A podcast about movie making and the scifi featurette, Daughter of God, with Director Shri Fugi Spilt, (Dan Kelly). Glasses of grandfather are talismanic.

Welcome to the Daughter of Godcast, Episode 017 Christmas 2006. This is recorded in 2016, and in the story of the making of Daughter of God, we’re almost clear of 2006 and about to head full steam into 2007. Momentum folks, that warm tingle in your chest and belly, spreading out down your thighs and into your shoulders, down your biceps and calves and now everywhere, electric spooky waves… of pleasure? Getting more so. That’s momentum, and the ghosts of 10 Christmases past.

Episode 017, Christmas 2006!

I’m post Catholic, wild hybrid Hindu, Taoist, Pagan, Vortexan, but you know, Christmas? Still love Christmas. Today is winter solstice, so if your listening on Wednesday, December 21, 2016 HAPPY SOLSTICE! Believe it or not light will now be increasing, especially here in the United States of America. I know, many people feel like we’re descending into the dark ages, but go talk to a tree, like Melonie did. Calmed her right down.

Or listen to me, and here’s what I’d say. These are exciting times. Just like in the movies, when all seems lost, the heroine saves the day. We are the Joseph Campbells that Joseph Campbell talked about.\

Lies

Here’s Anastasia reading from the intro to Ursula K Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness.

Why do I make movies? Because I want to lie to you like Ursula K Le Guin, I want to tell you the cosmic lie, what you already know but keep forgetting. Why do you forget what you really are? Theme park Earth has automated forgetting routines built in so our divine aspects won’t kick in too soon and spoil the tension, the drama. If you are only focused on the happy ending, where’s the fun in that?

We’ve called out a mess of contrast, we’ve gotten things to be super scary and that means we’ll have to remember way more than we’re used to. Time to get divine and shine. Marianne Williamson’s language might be heavy on the god thing, but she’s pretty much got the jist, far as I’m concerned.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

That last sentence is a like a blueprint to me. “our presence automatically liberates others.

And this from Ghandiji

All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the wo]]>  

A podcast about movie making and the scifi featurette, Daughter of God, with Director Shri Fugi Spilt, (Dan Kelly). Glasses of grandfather are talismanic.

Welcome to the Daughter of Godcast, Episode 017 Christmas 2006. This is recorded in 2016, and in the story of the making of Daughter of God, we’re almost clear of 2006 and about to head full steam into 2007. Momentum folks, that warm tingle in your chest and belly, spreading out down your thighs and into your shoulders, down your biceps and calves and now everywhere, electric spooky waves… of pleasure? Getting more so. That’s momentum, and the ghosts of 10 Christmases past.

Episode 017, Christmas 2006!

I’m post Catholic, wild hybrid Hindu, Taoist, Pagan, Vortexan, but you know, Christmas? Still love Christmas. Today is winter solstice, so if your listening on Wednesday, December 21, 2016 HAPPY SOLSTICE! Believe it or not light will now be increasing, especially here in the United States of America. I know, many people feel like we’re descending into the dark ages, but go talk to a tree, like Melonie did. Calmed her right down.

Or listen to me, and here’s what I’d say. These are exciting times. Just like in the movies, when all seems lost, the heroine saves the day. We are the Joseph Campbells that Joseph Campbell talked about.\

Lies

Here’s Anastasia reading from the intro to Ursula K Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness.

Why do I make movies? Because I want to lie to you like Ursula K Le Guin, I want to tell you the cosmic lie, what you already know but keep forgetting. Why do you forget what you really are? Theme park Earth has automated forgetting routines built in so our divine aspects won’t kick in too soon and spoil the tension, the drama. If you are only focused on the happy ending, where’s the fun in that?

We’ve called out a mess of contrast, we’ve gotten things to be super scary and that means we’ll have to remember way more than we’re used to. Time to get divine and shine. Marianne Williamson’s language might be heavy on the god thing, but she’s pretty much got the jist, far as I’m concerned.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

That last sentence is a like a blueprint to me. “our presence automatically liberates others.

And this from Ghandiji

All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the wo]]> yes Yes no no 27:43 Dan from dog.movie http://dog.movie/podcast/daughter-godcast-016/ Fri, 16 Dec 2016 14:11:03 +0000 Dan from dog.movie http://dog.movie/?post_type=podcast&p=945

The video player might choke in the middle, just notice where the video stopped, reload the page and resume where you left off.

A podcast about movie making and the scifi featurette, Daughter of God, with Director Shri Fugi Spilt, (Dan Kelly). Editorial – Deeper through 2006.

Welcome to the Daughter of Godcast, here we are cozy together at last! we could be halfway through the story of the making of Daughter of God  or maybe just 1/3 of the way. We’re a ways, that’s for sure, episode 016, and there’s still so much to tell, you lucky people. Of course, I am the luckiest of all, since all I’m required to do is ramble on, while you might have to be doing dishes or changing diapers while your listening, unless you’re watching me too in which case, hi! Let’s see if we can blow through 2006.

Episode 016 Deeper

2006 was a eventful year. I’d been living in Brooklyn for two years and had a pretty sweet groove going. A great place to live, creative friends and had started my first featurette, although I initially thought I was making a short. Of the many friends that have croaked while I’ve been making DOG, the first one died in 2006.

I kept a trickle of cash and beaucoup inspiration flowing documenting live performance, I co-hosted dance parties and music jams at the United Gardens, repeatedly struck out romantically and went way beyond the Daughter of God rough cut, as I gradually found answers to why I wanted to make movies.

The rough cut

A rough cut is an assembly of shots roughly corresponding to the screenplay, with perhaps some placeholder media, like music. The June 2006 rough cut starts with simple music I whipped up and opening shots of Gerry, Christina and the big boat. Christina boards the boat, walks down the passage and climbs the stairs to her cabin. Uncle Joe shows up, he and Christina talk, then he’s gone. Christina changes, sped up footage with some cross fades and more placeholder music. Now she’s in the hall, entering Gerry’s cabin, they talk, scene ends, roll credits.

Entering this version into festivals was a sort of mad celebration, having completed a working edit just one month after shooting, which was pretty quick. Another milestone passed. With a rough cut already complete, what could possibly stop me?

duhn duhn duhn!

There was a problem. The rough cut ran 20 minutes, twice as long as  I had anticipated. Longish movies have a tougher time getting into festivals, because they have to be be better than 2-3 shorter movies. So basically, there was no hope. Well, maybe a little hope.

After mailing off the DVDs, I forgot about festivals and just kept going. By the time the last rejection showed up, I was working on a very different movie.

Dancers

I provided documentation services to dancers and performers. Marion Ramirez had hooked me up in her community, but now she was long gone, traveling the world with her new love Jung Woong Kim and learning Korean. My network expanded as I documented more shows. Dana Hash, Philipa Kaye, Laura Peterson, Kara Tatlebaum, Elise Knudson, Jody Sperling, Zoe Klein, Mare Hieronimus, Debra Wanner, Antonio Ramos, Gerald Cassel, Bill Young, Alexandra Beller, Amy Larimer, Rebecca Stenn, Emily Faulkner, Kelly Hayes, Patricia Weiss, Christine Suarez – a who’s who of the early 21 century NYC indy dance scene. Kind of a tiny pond in hindsight, but back then I felt plugged into an fascinating scene that complemented and reinforced my own aspirations.

Not only did I get the chance to quietly fall in love over and over with these gorgeous people and their power, I also was scheming on how I might one day dance professionally myself. Another desire buried in the deep Dan Kelly treasure vault.

Let’s not move too quickly past the falling in love part. I had crushes on several of my clients, but I kept running head-on into my own self loathing, even as I was pulling off the impossible with DOG and stretching way beyond my prior incarnations. I just didn’t feel worthy and so couldn’t get with the women I most wanted to sparkle with. An ongoing tragic comic theme of my New York experience.

As a performance documenter, I gave the dance community my presence at prices they could afford, with technical support and heaps of patience as needed. Although I could have made way more money doing other kinds of production in NYC, I loved being around dance, so I was well compensated.

Money was always tight for my clients and helping audiences to find them wasn’t often their priority. Making the work and performing were. Which makes sense, artists want to art. Yet the audiences were tiny in relation to the miracles unfolding on stage. That left an impression on me.

How can a wider world discover us unless our work persists, flows out across the net to find our allies? I constantly advocated for more and better documentation, and when confronted with genius I was super generous with my gear and time, because I wanted to help that suffuse the world.

I was mildly frustrated documenting dance, I felt many of my clients could have gone so much farther sharing their presence with the world, yet this was totally projection. I wanted to fly farther, higher.

If I ever caught a whiff of desperation, a miasma of lack, a sense of struggle for no good reason while working with these talented and adventurous people, that was certainly my own hunger to be, do and have way more. The frustration was not knowing I could, any time.

Daughter of God quelled the frustration. Now I was channeling my energy into audacious action on my own behalf. Practice what you preach, Mr Artist.

Which of course brings us right into this moment and Daughter of Godcast. This episode may not be my best work, my opus. I am striking a balance between doing my best work and giving my allies a chance to find me. I am not building an audience anymore, neither am I scribbling in a closet, keeping my failures (and victories) private. I heard Carrie Fisher talking on NPRs Fresh Air about how she overshares, and I’m guessing that’s a practice for her, of being present and courageous.

I am being as me as I can be and letting you see. More rhymes. I do think about you coming along, about us blossoming together. Brother and sister flowers. Triffids.

With the ubiquity of smartphones, the latest generation of NYC dancers is likely way more savvy about outreach and persistence, I hope so. Dance is a powerful practice for waking up. Dance is a force that gives us meaning, to contraphrase Chris Hedges. There’s that re-purposing meme again.

United Gardens

This was the golden age of the United Gardens. My railroad apartment was not unlike Jimmy Stewart’s in Hitchcock’s Rear Window, sans my own Grace Kelly. I was on the top floor of a 3 story house with Trevor in the house adjacent and Fabrice in my house a floor below. The three of us co-rented the apartment below Trevor. Our rear windows looked out over two long narrow back yards, the United Gardens. Between the three of us and Phil our awesome landlord, we threw all sorts of parties, dances and music jams.

Ah, Romance

So along with DOG editorial, parties, music jams, dance documentation, and Tai Chi, I also found time to shave off my eyebrows, bleach my hair blonde, meet Garrett Brown, inventor of the Steadicam, learn to lock pick, record a theme song for Daughter of God, reconnect very briefly with my ex-wife and the girl friend who saved my life after my ex-wife, host all manner of visitors, shoot post-apocalyptic exposition footage in upstate New York, drive to Michigan, and almost fall in love a few times.

Lusting after dancers notwithstanding, certainly a rough year for romance.

After coming back from Canada, I briefly dated a someone but she started acting erratic and then told me she was pregnant, which didn’t make sense. The home test came up negative and she confessed to making the whole thing up to get more attention.

Although we weren’t lovers after that, I did get a lot of alternately accusatory and apologetic emails, and then a few months later another employee at the restaurant she worked at reported her to the INS for overstaying her visa. She was picked up, interned in New Jersey for two months and then deported. She’s still a friend via the internets, which I’m glad for. Because we’re all in this together. The whole mysterious pregnancy and deportation sequence was not a little disconcerting – coming so soon after shooting my story about divine pregnancies and the loss of my leading man thanks to beta border guards.

I also heard briefly from my x-wife, we’d divorced in 2000. Having only talked a few times since, I was pleased to get a mildly chatty email from her which I replied to with lots of swell pictures and then… nothing.

In mid August of 2006, My Toe Socks collaborator Lauren Di Scipio dropped in out of the blue for 30 minutes. She looked tan and fit. She was on her way elsewhere after visiting her parents in Connecticut. That’s like stopping by Ann Arbor from Detroit for you Michiganders.

I don’t really remember who else I longed for that year, but I spent a few hours one evening taking care of a barfing girl in my bathroom, and that might have been the romantic pinnacle of 2006.

Friendship

I still keep in touch with a few of my NYC friends, but many tight bonds faded or fiercely imploded before I left for good in 2010. NYC is a much more volatile environment for friendships than Beulah, Michigan, or perhaps I was a much more volatile friend back then.

The recent presidential election def trimmed my extended family still further, Yew Norkers really freaked out at the results! If you’ve been following the podcast, you know I’m not a fan of Trumpy, but c’mon, saddle up. You’d rather the wild roller coaster be flat? Mixing metaphors again, sorry. There was much wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth by my peeps in the 5 buroughs after Manhattan’s iconic clown beat the pant suited gal. I had NYC people tell me it was my fault because I lived in Michigan!

How often do I have to post this Robot Chicken snippet? Fear itself, that’s what’s being sold and sold hard in the USA. Don’t buy it, folks.

Here’s the Signals from a Nearby Now take on the Russian hacking. 17 intelligence agencies are going to have a tough time showing the evidence. The Ruskies didn’t just liberate snarky Dem emails.

count via electronics
moronic
if running private code
any script kiddie could hack
more vulnerable than windows
who’re black hats
ruskies or uskies?

In the universe next door, the Ruskies were able to hack American vote counting machines because those machines are utterly insecure on purpose, and if that was public knowledge then the American people might realize that this is not the first time they’ve had a government selected for them. The only difference this time around was that a foreign power did the selecting.  A sly move by the Russians. America gets the clown President, hand picked because he was the only opponent who could make Hillary look good in comparison. Trumpy will most certainly fuck up American projection of power big time, and the only way he can be stopped (short of a civil war) is by revealing that voting has been a sham for years, which the man don’t dare do. A perfect crime.

That’s why all the hub bub about the musty old Electoral College. If they can head him off there, then compromised voting machines can remain a state secret.

Securing proprietary code is nearly impossible, do you imagine a vote counting machine is less vulnerable than a Windows computer? and Microsoft is HUGE! In the utopian universe, voting is open source. Coming soon to Signals from a Nearby Now near you.

Odd that my alternate reality post apocalyptic science fiction podcast is starting to sound more and more like mainstream media. That can’t be good.

Charly Hansen

Meanwhile back in 2006. On June 27 my artist friend Charly Hansen re-emerged into the non-physical, using cancer as his excuse for bolting before my movie was done. Of course he’s responsible for the movie taking so long. He died and left me without any sense of urgency regarding completion. I wished I had sent him a copy of the rough cut a least, that would have been stellar.

But corny as it sounds, I know he’s been pulling for the project ever since and has engineered not a few coups for Daughter of God from this advantageous perspective beyond duality. He and the rest of those fun loving dead people, rushing off to fullness so they could render all manner of spooky assistance. We’ll recognize all their earth incarnations in a future episode.

Why Movie

There are now two reasons for this podcast. To revel in my evolving desire to make movies and to rough out a making of documentary that could release with Daughter of God, sort of the father to Daughter of God. Basically a blueprint for utopian earth stewardship in movie manifesto drag. If you read the transcriptions, you might see notes in [square brackets] that won’t necessarily be included in the audio portion of the podcast. Those are to remind me what might be cool visual components later on.

We might be half way through the Daughter of Godcast. Let’s say there’s about 10 hours total of content, and if only 20% of that is compelling, that’s two hours, easily a feature documentary. Maybe the working title could be the Why Movie, the legend of Shri Fugi Spilt. I’ll probably grab that domain.

Enough future, golly. We still got to get through 2006!

After the rough cut was done I tried answering the question of how do I make Daughter of God? Gradually it became apparent that this question depended on a more existential question, why movie at all?

More questions than we may be ready to answer.

I didn’t have a master plan, or all the answers. I knew I wanted to sketch out some more elements.

Reiterate

On May 22, 2006 while working on the rough cut, I wrote about encounters with a star faring civilization to explore the kinds of forces that could be influencing Daughter of God’s characters. Perhaps this was a day dream or thought experiment by any of the three – Uncle Joe, Christina or Gerry.

If we send them down without wiping their memory they get caught, tortured and killed. you act differently when you know what we know, it’s like people who almost die, often times they don’t look at the world the same way, they become alive. they stand out in a crowd, they tend not to buy into bullshit. that’s like painting a target on their back.

you come up to our starship, you get a good look, you aren’t going to fit back into the little nook that you used to occupy down on earth. you can’t take your job or family back, not without elaborate preparations, cover stories, fabricated evidence, etc. – a thousand points of vulnerability. better if we just wipe your memory, then at least you have nothing to offer the interrogators and they just leave you be. your friends and family find you and help you assemble some kind of new life. we’ve got articles in all the estabz magazines about sudden memory loss, it’s acceptable. we know and they know there is no recovery protocol, what we erase is just gone, that’s all. so now make a choice, stay up here and work with us, or go back to what your were before.

The characters have transcended the mundane, they are enhanced and yet apparently nothing special. Even they don’t know who or what they are, what happened to them. Again with the re-purposed weapons from episode 015.

Here’s another character study from July 15, 2006 this applies to Gerry, who is a version of me.

we’ve all suffered, everyone struggles and is defeated, is hurt, crushed and broken. my lot is no worse than most, and a lot easier than many. not to down play my pain, certainly i’ve had a heapin helpin. what’s the point? the score you get after it’s all said and done is based on how well we bounced back from our trials, what one has been able to accomplish after getting creamed and ravaged and ridiculed. can you heal? what’s your rate of recovery? how big a hit can you take and stand back up? that’s what it’s about, rise up and recover, heal and learn the lesson, reintegrate, mutate and thrive!

so that’s what i’d like to exemplify. first, how to slide by destruction and second, how to come back after the smack. how to be calm and peaceful during chaos, how to groove in dicey circumstance, staying cool no matter how desperate the sitch, keeping a twinkle in the eye and a sly smirk on the lips if the shit hits the fan. certainly, avoid the convergence of flying shit and spinning fans, but if your caught by surprise, deal with elegance and aplomb.

Going conceptual with character and story informed the development of concrete deliverables, like the DVD case. Here’s the elevator pitch from the interim DVD cover, which I rushed to the Terror Film Festival in July of 2006.

It’s the end times, again!

Despite weaponized plague, natural catastrophe, environmental near collapse, improvised technological infrastructure and poor hygiene – love endures. Plucky survivors shelter in the landfill of western civilization; salvaging, tinkering, biding their time.

A visit from her dead uncle sends a young refugee on a mission of salvation, seduction… or something. She’s going to give birth to the Daughter of God. If she can convince the awkward recluse down the hall to collaborate, it’ll be twice the miracle.

The summary reveals the premise and leaves a lot to the imagination. Dead uncle, Daughter of God, awkward recluse, twice the miracle. Though just text, the summary provided a cognitive handle so I could better grab the simmering pot of editorial.

Looking at the rough cut TODAY, I feel a little embarrassed. Terrible placeholder music, low quality render, choppy edits, awkward pauses in the dialogue. No wonder the Festivals passed.

However, the rough cut was a milestone, proving that the project worked, creaky and ungainly, but functional.

Next, sketch in more context. We’ve got this big boat, three quirky characters, what’s that all about?

Exposition of the post apocalyptic world.

Epic CG shots of abandoned cities, flipped over army tanks, and broken bridges are cliche and break my suspension of disbelief. We might marvel at the artistry but it doesn’t feel visceral, I am now totally jaded by cutting edge VFX. I had some epic CG ideas, but I wanted something more like cracks in paint on an old bench, beautiful if seen with the light and shadows just so, but otherwise perfectly invisible, innocuous. Monsters (2010), did a decent job of this, presenting scenes of aftermath almost as throw away detail, catching a glimpse of a ruined train at the bottom of a gorge, or the brief passing of a missile launcher trundling down a busy city street.

Another film that does the minimal masterfully is American Astronaut (2001) directed by and starring Cory McAbee. Samuel Curtis’s spaceship is presented as a slide show of illustrations, and totally works! I found this amazing movie on Netflix around 2012, thanks to Eliza Forrest.

Here’s my VFX principles from August 26, 2006

Approaching film like theater. you don’t have to show every special effect, just suggest. exciting when it’s suggested, hinted. erotic. we don’t have to parade the spaceship in front of the audience, just give them a taste, a glimpse. Was it real, i think i saw it.

Most of the apocalypse I wanted was within driving distance. Ann Loeding lived in Kingston New York with all manner of ruined industrial crap close by, even just up the street. Limestone kilns, crumbling mule barns, abandoned train cars, caves, derelict brick factories.

A few closing post apocalyptic shots would also feature Uncle Joe, raising questions about who or what he actually was. This would be 3/3 of the secret endings. 1/3 was the improvised scene with Gerry and Christina.

On September 18, 2006 my nephew Patrick and I drove up to stay with Ann, Gary and baby Ada Bee in Kingston and spend a few days of capturing random industrial decline.

Another element of post apocalyptic exposition was with radio broadcasts, heard at the start and during Christina’s changing sequence. I did a bunch of the voices myself and also hired my friends Claire Hallereau and Arabella Clitandra for some goddess power.

Suit Guys

Secret ending 2/3 was a scene with two Uncle Joe-like suit guys kibbitzing in an office. Taken together with the other secret Uncle Joe scene, this would cast Uncle Joe’s visit to Christina into a new light, not so much of a twist as a reveal.

A friend from Tai Chi, Philip Silverstein was a commercial real estate broker and an actor. I asked him to find a Manhattan office location with a view. I hired Eiji-san (from Episode 005) and Phil to play the suit guys, and since they both spoke fluent Japanese, I had them ad lib the first few lines in Japanese for fun. Ndong, my Afrique cat music mix master came along to assist. We shot the scene on August 20.

FUDIP

Ndong and I had been working on a mix for the soundtrack, based on Another Fucked Up Day in Paradise, a song I wrote long ago and then revamped around 2000. FUDIP is the theme song of this podcast. I sang and played acoustic instruments and Ndong kicked it with great beats and bass. This was done in early December 2006. He also created several instrumental variations for elsewhere in the movie, like in Christina’s changing sequence.

Christina Changing

I found a speed ramping technique that transformed Christina’s getting ready to talk to Gerry into a dance. Ndong’s arrangement worked famously.

December 19, 2006

she is changing, yes. let’s think about the story, about our aim and let that guide what movements. pick sexy things surely, pick awkward and sublime. this is the recipe for the dance of the new epic, the age of sustainability. she is trying on different personas, attempting to find what she is today. the primary ones i like are the earth muffin, the empire builder, the elegant ingenue, and the bride (her final choice) those are the ones that stand out. at the start she is the light carrier. it’s not even so much the personas as the TRANSITION between them that matters, it’s the in between places, emphasis on change. She must be the changes she’s seen, she is the movietone news. her costumes reflect what has crossed the world stage in her time, the earth muffins and hippies standing up for ideals, the armies marching and fighting in the streets, the wealthy and elegant in their fortress retreats, the magical child who somehow emerges, not by guile or force of arms, but by luck and mystery. like anastasia, helping hands along the way.

so it’s selecting the most poignant of each persona, not a stereotype but the key plot points of their stories. the movements are the dance that illustrates their epic, to the tribe around the fire in one hundred years. she is making the dance that will be. and it’s always sexy, because to keep the story going there must be new actors entering the stage, so life must go on, babies – and the intrigue and mystery that brings them forth. welcome to earth, the traveling circus and epic battle. we are the entertainment planet, with great defeats and triumphs, the universe loves a story.

Legal

All hail, Innes Smolansky! Our new project attorney had finalized all the contracts and our legal status was finally getting cleared up. Mel Tormey had certainly squandered a lot of my time. Innes was more than competent, she was momentum.

Why Movie

Considering the question of why movie, here’s what I wrote on November 16, 2006.

i resolve this day to tell a story that will serve the earth and the people who love earth

the corporations are instruments of tyranny. the self appointed rulers of earth have gone underground, they have left corporations to act in their interests, to be the targets of retribution, the focus of conflict. if a corporation is brought down and it’s directors jailed, the legal mechanisms recover the assets and it’s all recycled back into the portfolio. so even to act against the corporation is to miss the point, it’s what they were made for.

if an army tank is rolling down the street, throwing a bottle at it won’t do much, but hit the driver over the head with that bottle and the tank becomes neutral. see the man behind the curtain. mind you, a tank is a formidable weapon and can still do lots of damage, but the tank is not the enemy, [maybe] the driver is[n’t] the enemy [either]. even the driver can be turned, it’s the ultimate owner of the driver and the tank. whoever deploys the force.

ownership is a fiction agreed upon by consensus. can ownership of land be established by killing whoever is living on it? did the indigenous people of turtle island even conceive of ownership? if we stole the land, then the metals and minerals we take from that land to build our cars and computers are stolen goods also. if a father abuses his biological child, shouldn’t that child escape and go to folks who will take proper care? if people do not care for the land, can they claim title to it?

ok so all this comes back to the owners. the owners hold title because they tell themselves and the world around them a very compelling story. but heavens, it’s just a story and that story isn’t a happy one for most. i resolve this day to tell a story that will serve the earth and the people who love earth. a lawn is not a meadow, a garden is not a forest, a swimming pool is not a pond. those who know this love the earth. what this means is that going nature’s way is best, as long as there is stewardship and reverence, let folks live on the land. let there be cities, designed with presence so that forest can be untouched and fields unpaved. i tell the story.

and this on November 19, 2006.

becoming a master storyteller through robust living

tai chi is the physical expression of principles underlying all. what is effective, to feel. to become acutely aware of sensation. to pay attention to it, to explore it’s range and depth. to go deeper and feel the universe, every flutter of leaf, the thoughts and feelings of others, the slight torque of the trunk of an oak in the wind. what is happening inside, what i am inside, muscle bone and whelling up of emotion, the knowing in all it’s flavors. knowing inside, attentive to within the outside is also available. this feeling, deep, inside.
i stay at home to train. even movies are not frivolous, they are the ocean we choose to sail. emotion, story.
so if we train and open awareness, the principles become inate, the can inform everything we are. the movies we make transform, for they are living information. the tai chi shows the way, immersion in the water of being, it’s not ground of being, it’s the water of being, three dimensional waves, the peaks and troughs of information, nothing bubbling.
move me as thou wilt, goddess. i am your champion on earth.

So to translate, our apparent circumstances is a story we tell ourselves, whether we are oppressed or free and feeling is how new stories are possible. So easy!

You’ve been listening to the Daughter of Godcast, episode 016, an especially longer one, we’re on the cusp of the pithy core of the story, by analogy we’re wrapping up the first movie in the original Star Wars trilogy. The Empire is about to Strike Back. 2007-2011 were not looking so good for your podcaster. More heros die. The rebel base is a smoking ruin. The search begins for the lost Jedi paradise. Joseph Campbell wondered where the new myths would come from, little did he know he would become the new myth.

]]>

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A podcast about movie making and the scifi featurette, Daughter of God, with Director Shri Fugi Spilt, (Dan Kelly). Editorial – Deeper through 2006.

Welcome to the Daughter of Godcast, here we are cozy together at last! we could be halfway through the story of the making of Daughter of God  or maybe just 1/3 of the way. We’re a ways, that’s for sure, episode 016, and there’s still so much to tell, you lucky people. Of course, I am the luckiest of all, since all I’m required to do is ramble on, while you might have to be doing dishes or changing diapers while your listening, unless you’re watching me too in which case, hi! Let’s see if we can blow through 2006.

Episode 016 Deeper

2006 was a eventful year. I’d been living in Brooklyn for two years and had a pretty sweet groove going. A great place to live, creative friends and had started my first featurette, although I initially thought I was making a short. Of the many friends that have croaked while I’ve been making DOG, the first one died in 2006.

I kept a trickle of cash and beaucoup inspiration flowing documenting live performance, I co-hosted dance parties and music jams at the United Gardens, repeatedly struck out romantically and went way beyond the Daughter of God rough cut, as I gradually found answers to why I wanted to make movies.

The rough cut

The video player might choke in the middle, just notice where the video stopped, reload the page and resume where you left off.

A podcast about movie making and the scifi featurette, Daughter of God, with Director Shri Fugi Spilt, (Dan Kelly). Editorial – Deeper through 2006.

Welcome to the Daughter of Godcast, here we are cozy together at last! we could be halfway through the story of the making of Daughter of God  or maybe just 1/3 of the way. We’re a ways, that’s for sure, episode 016, and there’s still so much to tell, you lucky people. Of course, I am the luckiest of all, since all I’m required to do is ramble on, while you might have to be doing dishes or changing diapers while your listening, unless you’re watching me too in which case, hi! Let’s see if we can blow through 2006.

Episode 016 Deeper

2006 was a eventful year. I’d been living in Brooklyn for two years and had a pretty sweet groove going. A great place to live, creative friends and had started my first featurette, although I initially thought I was making a short. Of the many friends that have croaked while I’ve been making DOG, the first one died in 2006.

I kept a trickle of cash and beaucoup inspiration flowing documenting live performance, I co-hosted dance parties and music jams at the United Gardens, repeatedly struck out romantically and went way beyond the Daughter of God rough cut, as I gradually found answers to why I wanted to make movies.

The rough cut yes Yes no no 29:45 Dan from dog.movie http://dog.movie/podcast/daughter-of-godcast-015/ Thu, 08 Dec 2016 03:59:43 +0000 Dan from dog.movie http://dog.movie/?post_type=podcast&p=898

Try this link if media player chokes, or just reload the page and pick up where the video stopped.

A podcast about movie making and the scifi featurette, Daughter of God, with Director Shri Fugi Spilt, (Dan Kelly). Editorial – the rough cut flops at first wave festivals.

Episode 015 of the Daughter of Godcast, Dan Kelly here again with you, here in the lovely Artist house, Inc. studio in beautiful Beulah, Michigan. Want to shout out to our listeners around the world in Nigeria, China, Canada, Germany, Great Britain, Australia, France, Puerto Rico and the Russian Federation, as well as Traverse City and Ann Arbor Michigan. I see you out there listening and I thank you so much.

Today’s word is polymath, or “many learnings” from the latin. I’d prefer, “many likes” which would be polyphile, I suppose. I could make that word up, but it would wreck havoc with my SEO, or search engine optimization. That’s a blast from the right now, because along with weekly episodes of Daughter of Godcast, I’m teaching myself how to make dog.movie more findable in the world, via the poly prescient Google.

Meanwhile, back in Brooklyn 2006, post big boat. I made all manner of optimistic and confident predictions about how quickly I could cut the project. I had accomplished the toughest part, assembling people, places and ideas worthy of documenting, and captured 85-90% of what I set out to get. I should have enough to complete the core project. A couple or at most a few months of staring at screens, the rapture of editorial, should make up for the other 10-15%. First, a vacation.

Returning from Canada and getting Melonie back on a plane to Michigan, I retooled for camping and jumped on a plane myself to Arizona to meet my brothers and nephew for a few days descending into the Grand Canyon along the South Bass Trail.

During the flight, a super fat guy was next to me, aggressively overflowing into my seat. He seemed to be asserting his right to be really BIG, and we didn’t speak more than a few words to each other. I’m pretty open to diversity, but the dude was a stifling, arrogant, inescapable onslaught of meat and heat, somehow even more nightmarish in his navy blue tent-like business suit. This was probably the most stressful flight I’ve ever taken, so much so that in my eagerness to get out of the plane and away from the man mountain, I left my laptop behind. Fortunately, the airline was able to sort this out, and the laptop was back in my hands a few days later.

