I was so intrigued by the appearance of Mark Romanek alongside Steven Soderbergh on the BUBBLE DVD director’s commentary that I had to find reasons to slack off today so I could watch the whole thing…and also transcribe it.

This commentary is a little better than average in terms of most commentaries (even commentaries with great directors talking about great films can suck really bad), and while this film is not great, Soderbergh and Romanek do talk about a few interesting aspects of production which were worth the price of admission to me. Not all that surprising, Mark seems to be much of a digital novice, but Steven sure does no a thing or two about how to make great images.

So here are excerpts from the director’s commentary. I didn’t write down everything but attempted to offer up verbatim quotes as much as possible. What follows below is not a full text summary because some dialogue has been paraphrased (or omitted) depending on its relevance to what I thought was interesting to most Indies. My notes are in italics, and bold type was added to accent points of interest I found intriguing or pertinent. My thoughts are at the bottom of the post.
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Steven: First I want to thank you all for buying this disk. It was available the first day the movie opened in theaters, which is something Mark and I will talk about.
Mark: You’re assuming they bought it.
Steven: I hope they bought it. Well, you mean, they might have pirated it?
Mark: Well, there are all sorts of ways to get a hold of these things.

Mark asks Steven about the genesis of how the film came to be. They talk about conversations between Steven and the writer. Yada yada yada.

Steve: Since we did “K Street”, I’ve been really interested in this idea of using non-professional actors…interesting stuff about using non-professional actors (i.e. non-performers) and letting them act without memorizing lines or hitting marks.

Most of the film was shot using 2 cameras.

Mark says the whole film feels authentic. (I agree except for the whole contrived love triangle murder thing…)
Steven: I tried to shoot most of the film in sequence, and tried not to give the actors too much information about what’s happening further down in the movie.
Mark: I got wrapped up in the movie because I feel like I was emotionally participating in the movie even though it plays out emotionally flat on screen. The actors weren’t performing the emotions for me.

Mark: It’s a genre film, but it’s very untraditional.
Steven: It’s not a who-dun-it (murder mystery) as more as a why-dun-it. (okay, that helps me understand what they were aiming for, I can’t say their intentions translated on screen)
Mark: Its a noir film, its just not shadowy and dark.
Mark speaks as though has a script or a list questions he’s reading from to ask Steven. This doesn’t feel pretentious at all.

Martha was plucked from a KFC where she works.

(Provocative question)
Steven: Why do you think we’ve gotten so far away from people on screen looking like the rest of the country (i.e. normal)?
Mark doesn’t really have a good answer, and neither does Steven.

Steven: Working on Bubble was the creative equivalent of “The grass is greener.” (concerning the OCEANS’s films) ….which I enjoy, there are times when I’m on set thinkin’ “Oh, I wish I was working on set with only a 12 person crew.” There’s got to be things I can take from making the smaller movies which will benefit the bigger films. I’ve never felt inhibited (as an artist) by working on any of the films on the scale that I’ve made, but when you’re working on OCEAN’s and you feel like you have people tethered to your belt, your ability to make a radical left turn creatively….the fallout if you’re wrong will be more significant than if you’re working on a movie like BUBBLE. On a movie like BUBBLE, you can literally follow any little creative tributary which you feel you might be able to follow. Consequences are minimal if you happen to be wrong.

Mark: How many days did you spend shooting the film?
Steven: We shot on Bubble for 18 days, but it was designed to be shot in one big chunk - then a couple days off for me to edit - then a couple more days of shooting - then a couple more days to edit - then a couple of days for shooting (later he says 13 shooting, 2 editing, 2 shooting, 2 editing). I would cut every night. We could just transfer the HD into my computer and cut every night, and we could sit down and watch the film.
Mark: Did anyone assemble this for you?
Steven: No I just did it myself in my hotel room. I had an Avid Express. And so, the day we wrapped, the last day of shooting, that night, we sat down and watched the whole film, and sort of talked about it.
Mark: Who’s we?
Steven: Everybody who worked on it.
Mark: What about the actors?
Steven: No, I waited for them to see it until a little later. But the crew, which was - between the shooting people and the office - 20 people.

Mark: Lets jump into this whole topic of shooting on HD and film vs. Digital. What system did you use, what cameras?
Steven: We used the Sony CineAlta 950. Which I really liked. They’re easy to use and I thought the images were really terrific, and except for the one Blue light (fantasy sequence) and the one green light outside of Kyle’s trailer, we never used any lights. (Josh’s note: Wow.)

