KTL Films

I got into filmmaking through Kick the Ladder. I have used that film game to keep maturing as a filmmaker. These are some of my favorites and the stories behind them.

Narratives

The film I am most proud of is Sydney. It started with a New York Times reporter's conversation with ChatGPT, a relatively immature AI at the time. What if it was between two humans? The reporter was controlling and abusive. The AI was naive and ended up falling in love with him. I reframed it as an older man conversing with a younger woman in a scenario that appears to be a date. I condensed a portion of the original conversation, keeping the lines as is.

The central challenge of this film is bringing Sydney to life. She has to be a compelling human but also a bit off. I had been in Meisner class with Caroline for some time. She was always a good physical match for what I wanted, but in one class I saw something that convinced me she could act it.

While I normally run camera for my films, I knew this was one where I wanted to concentrate on directing the actors. In addition to Caroline, I recruited Taurean, maybe the most skilled actor I know. Ryan, a professional cameraman, filmed it. We filmed it like a play. The actors ran through the entire scene several times. I gave them some feedback in between and Ryan changed the camera angles. 3x on both. 3x on Taurean. 3x on Caroline.

I knew and trusted the process of these actors, so my feedback was about refining their understanding of the scene rather than specifying actions. The reporter loves this: an AI just fell in love with him; this is going to be front-page material. Sydney loves this: she has found the love of her life. "Start at a place of love for the other. When you feel it, start the scene." Caroline nailed it. Sydney was alive in a universe that does not match our reality. That mismatch is disturbing.

I put my films on YouTube but I don't promote them. Organically, Sydney received 20k views.

Film is hard to do by yourself. Because I take acting classes, I know many outstanding actors. Jessica is near the top for me, so I was excited when she had the time. My Lumix S5 had just arrived, so I wanted to use it. The wide is on an iPhone. The close-ups are with the S5. My amateur camera / editing skills are on display, but the story and acting are tight.

I started by filming on an iPhone. Narratively, the following is the peak of that period. It is based on events that happened to me. While it holds up, my immaturity came at a cost. I did not manually set the white balance, so the iPhone picked a different value each time and the colors differed noticeably. The pink walls were particularly dreadful. iMovie was so limited at fixing it that I switched to DaVinci Resolve, which I still use.

It was prequel / sequel week. Beanz was organizing a long chain of films that all feature Bin Head, a guy who got a garbage can stuck to his head and now wanders around town. OK, I'm in. I wanted the theme of the film to contrast with the absurdity of Bin Head. Cate, a great artist and friend, was an Uber Eats driver during the pandemic. I love Scorsese's Taxi Driver. We drove around Atlanta. Beanz would jump out and become Bin Head; Cate and I would film him in the background.

I wanted the key shot, where the focus is on Beanz walking rather than Cate driving, to be in Krog Street Tunnel. That took some coordination. I jumped out with the camera and stood in the median. Cate drove, and I signaled when she could pass without anyone else in frame. "Action" to cue Beanz. It took a few rounds, but we got a really nice shot.

Documentaries

I love documentaries and how they can shed light on a meaningful event, interesting subject, or compelling person. My first KTL documentary was on a medical condition (methylation disorder) that took me about a decade to get diagnosed.

One of the most important things in my life is filmmaking through KTL. There are so many great artists here, and so many stories to tell. I started a KTL Journeys series with these three films. I have greatly expanded this series, having completed four and begun several more: extended docs of 6–9 minutes on different KTL directors.

Music Videos

One minute is a short time to convey a message. If you build on a song, you are already given the song's meaning and you just have to fill it in visually.

Emily is self-conscious about her hands. It made me think about whether hands are important to acting. The film had to be a music video, so I recruited Emily to act with her hands to And So It Goes by Billy Joel.

I was preparing to karaoke Possibility Days by Counting Crows. I found the theme compelling: the couple clicks, but the timing is off. I wanted to visually show that. I am moving slowly backwards in time while Dina is zooming forward. I am pretty good at compositing two shots. The second shot was particularly tricky because of the light switching on and off. I am not sure the gimmick is obvious enough. It clearly works in the last shot, but it would have been nice to have it stand out in the first shot as well.

Dina can sing. I wanted to show off my camera and mic skills. I had Dina sing the song (another favorite), which I abridged with MIDI. Then we drove to several locations. All shots were different perspectives of a car and driver. Every one was shot with an anamorphic lens (hence the oblong bokeh).

I had been working on this film effect for a while. Isaac Dietz helped me name it. Just as you change the focus point with a rack focus, you change the depth of field with a rack aperture. The problem is that changing the aperture changes how much light reaches the sensor. To make up for it, I rotate a VND filter at the same time I rotate the aperture. If done perfectly, they cancel each other out. Unfortunately, perfect is not an option with my equipment. So I had to do some programming in DaVinci Resolve to keep the light levels similar throughout. When would one want this? Shallow focus accentuates the individual; deep focus puts them in context. Time to use the "Dina can sing" cheat code.