Independent America

11th Hour Downs and Ups

DOWN: We get last minute word that a musical artist we featured in the first edition of our documentary can no longer participate.  Her independent record company doesn't want to jeopardize the handful of sales she's had so far at Borders Books.  As the descendant of a renowned protest singer, we wonder whether her grandfather might be spinning in his grave.

UP: The fabulously independent U.K. band Marillion (whom I originally wanted to include in our soundtrack, but was afraid to ask how much they would cost), happily donated their fitting composition "Don't Hurt Yourself."  With its fabulous lyric, "the open road -- is infinitely hopeful."  Marillion run their own record company, with direct international sales to their fans.  A terrific new media model for the 21st century.

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DOWN: The battle of the Wal-Mart films began this week, and we're trying to figure out a way to get involved.  Or at least get noticed.  On one side, a movie largely funded by the unions and other partisans who don't like the Beast of Bentonville.  On the other, a Wal-Mart sanctioned documentary.  Somewhere in the middle, our self-financed, entirely independent effort that does not pander to any special interests on either side of the fence.

UP: Our brand new website marks the beginning of our partnership with non-aligned grassroots organizations (see "IA Network" on our new site) who appreciate our positive message of self-sufficiency and self-responsibility in support of all things independent.  Over the next six weeks, these groups will be hosting "Independent America" screenings across the country.

The Movie Trailer - Update

You can now watch the definitive six minute, twenty-five second trailer for "Independent America: The Two Lane Search for Mom & Pop" in high resolution on our HRH Media website.  It should start playing almost immediately if you have a high-speed connection
(and the latest version of Quicktime), Windows XP/2000 or a Mac.

UPDATE: Although that's the best way to view the trailer, we've added two other options -- though they're not quite as sharp.  The first alternative is to go to our Independent America video clips page and select "Movie Trailer."  The second is to watch it in the player below.

I apologize for all the choices, but I'm a stickler for production values.  For those who care, Option #1 is an H.264 file, which is a really efficient compressed version of our 1080i HDV trailer.  Option #2 is your standard MPEG-4 file which should work anywhere.  And Option #3 below is the equivalent of a photocopy of a photocopy: from 1080i HDV to AVI file to whatever it is that Audioblog.com does to it to post it to our site.

Although I've sworn off war zones --- except for the metaphorical one we discovered in Independent America -- this documentary would not have been made without them.  It was our road trip after my six months stint during "Operation Iraqi Freedom" back in 2003 that first inspired us to look for an unchained America.  It was the joy I experienced in Israel/Palestine, on board the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, and going live from one of Saddam Hussein's oil rigs, by experimenting with the latest digital technology under extreme conditions.  It was my last stint in Baghdad that helped finance our trip.

When I returned from that last assignment, I met Tom Powers, who would later become our collaborator and executive producer.  The film would have been far less interesting had we not stumbled across an old contact of mine from my Tel Aviv days, Chris De Witt.  She adopted us once we hit her hometown of Austin, and made sure we got the attention and interviews we needed for the rest of our trip.  And much of the music you hear in the trailer was composed and recorded by our friend Hyshi.  He's a Kosovar Albanian whom I met during the war in the former Yugoslavia.  He now lives -- and jams -- in Toronto (I composed the title sequence and the closing music).

War.  What is it good for?  Sometimes a few things.

The G5 Sleeps Tonight

"Independent America: The Two-Lane Search for Mom & Pop" is finally complete, all 88 minutes and 15 seconds of it.  We made our deadlines, shaved a few years of our lives, went cross-eyed, and did it all ourselves with a little help from some friends.

Eight straight weeks of post-production in our converted living room studio -- our Mac G5 was on almost always, almost always doing something (sometimes crashing when we needed it most).  We'll be posting the definitive movie trailer in the next 24 hours.

Just for fun, here's what our timeline looks like in our editing program:

Xterra: Road Trip Worthy?

