Rules for Making Films Cheaply

I came across a good article about making movies cheaply.

http://letsmakebetterfilms.hopeforfilm.com/2010/08/writing-for-a-low-budget-the-disappearance-of-alice-creed.html

Since I got into making films, I have been very concerned about finding ways to do it without spending much money. I’ve talked about some of my thoughts on this in a couple of articles I’ve posted:

http://www.bukisa.com/articles/284215_making-a-movie-about-the-fear-of-losing-a-job

http://www.bukisa.com/articles/81388_rick-schmidts-feature-filmmaking-at-used-car-prices-a-review

Like J. Blakeson (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2128335/ ), who wrote this article, I don’t expect someone else to give me money to make my movies.

I like his comment that writing a film, then trying to scale it down to save money hurts the quality of the final film. A film that looks bad doesn’t help you advance. I think that most filmmakers are like me, in that they want to make something they can point to with pride.

One rule is to shoot 90 per cent of the film at one location. This is more drastic than anything I have thought of doing. I shot 100 per cent of My Next Film (http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/my_next_film.php ) in one location, but when I’ve thought about doing a feature I felt that I needed to have at least four or five locations.

I worry about the limitations on the story of having only one location. Alfred Hitchcock did Rope on a single set, and it turned out well. I am no Alfred Hitchcock though. On the other hand, I feel that it is the limitations that decisions like this put on you that force you to be creative.

Same Idea – Different Authors – Different Stories

Whenever people talk about plagiarism and copyright, some one always points out that you can’t copyright and idea. What the author can copyright is how they express that idea in a story. Many years ago, I came across a good example of how two authors took the same idea and did very different things with it.

The first book was one of my favourites 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001:_A_Space_Odyssey_%28film%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_C._Clarke

The second book was Space Visitor by Mack Reynolds.

http://www.amazon.com/Space-visitor-Mack-Reynolds/dp/B00005XXI5/ref=sr_1_19?s=STORE&ie=UTF8&qid=1281915921&sr=1-19

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mack_Reynolds

Both of these stories develop from the discovery of an alien artefact on the moon. Very quickly, the two stories diverge. After I read more about the two authors, I could see the reasons for this in the differences between the two.

Arthur C. Clarke’s main interests were in science, technology, and religion. It may seem strange that religion was an interest of his, given that he was an avowed atheist. These interests show up in the story of 2001. Much of the story is about the technological feat of space travel. Scientific curiosity drives the characters to make the space trip. The story ends with what people have described as a spiritual or religious experience.

Mack Reynolds had quite different interests. When I first read his stories, I thought of him as a “social” science fiction writer. When I checked his Wikipedia entry today, I was surprised to learn that he had been an active member of the American socialist movement throughout his life. The focus of Space Visitor is on how society reacts to the news. It has been a long time since I read the book and my memory of the details has faded. There is little attention paid to the nature of the aliens or the artefact on the moon, until the end, but I don’t want to spoil it for you.

When I read Space Visitor back in 1977, I recognized the similarity with 2001. I was not all that perceptive at the time, but it did open my eyes to how the same idea can be expressed in different ways. When I look at the stories I have written, I can see how my personal attitudes come through, even though I did not always consciously put them there.

One Per Cent Inspiration

The other day I was reading Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient, when I came to a passage that reminded me of the movie Last Year at Marienbad. I saw it years ago, or at least I think I did. Maybe it was someone else that saw it.

Through some convoluted path that led me to think about what a friend told me once about her divorce. This, in turn, got me thinking about the movie Memento. Of course, that naturally suggested the short story Flowers for Algernon. The author later rewrote Flowers for Algernon as a novel. I’ve read the short story, but not the novel.

At this point, the beginnings of a story began to form in my mind. Some time ago, someone suggested that I make a movie like Before Sunrise, so I threw that into the mix. Finally, I started to see parallels between my idea and The Third Man.

My working title for the story is A Memento of Flowers for the Third English Patient Before Sunrise in Marienbad. It needs some work.

