OLDIEO #8 - BOSTON MEMORIES
Hey mom. Glad you decided to visit my site again, considering you’re its only reader.
This is a picture of me and my mom that time we were Asian women.
Today’s post is a short and quick one. We just started casting on our sketch comedy project running in June, and the next two months will be filled with a lot of rehearsal and other time-consuming excitement. To your dismay, I won’t be able to write my normal novel-length posts which you find oh-so fascinating.
On to today’s oldieo!
BOSTON MEMORIES is the first piece I ever shot on film. It’s a 2 1/2 minute portrait of the city I schooled in and grew up near. I scrambled to put the project together as a present for my Dad’s birthday in October 2001. I love making creative presents for family members, and I tried to make this one extra-special for my big-lug-ova-pop.
My father Bobby lived in Boston when he was 17 years old for a few years before meeting Ma and enlisting in the service. He shared an apartment with a few buddies in the Fens, and I still recall stories he told of being able to watch Sox games from his living room window- frankly, I love to picture my father roaming the city as a youth. Considering I was about the same age he was when living in the same area, I decided to shoot my own “Man With A Movie Camera” Boston city-scape to evoke memories of old. I dragged J-Raff out of the dorm to be my cameraman as we bounced around the city one afternoon making this project for my pop.
This is a picture of me and pop on the set of IT RUNS IN THE FAMILY
BOSTON MEMORIES was shot on a 16mm bolex film camera I had purchased before any production class or real shooting experience, and needless to say it looks like something produced by a clueless kid. I had the option to either buy a digital camera or a 16mm, and decided that it was important to learn where film came from before blindly jumping into the digital era like so many other doofuses (doofi?). I bought the camera off ebay for a few hundred bucks- it was a Sweedish bolex with a viewfinder that provided a skewed view of the captured image. Translation: I couldn’t properly see the frame before filming, so I had to guestimate (oh fun memories!). After the camera, I purchased my first light meter for 11 bucks. The thing was from the 1960s and couldn’t register a reading if it were within 10 feet of the Sun’s scorching gases.
My first meter closely resembled this model from the 1960s. Aside from faking light readings, it also doubled as hair clippers or a police dispatch radio.
Having equipment in hand, I bought a 100-foot daylight spool of B&W positive to shoot on. I didn’t have any access to an editing bay, so I had to be content with an in-camera edit (meaning whatever I shot, I must live with). I don’t think I loaded the film in the camera correctly, hence the annoying flashes of overexposure running throughout.
So with these obstacles to hurdle, J-Raff and I pranced around town filming iconic buildings and landscapes the best we could. The little blip moving across the majority of the frames is me. My objective was to create a moving time capsule- something that would remind my father of the city, while capturing images of me as a youth in Boston. Who knows, maybe this site will somehow still exist when I have kids, and they can watch their pop running in an homage to his pop.
Anyway, fond memories of this one. I rushed out a print in time for my father’s birthday, but originally had to dub it to VHS and separately play a music track (A Bill Lee original piece from his son Spike’s SHE’S GOTTA HAVE IT) on CD out of an old boom box. The music in this clip is a random jazz song tacked on for web posting- the original score was much more nostalgic and cool. A nice birthday present, a fair attempt at my first project on film, and good memories of a little snot running around his beloved city with a movie camera.
…NEXT WEEK’S OLDIEO will kick off a series of posts of my last project shot (*cough* 2006 *Jeez!! coughcough*)- a comedy pilot presentation reel I wrote and directed, starring my old pal Garrett Morris.
35 years later and the man hasn’t aged a day. It helps that he looked 65 when he was 20.
Talk to you soon, thanks friends!
Yours truly,
Brent Christo
April 25th, 2008 at 6:49 pm
I read the site and I’m not your mom.
April 25th, 2008 at 7:33 pm
Oh really? Nice try, Ma - I’m the one who nicknamed you “This Guy”!
April 26th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
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