Thank goodness for the shuttle driver at Lia Nissan in Schenectady, NY. I had just gotten into my Xterra after its third servicing on the road (15,000 km I think). A scheduled oil change, along with a request to attend to the same litany of complaints I had voiced across the country. I turned the key in the ignition. My heart sank. The engine still had that high-pitch rattle, like some castrated diesel.

"You've got a bad tension pulley," I heard a voice say. The shuttle had pulled in right beside me in the front parking lot. "I once had an old van with the same problem" the savvy driver said.

Las Vegas said "dirty fuel." Austin was too close to the noisy freeway to hear anything at all. Albany told me to come in anytime in the morning, then sent me to the kinder folk in Schenectady because there was "no way" they would have serviced my vehicle without first booking an appointment. Once home, my local dealership first diagnosed it as air conditioned-related. I had to bring it back in a few days later.

"Check the tension pulley," I said, remembering my friend the shuttle driver.

All was suddenly clear. They ordered in the part. It took three weeks to arrive. We had already brought the Xterra back to the garage when they suddenly discovered it was the wrong one – the box had been mislabelled. Another two weeks went by.

Five months and 23,000 km later, my 2005 Nissan Xterra Off-Road 4x4 Automatic finally sounds like it should. A well-engineered, well-designed, new truck. Thanks to Nissan. And no thanks to Nissan.

Rendering and the New Medievalism

Forgive me this indulgence as I await yet another interminable computer processor rendering of my 88-minute sequence.  Except this time, to cut down on the waiting time (and huge amount of disk space required), I've cut it in half, so we're looking at 44 minutes for Part 1.  Four hours to render this particular section of sound, fury and assorted effects.  And that's just the beginning of the painful procedure.

Also forgive this ripe overwriting style of mine.  It's a seasonal thing.  Whenever a new Salman Rushdie book is released, I must read it immediately.  And it infects everything around me.  Except I don't really have time to read right now, so I've got the audio version of Shalimar the Clown on my iPod.  Any pedestrian errand, or excuse for exercise (lawnmowing, garage cleaning, dog walking) allows me to read while walking.  First it was Ender's Game.  Now it's Rushdie.

He's challenge enough to read.  But when the thick prose goes coursing by your ears with no time to absorb it, there's dire need for a primer -- just a book jacket would do as well.  So I've been perusing various book reviews on another computer during the middle of this render.

And I've stumbled across this excellent one in the Village Voice.  A couple of lines really caught my attention.  I think I can tie it in somewhat with our documentary:

The events of Rushdie's life are allegory for the unavoidable world-historical collision between rootless cosmopolitanism and theocratic absolutism, between civilization (with its values of secularism, skepticism, and relativism) and the gathering forces of a new medievalism.

Coming Very Soon

The homestretch now...friends we thought we hadn't seen for a week are complaining that it's been two months.  By Monday, it'll all be over.  For now.

Stay tuned to this space -- we'll be posting a seven-minute movie trailer early next week.  It'll give the best sense so far of what we've captured.  And what we've understood about what it is that we've captured.

Yes, a Nissan Xterra review is still forthcoming.  The damn thing is finally fixed properly.  Hint: it was the tension pulley all along.  But only one person on the continent correctly diagnosed it.  More on who, later.

Tunnel Vision Clarified

There.  It's done.  Well at least for the next 24 hours.  We got the first final cut (oxymoron) completed at the last minute just in time for submission to the International Documentary Film Festival.  A few more tweaks -- and having to weather the idiosyncracies of non-linear editing -- and the Sundance version will be finished.

I think it's true that creative work is something both within and without us (to paraphrase George Harrison).  That maybe the idea is ours, and also something that is floating in the ether, awaiting execution by some corporeal being.  We don't really know what we have until we start putting it together.  This is what the husband and wife team of Open Water discovered in the editing phase, and what're finally understanding.