After we came out of the canyon, I rented a car and drove to Vegas to catch up with my excellent friend Susan Fisk, who’d moved there from Michigan a few years prior. She tried to help me see Vegas from a friendly perspective, but I’d attended too many SIGGRAPHS and SIGCHI conferences to ever accept Vegas as anything but an energy squandering, water wasting environmental disaster. I encouraged her to get out of there, then drove back to my brother and sister’s in Flagstaff and caught a plane back to Brooklyn.

Why did the fat guy freak me out so much? Why am I so down on Vegas?

Intensity might be resonance. The big guy embodied the excess inherent in consumption and the horrific waste of resources we Americans countenance. The endless quest for satisfaction in the manipulation of external trivia. Indulgence way beyond requirements and the suffering thus triggered.

I think more to the point, man mountain reminded me of me, of my own overflowing arrogance. Here was a man out of control in a fundamental way, he cannot easily fit in, constantly at odds with convention. Being this bulky is not ok in the prominent culture, he must feel friction. He’s not at ease and so, he’s angry. I can relate.

There’s plenty of “evolved” reasons to feel compassion – he might have been sexually abused, or perhaps he’s got a genetic disorder, he’s jangled in a way that’s not his fault… and a sink hole opens up at my feet – I’m trying to find some reason not to blame him, to not judge him. How could he live like this? Maybe he didn’t choose. The premise that he’s fucked up is total jackal thinking, (see Marshall Rosenberg).

I want to cut him some slack because then *I* can feel less imposed upon, I can experience some relief even as I’m squashed and constricted. I can defuse my resentment for the penny pinching airlines constantly shrinking their seats.

About 3 hours of being forced to look in the mirror. Jeff Gibbs helped me to let go of jet flying, but I think the fat man got me ready to hear Jeff’s rationale. I didn’t ever want to be stuck next to an angry obese guy again. In other words, I didn’t want to be stuck next to a fun house reflection of my own shadows. In other words, throw some light on the shadows, jet planes and fat guys are trivia.

Now, I am grateful to the fat guy. Time traveling back to myself on that airplane, clearing space to breath and stretch out. Witness energetic editorial – new insights inserted into old memories transform the now.

From: danny kelly <anything@
Subject: on the plane from AZ
Date: May 3, 2006 at 4:47:57 PM EDT
To: Ann Loeding <aboatgrrl@
Cc: danny kelly <anything@

I am flying on a big airplane right now and will be arriving back in NYC tonight.

Robert is coming into the hood thursday and is giving me a ride back to his place to pick up the honda.

I'd like to begin working on the edit very soon (next week?). would like to clear up some financials first. Thought  it might be a good idea to figure out who we'd like to thank in the credits before we got to far away from the project. also maybe you and I could debrief with an eye toward what we did right and otherwise.

kisses!

d

Making movies was the optimal path to follow as an artist, because I didn’t have to give any of myself up, quite the opposite – all of my interests and affinities are required for making movies. Making movies is also the most outrageous undertaking I can imagine.

And as I’ve been hinting for a few episodes, I’ve learned very recently that Daughter of God has been a sort of preparation for an even brighter blooming into my affinities, a significant upgrade of my already robust imagination.

Of my many likes, the process of assembling and remixing blobs of picture and sound or editorial got me to my first film festival, which then inspired me to start my first featurette. We prefaced Daughter of God’s making by preparing for and getting on the big boat, to acquire the core footage. So far, we’ve made the movie twice, according to Hitchcock. Now the third making, the one I’ve been most looking forward to – editorial, begins.

I had the sense that the movie was pretty much in the bag, because now I was in my element, editing was my forte. No pesky actors or crew needed, locations… oh wait. Lawyers. Did I mention lawyers? That’s a morass, we’ll gently side step lawyers for now.

Through the month of May I kept cash flowing by documenting dance performance around the city, worked my member shifts at the Park Slope Food Coop, practiced Tai Chi on the weekends, and I slammed together a working edit for DOG. By June, a bare bones pre-release screener was ready, and I sent this to the first wave of film festivals.

From: danny kelly <anything@
Subject: hey
Date: June 5, 2006 at 7:27:49 PM EDT
To: Steven Zilliax <szilliax@
Cc: danny kelly <anything@

Yo Steve!

are you still on the planet? I want to send you money and a final contract. I've finished a rough cut and have started firing it off to festivals. I've got to clear the legal issues real quick. PLEASE get in touch!

tried leaving cell messages...

D

Steve Zilliax had been deported, but his stuff was still scattered around the city. I retrieved all of Steve’s clothes and personal gear from his friends’ apartments, including a bicycle, tennis racket and $920 in cash. I shipped everything except the bike and racket to his parents in Canada.

From: Dan Kelly <nomad@
Subject: boxes launched
Date: July 18, 2006 at 11:33:20 AM EDT
To: Steven Zilliax <szilliax@
Cc: Dan Kelly <nomad@

Steveez

cross your fingers, six boxes launched today from church street station. I counted $920 in cash in that wad you left. The shipping was $146, so i also mailed you a check for $744 in a separate envelope. Could be two weeks for the boxes? Waiting to hear from claire about the lawyer.

love and love

dan

The racket and the bike gathered dust in my narrow hallway, biding their time. Everything has a destiny.

I scouted immgration lawyers for Steve to see if we could reverse his defacto deportation. I would’ve helped fund the process, but his inquiries weren’t promising.

Speaking of lawyers, my entertainment lawyer was proving to be problematic. Let’s call him Mel Tormey. At first I just thought he was thorough, but after a month or two I realized Mel was a serious pain in the ass. He went into excruciating detail about trivia either because he was total anal, to pad out his billing, or both. One of his predilections was commenting on emails in CAPS, and issuing dire warnings about failure to anticipate every possible eventuality. He did move the project forward, but time I wasted replying to his CAPITALIZED emails and excessive fees made the price for Mel’s help dear.

Downtown Community Television Center in Chinatown offers workshops on all things media, and over the summer of 2006 I attended a legal workshop hosted by the incomparable attorney, Innes Smolansky. I fired Mel and hired Innes Her experience and expertise with indy distribution is extensive, and she had a sultry Polish accent. As of today Daughter of God has yet to be distributed, and Innes doesn’t really feel like she’s contributed all that much over the last 11 years, but just knowing she’s on retainer feels like money in the bank.

Entering film festivals was a rather audacious move, the editorial was hardly started. I gambled that at least a couple of juries would see the project’s potential, the screener was a work in progress.  I wanted to feed the juggernaut momentum with a pre-emptive strike on the festival circuit. If the long shot paid off and Daughter of God got accepted anywhere, I’d have to go into total overdrive to actually get the movie festival ready.

I picked a few Oscar qualifying festivals and others that felt tasty, SF Shorts: San Francisco International Festival, AFI FEST, Global Peace Film Festival, Hawaii International Film Festival, Atlantic Film Fest, Sacramento International Film and Music Festival, Independent Television Festival, Terror Film Festival.

I then started editorial from scratch with a more methodical approach.

7/15/06 blog (editorial)

now i am thinking about logging, about how to do it. if I try to log every line, every nuance, by god i’ll be here forever. what i need is to select the high lights, the parts that really work well. what would those be? strong performances, clear and articulate audio, striking visuals. what we need to be doing is selecting the best stuff, not logging every moment. that really means watching and listening intently. I’ve already made some choices, like dark hall vs light hall. it’s perfectly fine to see her in the hall and then cut to a dark interior, that automatically deselects the bright door shots. choices like that, is this or that better? it means going through and analyzing what’s going on, what our options are. for instance, there are major branches where i’ve created options to work with, either this way or that. sometimes three or four options. so what this logging is all about is documenting the branches, the variety of coverage and how each possibility might jive with the rest of the material. so we watch for options. we can also situate ourselves someplace shady and quiet, the backyard comes to mind with that long extension cord which has not yet been brought in. i need to account for those and the rest of my extension cords as part of my kit.

Thinking about Gerry and Joe

In July I attended my second Hackers on Planet Earth conference (HOPE Number 6), where I purchased two sets of lock picking tools. A week or two after, my high school buddies and I rented a place near Deep Creek Lake in Maryland and I brought an assortment of padlocks and showed their kids how to use the tools. Next to the house was a secure storage shed off limits to renters. I had it open in about 10 minutes, like magic. We checked out the owners’ water toys and shiny ATV, and then locked the shed up again.

My experience writing code and HOPE conferences influenced Gerry’s character. He’s a hacker and a maker who’s been repeatedly crushed but insists on rebounding, he feels he’s been targeted by unseen enemies, and this makes him resilient. He does not know why he is a threat or to whom, but he has decided to find out. They have given him a reason to live.

7/22/06 Gerry Monolog

i will not be neutralized. ha, go ahead unseen adversary, you know that the most you can do is toss stumbling blocks in my path, but i am coming for you, i am standing for my earth family, and whatever your about, whatever you are, matters not. i am coming on and coming on strong. keep me lonely if you can, you’ve tried to sicken me, but couldn’t make it stick. you might jam my channels, i’ll find others. damaged, broken, crushed, i keep rising up. watch me recover. you might steal my will, i will grow another. you might erase my memory, my family and the gods stand ready to remind me. my mind is everywhere. i am the universe.

The character of Uncle Joe was inspired by Jon Ronson’s book, Men Who Stare at Goats, which was later made into a silly movie with George Clooney. Ronson’s book documents some weird and tragic stories about unconventional military explorations and black ops of the US fedgov. Weirdly, Deep Creek Lake was where some of the nasty stuff purportedly went down, like the use of LSD as a CIA interrogation aid and the murder of a government chemist who was uneasy with this research.

July of 2006, there I was on Deep Creek Lake, teaching my nephews and nieces practical espionage, picking locks to see what the landlords were hiding. Spooky.

If LSD was ever deployed as a weapon, I suppose the military might still maintain a stockpile, but civilian use is likely way more common, either by the very adventurous, or metaphysically inclined. The weapon has been re-purposed, re-contextualized.

I remember as a lad, some party girl pals were looking for something to smoke marijuana out of. My friend found her dad’s old replica flintlock pistol. After wire brushing the powder residue out of the barrel and reaming out the flash hole with a paper clip, she piled some pot in the flashpan, put the barrel to her mouth and touching a lighter to the pan, sucked in. An improvised and very scary pipe.

The gun became something of a legend in her circle because first of all, it was super freaky to put a gun barrel into your mouth, and second she had taken a device that had only one purpose – to kill or injure another person – and seen it in a new way. Now the gun was for getting stoned, for fun. And seeing a lot more use than it ever had as a weapon.

The re-purposing of weapons has many famous precedents. The first manned rockets were basically modified ICBMs, NASA replaced nuclear payloads with people. Werner Von Braun was himself repurposed, from Nazi scientist overseeing the slave labor construction of V2 rockets to hero of NASA and architect of the Apollo missions to the moon. We can all re-purpose, we can see ourselves differently.

I told the V2 and ICBM story to a bunch of grad students I’d befriended at a computer conference in the 90s, complete with the cozy little re-purposing moral, when an older dude stood up from a nearby table, came over and introduced himself. He said he had worked high up at NASA on this mission and that mission, laying out his credentials and getting the stars in our eyes. He then singled me out for an intense lambasting. “NASA had no connection to the military,” and so forth. My new grad student friends visibly shrank back from me, I had been spreading poison. I was astounded to have been singled out for offering what I felt was a message of hope.

Looking back, that guy must have felt a lot of guilt, there must have been way more military overlap during his career than he could handle, hence his strong reaction. The lady doth protest too much.

Then there’s the theory Joe Cissel reminded me of, that the space program was a foil to get missile targeting super accurate, a weapons program hidden in plain sight.

Even so, there’s always an opportunity to flip the horror show. The masters of war might be hard at work, but we can subvert their efforts, every single time. Fun and creativity always win, cause you never want to give up. They are their own reward.

Which brings us to Uncle Joe, who shows up with glad tidings for Christina – that she is going to give birth to the Daughter of God. Who is Uncle Joe and what’s he all about? Is he an angel from heaven? Or a weapon? Perhaps he’s both, a re-purposed weapon.

Thinking about the characters is a huge part of editorial. Who they are, what they want.

What do I mean by story telling? Story telling is just another way of saying art – the facilitation of a complex, engaging and persistent experience. By persistance I mean memory. Movies are akin to paintings and music in that it’s a mediated experience shading to memory. Virtuosic experience, vivid memories.

Editorial assembles diverse media into a coherent whole. Much meaning and nuance is possible depending on how the bits are juxtaposed. Some choices are about what shots are technically excellent – performance, sound, focus, lighting – while others are based on how to convey something subtle / crucial. Imagine two chunks of adjacent footage, say a shot of Christina talking followed by a shot of Gerry reacting. Even with matched cameras, the choice of where to make the edit will either knit their conversation together or blow it to pieces. Editorial choices trash or deepen the story.

The version for the first wave of festivals was slightly more than a rough cut, not nearly close to being complete. I was mildly disappointed but not surprised when the festival rejections started showing up. Eventually rejections from all festivals, though the Terror Film Festival was nice enough to send a t-shirt, and here it is!

You’ve been listening to the Daughter of Godcast, produced behind enemy lines in the United States of America, where the resistance continues the epic adventure of bringing domestic democracy and justice for all. Thanks for tuning in, we’ve been talkin about he beginning of editorial for the featurette Daughter of God, the longest little movie that Innes Smolansky has almost ever worked for, and if she’s listening out there somewhere, we’d like to send her a big hug! We like to send you all a big hug! Who is we? Me and tigger!

From: Withoutabox Customer Service <customerservice@
 Subject: Message from Sun Valley Spiritual Film Festival
 Date: June 30, 2006 at 7:00:26 PM EDT
 To: Dan Kelly <anything@

Sun Valley Spiritual Film Festival has sent you the message below regarding your submission of "Daughter of God" with the tracking number SVSFF-1046-2006.

------------------------------------------

Hi Dan -

Thank you so much for sending us your short film. It was a very creative idea - and I especially liked the quirkiness of your female lead.

Nevertheless, we will not be able to include your film in our program this year. We received over 130 films, and only have place for between 20-30 films.

We hope that you will think of us again in the future, for any spiritually oriented film projects that you may embark upon.

All the best,

Claudio Ruben
 Co-Director SVSFF

From: info@
Subject: Daughter of God
Date: August 5, 2006 at 9:22:55 PM EDT
To: anything@

Dear Dan,

The Global Peace Film Festival applauds your work to bring your creative talents to bear on this important subject matter.  It is with great regret that Global Peace Film Festival cannot accommodate your film at this year’s festival.  Global Peace Film Festival has only so many slots and too many worthy selections from which to choose.

Global Peace Film Festival wishes you every success with this and your future projects and looks forward to the opportunity to review your work another day.

With kind regards,

The Programming Staff of Global Peace Film Festival

From: Mark Flindall <programming@
Subject: 26th Atlantic Film Festival
Date: August 17, 2006 at 7:11:13 PM EDT
To: <anything@

Dear Dan Kelly,


Thank you for submitting Daughter of God for consideration in the 26th Atlantic Film Festival.

The Festival received an incredible number of submissions this year. Our Selection Committees were faced with some very difficult decisions and, unfortunately, we are unable to screen your work this year.

We thank you for your interest in the Festival and we wish you every success with your film. We look forward to receiving more from you in the future for Festival consideration.


Sincerely,

Lia Rinaldo
Festival Director
On behalf of the Selection Committee

From: TerrorFilmFest@
Subject: Terror Film Festival
Date: September 19, 2006 at 9:10:41 PM EDT
To: TerrorFilmFest@

Hey Everyone,
 
The is a sucky way to end my day, but I felt obligated to do this personally.
 
If you’re receiving this email, then sadly your film has not been selected by Terror Film Festival for 2006. My deepest regrets to all of you. I wish I could have selected your film, and I wish I was better at delivering unhappy news. But I guess there’s really no happy way to tell someone they weren’t selected.
 
I can tell you this though, you all made some really good films. It’s just that after all is said and done, there’s only so many hours in a day. And the choices had to be made. And this was an awful choice for me. I didn’t like rejecting any of your films, and I won’t like it next year either. As a filmmaker, actor, and musician, I know what it’s like to get a “rejection notice”. I’ve gotten a ton of them.
 
The only advice I can offer to you is to grab some good friends, go paint the town red, and then get up tomorrow and try again. Good luck to all of you and please feel free to submit again next year. I bow my head to all of you and I wish you all the best. And my regrets again for being the bringer of bad news. Thank you and keep of making films!
 
Good Health & Talk Soon,

Felix Diaz
Terror Film Festival (Horror, Fantasy, Sci-fi, Thriller)
October 17-20, 2006
Philadelphia, PA
http://www.terrorfilmfestival.net/

From: danny kelly <anything@
Subject: Re: pal and ntsc
Date: August 23, 2006 at 9:22:19 AM EDT
To: Carmen Althaus <carmen.althaus@
Cc: danny kelly <anything@, Steven Zilliax <szilliax@>


(snip)

now looking like end of September for DOG final cut.

What keeps me from passing DOG to you is the legal work. After 4 months I still don't have contracts for the cast and crew. my previous lawyer was a bad choice, he basically wasted my summer and billed me a lot. live and learn. I have replaced him with another lawyer who should be able to expedite the project. She is cool.

I just shot an additional scene (remember the three secret endings?) and keep posting posting posting. It's a quirky and odd movie, I like it. I am really just cracking the surface of the post possibilities, teasing out the potential of the project. Want to go farther!

Party this weekend. I have left myself the option of not showing DOG, it somehow doesn't seem right to debut it without you guys. What i might do is a sort of a focus group screening with forms for folks to fill out, what they liked etc. that might be more appropriate.

I love you too!

Dan

 

]]>

Try this link if media player chokes, or just reload the page and pick up where the video stopped.

A podcast about movie making and the scifi featurette, Daughter of God, with Director Shri Fugi Spilt, (Dan Kelly). Editorial – the rough cut flops at first wave festivals.

Episode 015 of the Daughter of Godcast, Dan Kelly here again with you, here in the lovely Artist house, Inc. studio in beautiful Beulah, Michigan. Want to shout out to our listeners around the world in Nigeria, China, Canada, Germany, Great Britain, Australia, France, Puerto Rico and the Russian Federation, as well as Traverse City and Ann Arbor Michigan. I see you out there listening and I thank you so much.

Today’s word is polymath, or “many learnings” from the latin. I’d prefer, “many likes” which would be polyphile, I suppose. I could make that word up, but it would wreck havoc with my SEO, or search engine optimization. That’s a blast from the right now, because along with weekly episodes of Daughter of Godcast, I’m teaching myself how to make dog.movie more findable in the world, via the poly prescient Google.

Try this link if media player chokes, or just reload the page and pick up where the video stopped.

A podcast about movie making and the scifi featurette, Daughter of God, with Director Shri Fugi Spilt, (Dan Kelly). Editorial – the rough cut flops at first wave festivals.

Episode 015 of the Daughter of Godcast, Dan Kelly here again with you, here in the lovely Artist house, Inc. studio in beautiful Beulah, Michigan. Want to shout out to our listeners around the world in Nigeria, China, Canada, Germany, Great Britain, Australia, France, Puerto Rico and the Russian Federation, as well as Traverse City and Ann Arbor Michigan. I see you out there listening and I thank you so much.

Today’s word is polymath, or “many learnings” from the latin. I’d prefer, “many likes” which would be polyphile, I suppose. I could make that word up, but it would wreck havoc with my SEO, or search engine optimization. That’s a blast from the right now, because along with weekly episodes of Daughter of Godcast, I’m teaching myself how to make dog.movie more findable in the world, via the poly prescient Google.

yes Yes no no 22:04 Dan from dog.movie http://dog.movie/podcast/daughter-of-godcast-014/ Thu, 01 Dec 2016 03:47:48 +0000 Dan from dog.movie http://dog.movie/?post_type=podcast&p=857 A podcast about movie making and the scifi featurette, Daughter of God, with Director Shri Fugi Spilt, (Dan Kelly). A new why clarifies the podcast, why make movies?

This video link opens a new tab, might be better for browsers.

Greetings wide world, we’re deep into the Daughter of Godcast, with me Dan Kelly, writer director and maybe much more, this is the story of the making of the featurette Daughter of God, all about making movies generally and becoming magic and digging this wild ride around the sun and into the future aboard this beautiful Earth, together. Most of us have no idea we’re wandering in the deep empty, destination unknown. Probably better that way, bigger surprise when we arrive.

Episode 014 Why Make Movies?

I am lucky to have very strong and servicable feet, I’ve walked up canyons and down mountains. swam across lakes and danced for hours in the moonlight. How silly I might be to think of my feet as components, like the shoes I wear, for I am my feet. That which I am feels like feet.

I am feeling the blood moving in my feet. Not a booming, throbbing like I have in my abdomen or chest, more like easy waves on a beach, a gentle surge and then receding.

This would make sense, as the feet and hands are extremities, at the end of the long hoses connected to the heart, that steady drum in my personal percussive ensemble.

Just take a moment and check out the feelings of your feet. Pull off your shoes and socks and have a look at your feet, or if your driving, then keep your eyes on the road while noticing you’re feet on the pedals, their weight and how sweetly your connected to the vehicle you’re in, through your feet and hands on the steering wheel. How is it that we can extend our awareness into steel and rubber and be one with a car? These are all clues should we dare follow them.

I’m telling a little story now about feet. I can’t help myself. Is there a plot? A hero? A quest? Maybe just inviting you the audience to think about feet is enough. Hey, imagine… that’s the smallest story we can tell.

Feet are incredible, and forgotten. I run barefoot on trails and so I know something about excellent feet and what they are capable of. I think the most I’ve run barefoot is 18 miles, on a combination of trails and beaches. So I didn’t get this next bit from Wikipedia. Unless I’m lying and I might not be.

Feet are optimized to make the most of terrain. If step up on a tree branch across a trail, the shape of my foot changes, wrapping around the cylindrical shape of the branch. If the branch is thin, I receive how much energy the branch absorbs from my weight and I adjust to leverage the branch’s rebound when I push off.

There are roots on the trail, and rocks. I was worried about these when I first tried running barefoot, but it turns out feet are smart and know where to go. They just know. Yes I have tripped and stepped on pointy things over the 30 years of running barefoot, but that’s been rare. Again, I’m talking about running here, not jogging. Things are whipping by rather quickly. Is it possible to even see all the tiny details of happy foot placement on the trail? My sense is that I’m not so much seeing with my eyes as a I am seeing with my feet.

Running barefoot was my first clue that there might be senses beyond the five I was told about in school.

A couple years into Daughter of God’s production, I solo camped on North Manitou Island for about a week, which I’ve done many times around my birthday. There’s a five mile hike from the dock to my favorite camp sites, and along with my tent, sleeping bag, clothes and yummy food, I had brought a camera, tripod and like gear to get footage for the post apocalyptic universe.

One day I had taken a day hike with just some water, snacks and the camera. I was deep in the forest heading back to my camp and the sun was setting. I decided to play a game. I told myself, “These woods are full of trolls! They don’t come out until after sunset. Of course, the woods get dark sooner but as long as I am out of the forest by sunset, I’ll be fine.”

What an epic hike, psyching myself up with the idea of trolls and time running out, the enchanted forest full of danger. I started making contingency plans for what might happen if I was still traveling in the forest at dusk – climb a tree, or quick, fashion some sort of weapon, all the while striding mightily along the path toward the sparkling glow of the departing sun. I emerged from the woods with a little light left and across the wide fields to my camp by the big lake, not a moment to spare.

What’s funny is, this little fantasy colored the rest of my stay. Playing in and around the forest, I noticed I was more vigilant and often thought about the trolls, careful to be clear of the shadowed trees before sunset.

By the end of the trip, I’d eaten almost all the food, but my pack was still rather heavy, I’d guess upwards of 70 lbs. The ferry back to the mainland was due in at 10 am the next morning and I set my alarm to be up and out at dawn for the 5 mile hike back.

I awoke at 2 am and couldn’t fall back to sleep. I decided, what the heck, I’ll just pack and head out, and nap by the boat dock. Up and packed, across the fields with flashlight bobbing and as I approached the forest I remembered, oh no, the trolls! I had forgotten about the trolls. The forest must be full of trolls right now.

I wasn’t about to sit at the edge of the forest for hours waiting for first light. There must be another way.

I reckoned that I might be able to sneak by the trolls if I didn’t attract attention to myself. I mean what kind of damn fool human would be walking through a forest full of trolls in the middle of the night? That’s the last thing they’d expect. As long as I wasn’t shining a flashlight all over the place and I kept quiet, I would be invisible. Trolls sense of smell is notoriously poor, but they are drawn to light like bugs. The night was also moonless so the forest would be pitch black.

I played with clenching my fist around my little Maglite so I could completely block the beam, and then spread my fingers slightly to allow a faint red glow of light through flesh. Once I could carefully control the light, I stealthily entered the forest.

After a while, I realized i could navigate by the starlight through the trees and the feel of the ground. I switched off the Maglite and kept a steady pace, slightly elated at the easy flow of hiking blind. Then I stumbled slightly and gently went down, turning to land on the heavy pack. I lay still, listening for trolls. Nothing. Evidently, I hadn’t been heard, so I got back to my feet and moved on. My senses were heightened, this little stumble had raised the stakes. I couldn’t fall again, a big tumble with a heavy pack would certainly be a noisy affair that trolls would not miss, and I might get hurt and be unable to defend myself.

I cruised along, steady for another 20 minutes and then without any decision, my pace started to slow and then… I stopped. I didn’t know why. Wasn’t tired, wasn’t needing water, I just stopped.

I’m like, OK. Keep in mind the forest is totally dark all around me, I can see stars through the canopy but the trail isn’t visible. I know where to put my feet because the earth feels different on the center of the trail than it does on the edges.

I edged forward very gradually, an inch, two and at three inches I felt a thick horizontal barrier pressing against my thighs. A fallen tree. This hadn’t been here the last time I’d passed. There had been no big trees across the trail before, this must have just fallen in the last day or two. And my body knew it was there.

Had I hit the tree at speed, the momentum of the backpack would have certainly carried me right over and I probably would have done myself damage.

My feelings at this moment were of awe. How did I know that tree was there? This was a new sense, a proximity sense. Real as taste, smell, sight… Alan Watts opines that all senses are extensions of the sense of touch, photons impact the retina, sound waves vibrate the eardrums, molecules make contact with the tongue and olfactory epithelium. What sort of touch is this? Was there a cloud of tree smell, does the skin’s receptivity extend several feet beyond the cells? This is only anecdotal, I’m not suggesting this is proof of anything. My experience suggests that our limited elementary school concept of human senses is only a starting point.

I was pretending and I found something important. I was being weird. Curious. Playful. I discovered more of myself.

I went shopping yesterday and walked through big box stores, across parking lots and the most unusual surface my feet encountered was a 4 inch curb. That’s the world we’ve created, a comfortable box where everything is flat. There’s nothing for the feet to wrap around, or rebound off of and everything is starkly lit with glaring florescent light. I mean that’s fine, there’s games to play there too.

Once, I tried to walk from the Bed, Bath and Beyond in Traverse City to the YMCA, across wetlands and a huge field, in the snow. This wasn’t easy. Nature is waiting for her chance to make the straight ways crooked and the flat places hilly. We can thrive amidst a lovely chaos, yet the prominent culture tries so hard to scrub away the mystery and miracles and replace everything with plastic.

In episode 013, I upgraded the why behind this podcast. My original why was to grow an audience for Daughter of God, but that’s not very compelling reason for an audience to show up and pretty abstract for me. Trying to be something an audience wants, that’s the road to mediocrity.

When I was on my juried art show tour, I met a woman who was a very talented painter and savvy business person. We got to talking and she invited me back to her booth. Inside were literally hundreds of nearly identical paintings of a palm tree. She had found an image that sold, and so she painted this image over and over and over, with slight variations. I was appalled, flabbergasted. I flashed on myself, glued to one popular idea, the perfect consumer bungee pit that would end my career as an artist, as an explorer.

So a big audience is not a helpful objective but rather the natural result of a why that I feel inspired by. Well, how about having fun? I was a little overwhelmed with episode 012 trying to populate the video version with out takes and whatnot, and I woke up one morning and said to myself, this is too stressful. We can always flesh out the video later, let’s just call it good and keep moving. So fun is crucial, but that’s also a natural result of inspiration and keeping things chill. So what is the why?

Why did I want to make Daughter of God? After seeing all those other movies at Palm Springs Shorts Festival, I wanted to make movies too. I had held myself back for years and now I was ready. As Daughter of God has progressed, more reasons for movie making have emerged.

So, why make movies? Answering this question drives this podcast. In the episodes to come, I’m going to discuss the why of movie making and the nuts and bolts of making them MY way. Sure, I’m going to borrow from what’s been done before, but I am definitely innovating, doing things that are unique to me, and freaking genius. As my first featurette, Daughter of God is a proof of concept, a way to demonstrate my ideas and approach.

So let’s get started right away. Why make movies?

I want to do it all, easy for me to find almost anything interesting. I now know this is a way more common feeling than I first realized, but tough for folks to admit. We often feel discouraged from diversity. You can talk about that in terms of skin color, religion and culture but what I mean is just what we let ourselves be interested in and what we decide is boring.

I think curiosity is powerful. Curiosity also killed the cat. Is that Schrödinger’s Cat? Wikipedia says yes, and that this modern maxim didn’t appear until the late 1870s, which says something about changing attitudes. Before Curiosity was care, Care killed the cat, or worry, first use in the 1500s. Two very different ideas. Why did curiosity become problematic in the late 1800s?

How about this one – jack of all trades, master of none? This also has an intriguing history. Jack of all trades came first and was complimentary. Master of none was added later. A disparaging quasi-latin phrase Johannes factotum or Johnny do it all was applied to Shakespeare in 1592 by Robert Greene. A pillar of western culture chastised for trying to do too many things. Love that.

This is a superficial Wikipedia research, and who knows what Wikipedia’s slant is, what axe they are grinding, if any.

Other cultures have this notion of too many trades too. Arabic “Who does several trades, is incapable of managing any,” and Chinese “Equipped with knives all over, yet none is sharp.“ Chinese have encouraging versions too.

There’s the western concept of the Renaissance man, who could paint, sculpt, engineer, write and design like Da Vinci and Michelangelo. These guys were geniuses supposedly, uncommon.

Maybe they just didn’t hold themselves back. Maybe the special sauce that distinguishes a supposed genius from a lathe operator is just expectation of what is possible. Lathe operation looks like a lot of fun btw, but that’s just me.

Why make movies? What intrigues me most about movie making is that I am required to use every freaking resource and talent I have. I not only get to apply my curiosity, I have to.

