Transcript:
Justin Joseph Hall:
Welcome to Feature & a short where an appointed contributor chooses one feature and one short to present to an audience, one film they've been involved in, one they haven’t. My name is Justin Joseph Hall. This week, we have presenter Bruce Lithimane. Bruce Lithimane is a commercial cinematographer and creative director and a film history buff.
He enjoys great independent cinema around the world, and today he brought his foreign language narratives to watch. The first film, entitled Échappé, is a ballet film shot in the US and the main stars are Russian. Bruce was the Steadicam Operator as well as Second AC. The short movie starred Olesya Senchenko who is a Russian model who lives in New York. And here's Bruce giving us an introduction to the film.
0:52
Bruce Lithimane:
I’ll give, like, a breakdown, so I'm Bruce Lithimane. I am a commercial artist, I guess is the best term in New York. Um, I am completely self-taught. Because of my love for film, I was able to kind of translate what makes film pretty interesting into viable skill sets later on in life. So, it's all ode to film. I never studied commercials. I only studied film.
Bruce Lithimane:
So both films tonight are actually subtitled original language films. The first one we're going to watch is a film I worked on for three days called Échappé, which is a period piece shot in Jersey about two Russian siblings that are touring America, and they're getting ready to defect. This is during the Cold War in the 80s. So, really interesting movie about motivation behind, you know, loyalty and, and what you, what you love to do. And, and is that even worth it?
Justin Joseph Hall:
After watching Échappé, which was incredibly beautiful. We had a discussion, the short film and Bruce's involvement with it.
Bruce Lithimane:
So Beth Napoli was the DP. Uh, Allison Mattox is the director, writer, executive producer of it. Beth is married to someone who I believe is in R&D at RED. So we shot this on, like, a RED Epic 8K camera. It is insane.
Audience:
8K?
Bruce Lithimane:
8K. It was 8K. It would fill up four terabyte SSD’s in 40 minutes.
Audience:
Really?
Bruce Lithimane:
Yeah.
Audience:
(laughter)
Bruce Lithimane:
They finished it in 4K, not 8K just because editing an 8K, I believe, is like still quite difficult, especially when you're using Avid.
Audience:
Yeah.
Bruce Lithimane:
Right. And yeah, this was actually, you know, it was a funded short film which I love for many reasons, mainly because then you have people that work in the industry. You're not kind of throwing a ragtag crew together, even though no one had worked together previously.
But I'd never worked with a group of 20 professionals that had never met, and it was probably the smoothest experience I've had on, on set mainly because of budget. Because you have things like coffee and PAs and set designers because again, it's a period piece. But, you know, I think it turned out super beautifully. They're currently shopping it around to some distributors. Um, it's playing in Traverse City tomorrow, if not tonight.
Audience:
Oh, really?
Bruce Lithimane:
Yeah. So we got into Traverse City. We got into a couple other film festivals. I was Second AC on it, so I would help set up the camera, make sure everything is charged, passed off stuff to DIT when things were full. But, main job on this set was Steadicam Operator. So, a rig like a RED Epic is once you put a bunch of shit on it, it's like, ends up being 70, 80 pounds. And so I, you know, had this rig on my back like 4 to 6 hours a day.
And the original thought was I was going to move around and we're going to kind of edit it together as a kinetic type of music video. They decided to get rid of all that stuff and just use the static shots. But I was dancing with them for several hours when we shot this. And, and you know, I had not rehearsed with them.
Yeah, it was very insane because like, you're on a stage, you can fall off of it. There's like a eight, eight-foot drop off and I'm spinning around in circles trying to keep up with them. ‘Cause if you are working with real ballet dancers, they move incredibly quickly, incredibly powerfully,
Audience:
(laughter)
Bruce Lithimane:
and I'm trying to keep up with them.
Audience:
(claps)
Bruce Lithimane:
Funny little tidbit about that movie, everything got ADR’d afterwards, which is,
Audience:
Oh, really?
Bruce Lithimane:
Which is where you have to go into,
Audience:
Oh, they did a great job…
Bruce Lithimane:
a studio and record the lines because the, the costumes were so loud.
