Continuing my education: Casablanca

I didn't go to film school. I've stated my thoughts on film school many times -- though never on this blog, so I probably should do a post just to have it on the record -- but the short version is I think it's a vestigial concept that was useful once but is now generally a waste of money, at least in terms of writing or directing. (I think programs for the more technical skills like editing, cinematography, sound and VFX are still useful because there's an element of learning the technology hand-in-hand with the technique, but that's a caveat for another day.)

My point is, for better or worse, what I know about films and filmmaking is largely self-taught. I've always believed that in order to make movies, you have to watch movies, and if there's anything in my life about which I could be considered "religious," it's probably that. I'm fortunate to have been born in the age of the video rental, and my grandparents kept a membership to a Mom & Pop video store through the 80s and 90s, just for me. My late grandfather had two VCRs, so that he could dupe the rental to another tape, and I could watch the movies over and over without having to re-rent them.¹

Still, my movie-watching education has been a curriculum of my own devising, and I have many "classic" films yet to check off the list. See, for example, my being so late to the party re: The Godfather. So here's the latest in what I consider the lifelong continuation of my film education: Casablanca.

So what did I learn?

Well, just to have it said: I liked it a lot. A few re-watches and I might even love it. Well-structured, moved along at a good pace without feeling rushed. And my God, the dialogue! No wonder this movie is so oft-quoted. It's pretty theatrical, even corny sometimes -- and according to IMDB and Wikipedia, the screenwriters themselves acknowledged as much -- but somehow it just all works.

Some of the exchanges between Rick and the less scrupulous denizens of Casablanca are particularly sharp and witty, though like most of the Golden Age films, it has a certain quality to it that initially makes it feel like "very good writing" rather than "believable conversation." Part of it is no doubt the fact that every line had to be very carefully constructed to get approved under the Hays Code. Part of it is the fact that film was still fairly new, and most writers were playwrights first and had a more theatrical style.

But part of it, I think, is outside the writing and in the performance. I think part of it is the way that performers were essentially property, loaned out and traded like baseball cards, generally lacking any passion for the projects they did. They just showed up and read the lines for their day, and it has the (pleasantly) odd, workmanlike, even formal feel that I've frankly come to appreciate about the old films.

They're almost like feature-length demonstrations of the Kuleshov effect, in which you're presented with films which give you, as an audience member, very little in the way of emotional inflection; and yet by the things that the characters say and do, it stimulates your own emotions and even causes you to project emotions onto the characters who are otherwise not expressing them.²

There's not a lot of screaming, or sobbing, or contorting of faces, or even moving much faster than a brisk walk. But in that stark simplicity -- whether it was by design, or simply an inevitable result of the assembly-line nature of Golden Era filmmaking (and I suspect the latter) -- they created a canvas with strong outlines, leaving it to the audience to complete the picture. And engaging the audience, as I said just recently, is a crucial factor in whether or not they give a damn about the movie while they're sitting in their seats, to say nothing of when they leave the theatre. I can definitely see why people might prefer this style to the more raw, even if perhaps more "real," style of acting today.

A modern disciple of this style would be David Mamet, from whose book On Directing Films I apprehended "inflection" as a filmmaking term (though I don't know for certain if he coined it). He generally seems to allow a single character a single emotional outburst in his dialogue-heavy films; otherwise the performances are very calm, restrained, and straightforward. Yet in that calm, because of the situations he creates, there is somehow anger; or fear; or arrogance; uncertainty; desperation; triumph -- all created by juxtaposition of the words and images, rather than the actors actively emoting. And because the emotions are not expressed, they are breathtakingly potent, boiling beneath the surface. (I still need to do my review of last year's phenomenal Redbelt, in which I can get into this more deeply.)

This is also, I would venture a guess, why many people of my generation and younger find these kinds of movies "boring." They are not used to having to do part of the storytelling work, are used to taking emotional cues from the actors' faces and tone of voice rather than their choice of words. It is a different kind of movie, a more challenging kind of movie for both the audience and (if he's doing it intentionally) the filmmaker. It relies on both sides of the equation placing a certain degree of trust into the other, and a certain degree of effort into the creation of something that can become intensely personal to everyone who views it. And it keeps the movie alive and relevant, because part of its vibrancy comes from the viewer, not from the screen.

In short, I learned for myself why Casablanca is a classic. I'm glad that I watched this before many other films, because a less-quotable film may not have caught my attention and helped me understand my role in the filmmaking experience -- both expanding it as a viewer, and perhaps contracting it when I'm in the hot seat. I think I will appreciate films of the era more, having experienced Casablanca first, and I do think it will improve my own filmmaking. It deserves its place in the pantheon of great films.

Instead of closing out this post with one of the old standard quotes -- "looking at you, kid," "beautiful friendship," etc. -- I'll go with one that Peter Lorre's character says in his one scene in the film (though I bet they used his name prominently in the advertising).

I use it because I think it relates perfectly to the odd way that the actors' and filmmakers' dispassionate, occasionally even hostile relationship with Golden Age material could sometimes, somehow, produce films of profound, lasting truth and power:

You know, Rick, I have many a friend in Casablanca. But somehow, just because you despise me, you are the only one I trust.

---

1. That's right, my grandfather was pirating movies decades before it was cool. He even duplicated the FBI warning telling you not to do that, the deliciousness of which I appreciated when I got older.
   
   On a footnote side-note: despite my grandfather being perfectly capable of understanding how to daisy-chain two VCRs together and having one record to another, while still outputting the movie to the television so I could watch and dupe simultaneously, the clocks on both VCRs flashed 12:00 for the entirety of my formative years. ↩


2. The Kuleshov effect technically only refers to two images juxtaposed, via editing, without inflection, or any sort of visual "editorializing" telling you what to think; and yet their juxtaposition creates an implied statement or emotion. But I would say that this applies equally to two lines of dialogue presented in the same manner. ↩

I'm with Bale

Apparently there was a bit of a row on the set of Terminator 4 last summer. Christian Bale blew his top at the DP, apparently for walking onto the set during a take. And now TMZ, that perfect encapsulation of our celebrity-obsessed culture, has the audio.

First impression: that audio is really clean.

Second impression: I'm siding with Bale.

Now, I wasn't there. I don't know what really went on. And I know a lot of people hear that audio and think "Holy shit, what a fucking diva asshole. I would never work with that dick and I've lost a ton of respect for him." But quite honestly, I disagree.

Acting is hard. If you want to do it well, it's hard. You've got to live in the space, you've got to really believe everything you're saying every moment that the camera is on you. Worse yet, in the film world, you have to believe it in five minute chunks, aka takes. You've got to know your lines, take direction, make sure you're made up, make sure you hit your marks, and maneuver around the lumbering apparatus that is a shooting crew -- while simultaneously looking like you aren't doing any of that at all. While looking like the character you're playing a real person in a real situation.

Gary Oldman has lamented the fact that the crew gets to take hours to do their jobs, and yet he's expected to show up, say his lines, get it right the first couple times and move on. Everybody always makes a big thing about how an actor in a biopic -- whether it be Carrey in Man on the Moon or Langella in Frost/Nixon -- never breaks character while on set. The fact is that this is the only way they can be sure they're doing their job properly. If they don't focus themselves wholeheartedly to respectful personification, it is far, far too easy in the staccato world of production to just fall into impersonation. The actor's job is to forget that they are acting, so that you, in turn, can also forget that they are acting. Sometimes, with very complex characters, that means they have to never acknowledge they are acting as long as they are on the set, or else they will not be able to maintain the character's reality before the cameras.

On a big-budget picture, I imagine the pressure is immense. There's an awareness that you are burning cash at a terrifying rate just by standing there. You've only got the brief period between "action" and "cut" to actually focus in and put yourself in the world. You need to use that time to immerse yourself in the fantasy world of the film. Because you care about doing a good job, doing the best job. The quality of your work matters to you no matter what the project, so within the limitations you are going to cast everything out of your mind, and just be in that other world, with everything you've got.

So imagine, that in that brief period between "action" and "cut" that is yours, that moment you need everyone to disappear from your awareness so you can be that character, imagine that the DP goes wandering onto the set, right in your line of sight, right in the middle of the scene. And he thinks it's okay because the camera can't see him.

He's showing total disrespect for your craft, to the extent that he doesn't even seem to acknowledge that your work is important -- doesn't acknowledge that you're even working at all. Listen to his excuse -- he's "checking the light." You can't wait for "cut," guy? You can't just look at the frigging monitor?

If you're an actor that cares about the quality of your work, how do you NOT go apeshit over something like that?

Viral Marketing -- ur doin it rite

Okay, so I lied about not posting about Watchmen no more.

But this viral piece from Watchmen comes on the tail of a disastrously failed viral marketing campaign in Australia, of which I was aware because I follow a number of Aussies on Twitter.

