The Overactive Editor

One of my pet peeves of modern filmmaking is the overabundance of "coverage" shot for a given scene.

Coverage! coverage! coverage! is the rallying cry for too many directors.  If the story of a scene can be covered with one camera angle, then certainly it must be better if it was shot with 4 or 6 or 10!

And of course once all that film has been burned (or more likely, digital media has been filled up), and the expense of all those camera setups and re-lights (not to mention the assistant editor's time to capture and log all those takes) has been added to the budget, the editor sure as hell better use all those shots - whether it suits the story or not.

Thank goodness we have Walter Murch to remind us what's important:

• An overactive editor, who changes shots too frequently, is like a tour guide who can't stop pointing things out: "And up there we have the Sistine Ceiling, and over here we have the Mona Lisa, and, by the way, look at these floor tiles..." If you are on a tour, you do want the guide to point things out for you, of course, but some of the time you just want to walk around and see what you see.  If the guide - that is to say, the editor - doesn't have the confidence to let people themselves occasionally choose what they want to look at, or to leave things to their imagination, then he is pursuing a goal (complete control) that in the end is self-defeating. People will eventually feel constrained and then resentful from the constant pressure of his hand on the backs of their necks.

Walter Murch,  In The Blink of An Eye

My mantra while editing is that I should always have a reason for making every single cut.  Every time you destroy the fabric of temporal and spatial continuity in a scene to make a cut, you better have a good reason for it.  Just switching to another camera angle because you have one available is not good enough.  Plus, you're giving me a dang headache - so knock it off!

The Story of Ink

If you are into visionary fantasy films, you owe it to yourself to check out indie cult favorite Ink.

From their website:
An 8-year-old becomes a pawn in a metaphysical war being fought between the forces of light and darkness in this visually outrageous indie thriller.

Kidnapped by a large, strange creature known as Ink, the girl is taken through a labyrinthine world of dream states while those who love her fight to bring her back into the real world and bring salvation to her desperate father.

Ink is one of the most ambitious indie films I have seen.  With a budget of around $250,000 filmmakers Jamin and Kiowa Winans have squeezed every penny of that mini-budget and put it up on the screen.

watch trailer 1  |  watch trailer 2	visit website

It completely sidesteps the usual hallmarks of low-budget filmmaking by including a large cast, many locations, superb fight scenes and amazing art direction.

You're just not supposed to bite off that much with so little budget and no studio backing - but thank goodness they did.

I especially loved the look of the Incubus (or is that Incubi??) with their ever-sneering projected faces:

(do I sense a little Dave McKean perhaps?)

Amazing as it is, the film is not perfect - the first act is somewhat confusing, the dialogue is a bit stilted at times and the editing unnecessarily frenetic in places.  Sounds like a typical Hollywood film. The micro-budget does inevitably show through in some scenes, but that is only because Jamin stubbornly refuses to be held back by commonsense notions of low-budget filmmaking.  Big kudos for pushing the envelope of what can be done!

As is so often the case these days, Ink is also a story about the trevails of independent filmmaking.  I particularly enjoyed reading their blog as they journey through the ever-changing sands of today's indie film world, while traditional distribution models crumble around them.  Ink had a film festival premiere, garnered great reviews (including Aint it Cool News, LA Times and Fangoria), amazing word of mouth, was theatrically released (by Jamin and Kiowa themselves) in Denver, New York and LA, their trailer was viewed hundreds of thousands of times, the movie itself ripped and dowloaded on bit torrent more than 500,000 times, was ranked as high as #16 on imdb, and had army of dedicated and passionate fans who clamored to see the film.

It also never was picked up by a distributor.

Refusing to sign with a distributor who at best might offer a small advance and retain all rights to their baby, and who at worst might just shelve the film, never to pay back a dime, Jamin and Kiowa made the inevitable decision to distribute the movie themselves.  In today's market that meant a combination of continuing to try to find independent theater owners who would screen it for them as well as the usual DVD and digital outlets - Netflix, iTunes, Blockbuster, and Amazon.

(For a more in-depth examination of the nuts-and-bolts aspects of indie filmmaking and distribution, take a listen to their Film Courage radio interview.)

