Still Having Flashbacks: Part One

If I kept busy I might have less time to stew over the would-coulda-shoulda where a more aggressive or enraged proactive choice might have been made. We hear a lot about scandals involving abuse by successful movie people and I can't help thinking what if the "sexual" aspect was removed and there could be a devastating scandal for people simply being assholes? Then I might have some war stories and a few names to toss into the abyss. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Ed was a guy who didn't show up to help edit a Super 8 assignment in college while I waited in the library, so after I ended up having to edit it myself he snuck into the post-production class and removed my reel from the crew bin and arbitrarily snipped frames from either side of each splice to render it unwatchable before handing it in to the instructor for screening the next morning to my horror. That act of vandalism left me shaken. I had directed that short and had it fine cut. One frame either way made the difference between "Hey, cool!" and "Huh ???" I certainly complained at the time but I'm haunted by the irrational idea that I could have campaigned to have that vandal removed from the course. But if I were to go back in time of course the smart thing would be to take the film reel home with me and hand it in to the teacher at the screening instead of following the letter of the plan and putting it were it was vulnerable - with the editing equipment in out crew bin. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The next year, Ed again had too much to say about a documentary I directed. I had written and storyboarded it in order for the crew to access equipment and then someone else was allowed to direct because of a rule at the moment against writer and director being the same person. But then that director was absent for medical reasons and the crew asked me to step in. I followed my storyboards which included a swish-pan-transition between a police station and a Guardian Angels office (this gimmick is seen on Batman or multiple times in Some Like it Hot - a fast pan away from something and a fast pan to something else can be cut at the blurriest frame to make it seem like a single pan). I nicely asked Ed (who was "camera operator" if he knows what a swish pan was and he was affronted and said "Yes," and then I could tell by his movement that he did not so I again politely took a stab at it and made the shot. The next day the other director was doing the office of the Guardian Angels and I did have to question her on one issue - reminding her that the pan was necessary as part of the swish transition and again I was able to get that done. The director also asked me - in addition to the storyboards - to type up an editing guide so the editors knew the order of shots and any special instructions. The editor accepted this and said he understood and had my number if there were any other questions. Then we show up in Post class and he screens a rough cut that doesn't even use my swish transition but uses Ed's meandering wrong pan and I have egg on my face instead of vindication. So I ask out Crew producer Sean if I can cut back in the unused transitions and he agreed. The next day is like a wake - busybodies are saying I have transgressed by re-editing. Later, they have to admit that my swish pan worked exactly as described and other edits as well and I am invited to direct the next assignment which is the drama. But this was a trial by fire. Ignorance almost won. Still, at one point Ed tried to bait me in the cafeteria by saying, "I don't think movies need directors." I forget what I said back, but the right answer is that some people would agree and it may depend on the kind of project but EVERYONE agrees that NO movie needs an incompetent crew member. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Ed's brother seemed like a friendlier person. Neither of them attended a class reunion years later, but I did hear that his brother ended up living across the street from a friend who had acted in a number of my projects. Unfortunately, over the years badmouthing had ripened into outright false history and mischaracterization so there might have been some derogatory mythology created by one brother or the other and passed along. I have been told that to top that off a woman I debated movies with on Facebook had such a meltdown that she decided to then badmouth me to the actor or his wife and I haven't heard from them in two years. So a little bit of misinformation is the gift that keeps on giving. It was likely for the best that these brothers did not show up at the reunion. They have oddly accumulated a fair number of credits on imdb.com which can add that extra seasoning of irritation. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ They say the best revenge is living well, so I hope I can redress this by actually clawing my way into the light at some point. At first glance my own problems don't seem like something to complain about. I wanted to write movies and so I have spent many years doing that. I wanted to direct the features I have written and have taken whatever steps I could toward that end. It is still an ongoing process. A few of my energies may have been misdirected, since the farther away I get from a simple shoot the more uncreative work has to be done. The one thing I know now that I didn't know a few years back is that a power struggle has to be anticipated and guarded against. That is almost a sub-category of Murphy's Law. There are a hundred ways to allow your leadership to be undermined. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ A college instructor I had for screenwriting and directing once asked me near graduation what I planned to do and I mentioned some screenplays I intended to write and direct and he said, "So, you want to pass yourself off as a writer-director!" That is a moment I turn over in my head, a typical mind fu*k. NO!!!! I don't want to PASS myself off as anything!!!! I plan to WRITE my screenplays and the DIRECT them !!!! Over the years the mind-fu*k has actually worked, because I pathologically resist any co-writer and insist on sketching storyboard panels of any shot and making sure I design any scene transition to fully feel authentic ownership of my directing, as opposed to people just arbitrarily covering a scene or letting someone else choose a shot. I would still rather be right about a shot than easy-going and loose. If it is worth doing, it is worth doing right. Meanwhile, I have also done a lot of b.s. goofing around that is not intended to go onto a reel. I have to get my passion back after a few set-backs have used up some of my stamina. It's at the low ebb that the traps of the past and fights I didn't fight fully come back to haunt me.

