Use of Audio
The explanatory narration was recorded quite cleanly with
a Sennheiser shotgun mic, and worked nicely throughout the
film, with only a few moments were it was a bit too soft
for the music. This last problem can be corrected by making
sure that background music is at -18 Db with the foreground
voice at -12 Db.
The
music that was chosen as background music was soft and cerebral,
ranging from New Age trance music to relaxed, '70's style
exploratory music. Much of the music was loop-based, but
it worked well for the most part, accenting the Eastern-flavored
artwork nicely. The only time the music chosen did not work
well was during a painting that showed a person walking
up a path past a corpse. During this segment, the music
chosen sounded like a bad digital loop from the '70's and
didn't flow well with the visuals.
Use of Budget
When I watched this film, I was at first a little mystified as to where $25,000 had gone, considering it was shot in one location with a DVX100, a Cobra Crane, and only one character. However, as I discussed this issue with the filmmaker, he explained the amount of lights that had to be rented in order to light the artwork properly for the camera and the fact that all of the crew were paid. (A non-deferred payment project is a bit of a novelty in the microfilmmaking community.)
After
all of that, the only thing that really confused me about
the budget was WHY all of the shots of the paintings had
to be done with the DVX100A. I'm in no way suggesting that
a lower cost video camera should have been used; rather,
I'm suggesting that the usefulness of shooting video of
the two-dimensional paintings was largely lost. Due to how
inexpensive five to eight megapixel still cameras have become,
it would have been just as effective to take a very high-res
still photo of these paintings and then zoom and pan across
them using a non-linear editing program like FCP or Premiere
Pro. Because a five to eight megapixel digital still camera
is shooting at over five to eight times the max resolution
of SD video, zooming into a high-res still like this would
have yielded none of the pixelation that's so common in
normal digital zooming. The advantage of this from a budget
perspective would have meant that the only things that would
have needed to be shot with the DVX100 and the highly trained
cameraman that was running it would have been the actual
interviews of the artist himself and the more 3-dimensional
dolly/crane shots of the one exhibit that was a statue.
Additionally, the shutter could have been left open far
longer on a still camera, which would have negated the need
for as many lights in the production.
Lasting Appeal
For folks who are big fans of Alex's artwork already, there
will definitely be some rewatchability to this film and
they will desire to show it to any friends they have who
are Grey connoisseurs. However, for those who are not already
fans of Grey's work, it's doubtful that they would rewatch
it or show it to their friends.
Overall Comment
This is a beautiful documentary with all the pieces that
make it up being done very precisely and well. Unfortunately,
the fact that it only features the dialogue and narration
of Alex Grey makes it feel like a guided tour which won't
appeal as well to folks who are not already fans of his
work. In the end, it's technically excellent, but the content
needs some polish if a wider audience is desired.
