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99% Calculation. 1% Manipulation.
By David Paszkiewicz, co-producer, editor of CubeFreak
(from the 2008 Newport Beach Film Festival)
Fifteen seconds. The time it takes to, say, find a song on your iPod while driving. Or brush your teeth when you're late for work. Fifteen seconds was the mythical barrier for speedcubers - people who solve the Rubik's Cube in record time - when we started shooting our film, CubeFreak, in 2004. It was the four-minute mile for geeks. When our student, Shotaro Makisumi, then 13 years old, shattered that barrier in 2004 with a time of 12.11 seconds, Erika Speed (CubeFreak director) and I knew that we had a story on our hands. As middle school teachers, we had to juggle budgeting, planning and shooting our first film with grading papers, faculty meetings and Back-to-School nights. We enlisted the help of our friends: photographer Mark Achilles White signed on as our director of photography and lent considerable creative vision. We called on the talents of all our friends - a local news editor, a NASA public relations video producer, a community college TA - and we embedded ourselves in the speedcubing community. While we all committed to learning how to solve the Cube, only our DP became a nationally-ranked cuber. After following these kids (all smarter than us, of course) for more than two years from competition to competition, we realized that this community was very unique. They are competing, yes, but not necessarily against each other. They share techniques and new twisting algorithms to shave off tenths of seconds. They are each others' biggest fans, using Sharpees to sign autographs on battle-scarred cubes and threadbare souvenir T-shirts. The real competition, that hard-core determination to conquer, is against themselves. There's a reason why YouTube is full of videos of solo cubing... they're showing off the process as much as the product. Speedcubers focus on improving their average speeds, not a lucky solve that yields a singular, impressive time. |
| We started this film when many of our subjects were in the 8th grade; they're now applying for colleges. CubeFreak captures their adolescent awkwardness and stays with them as they grow into themselves and into the media spotlight. Shotaro Makisumi, or Macky as he's known in speedcubing circles, was not your typical movie star. In fact, he often seemed to avoid our cameras whenever possible. That said, he was the consummate ambassador for the speedcubing world, as his mix of humility and mind-blowing talent attracted a cult-like following. Sycophants across the Web want to be Macky. Tyson Mao, the Caltech student who planted the seeds for competitions all over the world, was a bit less camera shy. He showed off his skills to America as a contestant on reality TV's "Beauty and the Geek 2" (he was the geek) and garnered star status in the Asian American community. He and his nemesis/sidekick Leyan Lo appeared on the "Tonight Show" to show off their talents after Leyan's world-record solve. As geek-culture heroes, they attracted a wide following - everyone wanted to ogle at their skills. Cube tournaments that were once attended only by the most dedicated of cubers in college rec rooms became havens for fly-by-night documentarians and news crews, cameras often threatening to outnumber cubes. These people came for the spectacle and got what they wanted. Fast fingers make good soft news pieces. We struggled with this fact, while our own film trudged along as we crafted a narrative. Our connection to the characters and their families kept us from wrapping up the story before it was finished. |
| What surprised us, however, while we followed the speedcubers, was how little our cameras (along with everyone else's) affected them. Sure, they became more comfortable over time. But they really didn't need us to be there. The cubing competitions would have happened without any of the publicity, albeit in smaller venues. Being followed by a documentary crew didn't change them; but that's not to say that they didn't change us. Their spirit of cooperation and desire for self-mastery at the expense of self-promotion rubbed off on us. When the inevitable disagreement would arise amongst our crew, we always returned to the lessons we learned from the cubers. If they could work together to solve Rubik's Cubes in unfathomably quick times, we could work together to tell their story. That's not to say we've risen above a little friendly competition. As the world single-solve record approaches 9 seconds (NINE SECONDS!!!), I'm still trying to crack one minute. Our DP averages around 45 seconds, a fact that he reminds me of every time we meet. Time for me to learn some new algorithms. Photos: (top) Chris, (middle) Macky, (bottom) Ryan; courtesy of the filmmakers. |
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