Andrew Blackwood's SLAP
Well, here we have it, a first for Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule, the world premiere of a new film! It's by budding filmmaker, blogger and SLIFR O.G. Andrew Blackwood, it's entitled Slap, and I haven't the first idea what it's about or whether it's any good or not. (I do hope it's violent!) All I know is that it's four minutes long. And with that revealed, now we can go into this adventure together fresh as cow's milk. At Andrew's request, I'd like to invite all of you readers, lurkers as well as known entities, to watch the movie and then take a few moments to let Andrew know what you think of the project. He's open to all kinds of criticism, suggestions, praise and commentary. The only thing I ask it that the tone remain civil (however, in the odd event that there's something inflammatory in the movie, fire away!) and in the spirit of genuine interest in the movie. Hopefully it'll turn into a mini blog-a-thon, and perhaps Andrew himself will join in the conversation later in the day.
And now, without further ado, the world premiere of Andrew Blackwood's latest short film, Slap.
Well, that was interesting...
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58 comments:
I love it. Are these two playing a game compared to the staring game? Instead of "Who will blink the first" it becomes "Who will start crying the first". I love how Andrew plays with the editing rules, especially the crossing the line one. It creates an amazing and interesting visual.
Stirring, Interesting, good acting, and minimalistic. That's a good recipe.
I like it very much, Andrew.
Was any harm done to an actor in this movie. :)
Gur
I love the idea and the actors have very compelling faces, however, I have a few small suggestions.
The background behind the girl kept changing, and it was distracting. I wondered if that was part of the concept or not. Also, the colors could be tweaked a bit to have the two look like they were in the same environment. It was visually jarring how the guy was under the shadow of a tree, but the woman was in the sunlight.
Also, what if the "flash" of black (that occurs when the person is getting slapped) was white instead? When we get smacked in the face (or even close our eyes momentarily), we see a white burst or a field that's a shade of gray approaching white.
It's just some nitpicky stuff. Great short, though!
as well as known entities A direct call out to Bill.
First, I just have to get this joke out of my system - Who wrote the dialogue? Okay, sorry.
I love short films of all kinds (this film reminds me of what Bill and I have been doing today on my own blog - hopefully the friendship will not end). Not that we've been slapping each other but in the film the two are smiling until the fisticuffs begin. It shows how two people can be on the same page until a perceived wrong occurs and a small slap can escalate into something more divisive and brutal. Although Bill and I backed off, at Bill's civil urging - he's a good egg.
Andrew - Have you ever watched Norman McLaren's Neighbors, his short film from I believe 1952. It's readily available on YouTube. If you haven't seen it give it a look. I felt the two of you were approaching the same idea from slightly different angles.
I remember going to short film festivals in the eighties and noticing by the early nineties that short films had started to become mini-movies, with plots, setups, 1st, 2nd and 3rd acts, etc. I like the old school of short film, like in Neighbors or here with Slap where the shortness of the length allows the filmmaker to be entirely experimental with his concept.
Great job Andrew.
And Dennis - Does this mean I can now start sending you my short films for world premieres? If so I promise: No home movies. And Bill better give me a good review.
"Slap" is sort of like Neil Labute's career reduced to a few minutes.
Jonathan - Don't sweat it. We're good. In fact, we're so good that if more people were like us, there would be no more wars. And people wouldn't slap each other, either.
found it a bit disturbing and revealing. when she slaps him, it dignifies her. she smiles. growing up mexican novelera, I was often used to seeing women slapping men to put them in their place -so to speak. i thought, he probably deserved it. it's innocent and she got her anger out in an acceptable way. when he slapped her the situation was different. usually a man who slaps a woman is seen as less of a man, and he better have a very good reason. seems like he slapped her as a reaction, as a response and not as a statement. we dont' see men hitting women especially on television -even action movies involving men and women fighting usually involve a female hero who ends up winning (the blows she get are more painful to the viewer and not highlighted). This film presents them as equals and yet it brings out that they are not.