Viral marketing is hard to do right. It's hard to predict what people will latch on to and really start talking about and pass on to their friends. I get a lot of people asking for advice on how to make their video a viral hit, and there are factors you can look at. High-quality content is likely to get passed around. Content attached to some kind of celebrity will probably get passed around. Funny or uplifting usually has a better chance than somber. But beyond that, I dunno. The RvD films are a total fluke -- it's not like we planned for them to be smash hits (although we hoped, on the second one), and I'm not sure you can plan that kind of thing -- although the Ask a Ninja guys might disagree with me.

It seems you can't go wrong with cute animals acting strange. You've seen the sneezing panda? Of course you have. Everyone has. Fucking bear has 30 million views on YouTube. I don't even know how many views the frigging dramatic prairie dog/chipmunk/gopher has, because it's been uploaded about 4000 separate times -- but most of the search results have half a million hits or more.

But trying to actually make an ad badass enough to catch on? It happens. Usually when you're dealing with Superbowl spots, you can be guaranteed people are going to seek it out, and if you do other spots throughout the year like that, there's a good chance people will talk about it and they'll look it up online. But that's more word-of-mouth from traditional advertising than viral marketing, which seeks to make the audience do the work. They spread it around, they show it, they talk about it and it becomes part of the zeitgeist, at least for a little while.

Viral marketing for movies had its genesis with The Blair Witch Project. They set up a website -- when the vast interconnected community they call "Web 2.0" was only just starting to appear on the scene -- which basically asserted that the film was a real documentary about real events. The campaign was so successful that not only did everybody know about this micro-budget indie flick, with almost no real marketing to speak of, but for years afterward I would meet people who still thought it was real.

Quite frankly, I think viral marketing for a film can be a beautiful thing. In the old days, movies were more like live theatre. You sat in your seat and the curtains went up and an overture played. Like in live theatre, the overture was meant to both accommodate some stragglers who were finding their seats, but also to set the mood. If it was a musical it would give you hints of the musical themes you were going to hear. But most of all it provided a buffer zone between your real life, and ushered you into the fantasy life you were about to see on the screen.

We don't have that anymore, except in more specialty theatres. Most theatres are little boxes with chintzy decor. You're bombarded with advertisements for various products, other movies, and reprimands about proper etiquette which people seem to ignore anyway. These days movies don't even have opening credits for the most part, which means you just have to hit the ground running when the film starts playing.

Viral marketing like the Watchmen piece below help, I think, to fill that gap. It creates a whole "experience" of the film's reality, allowing you an early taste of accepting and understanding and engaging the world of the film.

When done right, the seams are invisible. For one thing, note that this video never once mentions the film Watchmen. It's not really an advertisement so much as supplemental material, about what is ultimately one of the central concerns of the story (mild spoilers): Dr. Manhattan changed the world, and no one can in that world can imagine it without him.

It sets the stage for the time period (an alternate 1980s) by being a very faithfully-produced replica of a 70s-era news broadcast, complete with "bad VHS" type degrading, which is heaviest early on.

It also frees up the filmmakers to not really have to deal with setting this up too much in the movie. The world will be different, and what we have here is three minutes of exposition which are unlikely to be crucial to the story, but create, as I said, a fuller, more immersive world.

The last "nice touch" is that the video is posted by the user "thenewfrontiersman," which is the name of a sort of widely-read, conspiracy-theory type newspaper in the Watchmen world. The kind of paper that sometimes gets a scoop but is usually just adding editorial paranoia to otherwise innocuous events (i.e. the kind of paper an unfortunate number of people, in our America as well as theirs, tend to believe). If they do more videos, we may get to become acquainted with the personality of The New Frontiersmen, as well as other characters in the film.

This kind of marketing becomes fun, almost interactive. A kind of spontaneous roleplaying has already showed up in the comments, with people pretending that this world really exists, that this news broadcast is a genuine part of our history.

"I gotta say, I miss all those costumed heroes," one says. "Sure they were reckless, but they made things a lot more interesting."

If a video gets posted about Adrian Veidt, we'll probably see comments praising his products and his humanitarian efforts, while others malign him as a sell-out and a heartless mega-corporation, probably even using anti-Wal-Mart rhetoric to give it a realistic flair. They are engaging with the movie and they haven't even seen it. They are becoming part of the tapestry of the film.

Zack Snyder and the producers have already shown a strong grasp of getting people to feel like they are a part of this film -- they held a short film competition to produce advertisements for Veidt products, the best of which would be seen as television advertisements within the film itself. When you get people to feel a sense of ownership over the movie, to feel that they helped make it what it is, you are more successful creatively (because they're more engaged), and more successful commercially (because they're more likely to come).

I'm really very excited about this movie because more than anything, it just seems like they really get it. This clip is no exception.

What Just Happened: The Big RED Announcement

So remember my post earlier this year about how the RED camera was an awesome digital filmmaking revolution?

And remember how their NAB announcements further "changed the game"?

RED's latest announcement just bitchslapped all previous products and announcements and told them to go make it a sandwich.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, a brief timeline.

How We Got Here

At NAB 08, two new cameras were announced in the RED product line. The 3K "Scarlet" -- originally touted as a "professional pocket camera" -- and the 5K "Epic," called the "flagship of the RED family." There's been a flurry of discussion about both cameras ever since on the RED community site RedUser. Scarlet discussion, in fact, was so significant that it wound up spawning off its own dedicated discussion board, ScarletUser.

On both sites, requests for features -- both "reasonable" and "unreasonable" -- were made by the community, changes and revisions made by RED, and while not everyone was thrilled by every aspect of either camera, the forums were buzzing all through the spring and summer.

Then, in September 2008, several announcements came in quick succession from Jim Jannard -- founder of RED and wacky billionaire extraordinaire -- on the RedUser forum.

The first, posted on September 8, announced a "DSLR-killer" that was tentatively called a DSMC (Digital Still & Motion Camera). Speculation as to what this could mean -- and in particular, where the DSMC sat in relation to the Scarlet, specification-wise -- immediately erupted. Scarlet had a 2/3" sensor, after all, whereas to even play in the DSLR sandbox the DSMC would have to be a 35mm sensor, to say nothing of the planned "fixed lens" on Scarlet, when the DSMC would need to be swappable. So it sounded like the DSMC would pretty much trounce Scarlet spec-wise; but if it were more expensive than Scarlet's speculated $3K price point, it would be too expensive to be much of a competitor, let alone a "killer," of the DSLR market.

I personally was already confused by what seemed to me to be significant market overlap between the Epic and the Red One -- now RED seemed to be stepping on their own toes again. It just didn't make much sense.

Three days later, on September 11, Jannard posted a message stating simply that "Epic...has changed." Eleven days after that, on ScarletUser, Jannard announced that Scarlet, similarly, was "not the same," and that everything we "knew" about Scarlet should be wiped from our memories. He later made the same "clean slate" statement regarding Epic. Renders and spec pages of both products were pulled from the RED company website, replaced with temporary images stating that they were "Currently Undergoing Change."

When it was pointed out that no mention had been made of where the DSMC sat in these plans, Jim gave the cryptic answer, "What's a DSMC?"

Based on all that, it was assumed by many in the RED-aware community, myself included, that RED had realized that Epic needed to be more distinct from Red One and were re-tooling it, and likewise had absorbed the DSMC into a revised Scarlet concept.

Finally, Jim announced that all would be made clear on November 13th. Why that date? Who knows. But the RED community -- and really, much of the digital filmmaking community -- has been looking toward the day with some degree of anticipation or other.

So now the day is here. And as of 1:41 AM, all has indeed been made clear.

What Just Happened

The most significant element of the announcement, as it turns out, is the DSMC. If the concept started life as a distinct, stand-alone product, it has since evolved into the over-arching philosophy for the foreseeable future of RED's product line.

Standard practice for electronics manufacturers is to build a full-featured device -- in this case a camera. The commonly understood drawback being that the device is obsolete nearly the moment you buy it. Technological advancement has created an improvement in the sensor, or the processing, or the monitoring, even an improvement in form factor -- whatever it is, it will require that the manufacturer create a completely new device, and you must buy it again.

This also tends to mean that updated devices come every 12-18 months, since manufacturers don't want to constantly be revising their product line. So they wait for a "backlog" of improvements to build up, enough that they can justify creating a new product and you, the buyer, can justify ponying up the dough again.

The DSMC model does things differently.

RED's plan moving forward is to produce not cameras, but components of cameras, which can be configured and re-configured almost infinitely¹. You can buy one set of components and be able to make a still camera, a movie camera, a shoulder-mounted camera, and even a 3D rig. You are not locked in to the configuration that they think is most "optimized" for the most situations. You decide.

