Highway Patrolman
Took this photo heading North on the 5, Grapevine CA.
During my last year at AFI I shot what is referred to as the 2nd Year Visual Essay. Forget about the fact that they dont actually let you shoot a visual essay, but rather constrain you to a short silent film - and You come out with what could possibly be a career changing project. The pressure was high. I chose the song “Highway Patrolman” as my inspiration. I listed to the album Nebraska many many times when I was a teenager, It was practically my lullaby. So choosing this song as my inspiration was a no brainer. I wrote a story about 2 brothers that live on opposite sides of the track and one day have a chance encounter that puts one of their lives in danger and the other is forced to intervene. To put it mildly I missed the mark, I asked my friend Dan Cameron to come on as the director and I would focus on cinematography we put together a script and it was off and running. The outcome was that no one who watched the film could pick up on the fact that at the center of the story there were 2 brothers. After many aborted attempt’s at an edit I took a hard tack into the idea on the screen, these are not brothers they are strangers.
When all was said and done I was devastated that the film had not turned out, but as is the case with any great failure in a creative realm - there was a lesson to be learned. It took me a few years to stop beating my self up and I finally i realized how much I had gained from going through the steps of doing this project start to finish. Its hard to put it all into words, sometimes film making is a process of constantly falling on your face, like learning how to walk.
Bellow is my film and bellow that is a more literal version of a music video which was compiled from footage of a film that was ALSO inspired by the same song. That film is called “The Indian runner” , it was Directed by Sean Penn. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Indian_Runner.
Hello, World!
