Category: flix

We’re in principal photography for the Scary Cow Production of Matt Voss’ The Templetons (I am directing), and there are a couple of books that are good references for indie filmmaking.

A lot more useful than it might seem, Lloyd Kaufman’s book “Make Your Own Damn Movie” – the master of Troma films takes you through all the steps of developing, fundraising, and shooting your movie.

Smarmy as hell (have you seen any Troma movies?), Kaufman constantly gets in little squabbles during the narration with his Assistant Directors/ Production Assistants / buttslaves, Trent Haaga and Adam Jahnke, so the whole thing feels like a Troma Production. Bonus points for the introduction by Trey Parker & Matt Stone, which is nothing less than an inspiring tale of achieving the indie equivalent of Enlightenment.

This book is basically 500 pages of interviews with people in the film industry, in all sorts of jobs.  The interviews are each tightly focussed on a single aspect of film production, including parts you may not think of like promotion, the bookkeeping, the script supervision.  The audience is the independent low- or no-budget filmmaker.

I recommend reading this one completely through; all the interviews are interesting on some level, and like I say not everything will seem important to you… but actually it is.  It is all important, to the point of biting you on the ass in the middle of your production if you don’t think about it in advance.

After you’ve absorbed all that, you are ready for the Blueprint. If the previous book is the text for the lecture, think of this as the text for the lab. It’s broken down by stage of production, and has forms and little hints.

One really cool sequence of chapters has a description of what roles in the crew you will have to fill, for different sizes of productions (budget or number of crew). Each role (such as Writer, Director, Art Director, Soundtrack, Production Designer, Lawyer, etc etc) has its own cartoon character, with a description. There’s a diagram with an expanding circle that shows the core you’ll need, and the additional crew you’ll need for the immediate next level.

Here’s the “remix” cut of The Artist.

When Jennifer Griffin and I were editing the original piece, we remarked on the strong performances of the actors– I had directed them towards a melodramatic flavor to seem more “period.” Their facial expressions were so evocative that we realized the visuals of the film could stand on their own, even without dialog.

So, we contacted Little Man T who whipped us up a stellar “silent movie” soundtrack.

About the Art Deco-themed intertitles: sometimes you will see movies with intertitles for nearly every line; not here you’ll notice.

I always preferred the less-frequent titles as seen in Pandora’s Box: just enough information to help you figure out the story; but for the most part the narrative is carried by the performers. The audience is required to pay a little more attention to the plot, and to deduce what is happening. I feel that this involves the viewer more than the “AND DEN DA CAR BLOWED UP!!!1!!@!” style of spell-everything-out Hollywood releases.

Here’s a short I directed recently. I did the casting, the directing, shot lists, schedules, and basic storyboards. I say “basic” storyboards because mine were just stick figures; the ones we used on set were drawn by Matt Voss, the cartoonist and producer of The Templetons.

DP was Samir Sinha, edited by Jennifer Griffin.

Milo loves his paintings, but hates selling them. His wife Maureen thinks he’s going to be the Next Big Thing, if only he can get the right opportunity. An opportunity like meeting Geraldine.

Geraldine loves art. Especially art by dead artists. Some people make art; Geraldine makes dead artists.

Produced as our submission to Round 4 of Scary Cow “The Artist” is intended to be the first ten minutes of a hypothetical feature movie. I was going for a 1940’s flavor with some modern elements.

I’ve just finished casting for The Templetons, which is a short based on a comic by Matt Voss.

Matt’s comic is like a sort of twisted edition of Leave It To Beaver, where the family are all sunny and innocent to each other, but during the day they lead secret lives. Tim Templeton, the father, is actually a con artist pretending to be homeless and spare-changing on the street. His wife Tia runs a gambling ring out of her kitchen. And their daughter Trina sneaks out of school during the day to be one of those girls you see on Girls Gone Wild. Wooo!

The way they talk is like sitcom families as seen in the late 1950s or early 1960s, and that is how I’m trying to cast it. We begin principal photography this weekend, the end of March.

Even without the basic Puritain-influenced morality of Slasher Horror, you actually need the nudity early in the film. But why? Here’s my analysis.

In general, the audience gets uncomfortable if certain aspects of a film are ambiguous. For example, if the audience is shown a politically-charged theme (for example a teenaged girl about to get an abortion), the moral framing must be defined: is this an acceptable thing or not?

Even if the audience disagrees with the political stance of the director, they will be much more comfortable knowing they disagree than not knowing whether they agree or not.

Genre is a kind of contract between the audience and the director. The audience, adverse to a certain kind of uncertainty, needs a bit of definition of the type of thing that is possible in the universe they are observing. If the narrative changes genre in the middle, this can make the audience cranky. Even if the change is clearly intentional, critics get upset; audiences feel misled.