Tomas Alva Edison, the inventor, once said that genius is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration. I have the one per cent inspiration, all I need is the ninety-nine per cent perspiration.

I wonder if I can get way with just forty-nine per cent perspiration, or would that leave the story half baked?

How Can Fiction Compete with Reality?

This is a thought that first came to me years ago while I watched the O.J. Simpson “low speed chase” on TV.

I was at my cousin’s wedding. We all sat and watched the “chase” for hours that evening while we waited at the hotel for the wedding the next day. Other people have told me similar experiences of that event. As I watched, I thought that nobody would go to a movie and watch someone drive down the road for hours on end. Yet many people did exactly that.

I thought about this question again when I saw part of the movie Human Trafficking http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0461872/ . This was a fictional movie, but, as I watched, I was more frightened by it than any horror film I had ever seen. The movie is about criminals who transport women around the world for prostitution and the police who chase them.

I think the reason I was so frightened was, that, while the depiction was fictional, I knew that it showed what millions of real people experienced in their lives. I don’t think there are any real people who have been chased around by a mummy or bug-eyed monster.

I am not sure I have a real answer to my question. Reality will always be of more immediate interest to people than any entertainment can be. The question then is, what do people want from works of fiction? It must be something that they can’t get from reality.

The Best Movies I’ve Seen

Earlier today, Joie Schmidt, http://makethemostofyourtime.blogspot.com/, posted a question on her FaceBook page about which movies people thought we the best. She asked why people liked them. After I posted a response to her, I decided that I wanted to share some of my thoughts on my blog. I’ve edited and expanded my comments below.

I think these are the best movies I’ve seen:

•    2001: A Space Odyssey,
•    Koyaanisqatsi,
•    The Third Man,
•    Casablanca,
•   Fog of War,
•    La Strada,
•    The Draughtsman’s Contract,
•    City Lights, and
•    Blade Runner

2001: A Space Odyssey

I first saw 2001 when I was 15. I went to see it for the special effects, but after seeing it, I knew that I had missed something important. I went back to see it again, maybe 20 times, read the book 3 or 4 times, and even wrote a high school essay on it. I eventually decided that I understood it. Years later, I keep seeing more in it that I didn’t see earlier, so now I am not so sure that I really understand it. It changed my whole view of the world.

Koyaanisqatsi

I first saw Koyaanisqatsi when my brother showed me a videotape he had rented. It wasn’t until many years later that I saw it in a theatre. I saw it three times on the big screen, once at a live performance of the score by Philip Glass. The movie seemed to me to be completely abstract, yet it held my fascination every time I watch it. It does have a “story” and a “message”, but I’m not sure you can really put them into words.

The Third Man and Casablanca

I find that both of these movies have somewhat sad endings, in that the protagonists don’t get what they really wanted. Even so, they survive and maybe grow as people. I just wrote a blog where I talked about my fascination with this kind of plot. http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog/?p=170

I’d heard of both of these movies many years before I watched either of them. I never saw either on the big screen. I find both movies affect strongly at an emotional level.

I noticed that Roger Ebert has an image from The Third Man on his Twitter page.

Fog of War

Fog of War is an extended interview with Robert S. McNamara, who was the US Secretary of Defence during the Vietnam War. Sometimes it could be a horror movie, and other times a philosophical discussion.

La Strada

Federico Fellini’ La Strata is the only movie of his that I really like. I saw it first in a movie appreciation course. It is about a brute of a man and the woman that travels with him. The end is both sad and surprising. This is another movie that I never saw on the big screen.

The Draughtsman’s Contract

I wanted to see this after seeing the review on Siskel and Ebert, but I didn’t see it for many years after. The first time I saw it was in a theatre. The woman I took to see it did not like it, and she asked me to apologize to her for taking her. I’ve seen it several times since and it grew on me. It is a sort of mystery, but one that isn’t really solved. I think it is that uncertainty that draws me to the movie. The director has crammed this movie full of many little details. I am sure there is still much more to see in this movie than I have so far.

