Like A Rolling Stone...

Pre-Production of the film is well and truly under way. I get excited at this point and I will refer to it as being on the 'Death Ground'. This is a reference to Sun Tzu's, 'Art Of War', a theory with the presupposition that soldiers that are backed up against some kind of geographical feature, have no escape route and therefore fight twice or three times as hard as death is viscerally present. I submit that 'Death Ground' is a psychological phenomenon that goes well beyond the battlefield.

When you begin pre-production of a film, the interior world you have grown accustomed to while writing and imagining your script, suddenly flourishes externally as various different people begin attaching themselves to the project. Ideas from your head begin to be imagined for the screen, with other artists and professionals consulting you to help create physically your vision. This has a rolling stone effect, collecting momentum and the longer it rolls that harder it is to pull out, to change your mind because now other people depend on you and the potential life of the film. There is a very real pressure at your back and you cannot retreat. This becomes 'Death Ground' and you must act or suffer the consequences.

I believe that you can harness this into a powerful and creative force. This works to drive you to keep working, to keep coming up with solutions and pushing yourself to do the best work you possibly can. Our future is at stake, we cannot afford to lose... so we don't.

I have acquired a Producer, my brother who is currently a fourth year Law/Commerce student and will be doing articles in Entertainment Law.

My DOP, Aaron Farrugia, who photographed my previous film will be available, he is currently working on various television projects.

I have spoken to JP Beirout, who did some great sound design on Ray Pangs film, 'BREAK', and will possibly be my sound recordist as well.

Justin Oleyar has suggested interest as Camera Assistant and did a great job on my previous film.

I have my main actor, Tas, who I am already in dialogue with in regards to the script.

I am also trying to track down an Art Director and have had some interest already so that looks promising.

I am currently really fleshing out a detailed treatment, preparing to have to show to Chris on Monday. I have already found lots of things wrong with my first one, which is good to pick up on these weaknesses at such an early stage. I hope to have a first draft ready after my meeting with Chris for the following week, I feel more comfortable discussing a treatment initially then a first draft of a scrip. We'll see how it goes.

Working Title...

I have decided to go with the idea, 'a dysfunctional dreamer is mistaken for a notorious criminal who’s identity opens doors, legs and wallets, until the underworld comes to collect, but finds an imposter refusing to go'.

Having really begun to flesh out a defining controlling idea and premise, I see that the story has profound potential if I keep scratching away beyond the surface. I have had a few meetings with my actor and we are creating a backstory for the character, entering at the most significant moment in his life and how the events of the story will change him forever.

The opening, inciting incident, climax and resolution I feel are very strong at the moment, so I need to focus on the middle of the film and building the scenes into a fluid and coherent whole. At the moment I have lots of ideas for scenes and I need to choose one path for the protagonist to take and see how that resolves itself, then going back and experimenting with different scenarios and scenes, swapping and replacing then, finding which serve the story the best.

I have a good feeling about this story and am excited to be pursuing it which I think is a good sign this early in the process. I am starting to put out a call for major roles to see if there are any interested parties.

To Be or Not To Be...

Having prepared the pitch for my project and presented it in class, I was able to look more objectively at the idea and if it had the ability to work as a short film. It will work as a short film, but only as an opening act to a feature, at least thus far in the way I have attempted to structure it. Now this also brings something else to my attention. If I make the short and don't decide to make the feature, I will have a film that won't be as powerful as a short film constructed to be a short film because it will lack a penultimate climax and resolution in favour of an ambiguous ending that will serve the feature. This will also, I believe inevitably make it weaker because it is lacking the wholeness of the story at large.

I have gone through a few successful short films, having obtained copies of the Cinema16 series, and it seems the most successful are the ones that isolate one moment in a characters lives, and explore the ideas within that moment to the fullest. In other words, they seem to draw a maximum amount of conclusions from a minimum amount of observations. This I believe is the secret to their strength. They rarely rely on plot and reveal character through action. Which in most cases tends to be the response to one inciting incident that happens extremely quickly, if not before the beginning, and is resolved by the end of the short amount of time of the film. It is a successful recipe however I do not believe it is any easier, to the contrary, it requires thorough research of setting and character and really getting the script to the bare essentials of what is required to tell the story.

