Week #1

---

The project’s inaugural film is an abstract piece resulting from video I’ve been collecting for the past year or two. I’ve been shooting light in motion whenever it happens to present itself to me and I’ve finally compiled some of these shots into this short. It’s scored with a piece of choral music from my talented friend, the musician and composer John Mehrmann, who’s work you’ll be hearing more of as the project unfolds over the next year.

In preparation for this year long project I decided that, in addition to shooting new footage along the way, I would revisit some of the footage I’ve shot and archived over the years. It’s been a real joy rediscovering video that never found its way into a released film. This week’s film is such a case. Shot over eight years ago, it’s a little memory of a morning spent in one of my favorite places with one of my favorite people.

Summer is moving along and soon it will be Autumn, my favorite time of year. This week’s film transports us ahead a few weeks and takes us on visit to Maine’s Rockport Harbor on a blustery October day. This short features another original piece of music by the talented John Mehrmann, this one created specifically for this film.

A few years ago I was invited to accompany the Art Students League on a trip to Beijing to visit the artist Ai Weiwei. During our week long stay, I shot a lot of footage that I've never used.  This week’s film is the first from that trip that will be appearing over the months to come. It’s my record of a day spent among the people of Beijing - on the streets, in the parks and shops. Watch and I think you’ll find that, governments and religions aside, people are people no matter where you travel.

This week’s film gets to the heart of this project. This spring, while dealing with the new reality of living inside a pandemic, I was at our house in Maine, missing my wife but feeling somewhat safe and secluded, at least when compared to what most of the country was going through. I began most days with a walk around Beauchamp Point. It’s a walk I never grow tired of. It captures the best of what this world has to offer - the woods, the sea, flowers, birds and a fresh clean breeze. 

This week’s film began with a piece of choral music from my friend John Merhmann which, when mixed with my admiration for filmmaker Terrence Malick, inspired a rumination on the essence of simple, fleeting moments, the fragility of the natural world and the ephemeral nature of life itself. I hope that it invites each viewer’s personal interpretation because, though I’m reluctant to describe it as such - isn’t that what all successful art should do?

Several years ago I was in New York shooting a promotional film for the Art Students League. For more than a week I roamed the halls and studios with my camera gathering material for the piece. Of course I ended up with much more than I could use and so for this week’s film I thought I’d sweep some of it up off the cutting room floor and create this little day in the life film. While you watch perhaps you’ll catch the scent of oil paint and turpentine hanging in the air.

Back in early March I boarded a plane in Cincinnati on my way to Boston where, via bus and car, I made my way back to our house in Rockport. Once there I began, what at the time was still only a recommended two week quarantine. This week’s film is a self portrait of that period, the many faces of trying to accept what has now, six months later, become our new normal.

Using footage from my archives more than a decade old, this week’s film captures the pleasures of an ordinary moment and the joy of a late spring day. A remembrance of places past and loved ones lost, set to music from John Mehrmann.

This week’s film is just for fun. It started with a shot of rippling water that reminded me of the opening title sequence from the HBO film Empire Falls. Music from that film, combined with footage I hadn’t found a home for in any other piece, resulted in a credit sequence for a nonexistent film. I’ll leave it to all of you to imagine the film that might follow.