Make Good Art.
almost 5 years ago
– Wed, Jun 12, 2019 at 02:29:43 AM
Hello friends. It’s been a long time since we’ve sent an update, and we wanted to reach out and let you know how things are going.
Firstly, thank you. Thank you for being supportive, and patient, and having our backs while we wrangle this beast out of the art ether and fashion it into something we can all be proud of.
We believe in this film, and it is your belief in us that allows this film to be forged out of all the honest, inspiring, and vulnerable stories we’ve gathered since embarking on this journey.
We have spoken to friends and strangers who make films like these, small labors of love of only a couple of people, and we say with a pitched sort of intensity how long it's taken to make. Two years. Three.
Four.
Nearly five.
We're assured by people who make things like this: this is just how long it takes.
Part of it is the learning curve: teaching yourself to do the thing through trial and error. Part of it is budget: pouring money into the project in the form of credit cards and side jobs, and finding supportive investors to help pick up slack when your equipment begins to fail. Part of it is story: finding all the loose threads and turning it into something coherent as you go. And part of it is creating a giant ninety minute beast with no massive team: just two people, pushing the boulder of a film up a mountain, their hearts fierce with hope.
Hi. I'm one of those two people. This is Olga.
It can seem like, when these missives arrive in your inbox, that they might come from some giant anonymous structure of directors and producers and cinematographers and sound people and lighting people and editing people and assistant editors and motion graphics people and designers and website people and people to run the online shop and budget people and email support people –– but it's just the two of us, Allan and I, aided occasionally by favors from friends and loved ones.
We started by carving offices out of half a kitchen; we papered an entire wall with how we wanted to structure the film, and stayed up, night after night, talking about how to build a narrative, and worked, day after day, chiseling sentences and stories and moments out of hundreds of hours of footage into something that would make us feel.
Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it worked amazingly.
And sometimes it didn't. We had screenings where people cheered us on, and screenings where people told us exactly how-- and why-- it wasn't working.
And we'd go back and tweak it, and repeat the process. It began with us doing this side by side: we'd discuss, I'd edit short pieces together while we talked through what we wanted. As the individual narrative arcs got longer and longer, doing things side by side became impractical: it made more sense for us to have a shared creative vision, but having only one of us do the physical editing.
We would get together and have creative working meetings where we talked out the beats of what we wanted to happen. Allan would suggest something. I would suggest something. We'd work out a path forward. And then I would hole up somewhere by myself and edit, for days. Weeks. Months.
In the cracks of time, Allan would go and create other gargantuan feats of art, giant tomes with large audiences of their own.
In the cracks of time, we'd both do things to figure out how to pay rent.
And then we'd get back together and go through the newest cut, and show it to people, and figure out what worked and what didn't, and do it all again.
This process has been slow– just the two of us on a shoestring budget stretched out over years, hustling to keep the lights on, and trying to learn how to make the best film we can.
It's been slow. But it's been *working*. We have been getting it closer and closer to something that matched our lofty internal compasses, something that filled us with excitement.
We sent an update a year ago describing how close we were-- how tantalizingly close! If making this film was akin to being in a ship at sea, we were within sight of land: not there, not yet, but nearly, nearly!
And then:
I got sick.
* * *
It's hard to say this. It's personal. But the relationship we have with you, as backers, as friends, is a funny line between personal and professional. We both want to give you a product, this piece of art we want to share with you that you've helped make happen, and we also want to be honest with you about how we get to the finish line:
We've promised to lift the curtain and show what's happening.
It's hard to lift the curtain when you don't know what's happening.
* * *
A little under a year ago, my hair started falling out.
I sent photos of me to friends: my face was pale, the skin strange and gaunt.
I looked wrong.
Then: my memory started to crumble.
Then: I found it more and more difficult to stay awake through the day.
My partner came to where I was holed up, editing. We would be on a walk, talking, and the color would drain from my face and I would suddenly find it hard to stand.
I found it too hard to even sit up.
I'd go back to the friend's place I'd borrowed while he was away, and lie down, hours after waking.
I stopped being able to concentrate. My thoughts were buried in gauze. I felt underwater.
The worst, and strangest thing: words started to fall apart. I would type "bird" and it came out "boat." I would type "farmer" and it came out "father."
I dropped words in the middle of sentences. I stopped remembering how to spell things. "Beach" would become "beech" and then I'd forget how words were constructed at all.