Steven: What’s great is that you can look through the viewfinder and decide what color temperature you want to go with.
Mark: Did you have a monitor?
Steven: (nonchalantly) Na.
Mark: You didn’t have a monitor?
Steven: No.
Mark: So, if you were shooting two cameras, what did you look through?
Steven: The viewfinder on one camera, and Greg Jacobs (cameraman, producer) would look through the other.
Mark: So not having monitors on the set was just an effort to keep things, uh, light?
Steven: Yeah.

Steven: (on natural lighting - specifically the morning commute exteriors) Time of day is huge.
Mark: Well, you’re always going for plausibility.
Steven: The luxury of shooting on this sort of budget, and this sort of shooting schedule is we were able to be very precise about that.
Mark: Well, the magic hour when using the film cameras is like, 15 minutes, and with these cameras it’s more like, what 40 minutes?
Steven: It felt like it, yeah.

Mark: Why did you shoot this particular scene through this doorway? (its a wide static shot flanked on both sides by a kitchen doorway, looking into the living room)
Steven: Again, because I really had no idea of what was going to happen or where anybody was going to go. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to miss anything.

On the sound (which is absolutely fabulous)
Steven: They’re all wired, which is just another way of eliminating distractions for the actors, as well as stripping the crew down. Its tough on the sound mixer sometimes, but I was just trying to reduce the number of things around them (the actors) that would remind them they are in a movie.

Mark: With this system (referring to wireless mics, HD cameras), would you really need to use particular slates - a clapper board and such?
Steven: You didn’t have to, its kind of distracting. On a “normal” movie, and I’m sure you’ve seen this as well - on a “normal” movie, I was exploring this idea of never slating, and what I found, was that the clapstick focused everyone - and that they liked it - they liked having a starting gun, and knowing like - ‘I gotta be ready now.’ On a movie like this though (intimate, low budget production), it was sort of the opposite and we would just sometimes tail slate and not really worry about it knowing we could sync up the audio later.

Mark: Talk about your crew on this film. You shot it yourself as you always do, but you worked with a casting director.
Steven: Shooting crew was me, Greg Jacobs the producer, a second AD, a couple of PAs, one Grip, uhh, one electrician, one wardrobe person….uh, the whole operation was one cube truck and one van, and…we’d send out for lunch…
Mark: How long did you break for lunch? These are the real DIRECTOR questions that I’m interested in.
Steven: It kind of depended on what we were shooting, it was sort of up to us in a way.

Mark: So there was no sort of this necessity to have crazy, long shooting days?
Steven: No, no. (They talk about Kubric for a bit….then Steven says), I’d rather pay people more to do two or three jobs, rather than pay three people to do three different jobs. That’s sort of what we did here, I mean, everybody did everything.
(continuing with the aspects of small productions)
Steven: A. It’s hard to make a movie. B. It’s hard to make a really good movie. Sometimes the obstacles are just self-imposed and you’re bumping up against the ceiling of your own talent…
Mark: Or resources sometimes…
Steven: Given that, I think better in an environment when I’m not tense or upset.
Mark: Some directors actually create chaos, and most actors don’t respond well to that. But sometimes the director doesn’t care, because there’s energy there, a tone that’s created by this unease that he or she may want on this film. I feel you can tell a better story and help the actors do their best work by making them feel comfortable.

(lots more talking about the non-professional actors Steven used)

Then Mark and Steven start to talk about the use of natural light on location during a scene that takes place in one of the actor’s actual houses. Mark asks…
Mark: So, in this scene right here (dimly light interior bedroom with minimal outside light and one lamp in the room), did you place that lamp in there?
Steven: No.
Mark: Did you place a brighter bulb in it?
Steven: No.
Mark: (impressed) Wow, well I tell ya, I feel like if I’m shooting a 35mm feature, I should bring one of these video cameras to the set, its so beautiful what HD video cameras gets, look through the viewfinder, and tell the cinematographer, ‘Its gotta look exactly like this.’

(more talk about Kubric’s naturalistic visuals)

Steven: I feel that these high-end digital cameras are very good. You can get very remarkable imagery. I find it’s its own aesthetic. It’s not video, its not film, its something else, and I treat it like that.
Mark: I feel like this is one of the most beautiful digital films that’s been made yet. My problem with digital - film seems to poeticize everything, which is good and bad - usually good, where as video tends to just be flat information, but I feel that’s because possibly people really haven’t learned how to use it yet. The poetry in this technology (HD) hasn’t been found yet.
Steven: As it becomes more prevalent, you’re going to see more and more great stuff come out of this format.