On top of that, because the camera is modular in every way, including the sensor (which I'll get to in a second), you also don't have to wait for technological advances to reach critical mass before upgrading to the latest and greatest. If a better LCD monitor comes out, you can buy that and integrate it into your configurations without losing the investment on the rest of the components. A lot of the non-electronic components -- the grips, the shoulder-pads, the mounting rods -- will rarely or never need an "upgrade," so it's senseless to buy all those bits anew when the electronics are improved. Thanks to the modular DSMC system, you no longer have to.

The concept, like all revolutionary ideas, is forehead-slappingly obvious once someone comes out and does it. And to be fair, it's not a completely new concept -- to RED. This is essentially what the Red One was intended to be, but they couldn't quite make it happen.

But hey, the camera makes pretty pictures and if it was a necessary step to take on the path to developing the DSMC system, then I am happy to forgive.

As I said, the system is totally modular, and that includes the sensor. Not only was DSMC not absorbed into Scarlet, but as it turns out, both Scarlet and Epic were absorbed into the DSMC philosophy.

One of the issues that restricted the intended modularity of the Red One was the fact that some parts were easier to upgrade than others. For example, the camera can only record 4K resolution at 30 frames per second. This is not a restriction of the sensor, which can be upgraded and swapped out relatively easily (by trained technicians), but of the camera's internal motherboard which processes the imagery, which cannot be upgraded.

So when it comes to the DSMC, rather than simply selling swappable sensors and wishing the users best of luck, RED will package the sensors with the necessary electronics to record, encode, and control the imagery from those specific sensors, and swappable lens mounts. They call these modules "Brains," and like the other elements they are fully swappable modules. So instead of Scarlet and Epic being individual cameras, they are two lines of Brain modules, and they break down like this.

Scarlet

Scarlet Brains are tentatively to be configured as follows:

2/3" Mysterium-X Sensor,² 3K resolution, 1-120 fps recording, $2,500³

Super-35 Mysterium-X Sensor, 5K resolution, 1-30 fps recording, $7,000

Full-Frame 35 Monstro Sensor, 6K resolution, 1-30 fps recording, $12,000

All Scarlet Brains will record a data-rate of 42 MB/sec (compared to Red One's 36 MB/sec).

Epic

Fair warning: if you understand even some of what I'm saying here, the specs of the Epic Brains may explode yours.

Epic Brains are tentatively to be configured as follows:

Super-35 Mysterium-X Sensor, 5K resolution, 1-100 fps recording, $28,000

Full-Frame 35 Monstro Sensor, 6K resolution, 1-100 fps recording, $35,000

Medium-Format 645 (basically IMAX) Monstro Sensor, 9K resolution, 1-50 fps recording, $45,000

These Epic Brains will record a data-rate of 225 MB/sec -- that's a 625% increase in data rate, and hopefully therefore quality, over Red One.

I complained last time that they shouldn't be calling a camera Epic unless it basically shoots 65mm/IMAX format -- and they've answered that. Not only that, but they threw in one more format, one that makes IMAX its bitch.

Technorama 617 Monstro Sensor, 28K resolution, 1-25 fps, $55,000

Yes, you fucking heard me right. I said 28K. And it'll record at a computer-pulverizing 500 MB/sec.

Red One's 4K is already four times bigger than your 1080p HDTV. How big is 28K compared to that? Stu Maschwitz did a comparison on his Prolost blog.

If that's still too abstract, lay a 14-story office building on its side in your mind. That's roughly the fucking native resolution of 28K.⁴

It's basically a digital, motion-capable version of this camera. The obvious question arises: Why in the hell would you port such a camera format to the digital realm at all, much less at such blasphemous resolutions?

The best I can figure is that this is RED's way of telling me and people like me -- folks that thought we were hot shit calling for RED to step up to the IMAX plate after getting moist at a Dark Knight screening, folks that said that we knew what was "epic," we had seen "epic," and 5K Super-35, good sir, was not "epic" -- that we may feel free to shut our goddamned sissy mouths, and mince our dainty way out of RED Epic's sight.

So What Does All This Mean?

I remember being taught in science class that every cell of your body eventually dies, and is replaced by a new cell. Eventually this happens to every cell in your body, so that after a certain period of time -- as I recall it was a cycle of seven years -- your body is comprised of entirely new cells. After seven years, there is no cell in your body that was there seven years ago. They have all been replaced. But "you" are still "you."

Metaphysical implications aside, this is basically what the DSMC philosophy will mean to the RED camera, starting when it is implemented in (tentatively) Spring/Summer '09. You only have to buy "one camera," and from that point on it is only the components that change. And by the end of it you may have a completely different camera than the one you started with, but your investment and upgrading is spread out over the life of the camera, and you hardly notice.

Even better, with rental solutions you can upgrade your camera temporarily as needed. Say you invest in a package with a 5K Scarlet Brain, as it's most cost-effective, but you decide you want to shoot slow-motion at higher frame-rates than 30 fps. Outside a DSMC model, you would have to rent an entire camera package -- whether it be a Phantom or other high-speed camera, or even an old-style Epic -- the format and image quality and resolution may not match, they may not cut together, and it may bugger the whole pipeline.

But with swappable Brains, you can shoot with the 5K Scarlet, then if you want to shoot high-speed you rent a 5K Epic Brain for a day and swap it in for the high-speed shots. It's all REDCODE, it's all Super-35, all 5K with the same compression type (though quite a bit less on the Epic) and same lenses, and you never even have to change the accessory configuration.

And if (when), down the line, higher framerates or data rates or resolutions become a possibility, you can just rent or buy those new modules, and keep on shooting like nothing's changed.

The example I gave above is, basically, what I plan to do. When the DSMC system becomes available, I will sell my Red One + accessories and use the money to purchase a DSMC package with a 5K Scarlet brain -- I don't know how much those accessories will cost, but more than likely, it will probably be cheaper out the door than my current RED package. I will rent an Epic 5K brain for high-speed shooting, and otherwise be happy with a camera that completely out-specs a camera with which I am already quite happy.

The Editblog has dubbed today "REDmas," and though it's meant to be a bit of a nudge in the ribs at the TOTAL fanboyism and anticipation leading up to this day, I think it is still somewhat appropriate. Especially since, for me, the day is still not over.

Our friends at fxguide/Red Centre have asked me to attend a private RED event on their behalf this evening, where we will be able to talk to the RED peeps, ask some questions, and hopefully get some pictures and even maybe get our hands on some prototypes. Keep your eye on fxguide for the story, and if there's any new insight that impacts what I've said here, I'll do an update post here too.

Finally, the obligatory disclaimer: for all the excitement and profanity this talk has brought out of me, these are currently just plans and specs and CAD renders. None of this actually exists and it's possible that none of it ever will, whether by RED not following through or just changing their minds -- as they've already done once. But they did follow through on the Red One, so they've earned some faith from me.

---

1. Their marketing material claims 2,251,799,813,685,248 possible configurations based on the planned accessories; don't ask me how they got that number, they may have just made it up, but even if they did, it still makes the point pretty strongly.↩


2. RED's first sensor was, and is, the Mysterium. Mysterium-X is the second generation, with improved dynamic range (11+ stops to Mysterium's 10+). Monstro is the third generation, with both improved dynamic range (13+ stops) and improved bit depth (16 bits to Mysterium and Mysterium-X's 12 bits).↩


3. There is, at this time, still a plan to have a self-contained Scarlet with an included, fixed lens with this same "Brain" config, pricing TBD.↩


4. Sorry if the cursing is a little more excessive than usual, but seriously. Fuck.↩

But what I REALLY want to do...

Been a while since I wrote an actual blog on filmmaking, whether procedural or philosophical. This comment ties back to an earlier post I made about how some people really feel passionate about what they do in the industry. I had another experience of the sort that made me want to elaborate a bit more on the topic.

The common "wisdom" about the movie business is that everyone, whether overtly or secretly, is angling to direct.¹ Because of the pervasiveness of this idea, I think many of the more "lowly" positions on the set -- the PAs, the grips -- are treated with disdain by the higher-ups, who view them as opportunistic (and, for the more insecure artistes, as potential threats). An older hand at it, a career grip, who's been in the business 40 years for example, might be treated with a subtle pity, as though they had failed to reach what was presumably their "true" ambition.

More experienced filmmakers who have worked with proper crews I'm sure know better than this, so I'm talking more to the up-and-comers in the crowd. When you get to the point that you get to command a set, do not under any circumstances condescend to your crew. Do not assume that you are better than them, or that you have achieved what they never could. Because that's probably not the case.

When we were shooting Sandrima Rising, they hired a grip by the name of Popcorn.² And he was phenomenal, I gotta say. Got the work done, kept his focus, never complained. And we would get to talking, as you do on any project, especially a long-term one. And he talked about how his father AND grandfather had both been grips in the film industry. He was a third-generation grip. and he loved what he did.