Painting, acting, writing, storytelling, narration, construction, sculpting, music making, props, design, distribution, investment, book keeping, archives, direction, management, problem solving…

The resources and chutzpah required to make movies is vast, so if there’s any possibility of going beyond accepted limits, that’s not only intriguing, but pretty much imperative. Marvel makes movies about superheros, I want to make movies that demonstrate how to be fully alive.

The log incident in the troll forest was a clear indication that there is way more available to every human being. The experiences I describe aren’t reserved for elite gurus. We can all shine. Magic is real, specifically, if you are human being, you are walking around AS the highest technological achievement on the planet. You generate more energy than a wind tower, you can persist just by eating leaves. You are the most efficient solar collector yet developed. Your presence is an utter mystery, science has only just begun to hint at what we are. There are avenues of exploration into your power that science is as yet not allowed to take, but no one is stopping you. Science can be your starting place. Einstein again, Imagination is more important than knowledge. They are both fabulous but one flows from the other.

I am making movies to discover our nature, trusting the fuzzy experiences like intuition and inspiration which are the signatures of our full presence. A celebration of both inner nature and outer nature too. The earth is a global life support system, the untouched wilds are fundamental to operations. I want to make movies that restore and expand our outer nature.

Why make movies? Not for propaganda, influencing people to think this way or that. I want to remind audiences of what they already know but might have forgotten. How to be alive.

One last story about that night in the forest full of trolls. After swinging my legs over the big log, I moved through the pitch black, trusting my body and the cosmos. Ever wary for trolls, I caught a faint glow. Almost hallucinatory, a fuzzy purple cloud hovering. As I moved forward I blinked and yet the odd color persisted, not quite solid. I was like, fuck. My imagination is so powerful, I’ve manifested an actuality, I’ve brought forth who knows what, perhaps a phantom or will-o-wisp.

The Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual (4th edition 1979) has this to say about will-o-wisps.

A will-o-wisp is a glowing sphere, looking like a lantern, torch or even dancing light… they glow blue, violet or pale green.

Will-o-wisps commonly haunt deserted, dangerous places such as bogs, fens and swamps or catacombs where mires, quicksand, pit traps and the like are plentiful. Will-o-wisps seek to lure prey to their doom.

I approached the hazy violet light. There was definitely light, no question. My eyes were totally dark adapted, my irises fully dilated to grab every last photon. I turned my head to look sidelong and bring my sensitive rods in play. Some… thing… glowing.

Close now, a scattering of purple streaks and dots. I reached out and my hand touched a log, roughly textured. Clenching the Maglite in my fist once again, I spread my fingers slightly and played a bit of white light on the log. Mushrooms. I was seeing bio-luminescent fungus. I turned off the light and there they were, eerily sending out their mysterious signal. For who or what I wonder were they shining in the night? For me? What a gift.

Had I passed this way armed to the teeth against trolls, with a phalanx of men at arms and blazing torches, I would have totally missed this wonder. How many others would see what I’ve seen in my lifetime. How many understand the power of play?

You’ve been listening to Daughter of Godcast podcast, episode 014 with Dan Kelly, writer and director. All about the whys. We’ve been rubbing two sticks together and at last a little plume of smokes curling up from the tinder. Ready for a crackling blaze? We’re going to burn down preconceptions and awaken the tribe’s deep knowing. Sure glad you’re circled up for the ceremony, ready to sweat and see with me for the very first time. What happens next is anyone’s guess, but it’s going to be so fine.

]]> A podcast about movie making and the scifi featurette, Daughter of God, with Director Shri Fugi Spilt, (Dan Kelly). A new why clarifies the podcast, why make movies?

This video link opens a new tab, might be better for browsers.

Greetings wide world, we’re deep into the Daughter of Godcast, with me Dan Kelly, writer director and maybe much more, this is the story of the making of the featurette Daughter of God, all about making movies generally and becoming magic and digging this wild ride around the sun and into the future aboard this beautiful Earth, together. Most of us have no idea we’re wandering in the deep empty, destination unknown. Probably better that way, bigger surprise when we arrive.

Episode 014 Why Make Movies?

I am lucky to have very strong and servicable feet, I’ve walked up canyons and down mountains. swam across lakes and danced for hours in the moonlight. How silly I might be to think of my feet as components, like the shoes I wear, for I am my feet. That which I am feels like feet.

I am feeling the blood moving in my feet. Not a booming, throbbing like I have in my abdomen or chest, more like easy waves on a beach, a gentle surge and then receding.

This would make sense, as the feet and hands are extremities, at the end of the long hoses connected to the heart, that steady drum in my personal percussive ensemble.

Just take a moment and check out the feelings of your feet. Pull off your shoes and socks and have a look at your feet, or if your driving, then keep your eyes on the road while noticing you’re feet on the pedals, their weight and how sweetly your connected to the vehicle you’re in, through your feet and hands on the steering wheel. How is it that we can extend our awareness into steel and rubber and be one with a car? These are all clues should we dare follow them.

I’m telling a little story now about feet. I can’t help myself. Is there a plot? A hero? A quest? Maybe just inviting you the audience to think about feet is enough. Hey, imagine… that’s the smallest story we can tell.

Feet are incredible, and forgotten. I run barefoot on trails and so I know something about excellent feet and what they are capable of. I think the most I’ve run barefoot is 18 miles, on a combination of trails and beaches. So I didn’t get this next bit from Wikipedia. Unless I’m lying and I might not be.

Feet are optimized to make the most of terrain. If step up on a tree branch across a trail, the shape of my foot changes, wrapping around the cylindrical shape of the branch. If the branch is thin, I receive how much energy the branch absorbs from my weight and I adjust to leverage the branch’s rebound when I push off.

There are roots on the trail, and rocks. I was worried about these when I first tried running barefoot, but it turns out feet are smart and know where to go. They just know. Yes I have tripped and stepped on pointy things over the 30 years of running barefoot, but that’s been rare. Again, I’m talking about running here, not jogging. Things are whipping by rather quickly. Is it poss]]> A podcast about movie making and the scifi featurette, Daughter of God, with Director Shri Fugi Spilt, (Dan Kelly). A new why clarifies the podcast, why make movies?

This video link opens a new tab, might be better for browsers.

Greetings wide world, we’re deep into the Daughter of Godcast, with me Dan Kelly, writer director and maybe much more, this is the story of the making of the featurette Daughter of God, all about making movies generally and becoming magic and digging this wild ride around the sun and into the future aboard this beautiful Earth, together. Most of us have no idea we’re wandering in the deep empty, destination unknown. Probably better that way, bigger surprise when we arrive.

Episode 014 Why Make Movies?

I am lucky to have very strong and servicable feet, I’ve walked up canyons and down mountains. swam across lakes and danced for hours in the moonlight. How silly I might be to think of my feet as components, like the shoes I wear, for I am my feet. That which I am feels like feet.

I am feeling the blood moving in my feet. Not a booming, throbbing like I have in my abdomen or chest, more like easy waves on a beach, a gentle surge and then receding.

This would make sense, as the feet and hands are extremities, at the end of the long hoses connected to the heart, that steady drum in my personal percussive ensemble.

Just take a moment and check out the feelings of your feet. Pull off your shoes and socks and have a look at your feet, or if your driving, then keep your eyes on the road while noticing you’re feet on the pedals, their weight and how sweetly your connected to the vehicle you’re in, through your feet and hands on the steering wheel. How is it that we can extend our awareness into steel and rubber and be one with a car? These are all clues should we dare follow them.

I’m telling a little story now about feet. I can’t help myself. Is there a plot? A hero? A quest? Maybe just inviting you the audience to think about feet is enough. Hey, imagine… that’s the smallest story we can tell.

Feet are incredible, and forgotten. I run barefoot on trails and so I know something about excellent feet and what they are capable of. I think the most I’ve run barefoot is 18 miles, on a combination of trails and beaches. So I didn’t get this next bit from Wikipedia. Unless I’m lying and I might not be.

Feet are optimized to make the most of terrain. If step up on a tree branch across a trail, the shape of my foot changes, wrapping around the cylindrical shape of the branch. If the branch is thin, I receive how much energy the branch absorbs from my weight and I adjust to leverage the branch’s rebound when I push off.

There are roots on the trail, and rocks. I was worried about these when I first tried running barefoot, but it turns out feet are smart and know where to go. They just know. Yes I have tripped and stepped on pointy things over the 30 years of running barefoot, but that’s been rare. Again, I’m talking about running here, not jogging. Things are whipping by rather quickly. Is it poss]]> yes Yes no no 22:42 Dan from dog.movie http://dog.movie/podcast/daughter-of-godcast-013/ Thu, 24 Nov 2016 01:56:36 +0000 Dan from dog.movie http://dog.movie/?post_type=podcast&p=835  

A podcast about movie making and the scifi featurette, Daughter of God, with Director Shri Fugi Spilt, (Dan Kelly). A few totally naked truths about indy film, inspired by kidhood in the 70’s. Wrapping production aboard the big boat in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.

Better video link for desktop browsers is here!

Hello, out there, Haloooo! Haloooo! echo, echo! I’m talking with you again. Yet another episode of Daughter of Godcast and the vagaries of movie making. Did you ever wonder how podcasting actually feels? Every week, I belly up to the microphone, and the camera too now and I imagine listeners. Here in my studio, no other humans or mega fauna nearby, staring into the black crystal cavern of a Canon lens. I’m just talking to myself over here, yet at the same time, I can feel myself talking to the whole world. Only crazy people talk to themselves, ESPECIALLY if they imagine crowds raptly attending, (crowd roars). Do this in front of a camera for money and maybe they’ll give you an Oscar. We live in a sublime topsy turvy universe. Wonder is so available, so easy to allow.

These podcasts are about movie making, yet we’re exploring topics that might not immediately recognized as strictly relevant. Tonight while doing dishes I reveled in some clarity. I am drafting a manifesto.

For sure these podcasts are supposed to be entertaining, fun to listen to and watch. Fun to make! They are also essay drafts, destined to be condensed down into an extended documentary which I’ll release close behind Daughter of God. If you check the FAQ, a making of documentary is one of my deliverables in the gentle release, originally conceived as a DVD extra, whatever that looks like in distribution. These podcasts have helped to coalesce an exciting premise for the doc – my artist’s manifesto. I’ve been involved in movie making for decades and while I’m totally unknown as a director, I feel poised to transform the medium.

I wanted to say throwing down the gauntlet, but that sounds like I am challenging adversaries, and I don’t really give a shit what the rest of the industry is doing. A Daughter of God documentary would both sketch a map for myself of what’s possible and energize a beacon that other’s of my ilk can see. That’s what I got doing the dishes tonight. Whoa, right?

At first I started generating all this movie making content because I wanted to inspire curiosity about the Daughter of God prior to screening, because I mean what’s the point of a release without an audience? In episode 001, I mentioned that even the cast has kind of written the project off. Which was fine with me, because the project had to find it’s own flowering, as do I. Now the bloom gets brighter and so worthy of sharing.

After my fictional vs real apocalypse quandry in 2009 from episode 012, I stopped working on Daughter of God, shifted gears and decided to make a documentary about artifacts of the future sustainable civilization. Every filmmaker has an unfinished project but only a truly exceptional filmmaker would dare have two.

So screw all that claptrap about building an audience. Yes, I’d love more discerning participants resonating with the crazy transmissions from the Crystal Lake stewardship center. To have a massive amount of people as excited to see my movie as I am to show them. The goal of building an audience doesn’t inspire, but clarifying a really kick ass ILLUSTRATED vision of what’s worth doing? Now we’re talking.

Episode 013 Epilogue

After 13 weeks of podcasting, we’re about to wrap primary production on the big boat. And now the story begins.

There were a couple of really fun episodes getting here. Episode 4.1 seems to be performing well, probably because Keanu Reeves made an appearance, and Episode 005 is also popular, where Eiji tells me about the cocaine he threw away in front of the US border security cameras. By the way, that never happened. I just made that up to make the episode more dramatic. This is especially true if you’re a DEA agent and they haven’t emptied the trash at the Landsdowne crossing in 11 years. Some things are more true than others. I don’t own any guns either. Don’t believe anything you hear so see in these podcasts. I am making this all up!

We’ve officially started to tell the story. Congratulations, you’re almost done with the introduction.

Gerry’s cabin

Gerry is the defacto engineer for the big boat, a polymathic inventor conversant in a wide variety of disciplines from the maintenance of big diesels engines to software development. He has kept the boat’s engines, generators and pumps in operation. He is unfortunately not well, perhaps from exposure to chemical warfare or weaponized plague. In spite of his illness, he’s been concentrating on a unique project, and refuses to be thwarted as he nears completion. His cabin is packed with books on esoteric subjects, scavenged tech and gadgets of his own design. Christina needs access to one of his most rare and precious resources.

Refugees aboard the big boat tend to keep themselves to themselves, only coming together when the ship requires defense or relocation. This has not happened in almost a year as the aftermath of multiple catastrophes has mostly petered out. Immediate threats are rare and supply caches are still plentiful.

Gerry’s surprised and a little excited to see Christina at his cabin door. He’s watched her from afar but has never approached her. At first he feels friendly but she seems to have a secret agenda and he becomes more suspicious as her visit progresses.

Christina comes to Gerry’s cabin to ask for help, but how do you tell someone you’re dead uncle just showed up… or why? She has a hard time getting Gerry to pay attention to her requests, because her made-up explanations aren’t convincing. Can Christina find the key to unlocking Gerry’s cooperation?

This is the dynamic of the adventure in Gerry’s cabin.

In real life, Gerry’s cabin belonged to the chief engineer when the Alexander Henry was in active service, and the cabin is about three times as spacious as Christina’s seaman’s cabin, which was likely shared by two crew members. Gerry’s cabin also had a tiny kitchen and a separate bath with shower and toilet.

The larger cabin enabled more freedom of movement and diverse visual treatments of the two characters.

After Christina enters, Gerry sets up a sort of defensive perimeter at his worktable, while Christina sortes about the room, trying various exploits, first at his bed, then his closet. Finally, she ends up frustrated next to the kitchen, where she discovers a clue to her conundrum.

Problems. For Gerry’s costume, Steve had found a thick wool overcoat that wouldn’t have looked out of place next to a pack of sled dogs in the Yukon. This fabulous and totally implausible coat tended to crush the lavalier mic guards we built, eventually scratching against the microphone and causing noise. This caused a lot of consternation on set, and still more trouble in post.

During a particularly excellent performance, Carmen’s radio transmitter was clearly visible taped to her inner thigh. So captivating was her delivery no one on set noticed either then or when reviewing the captures. Only weeks later in post did this become obvious. Another job for the visual effect supervisor.

A key close-up on Carmen had soft focus. Not enough to ruin the shot but distracting enough to be of concern. I was not using a large external monitor for focus and review, relying on the tiny built in screens and the focus assist functions. The capture windows in Final Cut Pro were also smallish, there were no utilities yet available to monitor video on an external laptop. Loosing this take would have compromised the editorial, but an unlikely hack in post resolved the issue.

There were the ubiquitous stacks of boxes in Gerry’s cabin. Box labels would have to composited later. Since I already anticipated doing this job in post, I opted to add another compositing job to the list. Gerry’s bathroom door was left open to show the bathroom detail, toilet, sink and so on. We then had to leave the bathroom vanity cabinet open, so the mirror wouldn’t reflect the various production gear and crew in the room. This left a cabinet full of empty shelves, and rather than toss some random toiletries in there I imagined sticking bubbling beakers and flasks, suggesting Gerry was doing still more weird science in his bathroom.

There were about 8 camera compositions including closeups in Gerry’s cabin. Matched cameras were utilized, one for Gerry and one for Christina. This made cutting between the two characters smooth and exciting.

We celebrated our last day of primary production with a bracing swim in the graving dock adjacent to the Alexander Henry. We paid our bills, thanked our supporting staff in Kingston, jumped in the vans and headed back to NYC. Mission accomplished.

Driving the Odyssey, with cast and crew crashed out in the back, I quietly shaved off the buzz cut I had effected to play Uncle Joe. It was a great gag to have everyone wake up later and find me bald, kind of like magic. Melonie took a snap of me back in Brooklyn wearing my best Pearl River Chinese department store clothes, looking like Kwai Chang Caine.

What does it mean to become more alive? Isn’t life binary, you’re either alive or dead? Supposedly, most of our body is not comprised of human DNA, we are symbiotic with all manner of tiny creatures, our metabolism is a collaboration. So even after your heart stops beating and your brain isn’t sparkling anymore, your body is still teaming with life. We’re just not doing jumping jacks, we’re not talking to our family anymore, but the body is hardly dead.

Ok, so maybe what we mean by life is presence, how present we feel. Waking and sleeping, bored vs excited – different qualities of presence. More or less alive, maybe?

How alive can we be? What’s the highest level of presence that can be sustained? Is our society structured to encourage presence? Would we encounter friction from our peers by becoming more here and more now?

Some of these are very ancient ideas. The application of them to our individual experience is always unprecedented, a rip roaring adventure. No one has ever been you before, or me. So we get to make it up as we go.

I imagine younger people finding this podcast. Not that I have any special wisdom to impart, but what I was so appreciative of as a kid was finding out there were questions to ask, like the questions I’m asking here. I know this is an explicit adult-y movie making podcast, that’s not an accident. I want there to be a barrier to entry, if you’re put off by the swearing, terrific. All the sweeter for a kid to hear this, to access forbidden knowledge. To find out, “Whoa  – this guy thinks thoughts as weird as me! Maybe I’m going to be ok, after all.”

Which brings me to the theme song.

Wake up brother, we got nothing to do
Let’s go outside
just me and you
and build a fort

We’ll pack a lunch won’t be home til after dark
After dinner we can sneak back out
your know that high school girl I been telling you about
well she get’s undressed about quarter to nine
and we can watch her do it from the big old pine next door
she’s got a room on the second floor

Melonie’s griped this song felt totally smarmy – old dudes conspiring to spy on a high school girl undressing! This was super helpful, because yes, I’m an old-ish dude, but the song is sung from a kid’s perspective. I thought the “build a fort” and “sneak back out” were giveaways, but she was right, there was some ambiguity. I added sound effects of kids playing to make the point a little sharper.

An adolescent kid from the post apocalyptic future, really just a reprise of my kidhood in the 1970s, when finding a moldering Playboy was a freaking coup! The biological imperative of needing to see what girl bodies looked like, so compelling.

One fine day, my best friend Tommy Sorge and I found a Playboy fluttering on the side of the road in our rural hamlet of Pound Ridge, NY. We might of been 8 or 9. Our reactions were the poles apart. I was in awe, reverent. He couldn’t stop laughing, almost hysterical. I found his reaction unnerving, even a little annoying. Clearly he had disqualified himself for stewardship of this treasure, so I took possession.

Another time, I was riding my bike home from the town of Scotts Corners. I took my usual shortcut, up the driveway and through the backyard of a house that was perpetually empty. I don’t know why, but no one lived there. Except this time. When I came flying into the back yard, I glanced over and saw a woman sunbathing on the patio. My response was instantaneous. I spun the banana seat Schwinn around silently and flew back down the way I’d come, peddling at top speed along the windy road and around to the forest that bordered the house’s back yard. There I dropped my bike and crept up through the trees to the edge of the yard. Sure enough, there she was. Glorious. Radiant in the sun. TN. Totally Naked.

I drank this vision in for who knows how long, and then I had an idea. I was a sweet lad, kind hearted, generous to a fault. I faded back into the woods, grabbed my bike and sped home. I called my friends. In 20 minutes or so, a platoon of neighbor boys arrived, and we deployed to the forest. We crept or maybe more like crashed up to the edge and… she was gone. Or maybe she was there and heard us coming, I don’t really recall. Certainly John Flynn who remembers everything from our childhood could set me straight or maybe Kurt Hedberg would remember. I am not sure Binky Vebber was there, I hope he wasn’t. Can you believe I had a kid named Binky in my hood. Surreal.

I like to think she saw me come up her driveway and stayed there while I crept up to the woods edge. I like to imagine her smiling to herself that a precocious little guy had the nerve, that she wanted me to see her, appreciate her. She might have been my first love. I often ask her forgiveness that I brought all those dumb neighbor boys to share our moment, but that’s clarity for you. Who knows what mysteries would have been revealed to me had I kept her for myself.

Nowadays, kids have access to the most outrageous and bizarre porn imaginable, and sexual norms have again shifted. No judgements, but Playboys and nude sunbathing seem pretty tame to me, in comparison.

MY dire warnings about explicit content in Daughter of Godcast and the theme song are artifice. In these wild times, I have endeavored to create a sense of the forbidden, the illicit. Perhaps someone, maybe a younger person can have a delicious taste of transgression by sneaking a listen to this podcast. If I’ve lost potential audience with these games, I take solace in the memory of the lovely older woman (mid 20s) woman who blew my mind, whether or not on purpose.

]]>  

A podcast about movie making and the scifi featurette, Daughter of God, with Director Shri Fugi Spilt, (Dan Kelly). A few totally naked truths about indy film, inspired by kidhood in the 70’s. Wrapping production aboard the big boat in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.

Better video link for desktop browsers is here!

Hello, out there, Haloooo! Haloooo! echo, echo! I’m talking with you again. Yet another episode of Daughter of Godcast and the vagaries of movie making. Did you ever wonder how podcasting actually feels? Every week, I belly up to the microphone, and the camera too now and I imagine listeners. Here in my studio, no other humans or mega fauna nearby, staring into the black crystal cavern of a Canon lens. I’m just talking to myself over here, yet at the same time, I can feel myself talking to the whole world. Only crazy people talk to themselves, ESPECIALLY if they imagine crowds raptly attending, (crowd roars). Do this in front of a camera for money and maybe they’ll give you an Oscar. We live in a sublime topsy turvy universe. Wonder is so available, so easy to allow.

These podcasts are about movie making, yet we’re exploring topics that might not immediately recognized as strictly relevant. Tonight while doing dishes I reveled in some clarity. I am drafting a manifesto.

For sure these podcasts are supposed to be entertaining, fun to listen to and watch. Fun to make! They are also essay drafts, destined to be condensed down into an extended documentary which I’ll release close behind Daughter of God. If you check the FAQ, a making of documentary is one of my deliverables in the gentle release, originally conceived as a DVD extra, whatever that looks like in distribution. These podcasts have helped to coalesce an exciting premise for the doc – my artist’s manifesto. I’ve been involved in movie making for decades and while I’m totally unknown as a director, I feel poised to transform the medium.

I wanted to say throwing down the gauntlet, but that sounds like I am challenging adversaries, and I don’t really give a shit what the rest of the industry is doing. A Daughter of God documentary would both sketch a map for myself of what’s possible and energize a beacon that other’s of my ilk can see. That’s what I got doing the dishes tonight. Whoa, right?

At first I started generating all this movie making content because I wanted to inspire curiosity about the Daughter of God prior to screening, because I mean what’s the point of a release without an audience? In episode 001, I mentioned that even the cast has kind of written the project off. Which was fine with me, because the project had to find it’s own flowering, as do I. Now the bloom gets brighter and so worthy of sharing.

After my fictional vs real apocalypse quandry in 2009 from episode 012, I stopped working on Daughter of God, shifted gears and decided to make a documentary about artifacts of the future sustainable civilization. Every filmmaker has an unfinished project but only a truly exceptional filmmaker would dare have two.

So screw all that claptrap about building an audience. Yes, I’d love more discerning participants resonating with the crazy transmissions from the Crystal Lake stewardship center. To have a massive amount of people as excited to see my movie as I am to show them. The goal of building an audience doesn]]>  

A podcast about movie making and the scifi featurette, Daughter of God, with Director Shri Fugi Spilt, (Dan Kelly). A few totally naked truths about indy film, inspired by kidhood in the 70’s. Wrapping production aboard the big boat in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.

Better video link for desktop browsers is here!

Hello, out there, Haloooo! Haloooo! echo, echo! I’m talking with you again. Yet another episode of Daughter of Godcast and the vagaries of movie making. Did you ever wonder how podcasting actually feels? Every week, I belly up to the microphone, and the camera too now and I imagine listeners. Here in my studio, no other humans or mega fauna nearby, staring into the black crystal cavern of a Canon lens. I’m just talking to myself over here, yet at the same time, I can feel myself talking to the whole world. Only crazy people talk to themselves, ESPECIALLY if they imagine crowds raptly attending, (crowd roars). Do this in front of a camera for money and maybe they’ll give you an Oscar. We live in a sublime topsy turvy universe. Wonder is so available, so easy to allow.

These podcasts are about movie making, yet we’re exploring topics that might not immediately recognized as strictly relevant. Tonight while doing dishes I reveled in some clarity. I am drafting a manifesto.

For sure these podcasts are supposed to be entertaining, fun to listen to and watch. Fun to make! They are also essay drafts, destined to be condensed down into an extended documentary which I’ll release close behind Daughter of God. If you check the FAQ, a making of documentary is one of my deliverables in the gentle release, originally conceived as a DVD extra, whatever that looks like in distribution. These podcasts have helped to coalesce an exciting premise for the doc – my artist’s manifesto. I’ve been involved in movie making for decades and while I’m totally unknown as a director, I feel poised to transform the medium.

I wanted to say throwing down the gauntlet, but that sounds like I am challenging adversaries, and I don’t really give a shit what the rest of the industry is doing. A Daughter of God documentary would both sketch a map for myself of what’s possible and energize a beacon that other’s of my ilk can see. That’s what I got doing the dishes tonight. Whoa, right?

At first I started generating all this movie making content because I wanted to inspire curiosity about the Daughter of God prior to screening, because I mean what’s the point of a release without an audience? In episode 001, I mentioned that even the cast has kind of written the project off. Which was fine with me, because the project had to find it’s own flowering, as do I. Now the bloom gets brighter and so worthy of sharing.

After my fictional vs real apocalypse quandry in 2009 from episode 012, I stopped working on Daughter of God, shifted gears and decided to make a documentary about artifacts of the future sustainable civilization. Every filmmaker has an unfinished project but only a truly exceptional filmmaker would dare have two.

So screw all that claptrap about building an audience. Yes, I’d love more discerning participants resonating with the crazy transmissions from the Crystal Lake stewardship center. To have a massive amount of people as excited to see my movie as I am to show them. The goal of building an audience doesn]]> yes Yes no no 19:54 Dan from dog.movie http://dog.movie/podcast/daughter-of-godcast-012/ Thu, 17 Nov 2016 16:42:30 +0000 Dan from dog.movie http://dog.movie/?post_type=podcast&p=788  

The video player works best on mobile devices. Here’s video for browsers!

We’re back! Together! Episode 012 of the Daughter of Godcast, I’m still unapologetically, Dan Kelly, writer and director and you’re guide across the river to the dead and forgotten past, 11 years to be exact, though after 12 weeks we’ve whittled away almost a year, so now there’s only 10 years between the here and NOW. Whether your streaming this from India, China, the Pleiades or just plain old Beulah, Michigan, USA. Welcome.

Meanwhile, here in the time capsule, the tiny treasure that unlocks the utopian yearning, glints and fascinates.

Dan Kelly, how can you, of all people, continue to fixate on this bauble from the past while right now, America is quaking with transformation? Shouldn’t you be out in the streets? Friends, I’ve been there and yes, I might go into the streets again, to revel in the energy and exhilaration of shared, strong desire. I do love a powerful focused gathering.  Check out the links on Episode 002 for  in Arrest of TC 8 and 500k in 10 minutes.

By the time you watch or listen to this episode, re-released Episode 010 with the new introduction. I talk about, “history and present events as the playing out of an epic clash between occluded forces.” We may not be able to know what’s really going on by following news links on the www. For me, the American political experience is grand theater staged to either lull citizens into complacency or set us at each others throats. Because I am adept at hiding in plain sight, a scruffy angel sporting a hefty bag poncho, or maybe less metaphorically, a cosmic commando presenting as a straight white male trust fund baby, I notice what others just can’t or won’t see. I have an antennae for conspiracy. Plus I can’t stop rhyming.

I’m a world builder, have been since my days of high school Dungeon Mastering. We each build our world, every day. Sometimes, we get stuck and need a little encouragement, we forget that encouragement is everywhere. That’s what friends are for. Cat friends, tree friends and maybe if you’re lucky people friends. Our experience is ultimately our responsibility. I suppose I should be saying, I believe or I feel before these statements but gosh, so many extra words. I’m a rabbit and this is my warren, dug down through the sweet cool earth, 12 weeks worth. Deeper we must go.

So how am I building my world? The influence of an enlivened spirit enlivens. Any ideal Earth must include our sparkling selves, yes? We imagine we could be happy and fulfilled if only conditions were such and such, thus and so. Or is an ideal earth the result of humans opening their hearts and getting in the flow of ever available encouragement? I mean, which comes first, the conditions that inspire happiness or the happiness that inspires conditions?

Yep, you already know my answer. This bauble from the past and my retelling a bit each week is a happy practice. Our intent focus is magicking the world into a just, compassionate and sustainable shape within and around us. Can you feel this?

Every Good Boy Deserves Favor, Moody Blues

Episode 012 Two Rooms

The DOG script was simple, we only needed two rooms. Here’s a synopsis. Scene 1, Christina is visited by her dead uncle, who tells her that she is going to give birth to the Daughter of God. Scene 2, Christina appeals to her neighbor Gerry for help. 5 pages of screenplay for each scene.

Scene 1 and Scene 2 were essential. Since these scenes happened in cabins aboard a big boat, establishing shots of the big boat would be important.

The big boat offered so many fascinating possibilities. There was an engine room, a bridge, a mess, tons of cabins some decrepit and others livable, it was amazing. Not to mention the exterior decks and surrounding open water.

The establishing shots would include exteriors of the Alexander Henry with Christina and/or Gerry and if time permitted, a steadicam shot of Christina clomping through the hatches and passages. So these establishing shots became Scene 3.

I had a couple of extra ideas that would be easy to pull off. Scene 4 was envisioned as a sort of intermission between scenes 1 and 2, Christina deciding what to wear before talking to Gerry. Carmen in character trying on different costumes for about 40 minutes before a fixed camera. This shot was to be speed ramped up in post so she’d go through her entire wardrobe in about 30 seconds.

Finally scene 5, an improvisation between Gerry and Christina that would be a fun twist to stick into the credits.

So five scenes. Scenes 1-3 involved multiple camera angles, Scenes 4-5 just one each.

I had budgeted 2 days each for scenes 1 and 2, and another day or so for scenes 3-5. Actual production could be compressed into 5 days. 1 day of settling in and a 1/2 day to pack up. 6.5 days needed total. We arrived late morning of 4/11/06, Tuesday and would have to be done by the end of 4/20/06, Thursday. 9 full days available minus the 6.5 days needed = 2.5 days of breathing room.

I spoke about lollygagging in episode 011. Initially, there didn’t seem to be much going on. What’s Dan doing? He’s tinkering with cameras and lights, opening and closing doors, playing with props. Lollygagging is an engagement with totality transcending effort. During the first few days, I invited my super conscious to sponge up the possibilities, all the variables, opportunities and potential disasters. Then, with time running out, I jammed into gear and the solutions flowed.

