Word Press Blogs

http://cinematruth.blog/2020/09/05/mission-statement/ Here are a few links to my own blogs elsewhere, for what it's worth. http://cinematruth.blog/2020/09/04/leverage-and-support/ http://cinematruth.blog/2020/10/13/friday-the-13th-2009-or-12th-movie/ http://cinematruth.blog/2020/10/13/raise-a-little-hell/ http://cinematruth.blog/2020/10/10/some-halloween-viewing/ http://cinematruth.blog/2020/10/09/crawl/ http://cinematruth.blog/2020/10/09/the-it-girl-and-her-grown-up-self/ http://cinematruth.blog/2020/10/06/john-carpenters-the-ward/ http://cinematruth.blog/2020/10/06/the-third-black-christmas-2019/ http://cinematruth.blog/2020/10/03/generations-and-rick-moranis/ http://cinematruth.blog/2020/09/26/in-praise-of-the-eighties/ http://cinematruth.blog/2020/09/06/look-at-these-damn-shorts/ http://cinematruth.blog/2020/08/29/perceptions-of-screenwriters-or-directors/ http://cinematruth.blog/2020/08/21/audio-the-fault-in-their-star-wars/ http://cinematruth.blog/2020/07/31/an-old-youtube-channel-is-back-up/ http://cinematruth.blog/2020/07/17/letting-a-screenplay-go/ http://cinematruth.blog/2020/06/09/internalized-or-imposed-knowledge/ http://cinematruth.blog/2020/06/07/twitchy-twitter-tribes-and-fans/

Case Studies in Failure: Poster Design

Suppose, hypothetically, that you need a movie poster by a deadline and someone on your team has a connection willing to do it and you send that person your designs and specifications and cite a photo reference but insist there is only one element of that photo you want on the photo and not the face of the person.... but you end up with the opposite - the face is included and zombified for good measure. You ask whether the artist has made that strange departure on his own or whether he consulted your partner who decided your direction should be disregarded. This question is dodged or goes without answer. Months later you have a meeting and see that the zombie photo has been made into a print and your team member has it displayed near his apartment entrance. You realize this may be an expensive method of trolling, so you decide to say nothing about it and resist the temptation to set it on fire. In hindsight, you recognize this as a measure of power struggle. It might have saved another year of work to cancel the project right away or change the team. When a communication channel has been compromised by a clashing intention or ego, that cog in the works has to be dissolved.

Weighed, Measured, and Found Crazy

The bad guy Count Adhemar in A Knight's Tale says to the hero William, "You have been weighed. You have been measured. You have been found wanting." Naturally, in the end, William's friends turn these words against Adhemar. The scene resonates with me due to my own insecurity and my long held ambition to make a mark as a writer and movie director. There are a couple of faces that spring to mind as being the sort of disgusting self-styled snob who would go so far as to try to mentally sabotage those of us who have specific goals to achieve. ```````````````````````````````````````````````` Someone running a screenwriting group ostensibly for writers to read and comment on each other's works in progress might be motivated primarily by the need to be the focus and the decider, perhaps pushing what might be called the dogma of Syd Field and Robert McKee format even in a culture where many different storytelling styles might be aching to get exposure and might not survive adaptation into the presumptive blockbuster streamlining. I can say that I have more memory of abuse from those communities than useful feedback. If anything, time can be wasted following the alternate rabbit holes of random opinions given without focused consideration. The preference is for feedback to come from people whose own work you admire and who will look at a draft as indicating what it is you care about and from that how well you are serving that concern. I made the mistake of being candid about my night job, due to the need to travel there after each monthly meeting instead of joining the rest or the writers for a beer. I had a security guard job. If someone chooses to look down on that, they ignore the fact that it did allow me to read screenplays and give considered notes on them. In the realm of sharing notes with strangers, online outlets like Zoetrope.com and Triggerstreet.com were somewhat useful and at least you could tell something about the reviewer by the willingness to rite more than 200 words and the specific relevance to the manuscript at hand. Nothing against the study of Syd Field's Screenwriter's Notebook for example or Story by Robert McKee and various other books about writing but these should be part of a Recommended Reading list and not sources for generic go-to comments to pass off as thoughtful coverage. ```````````````````````````````````````````````` If someone is a toxic person, even though they might appear to believe in the most humane left-wing ideology their fascist heart can be exposed by the tactic of attacking the individual speaker and assigning a pathology to them instead of engaging the arguments with logic and without the expectation that your "facebook friend" is the enemy. Even if it is disguised as a teachable moment, that can tend to be so crass that it is a slap in the face. ```````````````````````````````````````````````` The tricky trap is that there are some who believe or push the principle wherein the mental instability or trauma of a small percentage of those reading or following must set the tone and limitations of what can be said and how it can be said for fear of "triggering" them. While we all might have compassion for someone's trauma, this has escalated to the level of the victim as ruler. If one makes any complaint, he or she will be accused of "playing victim," yet complaints often do have to be conveyed one way or another. If someone has legitimate claim to vulnerability or victimhood, however, it is not a workable situation to stifle and censor all thought that fails to placate that person. ```````````````````````````````````````````````` I don't find it necessary to name names. If someone wants to be an idiot and say that I have spoken out about his/her actions, that is out of my hands. But the principles are more important than the personalities. ```````````````````````````````````````````````` Someone asked for volunteers for a project in her back yard. I responded with an e-mail and mentioned I have a camera I can bring. This was agreed. I was to document. I happened to bring two cameras, the second one being capable of shooting tape for an hour unbroken. So while walking around documenting the volunteer work, I allowed this person to frame up each or three camera positions - each one running an hour - that might be used as part of a demonstration. So I spent some time over there. As essential as the three hour-long shots might have been, there had been no effort to secure this for the project outside of my randomly showing up. As well thought out as the presentation might have been, this person then was not able to firewire onto a capture card of the computers on hand. Documentation of the volunteers on my other camera was easily imported. But I left my camera overnight so more attempts could be made to capture video. When that failed, I returned to pick up my larger camera and I spent another four hours trying to capture and also burn discs. Two discs went fine, but the third shot had some glitches and I wanted to know if I should persist. I e-mailed that there were two discs that turned out but not in full 1080 HD, only DVD quality. I also sent via Facebook a similar message and uploaded sped-up files of all three shots to indicate what was done, noting that at high speed I could be seen waddling around fast and that might be a distraction. I got NO RESPONSE as to the next step from this genius. Do I drop off the two good discs or try to get something out of the third? I had discovered that my camera playback/record heads needed cleaning if I was to record anything again. I looked into taking it in to Canon in Mississauga to get the lens cleaned and heads cleaned. (Turned out that exercise was horrible because Canon workers there won't make money from cleaning lenses or heads, only for a deposit over $300.) Time passed as no phone calls, e-mails, nor Facebook messages were answered. I did my distracting and anxiety-filled back and forth with Canon and their techs trying to scam me. And before I knew it, I was hearing indirectly that the presentation that had been planned never happened. I had gotten through by phone only to be told my timing was strange. I did not press to find out what this meant, and only then did I learn the thing was a bust. I had no indication as to whether I was expected to do more than I had. I had not spend five hours at a semi-friend's place and four more at mine working on that as a prank. There is only one communication style that is worth anything when you have deadlines and specific things that need to be done: Direct, clear communication with a specific intention. There is nothing between the lines in a non-response. There is only disrespect and perhaps madness. ```````````````````````````````````````````````` Ove the course of a year, my only communication to this person was two supportive notes (along with other people) on Facebook threads. One was about being small after being big for a while, and I said, "You are big." The other was about the Netflix series Sense 8 the Wackowskis did. I commented like someone else that even if their content might seem to message-driven and can be a bit much they know how to direct. Finally, a crazy falling out happened (if there was anything to fall out) because I commented on a linked blog that was factually weak. It was complaining about "the male gaze" driving movies and in its three cited examples it included Fifty Shades of Grey and neglected to mention that its director Sam Taylor-Johnson was a woman and that the novelist who had control over the project was also female. It also jumped through hoops with diagrams trying to prove that the geometry of the framing in Mad Max: Fury Road forced the movie to be more respectful to women.... neglecting to mention that Imperiator Furiosa and the whole movie was the product of writer-director George Miller and his 70 year-old male gaze. If you like the heroine of that flick, thank her maker. ```````````````````````````````````````````````` It did not help that a guy I had unfriended a year previous for abuse chimed in for some virtue signaling to throw shade on the ignorant sexist (me). The only lesson I learned from that back and forth and the following morning was as follows: If your Facebook account is beeping whenever someone posts, don't procrastinate about disabling that function. Don't let others and their random input drive your day. Also, make your point and then leave any conversation. There is a tactic some use in which they widen the scope of a discussion beyond the specific item for which you have an opinion. The wider the umbrella, the more disrespectful it is to clarity and the finer points. By the end of it, you can end up with your name all over the page and people seeing remarks out of context. This is baiting. The imbecile who chimed in also lured me to address side-issues and then the next day deleted his own remarks and left mine hanging without context. My own direct message to the owner of the page asking what was really going on was not answered. So I could see the value of my remarks: nothing. I deleted each of my posts. When the owner of the page realized this, there was a manic attempt to paraphrase the discussion with multiple highlights of my name - again to restore the vulnerability of my name being all over the page and this time with less context. I could have sent a printscreen or frame grab to Facebook with a complaint of harassment. That might have been the wise course of action. Instead, the person unfriended me. ```````````````````````````````````````````````` There was some back and forth in Personal Messages trying to get to the bottom of it all, and finding only spin and a completely false recollection of something from 15 years prior. Of the project, the only mention was one of being grateful for my help, although it is doubtful how that could be anything more than ironic. I was told this person likes me but that on Facebook I was a terrible person and a troll. I began to correct the errant memory that had been referred to from the year 2000, and got back a rambling and hyper mess of words telling me not to communicate again. My only response was to go a step further than unfriend and actually block this individual, which I should have done to my shade-thrower the year before. ```````````````````````````````````````````````` I have posted commentary tracks to a few of my short films on youtube, and I started with one for the short that was mentioned from 2000. The sound quality and picture were both murky once I posted it, so I took another stab at it. But because the first version included an allusion to this individual walking from the location, I got indirect feedback on it. The first time around, I had a prop - a VHS tape - and I mentioned something scandalous the self-righteous protester shot which had aired on TV. I had nothing to show from it, but I flipped up the tape guard and pointed at the half-inch tape and said, "There's the nude shot" or something to that effect. The second time, I could not find the tape prop so I let it go. I got an automated e-mail in an account that only a few people knew, advising that am instagram account had supposedly been started by me and that my name was something other than my own. There was a picture of a little boy on the fake account and some message like "I have a podcast." ```````````````````````````````````````````````` When some people get indirect they can be very creepy. I also received a mess of Facebook friend-requests from accounts that seemed fake, like a little girl I did not recognize whose parents I did not know and that was filled with professional-looking photos. Many fake accounts were like dating ads. I had to actually block some so that they would not automatically follow me. I was told that both my troll and this person I had recently blocked were conspiring together to send me these annoyances and also going after the page for my planned film. So their attacks did have quite a great deal of bashing me by name. I know that it caused one friend to stop replying to me (on matters unrelated) and his wife to unfriend and block me. I can only imagine the range of evil slander that has been spread - and over what? If I could anticipate that sort of enemy being killed, I am not sure that I would make an effort to stop that. I look forward to the obituaries of even that mundane level of adversary. ```````````````````````````````````````````````` My generation was raised on Norman Lear, Princess Leia, Mary Tyler-Moore, the Bionic Woman and Murphy Brown. Yet, we are likely to be called sexist for not being excited about the 2016 Paul Feig version of Ghostbusters. There are people who will "other" you and shun you for disagreeing with a sub-issue despite genuinely holding many of the same values. No matter how it is spun, it really may just come down to assholes in sheep's clothing. And mad, mad, mad vindictive jerks cloaked in the flag of decency.

