Billed as an experimental genre of filmmaking, the "bookVideo" made its debut this summer, showcasing the work of several directors from different disciplines, including Mark Pellington, who’s represented for spots by bicoastal/international Propaganda Films. Rain, a New York production company founded in ’98 to pursue projects in new media, film and TV, sought out Pellington and other helmers last year to help create and develop content for Barnes & Noble Television (BNTV), an Internet television programming effort by Barnes & Noble. com. Viewed using RealPlayer, a new film has been spotlighted each week.
Ilene Saul, Rain’s owner/executive producer, credited the late Tibor Kalman, founder of New York-based design company M&Co, with inspiring the bookVideo. "Tibor had a relationship with Barnes & Noble and a relationship with Rain, and he had this idea of doing something sort of sexy and trailer-like for books," recalled Saul. "So that got us thinking about this concept, and we began to refer to it as the bookVideo. He passed away before we actually got to realize any of it—but what you see today is a result of his thinking."
Saul explained that the goal was to do for books what music videos had done for music: provide three to five minutes of visuals that would capture the vibe of the book, thereby creating an additional method of promoting interesting work. A wide net was cast in choosing directors, with people drawn from the disciplines of music videos, feature films, commercials, television production, interior design and graphic design. "There are no rules right now," said Saul. "The idea was to put some really interesting creative minds from different disciplines on the project and see what we could come up with."
Pellington came into the fold through his friend Stuart Cohn, who at the time was Rain’s bookVideo commissioner. Cohn—who has since left Rain to work at MTV—has been a friend of Pellington for many years; the two worked together on Buzz, a 13-part series commissioned by MTV in ’90. Other Buzz alumni, music video directors Mark
Neale and Grant Gee, have also applied their talents to BNTV projects. A British native, Neale moved to the U.S. two years ago and is represented for spot work and music videos by bicoastal You Media, and for other projects via Radar Entertainment, Burbank. Gee lives in his native London, where he is represented for music videos through the Oil Factory.
CREATive Time
Pellington’s assignment for Barnes&Noble was J. Snyder’s novel Of Time and Memory. He described the bookVideo as the "best creative experience" he’s ever had. Though the budget was slight, he was inspired by the creative freedom and rapport he developed with Snyder. Of Time and Memory is about a man trying to uncover the mysteries surrounding the mother he never knew, only to discover that she died giving birth to him.
Pellington made the bookVideo through Pellington/Gorai, an independent production house in which he’s partnered with producer Tom Gorai. When Pellington ended his long commercialmaking tenure at Crossroads Films (bicoastal and Chicago) and signed with Propaganda Films for spot and music video representation in April (SHOOT, 4/21, p. 1), the arrangement included a two-year, first-look deal with Pellington/Gorai for all feature film, television and new media ventures.
Pellington’s latest ad credits include a three-spot Honda campaign via Rubin Postaer and Associates, Santa Monica. He has directed music videos such as the Grammy-nominated "Beautiful Girl" for INXS, and "Jeremy" for Pearl Jam.Pellington has also helmed two features—Arlington Road and Going All the Way–and currently has several undisclosed long-form projects in the pipeline. He is about to embark on an eight-minute piece for AtomFilms, based on an essay that appeared in The New York Times Sunday Magazine.
Pellington said he was interested in the idea of taking literature and bringing it to the screen, having already enjoyed his first foray into combining the two art forms. This involved directing The United States of Poetry, a five-part anthology on PBS that explored America through the words of 72 poets. "The opportunity to work with text—whether it is a book, a poem or anything—and take on the challenge of bringing it to life with visuals and music is a joy to me. It offers more freedom than music videos because you are not locked into the song," he explained.
After reading Of Time and Memory, which he loved, Pellington set out to capture the essence of the book. "Rain was after three- to five-minute pieces; my feeling is that you can’t really encapsulate the whole chronology of a book in that length of time," he told SHOOT. "But what you can do, is give an impression or an emotional resonance, that people can watch and get a feeling of what the book is about."
Pellington met with Snyder and filmed him reading passages from his book. The director was able to use 35mm by piggybacking this Time shoot on the end of a commercial that he was doing at the time. He then went with a crew of two to Lansdale, Penn.—the author’s hometown and the setting of the story—and shot in a very freeform way, on a mixture of Super 8 and digital video.
While Pellington was editing the piece, using Adobe Premier software, the footage started taking on a life of its own. He ended up making a 30-minute film in addition to the four-minute bookVideo. For both he added music scored by an independent Minnesota-based band called Low, whose album he had been listening to for inspiration.
The four-minute version went on the Internet and the longer version, called Inside Of Time and Memory, was sent to the Independent Film Channel on spec; it was accepted and is expected to air in the next few months.
The film, explained Pellington, is an abstract and meditative piece that looks inside Snyder’s writing process. It takes the viewer on a journey through what the book is about and expands on Snyder’s feelings about his mother and his sense of wanting to connect with her and ultimately saying goodbye to her. "It’s not a narrative; there are no actors. It’s almost a lyrical poem," said Pellington.
eight and counting
So far eight bookVideos are archived on BNTV, including short films for Jhumpa Lahiri’s Pulitzer-winning novel Interpreter of Maladies, Dennis Lehane’s novel Prayers for Rain, and The Hungry Ocean—a nonfiction account by Linda Greenlaw, widow of one of the victims of the commercial fishing tragedy portrayed in the feature film A Perfect Storm.
Neale directed two of the bookVideos, one for Jack Womack’s novel Random Acts of Senseless Violence; the other for William Gibson’s All Tomorrow’s Parties. When approached by Rain, Neale had spent the past six months working on a 90-minute documentary based on the life of Gibson and his impact on new media, called No Maps for These Territories. He created the bookVideo while gathering footage for the film. His documentary will debut at the upcoming Vancouver International Film Festival.
Neale noted that the bookVideos are particularly suited to a new era of writers who are less publicity shy: "What’s good about the bookVideo is that writers have learned to be performers; they are no longer reclusive characters that sit in their garrets. They have to get out there and promote themselves, and the new generation of writers is more used to doing that," he observed.
Directing his pieces through Radar Entertainment, Neale pulled in favors from friends including Rochelle Ford from Avenue Edit, Santa Monica, who edited both of his bookVideos, and Shake-A-Leg, Santa Monica, which added the music. Like Pellington, Neale also appreciated the creative freedom. "The budget was very modest, but if people don’t have much money, you get a lot of freedom to do what you want. I shot both pieces on digital video, which I was using for the Gibson documentary—so it’s a good opportunity to experiment with new technology," Neale concluded.