Break-In

Here is a short about a guy down on his luck who mugs the wrong person and squats in his apartment for the winter.

Break-in from William La Rochelle on Vimeo.

Blade Runner Transitions

Directors Getting it Right or Being "Loose"

A benevolent dictatorship is how I have heard people describe movie-directing. It might be out of fashion, but I like that way of looking at it. I envy the Farrelly Brothers telling their crew at the start of Dumb and Dumber, “Hey, we don’t know anything about filmmaking so we are counting on you to save our asses.” Very disarming. Peter Farrally has said that if you come off like you think you are Stanley Kubrick the crew will make your life hell. I don’t know how true that is. But if I believe in being fair and up front I think it is essential to say that especially when doing a low budget movie the ethic of preparation makes sense and respects everyone’s time. Roger Corman liked storyboards. The sleepless nights and the anticipation of directing a movie would not be worth my time and I wold have no clue as to the final result without being high maintenance or at least specific about certain things, namely the frame and the cut. The myth of “coverage” is that as long as you “got” the content on one camera, you can cut to that wide shot as a bandage if anything else doesn’t work. There is nothing wrong with wide shot, over, close-up, over, close-up for the whole scene, except that you are stuck in the mentality of recording a stage play. It is fine to give the actors a running start, but I likely already know what segment of a scene will be shown from which view. Each beat within a scene might have its own best angle. I may also work “joins” into the scene where I know that in this or that motion the edit has to occur. That might make life tedious for the editor, and if that is a deal breaker he or she must have the opportunity to beg off the production so that someone more amenable can come in and accept direction. I know from past experience that it will eat away at me if I have found the best way to present something and – for example on a student film – it isn’t followed and there is no way to correct the problem. Coppola has said that the reputation of a director as “dictatorial” can come from the tendency of an experienced crew to have such a routine and to know so many variations of how something is usually approached that they want to do things by rote. The more vision and preparation the director has, the more this machine will seem to be impeded by specifics. But I expect that a good cinematographer appreciates time being properly budgeted and a day being planned. One can spend all morning tying to get an all-purpose master shot done and close-ups where there is a best performance and no flubs and ultimately have a dull scene. The audience may feel the generic shots intercut the way they might feel a live multi-camera interview. Those set-ups might provide a hiding place for a director’s entire career. Contrary to what I was recently told in a workshop, I would not equate this with every shot being “coverage” after you record a wide shot from the hills looking down at a traffic intersection. That bump might only be good for one early establishing shot or a reveal, but it is where the “master” concept breaks down because the rhythm of the scene will be made in specific shots and specific cuts. A director might claim, “I can do fancy shots but I find them distracting” reveals by the broad use of the term “fancy” an indiscriminate attitude about the use of cinema tools. I do not love bullets and guns, so I would not justify a loving slow-mo or digital shot which tracks a bullet. But there might be a story-relevant instance where that information is important, namely a shot in the TV series Fargo which follows a piece of buckshot from a shotgun, through a cop, and into the hand of an antagonist, and its resulting infection. Had that shot played as is the first time the scene ran, it would have felt showy and fancy but as a subjective recap or flashback, it was a strong use of modern digital technology. Some people include crane shots for “production value” even though they usually ruin the rhythm and flow of a rom-com and often get cut out. So if you can’t imagine spending half an hour or even ten minutes storyboarding that and reflecting on why the crane shot needs to be there, it might not be worth a morning on the clock shooting it. In High Noon, I often mention Gary Cooper stepping into the street of Dodge to find himself alone and the camera craning up to look down at him and establish how he feels – abandoned and small. That is historically perhaps the single best use of a crane shot. If it feels integral to the inner life of a character or to the story, it will be rendered somewhat