Recent Stories with tag lynn shelton

$5 Cover: Seattle Trailer from MTV New Media on Vimeo.

On Monday, the Seattle version of $5 Cover premiered all twelve episodes to a SIFF Cinema packed with cast, crew, volunteers, MTV producers, and Seattle music fans. The installments, along with short documentaries about each of the bands and B-side films about Seattle, won't start appearing online until June. Since everyone else will have to wait, I won't say too much beyond reporting that the finished product is so much better than the long-circulating trailer (above) suggests. 

When Audrey and I last discussed this matter, a map of band relationships had sparked delight and the preview footage had raised modest skepticism. Seeing the preview, I worried about how uncomfortable it might be to see musicians reading scripted lines to portray slightly more dramatic versions of themselves in service of thinly contrived plot devices. Happily, most of the moments of forced narrative are shown in the trailer itself, and the rest of the project quickly begins to feel more like a gently observed documentary than forced reality programming. ...

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The Seattle edition of MTV's $5 Cover, directed by Lynn Shelton and filmed around town this summer, is about ready to hit the web. Audrey and Josh chat about it for your enjoyment.

$5 Cover Seattle, the organizational chart

Audrey: Do you have anything to say about the $5 Cover trailer?
Josh: Not yet. I've had that Vimeo tab sitting open, sadly neglected, forever. It seems that just like my intentions to crash one of the filmings this summer, my interest did not overcome my laziness and attention deficit. For instance, I am not entirely clear on whether this is an on-television series or an internet-only series (like Josh Schwartz's mildly watchable buzz band showcase Rockville, CA).
Audrey: It's a web series, I believe. I don't even know that much about it!

Josh: Unlike my time machine, which is out for repairs and prevents me from seeing one of these episodes being filmed at a character-filled local rock venue, my internet machine still works, so I can remedy my ignorance. Hang on and I'll take a look at the trailer.
Audrey: ...
Josh: While I'm dialing that up, a procedural question: This trailer has been up for months, why is everyone suddenly talking about it?
Audrey: The vid has been on Vimeo for a bit, but the Mayor's Office of Film and Music recently wrote about it, which is why it's been everywhere lately.
Josh: Now that I've watched it, a few observations:...

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About five minutes into her dance film Holding This For You, Marissa Rae Niederhauser throws herself against the wall, slides to the floor, and begins trying to untie a key knotted to the front of her dress. But Ben Kasulke's camera stays trained to her face; she squints a little as she works, purses her lips before biting the lower one, and only when she's mostly worked her way through the knot and closed her eyes does the camera trail down to her breast as she pulls the key off the ribbon. She holds it tightly in her hand for a long moment, her face, turned from the camera, slightly out of focus, and then drops it.

"Different stories work better onstage, and different stories work better on film," explained Niederhauser last week at Smith, near her home on Capitol Hill. "And I'm particularly drawn to small facial gestures and physical details. Onstage, dance is great to have these big, sweeping spacial patterns and geometric forms, kind of like a kaleidoscope. But this was kind of more a psychological drama,...

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