Nowell and I shot this over the course of 2005 on his Panasonic DVX100 and we put it together intermittently throughout the following two years. The film began as a series of Steadicam and time lapse tests at some of our favorite San Francisco locations. Eventually the footage began to collect into a something resembling a coherent film and the project took on a life of its own.

We decided to develop it into a three or four minute video postcard with the hope of capturing the solitary, beautiful side of San Francisco. We also liked the idea of using a short to manipulate the idea of time. Our vision was for the film to simultaneously take place over three seasons and one day. That’s why my appearance changes (beard/no beard, different clothes) throughout the movie’s beginning middle and end.

We shot with an anamorphic lens adapter to squeeze the footage into widescreen, which also resulted in those cool horizon bends that you can see in some shots of the Pacific Ocean. Most shots were executed with Nowell’s Steadicam (he got a workout), though others employed a simple tripod, and a few were shot with a CobraCrane.

In the end, we condensed seven hours of footage intro the four minute runtime. Nowell and I composed and recorded the music in 2007 at his Cole Valley compound.

Locations: Telegraph Hill, The Financial District, Potrero Hill (with CA route 101 in view), Mission, Golden Gate Bridge, Jackson Square, Ocean Beach, Sutro Heights, Lands End, Fort Baker, Ghirardelli Square, Russian Hill, Nob Hill.

Ultimately, I was really happy with the way this turned out, particularly in its balance between narrative and whatever the opposite of narrative may be. It was a great collaboration and the film ended up as a simple and medatative sketch of my first four years in San Francisco.

Haight Ashbury Beat (1/17/08):"Cole Valley filmmakers make their SF IndieFest debut"