Film Appreciation: Directing

Various Shorts from the recent past

Some new, some as old as 15 or 20 years.

Blade Runner Transitions

Movies They Should Make: Jaws 5 (People 0)

In the early 80's, John Hughes was assigned a script that was never produced, National Lampoon's Jaws 3 (People 0) about producers who hire a novice director for a doomed film hoping for him to fail. The aesthetic of Jaws works against the idea of comedy, since there is nothing relaxing about the dangers under the water surface. But if they stay in the realm of fakery, trying to avoid the pitfalls of the original Jaws, and shoot in a tank it might have potential. One gag I remember from the script is the introduction of an actor who is to wear the shark suit with his legs sticking out the bottom (presumably chroma green) as having "experience playing Godzilla." The movie-within a movie could involve more than that version did, which got caught up in jokes that were off topic and not up to the standard that Hughes eventually evolved into. It was more like his work on National Lampoon's Class Reunion, which is not necessary to look for. Suppose there is an audition for a "Young Robert Shaw" for a pre-credit sequence depicting Quint saying goodbye to his first wife and her patting her tummy as he leaves, implying that even if that marriage failed or he died in war there was a child. Events from the Indianapolis could be shown, with Quint the last up the ladder to the PBY after witnessing a fake Great White shark who looks like Bruce kill someone in front of him and appear to flip him the fin and cause him to go from a patriotic believer and optimist to a grizzled bastard who decides to abandon his first family as he suffers post traumatic stress disorder. His granddaughter could show up at a book signing of Matt Hooper and fail to introduce herself because he is a no show due to Richard Dreyfuss refusing to return. The girl might be the opposite of her grandfather. She might be a Greenpeace activist fighting to protect the last Great White shark from extinction. But things go horribly wrong when her fellow activists end up getting eaten one by one and she has to consider whether to enlist the help of her adversaries the shark hunters for protection. She ends up feeding them to the shark. A real shark should invade the tank through a miscommunication with production e-mails and the guy in a shark suit might have to fight it off. Ultimately the novice sacrificial director should end up having to sacrifice executives to the shark. Due to objections from John Williams, the original shark theme should have to be traded out for the A&W Root Beer "Root Bear" theme.