City Lights

I saw this the first time in the mid 1970s when they rereleased several of Charlie Chaplin’s movies. It didn’t stick in my mind too much at the time, but years later I watched a documentary about Chaplin which showed out cuts from the movie. I think nearly an hour was devoted to City Lights. It was after that experience that the movie began to touch me emotionally. The last scene is devastating once you understand how the characters reached that point.

Blade Runner

I didn’t appreciate this movie until I began to talk to other people about it. Blade Runner asks what does it mean to be human. The movie uses hints at the nature of the hero to ask this question. These hints have fuelled many a long discussion. It is something of an intellectual and philosophical puzzle to be solved.

Reflecting on these thoughts, I see that most of these movies appeal to my intellect. They ask questions that get me thinking.

What Do I want to be Special about My Work?

“They” say that there are really only seven stories. Anyone can tell a story, but if you want to make a difference, you need to add something special that only you can give.

I have been working on several projects over the last year or so and I have started to think about what is special about my work. My big fear is that there isn’t anything special. My main objective now is to focus on gaining better mastery of the creative skills, but I know that eventually I do need to have something special.

Just the other day I saw a program about the writer Richard Matheson. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Matheson He said he didn’t realize what some of the key themes of his own work was until a long time after he began writing. I got the impression that it was only after others started to talk about what they found in his work that he began to see it too. I hope that is the case with me. I know that the things you care about show up in your work, even when you don’t consciously put it there.

I have noticed some things about my own work that I think may reflect something that distinguishes me from other film makers.

• I see in some of my work a conflict between respecting authority and rebelling against it. This is a conflict in much of my thinking. I believe that it is important to accept that we are all part of a greater whole, but I also want to be free from the constraints of being a part of a greater whole.

• In some of my work, I am consciously trying to send the message that things are not the way we expect them to be. The world is a complex of interacting systems, and systems often behave in ways that are not intuitive. What seems obvious is often misleading. This sounds somewhat “new-agey”, but it comes from my work as an engineer studying complex systems. There is a paradox recognized by transportation planners that sometimes adding a road can make traffic worse.

• Many of my ideas come from my feeling that sometimes merely surviving is victory. There is a cliché in “race” stories where the runner falls, then gets up and comes back to win. My inclination is to have him try to win and fail, but in his trying he becomes a survivor and ultimately more of a winner than if he had “won” the race.

• I often use the image of someone walking down a corridor, either toward or away from the camera. This kind of image is often given as an example of bad film making, because it doesn’t tell you anything important. In my case though, I feel that it is a symbol for something being inevitable. In a corridor, you can only go forward or retreat. I am attracted to the image of a train running along the tracks for the same reason.

• In many of my story ideas the protagonist is very passive, which runs contrary to what a protagonist should be. Maybe this reflects my own reluctance to admit it when the time has come to act when faced with a challenge. Often I delay until it is too late and the opportunity has passed. I will need to learn much more about story telling before I can make this work.

• My experience is that success comes from a long series of small victories, while failure comes from taking one big gamble. I want to make this a message in my work, but I am not sure how to do this and still have an interesting story to tell.

Many of the things I want to do “break the rules” of good story telling. Before you can break the rules, you need to know what they are and why they are rules. That is going to be the challenge for me.

A Co-operative Video Website?

I have been mulling an idea for a while now.

Video websites like YouTube have been very successful financially by selling advertizing. Meanwhile, most of the people who post their videos on the sites get little or no money for their contribution.

I thought about creating a website for my own videos, where I would get all the money from advertizing. Doing this would be a challenge with my level of internet programming skills.

However, I think the biggest problem would be finding an audience. People go to sites like YouTube looking for videos to watch. They are not likely to go wandering the internet in search of my films. It makes a lot of sense to be on a video website with lots of other videos. People drawn to other videos may very well find yours as well.

