CRYING SONGS TRILOGY
When I was 4 years old I decided I Try by Macy Gray would be my “crying song.” Between April and September of 2022 I made three films based around the idea of performing a karaoke version of I Try.
The series starts as a structuralist experiment, turns into a diary film and ends, as all things do, as a narrative comedy.
The very literally titled I Try Macy Gray - I Try (Karaoke Version) uses a custom version of the track purchased on karaoke-version.com. I made some slight modifications to the instrumentals including the removal of all backup vocals. I exported the video a few times at a low quality so the text would become really crunchy and pixelated. I layered it atop 4k scans of black frames found within six hours of super 8mm footage I had recently acquired. I looked closely for light leaks or any identifiable scratches, there are over a hundred unique shots within the four minute film, but you wouldn’t know that if I didn’t tell you.
Part 1 screened as part of Millennium Film Workshop’s opening night party on June 3rd 2022. The film was featured as one of 57 works from 54 different artists, “which challenge the popular notion that the form of the music video, a form conceived at the intersection of popular music and TV consumption, is one doomed to an interstitial existence between fuller realized and more respectable cinematic and musical disciplines.” During the screening, many audience members started singing along. I filmed their performance on my waterproof Kodak while Sage Ó Tuama shot the crowd on digital video, the resulting film is our collaboration.
“I TRY” follows Tommy McNamara as Tommy McNamara, trapped in a bar bathroom on karaoke night, preparing to sing the one song he knows will make everything right. Can you guess what it is? The short was co-written and co-produced by my dear friend Michael Price, shot by the wonderful Josh Kundert-Gibbs and colored by Kody Wescott from Assembly. We shot the majority of the film in a half-day at Starr Bar and shot the VHS-credits at Millennium Film Workshop many months later, after the film was fully edited. It was a very fun film to make and I can’t wait to show it to you.