Certainly, revelations have come to us in stages.  Is it about searching for inspiration as we go independent ourselves?  Is it to explore a lifestyle?  Is it about the creeping/stampeding corporatization of our lives for better and for worse?  Our need to re-engage with each other?  No.  Yes.  Maybe something a little broader than that...

The Bursting Point

David Brooks' New York Times column today is especially on point for Independent America as parallels begin to be drawn between Katrina and 9/11:

The economy and the moral culture are strong. But there is a loss of confidence in institutions. In case after case there has been a failure of administration, of sheer competence. Hence, polls show a widespread feeling the country is headed in the wrong direction.

Katrina means that the political culture, already sour and bloody-minded in many quarters, will shift. There will be a reaction. There will be more impatience for something new. There is going to be some sort of big bang as people respond to the cumulative blows of bad events and try to fundamentally change the way things are.

Over and over we heard about this growing mistrust of large instititutions: i.e. government and corporations.  That if anything is going to be done -- if Americans want to resume control -- it'll have to happen closest to home first.  That means hometown security through self-sufficiency and an engaged citizenry.

Also check out this weekend's op-ed in the Guardian about fears of the huge British  grocery chains ruining diversity of thought through homogenous, "top-ten" magazine and book inventories.

Production update: the first real edit of the documentary is turning out to be much longer than I imagined.  Too much of a good thing I'm afraid -- 80 minutes too much.  Ruthless trimming, shaving and polishing will ensue this week.

What We've Discovered

The expedition for Independent America was like mining for some rare and precious mineral beneath a ton of rock.  We dug a lot, trucked a lot out, and only now, with a lot of chipping away, do we know what we have. 

The first draft of the script is done, and yes, the shiny metal needs a lot of polishing.  But it is still shiny metal.  It's value just revealed itself to us over time. Now we know what we have.  And what it's worth.

From 70 hours of tape, to 4 hours to this.  We're aiming for an 80-minute feature film or less.  Dense, concentrated, full of energy.  We also still have the Amsterdam and Sundance film festivals clearly in our sights.  Nightline has gone away, but as veterans of the network news wars, we almost  expected this -- the winds blow a different direction depending on the time of day.

Three major themes inform Independent America:

(1) There's a growing hunger for community in the country -- an appreciation for relationships and civic responsibility.  A realization that since we can control so little of what is happening in the outside world, what we can control closer to home matters more than ever.  Citizenship vs. consumerism.

(2) There's a growing unease about the country's transformation from manufacturing to service, and where that leaves the economy.  Wal-Mart jobs vs. GM jobs.

(3) There's an ideological divide out there, certainly.  But it's less red state/blue state and more a reflection of the role of large, powerful, sometimes dominant instutitions.  The concentration of corporate power vs. diversity and democracy.  Private property rights vs. the public good.

On top of that, we have an entertaining, informative story to tell you about a certain trip a married couple and their dog took across America in the summer of 2005 before Katrina, before gas prices went through the roof and before we truly understood the importance that Mom & Pop play in our lives.

The Experiment that is IA

It's abnormally cold and rainy here in Kelowna today.  Perfect weather for chaining myself once again to a desk for the massive edit ahead.  Everything is going much more slowly than expected.  We certainly have the "goods."  Just an overwhelming bounty it seems.

Not enough for Independent American Tod Murphy.  He suddenly shut down his Farmers Diner last week -- looks like they weren't making enough money.  Hopefully it's temporary as they retool and aim to open a larger restaurant elsewhere in Vermont.

The high definition material we shot on the trip looks terrific on my 1080i monitor.  Except now I finally see all the dust and dirt we accumulated on the lense -- something my lower-rez viewfinder failed to reveal while "in the field."  The computer's dual G5 processors are working overtime trying to deal with all that video information.  So far so good.  It's just all so experimental still.  Thankfully, for occasional old world time-outs, there's guitar playing and The Citizenship Papers.