30 Years a "Director"

2014 marked 30 years since directing the first video short I had aired back in 1984. I may be repeating myself, but since it is unlikely that the reader has combed through all my blogs, this won't likely seem redundant. It cycles around in my head anyway, so it all remains current. Ten years in, it was 1994 when I graduated the Humber College three-year program in Film and Television Production. Ten Years after that was kid of a pivotal year, 2004. By then I had started over somewhat and I had a Bravo!Fact short Klepto the Clown and an Ontario Arts Council Emerging Artists grant for my 22-minute short musical satire Big Babies. I had joined the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto (LIFT) in 2003 and had taken over that year as instructor for LIFT's Directing Actors For the Camera course, which was an interesting experience I embraced; I ended up calling some of the students back for a free additional class once the camera actually became available. Would have been handy in the actual two-day class. 2004 also involved some fallout from taking someone at her word and not yet understanding the pitfalls of collaboration that may be unique to one unfortunate case. I took a workshop in Legal and Business Affairs for Filmmakers and Producers, but it would have been more handy a year previous. Everything must be in writing in terms of what is expected and what volunteers are agreeing to. It's not enough to say here is the square peg of a movie I plan to make and here is the round hole of money I plan to spend. I can pat myself on the head for being right in the abstract, but I would have preferred to anticipate and protect myself better. Sometimes people avoid bidding on a job offering to volunteer for work that a production can't afford to properly reward anyway. I also that year spoke out and let myself be the lightning rod for criticism when I questioned the founders of a film troop raising money ostensibly for the group and then deciding to spend it all on one of their own personal projects without subjecting it to vote. Money can be a real monster. Those funds were earmarked for at least four unspecified shorts to be voted on by the collective. Time has healed most of those wounds, but I'm sure at least one ally of my adversaries then went on to actively badmouth me and continues to be a dreadful person. 2004 is also the most recent date for a directing credit I have on imdb.com. I finished out that year with a barium enema and colonoscopy, appropriately enough, the results of which were apparently mishandled and lost -- which I did not discover until a year of inquiries passed and 2006 began. 2006 brought the passing of my dad from cancer and a loss of interest in a screenwriter's circle at LIFT and also the drowning death of Roberto Arigenello at LIFT who had been such a community-binding figure there. A couple of years passed where I continued renewing my membership, but I was not as active with the group. It also changed locations, which seemed to mark the new era even more firmly. Flashback to 2005 which contained one dialogue-heavy script that I let someone else direct, which turned out okay once the chore of editing finally fell to me, and a mind-reading adventure feature that I tried a few times to shoot with Super 8mm film and which I recast and re-started at least 3 times. Having our own cameras and editing software can be the difference between one or two years. 2005 also brought my diagnosis of type-two diabetes, which explained bouts of sleepiness. I continued to get short films and videos accomplished over the next few years and used some night shifts to evolve my screenplays and other writing and storyboard sketches. Without that. I might have been in limbo. 2014 has meant some progress and closure to writing projects and a sense of new energy and focus. An aneurism from late 2011 did not put me down for good; instead, it might have goosed me into improving projects that had stalled. It put off some work that might have gone into improving a 2010 short The Fashion of the Christ, which is currently still having its audio replaced due to my mistake of using the built-in mic of my Canon XH-A1. At this point, I need to get momentum and a sense of mission again. Movie writing and directing are not a "hobby" for me. They are my vocation. I still have a job insecurity, but if that erodes my identity then I'll be dead in the most significant sense. Life in 2015 as I enter the forth decade of my relationship with movie-making it has to be more than an unrequited obsession. In October of 2013, a directing workshop I paid to attend frankly stated that "people get hired to direct if they are the sort of person the producer wants to have a beer with after a shoot." That seems evident by much of the TV we see, and by the apparent new normal where storyboarding is rare and the cinematographer may be coming up with the shots (or calling them). If this is the case, I'll continue to be the odd man out. I like and respect storyboarding and I say it's okay that the "cut" is implied or forced by it. The frame and the cut are critical tools of the director, and merely to "cover" a scene in "real time" is just not interesting or cinematic. Hypocritically, I will end up doing a feature this year -- which will indulge in what Hitchcock called, "Pictures of people talking." But even that will contain a few careful cuts or moves that might make it more than the close-ups, overs, and establishing shot that will carry the bulk of it. I've transferred some updated copies of my footage from Klepto the Clown, Big Babies, and a film short from 1994 this past year for the internet and posterity in general. There was a 2014 20-year reunion of some of my Humber classmates. They seem to be doing well and most of them still keeping a foot or more in the movie industry. I feel like I have a toe in it. Another issues that caused reflection was that a screenplay I wrote for during my time at Humber for an independent filmmaker (around 1991-1993) was produced in 2011 and released in 2014 without giving me proper credit for co-writing nor any money. I still have to sit down and air my grievances about that, which I should have done during Festivus. Meanwhile, I have tried stand-up comedy for the first time, and though I don't know if it will be a lifestyle or craft that I cultivate, I can if it helps position me or goose me with my movie-making. But even visiting home for the holidays I am reminded how it can be an effort to even coral family members to co-operate with a short. Even reaching back to original resources can be a stretch. It is just so easy to put things off that maybe there is nothing wrong with being a nag and beig willing to inconvenience people. There are qualities I took for granted in my youth which can be replaced all to easy with neurotic second-guessing and self-negating faux etiquette. There will be people who accommodate an idea or a prank or a project. The point is to keep looking and maybe cast the net wide.

Can't Complain

A meme suggested giving up complaints for 24 hours. I agreed. Out of faithfulness to the meme, I will continue to put a positive spin on what I say. Tomorrow I am to improvise a bit of a shoot in a park so I've been thinking of general ideas. I suppose it is meant to be me talking about movies to a bored listener on a bench. I guess I can rant. There is a certain built-in conceit that maybe someone will find it amusing or useful. It's my hope to keep it happening. We will be recording proper sound, which I have not done for about 10 years. And it has been 20 years since I graduated Humber and a directing instructor left me with the inspirational question, "So you're going to pass yourself off as a writer-director?" And it is 30 years since I directed my first video at age 16. These numbers are somewhat intimidating. I will either be a successful writer and director or I will be a failed writer and director, but in any case that is what belongs in my obituary. I have been working, meanwhile, as a security guard and I feel that the research for my film or play on security has just about concluded. I think I can see the end in sight for that project. I have still managed to keep my soul. What am I randomly thinking about today? I went to a Comedy Bar event last night, had a beer and greeted Sketchy the Clown For Mayor, who got enough votes to win the competition. Today I went to see a Fringe play about the Robert Ford who killed Jessie James, its many asides reminding us that it is not to be confused with any other Rob Ford. I had a swim, and enough coffee, invested some time on the inter-net, and now I am in a caffeine daze deciding whether to focus on a script I need to finish. I can't and won't give up on the movie thing. That is already too big a part of who I am. It isn't like the character in Adaptation who one day says, "Done with fish" and starts collecting plants instead. ********************************************************************************************************** Is a video of myself ranting to the screen more effective than, say, text blogs like this? Maybe. But I'm not always of a mind to flap my lips. I think it is usually best to keep opinions close to the vest. Spike Lee said "Those who know don't tell and those who tell don't know." So is he saying that he doesn't know if he is telling us this? I think the message I get from someone has to do with what stock they own. It is only natural to try to boost that stock, what they have and what they are. A director with an A.D. background may say it is vital to be an A.D. before rising in ranks to director, even if the good ones will be encouraged to remain A.D.s. As I see the immediate future stretching out for me, I don't see myself starting out with the Director's Guild of Canada as a P.A.(Production assistant)/A.D. and then going to 3RD AD, 2ND AD, and finally First A.D. . Assuming I don't drop the ball in that capacity. One can be a talented director without being an effective Assistant, or a brilliant and vital A.D. but a mediocre director. If you are young, you might insist that a director of anything exciting and hip should be young. If you are a musician, regardless of talent, you might say that rhythm being so vital to filmmaking and editing a director or editor must also be a musician. Robert Rodriguez at least says that, "everybody has music in them" and has suggested people can use programs that allow experimentation and print out sheet music even for non-musicians to take a stab at their own scores. That is at least generous of spirit. If a director is female, she might be focused on the message of the seeming need for more females to be hired as directors. If you are old, you might want to see more interest in older or more experienced directors. Objectively, there is little to any of it. As a viewer, I might be fooled into praising a movie that simply has good performances because the cast is talented, or responding to a story that has content that pushes my own personal buttons regardless of whether there was anything special about the way the script was written or the way the director presented it. But the movies I love most could not have been directed by a piker, or simply "covered" by rote. The co-ordination of actors, framing, movement, and everything that goes into the best movie direction is what makes me take notice enough to look back at something over and over again and appreciate a touch of cleverness and confidence in what we see and from which angle at which moment. Raiders of the Lost Ark, Back to the Future, and much of Tarantino's work stand out. Some say the director's work should be invisible and not showy, but for the general audience there will be an unconscious feeling of assurance that they are in good hands while someone who is a filmmaker and/or obsessed by cinema and its machinations will appreciate the joins - whether or not they are noticed upon first viewing. A movie where the director's job is merely to "get out of the actor's way" would not appeal to me. The director directs the attention of the audience, picks each person up and allows them to see what small item is the most important thing in the world and whether the moment is steady as a rock or subtly shaky. There have been times I have built a house on quicksand without knowing it. It is a team effort, but I now that if I am going to feel the journey was worth my while expectations have to be disclosed and the storyboard must be the common frame of reference; usually if I'm not somewhat on edge over a detail being correct then I am on vacation and coasting and ultimately taking false credit. If the crew is happy to be directed by me, then they are the right crew. But tomorrow I have few if any firm expectations. I used to go to a party and organize an improvised movie, a horror premise or soap opera we could all watch edited-in-camera at the end of the night as a goof. But while I would still do that, I would feel it wasteful to approach a serious project that way. A movie should be more fun to watch than to make. And if I am so keen to appease every collaborator's impulses at the expense of my own instinct, the end product will be a monument to failure, compromise, and chaos. I would prefer it to be by design and not a mystery. I can bet on myself, and on people who also believe in what I am doing.

