The New Yorker dubbed Hamilton native Matthew Porterfield's Hamilton "one of the most original, moving, and accomplished American independent films in recent years," hailing Porterfield's "genius" for "light and color" and "tender yet unsentimental images." (A hit at the 2006 Maryland Film Festival, it will be screened next on Jan. 27, at 7 p.m., at the AFI Silver.)
Porterfield, 30, plans to follow that low-budget tale of missed connections among unwed teen parents in Northeast Baltimore with a more ambitious feature, Metal Gods, co-written and produced by his Hamilton partner Jordan Mintzer. It's about, as he puts it, "several days in the lives of a group of teenagers in southeast Baltimore who live and love heavy metal."
He began jotting ideas for his new project late in 2005, when he was sending Hamilton to film festivals. Over the phone from his office in Charles Village, he explained how he tries to reveal character "through the ordinary routines of home, work and school."
IN HIS OWN WORDS --For a while, Metal Gods was going to be a period piece, set in the 1980s, very nostalgic, with scenes culled from my own memories and from the memories of friends who were more into heavy metal than I was. I studied up on the intricacies of heavy-metal culture, including reading books like Metalheads: Heavy Metal Music and Adolescent Alienation.
But in the end, the script is more influenced by location and my experiences as an educator. [He has taught nursery school, kindergarten and high school.] I feel as if I have to immerse myself in a subject to come up with authentic ideas. But the actual scenes on the page come from my own imagination, after all the influences have filtered through it.
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE TREATMENT --I fill notebooks with ideas, and the ideas often become scenes. I start with early character development -- " ... [the girl is] really smart, tucked into wrestling sneakers, fed little, chain-smokes, super-skinny, tons of black eye makeup."
I began the treatment in June, 2006. I have a hard time composing ideas in the screenplay format, so I usually take about a year on the treatment.
I try to get the scenic structure down in about 23 to 24 pages, and then spend a lot of time moving scenes around. All the little paragraphs on those pages contain, for me, the pertinent information for each scene, and when I read through them quickly, in five or 10 minutes, I can tell where there's a lull or there's a beat missing.
