August 1, 2005

• Yesterday, I decided to head over to Malediction, a goth happening on Sunday. That brought back some memories in its own way.

  

  Randy, the owner of the batpack, who supplied most of my extras for Club Metroid scene (yeah yeah, I named it after that Nintendo game) was organizing the event. I had a chance to meet up with the extras and get to know them as individuals. I always love hanging around with extras. You always get to know a little bit more about your ambience if you take the time to understand the dynamics of your extras. Who knows, you might find something you really like, like a special trait from someone that you could use in your film!

  I have to admit that the extras from the batpack were amongst the best that I have worked with. They do not complain much and put up with a lot more blood, sweat and tears than most average humans would. I cannot express how much I appreciate working with them and will continue to work with them. Hopefully, with every film, the numbers will get bigger and bigger.

  
  

  
  

  I think the batpack are a very underrated group. When looking at the dynamics of any film, directors use a lot of tricks like foreground, texture, depth of field to create a sense of realism in a universal tone. That's what I see the batpack as. Perfect fore and background. When taking a look at our world, it consist mainly of all different kinds of people. You'll be narrow to think that what I am saying is different races, nationalities .etc. No, I'm talking about culture! Our world is nothing without culture. Yes, we have chinese culture, korean, japanese, german, american culture. But take a look at the goth culture, the punk, everywhere in the world, they are the same. Seems to me we are very unifying ourselves by being a part of it. Nothing wrong with being a cheerleader or soccer mom, if it rocks your boat...hey...all the more power to you and the pope.

  
  

  
  

  Talking to Randy, I learn that directors tend to use the batpack to emphasize the underground or extreme aspect of a current scene. It's funny, I hope I am going the right direction because I use them for the opposite reason. I use them to unify my movie and make it real in my world and the world we live in. Maybe I'm bias, but I like the goth culture because it seems so real to me. No pretention, no discrimination. Many people have asked me, 'But why Pearry, aren't they the disturbed, the mentally depressed kind of people, why do you want to use them?' Well, think about it. If someone is really distrubed? Could they feel depression (aka extreme sadness)? How do you feel extreme sadness without knowing extreme happiness? If you ask yourself these questions, maybe you would understand why they are underrated.

  There is a lot of things in this world that I do now know or claim to know the answers to. Through film, I explore and try to emphatize, understand and feel them. Sometimes through films, I damage myself. But the beauty of it is, in films, I heal myself.

  • 4:21 pm
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