Those are very interesting points, Rocio.
Please slap me for wasting my time watching that.
Who'd like to have the honor?
Why can't everyone be like us Bill?
Anyway, I'm just bursting with "short film" jokes that I never have the opportunity to use:
Is there a director's cut?
Okay, no more. But Andrew, are you going to chime in? I really enjoy short works like this (even if anonymous doesn't - is this the same anonymous always going off about Pauline Kael and pirates?) and I'd love to hear some of your thoughts on why you decided to make it and what inspired the idea.
And I'd like to thank Dennis for conveniently ignoring my question about SLIFR becoming the new home for Jonathan Lapper movie premieres. I promise I'd submit no more than five a week.
It was ... I like... the part... when he... when she...
Oh hell, it's more than I've managed to do, except for the drive-in clip mind you.
Interesting feel in how it made me wonder what it was that they were thinking. I wasn't sure if she was laughing or crying and that freaked me a little. The dude was obviously pissed at her violent outbursts towards him so his emotions were black & white.
Jonathan, you're far too sensitive! I've only just now been able to stop down from work to look in on what's happening here. But I'd sure love to see your films if you're willing to share. And that's not an easy thing to do, putting yourself out there like that-- even knowing that you're probably going to get some good constructive comments, you're also opening yourself up to the level of discourse "Anonymous" has offered us here today.
That said, I'd be interested in what Andrew has to say too... but only after I've had a chance to see the film myself. Gotta drive the family home from the office-- I'll see it tonight from the luxury of my own home.
Drive-in Dude: To which clip do you refer?
You mean you don't ignore your job to comment on your blog? You have willpower my friend.
If I had anything new I would gladly submit it. Give me six months and maybe I'll send something your way. I'll even throw in several unauthorized Kael quotes to make anonymous happy. And of course Bill will have to make a cameo.
I thought it was an interesting exercise in violent minimalism, and worked as such, importantly the length was about right. (These kinds of films often have a way of going on and on. This stopped about when it needed to.) I will say that I could have done without the slo-mo..assuming that was Andrew's film and not my internet connection.
And Dennis got his violence!
Dennis... I meant all of the clips.
Realistically, from concept to shooting it is a deeply personal revealing prospect as far as a film project is concerned. Even more so when someone is learning how to use film to tell a story.
I made light of the issue when I said I only had made drive-in clips but the truth of the matter is I've worked on everything from a 3 minute PSA to a 19 minute 65mm project as a spec idea for Imax.
None of it was easy. I will admit some are easier than others and Andrew is rightly commended for his SLAP project. It's easy to be critical without knowing the cost of what was entailed to make a creative statement, if statement is the right description for Andrew's film.
As your beloved Pauline Kael said, great films are not always perfect, and by all means SLAP is not anyway close to being perfect. But it is a step that should be celebrated and reviewed, all at the same time.
For me, it's a rather tantalizing, rather maddening film--I thought the actors were both really good, and I liked the way the slaps were created visually (and was it just my computer, or did the sound drop out entirely partway through?). I have a hard time with the slapped face: I think it's such a final kind of gesture, in real life, and unless I really, really deserved it, I think my own reaction to being slapped in the kisser would be to hate and shun the slapper forever or take some other drastic action. All in all, after this and Andrew's last film, I want to see more of what he can do!
This is the filmmaker.
I had some questions I should have asked earlier.
(First, if you could, say things you liked about it, even if just small parts or elements.)
1) Does it feel too long?
2) What is the theme (if one)? Or what did you get out of it?
3) Is the lack of sound other than slaps uncomfortable or okay?
4) Better with music?
5) Do you sympathize with one of the characters more?
6) Any opinions on the ending? Or interpretations?
Some people already started to do this, but what questions do you have about it or for me?
Criticisms and overall opinions also welcome! (I have no problem with lack of civility. Anonymous's comment was also useful to me.)
