SAR_10_along_the_way
Above: FP 30K SAR BL training. Identical to running… " [ a ] movie flows trough real time, like a river carrying you toward your destination. If you ask a question or think about something other than the movie, you're out of the river and up on the bank -- out of the flow. This is seldom good." -- Howard Suber ' The Power of Film ' (page 168).
Structure: How reality affects story:
"When I examined what the structure [ of the film 'Au Revoir les Enfants' ] should be, I thought it was important, little by little, to see the war breaking in. The central story is the arrival of this new boy and how he and Julien become friends; there's hostility at first and then step by step we see the birth of a friendship between two children who are equally curious about certain things, probably a little smarter than the rest of the students, and how they find their affinities." Louis Malle in 'Malle on Malle', edited by Philip French (Chapter 5, 'Coming Home', page 170 - 172)
Story: attempted quest for unity by the character(s):
" [...] "I don't want to bother you much with what happened to me personally," he began, showing in this remark the weakness of many tellers of tales who seem so often unaware of what their audience would best like to hear; "yet to understand the effect of it on me you ought to know how I got out there, what I saw, how I went up that river to the place where I first met the poor chap. It was the farthest point of navigation and the culminating point of my experience. It seemed somehow to throw a kind of light on everything about me -- and into my thoughts. It was sombre enough, too -- and pitiful -- not extraordinary in any way -- not very clear either. No, not very clear. And it seemed to throw a kind of light." Joseph Conrad 'Heart of Darkness', first published in 1899 (page 11)
As adapted in the 'Apocalypse Now' screenplay (John Milius and Francis Ford Coppola, narration written by Michael Herr):
EXT. MILITARY COMPOUND - DAY
A darkly painted Huey lands in a guarded military compound
somewhere in Nah Trang. The two enlisted men jump out of
the helicopter, leading Willard, who seems in much better
shape. As he gets out he sees a platoon of new men drilling
in the hot hazy sun. They are clean and pale.
MEN (Chanting)
I wanna go to Vietnam.
I wanna kill a Vietcong-
WILLARD (V.O.)
I was going to the worst place in
the world, and I didn't even know
it yet. Weeks away and hundreds
of miles up river that snaked
through the war like a circuit
cable...plugged straight into Kurtz.
He follows the escort across the fields as the platoon
drills.
WILLARD (V.O.)
It was no accident that I got to
be the caretaker of Colonel Walter
E. Kurtz's memory, any more that
being back in Saigon was an
accident. There was no way to
tell his story without telling my
own. And if his story is really a
confession, then so is mine.
They approach a civilian-type luxury trailer. It is
surrounded by concertina wire, and its windows have grenade
protection, but it still seems out of place in this austere
military base.
CLOSER ON WILLARD
He stands before the door for a moment, as the M.P.s
guarding the trailer check his papers.
SAR_9_along_the_way
Above: FP SAR BL 30K training. How to train? Run from - to and unite start - finish! Start it, do it, repeat it.
"I am writing this from Budapest, the city in which I was born. I went to the United States so young that all my memories of Hungary were acquired later in life or through my family, whose memories bridged both world wars and the Cold War, all with their attendant horrors. My own deepest memory of Hungary comes from my parents' living room in the Bronx. My older sister was married in November 1956. There was an uprising against the Soviets at the same time, and many of our family members were still there. After the wedding, we returned home and saw the early newspapers and reports on television. My parents discovered that some of the heaviest fighting between the revolutionaries and Soviets had taken place on the street where my aunts lived. A joyous marriage, followed by another catastrophe -- the contrast between America and Hungary. That night, my father asked no one in particular, "Does it ever end?" The answer is no, not here. Which is why I am back in Budapest.
Hungary is a country of enormous cultivation and fury. It is surrounded by disappointments that can become dangers. Europe is not what it promised it would be. Russia is not what Europeans expected it to be. Within and without the country, the best [prime minister, leader of a right-of-center party and quite popular] Orban can do is balance, and those who balance survive but are frequently reviled. What Hungary could be in 2005 is not the Hungary it can be today. Any Hungarian leader who wished to avoid disaster would have to face this. Indeed, Europeans across the continent are facing the fact that the world they expected to live in is gone and what has replaced it, inside and outside of their countries, is different and dangerous."
George Friedman in 'Borderlands: Hungary Maneuvers', published today on the Strafor website.
Read more: http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/borderlands-hungary-maneuvers
SAR_7_along_the_way
Above: FP 30K SAR BL training. Training at BL (Best Level) automatically introduces recovery and healthy behaviour into training experiences: overload exceeds BL-territory (leads to injury and drifting away from BL). SAR training is trail-training, focussed upon improvement of technique and effeciency. NO MATTER WHERE, NO MATTER WHAT: create optimum character-exposure and accelerated progression (run, built, jump, plunge, climb, fall, swim et cetera). Evolve alert and creatively and efficient and technically sound. Trough strategic use of available resources, including time, terrain, weather, technical-support (and injury treatment, food and rest).
