tommy dean & friends

i spent a whole summer following around tommy dean with a camera. i wandered the streets of seattle and slept out of my car and hung out with some slightly dubious characters. then, i spent three months editing this movie.

tommy dean & friends (1:07:14) from Joshua Guerci on Vimeo.

i borrowed/stole the camera equipment from seattle university. i was not a big fan of the consumer cannon vixio cameras at first but eventually i learned to love them for what they are. little innocuous windows into people's souls.

not long ago, i sat down to make some "final" edits and i discovered that my hard drive had crashed. seagate external hard drives have a habit of overheating. if you buy a freeagent hard drive, i cannot stress enough that you need to buy two. if you are lucky, only one will over heat at a time and you'll still have your data.

the obvious fault of this movie is that it is too long. i might be a genius film maker someday but today, i'm a beginner. an amateur. it's too early to get self indulgent. even as a student piece, this film loves itself a bit too much.

there is no context for my subject. i don't have any footage of tommy dean in the market and i don't have nearly enough footage of him busking. and of course, the classic 'seattle shots' are missing from this film. no space needle. no viaduct. no pikes or pioneer square. of course, it might be a blessing that i avoid that cliche.

i would love to do another film like this but i don't know when life is going to allow me to do that. a student has so much freedom to pursuit things like documentaries and self-indulgent cinema. the rest of us have responsibilities to answer for.