So let’s talk about the key elements.

Cinematography

Daughter of God is a post apocalyptic universe, people are for the most part missing. Where they went is unclear, we’re they raptured away by a benign deity, scooped up into slavery or worse by interstellar conquistadors, rendered into their constituent elements by clouds of doomsday nanobots?

I wanted to convey a stillness and abandoned feeling. I was interested in striking tableaus, lush and mysterious cinematic paintings. Almost a security camera feel, but with robust color and detail. I planned to shoot most of the shots locked down, which means having the cameras fixed in place and not moving.

I am not a huge fan of the slightly shaky documentary style of shooting, although it’s become almost ubiquitous and practically invisible nowadays. I wanted the simplicity of perspective, just staring into the moment, intent.

This choice also made production much easier. Frame, exposure, focus and record. Whenever possible, scenes were bathed in light and the camera aperture tightened for maximum depth of field. Having locked down shots with deep focus provided plenty of options in post production.

As I love editing, I was shooting for editorial and VFX. Strong color treatments, pull focus and camera shake can always be simulated later. Baking those choices in on location is limiting.

Aside from a single steadicam shot, I eventually tossed out trying even the most basic camera moves, preferring to let the action unfold without distraction.

The two cameras gave us matched performances in Gerry’s cabin, tho a little tougher in Christina’s, as the space was very tight, and two cameras wouldn’t fit. The second camera in Christina’s cabin peered in through the window.

Acting

My plan was to run each scene’s dialogue completely through, letting the energy between the actors build or fade depending on the flow of the story.

Rehearsals in Brooklyn were mostly table reads. All 3 actors were asked to have their lines memorized before coming to Canada, which we all mostly did. We blocked movement and did full rehearsals only on location, so as to keep the kinesthetics fresh and uncluttered. I believe movement and emotion are inextricable, and always felt uncomfortable in theater performances blocking out action twice, once in rehearsal and then on stage. Distances are rarely matched between rehearsal and performance spaces, and unlearning movement feels like wasted energy.

Carmen and I work shopped our scene, where Uncle Joe visits Christina, feeling our way for the best energy… Carmen offered terrific ideas, only a couple of her physical gags for Christina ending up on the cutting room floor, like the stretchy bra that got out of control. She came up with scads of schticks and idiosyncracies that worked great, and created a solid dynamic between our characters.

Steve and Carmen work shopped their scene both by themselves and with me. I had some clear ideas about how I wanted the scene to go, and their choices were usually spot on. I asked Steve for some stylized responses that also hit the floor in post, but for the most part his performance was consistently great.

Scene 5, the surprise scene between Christina and Gerry was also a surprise to Steve and Carmen. I handed the script to them at the last minute more as an outline, their performance was mostly improvisation. I loved what they both did with the material! This scene has a vitality that contrasts well with the deliberate awkwardness of the rehearsed performance.

We worked on articulation and enunciation, to get the dialogue delivery clear.

Sound

The low ceilings of the cabins ruled out a shotgun mic and boom operator. Audio was recorded with lavaliers and radio transmitters. These presented a few rather hilarious problems, like where and how to hide the smart phone sized transmitter under Carmen’s skimpy dress. There’s a behind the scenes photo of Melonie helping place the transmitter that’s better left in the archives.

Props

There was only one significant prop element we brought to the big boat, boxes. In Brooklyn, I ordered several dozen 18″ cubes from Uline, which Melonie assembled on location. The boxes were originally envisioned as stocks of supplies hoarded by the refugees, can goods, etc. The idea evolved into the boxes being air dropped by some far sighted relief organization. I wanted to have them stacked in every spare space on the boat, in the cabins, the passages. I ran out of time to design a suitable logo to print on the boxes, so I figured I’d handle that later too, in post. Famous last words.

The boxes became a rich vein of world building after I borrowed a concept from Neal Stephanson’s Diamond Age, mediatronics. Here’s an except of what’s been leaking across in Signals from a Nearby Now regarding the boxes…

boxes of solar distillers
boxes of sprouting supplies
boxes of hygiene, poop composting even social games
with packs of cards and dice

boxes with practically everything
for civilization restart
and they glowed with mediatronics
so you could find them in the dark

we gathered and stashed those boxes
in every cranny and nook
we didn’t have to fight for them
they were everywhere we looked

besides being packed with goodies
to ease our deprivation
their mediatronic surface
was rich with computation

And so on. The boxes were the first intentional rhythm, or repeating pattern that offers a specific feeling or idea about the world. We found other rhythms as we went, like reflections and squeaking doors.

Ann and Melonie also made a run to the local salvation army to prop Christina’s and Gerry’s cabins. Lots of weird little collectible ceramics were found for Christina and a plethora of antique tech for Gerry. Ann has a thing for animal skeletons and she found a desiccated bird on the upper decks of the boat which we added to Gerry’s cabin. The bird was worked into a great performance gag and expanded the world building. That’s the advantage of having plenty of creative people and room to breathe, to invent and improvise.

Here’s what Signals from a Nearby Now has to offers re birds.

don’t hear any birds
not really sure why
nary a twitter or peep
a lot of them died

walk away if you find one
dead birds carry contagion

I’m going to discuss the scenes in roughly the same order as the movie. Starting with establishing shots of the big boat, where Christina and Gerry live.

Scene 3

I wanted the Alexander Henry at magic hour, which is when the sun is low on the horizon at dawn and dusk. This creates warm glowing light with long shadows. The morning was best because the sun rose on Lake Ontario and set on the city of Kingston, so the late light would have been blocked by the town.

For several mornings, I had either Carmen or Steve up before dawn, on and around the boat.

Christina returns to the boat.  Initially I imagined this as early morning perhaps after being out all night, working, scavenging or whatever. Could be morning or the end of the day, vague.

The April Ontario mornings were consistently crisp, clear and gorgeous. We would arrive before first light, set up and then wait. Over several mornings, I shot Carmen approaching the boat from ground level and up high. I caught her both coming and going. I got her casting her long shadow on the hull and trudging up the gang plank.

I wanted Gerry doing some business up on top of the boat, waiting. Perhaps observing Christina’s approach. Maybe just taking in the sunrise.

The establishing shots were consistently lovely. 70% of the shots worked, 20% were perfect.

When the sun got too high, we ended our magic hour exteriors and got into the cabins.

On the very last day of production, Carmen and I banged off a steadicam shot using the Glidecam. Christina enters the boat and clomps down the main deck passage, around a corner to stairs and then up to her cabin. Balancing Glidecams was a bit of a black art, and I was an nube steadicam wizard. This follow shot is best described as unsteadicam, with a drunken, drifty feel, common to unbalanced rigs, but Christina is sort of a woozy, whacky character anyway, so this worked.

So we’ve seen the boat, been introduced to the main characters and gotten Christina to her cabin.

Scene 1

Christina’s cabin was tiny, approximately 8′ x 16′ with a sink, bunk bed, chest of drawers and a desk. We had other cabins to choose from, but I loved the cramped and cozy feeling for her.

I supplemented the natural light from the window (can’t say porthole, cause it was square) and practical light from sink and mirror with Martijn’s compact Dedos mounted at the ceiling and tucked amidst the clutter on the top bunk. As the neutral density filters I had brought were not big enough, I tried knocking the bright window down with a giant sheet of polarizer. This proved to be an inadequate solution and the window was slightly blown out when in frame. The lighting on the other camera angles worked well.

The mirror over the sink became a key to coverage in the cabin, allowing the camera to pull back for a wide shot. The mirror was framed to give a clear view of Christina and Uncle Joe’s faces in the context of the tiny cabin. The mirror also suggests Alice through the looking glass and a reversed reality or alternate universe.

I thought of the cabins as analogous to the characters lives and the doors as threshold between what they are comfortable with and the unknown. When Uncle Joe returns from the dead and shows up at Christina’s cabin door, opening the door becomes a really big deal. Cameras were placed on either side of the doorway, between life and death, between Christina’s experience and her imagination. Christina opens the door with great care and not a little trepidation, cracking the door first to peer out stare into the mystery. This moment was carefully crafted and worked out beautifully.

Aside from the blown out window, there were a few problems.

We had an electric space heater in Christina’s cabin, which trashed the audio on a couple of early takes when we forgot to turn it off.

We had lost focus on an important close-up with Christina and Joe. After setting focus for this shot, I must have bumped the camera. I deemed this take unusable until a breakthrough years later in post, when this shot was reclaimed.

I ended up having to cut around a gag that didn’t fly. Physical comedy can be complicated. Carmen introduced a popcorn schtick that we built on and worked really well. Her bra gag had critical timing issues, which we tried to perfect during performance. Always good to play and experiment, but I would have been better off having this as an optional take. I didn’t give myself a no bra option. I ended up doing major surgery in post to maintain the integrity of the scene.

Scene 4 Christina’s dance

Now Uncle Joe has departed, and Christina prepares to enlist help from Gerry, the recluse who also lives on the ship. She is trying on different outfits. I originally just thought I’d speed this scene up so she’d rush around frantically putting on and throwing off clothing.

This scene was only intended to be a backdrop for audio exposition about the post apocalyptic world, via disembodied shortwave radio broadcasts. When my music arranger, Ndong the Gabonese cat gave me back the mix, I decided to do a more subtle treatment of the speed ramp, and this scene blossomed into an intoxicating dance, a reprise of iconic images from the industrial age.

Red Hallway

If the cabins represent what is known and familiar to the characters, the passage between the cabins is the unknown, the smouldering light of a low birth, or hell, or the dim glow of exit signs in a dark theater, which takes us out of a cozy illusion and into the pelting, chill rain of a city sidewalk or suburban parking lot. Uncle Joe emerges from this stormy enigma into Christina’s world, and Christina must dive into the enigma to reach Gerry’s. If Gerry opens his door to her, he too will be permitting the enigmatic to swirl into his experience.

The hallway is introduced when we follow Christina up to her cabin, then when we meet Uncle Joe and finally when Christina knocks on Gerry’s door.

Christina’s cabin is the call to adventure and Gerry’s cabin is the adventure. A way forward must be found, and that way is transformation for both characters.

The threshold between the call and the adventure was another rhythm, but when Gerry’s door opens, his cabin is dark, lit by a single candle. He is silhouetted in the doorway. Christina has taken Joe’s place as the harbinger of change, but she stands before a void, a shadow man.

I relished making these moments, painting with emotion and meaning. I didn’t emphasize the passage’s significance until months later, but I knew the space between the cabins was important and took special care to show this.

Next week we’ll wrap production in Gerry’s cabin. I’ll offer some 20/20 hindsight on primary production and our adventure in Canada aboard the big boat. A little over a month until the year 2017. That’s the Daughter of God year.

In episode 010, I assigned homework, to ponder the most recent FAQ question.

Another post apocalyptic movie? Aren’t there enough troubles in the real world without having to imagine more?

Why is this my very favorite question? Because 3 years into the making of Daughter of God I had a crisis. Why was I making a movie about apocalypse when I could/should be focusing all my energy on healing the earth, of waking up, of examining the suicidal decisions my fellow humans seemed to be making? I abandoned Daughter of God for almost ANOTHER 3 years because I didn’t have an answer. Now I do.

People get paralyzed by fear. I think the insecurity of whether or not there’s even going to be a future for humans on Earth is so scary that most people just shut down. OR, they feel it’s a matter of changing massive institutions like governments or corporations through the passing of laws, lobbying and voting.

My idea of excellence is being deliberate about how I feel and think, regardless of what others might feel or think, do or not do. Rapport with others starts with self rapport. If I am in tune with my needs, then I can better appreciate others’ needs. This expands outward to include groups, society, institutions, culture. In short, if I want a more just, loving and courageous society, I must be first just, loving and courageous with myself.

That’s all well and good, but patterns of thought and feeling can be pretty sticky. Words are often powerful triggers and can send us into an emotional spiral. Words like cunt, faggot or nigger, or white privilege. How about holocaust or dirty bomb? Terrorist? Should words have so much power over our experience?

The universe of Daughter of God is quirky, weird and with a little luck, audiences might find it funny. Daughter of God is not only post apocalyptic, it’s the most apocalyptic movie EVER.

Every awful scenario ever imagined in novels, on screen or by science has happened, over the top. Yet, life on Earth has adapted. Those who remain are getting by, dreaming and even falling in love. The words that stop us in our tracks, cause us to seize up and shut down, those words are drained of their power in Daughter of God. By passing through our worst fears and then moving way beyond, we can find better feelings in our present moment, our right now, and allow more creative thoughts and actions that move us not only towards survival, but thrive-vival.

I’ve had to learn how to thrive, every day I decide to. That might seem silly for a straight white guy to say, I’ve had every advantage, right? Well, I’ve also have a secret FBI record just for following my heart, so maybe birth status isn’t the whole story, eh? Maybe our color or gender or sexual orientation shouldn’t be the criteria by which we are judged as worthy or our opinions valid. Maybe judgements are generally problematic.

NOW I’m supposed to ask you to help me get the word out there about Daughter of God, but I know I don’t need to do that. If you discover a yummy, you want to share with your favorite peeps, yes? So you’ve already told all the weirdos and deviants you know about this podcast. You’ve already whispered in the ears of your most savvy, hep and adventurous comrades. IF you’re having fun listening to this podcast, resonating with Signals from a Nearby Now, or generally appreciating any of the crazy content pouring from this project, that is.

There has to be scads of weirdos out there waiting to find this! My dream is to have 1000 listeners by the new year. You can help, but please, they have to be cool people, I only want to be famous among cool people. Aside from talking this up with your allies, you can also rate and review the Daughter of Godcast on iTunes, like the Daughter of God Facebook page, follow Daughter of God on Twitter and join the mighty misfits on the mailing list.

And yes, swag is coming, just in time for Winter Solstice!

You’ve been listening to Daughter of Godcast podcast, episode 012. Thanks for sharing your cognition with me! A bit of movie, a little preaching, a smidgen of humor, a dash of science, some practical magic, omg now there’s video, and of course leakage from the universe next door encrypted into poetry, we just keep amping up. More and more. I’m wondering what’s next too.

Some of this is me, but I’m guessing there’s a crowd of my favorite dead people supplementing the Daughter of God gentle release. Maybe having a seat right next to the dessert cart    in heaven isn’t half as fun as checking in on the soap opera down here, or after you’ve won a craft beer chugging contest with Jesus a half bazillion times you wonder what’s going on back on good old earth, and whether you might throw a little monkey wrench into the gears of physicality. Dead people are funny like that. What to do while waiting in line to ride the roller coaster, again.

]]>  

The video player works best on mobile devices. Here’s video for browsers!

We’re back! Together! Episode 012 of the Daughter of Godcast, I’m still unapologetically, Dan Kelly, writer and director and you’re guide across the river to the dead and forgotten past, 11 years to be exact, though after 12 weeks we’ve whittled away almost a year, so now there’s only 10 years between the here and NOW. Whether your streaming this from India, China, the Pleiades or just plain old Beulah, Michigan, USA. Welcome.

Meanwhile, here in the time capsule, the tiny treasure that unlocks the utopian yearning, glints and fascinates.

Dan Kelly, how can you, of all people, continue to fixate on this bauble from the past while right now, America is quaking with transformation? Shouldn’t you be out in the streets? Friends, I’ve been there and yes, I might go into the streets again, to revel in the energy and exhilaration of shared, strong desire. I do love a powerful focused gathering.  Check out the links on Episode 002 for  in Arrest of TC 8 and 500k in 10 minutes.

By the time you watch or listen to this episode, re-released Episode 010 with the new introduction. I talk about, “history and present events as the playing out of an epic clash between occluded forces.” We may not be able to know what’s really going on by following news links on the www. For me, the American political experience is grand theater staged to either lull citizens into complacency or set us at each others throats. Because I am adept at hiding in plain sight, a scruffy angel sporting a hefty bag poncho, or maybe less metaphorically, a cosmic commando presenting as a straight white male trust fund baby, I notice what others just can’t ]]>  

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We’re back! Together! Episode 012 of the Daughter of Godcast, I’m still unapologetically, Dan Kelly, writer and director and you’re guide across the river to the dead and forgotten past, 11 years to be exact, though after 12 weeks we’ve whittled away almost a year, so now there’s only 10 years between the here and NOW. Whether your streaming this from India, China, the Pleiades or just plain old Beulah, Michigan, USA. Welcome.

Meanwhile, here in the time capsule, the tiny treasure that unlocks the utopian yearning, glints and fascinates.

Dan Kelly, how can you, of all people, continue to fixate on this bauble from the past while right now, America is quaking with transformation? Shouldn’t you be out in the streets? Friends, I’ve been there and yes, I might go into the streets again, to revel in the energy and exhilaration of shared, strong desire. I do love a powerful focused gathering.  Check out the links on Episode 002 for  in Arrest of TC 8 and 500k in 10 minutes.

By the time you watch or listen to this episode, re-released Episode 010 with the new introduction. I talk about, “history and present events as the playing out of an epic clash between occluded forces.” We may not be able to know what’s really going on by following news links on the www. For me, the American political experience is grand theater staged to either lull citizens into complacency or set us at each others throats. Because I am adept at hiding in plain sight, a scruffy angel sporting a hefty bag poncho, or maybe less metaphorically, a cosmic commando presenting as a straight white male trust fund baby, I notice what others just can’t ]]> yes Yes no no 27:38 Dan from dog.movie http://dog.movie/podcast/daughter-of-godcast-011/ Thu, 10 Nov 2016 21:00:05 +0000 Dan from dog.movie http://dog.movie/?post_type=podcast&p=752  

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Welcome to or back to the Daughter of Godcast, episode 011. Dan Kelly here with the whispers from the wonderful, hints and portents, the handbook for humanity masquerading as a podcast about movie making. This probably has already got you rocked back in your control consoles, but buckle up, there’s a worm hole ahead.

Dorothy Gale walks out of her aunt and uncle’s house post twister and from a black and white world she emerges into another dimension, color. We’ll here we go, upping the dimensionality of the Daughter of Godcast. We’re now offering both an audio and video version! (Available 11-11-16)

This is a big step. I was recording Daughter of Godcast in my studio’s sound booth, where I do voice acting and narration, for other podcasts like StarshipSofa or Clarkesworld. Kind of a cool environment, isolated, dark and very quiet, except when there’s a cricket invasion. The crickets! That was the clue, 10 weeks back. If am narrating a story about traveling to a distant galaxy for a science fiction podcast, crickets kinda break the suspension of disbelief. But Daughter of Godcast doesn’t require carefully controlled conditions. In fact, the actual conditions here and now are relevant to the story! They are fun. So I am moving the recording out of the booth and into the various other creation spaces.

So another new dimension is not only being able to see me, but to peek at the places where much of the magic happens. A remote studio tour, every week! Yay!

For me this means my life is even more available, more public. But hell, why not? I’m an artist, and artists create for fun and to share. So now I’ll be creating even more, my life will be an almost constant act of creation. Isn’t that the point folks? Shouldn’t we all be deliberately creating our bliss, doesn’t bliss for all beings sound lovely? Rather than just accepting some arbitrary default? Especially if the default is anything short of stellar?

When I was a kid, I used to wish for things to be better, but eventually I stopped believing that I could have what I wanted. Feeling that way made me want to not want. Because I thought, what’s the point? Frustrating to want things and just know I’m never going to have them.

Ever since  I found this magic crystal sphere hidden in a remote irish cave, this crystal sphere that grants all my wishes, oh wait, this one reverses the aging process. This one grants all my wishes. I always get them mixed up. Anyway, ever since I found THIS crystal sphere, I know that I can have whatever I really want, eventually. I just have to hold this crystal sphere in my left, no wait right hand AND decide to feel the way I am going to feel when I have whatever it is I want. and poof, eventually whatever I want with all my heart shows up.

Now, this is MY magic crystal sphere, so I don’t know what you’re going to do about living your dreams. That’s not my problem. I don’t recommend you come to my house and try to steal this sphere from me because I know kung fu and own a lot of guns. Plus a crack crew of valkyries, wind gods, water nymphs, uplifted field mice and other uncommon allies you just don’t want to fuck around with. You’ve just got to find your own sphere, or ring or staff or whatever. Enchanted tiara. Or you could just try feeling great for no reason. As if you knew all your desires or something even better were for sure coming true. Like the entire universe is itching to be of service.

Anyway, watch and see how I pull this expanded sharing off, and with the project momentum continuing to snowball, we’ll share some full living together. Getting virtuosic at playing the human game. This world wants more wizards!

Episode 011 Time Travel Efficacy

In episode 010, I initiated a time travel experiment, drifting back in memory to whisper in my own ear. The text and audio of episode 010 appears to be just as I remember from last week. I have not yet equipped the fabrication studio with a temporal isolation vault, so we won’t be able to publish the results in Nature this time around. I’m asserting episode 010 didn’t change because I’m still talking about the time travel experiment outlined there, otherwise I’d be talking about how much my actors and make-up artist napped on location, they were like the ninja warriors of napping. At least they WERE ninja warriors of napping in that previous timeline.

So now we look for evidence to back up Ann’s version from 008 – that the production was frenzied, I was burning with over wrought intensity, the cast and crew were gritting their teeth at my frantic directorial style. If my time traveling caper was a success, then we’re won’t find much evidence of all that, because we’ll have slid over to another timeline.

Y’all with me? Promise I won’t go into more theory, I can already hear snoring from the cheap seats.

So based on the episode 008 narrative of inexperienced director, scheduling and staff constraints, here’s the scenario we would have expected to find…

With no time to waste, the plucky Daughter of God team immediately started production, unpacked the vans, gathered incidentals from local merchants, deployed gear, set an ambitious shooting schedule and bam! Roll camera, speed, action!

That’s not quite what happened.

After checking the accounting records, watching the performances and the out takes and reviewing other artifacts of that long ago, here’s what the evidence shows.

I lollygagged. I gestated. I pondered.

So, if you’ve been following along, that means the time travel thingy… worked. Look, I was fully in accord with Ann’s version back in episode 008. I admit not really remembering the cast grousing to her, but my being a 100 watt bulb burning at 240 made perfect sense. We were late to the location, we had lost a member of our tiny crew… of course I would have been harried and stressed. Plus I’ve been building up that drama since episode 005.

Now that I’ve tinkered with the timeline, the current artifacts indicate another history entirely. The grooviest bit about this time travel technique is the altered artifacts are presaged by a consistent chain of causality. In other words, not only did the results change, but it’s totally obvious why they did.

For a seasoned director and full crew ten days is a long time to pull off 10 pages of screenplay in just two rooms.

I was an experienced visual artist and cinematographer. Also an experienced actor. I was fully aware that I was an inexperienced director. My directorial debut was designed with leeway to learn while doing, to adapt my existing skills. I wanted to be able to take my time, to experiment and play.

Yes, we started getting ready,  but I was assimilating the scope of challenges for the first 4 days, I didn’t even attempt to get usable dialogue takes until 5 days after arrival. 5 days! The crew was getting a bit antsy wondering when we would actually start shooting.

VO Here’s the first test shot and run through in Christina’s cabin 5 days after we arrived, we were doing full costume takes later that day.

I scheduled more time than I needed.

I had anticipated doing most of the technical work myself. After two years documenting live performance in NYC, I knew how to light and shoot competently, record sound and set up / breakdown quickly and efficiently.

People can bring energy to a project but they also take energy to manage. Back then, I hadn’t yet learned how to optimize that formula. I had the habit of letting people suck up my cognitive space. Too many people would drag down my autonomy and nimbleness. I did reach out and recruit, but once I had a couple of other raging polymaths on board, I was satisfied.

I brought a tiny crew on purpose.

Inexperienced directors are often advised to surround themselves with expertise. I preferred to surround myself with amazing problem solvers who resonated with me, rather than experts who might not.

In a distant incarnation, I developed experiential software for hands on museum exhibits, or games. Way before I became competent writing my own code, I had collaborated with other coders. As the technical experts, they would often tell me this or that idea was impractical or couldn’t be done. This felt frustrating and discouraging. Ultimately a good thing, because I eventually gave up on experts and became a badass coder myself. Guess what? I found there was never anything I couldn’t figure out how to do.

The takeaway is best offered as an Einstein quote. “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” I love expertise, but I don’t let experts define what’s possible.

My inexperience was a super power.

Loosing Eiji sucked not so much because he knew how to do critical technical stuff but because he’s cool. I wanted his vision and sensibilities. An extra pair of hands for moving things would have been helpful, sure. But, oh well. I taught Melonie the protocol for digital capture and sound monitoring, she’s a fast learner. She ran one laptop and I ran the other. When we weren’t shooting she was propping and fabricating.

Loosing Eiji just meant my margin of error was reduced. I would be working a slightly more intense schedule and there would be less experimentation. Otherwise, totally doable. Leeway reduced but still extant.

We ended up with just the right number of people.

So, here’s a summary of what changed on the big boat production back in April of 2006, after I traveled back in time and tweaked things.

I scheduled more time than I needed.
I brought a tiny crew on purpose.
My inexperience was a super power.
We ended up with just the right number of people.

In this current or to be more precise for those of you who transitioned with me, this remediated timeline, if we rewind back to April of 2006, I had fashioned an ideal environment for making my first featurette. I chugged along at a comfortable pace, was   surrounded by resonating comrades, had all the resources I needed and was feeling capable and confident. Clearly time travel works.

As we explore this tweaked timeline in 012, I’ll occasionally point out details that contrast with the left behind overwrought timeline. So enjoying this sweet merging and upgrade of my memories.

We’re going to zip this episode up a little early, because we’ve got a hunk of production theory and practice next week, with luck we’ll unpack all the gory details while deftly avoiding spoilers. We’ve got 5 scenes to do, two with dual cameras and extensive coverage, or multiple angles on the action. A goal I have for next week is to explain some of the intricacies of the process to non-movie makers while keeping the content interesting and relevant to those in the biz.

I didn’t get a call from President Donald thanking me for all my hard work duping democrats to vote Green. OR wait, was that President Hillary who didn’t phone to thank me for conning conservatives to vote Libertarian. I’m a little mixed up, these two timelines are so tough to tell apart! The results of the US elections are completely out shone by the ineluctable blooming of global compassion and rapport that’s a consistent feature of every nearby now, all the timelines in our local bundle are tinted gold with dawning of planetary consciousness. Winslow who didn’t set  off a flare in my 2nd grade of St Patricks Parochial School has tagged me as an Orwellian bloviator but I don’t presume to take sole credit for this ubiquitous blossoming across the adjacent timelines. Sure Daughter of God may be contributing, but as I’ve stated before, there are strange attractors all over the planet configuring the freaks, long hairs and ne’re do wells into exciting new gestalts.  No matter what boogey man or boogey woman we choose to play the role of national nemesis, as our excuse to feel funky, our wild wonder cannot be blocked for very long. We are the thrive. But you might need a magic crystal sphere. Just find a hidden cave, sunken citadel or non-euclidian temple over grown with kudzu and get in there.

You’ve been listening to the Daughter of Godcast, Episode 011. You’re in on an epic 11 year odyssey of audacious mistakes on the fringes of credibility,  making the movie that made me. And who am I? I am Dan Kelly, writer, director, savory spook, lollygaggist, hologram, stargazer, self navigator. Oh, but you are the listener and ultimate creator, inviting these sound waves into your experience and instantiating another now. With just a smidge of cognition, you’ve teleported some version of me into your moment. Hello!

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Welcome to or back to the Daughter of Godcast, episode 011. Dan Kelly here with the whispers from the wonderful, hints and portents, the handbook for humanity masquerading as a podcast about movie making. This probably has already got you rocked back in your control consoles, but buckle up, there’s a worm hole ahead.

Dorothy Gale walks out of her aunt and uncle’s house post twister and from a black and white world she emerges into another dimension, color. We’ll here we go, upping the dimensionality of the Daughter of Godcast. We’re now offering both an audio and video version! (Available 11-11-16)

This is a big step. I was recording Daughter of Godcast in my studio’s sound booth, where I do voice acting and narration, for other podcasts like StarshipSofa or Clarkesworld. Kind of a cool environment, isolated, dark and very quiet, except when there’s a cricket invasion. The crickets! That was the clue, 10 weeks back. If am narrating a story about traveling to a distant galaxy for a science fiction podcast, crickets kinda break the suspension of disbelief. But Daughter of Godcast doesn’t require carefully controlled conditions. In fact, the actual conditions here and now are relevant to the story! They are fun. So I am moving the recording out of the booth and into the various other creation spaces.

So another new dimension is not only being able to see me, but to peek at the places where much of the magic happens. A remote studio tour, every week! Yay!

For me this means my life is even more available, more public. But hell, why not? I’m an artist, and artists create for fun and to share. So now I’ll be creating even]]>  

Having trouble with the video media player? Click here to open the video…

Welcome to or back to the Daughter of Godcast, episode 011. Dan Kelly here with the whispers from the wonderful, hints and portents, the handbook for humanity masquerading as a podcast about movie making. This probably has already got you rocked back in your control consoles, but buckle up, there’s a worm hole ahead.

Dorothy Gale walks out of her aunt and uncle’s house post twister and from a black and white world she emerges into another dimension, color. We’ll here we go, upping the dimensionality of the Daughter of Godcast. We’re now offering both an audio and video version! (Available 11-11-16)

This is a big step. I was recording Daughter of Godcast in my studio’s sound booth, where I do voice acting and narration, for other podcasts like StarshipSofa or Clarkesworld. Kind of a cool environment, isolated, dark and very quiet, except when there’s a cricket invasion. The crickets! That was the clue, 10 weeks back. If am narrating a story about traveling to a distant galaxy for a science fiction podcast, crickets kinda break the suspension of disbelief. But Daughter of Godcast doesn’t require carefully controlled conditions. In fact, the actual conditions here and now are relevant to the story! They are fun. So I am moving the recording out of the booth and into the various other creation spaces.

So another new dimension is not only being able to see me, but to peek at the places where much of the magic happens. A remote studio tour, every week! Yay!

For me this means my life is even more available, more public. But hell, why not? I’m an artist, and artists create for fun and to share. So now I’ll be creating even]]> yes Yes no no 19:28 Dan from dog.movie http://dog.movie/podcast/daughter-of-godcast-010/ Wed, 02 Nov 2016 23:02:34 +0000 Dan from dog.movie http://dog.movie/?post_type=podcast&p=717  

Hello friends, Welcome to Episode 010 of the Daughter of Godcast. Yes, you heard that right, we’re trashing that whacky numbering system and getting in accord with the podcast accumulators. This is actually the 10th consecutive week of podcasting, the 10th episode, so welcome to Episode 010. 009 is now officially the lost episode, until we reissue the entire Daughter of Godcast series for the platinum anniversary edition.

April 2006. Aboard the Alexander Henry, 200 foot Canadian Ice Breaker repurposed as a bed and breakfast, a hybrid preservation and income project for the Maritime Museum of Great Lakes in Kingston. Daughter of God rented this big boat for 10 days.