He loved the fact that he got to be a part of the creative and technical processes, without the rather crushing burden of having to run the show. He didn't mind that no grip, even key grip, is a household name (unlike directors and, to a lesser degree, writers), nor that he was not in the part of the industry that would ever make much more than a "modest" living.³ He just loved being a part of it, and love the part of it that he was in. Had no interest or aspiration for directing, loved being the one to realize the visions of the directors, solve a different problem every day, and most importantly, work regularly.

A director works on one project at a time, generally, and follows that through to completion, which can take a year or more. But crew can move from production to production, three or four months of shooting apiece and moving on to the next. The work is far more regular and, from a certain perspective and mindset, more rewarding. Like I said, every day a new challenge, instead of working on the same shots and sequences endlessly as you hone it into completion.

Another story, and the one that made me think of this topic again. I've been renting the RED to a no-budget feature titled Solitary.⁴ The crew is small, but so is the location, and as such I pretty much just stay the hell out of the way when I'm on set as camera support -- a project which I frequently designate to Anthony, so that I can stay home and work on Sandrima. But this weekend I went out with the camera on my own for scheduling reasons, and I met a grip who is doing his only weekend on the set.

The guy is a perfect case study in not judging a book by its cover. He's young, early to mid-twenties; good-looking, to the extent I'm surprised that he's behind the camera instead of in front. Very quiet, spends the day lugging equipment and such back and forth around the location. Easy to assume that he's a nice enough guy, but probably not very bright and therefore is best suited to manual labor.

Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, before working in film he took three years of engineering in college, as well as a year and a half of advanced physics studies, before putting college on hold to work in film for a while. His father was (is) a DP and he grew up on-set with crews and is comfortable with the "culture." He loves the physical labor part of it, but also -- as with Mr. Popcorn -- the synthesis of creative and technical problem-solving. He was more knowledgeable about filmmaking technology than most directors I know, and we had a brief but stimulating conversation about cameras, compositing, and shooting techniques. And still he, too, has no apparent interest in doing anything in the film business but what he's doing now.

While the grips carry equipment around and set up the lights, it's not mindless grunt work. They have to understand electrical currents and wiring in order to run cabling and power distribution appropriately; they have to understand the physics of light in order to get the precise lighting effects the DP requests⁵; and they've been on so many sets and solved so many problems that they can really bring a lot of diverse experience to bear on your current project.

If I remember to (and going back through earlier posts I discover a number of topics I've been "meaning to" talk about that haven't happened yet), I'll get into my thoughts on the "Auteur Theory" sometime. But whatever the case, when you get to make your movie, always treat the people working on the set with respect and dignity; and if they have suggestions, keep your ears and mind open.

Because despite the fact that you're the "guy in charge," there's still a good chance they're smarter than you.

---

1. A corollary to this holds that everyone in Los Angeles is working on a script. This one I think is true -- if you walked up to a random person in the supermarket and asked them how their script was going, I would wager 4 out of 5 times the response would be an astonished "How did you know?"↩


2. Seriously. I also know folks who go by Bear and Dragon. And then there's the concept artist Crash McCreery. You can get away with that stuff in this business. Hell, I go by Dorkman, so it's not like I can talk.↩


3. I say "modest" because, with film budgets what they are, a key grip with his own kit is gonna do alright for himself. It won't be in the millions, but a high five figures, even low six, is not out of the question↩


4. Not to be confused with an in-development project of my own that is titled Solitary, a title which really suits the project too well to change it. Not that most of you know anything about that project since it's nowhere near production and may never happen at all. But if it does, you'll know not to confuse them.↩


5. Some DPs are very involved with the process and will dictate what to do at a very detailed level. But some DPs prefer to invoke more of a feeling, and a general sense of where the light will come from and what the quality of the light will be, and the grips interpret that into the actual rigging of the lights. ↩

More GB3 News

Haven't posted lately, as I've been busy with Sandrima (just locked a 3D track of what I think will be one of the stand-out shots of the project) and there's not much to post about.

Well, I take that back. There's actually been a LOT to post about, if we're going to talk politics, hasn't there? But the baffling actions of the McCain campaign have moved so fast that it really felt more appropriate to address them via Twitter than try to write up a meaningful blog about it, especially since I am having trouble understand what it all actually means besides "McCain is losing his marbles" and I don't want to stoop to that unnecessarily. Also, the mainstream media is FINALLY pulling their heads out and noticing that this is ridiculous, no longer forcing the Daily Show to be the sole source of sanity and accountability in this race, so I felt like the MSM had it covered.

So I've been out, although I probably will write a blog re: tonight's debate -- which, despite McCain's confidence, is anyone's game.

But I thought I'd follow-up on the Ghostbusters 3 story from my last blog with some new and exciting information.

One of the biggest stumbling points to another Ghostbusters film has always been Bill Murray. My understanding is this: like Indiana Jones, for which a sequel could only move forward with unanimous approval from Lucas, Spielberg, and Ford, Ghostbusters is split among the controlling interests of Reitman, Aykroyd, Ramis, and Murray. A third Ghostbusters film could only be made if all four of the principals approved of it, and for the last 20 years, Bill Murray wasn't having it.

When Ghostbusters 2 was produced, he was openly unhappy with the process of the production, as well as the final product, and declared that he was done with Ghostbusters. When the subject of the sequel came up, Murray either said no flat-out, or yes on the provision that Venkman be killed near the beginning of the film and return as a ghost.¹

Things got more promising when Aykroyd, high off a viewing of TMNT, proposed that GB3 be made as a CGI feature. Though I'm on record around the web as hating that idea -- I would rather not have GB3 at all in that case -- Murray said that he would be willing to provide the voice for Venkman in that case. This opened the door to his willing reprisal of the role of Peter Venkman in the upcoming Ghostbusters video game, and apparently re-awakened his enthusiasm for the franchise, as he talks about in this video from Fantastic Fest (the GB talk starts at about the 5:00 mark):



It's funny, I always assumed that Murray was just kind of a crotchety guy and moved on from GB because of diva-esque "artistic differences," not getting enough screen time, whatever. But the interview here is so frank and open that I'm realizing that's wrong. It seems that the fact is that Bill Murray loves Ghostbusters, and he loves the Venkman character, and he was hurt and angry by the way the characters he so enjoyed, and the strength of the story possibilities, were marginalized and disrespected in favor of the effects and a lazy re-hash of the original.

Now, don't get me wrong, I personally like GB2, but based more on the mere fact of its existence than its relative merits. Objectively I can see where he is coming from. It was more slime than substance, and a clearly inferior sequel. And he didn't trust, for the last few decades, that a GB3 would be anything more than another hollow exercise in visual effects (and given the direction Hollywood movies have steadily taken, who can blame him?).

But it sounds like he's willing to give it another shot, and that he's in the same place I'm at with the talk of Office writers taking a crack at it -- new blood might be exactly what the franchise needs, not to re-invent itself, but to stage a triumphant return that more people would love to see than I think even the studio realizes.

If Bill Murray is on board, then this is the best news imaginable for the franchise.

---

1. Considering that his problem with GB2 was what he saw as the overuse of visual effects, this seems like an odd request. I've long thought that this notion of killing off the most popular character was just a bluff that he knew they would never call, thereby saying "no" without having to say it.↩

I never did follow-up...

At Comic-Con, RvD2 won the Star Wars Fan Movie Award for Best Visual Effects, which is a previously non-existent category apparently created solely to award us for it.¹

Not to look a gift horse in the mouth; MC Steve Sansweet had some amazingly kind things to say about both RvD and RvD2. I'm paraphrasing here, but it was to the effect of "When they announced that they were going to do a second one, we all wondered how they could possibly top themselves. But they did. Great work."

I may be reading into things, but that very brief kudos holds a lot of information between the lines. To wit:

-I assume that the "we" means, generally, "folks at Lucasfilm," potentially up to and including Lucas himself (to whom Sansweet has a direct line)

-They were aware of -- and apparently liked -- RvD well before RvD2 hit the scene

-They were paying enough attention to us to notice that we had announced a sequel in the works. This also means:

-They were aware of our call for donations before the film, and are almost certainly fully aware of the fact that we are selling DVDs. Regardless of the fact that the donations were true, voluntary donations, and the content being sold is legally ours to sell, both could have raised some hackles, and the fact that LFL has not only turned a blind eye to our activities but actively praised those activities' product is worth my gratitude.

I may be cynical about what LFL is offering the fans these days, but there can be no denying that they do know how valuable those fans are.

So thank you, Steve Sansweet, Atom, and Lucasfilm. I probably wouldn't have given two shakes if you didn't like the films, but it does mean something to me that you did.

---

1. Oddly, a category that did exist in previous years, and the one for which I actually thought we would be in the running -- Best Action -- was omitted from this year's competition. ↩

Everyone Can Relax, I've Seen The Godfather

Hello, everyone. My name is Michael "Dorkman" Scott, I'm 25 years old, a filmmaker, and until earlier today I had not seen Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather.