I would reach for my phone to look something up, and then suddenly be holding my phone, forgetting why I'd picked it up.
And do it again five minutes later.
And again, five minutes after that.
I didn't know what to do. I began seeing doctors: I got diagnosed with tumors (benign, removed) and told I might have anything ranging from a sleep disorder to Multiple Sclerosis.
I got blood tests, and more blood tests, and everything came back normal.
* * *
I tried to edit, in the middle of this. Or: I did edit, in the middle of this, but most days I sat at the giant Mac I'd been hauling around with me, and struggled to stay awake for more than a few hours at a time.
To think.
My muscles were constantly sore. My hair was coming out in fistfuls, now.
Some days I could show up and do the work, and some days it was like I had vacated my body.
* * *
If this were an administrative job and I could only do two hours a day, I could hire someone to do the other eight. If this was an editing job, we could hire an outside editor to snip and cut along our pre-existing dotted lines.
But it's neither: it's more akin to being an author, to creating a voice for the film out of this bedrock we've both built.
It's riding a horse, and trying to get someone else onto the horse, while cantering, without stopping, and without falling. It's not possible. It's better to keep going, slowly, as it is, pulling it together bit by bit.
* * *
A friend started telling me about Seabiscuit: how Laura Hillenbrand had written her novel after the onset of a chronic unknown illness, one page at a time. She kept showing up, eking out this story, bit by bit, even when she didn't know what was wrong.
Even if she didn't get better.
* * *
This is a film about making art. Making art when the world falls apart around you, in imperfect contexts: in success and failure, in sickness and in health.
Whoever is writing the current plot of our lives has a sense of humor, because it is not enough to make a film that preaches this mantra: we have to live it as truth.
To keep moving forward, to make art as the thing that keeps us afloat, the thing that nourishes us, the thing that keeps us going. Art is for everyone, no matter what condition you find yourself in, no matter who you are, where you've come from, or how your body may have turned against you.
Even now. Even in this place, you make art.
When things fall apart, make good art.
* * *
It is at this point in the story, that something akin to hope emerges.
I got a message on Slack from Andy Baio.
Andy was one of the people who helped found Kickstarter. He runs a small experimental festival in Portland with his friend Andy McMillan.
They have speakers and indie game rooms and live podcasts and--
they show films.
He asks about doing a very last minute small showing of the Temple of Art rough cut at the festival. I tell him it's not done yet, so he suggests showing it in the capacity of asking for feedback to help finish it.
Allan and I agree.
We show the film to a few hundred people, unannounced, at a secret midnight screening. I give a tiny introduction, explaining how the Kickstarter has taken far more time than anyone has hoped.
And I ask for feedback.
The next day someone stops me in the hall to tell me how much they loved the film.
And a few minutes later someone else stops me.
A few minutes later, someone else.
People not only tell me they love our film, they begin to tell me their *stories*. Their stories of their art, of their relationship to their creativity.
Several people tell me that they're having a hard time, and the film made them think about what they ultimately want to do with their lives. Several people hug me. Several people cry.
At one point, I am chatting to someone in the theater before the next speaker, and a line literally forms in front of me with people who want to talk about the film.
I think finally that maybe, maybe the film is working.
Allan and I were always most concerned that the film be helpful -- and I think, after all this, after days and weeks and months and years of turning ourselves inside out to be certain that this film is the most helpful thing it could be, a love letter to art, and to people making art, and a reminder that we have limited days on this earth and we should invest them in what we love:
maybe the film will be a thing that ultimately helps people believe that art is a basic human birthright.
That art is for everyone.
* * *
This is where lifting the curtain means real vulnerability.
I am making this post public, because our lives are too short to succumb to shame.
This is a massive trust fall.
Because I'm sharing here the truth we've been trying to live by: at my most broken, vulnerable self, the only recourse is to make good art.
There is no other choice.
We are grateful for you reaching out, checking in, and that you are as invested in this film as we are. I believe we will get this film into your hands, we just-- so close to the finish line--ask for the un-askable: we know you have waited this long, and we cannot thank you enough for the generosity of that gift, but we just need you to wait a small bit longer.
We've been moving slowly, and I have been getting care, while we figure this out.
We've been moving slowly, because we've been making this through the broken spaces.
We're so very close now.
So close.
And we can't wait to show it to you.
