Why I use the number 44.
Why do I use the number 44 for so many things?
I have various series I start with that number:
44 Automobiles
44 Shopping Carts
44 Pacific Northwest Places
I guess the simple and incomplete answer is this:
It is an arbitrary number (one of my very favourites - have a thing for Eleven & its multiples :) that I use to organize my various thematic collections around.
It is enormously helpful to me in providing a structure and an ending point. It is both a literal and a figurative construct. When I have 44 completed pieces (essays, drawings, photographs, etc) I consider that body of work complete...or at least complete as a "Volume 1" :)
For example, now that I have 44 images in # 44portland series, I am assembling them into a little book to print, as well as designing a poster based in a montage grid of those 44 IG photographs.
It is a structural device that helps me organize some of my ideas that would otherwise get out of hand and go on ad infinitum :) I have no ownership over a number, so 44 is accessible to all...but I would recommend choosing a favourite number and making it your own!
Altman played with overlapping dialogue and long handheld shots that kept the focus on people talking and interacting over each other. Rather than the rat-a-tat-tat of one person talking, then another, there were people constantly moving and talking over and around one another in many of his films - and sometimes off-camera - in fact, sometimes the dialogue happening off-camera is more important to moving the story along than what we’re actually seeing.
Malick has crafted many beautiful, provoking, poetic films that also focus on capturing the feeling, the presence, the happening of a moment in earth’s existence, rather than blazing along with the camera directly focusing on the action. There’s an ephemeral presence in his stories that are both contemplative and action; the action of life happening in our peripheral vision, and how that often is the driving force, rather the apparent happening in front of us.
My mom would come out in the front yard and video. A child would fall, and she would keep videoing. Children would argue, and she would keep videoing. Something would happen away from camera, and she would keep videoing - and narrate what was happening.
