Gay Days the movie
 

This year I am in a class where I need to go around and interview people from a race, religion, culture/sub-culture or sexuality that is different from the mainstream, the mainstream being of course white, Christian and stight. We can choose any format to conduct the interviews, on video, on paper, over the net or audio recording then we are to make a final project from what we gathered, the final can be a paper or a film or something else, I have decided to make a film.

I think that gay culture would be perfect subject for my reserch. Now I am not really sure what gay culture is, or if it even exists, but there is a public preception that it does so that will be one of the questions I will seek to answer in my film. I suspect that gay culture does exsist but it varies on the individual level as to how important it is for different people. One thing that is for sure is that gay people do look to other gay people, or open minded stight people, for support in the same way that members of any goup of people look for support when they are at odds with the mainstream. Gay Day is a perfect example of that support network in action.

I think that Gay Day would be a perfect format in which to conduct the interviews and get the fotage for my final film since it will be easy to find people to interview since they will all be wearing red!

I was thinking that a discussion here on the LOT would be a good way to start out, and we could use this thread to disscuss gay culture and gay days and what those things mean to people here. With the permission of the individual posters and the LOT administrators we could use some of this discussion in the film. I would also like to conduct extended on camera interviews with some of the people who participate in this thread and are going to gay day during the meet on gay day, the interviews would be no longer then 15 minutes, it would be kind of interesting to do the interviews on some attactions like small world or POTC ;) .

So let us start the discussion! :) Oh and feel free to PM me anything you might not want to post. I will keep this thread updated as this project progresses. Thanks everyone and I look forward to hearing your views! :snap:

Check your stats, I think white, Christian and straight might be the perfect topic and a grand bit of social commentary....

Maybe, but most straight white Christians scare the crap out of me (even though I am all those things), gays are much more fun and nice. ;)

Although getting reactions about gay day from the avarge disneyland guest that is not there for gay day would be interesting.

What a great idea for a project! :) When I have more time later I'll comment here.

You've got the blessing of this administrator to carry on! It sounds like a great project and I would be more than happy to use my "connections" in the Gay community to help you arrange interviews (I'm slightly well connected ;) ) I know some very well spoken gay men and women - and even some nice fag hags and "Lez Fez's" .

Woo Hoo!!! :D Thanks for the support, this should prove to be a very interesting experince. I am getting very excited about this film!

Boingo - right now you are at post number 69.

Toot!

Count me in as willing to talk about being subcultured.

69 dude, oh wait now its 70, damn...

I actually have a friend who's a big mucky muck over at GLAAD. I'd be happy to ask him if he'd like to ad his two cents.

I'd be happy to participate in the project. You certainly can't go wrong with Not Afraid offering her connections, and many of them are bound to be more typically gay cultured than I am.

But I'm an outside-the-mainstream guy of the outside-the-mainstream gays. My perspectives are bound to be unique, as opposed to indicative of many. Be that as it may, I'd be glad to help out in any way.








Um, I mean, for the project.

Thanks everyone, I think this will be very interesting. Sorry for not getting on this sooner but you know first week of school and everything. So I have decided on how I think I am going to make this thing. I am going to take a video camera or two with one or two people from my school running them and I will use those as the cameras to interview people with while I conduct the interviews, mostly it will just be more of a conversation rather then an interview. Meanwhile I will also shoot some film on my 16mm camera. WHen I present the project I will have a video projector and a 16mm projector side by side and run the silent film while the video is projected with sound that will be the interviews. I hope you guys are game for being interviewed on PotC or Small World or some other attractions since I really think that would be super cool. It would be cool if I could find some of the people that put together the event and have a little discussion with them as well. Pretty much I want to let the conversations speak for themselfs and I dought I will ad any kind of narration or anything like that. Like all my work it is more on the expreimental side of things (hence the two projectors). I will do my best to present gay day as a good thing, which of course it is, and hopfully everyone will have fun working on it! Ummm lets see I can't think of anything else to ad at this time but I will keep this thread updated about once a week to let you know the progress of this project.

Oh yeah I knew I was fogeting someting...

Okay so at first this project was for just one class but now I have decided to expand so I can use it in two classes. FIrst I will use it in the class that I told you guys about on the first post, and then also for my documetery production class. My teacher (the great filmmaker James Benning!) in the documetery class wants to see if I can get up to 20 people wandering around in the park with film and video cameras. I don't think it is going to happen since I would have to pay for everybodys tickets, but he thinks he can pull some strings at calarts since disney has a lot to do with the school. If he can make that happen this might turn into my first feature since 20 cameras will take a lot, and I mean a lot, of fotage. I am not getting my hopes up though so it will most likely just be me and a crew of one or two people and the end film will be 20 to 30 minutes. It would be great if I could do the interviews on 16mm but the sound sync camera is about 25 pounds when loaded and I would have a hard time getting it into DL in the first place, as well as the sound gear. But maybe it will happen, it would be cool!

Humm, I'm just wondering....

How much "support" do you expect to get from Disney for making a film in the park about Gay life styles?

I'm thinking it won't be much.

Good question. I guess the best thing to say is what disney does not know can't hurt it. I am not really planing to seek permission from disneyland or disney, way to much red tape. If I end up taking the more pro gear such as a sound sync 16mm camera and DAT sound recorder then I will leave it up to my teacher to work that kind of stuff out with disney. How it stands now though is I will just have my bolex with is pretty small and I have gotten into the park many times and my 3ccd video camera which is pretty small as well. If disney does try to give me trouble (which I know they won't) I can just say that I am making a home video, I dought they can make a rule aginst that, who says that just because my home video skills may be a little more advanced then your avage guest does not mean I can't still make a home video (yes I know I am cocky, thats part of what it takes to be a filmmaker) ;) .

If the film ends up being pretty good I might enter it into film festivals, but as of now it is just a student film for a assingment for a class which at the most will be shown at RedCat. If I do enter it into festivals I might need to get permission from disney, but I can't really think why. If the shoot does end up taking on a more pro look with more camreas and 16mm sync and sound gear then like I said I will let CalArts and my teachers deal with that for me, I've got way to much to do right now and I am not going to jump through a buch of hoops to get this movie made (sorry I really hate red tape when it comes to filmmaking, and I have had to deal with my fair share ;) ). Becides its funner to do guerilla style filmmaking :)

Again I would like to thank everyone who wanted to particapate in this project but I am sorry to say that it looks like it is not going to happen, at least not this year. Its a long story why, but mostly it has to do with a disagreement between me and one of my teachers that I would rather not get into at this time. Thanks again everyone.

Aw, sorry the deal went south, Boingonut. I hope the difficulties weren't "political," and I also hope you'll be there on Gay Day regardless.

Too bad things did not work out. Perhaps you should try some type of less controversial project...