This was the first production that I tackled with the intent of screening at a film festival. I had been at MIX NYC the year before where I showed "Pard' Me" at the Gong Show. While I was at the festival I attended as many screenings as I could to get a feel for the kinds of things they showed. Much of it was art videos, but I saw a piece that took a narrative approach, which was what I was more comfortable with. It was the tale of an indie rock band and their escapades on the road. It had a running time of about 40 minutes. I figured I would do something similar. It would be an ambitious project.

My idea was to do a road piece about a hitchhiker. He would be a blank slate whose primary purpose was simply to be someone that his various counterparts could interact with. His hitchhiking sign simply said "further" which was an allusion to the Ken Kesey bus. I wanted to include a number of vehicles and settings. I rounded up whoever I could coerce into appearing, and then chose settings and basic plot points for their interactions. Because there was no linear story arc, the only way I could really wrap it up and tie it all together was just to have him wind up right back where he started.

I shot it in the fall just as the foliage was starting to turn. I borrowed a pickup truck from a friend to use for shooting moving vehicles, put a Public Access colleague in the back with a camera, and had his wife drive. The first session that morning was the opening sequence with the Citroëen. It was a stark lesson in how complicated elaborate video shoots are, how much energy it takes, and frankly how frustrating it all was. I wanted to be able to do everything myself: driving both the pickup truck and the Citroëen, holding the camera, and acting. Instead I just directed others as best I could. It was a major pain, but I got the footage I needed.

That afternoon we shot the motorcycles. For part of it I was on the back of one of the bikes so I couldn't hold the camera. During the other shots I could have done the camera work myself, but I let my colleague continue shooting the video. I didn't give him any direction. I assumed he would just take normal footage. I was very excited to get into the editing booth to see what it looked like. When I saw it my head exploded. He constantly did unnecessary zooms all over the fucking place, never holding a steady shot. It was so bad that pretty much all of the footage was unusable. I was so fucking pissed. But it was such a colossal pain to orchestrate the whole shoot in the first place that there was no way we were going to do it all over again.

I shot other segments at other times with people who were available and settings that were convenient. We enjoyed some spectacular weather, and it was one of the longest and most brilliant fall foliage seasons I had ever experienced before or since. It gave every shot beautiful colors.

One element that I really wanted to include was the hippy bus that one of my Ithaca College friends had. It was a vintage passenger bus that had been converted into a camper, and it was absolutely incredible. I could have used the Ithaca College clan as the talent, and it all would have been epic. Unfortunately we could just never find a time when the bus was in town and everyone was available. Finally I gave up. I wrapped shooting, and immediately shaved my head for my Halloween costume that year. No sooner had I done that than the Ithaca College crew called up saying that everything lined up and we could do the shoot. Obviously my shaved head would have been a continuity problem, so we couldn't do it. If I had waited like one more day to shave my head it would have worked out.

I needed background music. I had a rambling tune in my head in the spirit of Roger Waters' "The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking." I worked it out on my little Casio keyboard and brought it to one of my fraternity brothers who was good with a guitar. He laid down the riff and repeated it for a good long running time. I then had him lay down other tracks over it, treating him basically like a human programmable machine. I would say things like "I need pensive contemplation," or "Give me some assertive ego" and goddammit he nailed it every time. He then put some rudimentary vocals over part of it. The end result was a few minutes of music that I could pick and choose from as needed when I put the final version together.

In these early days I was still doing analog editing at the Public Access studio. I needed to reserve time in the editing booth and travel all the way down there after work. It required dozens of slots over weeks and weeks and weeks. It was a big pain in the ass when I was exhausted from my day job and just wanted to go home. To make things worse, I decided to do a rough cut first. Analog editing was not very forgiving, and I still wasn't very experienced with it, so I did a practice run to be sure I had a very clear idea of how I wanted it to come together. Then I had to basically do it all over again and lay down all the edits for real. It was a long process, but it resulted in a good final product.

The video was all ready to be submitted to MIX, but before I did so I wound up shooting "G*I*J*O" on the spur of the moment when I was stricken with the inspiration. After all the time and energy I put into "Further," "G*I*J*O" came together in the blink of an eye. They were very different videos, but I couldn't help but admit that "G*I*J*O" was by far the better piece. In the end I decided to submit that and put "Further" on the shelf. It did get shown on the Public Access studio, but otherwise has never been screened to a seated audience.