Film Production – Page 6

How Do You Know When It’s Done?

Ah, that feeling when you make the last edit, tweak the last audio level, hit ‘render’ on your video file…

I love that moment when I know I have finished my film. It’s something I’m eager to show to the world. There’s nothing left hanging. It’s the last time I fire up the project in my editing program.

Actually, it’s hard for me to see that moment clearly. As a filmmaker who has his hands in the minutia of my films, that moment is actually really blurry. I may not even see it until it’s history. In the case of “Street Language” my new short, I’m the guy who wrote the script, did much of the production management, directed the film, and have been completing the post-production after a friend did the rough cut for me. Some pieces are really put to bed: script, acting, the picture cut, even the music at this point. But, because I’m a slightly obsessed filmmaker–I call it ‘high standards’–and because I have the whole film sitting on my own hard drives that I can fire up anytime a thought strikes me, this film seems to be inching slowly toward being really “done”.

I think this is a common malady among indie filmmakers. I know I will see something on every viewing that strikes me as odd, something that needs a little smoothing, a lingering doubt about a creative choice I’ve made. I know I’ve been over the film to the sub-frame level in many parts. Some choices are ones I’ve examined many times and come to the same conclusion. And I know that there are no perfect films–to the filmmaker. Look at George Lucas, causing a ruckus because he’s still tweaking Star Wars, after over 30 years!

If George does it, maybe I shouldn’t feel guilty. I know other filmmakers who walk away and don’t look back; and sometimes I think they should have.

I am really happy with this film. Preview audiences have loved it. My wife cried at the right time when I showed it to her (and doesn’t think I’ve wasted my time and our money making it.)

I know I’ll walk away and be done with it, soon. I’ve finished hundreds of projects in my career. But when you’re in this stage, just after all of the really heavy lifting is done, but before it’s set loose on the world, there is a little season of hesitation, button pushing, and oh-so-close satisfaction.

Screenwriters Slogans For The Wall

42 ways to improve your screenplay – from Chris Jones blog

From screenwriter and instructor Alexander MacKendrick – a great set of 42 aphorisms he had on his walls as he wrote and taught screenwriting. Good writing is not about learning everyone’s rules and ‘can’t miss’ methods. But learning from those who have gone before is part of task.

Read the complete list at: ChrisJonesBlog.com- Screenwriters Slogans For The Wall… by Alexander MacKendrick.

A few of my favorites that I haven’t read in every screenwriting book:

Self pity in a character does not evoke sympathy.

Coincidence may mean exposition is in the wrong place, i.e. if you establish the too-convenient circumstances before they become dramatically necessary, then we feel no sense of coincidence. Use coincidence to get characters into trouble, not out of trouble.

Ambiguity does not mean lack of clarity. Ambiguity may be intriguing when it consists of alternative meanings, each of them clear.

The role of the ANTAGONIST may have more to do with the structure of the plot than the character of the PROTAGONIST. When you are stuck for a third act, think through your situations from the point of view of whichever characters OPPOSE the protagonist’s will.

If you’ve got a Beginning, but you don’t yet have an end, then you’re mistaken. You don’t have the right Beginning.

DRAMA IS EXPECTATION MINGLED WITH UNCERTAINTY.

For The Love Of Post

My images and characters are just there, waiting for more direction. And they tell me something familiar, yet more real than I might have imagined when I first conjured them up in a coffeehouse a year ago.

I love post-production. I’m in love right now with my short film, “Street Language.”

When I get to post, it’s me, working alone in a studio. I have an array of materials and a blank canvas. It’s as I imagine painting to be, and different from writing, where everything is imagined. And there’s a bit of security in knowing that the canvas isn’t totally blank – I usually have a script of some sort – but it’s not paint-by-numbers. Today I’m polishing a rough cut of my film so my canvas has been prepped well by another editor who generously did lots of the grunt work.

And today, of course, I’m only dealing with bits of data that appear to be visuals and sounds, but it still feels real and concrete – even without reels of film and tape. (I think I heard that Walter Murch keeps little pieces of 35mm film around when he edits – he wants to feel that organic connection but is happy also to have the benefits of technology.)

I guess I love all of the stages of a film’s production because they all offer something different. I love to write and to see characters and drama appear – as if out of nothing – but out of my life and history and people I know.

