming Phoebe Owens to our production team. I met Phoebe back in 2002 when she was promoting the film Group which she helped to shoot. Group was a real eye-opener for me; I had never seen a movie that played so brazenly (and successfully) with an audiences’ expectations of what a “narrative” film should be. I’m a bit humbled to be working with her now, but one of Phoebe’s greatest skills is the ability to put me at ease and convince me that producing this film isn’t just possible, it’s an inevitability.

You can read more about her at her site, which she will be adding more to soon, she promises.