Audience:
Oh, really?
Bruce Lithimane:
Yeah. Like at first I thought they were crazy because I've never, ever been a part of anything where you go into a studio and overdub every line.
Audience:
Every single…
Bruce Lithimane:
Every single line.
Audience:
Well, they say most Hollywood films are 90% dubbed.
Bruce Lithimane:
Yeah, now they are. Yeah. I love Beth because she has this slew of short films, but she's also an amazing commercial DP too. Sometimes you will, like, separate both worlds, right? They say, I only do film. I don't touch commercial because it's beneath me. And I love the fact that she's like, I like making art no matter where it’s, it’s…
Audience:
Yeah.
Audience:
That’s like Bob Dylan's respect.
Bruce Lithimane:
Yeah.
Audience:
But she does dance also?
Bruce Lithimane:
No, no, that, that was a double.
Audience:
What?
Bruce Lithimane:
Yeah (laughs).
Audience:
No way.
Bruce Lithimane:
Yeah. Dude, are you saying you're confusion?
Audience:
I'm just saying.
Bruce Lithimane:
(laughs) But, like, you know, also you have to understand the scale, like. So someone like Tom Cruise, and you have a lot of time, you can afford to train him. It's kind of backwards, but it's actually cheaper to hire a double to just do it.
Audience:
Yeah, that’s an interesting-
Bruce Lithimane:
Great.
Audience:
point.
Audience:
…Wow.
Bruce Lithimane:
Yeah. Olesya is a Russian runway model in the United States. She's super successful here as a model.
Audience:
Oh, okay.
Audience:
Oh.
Bruce Lithimane:
Right.
Audience:
Yeah.
Bruce Lithimane:
They wanted Russian-speaking actors, like native Russian actors and they wanted Olesya because she was-
Audience:
They wanted her?
Bruce Lithimane:
semi-famous. They did want her because she’s semi-famous. But those two, um, dancers are, they perform at Lincoln Center I think like five nights a week. They're like legit ballet dancers. They're not just ballet people. They're like the-
Audience:
Right, they’re not,
Bruce Lithimane:
pinnacle of U.S
Audience:
uh…
Bruce Lithimane:
ballet dancers.
Audience:
starving for…
Bruce Lithimane:
No, no, no.
Audience:
It was beautiful…
Bruce Lithimane:
Yeah, go, thank you.
Stephanie Gould:
Yeah.
Akiva Zamcheck:
It’s a great thing. Like that, there was a really lovely grain to it.
Bruce Lithimane:
I'm sure they added it in post…
Audience:
???
Bruce Lithimane:
Well, well actually, I don't think so. They poorly lit stuff so that they could crank up the ISO or the grain.
Audience:
Okay.
Bruce Lithimane:
Because it's a look now.
Audience:
To give it that…
Bruce Lithimane:
Right. Exactly. Yeah.
Justin Joseph Hall (as narrator):
After the discussion, while we had already been consuming Japanese alcohol, whiskey and beer, Bruce gave us a little intro to Postman Blues. Postman Blues, that's my best Japanese, which is a very interesting comedy, independent flick. And while we were watching, raw fish was brought out, sashimi to consume along with the characters.
Bruce Lithimane:
The reason I picked this is because this is my favorite movie that is, like, artsy. Everyone talks a lot about, like, some of, like, Guy Ritchie. He's, you know, takes a crime caper, makes it suspense, makes it comedy. It's nice. He did Lock, Stock, Two Smoking Barrels.
Akiva Zamcheck:
(chuckles), that’s our favorite movie!
Bruce Lithimane:
Really, Lock, Stock?
Audience:
(chatter)
Bruce Lithimane:
Yeah, yeah! So, so, so that's a, that's a suspense crime thriller-
Audience:
(laughter) Yeah.
Bruce Lithimane:
mixed, mixed with a fucking comedy. Like,
Audience:
Yeah.
Bruce Lithimane:
you're dead on comedy.
Audience:
Like…
Bruce Lithimane:
Yeah.
