Category: Film Production

Perfect Aim – For Meaninglessness?

His “…biggest concern for the project was to maintain for the viewer a sense of complete randomness and meaninglessness.”

A sentence caught my eye and I just had to mention it here. This is an excerpt from the Dec 2009 issue of Videography magazine. In his description of a new music video produced for the song, “Heaven Can Wait”, a duet between Beck and Charlotte Gainsbourg, Director Keith Scofield is describing his goal and techniques for the music video.

The author says that Scofield’s “…biggest concern for the project was to maintain for the viewer a sense of complete randomness and meaninglessness.” Later, while editing, the Director says that, “…he had to make sure that viewers would not be able to accidentally find meaning or a narrative thread…”

Those comments just struck me as funny, or sad, or something. Not that I don’t understand the purpose of deliberately disorienting visual styles and editing and such, but I guess I prefer to think that they do serve to communicate something as part of a greater narrative thread – meaninglessness as an observation or feeling within a greater story – rather than as ends in themselves.

I have been through enough seasons in my life that felt random, futile, and meaningless to have discovered that those needn’t be the end of our stories, no matter how real or final or all-defining they may seem while we are in the midst of them.

Against the Avatar Tide

I wanted to stand up and say, “The Emperor Cameron has no clothes!”

I wanted to stand up and say, “The Emperor Cameron has no clothes!”

OK, I don’t want to offend you if you really loved Avatar and agree with those who say it’s one of the greatest films ever made. I would just like to argue for a higher standard. Certainly it will be one of the highest grossing films ever (though no one talks about total audience, which likely is not the highest ever, given inflation of ticket prices.) And, it is visually and sonically amazing. The visual achievement alone does make it a landmark film.

I’ll try to speak to my point.

A great film is a complete film. That is, a film is more than its visuals or technological advances or music or script or acting or editing or directing. A truly great film is created when all of those elements come together into one coherent whole. By this standard, Avatar misses the mark for me. Honestly, when I left the theater (yes, I saw it in 3D) I was saying to myself, “All that money and nothing for a script writer!”

Were there any characters that were not clichéd stereotypes out of a hundred other movies that you’ve seen? And what’s with the creative names for things: ‘unobtanium’, ‘banshees’? This is the best the writers could come up with for creating an exotic future world? I hate to say it, but the first thing that popped into my mind when Sully was introduced to the banshees was another epic adventure film, Dinotopia! My kids watched it over and over on VHS. Cameron totally ripped off the whole deal with the Skybax (sp?) for Avatar.

Were there any events that you could not predict miles away? Were there any crises that you felt in any way would not work out for the heroes? Other than on the most superficial level, I didn’t really buy the romance between this noble indigenous princess with all the knowledge of the natural and spiritual world and the moron from another planet? What was she thinking? I know what Sully was thinking ’cause she’s a hot, basically naked, princess. (I’ll give Cameron credit for actually having Sully’s character change over time, but in the most predictable way.)

It’s OK if you loved it and want to see it over and over. To me, it’s like an amusement park ride.

However, I actually believe that it is possible to make a really expensive film, with killer effects that have never been seen before, that is really popular, and at the same time not insult the intelligence of your audience. I mean, you have every tech guru on the planet working on the visuals, why not put a crack team of writers on the script too? Peter Jackson did it with the Lord Of The Rings trilogy. He had real literature as his starting point, and he chose to honor it. I’m not just all about weird indie films as the highest expression of the art. There are other examples, even within Hollywood. I just think James Cameron doesn’t respect the audience and got caught up with his toys. So, he made half the film that he could have made.

Personally, I can’t wait to see what a real, complete artistic team will be able to do with the technology Cameron and his team developed. It’s an incredible toolset, and in the hands of real artists it will bring us more than just eye-candy.

Just as an aside, here’s an article from the LA Times that explains any naysayers as reactionary conservatives. Thought it was funny.

Avatar… glimpse into another culture?

The Yanomamö are the embodiment of everything Cameron wants to extol in his film. And even better yet, they are real!

This article just caught my eye today, especially because one of the primary goals we had in making our film, The Enemy God, was to strive for a hyper-real, immersive experience into another culture. In our film, the culture is very much real, as is the historically verifiable story. The Yanomamö of the Amazon are the embodiment of everything Cameron wants to extol in his film. And even better yet, they are real! It’s just too bad that Hollywood seems bored with actual culture that is full of drama and action and beauty and intrigue.

You can read the review in the Washington Post: ‘Avatar,’ ‘Young Victoria’ offer glimpses of other cultures

I admit that I’m very interested in Avatar. Certainly as a filmmaker I want to see what they have done from a technical standpoint. This article doesn’t give Cameron many points for story quality, though it seems unanimous that the film is amazing visually.

So I’ll just admit that this post is going out in the hopes that there are people out there who think blockbusters are fun but also want to discover the joy and amazement that real life and cultures can bring on the big screen as well.

The Death of Merely Good Films

The loser in a world of almost limitless entertainment choice is not the hit, but the near-miss.

“The loser in a world of almost limitless entertainment choice is not the hit, but the near-miss.”

As a maker of films that fall into ‘niche’ categories, I appreciate new technologies that enable us to reach smaller audiences in new and creative ways. When I began my career, the options were few and if you had a film that wasn’t a mainstream film, it was almost impossible to get it to audiences. You could show it on one of the Big Three television networks, in theaters, or…

…I guess there were VHS tape and home video stores. But the reality was that everything was pretty locked-up, especially for smaller filmmakers who had films that would appeal to a smaller segment of the audience. Even if you could identify them accurately, it was really difficult and/or expensive to reach them.

The development of broadband internet and social media and all of the other constantly changing technologies now make it possible for us to target and actually touch audiences with niche media. This is the promise of the new media world and we are all clinging hopefully to that promise!

Interestingly though, another side-effect of the new media world is what I would describe as a widening gap – kind of like what happens in developing economies. Instead of a great, flat, democratic media landscape where everything has equal footing and ability to impact audiences, we are seeing an interesting trend in the world of the ‘blockbuster.’ While there has been tremendous growth in the production and distribution of small films to small audiences, there seems to be a greater emphasis at the opposite end of the spectrum. What is being lost is in the middle – those films that aren’t quite blockbusters but are bigger than the niche film. Are the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer?

This interesting article (originally from The Economist) describes the phenomenon very well. “Independent filmmaker earning a living in world where blockbusters dominate”

How does this impact folks like us? It’s not really my dream to make ultra-low-budget films ($0-50,000) for the rest of my career. But I am called to stories that fit smaller niches. It would be nice to be able to gradually make larger films, fill the gap between the blockbuster $150 million films, or even the average $50 million studio feature. Isn’t there a huge market now for low-budget films that are of high quality, made for $3-5 million? I know people who are aiming there. This article suggests that they are in for a battle for an audience.

What do you think?

Filmmakers Making A Difference In Africa

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I’m always on the lookout for great stories about how filmmakers are making a difference in communities, especially in the developing world. I found this article today from East Africa:

As part of the continuing series on African Filmmaking, we look at a film that’s made acclaim in both filmmaking and development in Nairobi’s Kibera Slum.

ukwelii.wordpress.com, ukwelii, Oct 2009

What kinds of ideas does an article like this stir up in your mind? What if part of our lives is focused on helping others tell their stories and empowering others through our gifts and experiences? Can we make that a priority?