Acoustic Information

I have a soundcloud where I post readings of my poetry and field recordings of New York City & Brooklyn

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White Collar Season 5

Alright!

I'm so stoked for Monday. I'll be starting work on Season 5 of the USA show White Collar as assistant to the producers. I'll essentially be a Jill-Of-All trades  for them, which suits me fine.

Wish me luck on the next 6 months!

Genuine Wild West

Yay. I'm art directing a New Jersey western out in May's landing.

New and Thrilling Developments!

Ok, so first off:

tonight Box Party will be in the Crown Heights Film Festival.



And my new website is 100% live! HOORAY! One 1 ii

2010 demo reel

Christa Pagliei's 2010 Demo Reel from Chris Pagliei on Vimeo.

How each part will proceed...

I.
(Vomit into flowers)
Pull back from white
The subject (A) leans against the frame of the door, and attempts to unlock it but is obviously having difficulty. Finally (A) enters the apartment. (A) leans against a wall, and slides down it falling over. (A) closes his eyes and a slight shade of green spreads out over (A)’s face. (A) vomits purple velvet with flowers on it. The flowers begin to grow from the pool of velvet.
Zoom into black

II.
Pull back from black
(Sing back the dark, pray)
A girl enters a bedroom, obviously depressed. She sits on the edge of the bed, and looks about the room. Pushing herself backwards, she moves onto the bed, knees to her chest in the corner of the room. (Bed Against a wall)The light around her begins to narrow, like a spotlight. She drops her knees and straightens herself, back leaning against the wall. She breathes in, and then out. On the exhalation of breath black tendrils crawl up the blank wall behind her, pushing back the circle of darkness around her. When tendrils have grown to take up the whole wall and the room is full of light again, the girl directly addresses the camera
Zoom into black

III.
(Severed)
Pull Back From Black
(B) walks into a bedroom and sits down at the mirror. (B) gazes into the mirror and begins to brush her hair absently. It is revealed that the mirror that (B) is looking into doesn’t provide a real reflection but rather (SOMETHING UTTERLY BRILLIANT). Moving behind the mirror the gaze is transferred. (The mirror looks at her) (B) bites off her fingers at the second knuckle, and the proceeds to pull clean silk ribbons from the wounds.
Zoom Into White

IV.
(Blood into Butterflies)
Pull Back From White
A young woman sits in a chair next to a small table with a jar on it. She looks almost coy. Glancing around her surroundings she puts her hands down at her side palms facing out head turned slightly to the side like one of those “Our Lady of Guadalupe” prayer cards. She then unbuttons the top buttons of her shirt and peels open her chest to reveal a void out of which Butterflies escape. She collects the butterflies and then exits the frame. The glass jar with the butterflies remains. They move their wings.
Fade to white.






Shot list to follow

They call it shooting for a reason...

So there's been a kind of change of plans in my shooting schedule. I'm going to be shooting all next week and editing the week after. The weather is looking pretty good, and suddenly I have access to this pretty good camera, and a letus 35mm adaptor, (which is sweet, trust me) and if I really kick out the jams I think I can have a good cut of the film for the uvm film festival... Anyway, all this insanity means I need to do all my schoolwork for the next 2 weeks this weekend. I hope that on Saturday I can go out and have a good time, since the next 14 days are going to be full of all nighters and the like...

I am really nervous to shoot, I'm DPing on my own and I want it to look as good as the stuff Jeff does, but he sets a pretty high standard. (If you're interested, look at Box Party under my videography links on the left, he DP'd that shoot.) Sometimes I feel like my shots lack depth, and maybe that's a product of cutting my teeth in theatre rather than film, though I'm hoping to really get past all those hang-ups in this piece. I haven't told you very much about my project, except that it's a dance film, but here's the general idea.

There is a group based in New York City called Troika Ranch, they combine media/dance/theatre in digital films, art installations, and live performances. I happened upon them through a media program called Isadora, which is kind of a long story. Anyway they created this short called BKLYN (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEL0TWF6sBQ) that really got me thinking about how time and space is used in film. I also find myself looking at work by Maya Deren, I know you're not one for arty cinema, but her short experimental films are really engaging to me. I'm also trying to address the issue of the feminine gaze and deliberately have her break the fourth wall on two occasions in the dance. Essentially I will be shooting the dance in the same way in 5 different locations and then editing the footage together as one, shifting location via jump cuts, split screens (sometimes up to 5 at once), combined with moments of the "Algorythmic editing" that's in the "BKLYN short.

The conceptual part of the short as a whole is essentially an exploration of personal perception of space and time. I'll attempt to address the issue of the private mind functioning in the public space, and the gap between who we are seen as and our personal understanding of ourselves. This leaves me with the dubious task of visually expressing the personal experience of time. Reading Deleuze expanded on this kind of thinking for me, and his theory has effected how I am viewing the project as a whole. Though the work itself doesn't directly hinge on the theoretical, it does make some attempts to bridge certain gaps between practice and theory...


I'll be updating everyday through the filming and editing process. Even if it's just grawlix.

Word of the day: Grawlix-A grawlix is a sequence of typographical symbols used to represent a non-specific, profane word or phrase. Here's an example of a typical grawlix: #@$%*!

Isadora, Multimedia Dance Piece

Boy! It's been such an epic gap between updates! In my defense though, there have been a ton of new developments in my personal and kinoeye (ie moving image making related to camera work) life. Midterms hit me with vengeance and though they all went well they took up most of my extra time and left me fairly dead to the word and unable to post.

So, since my last post I've been keeping pretty busy. I was a PA for a commercial shoot with Verde Group which was a cute little two day gig. They're a great little VT based indie production company owned by a husband and wife, so it was local.

I've started working with the choreographer Susan Levine, doing the experimental videography for her dance piece titled Miss. We're using this really interesting program called Isadora. 

Here's a little video that explains what it does and how it works:

Should be pretty cool. I'll keep you updated. Check out Troika Ranch, they do a lot of really dope multimedia work.

New Baffling Aspects Short Film is UP!