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.

Taxi Driver Audio Commentary (Director & Writer)

video blog Talking to a Wall begins

Occasionally I will throw one of these on-line, mostly random spiels about film making. From the perspective of a low-profile director clawing his way along.

Writer-director

Over Easter, I had beer with a few high school friends. It's the kind of thing where you expect to account for the last 20 or 30 years of your life. Even though the broad strokes are already known. Graduated from Film and TV Production at Humber, did a lot of volunteering and being unemployed, and kept writing and making my little movies even while taking on a job as a security guard, which I thought would be temporary. ************** Some helpful and supportive thoughts and ideas were offered. I won't mention one business plan which might easily be used by others. But along with that came the opinion that a person has to decide whether he/she is a writer or a director. I keep remembering what one of my instructors said to me as graduation approached and he asked what I planned to do. He asked, "So you're going to pass yourself off as a writer-director." Since this was someone who might still be able to mess with my grades, I must have said something polite instead of, "Better than passing myself off as writing and directing instructor." He must have failed upward because he became head of the department. I could have also said, "Yes, I'll pass myself off by writing a screenplay and then directing it; that will surely fool people into thinking I am a writer-director." :):):):):);):):):):) What I have been seeing typically for years is that many directors develop their own projects. If they have found an already written screenplay, it is considered a draft and they will want to "work with" the writer or just walk away. It is like the old joke of producers or executives lining up to take their turn pissing on a script. It's not like I have people lining up with excellent scripts for me to direct. But I have participated in readings over the years and given detailed notes on many scripts. It is enough to know that you either click with something or you don't. I may not have time to see every story idea through to completion. I have too much in my inbox anyway. I have directed another writer's work and the process was the process. Once a script is ready, it can basically be locked. Especially after group readings and storyboards have drawn out possible areas of improvement or necessary tweaks. All of my own scripts go through that process. And once I have drawn it out and had to meditate on each beat of the story or of a scene, I can relax as long as everybody else is open to actually looking at my plan rather than just trusting the whims of the day. ________________________________________________________________________________________Being the writer and the director does not mean that I do "everything." I have had a few people offer me scripts to "produce" which they would want to direct, but that is like hiring me to do many of the chores I only reluctantly do for myself or for which I have waited years to delegate. I would be the wrong person to finance a film, given that it is mostly guard income I survive on. But I have had to do just that many times. Even if you get a producer, you have to have that awkward talk about whether you both understand the duties and responsibilities of that post. If suddenly the director has to recover funding that had not been properly locked down while a project is near or in progress, that could be a disaster. If you start revising a script because it has to be done with no resources, you are wearing the producer had and Murphy's Law is not co-writing and co-directing. There are a lot of opportunities or windows to shoot something I have let go by because now I am not as naive and certain of my destined path. But for me it is a matter of keeping an eye on the expected final result. A compromise on one end of the time-line will have its result on the other end. Each crew member is important. Each is a link in the chain. ________________________________________________________________________One logistical snafu and nothing can nor should be shot without the necessary element. I have in the past accommodated people leaving early from a big shoot and I've had to shoot around them to disguise the fact that they were not present. At that point, the best shots for those moments may be lost. Except that I was in the habit of doing storyboards and it helped the re-organization considerably. What may be lost is subtle. A room full of people has a certain energy. At this point I've caught on to how certain shots can't be easily achieved in reality. Even a 360 degree pan of people might not give the smooth other-worldly mood necessary and build viewer confidence in the project. So those elements become part of preparation. Too much emphasis these days is on simply "covering" the content of a scene, and assumes that it is two people talking. I am going to blog about this in more detail. But on the subject of writers handing over their scripts to a director, each project is its own. If I have written a stage play, I am oddly open to someone or several someones directing and re-staging it however they like. Perhaps because of the expectation that plays will be remounted or go on the road indefinitely. A movie is rarely remade. Even if it seems like the Seventies and eighties are being raided constantly for remakes. Also, part of my interest in directing a script is its potential for necessary invention and use of cinema language. So many movies are just master shot, over shoulder of everyone, close-up of everyone, and the scene from top to bottom. Flipping a burger. In those cases it seems like the director's role is merely symbolic or a matter of reviewing whether the actors are sticking to the plan from rehearsal or casting discussions. Jon Favreau has said that often studios would give him storyboards and say "just shoot this." Or he has hired the animator from Samurai Jack and the first style of Clone Wars cartoon to "direct" on paper the movements and framing of a battle in Iron Man 2. To be honest, the proper application of cutting and shooting is the key to my love of movies. MANY articles and interviews I've studied pay lip service to storytelling and visual elements but then run a camera merely recording conversation - as Hitchcock said, "pictures of people talking." Ironically, I am poised to do something that simple perhaps just because I have no production team and nothing to pay them so I will be writing like the wind and confining everything to the simplest location for the sake of. . .well not just savings of money but the Aristotelian unities of time, place and conflict. Then at least I won't be doing my "first feature" when I tackle the larger project I have been developing. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________I would LOVE to have a decent income. I would LOVE to have more of my titles from the past 10 years on imdb. I envy an enemy of mine who was savvy enough to start a film festival and once it was recognized by imdb simply put her own film titles up there - even at least one I know to be some sort of inside joke (a so-called doc that isn't anything more than an interview of her boyfriend). Much of my play and my passion has gone into preparing projects that at least were my own and/ or had an interesting element. I would be doing more for other people, but in my nerves I feel I am out of place in that capacity. If you advise anyone else on directing you are pissing up a rope. Everyone thinks he or she can direct, so this may not be unique. I won't co-write the work of others, so the idea of working on someone else' script to direct is not on the immediate horizon for me. Maybe after I've gotten my stuff out of my system. Most projects I should have done in my twenties or thirties. I know how sane I felt immediately after completing a film shoot in late 2003 and my brain felt more free to write. I got a lot of good work typed up, and some that still needs to be fixed up. I would certainly give certain scripts to another director and let them stage them and even cast them while I am directing one of my other scripts. As long as I'm not expected to pay for the pride of being a writer-john. I haven't given in to the vanity press. For now all I can do is be thankful for the people who have taken an interest in what I am doing and have helped. _______________________________________________________________________________You know, as I recall, the Canadian Film Center had its Feature Film Projects that as a rule only budgeted for an individual to be paid for one of the positions he or she held. This meant that it made great economic sense for the writer to also be the director. I know that if I were merely surrendering a script I would consider my job done. It would be all over but the compromise. So better to have me doing something, actually directing. As a producer I would be a liability because there are producer-minded people who could be going to bat for the project. You need a load bearing member of the team to be the producer. Obviously the cinematographer and first A.D. are essential. People expect a producer to be production manager as well. There are many positions that I have occupied, but the only one where I feel I am actually the best for the job (for the money) is writer-director. Even then, when directing it is to an extend acting if the scope is large. I wouldn't want some pip squeak wandering along and sizing me up and trying to spread dissent in the ranks. George Roy Hill was much like a general. Apparently so was Milius (who is recently featured in a great doc by Chop Shop). But I tend to be more quiet and hope to plan enough in advance that we don't miss anything. It is a cause for concern that I have not climbed up the imaginary ladder of the DGC for be a PA/AD, then a 3rd AD, then a 2ND AD, with payments and minimum numbers of hours on set in between. Unless I get in straight as a director, I might have to forget about union shoots. I can't be playing that game at age 45. I pretty much have to stick to what I am doing. ___________________________________________________Every now and then you will see a directing credit like Vincenzo Natali on Hannibal that you recognize and you can settle in and watch more carefully, but for most shows it just seems arbitrary who comes in to direct. The shows have good image quality, so the shooters know what they are doing, but I think it will only be taken as a grouchy position to evaluate the quality of TV directing or movies at least in an open forum. I need to be doing this more often, though I have no love of logistical tensions and politics. I feel like I am getting back into it and starting over each time. I keep seeing posts (by female directors) saying there are not enough female directors. I can understand someone boosting the stock of something they've got. But the one thing definitely needed is more excellent directors and a better image for directors. There is clearly an impatient view of directors by and large and a perception that they are all doing something by rote that is so standardized that they are redundant. Whether it is me or someone else, we need to see the DIRECTING evaluated as directing and not so much for content and politics. Some films are more fun to watch than others. The writing is often a meandering mess, which might make it closer to life but also makes the proverbial natives restless. Anyone can do it, so why am I merely wasting my time blogging on a Saturday when my time and my ind are my own? I am either hyper-ambitious, or hyper-apathetic.