Audience:
(laughter)
Bruce Lithimane:
And so this has, this has elements of that. Right. But it's just done in a different way. I typically hate fusion. I'm a purist at heart. But like, when it's done really well, it’s like amazing. Japanese cinema’s very similar to Korean cinema.
Audience:
Yeah.
Bruce Lithimane:
It's very, very methodical. The beats are very freeform and you'll notice that very quickly in this film. There's not a rhythm to it, it’s just stuff happening. Um, scenes probably go on 10 seconds too long a lot. But this film is about my favorite two things in the world, honestly, isolation and connection. Right? It tells a story about isolation and how he just feels like he doesn't understand anyone in the world and then he finds a connection.
And that's why it's, it's just a beautiful film in many ways. Not, not just a theme being told to its utmost potential but also it, its, its genre mixes. There's action, there's comedy, there's a rom com in there. It's just very beautiful and I think it has an amazing ending. Uh, I'm actually going to steal the ending. You guys will see it when, when you see it.
Akiva Zamcheck:
You're making a film?
Bruce Lithimane:
Well, I'm, I’m, I’m, actually this is called Postman Blues. I'm going to make a film called Brooklyn Blues which is based in Brooklyn but the exact same themes, themes of isolation and connection. And I'm going to make a short of it, but I'm definitely going to reference that it is inspired by this, this director whose name is SABU, goes by one name.
Stephanie Gould:
SABU?
Bruce Lithimane:
Sabu. I'll be the megalomaniac on that one. I'll be the, the director and the director of photography on it. Hopefully.
Justin Joseph Hall:
Why do you want to make the short of this movie?
Bruce Lithimane:
Because I don't think more than 100,000 people saw this fucking movie.
Audience:
And why is it important to see it?
Bruce Lithimane:
Because it's one of the coolest stories and the way it's told is one of the coolest ways I've ever seen any modern story told.
Audience:
When you watch it, what do people say to you?
Bruce Lithimane:
Oh, typically people think the movie is too slow and it's too random and there's not enough going on, which I completely disagree with. Obviously, a lot of people agree and disagree with it.
Audience:
It's true. We disagree with it.
Bruce Lithimane:
(laughs) Why, why do you disagree with it though?
Audience:
Because everything's setting up the next joke and it has a flow from-
Bruce Lithimane:
Right.
Audience:
scene to scene.
Bruce Lithimane:
And again, to me, maybe I'm just too affected by it. But when I watch it even that time with you guys laughing, to me it's like, it's not as funny to me when I watch it now. And I’ve-
Audience:
Because you know the ending.
Bruce Lithimane:
Because I know the ending and I know, like, the gravitas of, like, what they're trying to tell. And he does this, like, uh, 4, 5 shot reveal, tempo thing a lot, where typically if, if you show the beginning of an action, you have to cut to what happened at the end of the action. But he actually cuts to, like, 4 or 5 reactions before he actually shows what the fuck happened.
Justin Joseph Hall:
And sometimes he doesn't.
Bruce Lithimane:
Yeah, and sometimes he doesn’t even show the ending or the, yeah, what happened.
Stephanie Gould:
Or he shows that like…
Bruce Lithimane:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. I, I would actually want to hear like a true, true, because I, I, I'm a film nerd.
(robotic sounding voice):
Fucking Leon from the professional stream… super pretentious…
Bruce Lithimane:
Do you guys ever watch Enemy, Jake Gyllenhaal?
Faster computer voice montage:
What the fuck is that? But he was super famous in Australia…
Justin Joseph Hall:
That’s Feature & a short. If you want anything more by Fourwind Films, please follow us on social media, f-o-u-r-w-i-n-d-f-i-l-m-s on any platform. We are also premiering a short film of our own this month entitled Abuela’s Luck. The debut will be August 25th at AMC Theater, Times Square in New York City and if you want to buy tickets, please go to the New York Latin Film Festival website and you can buy them there. We will also be at the screening so come say hi. All right. Tune in next month for another edition. Thank you. Thank you very much.
