With the Blondes In the Jungle shoot only half a year away (you heard the buzz?), we are fundraising like Ball Business. Now is Phase 1: Institutional Support. Next week we send in our application to the Jerome Foundation “New York City Media Arts Program”.
It’s our favorite foundation — first, the dude who runs it, Robert Byrd, is a real cool customer (that’s not sucking up. that’s the truth). Second, the grant could practically cover our entire budget. And third they’re waiting for a project like this one. So we’re psyched. I mean, it feels good just to apply for something prestigious.
And with that in mind, here’s the cover letter to our proposal — in a few months when we hear back, you guys will know whether or not it’s a good Sample Proposal. Till then, maybe you’d enjoy the inside peek anyways. The more interesting parts are highlighted
Updated 02/04/07 with the final version…
“I am nineteen years old, blonde, and looking for adventure. Let me be your special.”
- 1926 letter to J. Eric S. Thompson, Archaeologist of the ancient Maya
Blondes in the Jungle
A short fiction film with an accompanying original soundtrack
By Lev Kalman and Whitney Horn
Blondes in the Jungle is a comic fantasy. It follows British archaeologists in the 1930s excavating the Mayan Well of Sacrifice, and American teenagers in the 1980s hunting for the Fountain of Youth. Setting these stories side by side, we highlight useful links between the two seemingly unrelated cultures that inspire these expeditions. It will be an exciting movie for people like us, who are interested in the history of the Americas, the cultures of science and leisure and the many varieties of human adventure.
We will shoot on location, summer 2007, on the grounds of the Casa Verde yoga retreat near La Ceiba, Honduras. There will be a cast of six and a crew of three, including ourselves. The vast majority of shooting will take place outdoors in available light. We will also produce a companion original soundtrack for the film later this summer. One final product of Blondes in the Jungle will be a CD/DVD set of the film and soundtrack.
Taking the technical methods and artistic interests we have developed these past three years and elaborating them to far a more ambitious scope and scale, Blondes in the Jungle will be our breakthrough project.
Technical
In many ways, Blondes in the Jungle is the kind of production we are used to. All eleven of our movie projects have been shot on small budgets, teaching us how to minimize film used (we average a 1.5:1 ratio) and maximize the skills and resources at our disposal. Often we shoot using available light, in various weather conditions. We have also mounted complicated shoots including travel, isolated locations and limited time frames. Our work producing the GAaME DVD familiarized us the process of recording music and the possibilities offered by setting music alongside film. Professionally, Lev coordinated several large productions for the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), including a four-person crew, two-week, multi-location shoot in the U.K.
The scale of the Blondes in the Jungle production, the two-week duration of the shoot, and the relative unpredictability of tropical weather present us special challenges. We have prepared for these by:
1. Sending Whitney to Casa Verde on a location scouting/preliminary planning trip this February.
At this time she will also shoot test footage and some B-roll.
2. Recruiting experienced and multi-talented producer Alex Orban.
3. Increasing our filming ratio to 3:1.
4. Extending the length of our shoot to give a healthy allowance for weather and other contingencies.
And finally through ongoing consultations with Geralyn Abinader, who has over 16 years of experience producing and directing shoots in remote locations including the rain forests of Vietnam and Brazil. All these safety measures only slightly increase our costs.
Artistic
As in many of our films, Blondes in the Jungle creates meaning through the juxtaposition of discreet and seemingly unrelated narratives and styles. The 1980s story has an adventure movie look and an ironic “downtown” pace common to our short films. The 1930s story follows the didactic form of education films, like those Lev produces for AMNH — only here the narrator is the Mayan jaguar god.
In Canterbury Tales style, the two central stories are starting-off points for others. Some are told orally: favorite TV show plots, a narration of the medieval European Children’s Crusade, a description of Christmas at the Mayan Archaeological workers camp. Others are visual, like the silent jungle landscape sequences that punctuate and interrupt the film.
Moments of co-incidence, artifacts from previous times, and recurring experiences – pleasure, wonder, violence – act as hyperlinks between the movie’s stories. A number of these hyperlinks suggest a cause-effect relationship, but many more follow an abstract joke-like logic. Either way, they pierce the boundaries between the movie’s many cultures and world-views (ancient and modern; European/American and Native American; work and leisure; scientific and supernatural). Thus, they lose their hermetic isolation and become involved in a network of associations and comparisons. This increases the meaning and relevance of each.
We have explored the potential of juxtaposition before, most notably in Jazz Christmas and Blood Stew, but never to as broad a set of moments, concepts and characters. And never have we developed and fleshed out each individual part with so much subtlety and sophistication. Blondes in the Jungle is our most ambitious film to date, following the artistic methodology we have developed for years, but raising the stakes of what we can talk about and and how it can be said.
With Blondes in the Jungle, we are in the lucky position of being fully prepared for something we haven’t done before – both technically and artistically. Please help us realize this potential.
Sincerely,
Lev Kalman
Whitney Horn
“I’m telling you, baby….The world is a jungle. Wherever you go it’s still the same.” - Bret Easton Ellis, Novelist
Last Modified: Friday, June 29th, 2007 @ 14:16
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lev.and.whitney Said on June 29th, 2007 at 2:17 pm quote
sorry we had to take down the Lil Wayne mp3.