Filmmaking
Feature film, Faith of Our Fathers
My satiric comment on religion joined to capitalism — the conservative movement of Ronald Reagan. Faith of Our Fathers played the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival, The NY Anthology Film Archives, The Cinequest Festival, The Santa Monica Film Festival, and the Cairo International Film Festival.
Directing Faith of our Fathers
16mm to 35mm optical printer used to blow-up Faith of Our Fathers to 35mm IP. Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, and A Mighty Wind used this printer in Super 16mm to 35mm mode. The printer was also used on Zelig. This was the culmination of six years of labor — hence the smile.
Short films
Making Generations: a 54 minute Sci-Fi film that took three years to finance (playing bass) and make, ca 1977. Musician friends were the crew. Lewis Nash was a dolly grip, which wasn’t easy, as his scenes took place in the ASU music building, which has circular corridors. Generations actually found video distribution in Spain, though it never made back its production costs. I played many “casualties” to pay for it.
Film beginnings…
My first professional work in film began in 1980 at Catalyst Productions in Berkeley, California. The company was run as a collective. On one day I might be directing a public service announcement about the Eureka Theater Company coming back to life — after it had been trashed and burned by agents of the former South African Apartheid regime — the next day placing lavaliere mics on men dying from asbestosis — to depose them as they fought a room full of insurance company lawyers. At Catalyst, I learned that what I felt about economic justice had a basis in political thought. I also edited a film for a company that wanted to build a Monorail system in Las Vegas, for Phil Thompson Productions.
A Showcron 16mm flatbed at Thompson Productions: one picture head, two sound heads. Moviola, KEM, and Steenbeck also created 16mm flatbeds. The Steenbeck chewed less film.
After moving to Los Angeles, I worked shooting 16mm film, picture editing and sound editing for the United Machinist’s Union, Honda, and various companies. I assisted on a documentary about jazz singer Ernie Andrews, and cut the sound effects on the documentary, Convict Cowboy (Texans letting prisoners be trampled by bulls for entertainment). I also edited sequences in Warren Miller ski films, once working a 110-hour week for $300.00! We had a cutting room above a falafel shop, and at the end of the week, I found myself in the emergency room with gastritis. I was very happy to join the Editor’s Guild.
Alan Rudolph’s Trouble In Mind was my first feature film. At the time, having never worked in 35mm, I rented an upright Moviola and spent a week practicing syncing and cutting 35mm magnetic film in the kitchen of our apartment.
All music © and ℗ 2011 by Hamilton Sterling, Helikon Sound, BMI and Jimmy Haslip, LaViera Music, BMI. All rights reserved.
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