Two Van Tuesday

Film-making memory. This falls into, "the hand of Providence protecting me from what I want." It can be the smallest of issues that allows Murphy's Law to enforce itself in the demonic details of life, the o-ring that is frozen just enough to change size and let gas escape when heated at launch time. Friends were making what was then a Calling Card short film and the director asked me to help out for its five day shoot ostensibly as continuity but generally as "an ally on the set" which might be a term picked up from Buskind's book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. I mentioned that all but the Tuesday would be okay, and that an actress we knew was moving and I had agreed to help her on that day and this was understood so Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were the days I agreed to. I also helped in the days leading up if there was input requested, and also ended up helping on a secondary shoot and with a sound recording day weeks after this main week. But despite mentioning the Tuesday prior commitment a couple of times and even during the Monday shoot on location and even being razzed about it as to my reason for helping this woman move, my friend the director was on the phone with me Monday night and seemed rattled that I actually did mean that I was intending to stay on course and help someone load and unload a moving van Tuesday instead of standing-up the actress and doing the more fun option of hanging out and filming and then just resume with the production on the Wednesday. They had my Polaroid camera (this was 1999) and continuity papers, and plenty of advance notice. To this day, there have been many of opportunities I've said no to just because filmmakers don't HEAR or have selective memory about availability and they believe "in for a penny, in for a pound" and that all else doesn't exist once a production starts. In hindsight, I would have let down the girl because she ended up having a few people help her. That Tuesday was spent riding in a van with the other helpers. I have an over-developed sense of commitment. When I checked back in with my director friend, he decided that the person who replaced me can stay with his project for the rest of the week. I learned later, however, that nothing had been shot that day anyway because they spent it traveling in their equipment van to a location and then finding it unsuitable and returning so the producer could find a different house. I missed a day of riding in a van because I was riding in another van. Had I relented on Monday night, and stayed on to (I thought) indulge in my preference of movies over being a mover, I'd likely not have been accused of disloyalty by the actress and no harm would be done; I would be climbing out of the film van and quipping something like, "Well it's a good thing I blew off my other commitment," If I wanted to be a dick. To top it off, the A.D. from the shoot, a young woman who seemed nice enough for much of the first day, who did not know me at all, apparently had a lot to say. When I picked up my Polaroid, I got the sense that a LOT of spin-doctoring had begun. My frequent runs to the washroom were the result of water pills treating cranial hypertension which had caused me to collapse months before and had damaged my optic nerves. I had recovered enough balance that by summer I was pushing myself a bit. I recall a lot of little things, like when the art department guy didn't have impressive enough prop groceries I suggested stuff from the craft services table and helped stuff the bags. I had thought the day had gone well. There was a little edge from her when it came time to take a Polaroid of the cast and crew. It that photo still exists, I am not in it because I am shooting. The A.D. offered to take the photo but when I explained a subtle framing issue to compensate for, she handed it back. Oddly, the photo was intended for our hosts at the location and I don't remember giving it to them. The A.D. ended up riding in the same vehicle as me on the way back into town, and there was a subtle bit of mustard when she remarked generally about how people should be enthusiastic about filmmaking or not involved - not that she would have been talking about me. Her only hint of anything "negative" would be that when she asked me about something math-related about continuity I had nothing because in any other continuity gig I had I didn't have to add up film footage, only monitor each shot and take that was done. I had thought the camera crew took care of that and I only noted exposure and lens info. But even then despite being a little sun stroked by the end of the day I am certain I was purely polite with her and only got wind of her dark side weeks later in post-mortem chats. I had mentioned that I was not strictly a continuity person and was only there to help out as a former classmate and friend of the three key crew, and that was only mentioned so that I was not passing myself off as anything more. Apart from my own projects, I have avoided doing continuity since. I suspect that much of that A.D.'s attitude about me might have resulted from my re-statement Monday night that I was not due to come in Tuesday. She likely fanned the flames of frustration my friend felt at that point. When I see a shot from that first day, I think of it as mostly positive snap-shots and the film itself turned out very well and it should have gotten more exposure. Given what was known at the time, there is a certain inevitability to it but not any predictability. There was no obvious gravity point in that case study. People frequently come onto a project for a day, and I think they actually used a few continuity people that week. I put all of my cards on the table in advance. Undisclosed expectations are generally the root of conflict on this kind of thing. I don't usually change course when I've decided something, and would have no reason to expect that a known open shift would not be filled and would be left open with the expectation that "don't mean" that I am going to honour an agreement to do something menial as a prior commitment. I was a volunteer. Perhaps the only one on the set. I didn't lose them a day or put them over budget. The person who did was chastised but never shut out as a friend. It took me years to let myself off the hook and realize that I was taken for granted. And the undisclosed expectations were not mine. This kind of anecdote I think might be of use in building teams and airing any concerns during the early phase where people are buzzed about a project and just happy people are willing to show up. #GuardedOptimism.

