I shot [Dream of Life] all on 16-millimeter, and I just wanted to learn about Patti [Smith].
A lot of times I had footage that didn't have sound [in the Dream of Life film] - either I didn't bring a sound recorder, or I forgot to turn on the sound recorder - so we would have to improvise and build those scenes.
For me to see the film [Dream of Life] on a big screen - it's pretty extraordinary.
Over time it just got more and more intense as far as the trust factor. For example, when we started editing the film [Dream of Life], I thought, man, I need to make sense of all the footage I have; I need to ground the film. And one day I was hanging out in Patti's [Smith] bedroom, which is where Patti works, and in the corner of her bedroom is this great chair, and that's when she began showing her personal things to me. The camera was there, and we realized that we were really making the movie and making sense of the footage in the movie.
I would bring Patti [Smith ] in to the editing room [working on the Dream of Life] and say, "This is a great moment for a voiceover, or a poem," and then we'd bring in some sound design.
I was making a film [Dream of Life] about Patti [Smith], but I was taking pictures, too.
I think those moments in Patti's [Smith] bedroom really helped the film [Dream of Life] out, and those moments existed because of the trust between us. There isn't any real self-consciousness in the film because we all like each other.
[Some] times I'd have sound but no image. When Patti [Smith] was singing with her guitar, or doing something amazing with her clarinet, I'd just mess around and record the sound. So we'd use those sounds as another layer in the film [Dream of Life].
Ultimately, the film [Dream of Life] is inspirational.
The only self-consciousness in the film [Dream of Life] is anyone's natural shyness.
There are a lot of layers in the film [Dream of Life]. And during editing we would try to tame all the layers, try to make things a little bit more understood. We would move scenes around. We'd try all these things.
We had a hodgepodge of footage. We didn't film [in Dream of Life ]all the time - we would just film periodically, so nothing was synced and nothing was slated.
Because the filming process was so organic and there was no script, the film [Dream of Life] was literally telling us what it wanted to be in the editing room.
At the beginning I didn't even really think about making a movie [Dream of Life]. I was just thinking of documenting somebody.
The film [Dream of Life] came together when we started editing; it was organic, it became nonlinear and it was its own animal. And I didn't want to tame it, either. I wanted it to be different. It's not your typical documentary.
The editing process was a free-for-all, and since I hadn't gone to film [Dream of Life] school or anything like that, I just said, "We'll do this. We'll do that." It was a really great experience that way.
It took 12 years to put this film [Dream of Life] together, but it was not until toward the end of those 12 years that I looked at Patti [Smith] and said, "Maybe we should do something with this footage."
That was an amazing experience [making Dream of Life]. It's hard to imagine that we were editing every day for a year. And it was pretty extraordinary; it also went by super fast. But every day was an experiment.
Fashion's been really good to me. It financed Patti Smith: Dream of Life.
I came up with more money, took all the footage, got a great editor and made this film [Dream of Life]. But I really didn't go into it with the intention of making a movie.
Angelo Corrao was our editor [in Dream of Life], and he was just so diligent and so old-school in the way he looked at editing. He would take my far-out ideas and tame them and make sense of them.
[Through the making of Dream of Life] I learned about being patient, perseverance, having a dream, a goal. I learned that I can accomplish something despite not knowing anything about it when I begin.
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