AN OPEN LETTER TO DAVIS AURINI AND JORDAN OWEN UPON THE RELEASE OF THEIR FIRST SARKEESIAN EFFECT TEASER
Hey guys, big fan here.
Just watched your Sarkeesian Effect teaser video. An outstanding job! Even though this is, I know, a rough and unfinished trailer using raw footage from the first couple of days of shooting, it’s clear that this film – this epic journey into journalism, if I might coin a phrase here (you can totally use it!) – will more than live up to your earlier work.
And that’s saying something, as I don’t think I’ve ever seen a ten-minute libertarian suit-wearing-ninja parkour dance fight film better than Davis’ “Lust in a Time of Heartburn.” And obviously – obviously – I’ve never seen such a gritty depiction of YouTube jackass despair as Jordan’s minimalist masterpiece “Dude Lying On Couch in Messy Apartment Complaining That People Aren’t Giving Him Enough Money.”
I just wanted to give you guys some “notes” on it, as I know it is still early in your process.
First off, the production values are a-maz-ing. I realize that after spending money on airfare, hotel rooms, rent, samurai swords, white turtleneck shirts, and whatnot that you probably only had about $25 left to make the actual film. Well let me tell you this: every Canadian penny of that $25 is there on the screen. It’s RIGHT THERE.
Second, SOUND. I will admit you’ve made a bit of an unorthodox choice here. Most documentary filmmakers obviously go for “clean” and “crisp” sound in which you “can actually make out what people are saying.”
But you guys! You zag when everyone else is zigging!
Not since Birdemic: Shock and Terror and, of course, Davis’ own “Lust in the Time of Carpark,” have I seen such an innovative use of sonic muddiness. You guys know that in real life you can’t always tell what other people are saying. Especially if you have a lot of wax in your ears. And fellas, listening to the interviews in your film I felt like I had a whole beehive’s worth of wax in my ears. And possibly a bee or two, though I think that might be a problem on my end.
Ok, I’ll be honest, that’s definitely a problem on my end. I might as well admit it: My apartment is full of bees.
Third, the CINEMATOGRAPHY. Again, the zigging and the zagging. In a time of cheap digital cameras, it is easier than ever for even the most incompetent filmmaker, or, say, any 14-year-old filming a friend lighting his farts, to achieve pristine image quality.
But, like David Lynch, who turned his back on the latest digital technology to make his confusing surrealistic masterpiece Inland Empire with a cheap, consumer grade standard definition digital camera, you have eschewed pristine picture quality in favor of well, let’s just say that it doesn’t look like trained professionals had anything to do with it.
I don’t know if that was what you were going for but if so, NAILED IT!
Oh, and I wouldn’t worry about the blurry white smudgy stuff in the edges of the shot in that Justine Tunney interview. NO ONE WILL NOTICE IT. Seriously, it’s like a five-minute static shot, why would anyone notice anything in the edges of the frames. Was that vaseline? I think Bob Guccione at Penthouse was known for his vaseline on the lens technique. You guys weren’t using the camera to film porn earlier in the day, were you? I kid! What a question! Of course you were.
Speaking of static shots, your choice to film most of the interviews as static two shots – another brave choice. Most people filming interviews would have given us closeups of each of the people in the interview, and cut back and forth, and thrown in some of what the snooty cinephiles call “reaction shots.” You guys boldly went for static shots of two people sitting in chairs.
And that time when you cut from one static shot of two people sitting in chairs to another static shot of the same two people sitting in the same chairs from a slightly different angle? YOU GUYS BLEW MY MIND WITH THAT ONE.
It was also super cool when you did one interview in one particular room with two chairs and followed that up with another interview in the same room with the same two chairs, almost as if you had booked the room for the day and were just running people through it without bothering to change anything up or even move the camera or anything.
That’s the kind of PURE FILMING EFFICIENCY that’s going to enable you to bring this masterpiece on budget. Like Steve Jobs, Bob Hope and Johnny Cash used to say: REAL ARTISTS SHIP!
Some thoughts on the performances.
Jordan Owen was completely Jordan Owenish. I totally bought his character. Jordan, you are a MASTER of whatever it is that you do. Keep it up!
But Davis, you sly dog, I should have figured that someone who looks like a budget version of Anton LaVey would have some tricks up his sleeve! Or should I say “his white turtleneck?” Yes, that’s my way of saying that the costuming was PER-FEC-TION. Not every Anton LaVey impersonator can pull off a shiny suit and white turtleneck but, wow! That’s all I can say: Wow!
As for the performance itself, again some counterintuitive choices here. Most interviewers try to react to their interview subjects a little in an attempt to show “empathy.” Your decision to instead sit stock still and stare relentlessly at your interview subjects was a little jarring – but a good kind of jarring. That’s how you get the good stuff out of your interview subjects! And murder suspects. Stare them into submission!
One of my cats has a similar technique when she wants food, or attention, or, well, let’s just say she’s gotten me to confess to a couple of murders, if you know what I mean, and what I mean is NO I DIDN’T MURDER ANYONE WHY DID I EVEN SAY THAT, CRAP, HOW QUICK CAN I PACK, IS THERE GAS IN THE CAR?
