A big long somewhat technical schpeel about 11:11

11:11 is the work of a film and filmmaking junkie. I enjoy every part of the movie making process: writing, production design, cinematography, directing, editing etc. As a kid growing up on the East Coast, some of my most memorable experiences happened at the local art house cinema. I got hooked on great movies from the start: The Bicycle Thief, Persona, Raging Bull, The Conformist… The list is endless.

My idea for creating a backwards movie dates back quite a while to before David Lynch’s amazing bit of filmmaking in Twin Peaks. I got the idea of telling a love story backwards after seeing the brilliant film Betrayal. Failed love is entirely nostalgic and much better in reverse. Anna and Otto’s love for each other is thinner than the skin between two onion layers. They are completely self-centered and superficial human beings. It doesn't matter if they're going backwards because even forwards, they're not evolving. So they may as well be going backwards.

Meanwhile, my love for backwards imagery probably all started as a child when I was lucky enough to have a Super 8 camera. I still have vivid memories of projecting the reels backwards and laughing out loud.

In the digital world, even though the collection of zeros and ones racing around the capacitors, integrated circuits and logic boards of computers are flat, they don’t have the immediate analog reality of the filmstrip. Hit the rewind button on a projector and suddenly gravity is defied. Use a Panavision special effects camera - like we did - where the camera’s motor allows for variable speed and direction, add some reversing mags, and now you’re running the film through the camera's gate backwards. This allows the footage transferred in telecine to match the original screenplay – rather than the shooting script.

The shooting script is a flip or reversal of the screenplay. For instance, scene 28 of the shooting script is scene 1 of the screenplay. If scene 28 had 5 set-ups, 28E would correspond to the first shot in the screenplay – or the first shot in the story that people would experience seeing the film. If this is making your head spin, try writing backwards, not exactly the script writing equivalent of a Sundays stroll on Boston’s Esplanade. Training your mind around effect preceding cause is extremely unintuitive. In general, the difficulty factor of 11:11 increased in every way as the result of my insistence on telling the story in Z-Y-X order. As you might imagine, everyone told me not to bother. My investors were willing to fund the project, but only if I presented the story in a conventional fashion. I told them we had to perform it that way and that I would create a digital version of the movie that ran forwards. Two movies for the price of one went the pitch. In fact, the producer’s version is twice as long and at the ‘beg-ending’ of the film, it turns around and the story plays out in real time. This is available on the DVD as an Easter Egg as a "Watch the loop" feature. There's also a deleted scene and other footage from the set accompanied by Director commentary on the DVD. But enough with the blah blah blah...

I suppose I could have seen all the negativity around my directing a backwards movie as a vote against my competence as well as a vote for the unlikely success of a mock foreign film. Perhaps both possibilities energized me. I guess I’m of the school that something’s not worth doing if it’s too easy. I know, I'm a bit of a meshugana.

But, I love filmmaking so much I even enjoyed numbering the script for the first AD who sort of just shrugged at me when I told her I needed the shooting script to match the scene order in the screenplay. I even did own assistant editing in this film. (I’m Mark Kram.) This was a real drag as I had to sync up all the sound takes. We tail slated everything while shooting so the slate ended up at the start of each take. After importing the original DATs into the AVID (we shot analog ¼” and then I made DAT clones) I created backwards sound takes using the Audio Suite feature in the AVID and then re-output the new sound takes to new DAT sound masters, then re-input them and got everything synced up for cutting. Brutally boring. The true and completely uncompelling sacrifices we make for art...

Anyway, the other effect of shooting backwards in camera is that the footage looks better. No digital interpolation of backwards movement occurs. Where I could, I also varied the frame rate to add more frames per second. As you all know, film runs at 24 fps while video rate is 30 fps. This all looks life-like to the human eye. But 30 fps – or adding a few more frames to the movement actually creates a more fluid look by adding those extra 6 frames per second. So wherever we could we added more frames per second, to add a more graceful look to the movement of the actors.

Speaking of the actors, Mataji Booker, the female lead had never acted before 11:11. She was a dancer with Lula Washington – an LA based dance troupe, and it was this that got her the role. Working with a first time actor in a piece that required real synchronization in all aspects of the filmmaking process turned out ok, I hope. Mataji's focus and dedication really paid off, I hope. Mataji is a talented musician too. Check out her stuff on her myspace page. I will add that link to a future post.

Doug Bennett as Mac Daddy Otto is amazing too. He's an intense and talented actor.