(Don't) Consider the Source

I've come to (for now) the conclusion that one of the most damaging axioms to meaningful discourse is, "Consider the source." How many of those handy turns of phrase are used to shut something up with a few words or lead us into distraction over evaluation of something external rather than using on a question personally and inwardly? Unless the question at hand is of the nature of climate change or dangers of cigarettes where a source of information or disinformation may well be funded by Big Tobacco or Big Oil and its likely reason to exist is to provide a minority report that can be cited as reasonable doubt in the murder of the planet, we will be in danger of writing long blog sentences like this one. Think of all the people you know and who gets benefit of the doubt because they are on-side and who is disregarded or shouted down because he, she or the famous they uttered a word or idea on the issue at hand or another one entirely with which you disagreed. Think of how many people do love their parents and grandparents but constantly disagree on issues that may be generational or on which a stand may be habitual or on which so much time and commitment and sacrifice has been spent in spreading this belief or living this life that they feel it would be embarrassing to incorporate new information or flip-flop or betray agreements they have signed in order to mollify someone or maintain a connection or funding. How many people will fight to the death over the reputation of their most ancient ancestors whom they have never met but will flatly reject their parents' beliefs, taste in movies, or a business they have built and wish to pass along? "The sins of the father are visited upon the son" may be reportage of the way people do behave, but it is also nonsensical. If I am raised Catholic, does that mean anyone has a fool-proof code key to my psyche and voting habits? If I watch The Walking Dead, am I cool with America's Second Amendment, let alone the paradoxical idea that an a constitution and its amendments should never be amended with the introduction of new and evolving information? If someone is Portuguese should that person feel guilt for ancestors who started slavery? If someone is of the African tribe that aided the Portuguese in betraying and luring and trapping fellow Africans, must that blood be on them? Forgive the rhetorical questions, because after all it is easy to dismiss as rhetoric. Or the Pawnee who are shown in most movies about First Nations people as the "bad guys Indians" -- must their descendants live that down? I say in those cases there is no debt to repay. Does a country - an institution or general banner organization - that has wronged people under a previous administration have to account for that? Yes. Japanese internment camps during World War 2? I don't know if the compensation is timely enough to help anyone involved or if there could be reparations for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki considering the current understanding we get from Oliver Stone's recent series on hidden history (namely that Russians had already settled any threat of Japan military at the time and the bombings were not as necessary an evil as we have been led to believe). If I as an overweight person with type two diabetes tell you that eating vegetables and regular exercise are essential to keep fit, will that assertion be any less true than if it comes from someone slender? If I own about 23 Mel Gibson movies, and a boxed set of 30 Rock starring Alec Baldwin and Tracy Morgan, there are people who will take that as proof that I espouse the beliefs that have been attributed to them and that I am an "apologist" for this or that view or package deal of opinions. There are people who think that a word can be extracted like DNA to reproduce you in full. And this is in a culture of constant agitation, where the drama or the hot-button or the bottom-feeding element is taken for granted as necessary to get hits or clicks or make it "a thing." Every news item on line is likely to offer an opportunity to feel you are venting and weighing in, all the while providing your e-mail so you can get more spam and alerts from people who seek to refute your declaration of a favourite colour. That way, more clicks, more log-ins, more hits. Because they are both "social issues," does abortion have a damn thing to do with gay marriage, much less be the result of it? And will knowledge of one's distaste for one tell you his or her attitude about the other? Funny thing about rhetorical statements - people forget that art and even persuasion is about asking questions more than answering them. If the answer comes from you, it feels more organic and valid. Considering the source is ultimately a carry over from top-down structure of leadership. Who was the first to say "Consider the source" ? If Jodie Foster is friends with Mel Gibson, and if the highest paid actor currently Robert Downey Jr. has been a public supporter of him at his lowest ebb, how does that fit in to the way the media pushes and pulls and ultimately distracts people with side issues and sub-issues? How does that become a sound-byte or a tweet you can get behind? If Sinead O'Connor has dealt with sleaze-bags and she answered a question relentlessly posed to her about Mylie Cyrus causing a stir in a video ostensibly inspired by her own work yet directed by a pornographer and alleged rapist, why is anyone imposing upon that a discussion about "slut"-shaming ? And is a man defending Sinead therefore to be viewed as anti-women or anti-equality? And is the director of Wrecking Ball in any way motivated by your positive self-worth and freedom ? And are his detractors just party-poopers or zealots or date-rapists because they presumably seek to control girls? It's exhausting. There was an amusing discussion on a chat show I follow on-line in which a side-kick I won't name made a cheeky remark pretending to renounce the ignorant stance that gay men are automatically child molesters. He said essentially as his capper, "Straight men can molest young boys." His host then said, "How does that happen?" That kind of thing is bold, and should not be viewed as a threat to the earnest effort to educate parts of the world who mistakenly lump all creeps into a "gay" generalization. But you know the LIBERAL comics involved in that exchange would be enemies of the week to some people merely for suggesting that adult male sexual contact with underage boy does not sound like a heterosexual act. Even though I have heard otherwise reasonable and well-meaning friends of mine argue the other extreme. They might mean that they count persons IDENTIFYING as straight, but strangely when a movie star says that he is gay the true believers in the underground will not accept that answer because they determine which acts or words reveal the most amusing truth that will get the clicks and hits. If you told me the debates I've had on Facebook or other websites I would get mired in, I wouldn't believe it. Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, Alec Baldwin, Terry Richardson, Rob Ford, and a Pope who actually knows what he is talking about, I wouldn't have believed you. And in my disbelief I would have to demonize you and block you and fill in the blanks of who you are. That way, I can procrastinate in writing my masterpiece screenplay about communication. If you are a Star Wars fan you can visit starwars.com and look at the many sub categories for discussion posts and think that world religions are no more divisive. I'm sure I can find someone to argue in defence of the prequels so that I can disregard them. Fact is that anyone can be just plain wrong on something.

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.

investing and wasting time on this earth

When I feel a pinch inside my head somewhere I am reminded of the coil procedure that has filled one of my aneurysms and left one with a few leads and the fact that blood pressure is the main thing to worry about. I think okay this pinch might be a bit like when it happened in November 2011. That was the time when I felt a sense of surrender and looking at life as very unfinished and was just happy that my family and some of my friends came to visit me. Then I was outraged that either a paramedic or someone at one of the hospitals had walked off with my cash and TTC pass from my wallet. Not to take anything away from the excellent medical staff who looked after me. ____________________________ The other day a guard I had worked with two days ended with a diss. It is easy to say he is yet another flake who shares the same job, which is a crackerjack box of prizes when it comes to the people it attracts. Great people and functional sociopaths. And I'm mindful that I could swing to either side of that spectrum without knowing it. We share war stories, we compare notes on experiences at various places we have worked and certain bosses and how things are handled. And yet, officially, there is discretion. I am not anchored my my job and would rather not be. I am anchored in a daydream of unfinished business in my vocation. My next few blogs may be more detailed and I may swing for the fences. I may alienate people with some of the themes I want to pick through. Some people choose a side and damn all who dare challenge it. I think that if I am close to getting to the bottom of some controversies it is worth annoying people who chance upon it. Who am I to say what's what? But who is anybody? The experts are their own kinds of crackpots. Journalists are taking their lead from internet blogs and gossip sites - the bottom of the barrel. ____________________________ I m taking a course Thursday nights in directing, mainly to either re-charge my identity as a director or to make myself angry enough to defiantly take on a major project again. I have several on the backburner. I need the youthful full-of-beans insanity as the wind in my sails. No doubt about it. Instead of being angry about mediocrity I should put my non-existent money where my mouth is. Hey, I did do a Bravo!Fact short. On 35mm. Wrote and directed it. I did have an Ontario Arts Council Emerging Artists Grant and used it toward a 20 minute musical satire on super 16mm film. And so much has changed in the 10 years since that having shot on film might not be an advantage. It will look old. And I will sound old. But a lot of the stuff I want to do is going to seem out of step. I see what the trends are, and I don't know if it's my turn to remake Endless Love or Carrie or anything else on the approved-remake list. I argued a bit with my teacher about coverage and recklessly used a term like "coverage hacks" even though that isn't quite what I meant. I think it creates bad blood. I'll cover a scene, but nothing I write would or should be just covered for dialogue. I know where most of the cuts are before shooting. That isn't hip, and may not be professional. But it IS what is necessary to convince ME that a movie is worth doing. There are some great deal-makers and improv geniuses who can just cover the actors and do a documentary on their improvisations and be satisfied with that. I like the way the frame is used and a new world can be created. I am told "a storyboard implies a cut" and now I bite back my thought and keep it to myself (The director might very well know where the cut should occur. It's not just to be found in editing.) I like the idea of collaboration and that everyone contributes, but I may never be political or detached enough to get hired as a director and paid in whatever time I have left. I am going to know what the frame looks like before there is a camera to set up. I am going to know what lines and moments will be seen from what angle. Fucking period. And the angels and excellent people on my team will be eager to see how amusing it all turns out. I'll keep my head down and agree that master, close-up single for each character and over/dirty of each are the necessary shots. But it is also part of the real world that sometimes an actor can't make it through a full take and that sometimes only one or two lines or reactions need the close-up, as was the way with Hitchcock, or only a certain moment needs the perspective of the wide shot. __________________ My first video that got aired somewhere was in December of 1984. I was 16. I have directed countless shorts and videos since then. I graduated Humber in 1994 - after ten years of placing cameras and dragging portapaks around. 2004 I did the additional shoot for Big Babies and its final longer cut, but then also joined a co-op and made a kind of ill-conceived short ironically about a support group. At least it had some good visual gimmicks in it, and it may be remade in some form in the future. I tried to make a feature 3 times in 2005. I did get 3 shorts made, but the unrelated feature intended to be done on Super 8 ended up being recast and re-started three times and losing momentum or having just one important person be a problem I failed to get around. I also discovered I had type 2 diabetes that year, which explained sleepiness and loss of energy. 2006 I made a tribute video for my family when my dad passed away. That event kind of sharpened my view of a few people. I was in a screenwriting circle run by a character that was politely reprehensible. It turned me off of screenwriting discussion with random strangers and certainly cultivated a jaundiced eye toward leadership that seeks to perpetuate itself in a cloak of helpfulness and faux community. In 2007 I realized that a weird character Porno the Clown was right under my nose and wrote the first of several short videos around that satirical and whimsical idea. I've done other things since, but I think when I joined Raindance it was just a month after my aneurysm and my left eye had not yet opened. I am feeling a bit more energy and fight in me lately. I got started with Herbalife shakes and I'm trying to lose weight and keep it off. But the white whale for me is still to get my scripts made into movies, regardless of anything else I might accomplish. Family is important and it might be nice to have a girlfriend but the axiom is, "to thine own self be true" and for me that means get up off your ass and stop addling yourself with random internet bickering and get your movies shot. I can't control anything to do with acquiring money. That's another world. But what I can control is what I write and what I storyboard and prepare. The actors will be important but the movie itself will be the star. Celebrity culture is toxic, and I understand even tax credits for Canadian films are drying up largely thanks to PM Stephen Harper and his cronies. At least the rest of us can keep minding what little sand castles we shape together. ______ I'll rant more on that kind of thing in other blogs. I have a constant grinding of psychological gears, like the grain of sand necessary to create a pearl. Or maybe that is mumbo jumbo. I have lots to prove, and waste far too much time being distracted by the internet and so many must-see shows to keep up on. Dialing that back. Too many transitory debates. :)