Brian Percival's, "About A Girl", is about teenage pregnancy and how it affects the children involved. To begin the film, in one shot he gives us all the information we need about the theme, character and setting
and he does this in the most remarkable way. A landscape shot, a beautiful blue sky, a young girl in complete silhouette, mimicking the moves and singing the words to Britney Spears, 'Stronger'. He then ended the film with the girl walking out of shot, singing the same shot but with her back to the camera and her shoulders hunched over slightly, in a different tone, she will never be the same again because of the journey we had just taken with her. This film, in its brevity, was so poignantly poetic that we instantly understood the characters, their motivations, the socio-economic conditions and how they affects of child pregnancy are affecting the society as a whole.

The Process...

Excerpt from Robert Greene: The 50th Law

Often when you begin a project of any kind, it is from the wrong end. You tend to think first of what you want to accomplish, imagining the glory or money it will bring you when it succeeds. You then proceed to make this concept come to life, but as you go forward, you often lose patience because the small steps to get there are not nearly as exciting as the ambitious visions in your head. You must try instead the opposite approach, which can lead to very different results.

You have a project you wish to bring to life, but you begin by immersing yourself in the details of the subject or field. You look at the materials you have to work with, the tastes of your target audience and the latest technical advances. You take pleasure in going deeper and deeper into these fine points, your research is intense. From this knowledge you shape the project itself grounding it in reality, rather than in airy concepts in your head. Operating this way helps you slow your mind down and develops patience for detailed work, an essential skill for mastering any craft.

Case Study:
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564), commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, ...


As a young student artist, Michelangelo, had to confront a personal limitation. He had grand concepts of things he wanted to paint and sculpt, but not the requisite skill. He looked at the masterpieces of other artists and wanted his own work to have a similar aura and effect, but he was frustrated at the flatness and conventionality of what he created. He tried and experiment. He began to copy his favourite masterworks down do the smallest brush stroke. He discovered the effect he so admired was embedded in certain details, the way these artists were able to make figures or landscapes come to life by their intense attention to the fine points. So began a remarkable apprenticeship to his craft that would last the rest of his life and completely alter his way of thinking. In creating his sculptures, he became obsessed with bone structure but the boos and techniques on the subject were woefully inadequate. He started dissecting human corpses one after another. This gave him a profound feel for human anatomy, which he was now able to use in his own work. He developed and interest in texture, how each kind of fabric would fold in its own way. He worked on perfecting his reproduction of clothes. He extended these studies of detail to animals and how they moved. When he was commissioned to do his larger pieces, he avoided that old temptation of beginning with some grand concept. Instead, he looked at the material he had to work with, the space, the individual figures that might comprise it and from there he would conceive the overall shape and effect. In this intense attention to detail, Michelangelo seemed to have discovered the secret for making his figures come to life, which exceed any other artists of his time.

The Writers Journey

I will now attempt to answer the question I left you pondering at the end of my last post, the question that has been at the foreground of my thoughts since I completed my last film. I concluded that I lacked craft in writing. However, I stress you don't take this as literally as I have just presupposed. So as you can see as earnestly as I have made a statement I have implored you not to take a literal heed to it. This has now become a paradox but only because I am talking not about command of the English language, or an ability to provide an engaging rhetoric or discourse which by now I am assuming you have the greatest admiration for me, but in the subtle craft of screenwriting. This craft, is just like any other. It requires the writer to undertake an apprenticeship, a study of the fundamental form and rules of the craft like any other then interpret them and apply them to your own work with a creative an outcome as possible. I will go as far as to say as the current lack of quality in films is precisely derived out of this lack of understanding of a craft.