Production is all about the joys and pains of collaboration. It’s where I get to blend my gifts with others’ gifts and we get to see what new things come from the creative synergy. But it’s the most fatiguing to me and I feel the most pressure as the Director. There is an appearance of control but it’s more like riding a runaway train over which you have some ability to steer, but not entirely.

So I come to editing with a sense of relief and anticipation. The film has grown and changed since it first entered my writer’s mind. It became something slightly different in the hands of actors, crew, and the vagaries of principal photography. Now, the results of that synergy are sitting on a hard drive in neat little folders, awaiting yet another transformation.

My images and characters are just there, waiting for more direction – a bit less on this line, so I grab a take that wasn’t circled – and they tell me something familiar, yet more real than I might have imagined when I first conjured them up in a coffeehouse a year ago.

Sweet candy.

Write Lots, Write Shorts

All the arguments aside about whether or not shorts can help you make it in Hollywood, I believe writing short film scripts can serve your craft in much the same way writing lots of bad (and a few good) songs helps a songwriter.

I just completed a short film script for a contest, one of these speed-writing deals where you get seven days to write a script no more than 12 pages long. I did it for fun and I’m not anxious whether or not my script gets picked as a finalist or anything like that. I did take it seriously, but it was more for my own benefit than any big dreams. I have made movies and I’m working on more, so it’s not my ‘ticket outta here’ win or lose.

[AND, I do really like my final script; that also makes it fun.]

What struck me today as I was e-mailing my entry off to the powers-that-be is that short film scripts could be more of a core creative outlet and emphasis for me. I have always envied people in other arts like songwriters, painters, sculptors, and poets. I have dabbled in some of these creative forms so I know the same discipline, drudgery, and pain are present in the creative process. However, in each of these you have at least two things going for you: typically a more compact end product, and you can usually complete something on your own. [I know there are epics in any medium, but I’m talking about more usual forms.] When I write a song or a poem I know that it will fit in perhaps a few pages at most. If I could paint, I could create full expressions in a corner of my room if I chose. I will certainly work and re-work the song but it is usually in a whole different category than a feature screenplay – which is more like an opera or symphony.

I recently found and shared a short video clip featuring some words of wisdom from Ira Glass, host of “This American Life” on NPR. He was speaking somewhere about storytelling.

Ira’s main point is that storytellers need to tell lots of stories, tell them often, make mistakes, and hopefully get better. I’m sure I’m not alone if I admit that I get bogged down and intimidated at the thought of cranking out many feature-length screenplays.

Obviously, there are things you can only learn by writing a feature. You can’t really master the many beats in a feature, full act structures, sub-plots, and many other things you must eventually master. However, writing a short film script can help you to master characters, scene construction, dialogue, economy in your writing, transformations, and many other principles that are essential to good writing. I had a lot of fun working within the arbitrary constraints of a 12-page screenplay. It’s like doing a tv commercial. People complain about the storytelling constraints until they learn that they can pack their seconds and frames with story, creativity, and characters; it just takes a different kind of discipline.

So, all the arguments aside about whether or not shorts can help you make it in Hollywood, I believe writing short film scripts can serve your craft in much the same way writing lots of bad (and a few good) songs helps a songwriter. Even better if you want to direct and produce as well because you can benefit in the same ways because you are actually working in your craft rather than bogged down in the epic. That will come with time.

The 99 Recommended Steps For Making Good Movies > Hope for Film

Great post from Ted Hope; inspiration to indie filmmakers everywhere. It may exhaust you to read this list, but read it anyway. Filmmaking is not for the half-interested or half-committed.

Worthwhile Reading – “The Writer’s Journey”

Christopher Vogler combines Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung to paint a picture of mythic structure in storytelling for film.

I’m reading “The Writer’s Journey”- one of the prominent screenwriting texts. In it, Christopher Vogler combines Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung (with Syd Field and Robert McKee looking on) to paint a picture of mythic structure in storytelling for film. It’s all Heroes and Archetypes and elixirs. If you want to understand popular film story structure, it’s an important read.

If I have any hesitation, it’s that Vogler presents an important point-of-view for film structure, but he often rhapsodizes about these mythic truths and ‘energies’ in a way that makes me feel like I’m in a new age self-help seminar. At least he’s enthusiastic!