"In Search of Bathroom Graffitti"
This was a doc I worked on in film school as Production Manager. It was spring of 1997, a year before I graduated, and this was, I think, my last actual production class if you don't include screenwriting courses. Like all student films, the quality is uneven and it does not know the phrase "pretentious navel-gazing".
Shot on 16mm with a mix of film stock and use of an Oxberry animation stand, I believe it was cut on a Steenbeck, but my memory is hazy on this point. The only part of this that would have been digital was the transfer from 16mm to tape to encoding to become a digital file some time years after we'd produced the thing.
As it turned out, most of the places we'd scoped out to film repainted their bathrooms in preparation for SXSW the week before we showed up with equipment, and none saw fit to tell us this. This dilemma left us with really limited options given the short window in which we had to shoot (there's a good argument out there for doing a narrative film you can better control if you only have 7 weeks or so to put together a whole movie while carrying a full course load and working). Of course, weeks after we wrapped, it seemed like every restaurant and bar I walked into was crammed full of graffitti, but none of those locations had sprung to mind at the time. We learn by screwing up, I guess.
Interesting side note: the director was an absolutely terrific guy who also was on the germphobic side, so that was always interesting to navigate in the damper bathrooms.
Anyway, it's a little nugget from my past that recently resurfaced when the director and owner of the film sent me the link.
Also, I learned that 6th street in Austin at 11:00 AM on a sunny Sunday smells like vomit. That's one memory that really sticks out.
Those are my hands around the 1:50 mark. I still wear a wristwatch, which I am told the younger generation sees as an unnecessary affectation.
