David Marek and the film Somewhere West.
On May 25th of 2009, six others and myself piled into an RV and began a 28-day, 4,982-mile journey that would result in the production of my MFA thesis film, Somewhere West.
The 134-minute film chronicles the last days of Ian, a terminally ill young man who decides to forgo any further treatment and instead heads out onto the road in search of solitude and a beautiful place to die. And yet, against his best efforts, Ian becomes the center of a makeshift family of broken characters who help him to open his heart, find peace and finally reach his special place.
As a road film, Somewhere West is expressly interested in landscape and visits locations such as Northern Michigan’s Grand Sable Sand Dunes and Porcupine Mountains, the Badlands and Black Hills of South Dakota, Wyoming’s Devil’s Tower and Yellowstone National Park, as well as the Great Salt Lake and Bonneville Salt Flats of Utah.
Because of the unique nature of this project, I designed a very unusual production method that allowed the execution of this tremendously ambitious project with a cast and crew of nine people in 31 days for a very modest $18,500. The overriding intent of the production was collaboration, which meant the cast and crew worked as an ensemble, responding, improvising and adapting to the constantly changing landscape and ever shifting weather. I chose to shoot the project on the Sony EX-1, in 1080p HD video with a Letus 35mm lens adapter for their aesthetic look, workflow and mobility.
Further, Ian’s condition allowed us to experiment with different optical effects that help to visually and metaphorically explore his physical and spiritual condition. The postproduction utilizes an editing method that I have developed and call “Dissociative Montage.”
This method assumes five elements to narrative cinema, which are sound, image, time, space, and a narrative stream. Unlike the predominantly used Continuity Editing, my method attempts to dissociate these five elements while constantly maintaining the narrative stream. This allows for a much deeper exploration of dialectics and opens possibilities into what I consider a more poetic narrative cinema.
About David K Marek:
David Marek lived in northern Michigan for 25 years, attending Northwestern Michigan College, where he received the English Student of the Year Award in 1995 on his way to gaining an Associates of Arts Degree in English.
He published 5 short stories in the school magazine and was invited to read in the Young Michigan Writers Series in Traverse City, Michigan. David’s passion for storytelling and landscape led him to Boulder and eventually the University of Colorado, where he enrolled in the fall of 1999.
In 2004 he graduated with a dual BA in Creative Writing and Film Critical Studies and a BFA in Film Production. Along the way David’s films twice received the Goldfarb Award, as well as the Grillo and Coggen/Gougler Awards from the University of Colorado. David’s undergraduate thesis film, Snow Petals, received a First Place at the Crested Butte Reelfest (2004) and was an official selection at AllFest (’04), Boulder Fringe Festival (’05), Durango Independent Film Festival (’06), East Lansing Film Festival (’06) and Eugene Film Festival (’06).
David is presently a graduate student at the University of Colorado, where he is teaching two classes, Beginning Filmmaking (a class that shoots and edits in Super-8 exclusively) and Introduction to Cinematography (a class that focuses on shooting and editing 16mm film). Since entering graduate school David’s film “Sleeping River” has been an official selection at the Muskegon Film Festival (’09), the Long Island International Film Expo (’09) and the Queens International Film Festival. David is presently working on his ambitious thesis project, “Somewhere West,” which received the very prestigious Gambill Family Endowment and the J.R. Hopes Grant.
David K Marek Artist Statement:
Filmmaking is a process of renewal, faith and awakening for me. If I knew I could make a film exactly as I had envisioned it, or knew how I would get from beginning to end, I likely wouldn’t spend the energy.
For me, the joy of filmmaking is in being confronted by and learning to accept the unknown. When I admit that I cannot control the sun, the quality of its light, the cloud that appears and passes, the wind rattling grass unexpectedly, then I become quiet and in the listening, find my place and vision and with the utmost gratitude, attempt to fix my awe in time with light.
I go into the world with ideas and intentions and I come home with images and sounds, not that I’ve created or found, but that have announced themselves to my attention and in our meeting, there is a revelation of spirit, which I cannot claim as my own.