Two great examples: “From Dusk Till Dawn” and “Death Proof,” both joint Quentin Tarantino / Robert Rodriguez productions. In both movies, the story starts very firmly in one genre, then abruptly changes genre. You can read reviews online to see what people thought of that… I liked them, anyway.

So that said, the basic issue with Horror and nudity is one of genre. As above, you as the director need to define the movie as a horror movie very early in the piece. But, Horror is a genre, like Action, that requires a bit of crazy action right at the beginning.

What makes Horror fragile is its dependency on “suspense,” which is in turn contingent on the audience’s anticipation of an outcome adverse to the characters. The problem here is, in order for the audience to feel suspense, they must be emotionally engaged in the welfare of the character who is about to be a victim. And this must happen at the very beginning of the movie.

So: how do you make an audience member care, on some level, about what happens to the character they’ve just met? What will be the agent that “involves” the audience on some emotional level? You only have a few seconds; the movie can’t get old while we wait for the first killing.

For men, the “agent of involvement” turns out to be… hot girls. With bare boobs. “Oh no, don’t kill the girl with the killer rack!”

For women, it’s a little more complicated. Just as in advertising, when you show a sexy woman, the men want to sleep with her, and the women want to BE her. The female viewer identifies with the beautiful woman.

But not too beautiful! If the woman on the screen is too out of her league, the female viewer cannot identify with her and gets annoyed. The woman on the screen must be in some way “at the same level” as the female viewer.

So, more slutty, and you get the attention of the male audience. But too slutty, and you risk blowing off the female audience. Also the woman is marginally less desirable to the male audience if she is TOO “gettable.”

We wrapped on Principal Photography today for “The Artist.” I think it’s going to cut well.

This is the first film I’ve directed that I’m not editing. It’s sort of weird giving up that control… I’ll still be monitoring Jennifer, our editor, but she is the editor. Yikes!

This is also the first film I’ve directed where I had an actual camera operator and a DP. I definitely need a camera operator. A DP, not necessarily. I usually have a definite visual look I want for every shot.

Extras! What a pain in the ass. I definitely need a PA or AD or something to wrangle extras. Just figuring out who you are going to use for which shots, who would create a continuity error, etc, is very taxing.

I came up with a system that I will definitely use next time:

• all the extras must show up at the beginning, at the same time
• only extras who have signed a release may enter the set
• You leave, you can’t come back!
• on arrival, every extra is given a ticket with a number.
• The lower the number, the more desireable the extra’s presence in a shot is (better looking, better fits the setting).
• More appropriate extras will be in more prominent positions in shots
• that means that latecomers get lower priority…
• the shot list has these numbers on it, decided in preproduction.
• So when a shot comes up, the AD just reads the numbers of the extras that will be in the shot. Like “Shot 6.2, extras 12, 18, 47, and 54 please get on set.”

If anyone wants to be a hipster extra this Saturday evening, we’ll be shooting in West Oakland from 3pm-8pm.

In other news, Dimesmeric Antiphosphate (a bisturbile cranabolic amphetamoid) stimulates a part of the brain called Shatner’s Bassoon.

These are my notes on “Darkman,” by Sam Raimi. Incidentally I love Darkman, even though I know it’s kind of a crappy movie. But it’s a great grown-up indie movie!

Let’s just skip the first scene and go straight to the titles. Too bad there’s no commentary on this sucker! I’ve seen it before too. Why I like Darkman: it’s an indie movie that grew into a big budget. Most of the techniques in it could be done on the cheap. And let’s not talk about the script.

Opening credits: a shot of lit smoke, in slow motion against a black bacground, mirrored to be symmetrical. See the symbolism? The mirror? The dark? Oooh. Anyway…
Other popular choices/trends in (occaisionally cheap) titles:

• Some common process seen very very close up
• A simulation of some common thing at a microscopic level
• A common setting whizzing by so quickly we cannot distinguish it (Luc Besson, I’m looking at you!)

To generalize:

• Microscopic crap
  • Cells
  • Blood
  • Fungi
  • Bacteria or yeast
  • Crystals growing
• A cheap chaotic system seen with no context-
  • diffusion of dye in water
  • milk in coffee
  • smoke dispersing
  • something being consumed in open flame
  • flame by itself
  • clouds
  • ripples in water
  • other moving liquids
  • viscous moving liquids
  • ripples in cloth
  • the sky or trees or some other natural object seen from below the surface of the water
  • clockwork or machine movement
  • a pan of some complex system
• factories
• traffic
  • rotting things
  • melting things
• things to do to this shot:
  • mirroring
  • running backwards
  • sped up / slowed down
  • in negative
  • filtered with weird hue shifting
  • spinning around and zooming for a “tempest/drain” effect
• Every so often something symbolic can be made out. Distorted by:
  • High contrast Shadows
  • Turning away
  • Reflected in a partial surface
  • Colors filtered or in negative
  • Seen from the other side of a water surface

I like the cell fragmentation effect, as seen under a microscope. What is it exactly? When we see the nose melt, I think we are really just looking at the top of the range.