In episode 008, we heard from Ann Loeding and her impressions of the production aboard the Alexander Henry. The crew complaining about my brusque manner because I was over wrought, overwhelmed, trying to accomplish way to much with a finite amount of me.

What did I do right? Well, first and foremost, I sprouted. Me, a wild force of nature, a divine creator, dropped into the best sandbox yet deployed in all the cosmos and then what? 43 years of waiting. Of hesitating. Of barely even scratching the surface of my power. Lots of Americans are dead by 60 or 70. Three quarters of my time on earth frittered away being almost happy.

A patient seed at last twisting out a root and unfurling a green leaflet. Making a movie, my movie, my script. Taking on way more than my current instantiantion could hope to accomplish. More-ing myself through sheer will. Taking on the same amount of work that usually requires at least 2-3 people, if not 10. A 100 watt bulb burning at 240. Making up for lost time, for missing crew. Supposedly.

Just getting on location was a huge gift I gave myself. Back then, hard work was THE way to blow through beliefs… beliefs about myself I had reinforced for 4 decades and the ONLY way I knew how to do that was to rally and rally and rally. Sacred effort, back then. The only way to get unstuck was to work harder than I ever had. To remember as I dragged myself out of bed at 4:00 am to prep for the day’s production, that this is the new me, that this was MY movie and everything I was doing was for a brighter and more delicious me. I had decided, for sure, but back then deciding wasn’t enough. Heroic struggle against all odds was what made the gods smile.

That’s an amazing perspective on why I was pissing people off.

Going on location was a shift, a new experimental me. I wanted trusted friends along for sure, because somewhere inside I knew that I needed poeple who could follow me to the edges of myself. When I was looking for people to bring, I cared less for their cinematic experience and more for their quality of heart. This comes from my friend and teacher Swami Bua.

One night after a big party at Swamiji’s apartment in NYC, I was doing the dishes. Everyone else had left, the guests, the Indian amas with their silk saris and tupperware, all the other students. Though I’d been serious about yoga and coming to his class for years, Swami and I really didn’t know each other very well. He stood in the doorway of the cramped efficiency kitchen and said, “You have a good heart.” I melted a little, and said “Thank you, Swami.” I knew what he meant.

To pull of this movie, I had to have people with good hearts. When Carmen and I sat together in the bar, yes I saw her as the incarnation of Christina, but I could also tell that underlying the zany turbulent personality, she had a good heart. That’s how I knew I could start making the movie, this was the essential criteria. So too when I met and worked with Steve, and when Layna showed up from Craigslist. Good hearts. Ann and I have known each other a long time, (since she was eight) and Melonie and I had seen some changes together too, through most of her motherhood. And Eiji has a heart of gold.

I was going to melt in the alchemical crucible of the Alexander Henry and be transmuted to gold or better. I knew this in my gut, but could hardly articulate. I was about to go way beyond myself and that’s scary. To acknowledge the full import of this undertaking was to acknowledge the risk of failure, not so much of failure to make this movie, but failure to be fully alive, to lift myself out of mediocrity and into consistent deliberate joy.

The only lack of preparation was as follows. I should have sat everyone down and said this…

“What we are about to do, I’ve never done before. I’ve done lots of things like this, but not this. The technical stuff, I’m confident I have that covered, if we are missing anything we’ll improvise. We’ve got a great script, location, a cozy place to stay and a cafe that will feed us well. Every worthy endeavor involves going beyond the known. So what don’t we know? What don’t you know?”

This would have been an excellent question to ask everyone. Maybe go round in a circle and listen to everyone’s answer. Then when my turn came, I could have said,

“I know I can do this. What I don’t know is what is going to happen to me, how I will change. I am attempting to blow through my own ideas of who I am, to demonstrate to myself a level of power I know I have, but have not yet experienced. I have asked you all to come along because of your competence and skill yes, but primarily because I feel I can trust you. I am moving right out of my comfort zone with this project. That’s exciting and it’s scary. It’s exciting because it’s scary. Anything could happen. Yes, I’ve hired all of you, but this to me is way more than business and I think we all get that. By inviting you to come along, I am asking you to stick with me and hang in there, whatever happens. To realize that this is a big deal for me, a big shift in my life, perhaps the biggest shift so far. How does this make you feel to hear that?”

That would have been a good speech to make. Because it’s a fantasy about what I might have done differently, I don’t have to locate this precisely. Perhaps before I hired everyone? Before they signed contracts? Or before we all got into the vans that early Brooklyn morning, sitting on the parquet floor in the sunshine of apartment’s front room? That’s a nice image.

My friend Milagros turned me onto Michael Brown, developer of the Presence Process and he’s got this very pragmatic approach to time travel. In my imagination, I can go back in time and make this speech. The change in my brain will ripple quantum-esque into the present, and my now will be transformed, changing everything. If our perceived reality is all happening in our brain, that is. So I’ll do that, right after i tell the story that was, and then when you listen to this, you’ll be listening to fiction because I prepared my cast and crew for the intensity, they would have felt as if they were having the best adventure ever. Our 9 days on the big boat would have been a gas, a wild creative triumph. An exhilarating collaboration. And they did and it was!

Why am I telling all this in a podcast? Why indeed. Is there any point in me trotting out my dirty laundry, my foibles and yearnings? Well, these are the REAL stories behind the movie, and the tagline is the making of the movie made me. So there’s that. Also I like to think that maybe someone out there is hearing a little of themselves in my words. I mean, how many of us are living the lives we know we can? If I was the only supra genius who struggled with feeling ok, then that’s awesome. The reason there aren’t 50k listeners to the Daughter of Godcast podcast yet is because everyone is already living their full potential, and my story of discovering how to live mine just isn’t relevant to most of the planet. Except the upcoming American elections make me suspect otherwise. I mean, holy fuck sticks, the mainstream candidates! If self loathing isn’t rampant in the USA, how did these two get to be on TV so much?

In episode 008, I speculated on the mysterious future history transmissions from the Daughter of God universe, here’s the recent verses regarding the US elections. It’s totally geeky, if you get these right out of the gate, which I am sure Susan Fisk and Bennie Matesich did, then I’ll send you a mediatronic t-shirt when they are printed. Here goes, first straight up and then I’ll take a shot at decryption.

we thought the world our oyster
bright pearls for the taking
cracked crust and drilled deep
now elder gods waking

we broke open their tombs
released unspeakable horrors
a race of naked apes
from their distant tomorrows

great Cthulhu, so grumpy
a too early rising
he gobbled up Trumpy
and was poisoned, not surprising

That’s how Donald won the Nobel
posthumously, from hell

a braggart and dark lord
deleted from the scene
blame the pant suited broad
Reptilians 2016

but we we’re ready for that fight
thanks to David Icke

Ok, you follow all that? Stop the podcast now and email me your analysis at the@dog.movie for your free mediatronic t-shirt, while supplies last. offer void where prohibited.

ok for the rest of you people who have a life, here’s the breakdown.

This is a mash-up of various mythos, fictional and maybe not. HP Lovecraft was a brilliant bastard and wrote some freaky stories involving elder gods that are hugely influential even today. He was also something of a racist in real life. Here’s the set-up stanzas

we thought the world our oyster
bright pearls for the taking
cracked crust and drilled deep
now elder gods waking

The human beings used up the Earth’s resources willy nilly, but didn’t realize that they are living on sort of prison for the ancient elder gods, gods who would make Yahweh of the old testament look like a boy scout.

we broke open their tombs
released unspeakable horrors
a race of naked apes
from their distant tomorrows

So in drilling for oil, mining, and generally trashing the thriving global life support system which keeps the elder gods in stasis, we let them loose. We naked apes are the key in the lock. The baddest badass of the elder gods is Cthulu, a humanoid giant with an octopus head and dragon wings.

great Cthulhu, so grumpy
a too early rising
he gobbled up Trumpy
and was poisoned, not surprising

That’s how Donald won the Nobel
posthumously, from hell

so Donald is the hero of the earth, by becoming breakfast he takes out the badass god, even Cthulu can’t handle Donald’s bitter self loathing. But wait, there’s a twist.

a braggart and dark lord
deleted from the scene
blame the pant suited broad
Reptilians 2016

but we we’re ready for that fight
thanks to David Icke

David Icke is a hilarious nutcase like me and he talks about a race of reptilians who treat indigenous earthlings much like the Conquistadors treated the incas and aztecs or humans treat CAFO cattle. Supposedly, Hillary is one of these shapeshifting reptilians, she’s been on Icke’s radar screen for decades. Kinda spooky, actually. In this verse, SHE engineered the double assassination and with the head of the snake cut off, she and her kind can mop up the rest of the elder gods and continue the nefarious ET lizard agenda for Earth. But thanks to David Icke, we know ALL about this, and knowledge is POWER!

I’m not super excited about either of these two monsters or paying any attention to them. The reason I’m not is because I have made great strides in moving beyond self loathing! I like their poems tho.

Well, we’re all over the map on this episode, aren’t we supposed to be talking about the production aboard the Alexander Henry? C’mon ride the rollercoaster instead, just for this week.

If you’re standing, you might want to sit down. If you’re sitting, you many want to lie back and breathe deep and slow.

In episode 007, I talked about realizing a world ripe for thriving. Maybe the post apocalyptic universe of Daughter of God is interpenetrating our timeline to create an interference pattern. Imagine a murphy’s law version of our timeline, where everything that could go wrong has and will. Two simultaneously active timelines might be pretty disconcerting for me to maintain and still be able to safely drive to the Shop and Save for a stick of butter, but what if one of those timelines was abstracted? Water down the murphy reality to a signal, a movie, translate the apocalyptic horror show of the non optimal universe-next-door into a story, mere entertainment, which is simply just running an offset operation on the peaks and valleys of the Murphy universe’s wave function. Then overlay that movie on our reality and we cancel out all the suicidal trends. Our timeline is reconfigured, our zietgeist remediated, our options for catastrophe are curtailed and cut off. We’ll be bumped into more benevolent destinies.

This might make more sense than the premise that 11 years of cinematic profusion is coming from just one flesh and blood dude, even if he is Dan Kelly. I’d then be the local node of the Dan Kelly network, LEDs a flickering. Co-existent across the timelines, many selves overlapping.

Perhaps all my selves have formed a super genius entity, and Daughter of God is our cognitive ark, able to navigate the multiverse. By sloshing out every horrific scenario both plausible and im, we automatically imply the inverse, wild thriving and celebration. Desire turns decisively towards what’s missing and viola, we slide over to the next best reality.

I certainly feel transient amidst the strands, constantly tuning towards a more resonant reality, decisively broadcasting the thrive vibe. Daughter of God can help you tune with me, unless you want to stay here in this slightly silly timeline. Not as rough as Daughter of God universe, for sure. Who here expects to swerve around a T-rex on the interstate, or the undead to start applying for your burger flipping job? Hardly anyone. But lesser of two evils and divide and conquer seems to be pretty well established here. What about an asteroid impact? A satellite frying solar wind? Climate catastrophe? Those are not unthinkable scenarios.

At the dog.movie FAQ, I recently answered a question I didn’t even know I needed to ask. I’d offer this now but we’re rapidly approaching 30 minutes on this episode, so maybe I’ll leave it as homework. The question is,

• Another post apocalyptic movie? Aren’t there enough troubles in the real world without having to imagine more?

I’ve outed myself pretty significantly this episode. Next week, we’ll have a new president in the United States and maybe if we’re lucky a civil war. They can try sending trucks around to pick up all the listeners of this podcast and put us camps. Except this episode altered our timeline just enough so that the truck drivers will all be too hung over and keep missing their exit, over and over, into infinity. So if you see unmarked pseudo military transports rolling down the highway driven by hollow eyed police looking very confused, you’ll know that everything I’m saying here is true. In episode 011 we’ll send them home to sleep it off and continue with our liberation of all beings. We’ve got a big surpise coming next week, look forward to listening with you again.

This has been episode 010 of the Daughter of Godcast, with Dan Kelly, writer director and purveyor of democrazy. 11 years of me in how many weeks of podcasts? Can’t say for sure, but we’re gonna keep going. Stay with me, no matter what. Thanks for listening.

 

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Hello friends, Welcome to Episode 010 of the Daughter of Godcast. Yes, you heard that right, we’re trashing that whacky numbering system and getting in accord with the podcast accumulators. This is actually the 10th consecutive week of podcasting, the 10th episode, so welcome to Episode 010. 009 is now officially the lost episode, until we reissue the entire Daughter of Godcast series for the platinum anniversary edition.

April 2006. Aboard the Alexander Henry, 200 foot Canadian Ice Breaker repurposed as a bed and breakfast, a hybrid preservation and income project for the Maritime Museum of Great Lakes in Kingston. Daughter of God rented this big boat for 10 days.

In episode 008, we heard from Ann Loeding and her impressions of the production aboard the Alexander Henry. The crew complaining about my brusque manner because I was over wrought, overwhelmed, trying to accomplish way to much with a finite amount of me.

What did I do right? Well, first and foremost, I sprouted. Me, a wild force of nature, a divine creator, dropped into the best sandbox yet deployed in all the cosmos and then what? 43 years of waiting. Of hesitating. Of barely even scratching the surface of my power. Lots of Americans are dead by 60 or 70. Three quarters of my time on earth frittered away being almost happy.

A patient seed at last twisting out a root and unfurling a green leaflet. Making a movie, my movie, my script. Taking on way more than my current instantiantion could hope to accomplish. More-ing myself through sheer will. Taking on the same amount of work that usually requires at least 2-3 people, if not 10. A 100 watt bulb burning at 240. Making up for lost time, for missing crew. Supposedly.

Just getting on location was a huge gift I gave myself. Back then, hard work was THE way to blow through beliefs… beliefs about myself I had reinforced for 4 decades and the ONLY way I knew how to do that was to rally and rally and rally. Sacred effort, back then. The only way to get unstuck was to work harder than I ever had. To remember as I dragged myself out of bed at 4:00 am to prep for the day’s production, that this is the new me, that this was MY movie and everything I was doing was for a brighter and more delicious me. I had decided, for sure, but back then deciding wasn’t enough. Heroic struggle against all odds was what made the gods smile.

That’s an amazing perspective on why I was pissing people off.

Going on location was a shift, a new experimental me. I wanted trusted friends along for sure, because somewhere inside I knew that I needed poeple who could follow me to the edges of myself. When I was looking for people to bring, I cared less for their cinematic experience and more for their quality of heart. This comes from my friend and teacher Swami Bua.

One night after a big p]]>  

Hello friends, Welcome to Episode 010 of the Daughter of Godcast. Yes, you heard that right, we’re trashing that whacky numbering system and getting in accord with the podcast accumulators. This is actually the 10th consecutive week of podcasting, the 10th episode, so welcome to Episode 010. 009 is now officially the lost episode, until we reissue the entire Daughter of Godcast series for the platinum anniversary edition.

April 2006. Aboard the Alexander Henry, 200 foot Canadian Ice Breaker repurposed as a bed and breakfast, a hybrid preservation and income project for the Maritime Museum of Great Lakes in Kingston. Daughter of God rented this big boat for 10 days.

In episode 008, we heard from Ann Loeding and her impressions of the production aboard the Alexander Henry. The crew complaining about my brusque manner because I was over wrought, overwhelmed, trying to accomplish way to much with a finite amount of me.

What did I do right? Well, first and foremost, I sprouted. Me, a wild force of nature, a divine creator, dropped into the best sandbox yet deployed in all the cosmos and then what? 43 years of waiting. Of hesitating. Of barely even scratching the surface of my power. Lots of Americans are dead by 60 or 70. Three quarters of my time on earth frittered away being almost happy.

A patient seed at last twisting out a root and unfurling a green leaflet. Making a movie, my movie, my script. Taking on way more than my current instantiantion could hope to accomplish. More-ing myself through sheer will. Taking on the same amount of work that usually requires at least 2-3 people, if not 10. A 100 watt bulb burning at 240. Making up for lost time, for missing crew. Supposedly.

Just getting on location was a huge gift I gave myself. Back then, hard work was THE way to blow through beliefs… beliefs about myself I had reinforced for 4 decades and the ONLY way I knew how to do that was to rally and rally and rally. Sacred effort, back then. The only way to get unstuck was to work harder than I ever had. To remember as I dragged myself out of bed at 4:00 am to prep for the day’s production, that this is the new me, that this was MY movie and everything I was doing was for a brighter and more delicious me. I had decided, for sure, but back then deciding wasn’t enough. Heroic struggle against all odds was what made the gods smile.

That’s an amazing perspective on why I was pissing people off.

Going on location was a shift, a new experimental me. I wanted trusted friends along for sure, because somewhere inside I knew that I needed poeple who could follow me to the edges of myself. When I was looking for people to bring, I cared less for their cinematic experience and more for their quality of heart. This comes from my friend and teacher Swami Bua.

One night after a big p]]> yes Yes no no 19:29 Dan from dog.movie http://dog.movie/podcast/daughter-of-godcast-008/ Thu, 27 Oct 2016 02:15:45 +0000 Dan from dog.movie http://dog.movie/?post_type=podcast&p=668  

[phone ringing]

Hi, hello, how are you? Yeah, Good…

This is the Daughter of Godcast, select stories from the 11 year campaign to shoot, edit and distribute the narrative scifi featurette Daughter of God with myself Dan Kelly, writer director and today joined by my excellent friend Ann Loeding, Daughter of God’s Line Producer in Kingston, Ontario. I met Ann when she dated my pal Mark (not Mark Dillon from Episode 004.1) back in high school. She of course is much younger than me, like at least 10 years so that would have made her like 8 years old when she was dating Mark. I think the statute of limitations has probably run out by now, so Mark you can rest easy if you’re listening.

Ann Loeding, Line Producer for the Alexander Henry

Mark is a ghost buster these days, or CHUD hunter, the rumors are conflicting. The last two episodes I’ve been off in weeds talking about gear and money but before we return to the primary narrative back aboard the big boat in 2006, I feel compelled to muse about the inexplicable, the phenomenal. This is after all the Halloween episode.

Daughter of God can be taken as fiction, as a mash up of tropes from writers both revered and obscure, including Phil Dick, Michael Swanwick, Micheal Crichton, Kurt Vonnegutt, Cory Doctorow, HG Wells, James Blish, William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, Bruce Sterling, and anyone else who I’ve ever read, with a heavy infusion of genre movies both A and B.

However, I want to offer another perspective for our mutual consideration. In the infinite variety of the multi-verse, could Daughter of God be a true story?

What if Werner Heisenberg had not been able to cripple the Nazi atomic program as he did in our timeline, and New York City had been taken out by a nuclear tipped V2, launched from a U-boat near Nantucket? How would that world look like in 2017?

What if parallel realities are bundled together, like fiber optic strands? What if each strand is a little leaky? What if nearby timelines can bleed over into ours, like radio stations on adjacent frequencies?

If you’ve been tuning in to Daughter of Godcast for awhile, then you know I am not shy about acknowledging my extensive talents, but what if the gentle release isn’t all me? Screenplay, cinematography, supporting actor, primary investor, composer, VFX director, editorial, podcast, web presence, social media… how likely is it that one person, albeit a brilliant, exceptional artist, could pull all that off by himself? Doesn’t that seem kinda… impossible? Is there an alternative explanation? In the words of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Homes, “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”

What if Daughter of God is leaking over from an alternative timeline? Is this movie a transmission from the could be, a nearby now? What if I told you that I am not sure myself?

Well, running with this paradigm, the rift between our timeline and the universe next door seems to have recently widened. You may have been catching the odd snippets of poetry posting to Facebook, Twitter, Google plus, Linkedin and occasionally Instagram via Buffer. I am sure that’s ME filling Buffer’s queue, it’s got to be… right? I must be making all that up and scheduling it to post. A couple years back when my heart was breaking, I committed to roughly a year of posting only poetry on Facebook. There’s nothing supernatural about writing love poems. What’s a little freaky is that I was full on with Daughter of God then too. If that’s me posting the poetry today, was I being prepared to receive these current transmissions, warmed up like a dirt bike on a chill fall morning? Expanded and reinforced to allow the full flow?

Creation is being a fire hose and learning how to find the hydrants. We’re all fancy tubes, a hookup between the ineffable and what’s for breakfast. That high pressure gush several stories high? That’s the cosmos coming through, slaking the raging blaze of desire.

Wait! If you’re a hose, and desire is a fire, then what’s burning, who’s the fire brigade, and why are so obsessed with mixed metaphors? Is this a finger pointing to the moon or just spooky nonsensical bluster? YES.

I don’t want to pull a Twin Peaks on you and just keep opening up mystery after mystery without any supporting armature. I suspect there is an armature, an underlying structure that is discernible, and once perceived can trigger a boon, a blooming. The Daughter of Godcast podcast started out as an exposition, what happened years ago making my movie. At least I thought I was making a movie. Now I’m not so sure.

Time to roll forward on the primary narrative, in episode 006 we’re ready to start production – Lights Camera Action and all that. Current enigmatic musings and anecdotal evidence of strange happenings? To be continued. The takeaway from today’s little intro is just this… I don’t have an explanation for the phenomena that is the gentle release. If you want to pretend it’s all me, go right ahead.

A key factor in deciding to shoot on a big boat was that this made the chances of Ann Loeding coming along a lot more likely. She’s into big boats, especially old, sunken and/or decrepit big boats. The past few years, she’s been leading the effort to restore the Columbia, a steam powered passenger ferry built in 1902 and originally based in Detroit, MI. In 2015, Ann and her team moved Columbia to Buffalo, NY in preparation for eventual transport to the Hudson River via the St Lawrence Seaway.

Because Ann has a full plate between the Columbia in Buffalo and her family back in Kingston, New York, I knew she wouldn’t be up to speed with the podcasting and my version of events. Her recollections would be pristine. After getting the latest news from Buffalo, Ann and I talked about her memories of production aboard the Alexander Henry in Kingston Ontario, 10 years ago.

She talked about having to fill the role of mom, and how that was a little strange for her, having only been a mom herself for 9 months. The upstairs common room at the B and B where most of us slept, our flophouse. Her and Melonie trying to dress Christina’s cabin with props from the Kingston Salvation Army and feeling frustrated at the lack of options. Our struggles with recording sound and heavy reliance on lavalier radio mics, a boom operator being impractical in the low ceiling cabins with deep focus compositions, not to mention no boom operator. Take, after take, after take. Overloading the ship’s electrical service and having to run our own generator. Wrangling with payments to the museum. Reviewing location agreements from our lawyer, shuttling the gang between the B and B and the boat for an 8:00 am call, her vague impression of Layna as being a consistently sane and calm presence, in contrast to everyone else who at some point was wound up and cranky, me included.

… I remember you being overwrought, burning a  110 watt light bulb burning on 240, watching you struggling to keep your bon ami…

My bon ami, francaise for good friend. Also a scrubbing powder made from feldspar. Pretty sure she meant the french.

… and be a leader but at the same time you were sort of overwhelmed and frustrated…

This was what really interested me, her impressions of my presence as a new director under extreme time and staff constraints.

… was hard getting everyone out in the morning. The call out was 8 and you were like ‘C’mon, let’s go!’ People were drag ass-y, didn’t get to sleep at the right time… you were asking them to be more professional and they weren’t quite ready for it and sometimes you were short tempered because you were dealing with all these things…

Ann’s perception was that the group was young and inexperienced. Griping about trivia. She had logged many hours as a commercial captain, so the complaints of the Daughter of God crew would have seemed trivial to her in comparison to what she and her ship crew had endured, towing barges, weather, navigation, keeping million dollar infrastructure intact and afloat in challenging conditions. Ann was overkill as a movie producer. Which was why I wanted her with me.

I don’t remember any specific complaints, it was more of a group whining, they were young. just about how you were mad at them or weren’t being nice to them, a management thing…

Along with everything else she was doing to support production, Ann became a soothing influence, giving everyone an opportunity to vent their frustration, with me mostly.

… just make them feel like they had someone else to talk to that may be able to then report to you which of course I don’t think I did. Whatever you’re saying is stupid and immature and suck it up. [laughter] alot of this is knowledge that I’ve gained in the last 10 years, but people out of their element and maybe need a little more hand holding than you were in a position to give because you were juggling all those technical things.

Shit going wrong during movies is pretty much the rule, not the exception. My inexperience as a director was ultimately the reason folks were struggling and feeling frustrated. I had made the technical preparations, but I hadn’t prepared the people for adventure, for the intensity of the adventure. With how I might transform.

… you were a little less nurturing than your normal self would be. I think people came to expect a certain person with the person you are happy go lucky and that person wasn’t in evidence…

Ann and I had both been through the intensity plenty of times, together and separately. We had a healthy respect for the vortex, but we’re ready to surf if waves starting rolling. As she said, we wouldn’t court disaster, but we knew how to get lucky if it happened to show up.

… that’s the part of the job I liked, things going pear shaped…

In 006, I discussed how the energy of emotion is more powerful than effort, and how I attributed the clearing of Carmen’s work permit to my steady deliberate feeling of well being, that everything would work out. Back then however, I was mostly a man of action. I thought that effort was the driving force. Making luck was what I did to pull my ass out of the fire. I had the sense that if I enjoyed too much luck, I’d run out. I wouldn’t be able to reconfigure the universe for the really serious shit. Like staying out of jail, or not drowning.

So my presence on the set was all about action.

I don’t think anything you did was out of control Josef von Sternberg or Otto Preminger, whoever that guy was who was always yelling at people… You put yourself under a lot of pressure, time pressure, money pressure…

We certainly didn’t have enough people. I couldn’t have anticipated loosing Eiji. Looking back I could have spent more time in Brooklyn rehearsing with everyone, to practice together the transition between who were before Canada and who we would be on set. Between Dan Kelly, fun loving rascal and Dan Kelly super focused surfer of intensity.

… you sort of see the shape of a project working on newspapers…

So I could concentrate on the 10 jobs required to pull off the next take, Ann took care of everything else. Our interaction was easy and therefor unremarkable.

… seamless between you and I, you said I need this this and this and I said OK we’ll go get this this and this…

Having Ann as our line producer was excellent. Her combination of pragmatism, empathy and ability to stay chill under fire was key. Ann’s contribution is only rivaled by the amazing good fortune we had with craft services, which is movie speak for catering. The Sleepless Goat.

… the logistics of keeping people fed, lucking out with sleepless goat…

Sadly, the Sleepless Goat shut it’s doors in March of 2016. So much for our April of 2017 release dinner in Kingston, Ontario. A moment of silence in memory of this incomparable coop cafe.

Thanks for listening. Episode 008, Daughter of Godcast. I’m Dan Kelly and we’re here all week folks, every week until the story is told, boldly, as best we remember, of the making of the longest little movie ever, Daughter of God. She’s coming, she’s on social media, she’s stir frying tempeh and mung bean sprouts for you, she’s borrowing your socks, her whisper is the sound of falling leaves, the sun on your cheek is her kiss. Find her everywhere.

What happens next is anyone’s guess
Krishna, Christ, Buddha and all the rest
Throw up their hands at our perfect mess
We try to pray, curse, accuse and confess
But we can’t help smiling at the shining, scared truth
That you love me and I love you
My friend, let’s meet again
(excerpt from Lauren’s Birthday Song 2003, © Dan Kelly 2003)

Freesound

InspectorJ Thunder, Very Close, Rain A, (Halloween)
YleArkisto – Kids playing in theme song, Another Fucked Up Day in Paradise

]]>  

[phone ringing]

Hi, hello, how are you? Yeah, Good…

This is the Daughter of Godcast, select stories from the 11 year campaign to shoot, edit and distribute the narrative scifi featurette Daughter of God with myself Dan Kelly, writer director and today joined by my excellent friend Ann Loeding, Daughter of God’s Line Producer in Kingston, Ontario. I met Ann when she dated my pal Mark (not Mark Dillon from Episode 004.1) back in high school. She of course is much younger than me, like at least 10 years so that would have made her like 8 years old when she was dating Mark. I think the statute of limitations has probably run out by now, so Mark you can rest easy if you’re listening.

Ann Loeding, Line Producer for the Alexander Henry

Mark is a ghost buster these days, or CHUD hunter, the rumors are conflicting. The last two episodes I’ve been off in weeds talking about gear and money but before we return to the primary narrative back aboard the big boat in 2006, I feel compelled to muse about the inexplicable, the phenomenal. This is after all the Halloween episode.

Daughter of God can be taken as fiction, as a mash up of tropes from writers both revered and obscure, including Phil Dick, Michael Swanwick, Micheal Crichton, Kurt Vonnegutt, Cory Doctorow, HG Wells, James Blish, William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, Bruce Sterling, and anyone else who I’ve ever read, with a heavy infusion of genre movies both A and B.

However, I want to offer another perspective for our mutual consideration. In the infinite variety of the multi-verse, could Daughter of God be a true story?

What if Werner Heisenberg had not been able to cripple the Nazi atomic program as he did in our timeline, and New York City had been taken out by a nuclear tipped V2, launched from a U-boat near Nantucket? How would that world look like in 2017?

What if parallel realities are bundled together, like fiber optic strands? What if each strand is a little leaky? What if nearby timelines can bleed over into ours, like radio stations on adjacent frequencies?

If you’ve been tuning in to Daughter of Godcast for awhile, then you know I am not shy about acknowledging my extensive talents, but what if the gentle release isn’t all me? Screenplay, cinematography, supporting actor, primary investor, composer, VFX director, editorial, podcast, web presence, social media… how likely is it that one person, albeit a brilliant, exceptional artist, could pull all that off by himself? Doesn’t that seem kinda… impossible? Is there an alternative explanation? In the words of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Homes, “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”

What if Daughter of God is leaking over from an alternative timeline? Is this movie a transmission from the could be, a nearby now? What if I told you that I am not sure myself?

Well, running with this paradigm, the rift between our timeline and the universe next door seems to have recently widened. You may have been catching the odd snippets of poetry posting to Facebook, Twitter, Google plus, Linkedin and occasionally Instagram via Buffer. I am sure that’s ME filling Buffer’s queue, it’s got to be… right? I must be making all that up and scheduling it to post. A couple years back when my heart was breaking, I committed to roughly a year of posting only poetry on Facebook. There’s nothing supernatural about writing love poems. What’s a little freaky is that I was full on with Daughter of God then too. If that’s me posting the poetry today, was I being prepared ]]>  

[phone ringing]

Hi, hello, how are you? Yeah, Good…

This is the Daughter of Godcast, select stories from the 11 year campaign to shoot, edit and distribute the narrative scifi featurette Daughter of God with myself Dan Kelly, writer director and today joined by my excellent friend Ann Loeding, Daughter of God’s Line Producer in Kingston, Ontario. I met Ann when she dated my pal Mark (not Mark Dillon from Episode 004.1) back in high school. She of course is much younger than me, like at least 10 years so that would have made her like 8 years old when she was dating Mark. I think the statute of limitations has probably run out by now, so Mark you can rest easy if you’re listening.