Jamin and Kiowa make the case that the festival circuit of today is no longer a place to sell a film but an opportunity to launch a media blitz that may hopefully ultimately lead to paying back one's investors through self-distribution and a ton of hard work.  If these guys can't make it work, with their incredible film, dedicated fans and tireless work ethic, then the whole model of indie filmmaking is surely broken.

Please check out their work and if you enjoy it, support them by buying directly from their store where they will receive most of the profits.  Indie filmmakers like them can only survive by the continued support of people who actually buy their art and allow the artists the financial freedom to actually do their work for you, the viewer (more on this in a future post.)

Hollywood - no, it's not all that bad

I realize that some of my posts on this blog have tended to have an anti-Hollywood bias.  So in an effort to not seem like a complete dour sour-puss I thought I'd share with you some of the movies that I actually did enjoy in 2009:

(insert sounds of crickets chirping)


No, seriously, here we go (in stream-of-consciousness order):

- Inglourious Basterds
- District 9
- The Hurt Locker
- A Serious Man
- Up in The Air
- Up
- Watchmen
- Adventureland
- The Blind Side (ok, I admit I actually cried a little)
- The Cove
- Food, Inc.
- Let the Right One In (yeah, it was released in 2008 but I didn't see it until 2009)
- Drag Me to Hell
- Paranormal Activity
- Tell No One (alright, yes that was produced even further back in 2006 but what can I say, I miss some things you know)
- Knowing
- The Hangover
- Anvil!
- Star Trek
- Avatar (the first 90 minutes only - see my post here:)

You see, most of those are Hollywood-produced films, with a sprinkling of indies, docs and foreign films as well.

Ah... there, now I feel all warm and cozy knowing that great movies can be made despite the risk-averse Hollywood mainstream that continues to churn out ripoffs, retreads and sequels.

(oops, sorry - just can't help myself sometimes.)

Teal and Orange - Hollywood, Please Stop the Madness

Those of you who watch a lot of Hollywood movies may have noticed a certain trend that has consumed the industry in the last few years.  It is one of the most insidious and heinous practices that has ever overwhelmed the industry.  Am I talking about the lack of good scripts?  Do I speak of the dependency of a few mega-blockbuster hits to save the studios each year, or of the endless sequels and television retreads?  No, I am talking about something much more dangerous, much deadlier to the health of cinema.

I speak of course, of THE COLOR GRADING VIRUS THAT IS TEAL & ORANGE!!!

This is the insidious practice of color-grading every movie with a simplified, distilled palette of teal and orange like this:

Or this:

Or this:

So how did we get here, you may ask. Well, it's a sad and sordid tale my friend, the combination of new digital technology and a good idea gone bad.

AVATAR: Style Over Substance - Oh, but what style

 

The first 90 minutes of James Cameron's latest little personal film, Avatar, are jaw-droppingly beautiful.  One of the things that cinema is uniquely able to do is transform you into a place you've never imagined before - and Avatar does this amazingly.  The advanced motion capture technology and fully-realized CG alien realm, combined with the latest in 3D allow the viewer to enjoy a fully immersive experience - kind of like, well, controlling one's own personal avatar through Cameron's movie.  Within it you are able to experience moments of pure cinematic bliss.

And then... reality steps in.  The reality that Avatar eventually has to unwind its pedantic, cliche-ridden story - basically Last of the Mohicans/Dances With Wolves, with a touch of white-man guilt thrown in for good measure.

Now, this story is well-known and well-used for a reason. It works. We want to root for the underdogs. We want to believe in a world in which nature has inherent value and we are nourished by it. We want to feel a deeper connection to all things - and embrace the mysticism inherent to that connection. We want to fight against corporate greed and militaristic evil. Those are all good things and so we willingly follow down the well-worn path of this story because it is heart-felt and it is comforting.

With this film I realize what the problem I have with Cameron is - he is an incredible craftsman, but not an artist. And Avatar shows this with great clarity.

Cameron plays it so safe here, that he sucks all the magic out of this world that he has conjured for us.  It's as if he is so visionary, so far-reaching in his technical achievements that he has nothing left for the actual story, which is what ultimately frustrates me because having spent the $400 million on the tech, he had an opportunity to do something really ground-breaking, something truly revolutionary.

