The videos were shot by Dax, edited by me, with music by Godspeed You! Black Emperor.
Make Me Believe - Warden from Fifth Column Films on Vimeo.
Dax is a good friend and sounding board, we tend to talk through whatever we're working on with each other, tweaking the philosophy or concept more than the specific work. It's great to have those kinds of friends, it's even better when you get to work with them on a project.
We talked about the book while he was writing it, then he let me read one of the early test printings. It's a great piece, aesthetically, intellectually, across the board. When I reacted to the book with nothing but praises, Dax told me he was going to Dallas to shoot interviews with people who were either involved with the case that is central to the story, or who have been involved in the community where the mystery takes place.
(I don't want to get into it too much, for anyone who hasn't read it. Trust me when I say it's worth your time.)
Dax shot quite a lot of footage, but because of undiagnosed technical problems with the camera, the footage came back filled with digital glitches and sound issues. I spent a week banging my head against every wall I came to, trying to figure out how I was going to clean the material up and make it presentable.
One night I was doing an overnight shift at a national news outlet I used to work for, and got some of that good 4am inspiration. Instead of cleaning the footage up and trying to patch over the glitches, I would let it ride, and use it to make the pieces unique instead. It became a good excuse to expose the jagged edges, and with the novel revolving around an unsolved murder and an unethical capital punishment case, there were a lot of jagged edges to be found.
At this point, it's fair to say I love the four pieces we got out of his tapes. If what you want is highly polished, glossy marketing pieces, I have those too. But if you want video work that lives up to the aura of it's foundation, it doesn't get much better than this.