They have sex, but we don’t see anything. Which is good, because just Liam Neeson and Frances McDormand making cooing noises is gross enough. And how did they get involved in this movie?! And Danny Elfman for the score!? Okay, that’s enough- let’s focus only on the positive things to learn from this movie.

As in a noir movie, we don’t see the grad student killed. Just the gun to his face, and then Liam’s reaction.

After the accident we’re in a hospital… which we only know because there are people in medical gowns! The lady doctor’s Brit accent helps give her an air of authority. She gives a lot of exposition in the context of teaching medical students.

The scene ends in a composited shot through a window. His escape is summarized in a single shot of him in a flooded alley. There’s a more expensive shot afterwards (Liam and Frances) but it’s not very necessary.
Darkman sees his face for the first time. Again, we don’t see it. No effects! Plus it’s much better this way; his face could never have been as gross as we imagine it must be.
Montage of “research.” Advice: don’t let biology majors see this movie; the “TECH” portions are incredibly half-assed. But, we see a montage.

Montage elements:

• The character in question doing the things he’s doing during this time, compressed for the narrative
• Some element representing the passage of time, like a calendar or clock. Bonus points for:
  • Universal symbols
  • The object is in previous or subsequent shots
  • The object is thematically linked to the plot
• Darkman does both: the stopwatch Darkman uses to measure the synthetic skin. Also uses written notes (see below)
• Also, we see the moon. Passage of time + theme of the dark
• Various spinning objects related to the period, tumbling through space and freed from any context. Darkman uses beakers filled with fluid, presumably the synthetic skin
• Elements the struggle depends on—the direct objects. We see cells of synthetic skin.
• Objects related to the struggle depicted—the indirect objects: Darkman has:
  • pages of notes, clearly legible, with failed attempts
  • a growing pile of discarded Petri dishes

Next we see some symbols referencing Darkman’s rage.

• Zoom and close-up of the character emoting
• Flashbacks of what the character is remembering
• Alternately, imagined scenarios. Ally McBeal just cut to these, but in Darkman, we see them superimposed
• Some chaotic element with symbols of the mood. Darkman uses fire.

Darkman claims his first victim: I love this guy, he is so not a henchman type. Was he related to Raimi? He looks very New York Jew. Almost as ridiculous as the gay Latino henchman with the ponytail.

After arranging bald guy’s death, we see Darkman moping in a composite shot: clouds, night, gargoyles, his head.

How much of Darkman we see in this movie is actually Liam Neeson? His face is covered in bandages most of the time! He could have just dubbed in lines… or another actor could have dubbed ALL the lines, including his, for consistency.

Cemetery scene:

• Frances approaches the grave. We dolly in
• Frances sees Liam- a music-video truck in both POVs
• Frances freaked out- she backs away, sort of a missed opportunity for a Hitchcock shot here
• Frances far away as in Liam POV
• Now a gyrating sries of shots- emotionally chaotic
• They embrace. Finally the camera is still!

Durant, panicked, demands of his henchman, to know what is going on.

• We see henchman in the driver’s seat, reading a newspaper. We can tell it’s a car interior
• Suddenly, Durant’s head thrusts into view. We can see just a bit of the car window frame.

Karuna came over tonight and we sat around reviewing footage for her music video, Sagar. It’s a great project and I’m thrilled to be a part of it.

As you can read on her production blog, Karuna basically heard this song at some point and was hit with the epiphany that she was destined to make the music video for this song. So, she secured the rights from the Indian rock star, arranged permits and insurance to film on the sand dunes of a National Park, and found an entire crew and set of equipment to film her dream.

I heard Karuna’s pitch at ScaryCow, was seduced by the ambitious production elements, and signed up as the editor. I’m a very fast and efficient editor; if not forbidden from my jumpy editing style I can slap together a rough cut in about twice the running time of the finished work, plus about half a day. So, less than a day. All I require is a shot log with the list of the “keeper” takes, and a storyboard.

As it turned out, the production was a shade too ambitious. The principal photography ran over and there was no way to get all the footage. Karuna ended up editing a “making of” work for submission for Round 3. We’re now in the next round, and I’m the new editor of the finished work again! Woot!

So here we are, and I’m learning some of the downsides of DV HD. It uses the same compression as DVD, so when you rewind, it gets all boxy. Also, if you are changing light conditions slowly, you can actually see digital artifacts… Ironically, I might stick to miniDV for this exact reason, perhaps with a mini35 stuck on the front!

Due to the mayhem during the shoot, we don’t have a log of the good takes, and where they are on which tapes. D’oh! Don’t do that. You aren’t saving time by not writing down the good takes!

Due to our lack of our own HD deck, we are seeing some of this footage for the first time. Rent a deck and schedule your editing sessions!

You know what would be great at this point? I mean besides the shot log? The storyboard. Need the storyboard. Those little pictures really help.