2024 09 23
Last night, we watched Ren Faire, the three-part mini series on HBO, and I was kind of blown away by the project. Going in, I’d assumed it was a documentary and my brain was primed for a good doc-viewing experience. Without spoiling anything, I’ll just say that I categorize it in a new still-developing genre of filmmaking that blurs reality with narrative forms of storytelling, and I’m not yet fully sure what to think of it. Much like news has largely become a facts-optional landscape of entertainment-minded-viewer-pleasing content, the genre of documentary filmmaking is going through a similar transformation, with modern tools of moviemaking allowing for some clever new approaches. Stylistically speaking, Ren Faire was one of the best films I’ve seen in recent memory (also, I’m such a sucker for the anamorphic lens work they used).
Today, I came across this quote from Stanley Kubrick:
“A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what's behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.”
While I’m not sure the quote ties in with my thoughts on Ren Faire, I will add that oftentimes I find movies pay too much attention to style and not enough attention to story. While they did some amazing work on the project, especially with editing, audio, and cinematography, you started to get the sense that this crew could make damn near any group of people interesting, so what’s the point of spending so much time learning about this specific group?
All that said, if you are into film at all, give Ren Faire a watch. And now I’m off to try and find a reasonably-priced anamorphic lens.
-Clayton
Preparing for dinner at the Northwoods lake cabin. St Germain, Wisconsin. July, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
Last night, we watched Ren Faire, the three-part mini series on HBO, and I was kind of blown away by the project. Going in, I’d assumed it was a documentary and my brain was primed for a good doc-viewing experience. Without spoiling anything, I’ll just say that I categorize it in a new still-developing genre of filmmaking that blurs reality with narrative forms of storytelling, and I’m not yet fully sure what to think of it. Much like news has largely become a facts-optional landscape of entertainment-minded-viewer-pleasing content, the genre of documentary filmmaking is going through a similar transformation, with modern tools of moviemaking allowing for some clever new approaches. Stylistically speaking, Ren Faire was one of the best films I’ve seen in recent memory (also, I’m such a sucker for the anamorphic lens work they used).
Today, I came across this quote from Stanley Kubrick:
“A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what's behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.”
While I’m not sure the quote ties in with my thoughts on Ren Faire, I will add that oftentimes I find movies pay too much attention to style and not enough attention to story. While they did some amazing work on the project, especially with editing, audio, and cinematography, you started to get the sense that this crew could make damn near any group of people interesting, so what’s the point of spending so much time learning about this specific group? It started skewing into style over substance territory.
All that said, if you are into film at all, give Ren Faire a watch. And now I’m off to try and find a reasonably-priced anamorphic lens.
-Clayton
2024 09 22
Writing is hard. I woke up this morning with a great story playing out in my head. Often, I’ll awake in the middle of the night, in the midst of a dream which seems like an amazing story, only to wake up hours later and reassess the dream in the light of day as not very interesting after all. That said, today’s story was formed in my waking moments, while fully conscious of what I was crafting. Excitedly, I rushed downstairs to my laptop and began to jot down my thoughts on the screen before immediately hitting a wall and losing all momentum. The sentences sounded fantastic in my head but proved impossible to get onto paper. Likely, my conscious brain began to over-think and harshly judge the words once they existed in the actual world, where other people might end up reading them.
All that said, I’m considering this a step in the right direction. Writing is not easy, art is not easy. I know this, but I’m optimistic that continued effort to translate these thoughts into real-life words will eventual pay off, much as my decades-long efforts into photography have given me a more comfortable approach to turning my ideas into photos.
-Clayton
Allison at the cabin in the Northwoods. St Germain, Wisconsin. July, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
Writing is hard. I woke up this morning with a great story playing out in my head. Often, I’ll awake in the middle of the night, in the midst of a dream which seems like an amazing story, only to reassess the dream in the light of day as not very interesting after all. That said, today’s story was formed in my waking moments, while fully conscious of what I was crafting. Excitedly, I then rushed downstairs to my laptop and began to jot down my thoughts on the screen before immediately hitting a wall and losing all momentum. The sentences sounded fantastic in my head but proved impossible to get onto paper. Likely, my conscious brain began to over-think and harshly judge the words once they existed in the actual world, where other people might end up reading them.
All that said, I’m considering this a step in the right direction. Writing is not easy, art is not easy. I know this, but I’m optimistic that continued effort to translate these thoughts into real-life words will eventual pay off, much as my decades-long efforts into photography have given me a more comfortable approach to turning my ideas into photos.
-Clayton