Ann Loeding, Line Producer for the Alexander Henry

Mark is a ghost buster these days, or CHUD hunter, the rumors are conflicting. The last two episodes I’ve been off in weeds talking about gear and money but before we return to the primary narrative back aboard the big boat in 2006, I feel compelled to muse about the inexplicable, the phenomenal. This is after all the Halloween episode.

Daughter of God can be taken as fiction, as a mash up of tropes from writers both revered and obscure, including Phil Dick, Michael Swanwick, Micheal Crichton, Kurt Vonnegutt, Cory Doctorow, HG Wells, James Blish, William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, Bruce Sterling, and anyone else who I’ve ever read, with a heavy infusion of genre movies both A and B.

However, I want to offer another perspective for our mutual consideration. In the infinite variety of the multi-verse, could Daughter of God be a true story?

What if Werner Heisenberg had not been able to cripple the Nazi atomic program as he did in our timeline, and New York City had been taken out by a nuclear tipped V2, launched from a U-boat near Nantucket? How would that world look like in 2017?

What if parallel realities are bundled together, like fiber optic strands? What if each strand is a little leaky? What if nearby timelines can bleed over into ours, like radio stations on adjacent frequencies?

If you’ve been tuning in to Daughter of Godcast for awhile, then you know I am not shy about acknowledging my extensive talents, but what if the gentle release isn’t all me? Screenplay, cinematography, supporting actor, primary investor, composer, VFX director, editorial, podcast, web presence, social media… how likely is it that one person, albeit a brilliant, exceptional artist, could pull all that off by himself? Doesn’t that seem kinda… impossible? Is there an alternative explanation? In the words of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Homes, “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”

What if Daughter of God is leaking over from an alternative timeline? Is this movie a transmission from the could be, a nearby now? What if I told you that I am not sure myself?

Well, running with this paradigm, the rift between our timeline and the universe next door seems to have recently widened. You may have been catching the odd snippets of poetry posting to Facebook, Twitter, Google plus, Linkedin and occasionally Instagram via Buffer. I am sure that’s ME filling Buffer’s queue, it’s got to be… right? I must be making all that up and scheduling it to post. A couple years back when my heart was breaking, I committed to roughly a year of posting only poetry on Facebook. There’s nothing supernatural about writing love poems. What’s a little freaky is that I was full on with Daughter of God then too. If that’s me posting the poetry today, was I being prepared ]]> yes Yes no no 22:31 Dan from dog.movie http://dog.movie/podcast/daughter-of-godcast-007/ Wed, 19 Oct 2016 16:13:22 +0000 Dan from dog.movie http://dog.movie/?post_type=podcast&p=618  

Hello World, you’re tuned into the Daughter of Godcast, and I am Dan Kelly, water rabbit, spiritual vagabond, energy artist, wilds man. Lit below by the flickering light of mild revelation, an uncanny visage passing on the oral history of the making of an aspiring cult classic, Daughter of God. This is episode 007, Treasure.

Daughter of God like most endeavors in the arts has three major enabling components – gumption, gear and gas. I’ve talked about two so far. First, there’s gumption. A vision, a yearning to create. In episode 001 I had my “I can do that” moment at Palm Springs Shorts Festival, which was really just an acknowledgment of, I want to do that. And how. Then in 006, I gave a whiskered recollection of pre-digital media and how earnest desire called forth affordable gear for movie making. Finally I needed gas. What keeps human metabolism roaring, vehicles rolling, lights shining and batteries charged? Money.

If you’re worn out from that gear geek out in Episode 006 and you’d prefer the executive summary of my innovative funding technique, then here’s the only two words you need. First the T word. Trust. And now the F word. Fund. See you next week. You may now switch off your podcasting device.

Ah, you’re still listening? You must be down with nuance.

Horatio Alger had nothing on my dad. Starting from not much, he bootstrapped himself and his little family into upper/middle class lower/upper class strata by getting a couple of degrees and then steadily climbing the ladder at a conglomerate. He was intelligent, ambitious and… white. He put my three older brothers through college. When I was 13, we moved to a house in New Canaan, CT with two staircases and a pool. We had been summering at a lake front cottage in Northern Michigan, eventually this became several cottages to handle the grand kids and extended family. Stock portfolios, real estate investments. Opportunity.

I don’t know whether my brothers aspired to repeat or eclipse our father’s success, but the traditional booster rockets were at the ready if *I* wanted to try. I too had a treasure chest of funds for college, but ONLY for college.

I didn’t fuck up all that much in high school, aside from barely squeaking by grade wise ’cause I was just so damned bored. I stayed out of jail, only drove wasted when I absolutely had to, didn’t get anyone pregnant and was generally pretty easy going and gregarious.

I had dreams, but they didn’t involve another 4 years of institutional education. I planned to backpack across Europe. I was 18 in 1981, and had been raking in the bucks running a house painting business in ritzy Fairfield County with 3 pals, Dirk, Dave and Brad. But at the end of my senior year, as all my friends prepared to go off to college, I got scared. My father revealed his laughable master plan for me – to get a degree in Petroleum Engineering “so you can retire when your 30.” Theoretically at Marietta College in Ohio, the only college that had accepted me, likely because I had flippantly checked the Native American box on the application. My grandmother often kidded that we had Cherokee blood, but that’s a pretty ubiquitous myth among the European invaders.

I caved. I blew my budget for plane tickets and Eurail pass on a stereo, which is how recorded music was heard back in the early eighties. That meant a tuner/amplifier, tape deck, turn table and speakers. The analog media of the day was vinyl, 33 rpm records with actual grooves that a needle followed and bounced up and down on, creating an electrical signal that was boosted by the amplifier and sent to the speakers. I bought a stack of those too, with music by artists like Steely Dan, The Tubes and Holst. I hauled it all to dismal Marietta, Ohio, on the border of the state with the highest unsolved murder rate, West Virginia.

Marietta was doomed from the start, mostly because the ratio of guys to girls was 3 to 1. Dating, my favorite sport? Not happening. I took up rowing instead, our freshman 4 and 8 boats ruled. I made some friends there too, Bruce, Damian, Tim, Chris, Dave, Rene… Academics predictably bored me silly, and eventually I failed out with gusto. So my college treasure chest remained mostly untapped.

Meanwhile, compound interest.

Fast forward to the 90s, living in Northern Michigan and freshly unemployed, having quit Computerland to launch my own Macintosh based media design and production company. Slightly ahead of my time, offering media design in Northern Michigan at the inception of the internet. Most every local – WTF is media design?

The first couple of years I wasn’t quite profitable. My father proposed that he incorporate my company. He could provide solid cash flow and take any losses as a tax write off. At least until the world caught up with my genius.

Prostitution? Kind of.

I never felt truly seen by my Dad. The idea of being in partnership was anathema. Learning how to soar was theoretically my priority, yet kinda impractical tethered to safety and zero risk. Somehow, I did want to please my father and enjoy his respect. Lots of dichotomy in play. My operating assumption was that before too long I’d be kicking ass financially just like I had with my house painting business. He’d feel proud and I’d buy him out.

Prostitution is an extreme word, so here’s my working definition. Disregarding our mysterious power in an effort to facilitate conventional outcomes. Sure there might be profit, even pleasure, but without passion any slight gains would require beaucoup effort. An over emphasis on certainty. Acquiescing to the illusion of limitation.

In retrospect, of course my plan was whacked.  First, the rigor of the market is kind of important for shaping effective profit strategy. Second, the projects I found post incorporation were interesting and lucrative but forever divergent from my bliss. I was cloistered in an impoverished simulation of life. So third, wild profitability and chronic frustration are incompatible, at least for me.

To this day, I am not sure what my father’s motivation was. The tax write off premise was plausible, but I wonder now if he didn’t secretly doubt my viability. Was this corporate welfare scheme really just his way of keeping me from failing miserably? Was he trying to create a safe sandbox for me to play in, like… for the rest of my life? Or was he trying to provide an environment where I could cultivate my unique vision and blossom?

I’m pretty sure was afraid for me. I was beyond category, but for him that just meant, misfit. He didn’t know what I was and I since I didn’t know myself, I wasn’t ready to teach him. Just like Daughter of God, my life has been a gentle release, coming into my fullness gradually. Starting with groping in the dark. What are we even groping for? What do we really want?

For me, fun. Exhilaration. I had some of that, even after I volunteered to make sense to my father, and take on the identity of a walking tax deduction. And a dollup of conventionally defined success.

I won state arts grants to deploy hands-on museum exhibits experienced by 100ks of visitors, wrote a detailed software specification for a literacy game inspired by ergonomics expert Lillian Malt, developer of the Maltron keyboard, provided CHI design for testing applications distributed by Harper Collins, coded an interactive yearbook for a private school customized to each student and on and on. Also painted and sculpted and schemed – off the books.

A decade passed.

This was a much longer gaff than my year as a petroleum engineer undergrad. 10 years masquerading as responsible, conventional, comprehensible. Such a safe and silly choice.

And I did have a choice, I’d already made great money, even legally, as a entrepreneur dude at 18. I’d been both free agent and salary man ever since doing everything from freelance dog food delivery to selling Apple computers. I made livings, I could survive. C’mon, I’m white and male after all, piece of cake…

Except I’m actually a freak. I can’t support most of what the dominant culture represents. I’m not a consumer, I am a creator. Or at least, I yearned to be. My perception then was that the world didn’t feel welcoming to my unique offering. I shared my father’s fear, I was afraid of what I was.

So choosing to be an walking contradiction, I hung in suspended animation until 2001.

9/11 and the Iraq war were catalysts. I could see the national sham so clearly, and was ready to be, to do… truth. Each step into activism felt empowering, essential. I was getting in alignment. My participation in the Traverse 8 helped me to understand what mattered, who I was.

When my Dad told me I was making life miserable for my mother and him, the clouds parted. So he didn’t know me, fine. I didn’t know me either. Now the roller coaster was starting to roll, and he didn’t want to ride with me. So what? Who CAN take that journey with us?

Only I could feel how my life was blooming, how my cosmic sleeper cell had suddenly been activated. The beautiful, painful moment when my parents’ opinion didn’t matter, once and for all, ever again. Why seek elsewhere for what flows freely with every breath? As Dorothy said, there’s no place like home, the home of our own bodies, our own presence.

I was done being a deduction. Prostitution was my gateway crime. Moving up to theft. Remember the treasure chest? For college?

I stole it and went on the lam. Metaphorically speaking.

This is a parable, maybe a koan. The treasure was mine all along, I had direct access, I could write checks! For acceptable expenses, in approved ways. For college. Not for motorcycles, for instance. I was bringing the house down playing the part of the acceptable son.

Show’s over. Take a bow. Applause!

Before going into exile on the Florida art show tour, I bought a big, black, motorcycle, a BMW GS1150, and strapped it into the trailer with all the paintings. For doing crimes. I didn’t tell a single soul.

I also bought a black full body armored riding suit and black full face Shoei helmet. Black as interstellar space, which would prove telling later. My first iteration of a super hero costume, just like Bruce Willis’s SECURITY hoodie in Unbreakable.

There’s a lot to parse here. More hilarity.

Scion of wealth and privilege engages in fantasy of rebellion and freedom without fear of consequences. That’s one perspective.

Though not very flattering or fun, and as I’ve said, I love feeling wonderful and having fun. There’s certainly many other more uplifting and incidentally accurate executive summaries. Why do many of us judge ourselves as lacking, fucked up and unworthy? What’s that all about?

The dominant culture of the USA provides constant training in self loathing. Asserting that there is such a thing as right and wrong and we knows which is which. To judge and punish. That external authority is more valid than what we might feel. Our systems of self governance don’t work because we despise the collective WE. Most Americans are stupid, how often do you hear that? Isn’t that the same thing as saying I am stupid? Aren’t you and I people? What’s stupid really mean? That everyone’s brains are sub par? Maybe it just means that we’ve been trained to look outside ourselves for a feeling of worthiness.

I know I was.

My family’s mores were a fun house reflection of the dominant culture. For instance, go to college. College is the ticket to acceptance and traction in American culture. What you need to make good. A demonstration that you’re willing and able to sustain the system.

A system that sucks, ’cause it’s suicidal.

A system that sucks. That doesn’t mean we suck, or that any adventure that involves humans will always and forever suck. It just means that what we’ve chosen to believe makes us feel terrible – impotent, angry, frustrated, fearful. Thus we have lots and lots of problems, because we expect to, we make them.

In the first paragraph of episode 001, You hear me rail against jet flying, right? How many listeners did I loose right out of the gate, by dissing that very American symbol of pleasure and discovery, flying in jets? I mean, how could going to Hawaii or Paris be bad?

Why do we crave a week or two of adventure in an exotic place? Because everyday life isn’t exotic, entrancing, exhilarating? Why not? Why not choose a more enlivening everyday life that we don’t feel the need to vacation from? Our everyday choices matter. The government and the corporations aren’t fucking up the planet or dropping bombs elsewhere, it’s us, you and me. It’s what we think and feel and then do daily that decides everything. The government and corporations are just extensions of our mundane personal choices. We are the government and the corporations, WE are Keanu Reeves, we are Keanu Reeves.

My friend Kent posted a great meme on FB. A guy at a United Nations podium asks a crowd of people, who wants change? And they all raise their hands. Then the guy asks, who wants to change, and nobody raises their hands.  Right, but of course we want to change! We want to be Steve Austin, better stronger faster. We thrill at American Ninja Warrior woman Jessie Graff and Yes I Can people. What would you need to give up, let go of and totally forget about to be super human and then super super human? What keeps YOU from really living?

Ok, NOW how many more listeners did I just loose? Yay! Only the supple survive. If you’re still listening, congratulations.

So I took the treasure and by deciding to use it for an education that wasn’t about supporting the dominant culture or the current system, I STOLE it. I decided to fund the movie of finding out who I am and discovering, activating a world where I can thrive. All of me. Where my thriving coincides with a thriving global life support system, with the awakening of imagination and autonomy of human beings, of plant beings, of ocean beings.

Am I a criminal, really? As far as the USA FBI is concerned, I’m still a sex offender, maybe even a terrorist. I did a FOIA to the FBI, btw and they denied having any records on me. After Canada refused entry because of those records. After I saw them with my own eyes. I celebrate being hassled by the FBI, I must be on the right track.

What will my next crime be? I’m a wanna be indigenous person with no documented tribal affiliation, tho I’m pretty sure I am native to earth proper.  I’m also a self confessed prostitute (reformed) and a flat out thief. I’m a prophet, a guru, I’m the wizard of oz. I’m trouble. I’m the Millenium Falcon silhoutted against a blazing star, blasters blazing. Do you really want to watch a movie made by the likes of me?

Feels good to not fit in to an insane system, to be the seed of something else. Slipping into the next most auspicious reality with every smile. Ready for another secret about this movie? Yeah yeah, so we’re the audience for Daughter of God, big whoop.  Or because we’re the audience, we’re actually part of the story now too. ZZZZ, wheeee!

What if this gentle release is about learning to navigate the alternate timelines together? What if Daughter of God is a path to establishing a more just and enlivening human presence on earth? I am not saying it is, but what if what I’m not saying actually is what’s happening? Would that be worth stealing $50,000 for?

Thanks for listening. We all grooving together, and I’m glad. This has been episode 007 of Daughter of Godcast with me Dan Kelly writer Director telling the stories about the making of the narrative featurette Daughter of God, she is coming. I’m ready to welcome another 49,900 listeners and I’m counting on you folks to bring that about. So If your experiencing miraculous healing, dreaming lucid dreams or just having fun please, please share, like, retweet, love, heart, hug.

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Hello World, you’re tuned into the Daughter of Godcast, and I am Dan Kelly, water rabbit, spiritual vagabond, energy artist, wilds man. Lit below by the flickering light of mild revelation, an uncanny visage passing on the oral history of the making of an aspiring cult classic, Daughter of God. This is episode 007, Treasure.

Daughter of God like most endeavors in the arts has three major enabling components – gumption, gear and gas. I’ve talked about two so far. First, there’s gumption. A vision, a yearning to create. In episode 001 I had my “I can do that” moment at Palm Springs Shorts Festival, which was really just an acknowledgment of, I want to do that. And how. Then in 006, I gave a whiskered recollection of pre-digital media and how earnest desire called forth affordable gear for movie making. Finally I needed gas. What keeps human metabolism roaring, vehicles rolling, lights shining and batteries charged? Money.

If you’re worn out from that gear geek out in Episode 006 and you’d prefer the executive summary of my innovative funding technique, then here’s the only two words you need. First the T word. Trust. And now the F word. Fund. See you next week. You may now switch off your podcasting device.

Ah, you’re still listening? You must be down with nuance.

Horatio Alger had nothing on my dad. Starting from not much, he bootstrapped himself and his little family into upper/middle class lower/upper class strata by getting a couple of degrees and then steadily climbing the ladder at a conglomerate. He was intelligent, ambitious and… white. He put my three older brothers through college. When I was 13, we moved to a house in New Canaan, CT with two staircases and a pool. We had been summering at a lake front cottage in Northern Michigan, eventually this became several cottages to handle the grand kids and extended family. Stock portfolios, real estate investments. Opportunity.

I don’t know whether my brothers aspired to repeat or eclipse our father’s success, but the traditional booster rockets were at the ready if *I* wanted to try. I too had a treasure chest of funds for college, but ONLY for college.

I didn’t fuck up all that much in high school, aside from barely squeaking by grade wise ’cause I was just so damned bored. I stayed out of jail, only drove wasted when I absolutely had to, didn’t get anyone pregnant and was generally pretty easy going and gregarious.

I had dreams, but they didn’t involve another 4 years of institutional education. I planned to backpack across Europe. I was 18 in 1981, and had been raking in the bucks running a house painting business in ritzy Fairfield County with 3 pals, Dirk, Dave and Brad. But at the end of my senior year, as all my friends prepared to go off to college, I got scared. My father revealed his laughable master plan for me – to get a degree in Petroleum Engineering “so you can retire when your 30.” Theoretically at Marietta College in Ohio, the only college that had accepted me, likely because I had flippantly checked the Native American box on the application. My grandmother often kidded that we had Cherokee blood, but that’s a pretty ubiquitous myth among the European invaders.

I caved. I blew my budget for plane tickets and Eurail pass on a stereo, which is how recorded music was heard back in the early eighties. That meant a tuner/amplifier, tape deck, turn table and speakers. The analog media of the day was vinyl, 33 rpm records with actual grooves that a needle followed and bounced up and down on, creating an electrical signal that was boosted by the amplifier and sent to the speakers. I bought a stack of those too, with music by artists like Steely Dan, The Tubes and Holst. I hauled it all to dismal Marietta, Ohio, on the border of the state with the highest unsolved murde]]>  

Hello World, you’re tuned into the Daughter of Godcast, and I am Dan Kelly, water rabbit, spiritual vagabond, energy artist, wilds man. Lit below by the flickering light of mild revelation, an uncanny visage passing on the oral history of the making of an aspiring cult classic, Daughter of God. This is episode 007, Treasure.

Daughter of God like most endeavors in the arts has three major enabling components – gumption, gear and gas. I’ve talked about two so far. First, there’s gumption. A vision, a yearning to create. In episode 001 I had my “I can do that” moment at Palm Springs Shorts Festival, which was really just an acknowledgment of, I want to do that. And how. Then in 006, I gave a whiskered recollection of pre-digital media and how earnest desire called forth affordable gear for movie making. Finally I needed gas. What keeps human metabolism roaring, vehicles rolling, lights shining and batteries charged? Money.

If you’re worn out from that gear geek out in Episode 006 and you’d prefer the executive summary of my innovative funding technique, then here’s the only two words you need. First the T word. Trust. And now the F word. Fund. See you next week. You may now switch off your podcasting device.

Ah, you’re still listening? You must be down with nuance.

Horatio Alger had nothing on my dad. Starting from not much, he bootstrapped himself and his little family into upper/middle class lower/upper class strata by getting a couple of degrees and then steadily climbing the ladder at a conglomerate. He was intelligent, ambitious and… white. He put my three older brothers through college. When I was 13, we moved to a house in New Canaan, CT with two staircases and a pool. We had been summering at a lake front cottage in Northern Michigan, eventually this became several cottages to handle the grand kids and extended family. Stock portfolios, real estate investments. Opportunity.

I don’t know whether my brothers aspired to repeat or eclipse our father’s success, but the traditional booster rockets were at the ready if *I* wanted to try. I too had a treasure chest of funds for college, but ONLY for college.

I didn’t fuck up all that much in high school, aside from barely squeaking by grade wise ’cause I was just so damned bored. I stayed out of jail, only drove wasted when I absolutely had to, didn’t get anyone pregnant and was generally pretty easy going and gregarious.

I had dreams, but they didn’t involve another 4 years of institutional education. I planned to backpack across Europe. I was 18 in 1981, and had been raking in the bucks running a house painting business in ritzy Fairfield County with 3 pals, Dirk, Dave and Brad. But at the end of my senior year, as all my friends prepared to go off to college, I got scared. My father revealed his laughable master plan for me – to get a degree in Petroleum Engineering “so you can retire when your 30.” Theoretically at Marietta College in Ohio, the only college that had accepted me, likely because I had flippantly checked the Native American box on the application. My grandmother often kidded that we had Cherokee blood, but that’s a pretty ubiquitous myth among the European invaders.

I caved. I blew my budget for plane tickets and Eurail pass on a stereo, which is how recorded music was heard back in the early eighties. That meant a tuner/amplifier, tape deck, turn table and speakers. The analog media of the day was vinyl, 33 rpm records with actual grooves that a needle followed and bounced up and down on, creating an electrical signal that was boosted by the amplifier and sent to the speakers. I bought a stack of those too, with music by artists like Steely Dan, The Tubes and Holst. I hauled it all to dismal Marietta, Ohio, on the border of the state with the highest unsolved murde]]> yes Yes no no 23:29 Dan from dog.movie http://dog.movie/podcast/daughter-of-godcast-006/ Thu, 13 Oct 2016 01:33:24 +0000 Dan from dog.movie http://dog.movie/?post_type=podcast&p=620  

Gosh, Episode 006 of the Daughter of Podcast podcast, with your full of himself host, Dan Kelly, writer, director, talent, guru, sexy boy, cat whisperer. We’re on iTunes now, and a whole bunch of other podcast accumulators, subscribe via your fav service at dog.movie. If you are already listening via a podcast app, there’s all kinds of bonus movies and pix on each episode’s transcription at dog.movie. dog.movie dog.movie, how many times can I say that today? We’ve also got the obligatory Facebook page, Twitter feed, and you can also get updates via Instagram and Linkedin through me, Dan Kelly. You can find all those links at, yep. say it in your head now… hmm hmm hmm hmm.

This is that gentle release I’ve been talking about. We’re feeling our way forward, discovering how to bring this movie to the world and here you are, getting in on the ground floor. We’re still way back in 2006 storywise, but going meta for a hot second, your listening is also part of the story of the making of Daughter of God, because just as this podcast is only bunch of magentic swirls on Utah hard drives until you LISTEN, a movie isn’t a movie until it finds an audience. So that’s cool, right? You’re in the story now. Uh oh.

Episode 006, Technology and…

There’s effort and then there’s knowing. Waking up in the Kingston Ontario Holiday Inn hotel on the morning of April 11, sun streaming in, a big Canadian in the bed next to mine, I knew the game wasn’t over. The situation might seem bleak – my crew and gear divided by national borders, my leading man deported, my leading woman’s work permit completely snarled, location schedule cut short, my skeleton crew minus a bony arm.

The feeling of knowing is hard to describe. There was going to be a way. I didn’t come this far, spend this much money, do all the research, plan… I didn’t get this much energy moving just to be thwarted by national borders. There was way too much momentum.

From the classical perspective feelings don’t matter, right? I mean classical physics. Feathers and cannon balls. Shit happens, and all that whoo whoo energy talk is just bosh.

Movies about movie making are often documentaries of disaster, heart break and conflict. Heart of Darkness relates the intense turbulence encountered by Francis Ford Copolla and Martin Sheen making Apocalypse Now and Lost in La Mancha details the slow implosion of Terry Gilliams Johnny Depp project, Man from LaMancha. a movie that you’ll likely never see, because it utterly failed during production.

Dark Horizons – Don Quixote Delayed Again

So movies with brilliant directors like Gilliam and super stars like Johnny Depp can get all their funding, start production and never get made. How could I imagine my little movie would survive such a significant series of setbacks?

What is luck? Opportunity plus preparation? Maybe. How about a feeling? How about a decision? A decision to feel. I can’t say I felt ecstatic, just a steady readiness. Make no mistake, crap had happened, potentially crippling events. Dire though they appeared, circumstances weren’t relevant when I opened my eyes at the Holiday Inn, that morning. I just needed my Odyssey to cross the border with what remained of our team, and we could start.

Intuition is fluency with emotion. Another word for that is energy, how a moment feels. I’m looking back with an insight I didn’t have then, but I can definitely remember how I felt. I’m clear that decisive buoyant feelings were key to what happened next. Enough bullshit, let’s do this.

Sonya Di Mambro eventually called. She had spoken to the officers at the Landsdowne office, and Carmen was cleared for crossing. Ann had already taken Eiji to the bus station.

Our 4 women slipped into Canada without a hitch. And the deficit of schedule and staff? We had what we had. Time to make a movie.

I want to thank Ann for handling the Eiji situation so adroitly. I want to thank Eiji for going home on that bus all by himself, after sharing the excitement of getting started. I want to thank Carmen, Layna and Melonie for being totally unsatisfied with Eiji’s explanation, knowing something was amiss but trusting anyway. I want to thank Steve for accidentally throwing away his New York City acting career just to be in my project. I want to thank the cosmos for kicking off my audacious decision to make a movie with a full on roller coaster ride.

 Production begins… in Episode 008. What?!

Yeah, that’s right. All that planning and research, all that money? You thought you weren’t going to have to hear about that, right? But how can we make a movie without sweet gear and the cash to rent or buy it? You’ve had your little denouement, your fix, your cocaine crisis resolution! My gosh, you know the movie gets made, you’re listening to a podcast 11 years after the fact. Who cares about outcomes, we’re here for the process! Living it together, moment by sparkling moment.

There’s another roller coaster coming up. Before I can let you on tho, you’ve got to get taller, you’ve got to be this… high. Remember those signs at the amusement park, you’ve got to be this tall to ride? By imbibing the critical logistics, you are growing up, and up. Anyway, who’s complaining? That’s how story telling goes! Peak and lull, peak and lull. I’ve shown you a good time so far, right? Just hang in there.

Warning, the following episode contains geeky references to outdated and obscure technology at the close of the analog TV epoch. Prolonged listening to this episode could result in dreamy, zoning out sensations and subtle yearning for the ghostly glow of unnumerable flickering phosphor screens; now dusty, dark and forgotten.

Before the global adoption of enhancement transparency in 2020, many of us were a little wary of progress, having experienced first hand the dystopian creep of convenience über alles.  Some peeps, ok lots of peeps, were trying to compensate for the lack of real magic in their everyday experience by adopting the freshest gadgets, or whatever they could afford. Back then new technology was the surrogate for really living. Eventually tho, the novelty wore off and the awe leaked out. Then they’d get the urge to kill again, and buy the next miracle, to shoot up with another syringe of gee whiz. Those were the death throes of consumption, when we almost didn’t make it.

I was an early skeptic of mediated experience, but I deliberately hitched my creative wagon to the capricious star of technology anyway. My motivation may be slightly atypical, at least that’s my conceit. Certainly I am a man of my times, I still enjoy a little surge when acquiring new gear, 2020 is a few years off yet. Here’s the story I tell myself that makes it all ok.

We’re on a planet where human influence is profound. There’s brilliant awakening and deliberate occlusion all at once. Technology contributes to both the sweet and suicidal. The line between people and tools is getting ever fuzzier. So, I’ve decided to be a deliberate hybrid, all about the juicy human while keeping one paw on the steering wheel. I hug trees with a supercomputer in my pocket and perform modest miracles with my standard issue birth body, sheathed in merino wool from New Zealand. I live to merge my meat with the hot tangle of aluminum and petro plastics of a Honda XR650. Yet, I’m clear that joy isn’t about achieving the optimal cyborg mix, rather a choice to be fully here whatever the pedigree of our parts. Getting present in the moment and allowing a great big shit eating grin to manifest across the front of our cognition turret, plasma emoticon projector or flesh and blood head.

The decision to really live, however that looks for you or me, may be scary but so is a roller coaster, and that usually comes out fine in the end. Just don’t eat a hot dog right before.

So I hitched my wagon to the star of technology and I’m asserting that I’m not an addict, implying that’s it’s a spiritual practice and hinting that this might even be serving the greater good.  But back in the day, I wasn’t so sure what the heck I was doing. Mostly just waiting for the technology to catch up with my dreams.

While getting tugged and occasionally dragged along by that crazy star, I’ve had many almost launchings of my cinematicality. Like way back in 1985, after psychedelic god play in the east village and a brief winter recovery in Northern Michigan, I explored the idea of designing my own degree at the way out New School for Social Research.

The New School’s alleged campus infiltrated most of Manhattan’s cultural and academic geography, encouraging studies both esoteric and exotic. I explored the electronic painting system Lumena (15k colors!) with the renowned and rather disheveled Carol Chiani, programmed in C language at Parsons and edited video at the Global Village, which was a sort of grass roots media cooperative. My most vivid Global Village recollection is of the super hot blonde Israeli, Jordan. She and I partnered on cutting a cynical war montage to Glenn Miller’s Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree. We were doing archaic AB roll with massive Umatic video decks, using 3/4″ tape cassettes each about the size of a box of corn flakes. That was the only partnering I got into with Jordan, alas. And at $10,000 dollars each, these monster editing decks were also beyond my reach, unless I took more classes, or got a job at a production facility.

^{Don’t Sit Under The Apple Tree (With Anyone Else But Me) (Brown-Tobias-Stept) by Glenn Miller & his Orchestra, vocal by Marion Hutton, Tex Beneke and The Modernaires}

I moved to Michigan for real in 1986 posing as an editor, but TV stations in Traverse City weren’t hiring. The local Computerland had an opening in sales, on commission, provided I cut my fabulous 80s glam rock hair. I kept editing using glitchy consumer tape formats. With the release of the Macintosh II in 1987, my attention turned towards the promise of digital supremacy, solid state synchronicity.

The internet morphed into the world wide web just a few years later. For those of you who don’t know the difference, imagine no web sites. I remember Saskia showing me the Mosiac web browser. A real ‘where were you when’ moment.

I did eventually work as a 3/4″ Umatic editor in the late 90s, just as media savvy personal computers were preparing to push that prehistoric tech into the tarpits. Analog was finished, it was just a matter of time.

Originally developed by the flamboyant genius Marc Cantor’s Macromedia, Apple’s Final Cut Pro was released in 1999. The second generation of DV or digital video cameras from Sony and Canon followed a year-ish after that.