I have lost count of how many times someone has nearly leapt across a table and wang-chung'd me after I have been forced to make that confession in conversation. Even those who were kind about it treated me like the filmgoing equivalent of the 40 Year Old Virgin: they were nice about it to the level of slight condescension, assuring me that I'd see it "when I was ready."

Well, as the subject line says, everyone can relax. I've seen the fucking movie.

Obviously, with the kind of reaction people would have to my not having seen the flick, I went in with some pretty high expectations. Some films, like Pulp Fiction, and more recently The Dark Knight, manage to live up to and even, miraculously, sometimes surpass even the highest of expectations. The aforementioned Pulp Fiction was another on the list of "You mean you HAVEN'T SEEN -- ?!" reactions until finally I did see it about five years ago -- and understood what all the fuss was about.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are films like 2001, Blade Runner, and recently the obscenely-lauded Pan's Labyrinth, for which, for the life of me and even with multiple viewings, I cannot begin to understand the hype and passionate love people have.

So it was up in the air as to what I might think of Godfather now that I've had a quarter century of people telling me I'd better see it if I knew what was good for me. Fortunately, I liked it.

There's very little I can say about the film that hasn't already been said, so I won't bother to review or analyze it here. I think I need time for it to sink in before I can say I love the film, but I do think it's a great film. I wasn't blown away by it like I was by Pulp Fiction; it fits into a rarer category of a film that exactly hits my expectations, neither falling short nor exceeding. Another film to do that was The Shawshank Redemption. Didn't blow my mind, but I didn't get bored, and in a three-hour film that's always noteworthy. And of course the performances were flawless.

Now I guess I'd better see Godfather II, if I know what's good for me.

So what's this Sandrima Rising thing?

Over the years since RvD, and especially following RvD2, Ryan and I have gotten numerous proposals to be involved with other peoples' fan films. Generally speaking, we've said no. Fan films take a lot of time, even if it's "just a saber fight," and if we're going to spend that kind of time on a project it'll be our own.

Then I got an e-mail about Sandrima Rising. As I mentioned before, the actual complete title of the project is The Renaissance Chronicles: Sandrima Rising. The idea was that they were going to pitch it, to George Lucas, as an ongoing Star Wars series about the adventures of this freighter, the Renaissance, and her crew. I'm already on record on several occasions saying that I don't think that'll happen, and I don't, but as I said yesterday, that doesn't mean I think the project is without value.

One thing that intrigued me about the project is that it followed the Han Solo characters. In point of fact, it's basically Firefly with lightsabers and wookiees -- which is fine by me. I loved Firefly, I love lightsabers, and I can live with wookiees (though dealing with the costume is a nightmare), so it seemed like something that would be a lot of fun.

It was (and is) also an extremely ambitious project. I think everyone who gets into the fan film world -- myself included -- gets it into their head to do a feature-length fan film, but only a few have been able to see it through. Sandrima Rising is shortly going to join their ranks.

I'm going to skip over the story of the film's production, because I've only recently stopped having nightmares about it; I will probably talk about it someday, but I need a little bit more hindsight on it all before I can really say anything. I will say that some good came of it for me, even from the bad. I learned a lot about what can go wrong on a feature film project, and I learned that I can take it and still want to make movies at the end of the day. I met one of my best friends on the set, and walked away with many other good friends.

The original plan was for me and Ryan to choreograph the fight scenes, train the actors, and shoot the fight scenes as "action directors". Ryan wound up being unable to get away from work to come out to the shoot, but we did still choreograph the fight scenes and I showed them to the actors. As I mentioned in a previous post, I wound up doing far more than just choreographing and shooting the fight scenes. And I'm not the only one -- almost everyone on set was taking on multiple roles to make this happen. Jeremy, who played Jacen the captain of the Renaissance, became our AD about halfway through. Andrew, one of the Renaissance crew, built the sets alongside Ed, who played Kyp, a rival captain. Our producer filled a role as a Sabacc player, and even I wound up in front of camera as an ill-fated archaeologist.

But I digress. I'm not here to talk about the production, I'm here to talk about the product. The film was shot last summer, edited in the fall, and since the New Year has been in post-production.

By way of introduction to the project, there are a couple of videos available on YouTube. The first is a "placeholder trailer" for the film. The scheduling for the project was a bit ambitious and they had said that they would have a trailer available as of December last year. None of the effects were completed at that time, but they made good on their promise and put together a trailer from the raw footage (greenscreen galore), and lifted the CG shots from Serenity.

Dwight, the director of the project, spends a little while introducing the project in this video. If you want to go straight to the trailer itself, let it load to skip forward; the trailer starts exactly two minutes in.



Additionally, you can see a work-in-progress version of one of the lightsaber fights Ryan and I created for the film. I say work-in-progress because the sounds and music are temporary, and were put together for a screening at a recent convention.



As I mentioned yesterday, I haven't talked much about this project before. A large portion of that is the fact that I didn't want to overhype it, but there's also the fact that I didn't know exactly how it was going to turn out. I didn't want to stick my neck out for something that could have turned out to be an incoherent pile. The shoot was so messy that I didn't know if the movie would come together at all. But against all odds, it did, and I think it's going to really be something special.

The trailer includes shots from Serenity, but the finished film will have completely original visuals created for the film by Dastoli Digital. They happened to release their film "Omega 35" just as we were wrapping up Sandrima and looking toward post-production. The CG work in their film was great and the producer Moe called them up to get them on board, and they've been doing a bang-up job, delivering professional visuals for the film.

The film is feature-length, but it's cut together in such a way that it can be released in 10-minute chunks. While a feature would be difficult to sit down and watch in a go on the web, I think the staggered release is a great idea. The characters are interesting, the visuals are coming together powerfully, and I think each chapter is going to leave the audience wanting more, and the chapter after is going to give it to them.

As I've said before, I think Sandrima Rising will be the last fan film project I do, aside from RvD3, and I think it is fitting to go out with a bang. If the success of the recent Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is any indication, I think audiences will really flock to Sandrima Rising. It's got some great performances, some great visuals, some great saber action, and I think the story -- especially in serialized chunks -- will really interest and entertain people. My experience in production aside, I think that the finished project is going to be one of the most popular fan films ever released. I really think this is the culmination of this generation of fan films -- everything so many other projects have wanted to be but couldn't quite cut it.

Is it perfect? Certainly not. There are things we could have done differently, equipment we could have used to enhance it (I wish we'd had the RED back then). But as a low-budget production, I think it'll blow people away.

Fingers crossed we can finish it soon, and find out if I'm right about that. I'll keep everyone posted as we get nearer to release.

Check in this weekend for the continuation of what has randomly become Fan Film Week here on my blog, and find out how RvD2 fared in the Star Wars Fan Movie Challenge.

My thoughts on Fan Films

So I've had some people actually asking me where I've been, why I haven't been updating my blog as much. Which is a little silly, seeing as how I frequently check in and explain, and the story never changes. However, while I'm sure it sounds like I've got a lot on my plate -- and I do -- one project in particular is the focal point of my time, around which the rest of the work I'm doing currently orbits. That project is the fan film, Sandrima Rising.

I know that I've been vague and avoided mentioning it too much until now, to the extent that it's more than likely sounded like a project happening somewhere in the background. The main reason being that I've seen too many fan films get destroyed by long-term hype, so I advised the producers that it would be good to wait until we're fairly far along into post before we start talking about it. But we're getting pretty deep into the final stages of post, and I've been given the go-ahead to talk a little about the project.

So I'm going to do so -- in my next post. Before that, though, I'd like to talk a little about fan films in general.

As I write this, I am counting down the days until Comic Con, and the Star Wars Fan Movie Challenge, formerly the Star Wars Fan Film Awards. I don't know why they changed the name, but they revamp the contest just about every time. As part of the contest, George Lucas himself views all the finalists and selects his favorite for a special award. RvD2 is entered in the competition as a finalist, and so whatever happens, we know for certain that by 8:30 PM on July 24, 2008, George Lucas has seen RvD2 at least once.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I'm not going to get into the broad history of fan films, because I don't know it. If you're interested in up-to-date as well as retrospective fan film news and postings, check out Clive Young's site Fan Cinema Today, as well as his upcoming book, Homemade Hollywood.

What I plan to talk about, instead, is how I wound up getting into fan films, and why I think they're important.

To some extent I've always been interested in filmmaking, although prior to the digital revolution it seemed totally inaccessible to the average person, and so the idea of becoming a filmmaker myself never actively entered my mind. Even when the modern breed of fan films first came along, with Troops, I didn't really think "Hey, I could do that." It wasn't until I saw my first fan-made lightsaber fight that I sat up and took notice.