invisible because it plays as content. What if in a dialogue scene, two people meeting in a coffee shop, the talking heads and the words they say were not the only content? What if the way they are framed and the bustle of crow around them also had to be considered content? Then the director would be tested. Of course, the behavior of extras and their timing and the assistant directors managing them will play a part. The cinematographer will want to know the workload for the day or the morning, so the preparation should be outside of your head. What if this dialogue scene was going to be what your next job prospects hinged upon? Is it then enough to just get along with people (which does matter) and get a job done as opposed to THE job done? The actors will also want to know that they are not playing their hearts out for nothing. I have acted and worked on sets where there seemed to be no light at the end of the tunnel and where I have lost faith in the idea that there is a plan or anything special going on. I’d usually keep it to myself, but I have a feeling smoke might be seen coming out of my ears. It is usually the non-storyboarding director who will create this unease. Better to have a plan that is not 100% followed than to say that because they won’t get 100% done there is no need for a plan. Fail to plan, plan to fail. Some writers don’t mind taking full screenplay credit even when others have made substantial contributions of even more than 50%. Some directors feel comfortable letting the crew “do their job.” Which is likely fine and healthy. If the cinematographer’s job ends up incorporating decisions that should be part of the director’s work – like deciding what the angles will be or literally calling the shots – it is less because this director cares so deeply about the actors than that he or she just looks at the camera’s job as something to “cover” the action and not be part of the action and part of the whole performance. When a live person sits from an audience watching a play, the brain creates cuts and close-ups and zeros in on what it must. A camera covering this from the same position does not. In a movie, the camera and the cut hold the sensibility of the audience and either jerks them around or carefully crafts a journey and a way to perceive the events and it should feel even more like we are there and involved than the objective audience in a live theater. Sometimes I care so much about this that it freezes me. I know people generally fuse director and producer, and that even though these are two very different disciplines the director’s ability to get across the proper message and feel is reliant somewhat on production value. I rue every compromise I have made in the past, and each time I was too relaxed or trusted too much. If I ask to see a shot or a take or a cut a certain way I NEED to see that first, before any other options are presented. Some people may test the role of director and feel somebody else gets the last say, but it is a long journey and when the omission of one bit or the addition of an other in the alchemy of good cinema it can be as different as the temperature between light and shadow on the moon. I like my work, for example, to have a prickly edge that others will file off. It may travel better if it is very smooth and offends nobody, but there is no shortage of that kind of thing. So it is especially vital that people know a plan is on track and a screenplay will remain much as it was when they said yes let’s make this. A storyboard is much like a script as well, especially if the movie is not a rom-com or talking heads. Even in that case, new approaches to a less director-friendly genre can make them interesting, and create problems that can be fun to solve. Sometimes I am willing to let someone else direct a script until I sit down and storyboard it. Then my appetite to direct it returns. I mean, you can and certainly want to be friendly and keep the actors relaxed so they can make mistakes or try things you might not use, but in terms of allocating time to get the shots and managing the crew I would rather run a tight ship than a loose one. And that might just be something that is understood in advance. I know that's the way I prefer it when I am being directed or when I am on a crew. We don't need more directors or fewer directors from any social stripe - except those who are both talented and organized. The field is crowded. In film school, it's difficult to put your foot down. But anywhere, anyone would expect common sense and communication. If a take is chosen, it's not asking much to use that one in the edit. If a zoom-out should stop on the shoulders, it is astounding if it ended up going to the full body and becoming a heartbreaking "wrong" shot that might mean re-do.