- The Mysterious A)dri.an B|eta)m[ax (this is my pseudonym on Dennis's Web site.)
Not sure what Andrew was trying to say or accomplish. I was holding out for a "happy ending" or reconciliation, but didn't find either. Perhaps Andrew can reveal the answer.
There is a lot of different emotions
going on there. The actors are incredible.
Their faces reflect it all. And we have a "condensé" of how fast things can degenerate. How violence can easily explode. In a very short time, Andrew shows us a variety of feelings that have been no doubt experienced by all human genre, even in dreams!
Bravo, Laurence
I really liked this film. It feels like an on-screen metaphor of a degeneration of a relationship. I think it captures all the stages of a failed relationship. From strangers to wanting to get to know each other, to mutual understanding, then conflict, escalating to the slaps, (the slow motion slaps kind of "The Matrix" style was comedic) then to unresolved issues and finally back to being strangers. It's very realistic to me but not in the literal sense.
For future purposes, I guess, for comic relief, I have to see this after I get dumped or after I dump someone. So I can have light of the situation in a comedic sense.
Good job, Andrew!
Andrew Blackwood has done it again with "Slap," his delicious take on contemporary gender wars and the orgiastic self-indulgent sadomasochism which underly them.
As with his "Elements," a stylistic homage to "Backdraft," Andrew again channels his inner Howard and gives us something with a sexual frisson that was so salient in "Far and Away." With each slap, we feel the anger, confusion and desire which are inherent in contemporary male-female relations. Are these slaps due to challenges in the workplace, the home, or just simple fetishistic hunger? Perhaps there's no one right answer. When the camera angles up towards the woman, are we being forced to confront femininity in a new and different way? Who knows? It's all positively "Da Vinci Code" in it's cinematic riddles.
Kudos to Andrew Blackwood! You've done it again!
I have no idea what everybody is talking about.
I thought it was positively dreadful. "Minimalism"? "Neil LaBute"? Are you serious?
The whole thing struck me as primitive and fatalistic in a very callow way. A relationship disintigrating into a slapping fight. Very enlightening! Very deep! I'm reluctant to truck out the M word (misogyny), as there is no way to really avoid it when depicting a man and a woman slapping each other (if he struck first and then she went at it, I would inevitably call it for being overly reactive misandrist). But it struck me as the work of a teenage boy who just broke up with his girlfriend.
I hated the use of sound. Only using the slaps came off as smart-ass to me, the death knell for the amateur filmmaker. It's cute.
I'm not quite sure why this is. To be fair, it does work into the film's ridiculous overly simplistic worldview-- the slap is ultimately the only thing that matters and the only thing we'll ever hear. Pain is the universal language.
Maybe LaBute is an apt comparison and it's only because he properly dramatizes his superficial fashionably nihilistic ideas that we don't see as much how limited his scope is. When a director like Blackwood limits himself to only a few elements his stupidity is more fully exposed.
I think he might have actually been serious, but it sure doesn't come out that way. The idea that he's treating this as all a joke might be my way of compensating for how intellectually and emotionally bankrupt the entire excercise is.
It's really a terrible terrible piece of work. Go back to the drawing board.
In a word, this is truth...truth in a bombasticaaly derivative package. Generally, when a message is delivered with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, I cringe. But if I am not mistaken, that is the whole point with this contemporary take on "I Love You Alice B. Toklas." Framed within that gestalt, it works, and it works well. My hat's off (and hand's off) to Mr. Blackwood, a guy who seems to know his way around a pillbox hat (thank you, Mr. Zimmerman).
Ah, I see we have Mr. Jackson, who is far from the first or the last young writer who discovers he can write, and decides that the best use of it is to be the nastiest critic he can.
I thought being the nastiest critic possible was the whole point of Film Freak Central.
Well, Alex, to be fair just because a movie does not have an extensive plot, dialogue or complicated editing doesn't make it bad. I understand the frustration of being a filmmaker and viewing other people's work and thinking, "That's so simple, mine is better." But except in cases of something working towards harmful or hateful propaganda I don't believe we should be so dismissive of other's work.