As I mentioned back when I wrote my love letter to Ghostbusters, my first feature-length script was a fan script for Ghostbusters 3. After watching The Phantom Menace, I began to write another fan script, this one in the Star Wars milieu.¹

Like Ghostbusters 3, it was only intended to be a script. Some stories want to be told as short stories, some as novels, and some want to be screenplays. This one wanted to be a screenplay. Regardless, it never really occurred to me to make the film myself.

Until, that is, I saw "The New World," a lightsaber fight by the original saber master, Clay Kronke. To be more precise, what I saw was the effects test that preceded "The New World", which for some reason was called the "Matrix Test". I say for some reason because it bore no resemblance to The Matrix, other than I guess it was two guys sparring. The choreography was ripped directly off of Phantom Menace, the music was "Duel of the Fates", and it was sped up in post.

But the lightsabers looked awesome.

And it was at that moment that I realized: this script didn't have to stay a script. I could make this movie.

I won't bore you with the gory details of my ill-fated feature-length fan film -- another blog another day, perhaps -- but suffice it to say that by the time production folded indefinitely, I had spent money intended to buy a car on a camera², and racked up another $10,000 or so in debt besides, which I only recently paid off with the help of the next project I have said I will be discussing in my next post. I spent half of my high school and all of my college experience frequently sitting in front of a computer, more often than not rotoscoping lightsabers. There were points where I wouldn't -- months at a time -- but eventually I would get back to it. Not just the abandoned feature, but numerous other fan film projects with which I was involved.

And all in all, I think it was worth it.

The obvious reason for that would be RvD and RvD2, but this goes back beyond those films. What working on fan films did for me was to awaken in me the desire to make films -- and the understanding that I could make films. I didn't need anyone's permission. I didn't need anyone's money. Both things help, of course, but as long as I have a camera and a computer, I have a movie.

The fact of working within Star Wars specifically instilled me with (probably altogether too much) confidence. Here you have a world that hundreds of people spend thousands of hours and millions of dollars to create -- and I'm doing it from home. The scope is more limited, perhaps, and the effects not quite as polished, but the movie's getting made. The story is getting told.

RvD and RvD2 have gotten attention, and that attention has gotten both myself and Ryan careers doing what we want to do (mine admittedly a slower burn than his -- he was nominated for another Emmy this last week!), but I really count the less concrete impact of the confidence I mentioned earlier as the most important thing I have gained from working in fan films.

Now, as to why I believe that fan films are important just in general.

For one thing, they act as cinematic training wheels. The blank page can be daunting when attempting to write a script (or anything else --a blog post for instance). To have to create a world with its own internal rules, characters with history, situations, alliances and enmities...it all stacks up until one would rather just give up and go play Rock Band. But when the rules and designs and locations and broad-stroke characters are already defined for you, well then you're ahead of the curve. You can mold the clay without having to have dug it up yourself.

You still have to create new material -- conflict, new characters -- but you can do so in familiar territory. One doesn't want to spend an entire career doing this kind of thing, but as a start? A golden opportunity to start experimenting creatively. You've got boundaries that prevent you from screwing up too much, and you start to understand, if you decide you must break an established rule, why that rule is there and what purpose breaking it serves.

I've heard it said that if you want to learn to write well, sit down and copy a book you like. I did that when I was learning to write short stories (a few times unethically, as I believe my grade-school teachers suspected but could never confirm) and, ethical quandaries aside, I do believe it helped me out when I finally came to flying off on my own with my own writing. You learn by doing. Even without consciously thinking about it you get a sense of why things work when they are structured a certain way, why they ring hollow when structured another. It, to sound like a hippie for a moment, expands your mind.³

And that's what I believe fan films can accomplish for a filmmaker. Play with what already exists, get an understanding of why things are done the way they are. Make mistakes in a creatively "safe" environment. And learn, and grow.

We talk about fan films like they're some new, crazy, Web 2.0, Age of You Tube thing, but it seems to me like this has already always been the case. How many filmmakers talk about how they saw [movie that influenced them] and ran home and picked up the Super-8 camera and shot themselves and their little brother as Batman/Sam Spade/James Bond/Blob Victim #3/whatever? Sure, those projects were never widely shared in the pre-internet age, and probably long since have disappeared from the face of the Earth. But the fact is that it starts with imitation. Then it moves to innovation.

On top of that, fan films, quite frankly, make good business sense. You've got people who are so damned enthralled -- obsessed, even -- with something you've made that they have thrown their passion into creating an homage, into extending and engaging with your creation. That's publicity if it's nothing else. That's people being reminded of your product.

Some businesses don't get this. They send Cease and Desist orders to stop Little Jimmy from playing at Spider-Man (on camera) in his backyard.

But George Lucas, whatever else he may be, is a shrewd businessman. He knows fan films are out there, and he knows that they help him, not hurt him. He was the first to "officially" recognize them, initially only the safe-under-fair-use parodies, but recently even then infringement-grey-area "serious fan fiction" films. He could C&D -- even sue -- any one of them if he really wanted to. But you catch more flies with honey...

In fact, Lucasfilm even made an unprecedented move earlier this year in SUPPORTING, essentially, infringement of their copyright. Lucasfilm discovered that material from Hyperspace -- the official site's "Exclusive Content" subscription service -- had been posted to YouTube. They asked YouTube to remove said content, and YouTube, in a fit of pique brought on by way too many other active or threatened lawsuits circling at the time, proceeded to remove all content that had anything at all to do with Star Wars. The outcry from fans was massive -- and Lucasfilm actually stepped up and said "No no, only the Hyperspace stuff. The rest is okay. Put it back."

Say what you will about Lucas the filmmaker (as I have been known to do), but he "gets it" when it comes to fan films. Although I do think there is still a line.

Which will bring us, tomorrow, to Sandrima Rising.

---

1. As one of the regulars over at TheForce.net recently posted: "I was just asked an interesting question - "What film changed your life?". The answer horrifies me - the film that has quite literally changed my life is The Phantom Menace." I, too, am horrified that any interview for the rest of my career that asks me that question, that's how I'll have to answer, and then spend five minutes making it clear that I do not in any way consider it a good movie, nor one that actively influences my filmmaking. ↩
2. I got in an accident and the car was written off as totalled. I got $7000 from the insurance company. $5500 went to a PAL-standard Canon XL-1, in order to get close to a 24p image (this was about a year before the DVX100 hit the market), $1500 went to a death-trap of a car that nonetheless lasted me about 5 years before eventually the engine fell out on the freeway.↩
3. Even still, I find that if I am stuck for writing, I will pick up a book whose prose I admire and just copy the text from page to processor. I will of course immediately erase it all, but it gets the juices flowing without expending creative energy ramming up against a wall.↩

Lots to mention...

Been hard at work on everything in the world these last few weeks, seems like. Some of the highlights:

Kung Fu Red: The first of many collaborations to come between myself and Anthony, we shot this the very first weekend we got our brand-spankin-new RED camera. I wanted to shoot a fight scene and he obliged. It was originally just supposed to be a camera test but we wound up liking the edit so much that we finished it out with sound, music, and color grading.

I've embedded the YouTube for your convenience and viewing pleasure. If you want to see it in higher quality, check it out on Vimeo.



The Descendants: Turned in the latest, and IMO greatest, draft. I'm super happy with it, I'm waiting on Dark Horse to see what they have to say.

Sandrima Rising: Working with the Dastolis and churning out finals. Some of the CG work in this is really top-notch. There's a "city chase" sequence in the middle that I think will knock people's socks off. My hat's off to those guys.

fxphd: I've mentioned fxphd in the past, but this time around it's even more special: Ryan and I are teaching a course this term! So if you can afford it (and for the level of training phd offers, aside from us, it's an amazing deal), come sign up and we'll drop some knowledge on you.

48 Hour Film Project: Already kind of addressed this. We really wound up liking the film we made, with the exception of the opening scene. We re-shot the scene and will be posting the revised version on YouTube probably in a couple weeks (I have too much going on to finish it right now). We will also probably post the 48 Hour version after that, just for comparison.

Troika: This is a project that Anthony wrote and directed a selection of scenes from in order to pitch it to financiers. As a writer I'm super-critical of my own work, and that of others, and there's not a lot of scripts that really entertain or interest me. I like reading good scripts, but a lot of scripts just don't cut it.

I have to say, Troika is a great script.

Among the scenes shot are a fight scene, a dialogue scene, and a car chase. The car chase was shot on greenscreen, and there are plusses and minuses to that. On the plus side, the fact that they were shooting green is the reason Anthony called me to be on-set, and that led me to being on-set for all of the subsequent shoots, and ultimately concluding that not only did I want to make movies with those guys, I didn't want to make movies without them.