I think one way to get around that is to create a co-operative video website.

The website itself would just provide a common front end, links to the videos and a search function. Members would provide their own video, while the co-operative would provide them with templates and advice on setting up their own sites. Members would pay to be on the website, or could volunteer to help run the site instead.

With a co-operative, no one member would need to have all the skills to set up and run the site. There are many details to work out, but I think this could work.

Do I Have the Right to Say What I Want to Say?

I’m one of those people who always thinks of a good comeback, the day after the conversation. One of the nice things about doing a blog is that you can talk about what you would have said.

About nine years ago, I did a workshop talking about my films. In the workshop, I wanted to explain what I was trying to accomplish with my films and what I learned from making them.

With the workshop, I wanted to encourage people to try to make films. I had started to make films in High School, but then stopped when I was in University. I didn’t try to make any films for another 14 years. The main reason I stopped was that I had reached a point where I felt I couldn’t go any further unless I felt I had something to say that people would listen to.

This was a big barrier to my creativity, and I got stalled on several projects because I was worried if what I had a worthy of sharing. I was able to overcome these fears and complete several films. This was one lesson I wanted to share in the workshop.

When I was talking about the struggles, one of the people taking the workshop interrupted me. They told me that I shouldn’t let that stop me because everyone had a right to say what they wanted to. I wasn’t an experienced public speaker and their comment caught me by surprise. I wasn’t sure how to respond, and so I just continued with my talk.

Looking back on this incident, I see that the person did not understand the point I was making. As I recall, some of the others in the workshop did react in a way that made me feel they had understood.

What I wish I had said was to point out that, I had in fact gone on to complete several films.

I would have liked to point out that I felt that if you don’t at some point in your filmmaking question if you should be saying what you are saying, then you are not pushing yourself to your limit. When I talked to Steve Hanon about this issue, he agreed that questioning if you should say what you want to is a necessary part of being creative.

I got thinking about this episode after I posted a comment to a LinkedIn forum on script writing.

I read that Alfred Hitchcock was asked why he remade “The Man Who Knew too Much”. His reply was that a talented amateur made the first version, while a seasoned professional made the second. What I keep in mind was that when he made the first version he had already made over 20 features and many people saw him as one of the best movie directors in the world.

If Hitchcock was only a talented amateur after 20 films, then I need to be much more humble about how good my work is. Several other posts agreed that the really good filmmakers and writers are always worried if their work is good enough.

This is another good reason to worry that your work is not worthy. That fear will drive you to higher goals. Someone who never worries if their work is good, will always be just a hack.

Getting Feedback for your Movie Script

After I have finished the first draft of my detective script and polished it a bit, I want to get someone else to read it. I know that I have my blind spots when I go over my own work, and I suspect that there are not many writers who don’t. Hearing someone else’s opinion is a valuable reality check.

I also need some kind of audience response to my work. That tells me when I am connecting.

One time I paid to have a professional reader review my script “The Anger Trap”. It was more money than I wanted to pay, and I felt a little disappointed by the review. It was fairly positive, but it didn’t have a whole lot of advice on what I could do to improve my script.

Another issue with a hired reviewer is that they are looking at the script from the point of view of getting it accepted by a reader at a big studio. Since I am looking at making my own film, I am not sure that I need to convince a reader to recommend my script.

Another time I sent “The Anger Trap” to one of those script competitions. The reviewers didn’t like it, but their comments were even briefer. One of the comments made me realize that the reviewer had never read past the first 10 pages. I couldn’t use any of the comments to understand how to improve my script.

Mostly though, I have friends review my scripts. They tend to be very supportive, which is a double edged sword. While some of my friends had some valuable advice, I do think I need to have broader input. I do think my friends are more likely to react the way a real audience would.

What I am thinking about now is to find other people writing script and get them to do a script review swap. I would review their script, and they would review mine. Now all I have to do is find people willing to do that. I did review one script for someone and I found it helped me see problems with my own script.