I viewed your film on your website and saw some good and some bad. I'm at work so I can't really take the time to view it again and give you a full review but I know from making short films the frustration of having an idea and not having the technology to get it accomplished. We resign ourselves to bad sound, bad dubbing, limited editing choices and poor lighting that never is used in any artistic way beyond illuminating the scene. That said, I think Slap is well shot and cleverly done. Yes, it's simplistic and I would not mention it alongside great short works I have seen, but for what it is it works.
In fact, it is so consise and minimal in its construction that there is little else to say about it beyond what most of us have written. As such I would like to hear from Andrew at this point a little about the background: What inspired this, what was his intention, what were the artistic choices and what had to be done due to limited resources, etc.
And I'll give your film another look as well later and give you feedback on your on page.
Make that last part - "own page"
That there have been so many requests to hear about things that should be self-evident in the film reveals its limitations. That said, I got the same criticisms with my first short, so I can commiserate. So yeah, it doesn't really work for me, but don't give up.
Here's my take on Adrian's film.
Films, whether short or long, I believe are a representation of real life. No matter how clear the answer is or how evident the director makes the film with or without dialogues. As a viewer, I would often find myself curious about one part of the story, the actions, the expressions...It's human nature to be curious, to not be satisfied with what the visual perceives. It's the imagination that takes us to a different realm and forces us to confront the questions that boggles the mind.
It also should be taken in consideration, that most of the time, real life has no closures. There are no possible reconciliations...and unfortunately, no happy endings.
I see the film for what it is...a relationship that has reached the end of the line. Perhaps, the slap signifies a certain finality. An end, maybe it was too harsh....but it also represents the dialogue...of words exchanged in the past...of pain...and finally being able to unleash the anger on both sides.
As you know, I have limited experience with short films but as a complete outsider I loved it but of course, I loved elements more..:)
You're on the right track kiddo. My debt is now paid. :)
I think it's the Kuleshov experiment with two faces. The only dialog (the only recorded sound!) is the device of the slap. We don't have to know the specific words that the slap represents. We get the gist. Good faces, too. A clever comment on those arguments that may or may not permanently end a relationship -- on the power of words, and on violence in the cinema!
Have to mention, this minimalist student film is much better than either my or Andrew's shorts. Also check out her music video Magic Position, a work I'm dying to talk about through the prism of The Diary of Anne Frank and Sofia Coppola, but am not quite sure how.
But generally, yes, because I have made a short myself I often see these minimalist filmmakers as simply not trying hard enough. They're not necessarilly any better than those that attempt to stuff in every visual effect and camera trick they know into the work.
Well, I do look forward to your review Jonathan. Show me no mercy.
Hi! I'm the filmmaker whose shorts are graciously recommended in Alex's previous comment.
First: for what it’s worth, I’m less bothered by Alex’s remarks than by the comments of several others, who lavish such praise as to corrupt the critical faculties of the artist. Better to get your teeth kicked in than to be spoiled, or else to be paralyzed by expectation.
Regarding the short, I don’t think it works. Simply, slapping must be the thing successfully described, or it must be used to successfully describe something else.
There is nothing in this short that captures the experience of being slapped. Slapping is about confrontation, damage, and social transgression. Yet the two characters never appear in the same frame to confront each other, nor are we, the audience, confronted: neither character looks into the camera, nor is there anything aggressive about the visuals or the audio that would make us feel as if our space had been invaded.
In the same vein, there isn’t any evocation of violence. (An egghead might say, the piece lacks any objective correlative.) If you don’t want the actors to actually slap each other, you have to find another way to describe the suffering. One—albeit, hacky— example would be to intercut her face with shots of a television being smashed with a crowbar. If you can successfully tie the idea of her slapped face with the idea of the smashed television—a real event documented—then that’s the beginning of an honest reaction in the viewer.