Filmmaker Commentary Tracks and their Usefulness

They say listen to people who are doing what you want to do. So I’m surprised that it is in fashion to disrespect the opportunity provided by the better DVD commentaries. I don’t buy a DVD generally unless there is a commentary. They can be long, but at least like radio or a podcast you can listen while doing other things. Here are a few samples. Control – distinguishing between the actor’s “journey as a human being” as opposed to honoring the character and function of the story. David Fincher commentary on various films Ridley Scott – commentary from Thelma and Louise is very worth hearing Beyond these, I’d recommend Aranovski’s commentary for Requiem for a Dream which gets into the why of some shot choices. For example, it would not have occurred to me that in a restaurant dialogue scene the person with more depth and background behind him/her has the “authority” in the scene. Nicholas Meyer (Wrath of Khan) gives good commentary on his disks, Frank Darabont’s commentaries on Shawshank, Green Mile and The Mist are very informative, any movie on which Walter Murch was editor or sound he might have a separate commentary for his own discipline, The Conversation, for example, which breaks things down more than the director commentary. Writer/actor Emma Thompson has her own commentary on Sense and Sensibility which is more worthwhile than the director’s track for Sense and Sensibility. If you only have time to hear one commentary on Citizen Kane, choose the Roger Ebert version which is very informative and especially useful to film students. Roger Deacons the cinematographer from Fargo gets to provide its only commentary track, but he lets you know how the shots came about and his process with the meticulous Coen brothers as well as the truth about the “true story” card at the beginning. Some directors do embrace commentary tracks for the sake of posterity and use the time efficiently, while others admittedly seem to recline and wax nostalgic with actors and may not have screened the film in years or planned an approach to the track nor had anything to get off the chest. Haskell Wexler Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Audio Commentary is very detailed, best listened to if you are already familiar with Mike Nichols’ first feature but the descriptions by Wexler are detailed enough that you can imagine the set-ups and situations explained.

The Payment

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CV6W_MnEbxE This is a little video experiment that was done when visiting my home town at Thanksgiving. I went to the bus station early to make the rush of lining up less complicated later. While at the station I mentioned to my friend I was having a coffee with that I had a new Rebel 3 that shoots video and I hadn't shot much with it and maybe something could be made up on the spot. He mentioned the tunnel between the mall and the terminal and that we could do a scene like in The Six Million Dollar Man which I understood to mean the bit where walls of a circular tunnel spin and the light or energy cause Col. Austin to lose power and fall unconscious. The technology to make the tunnel turn did not exist so I just suggested this or that shot as we go and Rob improvised as we went from point A to point B and I suggested a concept that might make use of the sequence. It has to do with memory and karma catching up. His verdict upon seeing it was "fun to watch but still makes no sense." Fair enough. A script is a good place to start, but all things considered I have seen stories that are crazier. At least it is one more exercise to use that camera, although I regret buying it because while some argue that an LCD screen is not as true for photography as an eyepiece this camera does not offer the option of shooting video that way and you MUST refer to the LCD screen regardless of whether conditions -- but it is inexplicably one that is built in or set in and can not be flipped out to make for more comfortable handling during lower shots. Along with the fact that it does not offer 24 frames per second, it has just about inspired me to revert back to my more expensive but HDV cassette utilizing HX-A1 despite its size and lack of discretion. But all things considered, I like knocking off a little movie every now and then as recreation. It's only the editing that can be annoying, since whether it is my Dell laptop or my Premiere Elements 8 there are some quirks that make previewing and seeing clean cuts almost impossible until the file is created. So it make for a few test uploads. But this seems like the end of that journey for this imperfect whim of a short, The Payment. If you don't like it, at least it is over in two minutes. I'm including both the embedded version for a visual and the link to its youtube page. Sometimes "high def" (broadly defined) crops too much in the blog, so you might prefer to just paste the link. Actually after looking at it just now indeed it does crop the film. In the beginning it looks kind of interesting to be so off center, but then someting important in right frame at the end is totally lost, a Christian fish symbol on somebody's car which provokes the only line of dialogue (improvised).