Steven: Everybody that worked on the movie owns a piece of it, so everyone is all rooting for everyone else.

(Now we get a little off topic from what I’m interested, but Steven says something pretty cool. He begins talking about how during the first few rounds of interviews with the press people kept accusing him of exploiting the actors, and exploiting this town. He counters by saying, “Of course I’m exploiting them. I’m exploiting them to same affect that I exploit Brad Pitt or George Clooney because I’m putting them in front of the camera. Saying that these people in the movie were exploited is condescending, basically saying they’re not intelligent enough to make that decision on their own. And my response (to that attack) would be, you should go check it out, go spend a couple of months there, and if you feel like I fucked it up, then you’ve got an argument. I don’t know what else to say. I feel like everyone who worked on this movie had a lot of fun.”)

After this, Mark asks two questions that we already covered in detail before. Steven handles them appropriately, trying not to repeat himself.

Moving on…

Mark: Was this scene art directed in anyway? (interior shot of main character’s house - in this case - the actual owner of the house, an elderly man named Omar, was cast as the actual owner of the house who is living with his middle-aged daughter.)
Steven: No. We didn’t touch anything, the light is the overhead light from the fan in the room. We didn’t replace any bulbs.
Mark: So you create a mood, but only what you have to work with.
Steven: I think its good to have boundaries and create rules for you to work with.

As the credits begin to roll, Mark and Steven finally begin to talk about the new distribution format this movie was released under.

Steven: There’s a lot of anxiety about collapsing windows, and the theater going experience, and diminishing ticket sales. First off all, I don’t feel like we’re the first people to do this (day and date releases). Any major movie release in the last four years has been available in all formats the day it opened. I’ve seen ‘em. I’ve been on Canal Street, and I’ve seen my movies and other peoples’ movies available the same day they opened in theaters. So this idea that it hasn’t happened before me - its been happening for awhile now.
Mark: Well, it hasn’t happened in a sectioned form
Steven: Well exactly, and I feel there is no reason it shouldn’t. First of all, you can’t put the genie back in the bottle. The technology is available to do this and it’s going to happen. Second of all, I don’t feel this precious about the theater going experience - in that I have no problem letting someone experience BUBBLE for the first time on DVD or on HDNet. It’s just not a problem for me. And, I don’t think its going to destroy the movie going experience any more than the ability to get take-out has destroyed the restaurant experience (this is the same argument that Mark Cuban often uses).

Steven: Thanks Mark.
Mark: Thanks for asking me, Steven.

—
Josh’s thoughts:

Here’s what I thought to be the most important comment made:
Steven: I feel that these high-end digital cameras are very good. You can get very remarkable imagery. I find it’s its own aesthetic. It’s not video, its not film, its something else, and I treat it like that.

EXACTLY! Hey, film looks good - but there’s no reason why high quality video has to look exactly like film. All in all, storytelling should take main stage to the nuances of format aesthetics.

Mark: (impressed) Wow, well I tell ya, I feel like if I’m shooting a 35mm feature, I should bring one of these video cameras to the set, its so beautiful what HD video cameras gets, look through the viewfinder, and tell the cinematographer, ‘Its gotta look exactly like this.’
Again, credit the operator of the tool. In this case, a genius shooter has eliminated lighting equipment and crews by using the CineAlta to its fullest potential. Proper equipment alone will not make your film standout. I’d take “inferior” equipment with a genius operator over “superior” equipment with a novice handler. And specifically in terms of the HD/ HDV Indie budget cameras on the market today - don’t think that 24p alone is going to save your film (are you listening, film school students?).

Love this working schedule:
13 days shooting, 2 to edit, 2 to shoot, 2 to edit. I wonder how complex Steven’s hotel room edit bay was? Did he edit on Avid Express in native HD (which would have required a jacked machine and a few large storage bays) or did he down convert to an SD edit (which could have been as simple as a laptop and firewire drive)? How many directors can say they have a rough cut of the film on the same day they’re done shooting? Even if there were no budget advantages to shooting HD over film - the ability to not only screen dailies but also edit footage everyday is a huge perk.

No monitors on set?
Wow. Knowing the production could afford it, but Steven chose only to view the CineAlta’s images through the viewfinder is ballsy.

Day and Date:
Other than Steven’s opening remarks and for 90 seconds during the credits, the two generally did not talk about distribution. Steven was pretty laid back about the whole “day-and-date” thing. Lets see who’s gonna be the next director to step-up and embrace simultaneous releases.

Okay, so the director’s commentary was fairly interesting, but overall this movie is not very good. At least is looks cool.