How many screenwriters today have the attitude of, 'I know the difference between a good film and a bad film, I've lived any interesting life, I think I'll sit down over the weekend and write a script". I know people think like this because I did too! However, nobody says, 'I know the difference between a Carvaggio and a Raphael, I think I'll knock one up after I finish work tonight'. Like any other craft screenwriting requires discipline and a mastering of the craft, a perpetual apprenticeship that must have a beginning with no clearly defined end in sight, because of the constantly changing form and style which comes with post-modern society and its realities and expectations. Talent, which is innate, is also a requirement, however talent without craft is like trying to build a house with out knowing how. You might succeed the first time, but your next attempts fail as you have no idea how you constructed it the first time. This is all too obvious in some modern day Directors and Screenwriters who were heralded as innovators when they entered the industry, to be specific, M.Knight Shymaylan whose films have gone from unique to absolute dribble, Richard Kelly of Donnie Darko fame and countless others. In contrast to this Bergman began honing his craft in television and classical narratives before embarking on the deep psychological drama of, 'Persona'. Fellini perfected his craft making films like, 'I Vittelloni' and 'La Strada', finally after nearly 20 years presenting us with the sublime, '8 1/2'.

So, I guess what I am trying to say is that without this fundamental knowledge of craft you will have no direction, like they say, 'A blind man is a good guide in the dark, but when the light comes, it is foolish to use him'. So I have taken on a kind of a literary and technical apprenticeship in the writing craft. The only problem is, like any area of study, is that 'the more you learn the less you know', if I may be so bold as to paraphrase Socrates. So what begins is the Writers Journey, one that in the process will enlighten your work and in turn yourself. Now understanding the principles of story, plot, characters, structure will allow you to crystallise your ideas which previously you had no understanding of how to get onto a piece of paper. I believe this is more prevalent in young filmmaker and writers, who have so many ideas in their heads, yet don't truly know what they want to say because they are still in the process of forming their unique perspective of the world. It is said that knowing what you like comes from knowing the vast amount of things you dislike first. This is where the problem for me truly lies. I am trying to find out what I want to say and how I will say it, now this in turn can not be taught in books and requires a significant amount of truthful introspection but is constantly in metamorphosis due to the behaviour of our still young minds. I also believe I have a tendency to overanalyse things and that at some point I will just have to let it go and commit to write. Hopefully, I will have the skills by then the write with my heart, then re-write with my head.

So to cover some of the literature I have been exploring in the hope of acquiring some understanding of the form, at least to a greater degree than I did this time last year when I wrote my last script. I have piled through the pages of Robert McKee, Syd Field, Alexander McKendrick, Joseph Campbell, Aristotle, Volgler, Ergi and Forster to name a few. I would recommend foremost Lagos Erji's, 'The Art of Dramatic Writing' and Forster's, 'Aspects of the Novel'. Throughout these texts you are confronted with different ideas and interpretations into the craft, however, all emphasise the requirement of mastering it to succeed. It is fascinating to study the compelling three dimensionality of Ibsen's charcaters, compared to the stereotypes used by Dickens, but in both cases it is their ability to control the fundamental form which allows these contradictory forms to succeed. To give a modern day example in film, I'd compare the films of Pedro Almodovar to those of Wong Kar-Wai. The former creating great depth of character and the latter using relatively one-dimensional stereotypes to focus more on the films feeling and theme, as for example, 'In The Mood for Love'. I will also suggest that Kar Wai is utilising a modern inerpretation of Brechtian techniques explored in his, 'epic-theater' and is the 21st centuries answer to Godard. Exploring the differences between arch-plot, minimalist and Anti-Plot, suggests that without knowing the principles of the classical, 'Aristotelian', narrative, you would not successfully bend or break the rules to create the Anti-Plot of Godard's films or encapsulate all three into one as in the case of Barton Fink. The minimalist nature of Antonioni requires the reduction of plot, but in turn the necessity of replacing it with the depth of the psychology of his characters. Realising also the need to understand the mythology of storytelling, personifying characters with the archetypes of heralds, mentors, seekers, etc. as a way to create characters with a real purpose. Looking at archetypes in the work of Campbell which is derived from the observations and psychoanalysis of C.G. Jung and the subconsicous. The fundamental understanding of subtext, which I personally believe to be one of the hardest things, not to understand in principle, but to get your head around and successfully apply to your own work. The true revelation and understanding of subtext required two giants in the world of drama for us to have the knowledge of it we have today. It can be argued the work of Stanislavsky required the work of Chekhov, and vice-versa, for them to both succeed, which has now paved the way for modern standards in acting and writing.