Tarantino shuts down ambitious interviewer

I recently had an argument about this Channel 4 interview in which Tarantino is facing someone who appears clueless and he makes a good point about the fact that the question "do violent movies influence violence in life" has been asked and answered for 20 years and people could google his opinion. I would say that the "link" issue could have been brought out in the pre-interview. It is obviously a sore spot. If this interview is for the UK where they are stricter on violence in films than the States, then an interviewer pushing for a spoon-fed reason WHY there is no link between screen violence and real-world violence is actually counter to the purpose of promoting the movie. If he indulged the interviewer, he could have said that his violence has CONTEXT and the audience can have empathy for certain characters and make judgments of others, whereas video games especially singe-person shooter games and Grand Theft Auto 4 involve only scoring points regardless of a target's humanity. The CT killer and the Aurora killer, as well as the Colmbine kids were known to be "gamers." This doesn't mean a gamer can't be benign either, but the stimulation is different and the discussion of a "link" to real word violence would be valid in that case. Not so much with movies. We want to have a catharsis with a movie like Django, and I think by the end the viewer leaves pacified and amused by the story's closure. He could also have argued that guns CAUSE trouble for characters that have them in his movies and have not until Django solved problems for the gun owner. In Reservoir Dogs, Freddie "Mr. Orange" suffers a stomach wound from a gun and shoots back in reflex despite being an undercover cop and has to live with that collateral damage. The kidnapped uniform cop after all his own suffering is unceremoniously shot by Nice Guy Eddie. The other Dogs confront Mr. Blonde for killing people during the heist. The Mexican stand-off is also a negative portrayal of guns and intransigence and cock-wagging. In Pulp Fiction, a hidden and forgotten character cowers as his friends are killed and then - as the hit men turn to leave - he springs out to shoot them both but his gun solves no problem and inexplicably misses them completely and all he has done is reveal himself and provoke his death. Later, an accidental misfire kills an ally of Travolta causes an entire segment is about the aftermath. In the key Cafe sequence, Jules is unarmed and at the mercy of a twitchy robber and has to reason his way out of the mess verbally. Travolta's character eventually leaves his own gun sitting unguarded on a counter of his target's apartment and the gun is his downfall. Butch ends up under a gun shop in the movie's most harrowing scene, where guns are used only by pure scum and the other weapon Butch uses to free his ENEMY from torture is a sword. So there are a lot of beats about honor and responsibility and Pulp Fiction is no love letter to guns or gun owners. In True Romance, the hero's decision to confront the pimp in his den and try to kill him alerts more danger underworld figures to his existence when he could have just skipped town with his new girlfriend and nothing would have happened, including his father getting shot by an underworld figure. Interesting that in the script for Natural Born Killers the media and penal system are portrayed as just as dangerous as the central characters who are irredeemable and evil and manage to escape at the end. Hard to comment since Tarantino disowned the Oliver Stone rewrites and claims he has never seen the film itself. Kill Bill has its protagonist shot in the head and later after her recovery shot with buckshot, and I don't think The Bride handles a gun. Bill and the little girl BB when we finally get to them "play guns" and play dead for The Bride but her only scene with a gun is during the negotiation with her own contractor to walk away because she is pregnant. Those movies have lots of martial arts and over-the-top jeopardy, but again they are not at all a love letter to guns. Inglourious Basterds is a wild card. It has the usual strong female characters but it does have gun use. I'd say Samm Levine's short and short tempered character is reprimanded for prematurely shooting a Nazi prisoner, and the most focused "Basterd" is the Bear Jew Eric Roth whose weapon of choice is a baseball bat. When he finally shoots Hitler in the face while the Fuhrer is on fire, it is clearly a huge fantasy, but even that I wouldn't count as an ode to guns in general. Everyone wants to kill Hitler. The Nazis are the real threats with guns throughout. Ultimately, by the time of the CT massacre, there would be no line to draw between Tarantino's body of work and that loner killing his parents and innocent kids. If this reporter is indeed Mr. Responsible Journalist and concerned about news and taking this seriously, then he would know the points I have made above. There are plenty of movies from the A-Team on down where people fall like flies and car chases where people are injured in the periphery and violence is in a bubble. Even the silliest of Tarantino's movies are not casual with guns. In Django Unchained with an overseer is shot and his blood mists across the cotton, any reviewer who calls that image gratuitous needs to retire. I obviously side with Tarantino in this interview even though perhaps he should have "acted" more calm -- although I think this is consistent with the way he talks when passionate about something. I say there should have been a pre-interview and the "link between movies and violence" should have been anticipated and vetoed since it has been getting on his nerves. I agree with people who say Tarantino was honest, the interview was agreed upon to promote the film, and the reporter pushed for something more to boost his career. Some claim he is all about superficial trappings and that Roger Avery was the genius behind Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. Well, Avery only wrote the radio chatter in Dogs. . . . With all due respect to Avery, I have not seen an annotated version of the scripts or stories to know what he contributed. I did see Killing Zoe, written and directed by Avery and produced by Lawrence Bender. That was a good chance to shine, but not memorable at all. He was also involved with co-writing the Robert Zemeckis version of Beowulf, which I may have at arm's length but I don't know how that script evolved either. For me - all the way through Tarantino's work I see heart and skill. The hip-hoppy imitation or co-option or homage he has copped to all along isn't an issue for me because I was not actually a fan of the films that he reportedly cites. If I saw a moment of Kung Fu it was in passing someone else' TV set. I saw enough to get it but not enough to be addicted. Blacksploitation I am only aware of because documentaries about film discuss it and I did end up seeing Badasss by Mario Van Peebles and then Melvin's original film that led to it. Roots and Amistad pretty much sum up my exposure to and interest in slavery, the former being something I saw as a child when it first aired. Blazing Saddles is pretty much my education in westerns with a black protagonist. I figure I'm seeing it fresh. The other Jango with a silent D who cameos in this film represents something I had no interest in until Tarantino's latest primer on this aspect of grindhouse cinema. Actually my only memory of the word Mandingo comes from a parody segment in Kentucky Fried Movie, directed by John Landis and written by Abrahams, and the Zucker Brothers. When I saw Reservoir Dogs, I only recognized the use of colors as aliases (Mr. Brown) from The Taking of Pelham 1,2,3, and that was given an amusing spin by showing reactions to the names. I like what Tarantino ends up with. Do the girls chit-chat way too much in Death Proof? Yes. But I still found it interesting and it had some genuine scares and later some amusing table-turning. I do wonder if the Dogs are dressed the way they are because of the scene in Blues Brothers where they speak to a landlady and mistakenly call her Mrs. Toronto, and she corrects, "Tarantino." But I had forgotten that bit by the time his name became famous. I think the perspective of the underdog video clerk geek is far more interesting and unpolished and edgy than some of the more academic old farts full of restrictive prejudice about the moral obligations of the artist (which means it is wrong to depict Hitler or slavery unless in a dry and aloof documentary). I think Tarantino has a sure grasp on which buttons are being pushed. Even the scene he is in, where Michael Parks is under-used, which people attack for opening up the locale of the story when it should be narrowing, at least allows Django to purely use his wits and talk his way into a power position which I think is vital to the movie. There are plenty of "original" movies in which we can guess very plot point, and yet in Tarantino movies that are reputed to be derivative anything can happen. his fascination with Pam Grier and The Bride as survivors in their own styles is said to have come from his single-parent mother and her attitude. I'd say that came to the fore in the second half of Death Proof; the first half involved superficial women who ended up being victims and the second group were filmmaking, active and victorious over the villain. Then two strong women were the heart of Inglourious Basterds despite the male screen time. Women are absent from Reservoir Dogs, and lack of that in their psyche leaves everybody dead. Rather than do a domestic drama about making toast, he is using genre to often bring his personal views gradually forward. I think Tarantino makes serious films but it's like Lex Luthor says in Superman: The Movie, "Some people can read War and Peace and come away thinking it's a simple adventure story and others can unlock the secrets of the universe from a chewing gum wrapper." So to each his own. In Django, Broomhilda seems to have a smaller role, but she is constantly shown in flashbacks and as daydreams, obviously his guiding light and motivation to move forward. It is kind of sad that during the Golden Globes Tina Fey joked and nailed QT's place in the minds of women when she referred to him as "the star of my worst sexual nightmares." Because even though he is crass and plays up the twitchy egotist with a quick meaningless peace sign as his wave, the movies I feel show that he has compassion for women and respect for them. This is my defense of Q.T. against his detractors who find him only about superficial homage, pop culture and violence without something to say: I say Tarantino (raised by single mother) centers his movies on women. They would be the code key: strong women. Dogs may seem like the exception that proves the rule because the final cut only has one woman, the anonymous shooter of Freddy who herself is collateral damage. But she is the only female element in the zeitgeist of the film and its psyche kills itself. And SHE is prime mover of the central emotional and ethical crisis/wound in Freddy's gut. Looking closely at the female characters in Tarantino flicks will prove this.