The DV standard approximated the picture quality of those massive Umatic decks, except the cameras and tapes were much smaller and exact copies could be made of the digital content with no degradation, known back in the bad old analog days as generation loss. A copy of a copy in analog-world looked and sounded nasty.

I waited until the fall of 2002 to buy into the DV revolution and Final Cut Pro. Michael Rubin’s Beginner’s Final Cut Pro book provided the ultimate jump start. Editing at last! Based on the recommendation of Jeff Gibbs, the composer/producer on Bowling for Columbine and the guy who filmed my arrest back in Episode 002, I acquired a Sony PD-150 in late October. The next month I cinematographed and co-edited Lauren Discipio’s parable Toe Socks, starring Lauren, our pal Shoal Southworth and XY the cat.

Shoal gets a special mention because she gave me the lowdown on juried art shows which, domino like, triggered the auspicious failure that tumbled me once and for all into the vortex of full on movie making. Thanks Shoalie!

After moving to NYC in January of 2004, I earned a solid living with my Sony PD-150. I didn’t even think about upgrading until a clumsy still photographer backed his fat ass into my tripod at an outside dance performance that November.

My next DV camera was the much hyped and trendy Canon XL2, which looked more like a blaster out of Star Wars than a camera. When I met Michael Aaron, (the Director of Blind Date from episodes 001 and 002) he owned an older Panasonic DVX-100, and when we compared our two cameras, his DVX-100 performed way better in low light. Panasonic’s 2 year old technology beat Canon’s leading edge. Time to sell the XL2.

By the end of 2005, plenty of indy feature films were being shot in standard DV. Alex Ferrari, host of the Indy Film Hustle Podcast had released his DV project Broken in 2004 and a how to DVD that subsequently inspired hundreds if not thousands of independent film makers. Unfortunately, I was not one of them. I did not get the benefit of his expertise until much later, like say last month. Wah wah.

Daughter of God would push the indy envelope by recording in 720p HD, or 1280 x 720 progressive which is about 2x the resolution of DV. In December 2005, Panasonic released their next generation of camera, capable of several flavors of HD and variable frame rates, the HVX-200. I wanted two.

There’s a scene in Amadeus where Salieri (played by F. Murray Abraham) is “helping” the ill and exhausted Mozart (played by Tom Hulce) to write the requiem commissioned by a mysterious stranger. There were two cameras covering that scene, one for each actor, so the entire performance could be filmed at once as opposed to running the scene twice with the camera first pointed at Hulce and then at Abraham. This was a big deal, because two cameras meant doubling the budget, and 35mm film cameras are expensive. The result was an intense connection between the actors and a powerful performance.

I loved this approach, and with the advent of digital, shooting with two cameras was doable. The new HVX-200s had great reviews. Unfortunately, the solid state P2 cards that allowed for higher resolution recording were SUPER expensive and not yet readily available. There was a method for streaming direct to disk over firewire that had been meticulously documented on the forums, and I counting on this hack for Daughter of God.

Less than two weeks before heading to Canada, I assembled dual HVX-200 packages including cameras, mac laptops, extra PCMCIA firewire ports, dedicated hard drives and assorted cables for about $15,000 dollars. Along with my Arri, 4 light kit, I rented a Dedo kit from Martijn Hart for $200. I also bought a glidecam rig, (steadicam clone) for $1900 including vest, gimball and arm. I sold my dual 2000 watt Honda generators and bought a 4500 watt Honda for $2500. A second tripod, matte box, 4×4 filters, sandbags, gaffers tape, gels, Tenba cases, another $10,000. $2100 in production insurance. I was also paying the cast and crew $1000 each for the 10 days of production and providing lodging and food, $3500. There was also the extra van rental, gasoline, tolls, attorney fees, work permits for Canada, on and on. Where did I get $50,000 dollars give or take?

Credit cards?
Nope.

Prostitution?
Sort of.

Robbery?
Hell yes.

End of Episode 006 Technology and…  Next week we’ll be getting into Treasure, my creative funding approach. Thanks for listening, I am looking forward to more time together on whatever time perspective you happen to be taking this in on, whether a minute from now or next week.

•••

Stories matter. The stories we adopt/adapt reveal the most relevant data to attend to, help us identify reliable allies, enable rapid recovery from mistakes, on and on. Our entertainment choices are not trivial, they are the basis for whether or not we thrive in a post science fiction, globally catastrophic future. November 29, 2013

Credits

Freesound
YleArkisto – Kids playing in theme song, Another Fucked Up Day in Paradise
JohnsonBrandEditing – Footsteps

Glen Miller recording

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Gosh, Episode 006 of the Daughter of Podcast podcast, with your full of himself host, Dan Kelly, writer, director, talent, guru, sexy boy, cat whisperer. We’re on iTunes now, and a whole bunch of other podcast accumulators, subscribe via your fav service at dog.movie. If you are already listening via a podcast app, there’s all kinds of bonus movies and pix on each episode’s transcription at dog.movie. dog.movie dog.movie, how many times can I say that today? We’ve also got the obligatory Facebook page, Twitter feed, and you can also get updates via Instagram and Linkedin through me, Dan Kelly. You can find all those links at, yep. say it in your head now… hmm hmm hmm hmm.

This is that gentle release I’ve been talking about. We’re feeling our way forward, discovering how to bring this movie to the world and here you are, getting in on the ground floor. We’re still way back in 2006 storywise, but going meta for a hot second, your listening is also part of the story of the making of Daughter of God, because just as this podcast is only bunch of magentic swirls on Utah hard drives until you LISTEN, a movie isn’t a movie until it finds an audience. So that’s cool, right? You’re in the story now. Uh oh.

Episode 006, Technology and…

There’s effort and then there’s knowing. Waking up in the Kingston Ontario Holiday Inn hotel on the morning of April 11, sun streaming in, a big Canadian in the bed next to mine, I knew the game wasn’t over. The situation might seem bleak – my crew and gear divided by national borders, my leading man deported, my leading woman’s work permit completely snarled, location schedule cut short, my skeleton crew minus a bony arm.

The feeling of knowing is hard to describe. There was going to be a way. I didn’t come this far, spend this much money, do all the research, plan… I didn’t get this much energy moving just to be thwarted by national borders. There was way too much momentum.

From the classical perspective feelings don’t matter, right? I mean classical physics. Feathers and cannon balls. Shit happens, and all that whoo whoo energy talk is just bosh.

Movies about movie making are often documentaries of disaster, heart break and conflict. Heart of Darkness relates the intense turbulence encountered by Francis Ford Copolla and Martin Sheen making Apocalypse Now and Lost in La Mancha details the slow implosion of Terry Gilliams Johnny Depp project, Man from LaMancha. a movie that you’ll likely never see, because it utterly failed during production.

Dark Horizons – Don Quixote Delayed Again

So movies with brilliant directors like Gilliam and super stars like Johnny Depp can get all their funding, start production and never get made. How could I imagine my little movie would survive such a significant series of setbacks?

What is luck? Opportunity plus preparation? Maybe. How about a feeling? How about a decision? A decision to feel. I can’t say I felt ecstatic, just a steady readiness. Make no mistake, crap had happened, potentially crippling events. Dire though they appeared, circumstances weren’t relevant when I opened my eyes at the Holiday Inn, that morning. I just needed my Odyssey to cross the border with what remained of our team, and we could start.

Intuition is fluency with emotion. Another word for that is energy, how a moment feels. I’m looking back with an insight I didn’t have then, but I can definitely remember how I felt. I’m clear that decisive buoyant feelings were key to what happened next. Enough bullshit, let’s do this.

Sonya Di Mambro eventually called. She had spoken to the officers at the Landsdowne office, and Carmen was cle]]>  

Gosh, Episode 006 of the Daughter of Podcast podcast, with your full of himself host, Dan Kelly, writer, director, talent, guru, sexy boy, cat whisperer. We’re on iTunes now, and a whole bunch of other podcast accumulators, subscribe via your fav service at dog.movie. If you are already listening via a podcast app, there’s all kinds of bonus movies and pix on each episode’s transcription at dog.movie. dog.movie dog.movie, how many times can I say that today? We’ve also got the obligatory Facebook page, Twitter feed, and you can also get updates via Instagram and Linkedin through me, Dan Kelly. You can find all those links at, yep. say it in your head now… hmm hmm hmm hmm.

This is that gentle release I’ve been talking about. We’re feeling our way forward, discovering how to bring this movie to the world and here you are, getting in on the ground floor. We’re still way back in 2006 storywise, but going meta for a hot second, your listening is also part of the story of the making of Daughter of God, because just as this podcast is only bunch of magentic swirls on Utah hard drives until you LISTEN, a movie isn’t a movie until it finds an audience. So that’s cool, right? You’re in the story now. Uh oh.

Episode 006, Technology and…

There’s effort and then there’s knowing. Waking up in the Kingston Ontario Holiday Inn hotel on the morning of April 11, sun streaming in, a big Canadian in the bed next to mine, I knew the game wasn’t over. The situation might seem bleak – my crew and gear divided by national borders, my leading man deported, my leading woman’s work permit completely snarled, location schedule cut short, my skeleton crew minus a bony arm.

The feeling of knowing is hard to describe. There was going to be a way. I didn’t come this far, spend this much money, do all the research, plan… I didn’t get this much energy moving just to be thwarted by national borders. There was way too much momentum.

From the classical perspective feelings don’t matter, right? I mean classical physics. Feathers and cannon balls. Shit happens, and all that whoo whoo energy talk is just bosh.

Movies about movie making are often documentaries of disaster, heart break and conflict. Heart of Darkness relates the intense turbulence encountered by Francis Ford Copolla and Martin Sheen making Apocalypse Now and Lost in La Mancha details the slow implosion of Terry Gilliams Johnny Depp project, Man from LaMancha. a movie that you’ll likely never see, because it utterly failed during production.

Dark Horizons – Don Quixote Delayed Again

So movies with brilliant directors like Gilliam and super stars like Johnny Depp can get all their funding, start production and never get made. How could I imagine my little movie would survive such a significant series of setbacks?

What is luck? Opportunity plus preparation? Maybe. How about a feeling? How about a decision? A decision to feel. I can’t say I felt ecstatic, just a steady readiness. Make no mistake, crap had happened, potentially crippling events. Dire though they appeared, circumstances weren’t relevant when I opened my eyes at the Holiday Inn, that morning. I just needed my Odyssey to cross the border with what remained of our team, and we could start.

Intuition is fluency with emotion. Another word for that is energy, how a moment feels. I’m looking back with an insight I didn’t have then, but I can definitely remember how I felt. I’m clear that decisive buoyant feelings were key to what happened next. Enough bullshit, let’s do this.

Sonya Di Mambro eventually called. She had spoken to the officers at the Landsdowne office, and Carmen was cle]]> yes Yes no no 21:17 Dan from dog.movie http://dog.movie/podcast/daughter-of-godcast-005/ Thu, 06 Oct 2016 00:08:12 +0000 Dan from dog.movie http://dog.movie/?post_type=podcast&p=551  

Episode 005 of the Daughter of Godcast podcast. I am Dan Kelly, Writer and Director, and these are the harrowing and hilarious stories of the making of my featurette, Daughter of God, a parade of inspired stumbles, spectacular bumbles and a gradual coming into resonance with the entire cosmos.

Last Saturday, I asked my spiritual sibling, brother rabbit and fellow movie maker James Schaberg what he thought of the podcast so far. As a new-ish parent, he’s in his own Holy Trinity, defined by Mark Dillon back in 1984 as, father, mother and child. James is super busy doing Dad, working at the NON GMO Project and setting up his trinity for the *Oregon* winter in their hand built off the grid tiny house. At least that’s the lame excuse he gave for only listening to the first two episodes of my freaking awesome podcast! Anyway, he said that the Daughter of Godcast differs from most other podcasts he listens to because it’s all about the past and other podcasts are about what’s happening now. Maybe I should call it the Daughter of Godpast. Podcast. Daughter of Godcast podcast. That’s actually kind of cool.

For the disillusioned and cynical palate, the sweetness of my now could be cloying, unless prefaced with a bit of salt and savory spices from the past.

My present is fairly brilliant – I’ve broken through to some phenomenal clarity about reality construction. I’m loving the gentle release of my 11 year long featurette. I have a delicious physicality and enjoy hanging with my extended family. I can even feel the way forward for the most enlivening outcomes on our shared spaceship, Earth. Yet since I’ve started this podcast, the past is almost as exhilarating to me as the present, because I get to remember, with you, dear listener about how I got to where I am now. Amongst the growing Daughter of Godcast audience, I wonder who might be tracking the deeper story that maps to all of us here on the pale blue dot, lost in the infinity of the big empty.

Deep.

Before we leave meta mode and get back to the next episode of this gritty, spellbinding story, some announcements. If you haven’t checked out the actual web pages for each episode, there’s all manner of tangental pictures and movies posted there. Scroll down on episode 002, for example, and you can actually watch me getting arrested wearing the awesome orange Patagonia jacket Lauren Discipio gave me. I’ve had iterations of black Patagonia shells ever since.

This is not an advertisement for Patagonia by the way, just an excuse to mention Lauren DiScipio’s name. Lauren DiScipio.

Last thing. The episodes are gonna get longer, starting today.

Daughter of Godcast Episode 005, Never Bring Cocaine to a Border Crossing.

In Episode 004.1, supplemental we lept ahead to 2015 and got a quick glimpse of the scrumptious weirdness that continues to unfold around Daughter of God. The energy of this movie is pulsing, right now. Booming practically. She is coming.

In Episode 004, I fixed my Canadian felony record at the border in Landsdowne, confirmed that we were shooting on the big boat in Kingston Ontario and returned to Brooklyn with less than two weeks before starting production. We now return you to the primary narrative.

Those last 10 days were a blur of equipment testing, organizing, packing, making reservations, coordinating rehearsals – 1000 essential outcomes either achieved or reclassified. All encapsulated into two vans and aimed at Canada.

April 10, 2006. A sunny morning on St Marks Ave in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. Horns honking euphorically, two vans pull away from the curb and form the smallest convoy possible. Together they slam and bump over hastily patched potholes and thick steel plate, thread through archaic ramps and bridges, slowly shedding New York City and heading upstate. (Rhyme) Eventually to go beyond America altogether. Each van a potent mix of technology and humanity, the cast, crew and gear for Daughter of God.

A few hours late departing, not much wiggle room left in the schedule. The plan was to cross the Canadian border in the afternoon with plenty of time to tour our location, the big boat Alexander Henry, settle in at the b and b, crash and get an early start the next morning.

Seven laughing, ecstatic people. The team. The magnificent seven. Actually 7 in spirit, we still had to rendezvous with our producer in Binghamton, NY.

We could have used a few more. We were very light on crew. Dangerously close to the bone on crew.

The hyperbole of movie making is that’s it’s like going to war. I’ve never gone to war, but because I cultivate a vivid imagination, I can imagine what going to war might be like. My friend Bob Cissel is a Vietnam veteran and he’s never seen a cinematic depiction of that war he can recognize. I’m pretty sure going to war is not like you see in movies, maybe it’s the other way around, maybe going to war is like making a movie. Except with rivers of real blood.

Rather than prop up silly metaphors, it’s simpler to say that making movies requires a lot of preparation and an small army of competent people.

We had a very small army.

Not for lack of recruitment. I wanted to be surrounded with solid allies on this very scary, unprecedented undertaking and so I reached out to my most trusted and capable friends. I asked Martijn to be my cinematographer, but he was busy making real money, tho he did give us a great rate on renting his Dedo light kit. I wanted my favorite Gabonese cat Ndong to handle audio, but he had complications. I invited both Bob and Cynthia to come along for production support and makeup respectively, but they had other priorities. My location guru Maho didn’t fancy leaving her man or her cat. Claire was locked into her commitment to the theater company The Builders Association.

Who did answer the call?

Melonie Steffes did, that northern michigan painter and singer/song writer with an affinity for power tools and problem solving. Melonie is also a mom, and I guessed moms would bring a soothing influence on the set. I’d been impressed with how Melonie had adeptly balanced her expressive obsessions with the needs of her son, Seamus, a mad genius even at the age of 7. Melonie’s a petite, genetically optimal if slightly mutant powerhouse, able to sustain creative focus indefinitely. Funny. Iconoclastic. Raunchy. Our Assistant Director.

Ann Loeding generously offered to join up, leaving her 9 month old infant Ada Bee in the care of her partner, Gary. Ann is a tugboat captain and literati with experience assisting professional documentary productions. She had salvaged sunken ships, bent burly, chauvinistic deck hands to her will and finessed unbelievable outcomes involving intractable non profit boards and scarce foundation funding. She’s rock steady in crisis and as loyal as they come. We’ve been friends since high school. Producer.

Eiji also joined the party. Another accomplished painter and musician, Eiji is an ingenious explorer of the arts, and had been fueling his passions as a virtousic bartender at expensive, trendy clubs in Manhattan. Picture a Japanese fusion of James Bond and Picasso, suave and smiley. That’s Eiji-san. He hates being called that by the way, at least he did when he was in his 30s. Audio.

Layna Roberts. Layna was my only gift from Craigslist. I put the call out for makeup artist and she promptly answered. We met and I liked her immediately – good heart, radiant with easy going energy, super competent. She had a dual USA and Canadian passport, so she wouldn’t even need a work permit, and she could do hair too. Makeup.

Dan Kelly, yours truly. A polymath, dreamer and apprentice wizard, with just enough magic to get into serious trouble. Director and having run out of time, also default cinematographer. And supporting actor. Phew! The character of Uncle Joe was the least demanding of the three parts. Still – way, way, too many jobs.

A very small army and 10 days of production, April 11-21, just enough time for 3 set-ups, establishing shots and B-roll for a novice director. Maybe.

And right in the middle of the schedule, April 16, 2006 would be Easter Sunday, celebrated by Christians as the resurrection of Christ. A holy day. Help me Jesus.

Aside from me playing Uncle Joe, the rest of the cast was optimal. Along with Carmen as Christina, Steve Zilliax took Gerry, the recluse down the hall. My pal Laurence Schroeder once once again hooked me up, I met Steve during her dance production at sculptor Benar Venet’s studio.

Steve is a gregarious and gorgeous guy, a Canadian with a deep and resonant Northern Ontario accent. He actually has the sexiest Canadian accent I’ve ever heard. He radiates a easy going super chill vibe, while subtly conveying the sense that he’d be a good man to have at your side in a bar fight. Aside from his charismatic presence, he also came with feature credits. Likely the most cinematically experienced among us, Steve brought a sense of plausibility to the project. He’s Classic Canadian, (like this guy).

Classic Canadian

A very small army, 10 days and 2 vans. Costumes and props packed. All the technology inventoried and stowed. Passports and work permits at the ready. Checklists checked. Dramatic life changes approaching. No turning back.

In the beginning we were cruising giddy, trying to pass oranges between the vans on the open highway, but I sobered up pretty quick. A lot was at stake, plenty could still go wrong without us helping. Well, maybe not cold sober, not yet.

Carmen hadn’t driven in America and she was spoiling to do so. She kept asking if she could drive. I was a little reluctant, we already had plenty of skilled native drivers and better to err on the side of caution. But we were making good time, still behind schedule but doable. When we pulled in for gas about an hour out of Binghamton, I relented. Carmen would drive the ultra cush Odyssey and I would drive in the rented cargo van.

Bladders voided and gas tanks full, we pulled away from the pumps. Carmen decisively turned the Odyssey in the wrong direction and roared away. I watched her with a sinking heart. I immediately gave chase, but she had already gotten several cars ahead and was just flying. I tried calling on the cell but reception was shit. Every minute in the wrong direction was twice the time lost, I had to stop her. After 10 minutes of impotent pursuit and feeling more frustrated with every passing second, I downloaded the stunt driving app from the Matrix. With a square jaw and steely stare, I played the gas pedal like a Hammond B at a revival meeting, and in spurts of 90 to 100 miles an hour, leap frogged from one car to the next, scaring the piss out of the other drivers and pegging my adrenaline in the process. Finally, we were behind the Odyssey and I flashed the headlights to pull her over. I got out, told Carmen she was going in the wrong direction and that she was done driving, perhaps without much diplomacy. We were now an additional 45 minutes behind schedule.

We pulled up to the border crossing in Landsdowne near dark. I told the agent in the booth we had work permits and he instructed us to park and go into the office. All the work permits were fine… except Carmen’s. They wouldn’t let her in to Canada. Discouraged but not defeated, we decided to take everyone back to the US, find a hotel and straighten out the situation with Sonya Di mambro of the Canadian Foriegn Worker Program Entertainment Division in the morning. At least a half day of production lost. We spun around to the US border and the officer there instructed us to park and enter the USA office. We did so, and the situation went from bad to worse.

The US agents were in an ugly mood. Eiji, Steve and I are over 6′ tall, and these guys were all shrimps. Warty little trolls, if memory serves. They took one look at our contingent of international babes and were overcome with envy.  All our passports were collected and an inquisition ramped up. They brought Layna to tears asserting that she wasn’t actually a US citizen, even though she had been born in Hawaii. They googled Steve and found some reviews for theater he’d done in NYC. They asserted he’d been working illegally in the USA and refused to let him back in. Now we were truly fucked, we couldn’t proceed into Canada and we couldn’t return to the United States . While the agents were typing up the official paperwork, Eiji sidled up to me and said, sotte voce, I need to talk to you. We went outside and stood by the parking lot, bathed in the eerie glow of sodium vapor lights and lovingly monitored by ubiquitous security cameras.

“I uh, found some cocaine in my jacket pocket.”

My face automatically dropped into a shape utterly void of emotional content, airbrushed into inscrutability, a fleshy cipher. Nary a micro expression flickered. Looking straight ahead and barely moving my lips,  I said, “Uh huh.”

“There’s this guy who comes into the bar, he’s some kind of fancy gangster. He’s very friendly with me, I mix his drink, a big tipper, and the other night when I was leaving he put $20 bill into my jacket pocket and said I forgot to tip you for the big tab. I said thanks and he was smiling funny, later I just took the $20 out and put it in my wallet. Just now I was looking for gum and there was this lump in that pocket and I thought it was gum but it was a tinfoil packet of cocaine in there. He must have put the cocaine inside the $20 bill. I don’t do drugs, but he must think I do. Like this must have been the real tip.”

Painfully aware of the cameras trained on us, I smiled at him in a friendly way as if he had mentioned bacon cheese burgers and said, “and so?”

His face was white and tense. “Well I threw it out, in that garbage can right there.”

He feinted deftly with his right hand indicating the perfectly ordinary garbage can not 10 feet from where we standing.

In front of all the cameras, I thought to myself.

I widened my grin and chuckled a little, doing my Oscar winning performance of the man with nothing to hide and whispered,

“So you threw a packet of cocaine out just now, in front of all these cameras? Ok, well, possibly we’re all going to jail tonight. The two moms are going to separated from their children, and that will be my fault. Their kids will effectively be orphans because of me. All we can do is wait and see. These customs guys have already screwed us royally, let’s just trust they were having too much fun reaming Steve to bother watching you throw drugs into a US border office garbage can.”

He nodded and managed a sickly smirk, and we ambled back into the office.

The agents finished up with Steve. He was barred from entering the US for 10 years! We realized that the only choice for Steve now was to go forward (or back) to his home country of Canada. Carmen could re-enter the USA. So Steve and I would go to Canada in the cargo van and Ann would take the rest of the crew back into the US with the Odyssey. We said goodbye, put on our seatbelts and entered our seperate countries without further incident. Bullet ducked.

Holy flying fucksickles.

As Steve and I drove into Kingston, he took in the reality of being deported.

“All my stuff is in New York. I have three girlfriends there. Now what am I supposed to do?”

I felt terrible. “Man, I am so sorry. That was a lot to give up for this project.”

Steve, “I guess I knew the risk.”

Me, “Those fucking wimp border guards. They were obviously just jealous of you.”

Steve, stoically, “There’s nothing else to do but make this movie now, eh?”

I’ll take care of everything when I get back, Steve. Well, maybe not the girlfriends, but all your stuff, I’ll ship it to you. Whatever I can do.”

We rode in silence through the dark. A light rain speckled the windshield.

Steve uttered a stretched out,”Fuck.”

I replied , “Fuck.”

We hit the Holiday Inn in Kingston, dragging, exhausted. I made two phone calls. One leaving a message with Sonya Di Mambro informing her that Carmen’s work permit had been rejected and could she please do something as soon as she got into the office that next morning. Then I called Ann.

“Let me talk to Eiji.”

Eiji came on, “Hello?”

“Listen, I’m firing you. I know it’s not your fault that there was cocaine in your jacket pocket, but these are little details I expect everyone to be aware of before we attempt to cross a national border. We could have put two moms in jail and Ann’s got a 9 month old baby. So you’re getting on a bus home tomorrow morning.

“You won’t tell anyone what happened?”

“No, we’ll just say you had a family emergency. That’s what you tell them tomorrow. I’m sorry man, I really need you, but I have to take responsibility for the safety of the crew. I don’t even know if we’ll be able to get Carmen into Canada anyway.”

“I’m so sorry”

“It’s not your fault. This is just how it’s gotta be. See you in a couple of weeks.”

I asked him to put Ann back on, and I let her know what happened, gave her the plan and the cover story.

I hung up, thanked Steve for being the bomb, and climbed into bed. My project was now split between two countries, my male lead had been deported, we had lost at least a day of production on an already tight schedule and were now totally short staffed. Deciding to give zero fucks, I fell into the starry night.

Audio credits
Freesound
YleArkisto – Kids playing in theme song, Another Fucked Up Day in Paradise
Ohrwurm – Applause

 

 

]]>  

Episode 005 of the Daughter of Godcast podcast. I am Dan Kelly, Writer and Director, and these are the harrowing and hilarious stories of the making of my featurette, Daughter of God, a parade of inspired stumbles, spectacular bumbles and a gradual coming into resonance with the entire cosmos.

Last Saturday, I asked my spiritual sibling, brother rabbit and fellow movie maker James Schaberg what he thought of the podcast so far. As a new-ish parent, he’s in his own Holy Trinity, defined by Mark Dillon back in 1984 as, father, mother and child. James is super busy doing Dad, working at the NON GMO Project and setting up his trinity for the *Oregon* winter in their hand built off the grid tiny house. At least that’s the lame excuse he gave for only listening to the first two episodes of my freaking awesome podcast! Anyway, he said that the Daughter of Godcast differs from most other podcasts he listens to because it’s all about the past and other podcasts are about what’s happening now. Maybe I should call it the Daughter of Godpast. Podcast. Daughter of Godcast podcast. That’s actually kind of cool.

For the disillusioned and cynical palate, the sweetness of my now could be cloying, unless prefaced with a bit of salt and savory spices from the past.

My present is fairly brilliant – I’ve broken through to some phenomenal clarity about reality construction. I’m loving the gentle release of my 11 year long featurette. I have a delicious physicality and enjoy hanging with my extended family. I can even feel the way forward for the most enlivening outcomes on our shared spaceship, Earth. Yet since I’ve started this podcast, the past is almost as exhilarating to me as the present, because I get to remember, with you, dear listener about how I got to where I am now. Amongst the growing Daughter of Godcast audience, I wonder who might be tracking the deeper story that maps to all of us here on the pale blue dot, lost in the infinity of the big empty.

Deep.

Before we leave meta mode and get back to the next episode of this gritty, spellbinding story, some announcements. If you haven’t checked out the actual web pages for each episode, there’s all manner of tangental pictures and movies posted there. Scroll down on episode 002, for example, and you can actually watch me getting arrested wearing the awesome orange Patagonia jacket Lauren Discipio gave me. I’ve had iterations of black Patagonia shells ever since.

This is not an advertisement for Patagonia by the way, just an excuse to mention Lauren DiScipio’s name. Lauren DiScipio.

Last thing. The episodes are gonna get longer, starting today.

Daughter of Godcast Episode 005, Never Bring Cocaine to a Border Crossing.

In Episode 004.1, supplemental we lept ahead to 2015 and got a quick glimpse of the scrumptious weirdness that continues to unfold around Daughter of God. The energy of this movie is pulsing, right now. Booming practically. She is coming.

In Episode 004, I fixed my Canadian felony record at the border in Landsdowne, confirmed that we were shooting on the big boat in Kingston Ontario and returned to Brooklyn with less than two weeks before starting production. We now return you to the primary narrative.

Those last 10 days were a blur of equipment testing, organizing, packing, making reservations, coordinating rehearsals – 1000 essential outcomes either achieved or reclassified. All encapsulated into two vans and aimed at Canada.

April 10, 2006. A sunny morning on St Marks Ave in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. Horns honking euphorically, two vans pull away from the curb and form the smallest convoy possible. Together they slam and bump over hastily patched potholes and thick steel plate, thread through archaic ramps and bridges, slowly shedding New York Cit]]>  

Episode 005 of the Daughter of Godcast podcast. I am Dan Kelly, Writer and Director, and these are the harrowing and hilarious stories of the making of my featurette, Daughter of God, a parade of inspired stumbles, spectacular bumbles and a gradual coming into resonance with the entire cosmos.

Last Saturday, I asked my spiritual sibling, brother rabbit and fellow movie maker James Schaberg what he thought of the podcast so far. As a new-ish parent, he’s in his own Holy Trinity, defined by Mark Dillon back in 1984 as, father, mother and child. James is super busy doing Dad, working at the NON GMO Project and setting up his trinity for the *Oregon* winter in their hand built off the grid tiny house. At least that’s the lame excuse he gave for only listening to the first two episodes of my freaking awesome podcast! Anyway, he said that the Daughter of Godcast differs from most other podcasts he listens to because it’s all about the past and other podcasts are about what’s happening now. Maybe I should call it the Daughter of Godpast. Podcast. Daughter of Godcast podcast. That’s actually kind of cool.

For the disillusioned and cynical palate, the sweetness of my now could be cloying, unless prefaced with a bit of salt and savory spices from the past.

My present is fairly brilliant – I’ve broken through to some phenomenal clarity about reality construction. I’m loving the gentle release of my 11 year long featurette. I have a delicious physicality and enjoy hanging with my extended family. I can even feel the way forward for the most enlivening outcomes on our shared spaceship, Earth. Yet since I’ve started this podcast, the past is almost as exhilarating to me as the present, because I get to remember, with you, dear listener about how I got to where I am now. Amongst the growing Daughter of Godcast audience, I wonder who might be tracking the deeper story that maps to all of us here on the pale blue dot, lost in the infinity of the big empty.

Deep.

Before we leave meta mode and get back to the next episode of this gritty, spellbinding story, some announcements. If you haven’t checked out the actual web pages for each episode, there’s all manner of tangental pictures and movies posted there. Scroll down on episode 002, for example, and you can actually watch me getting arrested wearing the awesome orange Patagonia jacket Lauren Discipio gave me. I’ve had iterations of black Patagonia shells ever since.