On the minus side, it was my first day on-set and I wasn't totally committed to the project, or to them, at that point, so I came on board as a consultant for the first half of the day and then buggered out. I did have something else to do, but I can't remember what it was and it doesn't matter; I should have stayed there all day. So while I consulted and gave them advice, once I was gone they were on their own in a foreign land, and mistakes were made. Now, in between Sandrima renders, I'm working on the car chase stuff, and its difficulty is my punishment for leaving that day. Karma!

Still, it's nice to have something that isn't lightsabers to put on my reel.

He's also written another script that he's working on developing and may shoot in the next few months, and which I also think is great.

So that's where I've been the last few weeks and why my posts have been scarce, and will probably continue to be scarce through July. I am still active on Twitter, and will be getting more active back here once all of these projects -- which have bottlenecked into July -- are completed.

Oh, also, Ryan and I will be at Comic Con this year, as is swiftly becoming traditional. If you see us, do say hi.

Stuck

So this is the 48 Hour Film that won Audience Choice in our group, wrenching the validation I so crave from my small, girlish hands.

*sob*

Seriously though, you can see why it won -- and again, why I voted for it. The Steadicam shot is extremely well-executed, smooth all the way through with no bumps; throughout the film the camera and blocking are creating new frames that are all very nice.

Also worth noting, I never saw a camera shadow. And the actors did a really good job of not shadowing each other. For a shoot at a time with such long shadows (I'm guessing it was around 4PM), that's pretty impressive.

There are no "clunkers" in the dialogue, at least nothing that can't be excused for the short writing window, and the performances are all really strong. You'd expect a line or two to be below par but it got into the film because the rest of the take was good; but here, all the performances are solid.

The music toes the line between "catchy" and "repetitive", but I think it stays on the right side of "catchy", and gives a good pace to the film. It's also a very active film, without any real dead time. Which is pretty impressive since it covers a lot of ground and it's mostly just following a guy walking.

It gets a little cute at the end, but it's forgivable. All in all, you can tell the director knows what he's doing. It's worth studying -- and for a 48 Hour Film, that's damn impressive.

I liked it when it screened, I'm glad it won Audience Choice, and I'm glad it's up on YouTube so I can share it with you guys. Enjoy.

48 Hour Film Project: Live Interview

Right, so. I haven't posted about the 48 hour film project even though it went on two weeks ago. Couple reasons.

First, the usual excuse about having lots of work to do on Descendants, Sandrima, etc.

Secondly, I wanted to wait and see if we won the Audience Choice award before posting, because what a great end to the story that would have been. But we didn't, so there you go.¹

did a podcast interview about the experience that I thought covered the bases nicely, plus it's much nicer for both of us if it's audio instead of text -- you can do other things while you listen, and I don't have to type the thing in the first place.

So, instead of writing it up, you can listen to my interview over at Filmmaking Central.

And if you found my blog via Filmmaking Central in the first place, hi! Feel free to peruse the archives, and I hope to see you around here again.

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1. The one that did win was a film called "Stuck", a detective story executed in a single unbroken Steadicam shot. I heart unbroken Steadicam shots, especially when well-executed -- and this one was great, especially for such a short timeframe to orchestrate the thing -- so I can't begrudge them for winning. Hell, I voted for them.↩

48 Hour Film Project: Intro

The 48 Hour Film Project (48HFP) has been around for 8 years now -- pretty much as long as I've been involved in filmmaking. It's grown from a local thing (according to Wikipedia, it started in Washington, D.C.) and grown into a worldwide, year-round touring event.

For those who don't know, here's how it works: You are given a genre, a character, a prop, and a line of dialogue, and you are told to make a film that contains all of those elements.¹ The film must be produced, from start to finish, in 48 hours.²

I've basically wanted to do this ever since I started doing films, but never been able to for whatever reason. I lacked resources, a team, the confidence, the time. But this year I knew it was coming up and I thought "Goddammit, I want to do it." We had just teamed up with Ski-ter and Anthony and I was jazzed to fucking shoot, so I checked with them, they were all down with it, and I entered us in the competition.

This is going to be a couple of blogs, and I think I'm actually likely to make it happen. 48HFP is like an anti-procrastination boot camp; I'm a lazy guy in general, truth be told, and I need to get my ass kicked sometimes to keep moving. I never work better than under a deadline. So every time I thought "Ehh, I'll do this later" I immediately thought back "Motherfucker, there is no later. Cut the fucking scene!"

I remember reading a screenwriting book once that carried that message, essentially. It was talking about how writers used to be contract employees at a studio, who went in from 9 to 5 and just wrote for 8 hours. None of the pansy artistic whims we get away with now, where as long as you finish sort of near the deadline you're okay. You sit your ass down and you write every day if you want your paycheck.

Ultimately the message is: saying you don't want to do it now is stupid, because you're not going to want to do it later either. You're never really going to want to do it. So man up and just fucking do it. That's something I knew but it's good to be reminded every so often.

I will be writing more and talking about this weekend's journey in the days to come. Be sure to tune in.

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1. I'm pretty sure that the early iterations of the project only provided genre and either a prop or a line, but not all of the above. Also, previously I think everyone competed in the same genre, now everyone has different ones that they draw from a hat.↩
2. You are allowed to cast performers and lock down locations beforehand, and you are also allowed to use pre-existing music and sound effects provided you own the rights and/or they are royalty-free. But the writing and shooting and finishing must all be within the 48 hour period. ↩

Thoughts on Indy IV

So this post is a week later than is probably relevant, but a full and busy week it's been. Shot a bunch on the RED last weekend, and shooting some more starting tomorrow. I've been cutting this and keying that and sitting down to talk about Descendants with several folks who took the time to read and review the latest draft. Busy busy.

This is actually a re-post of a post I made over at the fxphd forums, when asked what my "likes and dislikes" were with the film. I wound up covering everything I wanted to say, so while it's less of a structured "movie review" (which is why I didn't call this post a review), I think it's pretty much all there.

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Oh man, where to begin. Well, I'll start with likes:

Some of the FX were really top-notch. The mushroom cloud (despite its logistical problems that I'll get into below) was phenomenal, as was the climactic shot of the UFO lifting off and the rocks whirling around it. The water filling the canyon looked great too.

Unlike a lot of others, I actually liked the concept of an alien movie. Look, if I can accept God as a McGuffin -- twice! -- and another movie where people are pulling other peoples' hearts out of their chests, I can accept aliens.

And I even like the reasoning Lucas had for it -- the movies set in the 40s were made like movies from the 40s, so a movie set in the 50s should be like a movie from the 50s. The 40s were action-adventure serials, the 50s were science-gone-wrong and alien invasion tales.

The skulls looked really cool and the room of the crystal skeletons was like something out of classical mythology -- powerful stuff.

Now the dislikes:

As an FX artist and a filmmaker, I have a lot of friends who are filmmakers but not so savvy on FX, and they tend to want to do a lot of stuff with FX that isn't necessary. One of my favorite stories to tell them is that Spielberg always appreciated the fact that the limitations on Jaws ultimately made it a better movie, forced him to be more creative, and he kept that lesson with him even as he became STEVEN SPIELBERG. Even though he could get any budget to do anything he wanted, for a long time he would limit himself to 400 VFX shots in a film. If there was a shot that put him over the limit, he had to either figure out a way to do it without VFX, or figure out how to do another moment without relying on FX. In keeping himself limited he ultimately kept his creativity strong by thinking around "we can do it with CG."

As I said, I've told all my filmmaking friends about this, so sitting in the theatre and watching CG gopher shot after Tarzan Shia shot made me feel like an asshole, because obviously that's gone totally out the window.

Spielberg made a big deal about how he and the DP swallowed their pride and watched all three movies, so SS could go back to his early style, and the DP could duplicate the previous DP's style. I didn't see any of that. It felt like a modern movie trying too hard -- is it so much to ask not to throw a diffusion filter on the camera, Kaminski? The original films are very simply shot, straightforward but powerful, the lighting naturalistic. This one had cuts where there would have been camera moves, and heavy heavy HEAVY filtering where there should have been none at all. As far as matching the originals stylistically, I give it an F.

Now one of my biggest issues. These days your MOVIE heroes are always total badasses who know how to handle any situation you throw at them. Your Vin Diesel characters, your Angelina Jolie characters. They're always calm, cool, collected, and there's never a question that they're going to come out on top of any situation.

In pitching the direction I want to take Descendants, I've always said that I don't want Charlie, the main character, to be That Guy. I want him to be Indiana Jones.

Indiana Jones has a tendency to get in over his head, in situations for which he's not wholly prepared. When he gets into a situation where he's pretty much fucked, you can see on his face that he knows he's pretty much fucked, and only by sheer luck or cleverness does he manage to escape. When the hero clearly thinks that he might be about to die, the audience thinks that maybe he's about to die. We're there with him and when he gets out by the skin of his teeth, we cheer our fool heads off.