Pet Peeves - film and ads

I had in mind a topic to blog about which had nothing to do with what is now the first pet peeve on my mind. First, I'm sure some insufferable boob is going to say, "If you don't like ads there is nobody forcing you to use the website." That is the kind of remark that deserves a slap in the head with a dead fish. I finally make my way to google and blogger and click "create new post" and lately what I get is a blank screen with nothing but an ad banner and at the bottom a "send feedback" button which I may have use for. If I want to actually see where to put my subject line and the body of my blog entry I have to click refresh. This I find out purely by experimenting. When I sign into a hotmail account, I see at the top an indication like, "a password is not enough," which looks like the name of a philosophically horrific song raising money for internet stupidity. To circumvent that I have to highlight the address bar and either go to another site or type hotmail again and then I am in. So I'm learning two things from msn in that case: They want to force me to give them a phone number or credit card or some other perhaps false verification of identity for an account I have had for 13 years (which is something I don't respect) and the security of their stupid system can be gotten around (which I also can't say I respect). I have heard that something on the horizon will replace hotmail accounts entirety, but have received no alerts and it may have merely been hype for the new service. Some of us have records of hotmail messages archived in such a way that there would be a loss if they were deleted. I don't know how to fight these things without seeming naive. What I had in mind was to talk about filmmaker pet peeves. Mainly the way that aspects of production are played off without context. An actor brags, "We don't need to use monitors or video assist. The camera man can do that. And I don't like the director looking at a monitor during the take. He should be looking at me." Or somebody says, "Oh, out director doesn't bother with storyboards. He just makes up his mind as we go along. That keeps it all fresh. he doesn't need the crutch of storyboard sketches." There seems to be nobody responding to those kinds of sound bytes, and so they are taken at face value. This drives me nuts. About the actor saying a director should be looking at him/her during the take, the actor is important but so is context and perspective. Even if the director is ONLY concerned about the actor, the lens and the lighting and the way the actor is framed and frankly whether a moment within a take is actually IN FRAME at all are all elements of that. And the actor's job is largely concentration. If the reality of the director standing there in his/her eye-line and staring at them is important, that actor has problems ACTING!!!!!! There IS NO director between action and cut, only your character and whatever other fictional person should be imagined there. Furthermore, the director has to sign off on the shot. It is nice if other people do to, but the director HAS TO be able to give the minimum direction of YES or NO. The director can sign-off blindly and take the cinematographer's word for it, but chances are the cinematographer might not be operating the camera either and if HE isn't using a monitor to at least see how the lights interact with the scene then it would come down to the camera operator's sign-off. However competent or extraordinary each member of the crew may be, the director should WANT to be the person who signs off. Especially because there may always be one detail that shouldn't be taken for granted and he should have to take responsibility when it comes to edit and there are no surprises about something being there you don't want or something missing that should be there. About the storyboard, this is not spelled out enough. The kind of storyboards to avoid are the ones that a studio might give to the director of a tent-pole film and say "just shoot this." A good storyboard for s similar size film might be Paul Verhoven's personal storyboards for Starship Troopers which depict the shooting plan pretty much as it emerged on screen, and with the added benefit that he happens to be an excellent draftsman so the illustrations are true to the subjects. Whether it happens all the time or not, I like the idea of the director drawing each frame within a shot and having a plan. If a movie were 100 pages of screenplay, I estimate that two and a half weeks of 8-hour days could be spent on the director doing the first pass of thumbnail storyboards for a feature. That is thought and time and close regard of the scenes that will not be spent during the high tension of making the movie itself when time is of the essence. Plans can be modified or adapted as circumstances change, but having done storyboards makes a person mentally prepared for how to use the camera as visual reinforcement to contain the relationships and moments of the story. They can also help narrow down locations. If someone expects to be a beggar and not a chooser with locations or sets, they might compromise the best way to shoot a scene. For example, being unable to get the camera far enough away from the actors to blur out the background because the location is too confined might be something that they are willing to compromise or it might be an argument that can be defended persuasively with storyboarding (and with pointing to the sketch and explaining "this is the character and this is scribble is the blur because he is isolated from others and should have his own focal plane"). The camera (except in faux documentary style which I dislike) should not be playing catch-up with the actors. There is nothing unusual about giving the actor the edge of the stage and the confines in which he/she has to work. Sometimes it will be just their hands acting in close-up, sometimes just the face, and sometimes head-to-toe body language. The actor's requirements include technical competence. They can certainly bring something to the table, and may have a better-motivated start position or an idea of how to be introduced. But even those are best as early discussions instead of last minute so their implications can be applied throughout the story and not as a whim or as a concession to a star's ego. If you are lucky, Samuel L. Jackson has a character-motivated way to first show his religious character in Black Snake Moan, in a prayer-like position leaning on a vehicle. If you are unlikely and actress doesn't feel like wearing the hat the movie is named after and scenes that have already been done with it have to be abandoned, as detailed in "Claire's Hat" the bootleg documentary by Bruce McDonald. I'm sure there are other examples but those were the ones I had to get off my chest today. In case anyone is reading.