This is not an advertisement for Patagonia by the way, just an excuse to mention Lauren DiScipio’s name. Lauren DiScipio.

Last thing. The episodes are gonna get longer, starting today.

Daughter of Godcast Episode 005, Never Bring Cocaine to a Border Crossing.

In Episode 004.1, supplemental we lept ahead to 2015 and got a quick glimpse of the scrumptious weirdness that continues to unfold around Daughter of God. The energy of this movie is pulsing, right now. Booming practically. She is coming.

In Episode 004, I fixed my Canadian felony record at the border in Landsdowne, confirmed that we were shooting on the big boat in Kingston Ontario and returned to Brooklyn with less than two weeks before starting production. We now return you to the primary narrative.

Those last 10 days were a blur of equipment testing, organizing, packing, making reservations, coordinating rehearsals – 1000 essential outcomes either achieved or reclassified. All encapsulated into two vans and aimed at Canada.

April 10, 2006. A sunny morning on St Marks Ave in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. Horns honking euphorically, two vans pull away from the curb and form the smallest convoy possible. Together they slam and bump over hastily patched potholes and thick steel plate, thread through archaic ramps and bridges, slowly shedding New York Cit]]> yes Yes no no 21:30 Dan from dog.movie http://dog.movie/podcast/daughter-of-godcast-004-1/ Wed, 28 Sep 2016 13:49:37 +0000 Dan from dog.movie http://dog.movie/?post_type=podcast&p=508  

Daughter of Godcast, episode 004.1. This is a supplemental episode, diverging from the main narrative and flashing forward to the near present. I want to remind everyone that today, September 28, 2016 the story of the making of the Daughter of God is far from over, that while you listen to my dusty recollections of DV video and the Iraq war, the game is still very much afoot. Oh, yes friends things are a happening. I’m not kidding about the importance of a GENTLE release, short of getting run over by trolley cars, I am going to tell you the whole story, and by the time we’re caught up, you’ll be prepared for the present reality, which is boggling. For proof, I offer this little tidbit. This supplemental chunk. A taste from just LAST YEAR.

November 2015. I’m visiting NYC, on my way back to Michigan from running a Spartan Race in Philadelphia. Catching up with Master Ru and my Tai Chi family.

Also planning via text a reunion with Mark Dillon of 1st Ave and 5th Street fame. This was the crazy matchbox apartment we shared with two other 20 somethings back in 1984. That friendly old codger Reagan was President. A time of awakening. The East Village. I was 23 and cracked wide open. Liquid LSD in the refrigerator. Spooky, magic, momentous and profound happenings. Young gods playing, the universe was intent upon us.

I hadn’t seen Mark since he and Lori got married in Oklahoma around 1991. Since then two almost grown kids for the Dillons. Mark had decisively escaped the family novelty business in 2014, and moved Lori and the kids from Norman, OK to Brooklyn, NY.

Mark and I were going to eat at the venerable Excellent Dumpling House on Lafayette in Chinatown, our traditional meetup place, still serving after 30 years.

The wild wheels of the mystery machine were spinning, a sparkling experience awaited.

Mark showed up sans fam. We ate and talked. Cold sesame noodles, dumplings and sizzling garlic eggplant. Afterwards we went for a walk. I was ranting about Daughter of God, about feeling the power surging and asking whether he was planning on acting again or even directing after doing theater work in Norman.

Strangely, the twisting narrow streets of Bayard, White, Mott and Mulberry were overflowing with production gear – huge Arri lights on hydraulic lifts, the hubbub of busy crew, a whole squadron of editing bays on wheeled carts crammed into an alley. A big budget film was shooting. Production assistants detoured us away from a brightly lit street and then Mark said, “There’s Keanu Reeves.” He was standing on the corner we were stepping up onto. Mustering my most confident and collegial manner, I looked him in the eye and said “Hey.” He met my gaze silently and we walked on by.

I was like “Whoa, that was weird.” We both were kind of excited and blasted back in time to city street serendipity. The magic was hot and moving again.

Eventually we split, him back to his apartment and me back to my battered blue Honda Odyssey, parked discreetly by some construction on the lower east side.  A little later, Mark texted me an image – the title of the movie Keanu was shooting in Chinatown.

As of today, Keanu Reeves has not moved into the Airstream, but certainly he’s got an open invitation, tho I’ll be shutting the water off in October. Ever see those Facebook memes about how Keanu is kind of sad because his life had been hard, full of loss? Well, if this is true, maybe he should hang out with our tribe more. He’s got friends in Manhattan and Michigan he didn’t even know about, until now.

Keanu and Mira Sorvino’s Daughter of God was retitled Exposed and released in 2016. I gotta say, Keanu’s agent clearly wasn’t fully up to speed on the latest temporal transcendance technology. Keanu needed to bump into me in Chinatown in 2005, not 2015! Then he would have gotten the part of Gerry instead of Steve Zilliax. Steve could have played Uncle Joe, or vice versa. I could have found something for Keanu, honest.

Instead, Keanu gets totally sideswiped in the time space continuum and entangled making this other Daughter of God – way too late. Another chance to paradigm boggle Matrix-style but instead more gritty cop drama, plus Mira, yum. One might opine that one reason we are delaying release of our Daughter of God to give Keanu’s film a fighting chance.

That’s how we like to roll, doing favors for our future best friends. Like helping out Vigo Mortengenson and The Road. We scouted and shot at the awesome abandoned turnpike in Breezewood, PA in 2007. The next thing you know, The Road’s location people are all over the turnpike in 2008. Just like we planned. De nada.

We’re happy to help because we’re so brimming with infinite cosmic abundance, everything seeks to assist our bliss. We’re epic. Maybe that’s why Lionsgate retitled their Keanu project “Exposed” and decided to release in 2016 – to get out from under our long shadow. Either that or they heard about our sultry Polish entertainment lawyer. Beautiful but deadly. Cue Bond theme.

What is the import of this story? For some listeners, maybe most, it’s just a weird coincidence, which is to say meaningless. How can there be any connection between people who’ve never met, projects that share no commonality besides a working title? Two friends meeting for the same dumplings they ate 30 years before and then firing off old patterns, to them everything seems suddenly packed with profound mystery.

Science is a wonderful way to trivialize the unspeakable. Most events are easily explained, but what’s the meaning of a flea, what’s the meaning of a flower? They just are. Arthur C Clarke so called 3 laws are relevant, especially 2 and 3.

“The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.”

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

When we think of technology we think of gadgets, iPhones or apps but obviously the most advanced technology on the planet is our bodies, the mechanisms of which we so imperfectly understand. Bodies are way easier to experience than understand, how deeply do most of us allow an experience of being alive? That I think, is the path to magic. The full experience of one dumpling could power a starship.

 

Credits

Mark Dillon as himself.
Dan Kelly as myself

Bond theme
Polish military Orchestra of Lower Silesia, Wroclaw Polish National Flag day. (I also liked the version by Szczecin Philharmonic, Female Youth Brass Orchestra)

City Ambiance
The Honeymooners
Freesound
Panikko
Man
The Film Bakery

]]>  

Daughter of Godcast, episode 004.1. This is a supplemental episode, diverging from the main narrative and flashing forward to the near present. I want to remind everyone that today, September 28, 2016 the story of the making of the Daughter of God is far from over, that while you listen to my dusty recollections of DV video and the Iraq war, the game is still very much afoot. Oh, yes friends things are a happening. I’m not kidding about the importance of a GENTLE release, short of getting run over by trolley cars, I am going to tell you the whole story, and by the time we’re caught up, you’ll be prepared for the present reality, which is boggling. For proof, I offer this little tidbit. This supplemental chunk. A taste from just LAST YEAR.

November 2015. I’m visiting NYC, on my way back to Michigan from running a Spartan Race in Philadelphia. Catching up with Master Ru and my Tai Chi family.

Also planning via text a reunion with Mark Dillon of 1st Ave and 5th Street fame. This was the crazy matchbox apartment we shared with two other 20 somethings back in 1984. That friendly old codger Reagan was President. A time of awakening. The East Village. I was 23 and cracked wide open. Liquid LSD in the refrigerator. Spooky, magic, momentous and profound happenings. Young gods playing, the universe was intent upon us.

I hadn’t seen Mark since he and Lori got married in Oklahoma around 1991. Since then two almost grown kids for the Dillons. Mark had decisively escaped the family novelty business in 2014, and moved Lori and the kids from Norman, OK to Brooklyn, NY.

Mark and I were going to eat at the venerable Excellent Dumpling House on Lafayette in Chinatown, our traditional meetup place, still serving after 30 years.

Daughter of Godcast, episode 004.1. This is a supplemental episode, diverging from the main narrative and flashing forward to the near present. I want to remind everyone that today, September 28, 2016 the story of the making of the Daughter of God is far from over, that while you listen to my dusty recollections of DV video and the Iraq war, the game is still very much afoot. Oh, yes friends things are a happening. I’m not kidding about the importance of a GENTLE release, short of getting run over by trolley cars, I am going to tell you the whole story, and by the time we’re caught up, you’ll be prepared for the present reality, which is boggling. For proof, I offer this little tidbit. This supplemental chunk. A taste from just LAST YEAR.

November 2015. I’m visiting NYC, on my way back to Michigan from running a Spartan Race in Philadelphia. Catching up with Master Ru and my Tai Chi family.

Also planning via text a reunion with Mark Dillon of 1st Ave and 5th Street fame. This was the crazy matchbox apartment we shared with two other 20 somethings back in 1984. That friendly old codger Reagan was President. A time of awakening. The East Village. I was 23 and cracked wide open. Liquid LSD in the refrigerator. Spooky, magic, momentous and profound happenings. Young gods playing, the universe was intent upon us.

I hadn’t seen Mark since he and Lori got married in Oklahoma around 1991. Since then two almost grown kids for the Dillons. Mark had decisively escaped the family novelty business in 2014, and moved Lori and the kids from Norman, OK to Brooklyn, NY.

Mark and I were going to eat at the venerable Excellent Dumpling House on Lafayette in Chinatown, our traditional meetup place, still serving after 30 years.

yes Yes no no 14:32 Dan from dog.movie http://dog.movie/podcast/daughter-of-godcast-004/ Wed, 21 Sep 2016 16:04:31 +0000 Dan from dog.movie http://dog.movie/?post_type=podcast&p=458  

Back in Episode 003, the ultra easy became way complicated when a swirling vortex yawned open and swallowed the project. Carmen, my female lead couldn’t legally work in the USA, so we moved the production to Canada. Then, Maho found a big boat to shoot on in the province of Ontario, clearing the way to restoring the script’s post apocalyptic context, which opened a whole other can of worms. On my way to eyeball this can, less than a month before we’re scheduled to start shooting, my alleged sex crimes prevent me from entering Canada.

Since this is Episode 004, you might as well admit that you’ve been sucked into the lightning streaked vortex too, and you’re kinda liking the ride. This might be a good time to drag ten of your most trusted allies into the gaping maw of the Daughter of Godcast, because the story only get’s weirder and more paranoid from here on, and you might need some peer support to make it through alive. Just saying.

You’re going deeper, poised to slip past the outer edge of the inner circle. You’re about to be initiated into one of the most closely guarded secrets of this podcast. This is your last chance to turn back!

Episode 004 Five to Ten in the Canadian slammer

I love Canada. I’ve partied with friends in swinging Toronto, attended the 1996 CHI conference in Vancouver, BC, and crossed the Peace Bridge countless times traveling between NYC and Michigan. As recently as January of 2006, I had driven up to Montreal with Laurence Schroeder and two other artists, Jung Woong and Valere for a long weekend of snowboarding.

Negotiating with Sonya De Mambro of the Canadian Entertainment Division to get work permits for the cast and crew was a piece of cake in contrast to the pointless application and denial by with US immigration for an H2B visa. Fine, we’ll just enhance the Canadian economy with our juicy production budget.

Ann Blake of The Marine Museum of the Great Lakes in Kingston Ontario offered us 10 days aboard the Alexander Henry with support staff for $5000 US. The ship wouldn’t be ready for guests until May so we booked another b and b close by and a fantastic vegetarian restaurant in downtown Kingston, the Sleepless Goat for supreme craft services.

Canada is awesome. Canada rocks.

On March 22 I drove 6 hours through the boondocks of upstate New York anticipating a tour of the Alexander Henry and a heavy session of production planning. I rolled up on the Canadian border at Landsdowne and wearing a broad confident smile, handed my passport to the agent in the booth.

He asked, “What are your plans in Canada?”

I proudly declared, “I’m scouting a film location.”

He gave his screens an extended stare and said, “Pull over.”

Oops.

I pulled over and parked, and another customs agent started to inspect my Honda Odyssey. We chatted amiably, did I mention I love Canada? He found my SLR camera, extra merino wool long johns, organic celery and…

“Step back from the vehicle! What is this?”

The agent was brandishing a copy of The Concealed Handgun Manual, How to Choose, Carry and Shoot a Gun in Self Defense by Chris Bird. The National Phenomenon Second Edition. I had bought it on a whim years ago and forgotten it in one the random compartments in the back of the van.

 

“Sir, are you transporting any weapons in this vehicle?”

I thought fast. “No! Look, I’m a filmmaker, it’s for research. I buy lots of books for research. People have guns in movies.  I don’t own any guns. The most shooting I’ve ever done was plinking soup cans with my friend’s father’s 22.” I may not have said ALL that, I was just trying to sound sincere, which was tricky because well… I was sincere.

“Well, what was I supposed to think when I found this?” He sounded kind of apologetic. I love Canada. Inspection over. I entered the border control office and handed my passport to yet another agent behind the counter. She was rather attractive, I couldn’t help but notice as she brought up my information. I wondered if perhaps I might ask her out.

“Were you ever convicted of a crime? She asked.

“Uh, no…” I stuttered, “Speeding tickets.”

“The United States FBI shares information with Canada and your record shows unresolved felony charges.”

I balked, “Felony charges?!”

She turned her screen around on the counter so I could see. There was the action with the Traverse Eight, what the rabid prosecutor had patriotically felt were appropriate charges for laying down in front of army reserve tanker trucks – criminal trespass and molesting workers.

I told her they were from an protest in opposition to the Iraq war, and that all the charges were essentially dropped.

She helpfully explained, “There are three boxes here – the initial charges, what you’re tried for and the judgement. The first box has your felony charges. The other two boxes are blank, so your record appears as if you haven’t gone to trial, there has been no resolution. Molesting workers in Canada means sexually molesting workers. You can get 5 to 10 years in prison for that here.”

Her eyes we were not flirty, not even friendly. As far as she knew, I could have broken into a office building, had my way with an elevator full of secretaries at gunpoint, been arrested, jumped bail and was now fleeing the country. As a representative of law and order, she likely wasn’t into bad boys. Forgetting completely about the big boat, I watched my scheme of getting with her take a torpedo amidships. I was feeling not a little annoyed.

“Look, this was a war protest. The prosecutor reduced the charges to blocking traffic, not even a misdemeanor.  I am planning to shoot a movie in Canada in April, I’ve gotten work permits from the Canadian labor board. What can I do?”

“Go back to the jurisdiction where you were arrested and obtain a notarized copy of your complete records, then come back to this border location and we’ll fix your records here in Canada. We can’t do anything about your FBI records in the USA, but you’ll be able to enter our country.” She was kind of sweet on me after all. Or maybe just Canadian. I smiled and thanked her.

I jumped back in my van, turned around, got a brusque wave through by the troll-ish US border agent as I re-entered ‘merica and then settled into the 6 hour drive back to Brooklyn. I got on the phone to Traverse City Government Center and asked about my records. A typically friendly Michigan lady looked me up.

“Well, they look good here, everything is complete.”

“Why would my FBI records be incomplete?”

“I don’t know. We transmit everything to the FBI once the case is closed. Couldn’t of happened on our end, that’s just not how things work here.”

Curiouser and curiouser.

I requested a duplicate for immediate pickup. Melonie Steffes, my painter friend living in Honor, Michigan was scheduled to join the DOG crew as an Assistant Director. I got her on the cell and she leapt into action. She drove to TC, grabbed the records, had them notarized and dropped off at Fedex. With luck we’d only be slightly behind schedule.

On March 27 I drove back to Landsdowne and once again met with my attractive border officer. She seemed preoccupied, my triumphant return to Canada and exoneration didn’t make much of an impression. Maybe she liked bad boys after all, like in Raising Arizona. She fixed the Canadian version of my FBI file, advised me to keep the notarized records with my passport just in case, and allowed me to enter her country. I didn’t ask her out.

The Alexander Henry was truly awesome! Complexity be damned, this was the location. Besides, time had run out. Production scheduled to start on April 10, now just two weeks away.

You’re initiation is almost complete. Now you get to find out the most closely guarded secret of the Daughter of Godcast podcast.

The audience for Daughter of God… is you, and everyone else like you.”I’m special, I don’t know any other people like me,” you might be thinking. Yet. That’s the beauty of this podcast. All over the Earth, strange attractors similar to Daughter of Godcast are popping up, (visualize web enabled mycelial mats or thorny black locust saplings growing into radio telescopes), and transmitting, calling every dreamer, closet optimist, super freak, volunteer outcast, and unwitting super hero just like you and me.

This podcast has mysteriously brought us together, and more friends are on the way, raring to collaborate on pegging the fun meter. You can be a beacon to guide the scattered tribe in. Go ahead and open up a new browser window, login to your favorite social media and slip dog.movie into your feed. Help all the glorious weirdos, genius oddballs and delicious misfits to hook in, power on and shine to rival the sun.

We are legion.

]]>  

Back in Episode 003, the ultra easy became way complicated when a swirling vortex yawned open and swallowed the project. Carmen, my female lead couldn’t legally work in the USA, so we moved the production to Canada. Then, Maho found a big boat to shoot on in the province of Ontario, clearing the way to restoring the script’s post apocalyptic context, which opened a whole other can of worms. On my way to eyeball this can, less than a month before we’re scheduled to start shooting, my alleged sex crimes prevent me from entering Canada.

Since this is Episode 004, you might as well admit that you’ve been sucked into the lightning streaked vortex too, and you’re kinda liking the ride. This might be a good time to drag ten of your most trusted allies into the gaping maw of the Daughter of Godcast, because the story only get’s weirder and more paranoid from here on, and you might need some peer support to make it through alive. Just saying.

You’re going deeper, poised to slip past the outer edge of the inner circle. You’re about to be initiated into one of the most closely guarded secrets of this podcast. This is your last chance to turn back!

Episode 004 Five to Ten in the Canadian slammer

I love Canada. I’ve partied with friends in swinging Toronto, attended the 1996 CHI conference in Vancouver, BC, and crossed the Peace Bridge countless times traveling between NYC and Michigan. As recently as January of 2006, I had driven up to Montreal with Laurence Schroeder and two other artists, Jung Woong and Valere for a long weekend of snowboarding.

Negotiating with Sonya De Mambro of the Canadian Entertainment Division to get work permits for the cast and crew was a piece of cake in contrast to the pointless application and denial by with US immigration for an H2B visa. Fine, we’ll just enhance the Canadian economy with our juicy production budget.

Ann Blake of The Marine Museum of the Great Lakes in Kingston Ontario offered us 10 days aboard the Alexander Henry with support staff for $5000 US. The ship wouldn]]>  

Back in Episode 003, the ultra easy became way complicated when a swirling vortex yawned open and swallowed the project. Carmen, my female lead couldn’t legally work in the USA, so we moved the production to Canada. Then, Maho found a big boat to shoot on in the province of Ontario, clearing the way to restoring the script’s post apocalyptic context, which opened a whole other can of worms. On my way to eyeball this can, less than a month before we’re scheduled to start shooting, my alleged sex crimes prevent me from entering Canada.

Since this is Episode 004, you might as well admit that you’ve been sucked into the lightning streaked vortex too, and you’re kinda liking the ride. This might be a good time to drag ten of your most trusted allies into the gaping maw of the Daughter of Godcast, because the story only get’s weirder and more paranoid from here on, and you might need some peer support to make it through alive. Just saying.

You’re going deeper, poised to slip past the outer edge of the inner circle. You’re about to be initiated into one of the most closely guarded secrets of this podcast. This is your last chance to turn back!

Episode 004 Five to Ten in the Canadian slammer

I love Canada. I’ve partied with friends in swinging Toronto, attended the 1996 CHI conference in Vancouver, BC, and crossed the Peace Bridge countless times traveling between NYC and Michigan. As recently as January of 2006, I had driven up to Montreal with Laurence Schroeder and two other artists, Jung Woong and Valere for a long weekend of snowboarding.

Negotiating with Sonya De Mambro of the Canadian Entertainment Division to get work permits for the cast and crew was a piece of cake in contrast to the pointless application and denial by with US immigration for an H2B visa. Fine, we’ll just enhance the Canadian economy with our juicy production budget.

Ann Blake of The Marine Museum of the Great Lakes in Kingston Ontario offered us 10 days aboard the Alexander Henry with support staff for $5000 US. The ship wouldn]]> yes Yes no no 11:31 Dan from dog.movie http://dog.movie/podcast/daughter-of-godcast-003/ Wed, 14 Sep 2016 22:01:37 +0000 Dan from dog.movie http://dog.movie/?post_type=podcast&p=408  

Wow, Episode 003 of the Daughter of Godcast podcast. This must be a real thing now. Especially since you’re still listening. I’m kind of amazed myself. I wonder how many episodes there are going to be? Maybe 33, to coincide with the known degrees of Masonry, but at an episode a week that would be more than half a year, unless I started releasing two or three episodes at a time.

Let’s not fret about such trivia, let’s talk about the making of the longest little movie ever, Daughter of God!

Episode 003 A Big Boat

In Episode 002, I offered Carmen Althaus the part of Christina. She was super excited to breathe life into the role, her enthusiasm was off the charts. We were more than two people now, we were a project.

Offering Carmen the part of Christina was an act of ecstatic hubris. A magical, sublime and audacious mistake. This was the moment when my first movie went right off the rails of reason and into the electric azure blue sky.

Seemed like the path of least resistance. Carmen had theater and film experience, she was smart, funny and motivated. Christina would fit Carmen like sparkling, silver sequined skin tight zentai. Carmen would loan Christina her flesh. I could just hand over my main character and concentrate on pre-production.

Acting on this epiphany caused a hundred thousand easy realities to wink out and now a lightning streaked vortex yawned open, sucking me in!

Originally I conceived Daughter of God to be ultra easy to produce – three characters, minimal props, simple sets. I could do the whole thing in just two rooms. With clever camera coverage, my own narrow railroad apartment in Prospect Heights would have worked fine. The only tricky bit was finding an actress who could play Christina, but with the advent of Carmen, this was no longer a problem. We were under way.

Except… I wanted the project to be legal. I wanted to be able to sign contracts and have clear chain of title which means being able to license the movie to distributors after it’s done. Carmen was a citizen of Switzerland, she couldn’t work in the USA legally without a green card or H2B visa. I immediately applied for an H2B and was denied.

After Tai Chi class one morning, browsing in the South Street Seaport Strand bookstore, I picked up a used copy of Making Your Movie for Less Outside The US by Mark DeWayne, ($8.97). I could sign a contract with Carmen if I shot my project out of the country. Canada was only 6 hours drive north. I started to hammer out the details with the Entertainment Unit of the Canadian Foreign Worker Program.

The ultra easy production was now slightly complicated, the vortex swirled and sparked.

Once I found Carmen, I never reconsidered. The idea that I could cast an American as Christina and shoot the project in my apartment felt like retreat. There was a single mindedness that seemed almost unbalanced, looking back. I can admit to having a mild crush on Carmen, perhaps abenteuerlust (lust for adventure) had taken over and/or the project had become self aware, like Skynet and I was now a mere puppet. Daughter of God was coming, and Carmen WAS Christina.

March 2006 and almost ready. We had a strategy to shoot legally with Carmen. The other two male parts were cast. A tiny crew had been recruited. The intensive identification and acquisition of the optimal equipment package was mostly complete. The disparate schedules of everyone involved overlapped in April. But we were still sans a Canadian location.  Time to reactivate my secret weapon, the Japanese/French connection.

I’d moved to New York from Michigan once before, in 1995 to be closer to the woman who would eventually become my wife and 9 months later my x-wife. Aside from setting me up for a glorious prat fall, my 90s in New York City yielded a fabulous boon, Maho Sone.

When we met in class at the Art Student’s League, Maho spoke Japanese and French fluently, English not so much. We clicked anyway and she introduced me to her neighbors at that time, Claire and Fabrice and another rascal, Eiji, all of whom eventually became involved directly with Daughter of God. But Maho changed everything.

While I was getting married, divorced and arrested in Michigan, Maho’s English improved, she found a nice Japanese guy, Shinji and they opened a chic chic restaurant, Bozu in Williamsburg.

I asked (more like begged) Maho to help with pre-production, first as a stylist and then with locations. Only a month left and we needed a small house or perhaps a couple of adjacent apartments in Canada, close-ish to the border. She agreed to do research from her place, and send me results via email. The ding of her third message on March 15, 2006 was the sound of the vortex gulping the project down.

From: Maho Mizutani Sone
To: Dan Kelly
Date: Mar 15, 2006, at 5:35 PM
Subject: ship!

Alexander Henry is the name of the ship.

www.marmus.ca

is the site for the Museum inc the ship.

Paul-George is the name of the gentleman I spoke with. He is off on Friday, but there are other people that could take care of us as well.

maho

In Kingston, Ontario, the 150 foot ice breaker Alexander Henry was being operated as a bed and breakfast.

Did this make sense? Why would the characters be living on a big boat? By even asking this question, I gave myself permission to re-engage in the joys of world building.

My 2oo5 Palm Court Inn writing marathon resulted in a collection of pre and post apocalyptic vignettes. Now, your cliche end of civilization scenario posits a failed energy infrastructure, so no lights, no pumps for gasoline or water, no sewage treatment. Cities burned or drowned, riots, hordes of roaming scavengers and worse. Depicting all that convincingly is a lot of work. To keep Daughter of God’s production svelte, I had trimmed off most of the post apocalyptic context.

The script let the characters’ interaction and dialogue imply their world, overt visual exposition would be clutter. They inhabit an idea of ending, replete with unsettling casual references to mayhem and gallows humor insinuating dire circumstance.

With the prospect of shooting on a big boat, context came flooding back.

The characters might be living on a big boat because big boats have independent infrastructure – power, plumbing and light. Big boats can pump fuel out of storage tanks in abandoned ports. Big boats can relocate to safer shores. A shadow of bygone days could persist on a big boat.

Big boats also have plenty of cabins for crew and passengers, so there would be myriad choices for the two rooms needed.

The Marine Museum of the Great Lakes at Kingston was the organization in charge of stewardship of the Alexander Henry. The Director, Ann Blake opined over the phone that April was doable – right between the winter thaw and the tourist season. The final step before signing contracts was to scout the location and confirm. On March 22, 2006, I jumped in the Odyssey and headed north.

At the border crossing in Landsdowne, I was refused entry into Canada. My FBI record tagged me as a sex offender.

]]>  

Wow, Episode 003 of the Daughter of Godcast podcast. This must be a real thing now. Especially since you’re still listening. I’m kind of amazed myself. I wonder how many episodes there are going to be? Maybe 33, to coincide with the known degrees of Masonry, but at an episode a week that would be more than half a year, unless I started releasing two or three episodes at a time.

Let’s not fret about such trivia, let’s talk about the making of the longest little movie ever, Daughter of God!

Episode 003 A Big Boat

In Episode 002, I offered Carmen Althaus the part of Christina. She was super excited to breathe life into the role, her enthusiasm was off the charts. We were more than two people now, we were a project.

Offering Carmen the part of Christina was an act of ecstatic hubris. A magical, sublime and audacious mistake. This was the moment when my first movie went right off the rails of reason and into the electric azure blue sky.

Seemed like the path of least resistance. Carmen had theater and film experience, she was smart, funny and motivated. Christina would fit Carmen like sparkling, silver sequined skin tight zentai. Carmen would loan Christina her flesh. I could just hand over my main character and concentrate on pre-production.

Acting on this epiphany caused a hundred thousand easy realities to wink out and now a lightning streaked vortex yawned open, sucking me in!

Originally I conceived Daughter of God to be ultra easy to produce – three characters, minimal props, simple sets. I could do the whole thing in just two rooms. With clever camera coverage, my own narrow railroad apartment in Prospect Heights would have worked fine. The only tricky bit was finding an actress who could play Christina, but with the advent of Carmen, this was no longer a problem. We were under way.

Except… I wanted the project to be legal. I wanted to be able to sign contracts and have clear chain of title which means being able to license the movie to distributors after it’s done. Carmen was a citizen of Switzerland, she couldn’t work in the USA legally without a green card or H2B visa. I immediately applied for an H2B and was denied.

After Tai Chi class one morning, browsing in the South Street Seaport Strand bookstore, I picked up a used copy of Making Your Movie for Less Outside The US by Mark DeWayne, ($8.97). I could sign a cont]]>  

Wow, Episode 003 of the Daughter of Godcast podcast. This must be a real thing now. Especially since you’re still listening. I’m kind of amazed myself. I wonder how many episodes there are going to be? Maybe 33, to coincide with the known degrees of Masonry, but at an episode a week that would be more than half a year, unless I started releasing two or three episodes at a time.

Let’s not fret about such trivia, let’s talk about the making of the longest little movie ever, Daughter of God!

Episode 003 A Big Boat

In Episode 002, I offered Carmen Althaus the part of Christina. She was super excited to breathe life into the role, her enthusiasm was off the charts. We were more than two people now, we were a project.

Offering Carmen the part of Christina was an act of ecstatic hubris. A magical, sublime and audacious mistake. This was the moment when my first movie went right off the rails of reason and into the electric azure blue sky.

Seemed like the path of least resistance. Carmen had theater and film experience, she was smart, funny and motivated. Christina would fit Carmen like sparkling, silver sequined skin tight zentai. Carmen would loan Christina her flesh. I could just hand over my main character and concentrate on pre-production.

Acting on this epiphany caused a hundred thousand easy realities to wink out and now a lightning streaked vortex yawned open, sucking me in!

Originally I conceived Daughter of God to be ultra easy to produce – three characters, minimal props, simple sets. I could do the whole thing in just two rooms. With clever camera coverage, my own narrow railroad apartment in Prospect Heights would have worked fine. The only tricky bit was finding an actress who could play Christina, but with the advent of Carmen, this was no longer a problem. We were under way.

Except… I wanted the project to be legal. I wanted to be able to sign contracts and have clear chain of title which means being able to license the movie to distributors after it’s done. Carmen was a citizen of Switzerland, she couldn’t work in the USA legally without a green card or H2B visa. I immediately applied for an H2B and was denied.

After Tai Chi class one morning, browsing in the South Street Seaport Strand bookstore, I picked up a used copy of Making Your Movie for Less Outside The US by Mark DeWayne, ($8.97). I could sign a cont]]> yes Yes no no 10:05 Dan from dog.movie