I have digressed as you, my reader, are bound to have noticed. So I will therefore guide you back to where we began, with a question, 'Having understood all these things how will I overcome the shortcomings of my previous film and grow as a filmmaker in the project I am about to undertake?'. What I will attempt to do is find characters and a story that will allow me to create a metaphor for life that within it has the subtext of my convictions. This I believe will give passion to the project, and if there are any shortcomings, which ultimately only time will tell, I will be satisfied with my attempts because I have undertaken a path to increase my knowledge and understanding of a craft that I intend to be the main focus of my life.

Retrospect...

I shall begin this blog with a retrospect of last year, a brief discussion on my film, 'The Importance Of Being Idle', which I believe requires an analytical discourse of my strengths and weaknesses as a filmmaker. I need to do this in order to reveal what worked to permeate into future projects and confront my failures so I do not make the same mistakes.

I am in two minds about the outcome of the film. I believe that I can modestly say that I made the film I set out to make at the beginning of the year. I would even go as far as saying that the film surpassed my expectations. However, I realise its shortcomings only with the enlightenment of hindsight, only through the process of making the film was I allowed to understand where I had gone wrong.

In terms of style, atmosphere and direction the film succeeds. It has a distinct look and feel that benefits from a great DOP and Art Director that both vividly captured my intentions for the film aesthetically. In regards to performance, I strongly believe the actors did a great job in portraying their characters and they were good and believable performances, despite the heightened reality in the interactions and dialogue of the characters. The music complimented the tone of the film, always finely tuned to what was going on in the emotions of the characters while they were on screen. So, you may ask, where did the film fail?

I shall assert that the fundamental problem of the film lies in its deepest origins, in the original conception of the idea and the scriptwriting process. I began to realise this initially not with my head but with my heart, forgive the use of cliche, but that is the best way to describe it. During the editing process I felt like I really didn't care anymore, and like a revelation began to understand the worn idea of making a film first for yourself, not for an audience. The problem with this statement is that without an audience who wants to see the film, there can be no satisfaction in making it. There has to be a fine line between what is intelligent/intellectual, and something people want to see. It is this passion that will drive the story from beginning to end. To begin with an idea that represents a premise; a premise that represents a conviction; a conviction that is inert and represents your individual point of view, attitude to life, sex, religion, political views and ethical outlook. Only by creating a story derived from this approach can you even begin to expect any sort of catharsis in yourself or in the minds of your audience. 

What I lacked was a clear understanding of what I wanted the film to say, the metaphor for life that is required in any traditional form of narrative. To add to this I lacked craft. Not technical craft which I believe the film shows not only control but also originality in terms of lighting, camera movement and framing, but in the writing. I had characters say something that was cool in order for the other character to say something cool in retort. Now this is not to say that I did this on purpose, I did this because I lacked understanding of the depths of the writing process and the development of well constructed three dimensional characters. There was no conflict in the story because the protagonist himself lacked any understanding of what he wanted on a conscious level, let alone in the deep recesses of his subconscious. Therefore interaction and movements in plot were superfluous and ultimately became redundant.

I will finish here with a question that I will try to answer in my next post. Having understood all these things how will I overcome the shortcomings of my previous film and grow as a filmmaker in the project I am about to undertake? 

STILL FROM THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING IDLE