Also I think it was a good idea to mix up the sitting and staring stuff with that whole “erupting into unnatural and exaggerated laughter” schtick. Totally sold your character as some sort of primitive cyborg trying to pass as a human.
Also, amazing prop work with that disposable coffee cup. You gripped it so hard I really BELIEVED that if you let go of it you would have flown off into space — you know, like George Clooney in Gravity. Oh, whoops, SPOILER ALERT.
This is how good your film is: I’m comparing it to freaking GRAVITY. I’m comparing it to freaking Davis Aurini’s “Lust in the Timer of Clambake.”
Oh, and the foley work was spot on as well. That … sound that happens at about 6:10 in? You know, the thing where it sounded like someone was dragging a large rock over cement just out of shot, or maybe like you had swallowed your microphone and your stomach was having troubl edigesting it? That sound is going to haunt me for weeks. I don’t even want to know how you did that. Sometimes mysteries are best left unsolved.
Anyway, outstanding job. I really can’t say anything about any of what your interview subjects were saying, or even remember any of their names except for Justine Timberlake the Slavery Lady. I think it was a combination of that wax-in-ears sound quality and their complete inability to say anything interesting in response to your stupid questions.
But with everything else going on in this film – the static shots, the white turtlenecks, that white stuff at the edge of the shot in that one interview that NO ONE WILL NOTICE, I PROMISE THEY WON’T EVEN SEE IT … well, anyway, with all that going on in the film no one is even going to care what any of your incredibly boring interview subjects said or who they are or why on earth you decided this was a good subject for a documentary or why you even thought you were remotely capable of making an actual professional quality film.
Anyway, I’m sure all of the people who gave you literally thousands of dollars of their own money because they assumed you might actually come up with something that looked vaguely professional will be very proud of you.
I’m assuming, of course, that your final film will be about 4 minutes long, and that half of it will be libertarian suit-wearing-ninja parkour dance fighting to the sounds of Yakety Sax. If not, yeah, no one is going to be able to sit through this crap.
In other words LOVE IT!
Sincerely,
Your Biggest Fan
(and now he’s on a superbly patronizing rant about display resolutions, and how 1980×1080 is far more resolution than they could ever use, comparing it to an iceberg where 90% of the quality is hidden. This is bullshit, since 1980×1080 is 1080p, or a good quality hd resolution… There is no extra)
(he has an amazing ability to bring up a criticism, spend 10 minutes explaining technical details about why the problem the criticism addresses is a problem, then end with “trust us, we got this” without ever actually answering the criticism)
If there is a point, it’s probably to bore people until their eyes bleed.
I honestly thought he’d try to do something clever like show how hard the problem is by filming with the laptop camera and then… something… Like, he brought out a floodlight, and I thought he was going to demonstrate how it will solve the lighting problem by turning it on and showing how much the crappy laptop video brightens. Nope.
It’s looking like there was no point. So much so that it was an anti-point, because why would you have a technical video about filming where your only arguement is “trust us, we know what we’re doing” and not actual demonstrate you know what you’re doing?
Well, he can’t demonstrate that, cos he doesn’t know what he’s doing, does he? 😀
Someone I feel like watching these extra videos would not improve my life in any way.
I dunno, I’m watching Jorden Owen’s first one now, and it was pretty amusing to watch the dude go from mild pleading to his
fansbackers to ranting vulgarity at everyone else. But whatevs, to each their own.I skimmed through mere seconds of the others, and thought, nope, if I’m going to look at a long-haired dude, I’ve got a better option. Lots of better options, actually.
Ok then. I am now listening to a long-haired dude express an extended metaphor for… something… by detailing a hypothetical slave-leia costume contest where some nerd nitpicks the costumes. “The point is that these are nearly-naked women, and we are taking pictures of them!”
It is late, and my mind is lost in a wonderland of wut.
Words fail! XD
For a documentary that’s intended to have big-screen exposure (rofl, lmao), 1920×1080 is the minimum acceptable resolution in terms of current accepted technical standards. They might have been able to get away with standard-definition video up to about three or four years ago, but not any more.
But I’m loving these “explanations” – every successive syllable amplifies the already all too audible cry of “I have no idea what I’m doing”.
The saddest part of this all, apart from the unbelievable entitlement these guys are showing by being so snide about answering legit concerns from their investors, is that by their own admission they are bankrupting themselves in order to put this piece of shit together.
It’s like… Guys, just… just stop. Don’t do this to yourself, nobody deserves this. You don’t even need to realize you don’t have a point to make, just recognize that you don’t have the chops to do it.
Unfortunately for them, when the criticism is “you clearly don’t know the first thing about staging, lighting, recording and shooting interviews”, the only effective riposte would be “Yes I do, and I shall proceed to demonstrate” – something that could be got across in a minute or two if they actually had the necessary ability.