Instead, we have the basic soldier goes native and winds up fighting with the natives and against his own country. Now this might be interesting if there was an actual difficult choice to be made here - like having to fight against his former friends and comrades, but Cameron obliterates any inherent drama in that decision by allowing everyone he cared about go AWOL with him, and also making the remaining soldiers and corporate goons paper-thin "bad guys" so they can be easily disposed of without any internal conflict. Gee, nothing like eliminating any tension and drama from the last 3rd of the movie where it sorely needs it, eh?

And as far as this being a visionary Sci-Fi flick - forget about it. This is Kindergarten-level Science Fiction - everything is spoon-fed to the viewer with very little mystery allowed. The viewer never has to "catch up to the film" because they are seeing it clearly in their rear view mirror.

And really, do I need to see yet another exo-skeleton battle in the 3rd act - like, oh I don't know...

Aliens?


Ultimately, I just want to smash Cameron's head against a wall and scream - "Hey dipshit, you had me in the palm of your hand - now spend the extra scratch and have a real script doctor polish up your story so I don't see every single thing coming my way!" How about throwing me a freakin' bone - like oh I don't know, like a little twist, or a misdirection, or hidden meaning - how about letting me bathe in the air of mystery a little bit, eh? How about some actual art beneath your amazing matrix of CGI - how about some fucking poetry!

Oh well - if I want that I can always throw this baby in the DVD player:

Now there's a master craftsman AND master artist!

---

As far as Avatar goes, if you want to see this movie, you really must spend the extra cash to see it in a big-ass theater with 3D glasses - it's all about the wow factor.

This movie is so schizophrenic, I have to give it two different ratings:

Special FX/Art Direction

Story

The Commune DVD is here!

My first foray into the indy film market is done!



A labor of love for over 2 years, The Commune is now available for everyone to enjoy. We worked really hard on the DVD to pack it with many extra features including deleted scenes, behind-the-scenes interviews and not one but TWO entire commentary tracks that take you deep inside the making of the movie and the process of developing the story, themes and symbolism hidden within The Commune.

---

OK, enough hyperbole for now.

Allow me to fill you in on the backstory of The Commune.

Almost three years ago, my good friend and brilliant screenwriter, Elisabeth Fies started working on pre-production on her first feature film, Pistoleras. Now, her screenplay for Pistoleras had already won a couple of awards and everyone who read it instantly recognized not only its smart mashup of Spaghetti western and teen flick genres, but its instant marketability.

While Lis started casting the movie, my other good friend, comic book artist Charles Yoakum begin work in the graphic novel version of the movie.

I concentrated on the production and post-production workflow. At the time, affordable HD camcorders were just hitting the market, and the Panasonic HVX200was getting lots of buzz due to it's ability to shoot 1080p at 24fps - in other words, produce a convincing film-look for under $6000. Add to that, the new 35mm adapters that were coming out like the Brevis and the Red Rock Micro which allow for true 35mm depth of field just like the big boys in Hollywood, and this combo looked to me to be the perfect way to enter the feature film market with a microbudget.

We started to do some screen tests but soon realized that the scope of the project was just too big for the resources that we had available. The script just had too many characters, too many locations, too much action choreography and to be honest, we had too little experience to do the script justice. Although Lis and I both had filmschool backgrounds, and I had over 15 years experience as a professional editor (mostly documentaries and corporate videos), this would be our first feature film. We decided that it would be best of we got our feet wet on a smaller-scale project that had fewer locations and actors, and that we could shoot in a matter of weeks.

Lis happened to have a screenplay that she had been working on that was almost ready to go, so she emailed it to me. I was blown away. Again, this was a genre mashup but this time a classic 70's style thriller mixed with a coming of age drama, all wrapped up inside the creepy Patchouli oil drenched commune. It was a slow-burn kind of story where you get lost in the intrigue and the amazingly honest love story and then BLAMMO you get blindsided at the end and realize that what you thought the story was about was far, far from the awful truth.

This was The Commune.

(To be continued...)

Why Special FX Shouldn't Be the Deciding Factor for Directing a Movie

In my previous post I stated that just because some guy could animate some nice robots, maybe that's not the best reason to give him $30 million to direct a movie.

You see, movies kinda have something to do with story and motivation and human emotions and metaphor and psychology and... oh heck, just watch these brilliant deconstructions of why Star Wars: The Phantom Menace sucked beyond belief and you'll see what I mean.