Personal statement

Background

The idea was to create a short video summarizing one’s life philosophy. A group of us was converging on Nepal for a Tibetan singing-bowl master class. I wrote the script and shared it with Johan, an up-and-coming Friesian videographer and photographer, who constructed the shooting schedule accordingly. When we got to the famed Monkey Temple in Kathmandu, he used in-camera editing. I recorded the voiceover on a pro mic. Now, to put the pieces together.

The singing-bowl class over, I returned to New York; Johan went back to Groningen. Using my comments, he optimized the audio, then patiently tweaked and re-tweaked the marriage of voiceover and video. I sent the resulting draft to Alina, a young composer about whom we’ll be hearing great things soon, who was in Moscow at the time. She created a gorgeously atmospheric soundtrack that puts me in mind of Mahler, Rachmaninoff, and Ennio Morricone.

And so, Kathmandu, NYC, Groningen, and Moscow met in the ethersphere and created something eloquent and succinct: a summa of the past, a credo to reflect the present, and a time capsule — as a deliberate method of communication with my future self, a way to keep myself honest. Possible only through the sensitivity, talent, and dedication of my friends and collaborators — in the non-Vichy sense, bien sûr.

Personnel

Davíd Lavie, script and direction

Johan Herder, camera, audio, and editing

Alina Nenasheva, original music, arrangement, and orchestration.

Time

~25 hours, spread over 3+ people, in spring/summer 2019.