Finally, there is no attempt to evoke the response of society. What’s interesting about slapping is that it’s so crazy inappropriate. You don’t necessarily need the reaction shot of some stunned passerby; however, I feel like there needs to be a third party, SOME perspective, or else it’s just the sweet nothings of aliens.
If you don’t in fact want to describe the act of slapping, but to use slapping to describe something else... you would need to use real slapping. Again, an event must be captured, that’s what cameras are for.
SUCKS!!!!!
Dammit Rachel, why do you have to make me love you so much?
I still say anonymous should write for Entertainment Weekly. Gotta be better than Owen Glieberman right?
Well Rachel probably gave the most useful review for Andrew so far. I agree as a filmmaker it is sometimes more helpful (though painful) to hear a straight story.
Alex, I really want to give your film another look and now Rachel's too. Just give me some time. I'm going through some busy year end stuff at work. Maybe if I ever get my stuff up, you could give mine a look. And anonymous could tell me it sucks. And then Bill could tell him to cram if full of walnuts.
MAB, I did like this short film. On par with Elements and your first one-shotter. I didn't get the tree one though. Anyway, I find slapping a very personal way of attacking someone. In other words, you only slap the ones you love. Or the ones you want to humiliate, which can be the same thing. If you really wanted to hurt a person or get some real steam out, you'd go to the knuckle sandwich or crowbar. Sometimes when I argue or discuss things with my loved ones, I have a compulsion to just devolve the whole thing and slap the other person. Whether they slap me back or not doesn't matter, though it seems only fair. I liked the actors' expressions, although the less close-up zoomy shots were kind of confusing to me. I maybe would have liked more bruises, a cut lip or something, tears, just to signify physical consequence, but that may have been above your budget. I like the no music, but loud slaps. And I would have liked a more emotional ending-- not hugging and making up, but showing the emotional consequence of when you take something between people who love/really like each other to that primal, physical level of assault-insult. It's never worth it, and nothing's ever the same again. Keep on keeping on, Andrew.
Andrew,
I liked the film. Expressions were great. Don't know if I'm comfortable with females getting slapped. Camera work was very good.
"Alex Jackson"-- If that is your real name. Outrageous! Your critique of Andrew Blackwood's marvelous oeuvre, "Slap," is beyond the pale!
I can see why you might have problems with it, judging from the twisted, occult sensibilities so pervasive in your "Hieronymous Bosh's Heck." The stick figure head which opens your piece (calling to mind the Masonic All-Seeing Eye) alerts the viewer to the Anton Lavey inspirations that simply litter your film. Note the use of the "Pig Man," an ancient symbol of the Prince of Darkness. Pig Man makes chairs disappear then kills without remorse. Blood splatters throughout the film, the sacred, sacrificial liquid of the Dark Realm. We later watch a woman commit ritual suicide, no doubt to sacrifice her immortal soul to the cloven-hoofed Bringer of Destruction. Finally, the piece ends with a dark-robed hand changing television channels. Clearly, it's Beelzebub showing us that he is the real power behind "Hieronymous." The film ends with the Fallen Angel finishing a bowl of cereal, which certainly represents the devouring of our souls.
Next Alex recommends "Roman: A Suitable Case for Treatment." Well, of course he does.
"Roman" is yet another demonic exercise, yet this time with overt sapphic currents. We see a lovely young lady, the very picture of innocence, recite from a book about the Manson Murders ("Helter Skelter"?), the very symbol of ritualistic madness. Off screen another woman begins to tempt her, whisper to her, battle her, till she succumbs to this sexual predator's aggression and ends as little more than a puppet of the other woman's demonic charms!
Shame on you, "Alex"! This isn't cinema, it's perversion! Where "Slap" invites us to use film as a tool of intellectual exploration, your two films simple tempt us to corrupt our souls and bodies in a cataclysm of dark and carnal mysticism!
This premiere now officially rivals the riotous premiere of The Rite of Spring.
Dennis, I applaud you.