Output details

Hit So Hard – the Life and Near Death story of Patty Schemel

Hit So Hard is a feature documentary following the life and career of Patty Schemel, drummer of Courtney Love's seminal rock/grunge band Hole. The film traces Schemel’s rise to the cover of Rolling Stone, her fall into homeless on the streets of Los Angeles and her eventual rebirth as a successful business owner, wife, and mother.

The “American Cinematography Manual” defines cinematography as “a creative and interpretive process that culminates in the authorship of an original work of art rather than the simple recording of a physical event.” The problem therefore posed in being cinematographer on this project was that the film started as an archive of amateur home video and diverse professionally shot footage. Additionally the producer wanted to film future interviews himself. Therefore the concept of creating unity of authorship was an open problem. In order to approach this, I needed to interpret the existing text so as to create an authorial cinematographic style, to shoot additional interviews to establish the beginnings of this style (the drummers from The Go-Gos, The Bangles, The Beastie Boys and Luscious Jackson) and then to instruct a non-professional such that he could shoot in a style which was already a complex problem to be solved.

Practice-based research and interpretation allowed a cinematographic aesthetic unity to be constructed and then pedagogical research led to the creation of new techniques which allowed me to pass on the ability to communicate a complex cinematographic unity to a non professional and to guide the project to a successful aesthetic outcome.

The documentary was released in cinemas in 2012 in the US, UK, Canada and Japan and screened in over 75 film festivals worldwide. It won the Frameline Festival Best Documentary Jury Award, was nominated for NME Best Music Documentary Award and a GLAAD Media Award.