"Do today what others won't. Do tomorrow what others can't. Hooyah!" - Mark Divine
*) "The task of the lighting technicians is an extremely creative one. A really good lighting man has his own plan, though he of course still needs to discus it with the cameraman and the director. But if he does not put forth his own concept, his job becomes nothing more than lighting up the whole frame. I think, for example, that the current method of lighting for color film is wrong. In order to bring out the colors, the entire frame is flooded with light. I always say the lighting should be treated as it is for black-and-white film, whether the colors are strong or not, so that the shadows come out right."
*) "During the shooting of a scene the director's eye has to catch even the minutest detail. But this does not mean glaring concentratedly at the set. While the camera's are rolling. I rarely look directly at the actors, but focus my gaze somewhere else. By doing this I sense instantly when something isn't right. Watching something does not mean fixing your gaze on it, but being aware of it in a natural way.I believe this is what the medieval Noh playwright and theorist Zeami meant by "watching with a detached gaze.""
*) "What is cinema? The answer to this question is no easy matter. Long ago the Japanese novelist Shiga Naoya presented an essay written by his grandchild as one of the most remarkable prose pieces of his time. He had it published in a literary magazine. It was entitled "My Dog," and ran as follows: "My dog dog resembles a bear; he also resembles a badger; he also resembles a fox…." It proceeded to enumerate the dog's special characteristics, comparing each one to yet another animal, developing into a full list of the animal kingdom. However, the essay closed with, "But since he's a dog, he most resembles a dog. I remember bursting out laughing when I read this essay, but it makes a serious point. Cinema resembles so many other arts. If cinema has very literary characteristics, it also has theatrical qualities, a philosophical side, attributes of painting and sculpture and musical elements. But cinema is, in the final analysis, cinema.""
Akira Kurosawa: "Advice to young people considering a career in filmmaking", adapted by Audie E. Bock, first published in 1975, cited from 'Something Like an Autobiography' (page 191, 'Some Random Notes on Filmmaking')
More: http://bartvanbroekhoven.com/en-US/running/78-sar-11-dirt-dive
See also: http://sealfit.com/blog/
SAR_8_along_the_way
Above: FPS Sunday 9K SAR with Jesse today (2002). "Most [people], when experiencing fear or anxiety, tend to magnify the unknown. Training, including knowledge and experience gained in simulated situations, has the power to reduce the unknown and contribute to the control of fear." From: The Air Force Survival Training Manual.
"I expected it to be heavy."
Jesse van Broekhoven, member AV Haarlem
"Our practice cannot be perfect, but without being discouraged by this, we should continue it. This is the secret of practice."
Shunryu Suzuki in 'Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind' (page 73)
"Many of us have come to consider comfort as our greatest need. Comfort is not essential, and we often value it much too highly when the alternative is survival. You must value your life more than your comfort and be willing to tolerate heat, hunger, dirt, itching, pain and almost any discomfort. If you expose yourself to capture because you have a blister and think you can't walk another mile, you have not thought the situation trough. Reason is the key to this change of attitude; reason which identifies discomfort as a temporary problem in comparison with the much more serous problems you will be faced with if you are captured." '
From:'Survival Training Edition' , first published in 1962 by Air Training Command/Department of the air Force, reprinted in 1978 (chapter 1, page 8: 'The Will and Ability to Survive')
"The Tibetan tradition maintains that contemplation on suffering is much more effective when it is done on the basis of one's own personal experience, and when it is focussed on oneself, because, generally, we tend to be better able to relate to our own suffering than to that of others. This is why two of the principal elements of the Buddhist path, compassion and renunciation, are seen as two sides of the same coin. True renunciation arises when one has a genuine insight into the nature of suffering, focused upon oneself, and true compassion aries when that focus shifts to others; so the difference lies simply in the object of focus."
The Dalai Lama: 'The Dalai Lama's book of Transformation', first published in India in 2003, page 89-90.
"It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change."
Charles Darwin as quoted by Don Mann in the introduction to 'The US Navy Seal Survival Handbook' (2012)
SAR_6_along_the_way
Above: Footprint after 32K SAR BL training.
"The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword, are portions of eternity too great for the eye of man."
William Blake as quoted by Joseph Campbell 'The hero with a thousand faces' ('The world navel', page 44)
"Photography is a luminous drawbridge trough which the story has to reach the audience and the audience has to acces the story, the DP and the director have to built it together with the same objectives. Cinema is synthesis: the rapid and ever increasing popularity of the cinema is due to the possibility of concentrating huge amounts of information in its images, and the immediacy of the process with which the eye transmits them to the brain.
The set of rules that technique [...] allows us are indispensable to express ourselves better, more thoroughly and rapidly with the available means. It would be almost impossible to do […] without a great technical training. Everything is to be measured in terms of balanced relationships to serve the story that is committed to us. The enjoyment of the cinematographic show will be the more complete, the less the technique disturbs the story.
To know one's limits is indispensable even to a director of photography -- it is an invaluable gift because the curiosity it generates stimulates one to invent and experiment."
Guiseppe Rotunno in 'Guiseppe Rotunno', published in 1999 by Camerimage, Poland (page 30, 31, 69)