So imagine my disappointment when Indiana Jones turned out to be That Guy this time around.

First off, the fridge. There's so much logistically wrong with it my head might explode. I mean:

-Even generously assuming that the lead lining is enough to protect him from the radiation, it protects him from the shockwave AND the heat as well?
-Even generously assuming that the lead lining saves him from all three, he would have been killed multiple times bouncing about the desert on landing.
-Even generously assuming he survives that, the lead lining only protects him while he's in the fridge. If he got out as close to the blast as he would have to in order to get the iconic mushroom cloud shot that they did, he's dying of radiation poisoning. I don't care how hard they scrubbed him down at FBI HQ.
-Where's the hail of all the other fridges that were also thrown clear totally intact? He happened to be in the only one?
-You could have totally removed that scene and it would have changed nothing in the story.

There's a movement starting to make the term Nuking the Fridge the film franchise equivalent of Jumping the Shark. I think that's appropriate. That's shit you pull in a Jason Statham vehicle, it's not something that happens to Indiana Jones.

Indiana Jones doesn't survive the plunge over three waterfalls. The bad guys die going over the waterfall, and Indy uses his cleverness and luck to avoid going over the falls at all.

I never once felt like Indy was in any genuine danger. You have him survive a nuclear blast in the first ten minutes of the film, and then you expect me to worry about him in a fistfight? Sorry, no.

None of the actors felt like they had anything to do. I really like Shia in general but a big part of that is the wit and personality he brings to his characters, very little of which was present here. Great to have Karen Allen back, but so little was actually done with her character that it felt superfluous and fanwanky.

Then there were all the great ideas that were brought up and then dropped just as quickly, almost every scene. It seriously felt like they'd just taken one scene from each draft they'd done over the last 20 years and grafted them together in semi-chronological order.

For example, Cate Blanchette's character is supposed to be a freaking psychic. That's established in the very first scene where she tries to read Indy's mind. There's even implications that maybe she's telekinetic. That disappears totally after the opening scene. Sure, she mentions mind control later when infodumping about the importance of the skulls, but her own psychic abilities are nonexistent. It makes her seem more like that weird emo girl at your high school that no one wanted to eat lunch with, than a genuinely threatening villainess. And her first-year acting school Soviet accent didn't help, either. I love Cate, I would think she could do no wrong, but man.

Or how about the next scene, where Indy finds the crate by throwing gunpowder in the air? Where's the moment where they all point their guns at him only to realize that he's destroyed all their ammo, enabling his escape? And if not ALL their ammo, at least make them have to reload.

Or how about the interrogation scene, where Indy is subjected to McCarthyist paranoia? Sure, he loses his job, but come on. You could build a whole subplot around the idea that Indiana Jones is declared an Enemy of the State, and have the Russians AND the Americans trying to stop him from doing what he's gotta do. But no, Janitor gives him a few of his favorite Scrubs lines and that plotline is dropped entirely.

On and on and on.

I think what upset me most, though, is how little Spielberg seemed to trust the audience. Damn near every scene was an expository infodump that just screamed "Look how much research we did on the subject!" and advanced the story very, very little.

But the most egregious examples are when Indy spoon fed us exactly what we were supposed to understand.

"Damn, I thought that was closer." Come on. That same moment in Raiders would have been totally silent. Indy crashes into the truck. He and the two bad guys sit in stunned silence for a second, then he grins sheepishly at the driver before elbowing them both in the face and shoving them out. Nothing need be said.

"Those darts are poison!" Okay, seriously, blowdarts are always poisoned. That's what blowdarts are for. I think it's safe to assume that we get it.

"Their treasure wasn't gold, it was knowledge. Knowledge was their treasure." He seriously said the same thing twice, phrased in reverse, just to make sure we didn't miss it.

And of course, one of the most shocking dialogue choices to me: "What am I being accused of -- besides surviving a nuclear blast?" The script has the audacity to remind us of how ludicrous the preceding scene was.

Overall I could do a DVD commentary, scene-by-scene regarding how absurd it all is, and that's not the case with the other Indy pictures. Okay, maybe Temple of Doom. But you'd think after almost twenty years they could do better than that. It had all the elements of an Indy movie, all the characters -- again, almost to the extent of fanwankery with all the nods to Raiders -- but it never actually felt to me like I was watching an Indy movie. It was just another of the long list of movies trying to capture the Indy magic, but failing. The tragedy is that this time, it was official.

Out of town...

I'll be in Florida Tues-Thurs shooting some VFX plates for Sandrima Rising, the Star Wars project for which I am doing the visual effects. I'll be back Thursday night but won't have time to blog in the meantime (I will probably do some Twittering).

I wanted to post a review of Redbelt, which I saw this weekend, but I have too much to say and not enough time to write it down. Go watch it and we'll talk about it when I get back on Friday, because I thought it was amazing.

Busy week again

Been fixing Descendants. The script was "about 80% there" (the producers' words, and I agree), so the last couple weeks have been about that last 20%. Like anything else, the bulk of the work is the "easy" part; it's the last 10-20% that separates "alright" and "outstanding", and which takes the most work.

Additionally, in partnering with Wade/OIP, we inherited their future slate of projects, and vice-versa, as productions on our own slate. That was part of the deal -- and part of the appeal. But although I have about a dozen feature film ideas to develop post-Descendants, they have a half-dozen feature scripts already written. Besides lighting a fire under my ass to step up and get on the ball, it's also meant scripts to be read and thoughts to be shared on them. All of which conspires to take up all my writing energy for the week.

I had a mix-up in my schedule where I thought I would be out of town on a shoot next weekend -- but it turns out that the shoot is actually this weekend. So I've been scrambling a bit to sort that out.

On top of that, Ryan and I had a last-minute call to cameo in a music video by a prominent band. I hate being all vague and industry-talk about it, and I haven't signed an NDA, but it's a cool opportunity and I don't want to piss them off by blogging about it if they didn't want the news to get out. The shoot is tomorrow morning (call time 6:30 AM) and I've had to do some more rescheduling to fit that and the other, pre-existing shoot together. I'll post more specifics when I'm sure that I can.

So this is another brief "here's my excuse for not posting" post. Like I said, I'm out of town this weekend, but I'll try to write at least one in-depth theoretical post if I have some downtime.

Blinding Light in Partnership with Wade Val'iant/One Inch Punch

So we're not big enough to be making any headlines in Variety or Hollywood Reporter, but still, this is a big deal for us, and all our respective fanbases, so here's a pseduo-press release.

As of today, Blinding Light Productions is officially in partnership with Wade Val'iant and One Inch Punch Productions for all future film projects.

Wade Val'iant and One Inch Punch are, respectively, the production companies of Ski-ter Jones and Anthony Alba, two gentlemen who do outstanding work, with the recently-mentioned Animus as a great example.

I've worked with a lot of folks¹ in the nine years (god, nine years -- time flew so I must be having fun) that I've been doing film and visual effects stuff. I've made friends with a number of them, made "call me if you're working on something" connections with many, but prior to today the only person I've made the "if you're on board, I'm on board" partnership with has been Ryan². But working with Ski-ter and Anthony has changed that.

Filmmaking is like fighting a war (I still owe you folks a blog on that), and in war you want people you know have your back when the shit inevitably starts coming down around your ears. Until recently the only person I had that I knew could handle the battles with me was Ryan, but I know that I can trust Anthony and Ski-ter, because they've been doing it too.

As I said in my post on Animus, I was a fan of Anthony's work before I met him, and I've become a fan of him since. He's a great collaborator, very positive and passionate, and I click with him the way I click with Ryan. And similarly to the way Ryan and I work, where you get Anthony, you get Ski-ter, and I couldn't be happier. Ski-ter brings an attitude that reminds me why I love doing what we do.

I've been crewing a concept shoot for their feature, and last weekend we shot a fight scene. It was outdoors, it was hot, it was tiring, it was miserable, and I couldn't wait to do it again. There's an energy you get when everyone's moving in the same direction, with the same goals in mind, egos put aside and everyone focused on what's best for the project. It's the energy I get with Ryan, and it's the energy I get with Ski-ter and Anthony. It's a joy to work with all of them.

The last few weeks we've talked casually about the future, about us working together, but yesterday we sat down and officially discussed it. We all agreed that it seemed like a great idea, and now we are officially producing all each others' projects.

I'm thrilled, proud, and honored to have them on our team, and to be welcomed as a part of theirs. If you've thought the stuff we've done to date has been good, you ain't seen nothing yet.

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1. Most of the industry has a habit of using the noun "cats" to refer to the general filmmaking populace -- often with a subtle negative connotation. I'm still fighting the compulsion, but I have to admit that I almost did it just then.↩


2. We do also essentially have this with Travis, but he's in Texas so there's an inherent degree of separation there where we can't really do anything besides post work.↩