And if they don’t have the necessary ability, a convincing alternative would be a frank admission that they didn’t know what they’re doing and a commitment to scrap everything that they’ve shot and to hire a professional cameraperson and sound recordist for future sessions – something they should easily be able to afford given the sums that they’ve allegedly raised. (I’ve produced interview-driven videos for a fraction of $10,000 that were shot and edited by paid professionals).
Everything else is waffle and bluster, but you knew that already.
Now that’s just sad. Jordan’s second video is basically a plea to have people ignore all the anger in his previous “clarification” and to keep donating. At least it’s only a couple minutes long.
G’day, Wetherby! 🙂
G’day back!
I’m loving this discussion, because at this very moment I’m editing a video that I shot a week or so ago – and while it only just barely passes for professional quality (my budget was low triple figures, most of which went on transport to the location and a fee for the interviewee’s expertise), it looks like Errol Morris compared with what these clowns are producing.
@Wetherby:
But but but PRODUCTION! If you want to criticize the PRODUCTION, you have to wait until the PRODUCTION is PRODUCED!
/channeledowen
Seriously though, hundreds of dollars? What are these guys doing so wrong?
I can’t wait to see the mental contortions done to justify this by the same Owen/Davis fans who are claiming Sarkeesian’s a scammer because her production values don’t reflect the amount of money she raised for the video series. I mean, these goofballs are pretty much undermining that hypothesis every time they release something, by showing how much worse a video looks without the production values her videos demonstrate.
I know – that’s what’s so truly glorious about this!
The really stupid thing is that it’s never, ever been easier to achieve decent production values on a modest budget. I’ve shot perfectly viable high-definition videos on a standard consumer camera like a Nikon D3200 (which is currently going for $320), a single light and a well-placed reflector. The only thing I never compromise on is the sound, but even then you should be able to get a decent recording kit for mid triple figures.
As I said above, I fumbled the visual side of my first solo effort as producer/cameraman/sound recordist/interviewer – but I was fully aware of this from the moment I first watched the playback, was thankfully able to salvage a decent piece because the sound was fine, and – the most crucial point – I made sure that I didn’t make the same mistakes again. So while I wasn’t fully cognisant of what I was doing on a technical level, I could at least work this out for myself.
But shooting multiple interviews that repeat the same basic technical errors? That’s just a monumental waste of time, effort and money. If the clips in the teaser are a fair reflection of their quality (and, given the purpose of the teaser, I assume they are), they’re all unusable even on a technical level, never mind an aesthetic one – they’d never get through even the most cursory QC assessment.
The left hand does not know what the right is doing, either.
Davis Aurini says he is using Sony Vegas software. He also acknowledges that the audio came from the camera (while insisting it wasn’t a problem).
Jordan Owen says he thinks Davis Aurini uses Adobe Premiere software. First he says they used an external microphone, later he says that the audio came straight from the camera.
@kirbywarp:
Forgive me, even knowing these people, I did not believe you about the Leia thing. But, there it was, exactly as you described.
Let’s try.
Because Sarkeesian is a feminist, she has unlimited resources at her disposal outside of the donations she received. For example, our feminazi run educational system would surely offer her free classes in all aspects of video production if she asked – why, the schools would be too scared to turn her away, lest she sue them for making a woman cry! The same goes for people who have the skills to assist her on shoots. Thus, the money she received is just pocket money (because women are children) and all she had to use it on was upgrading her scented candle collection and a few tubes of lippy. These poor unfortunate men, otoh, have no resources to help them at all and have to build every single light they use by the sweat of their own brows. It’s not their fault they were too tired to build a boom mic too!
A small child could have made a better film than this with the loose change down the back of a sofa. Come to think of it, a sofa could have made a better film than this.
On a positive note, it’s so hilarious I’m going to watch it again. Missed the vaseline cos I was too busy lolling at your article.
Hahaha, I’m really enjoying the comments section of the teaser. My new favourite is all the pained and earnest cries of “But you can’t judge a film by its trailer!”
…
😀
strivingally:
Yeah, they really have backed themselves into a corner with this one. They claim that good quality videos don’t need big budgets, then reveal they’re already wasted their first $10,000 on 6 minutes of unsalvagable footage. They’ve already spent more money than Sarkeesian ever asked for and produced something not even a fraction of the quality. In fact, it’s not even a fraction of the quality of the dozens of (not perfect, but perfectly watchable) videos Sarkeesian made before she ever turned to crowdfunding.
They had $10K? $10,000?
I helped a friend shoot for a short documentary once. Airfare from Canada to US, equipment rental (cameras, mics mainly), tapes and hiring a bloody camera operator to shoot A Cam footage cost us less than that for a week. Oh, and throw in hiring an editor. This was before the cost of such things shot down so much too.
What on earth have they spent their money on? Turtlenecks? Scotch?
I’ve shot and edited half a dozen short interview-driven pieces this year on high-definition video, and I haven’t come anywhere close to spending $10K.
In fact, I’d be surprised if I’d even spent half that – let’s say about $2K for equipment and $500 maximum per piece, and even that looks like an overestimate.