Okay, so I admit that once again, I have let this blog get dusty. I'm not sure why, other than I find the topics I want to write about here are usually a little redundant. Also, I'm about to have a kid this November. All other things have kind of been put on hold.
I wanted to have the first season of Blue Water shot by now. It's put off now until next year. That doesn't mean I'm not working on it still, or not dropping little teasers every now and then.
At any rate, having a kid is making me think about the future. And being that this blog is about entertainment, I'll try to keep it in the frame of that.
I think about the difference between my childhood, and my kid's. When I was seven years old, the only Batman movie was from 1966, and it starred Adam West. Now, my kid has a virtual Bat-Library. Not counting animated films, there will be nine total Batman films including one where he fights Superman.
An aside: Let me talk a bit about Ben Affleck. Who so far has been the best Batman? Michael Keaton. If you say anyone else, you're wrong. Or you're entitled to your own opinion, I guess. Keaton was better than Val Kilmer or George Clooney. There's no controversy there. So is Keaton better than Christian "Throat Cancer Gravel Voice" Bale?
Keaton wins. And everyone thought he was a terrible choice. So give Affleck a chance.
And I get it. It's really hard to see Ben Affleck in a movie and not see Ben Affleck in a movie. It's not going to look like Bruce Wayne donning the cape and cowl, it's going to look like Ben Affleck in a Halloween costume.
"It's a bird! It's a plane! It's that dude from Mallrats in a Superman suit!"
So I get why you think it's a bad casting choice. In fact, let's play a little game. Look at the following pictures and say out loud the first word or name you come up with. The first name that pops into your head when you see them. (If you know them at all.)
I'm willing to bet you never said Matt Murdock, Daredevil or Shannon Hamilton.
But don't hate it before you see it, Internet. See it. Then hate it.
Anyways, back to my child.
So at least nine total Batman movies for my kid to enjoy. I would have loved that! But then again, what if my kid doesn't like Batman? That isn't so great I guess. Let's hope it never comes to that. I mean, who doesn't like Batman?
Okay, so before this becomes a post entirely about Batman, let me start moving towards my point. I hope my kid likes the movies I liked as a child. In fact, let me broaden that even more: I hope my kid can see the value in the movies I liked as a child.
This goes back to a point I've made over and over: The Hollywood Remake.
I want my kid to be able to enjoy The Karate Kid with Ralph Macchio, and not just dismiss it because the new one with Jaden Smith has iPods and newer music in it. I want my kid to appreciate (not even prefer) the original Star Wars Trilogy with all its puppets and models, and not dismiss it because Yoda doesn't do any cool flips and R2D2 doesn't have jet legs. I would love for my kid to love The Goonies, and not dismiss it because it took place nearly 30 years before (s)he was born.
It is strange to think though, that the span between when that movie took place and when my kid will be born is the same as if you wanted me to watch a movie about treasure hunting kids that was set in 1952. And so maybe there is some value in updating films.
Some films are sacred, and shouldn't be remade. Ask anyone around my age if they should remake the Back To The Future trilogy, and you may get shot.
"Make like a tree... and don't even think about it."
But let's say my kid is seven or eight years old the first time they see those awesome incredible movies. It will be 2021. And despite what all the Facebook "OMG! Today is the date Marty McFly traveled to in the future!" fake posts say, that will actually be six years after the "future" of 2015. I'm willing to bet we'll still be without hoverboards, flying cars or instant pizza.
Not that they got everything wrong.
So does a film like that deserve an update? Or is that sacrilege?
Or is it even that big of a deal? Is this new territory? Did our generation ever have to deal with this?
I mean sure, some movies we love have already passed their future dates. Judgement Day in the Terminator series, the day where the machines became self aware and nearly wiped out humanity, was supposed to be August 29, 1997. And when you watched it in 1984, that was the future. But when we watched it, we still had that time when it was the future. It wasn't automatically the past. I don't recall seeing a movie that was set way in the super space warp drive future of 1977.
Now the "future" of The Terminator is 16 years ago tomorrow. Does that make the series any less enjoyable? And specifically for a time travel movie like Back To The Future, is it more of an issue?
Some films it shouldn't matter. Like the upcoming remake of The Neverending Story. The only thing they could possibly be doing is adding a bunch of CGI. Just like they did in Clash of the Titans. It's still the same story, set in the same land, with the same technology. The only updates can be for visual effects sake. And visual effects is never a good reason to make a movie.
Been a minute. Well, ten weeks. So about a hundred thousand minutes. Sorry about that. My goal originally was to put up a post every Monday. Then it became every other Monday. Apparently now it's every tenth Monday. Maybe I just don't have that much to say. Perhaps I only have 10% of the information that I thought I did.
I'll do better. Starting now.
Or ten weeks from now.
So hello out there. I'm back. And this week (deciweek?) I'm going to touch on a subject that I've hit before, but I want to expound upon. Originality. Namely and abundance or lack thereof in film and it's future potential.
This is "Impression, Sunrise."
It was painted by Monet in 1872. What makes it remarkable is its brush strokes and lack of defined lines, which make the painting look as if you're observing a sunrise while squinting, or seeing it reflected in water. When first displayed in 1874, it was harshly criticized for basically breaking the "rules" of art. The lack of definition went against what established artists had been doing for years. Others however, saw the art style and loved it. They began to emulate it, and create a whole new style of painting that begat modern art.
While you may never have heard of "Impression, Sunrise," you've probably heard of Impressionism.
Recently (as I noted before) I saw a film called Side By Side, a documentary about the end of film, and the beginning of digital. One oft quoted line from the film came from David Lynch, regarding the now nearly free range access to film making.
"Everybody and his brother has a piece of paper and a pencil. How many great stories have been written on that piece of paper? Now the same thing is going to happen in cinema."
Everybody and his brother also has access to a comb.
And while he is looking at this in a somewhat cynical light, I think of anyone, Lynch should be the guy who thinks this is a great idea. While I'm on the fence about this guy as a director/storyteller (For example, see Twin Peaks: Season One for how brilliant this guy can be, and to see a complete train wreck, check out Twin Peaks: Season Two), I think his type of storytelling only works from a studio that is willing to take a huge risk. Pitch Mullholland Drive to a friend and see if they'll give you $20 to help you make it.
Now, you have digital filmmaking and Kickstarter. No one on earth needs permission to make a film anymore.
And I see his point. With that, you're going to get a lot of terrible YouTube videos to sift through to find the good ones. And those good ones are going to be few and far between. But I'm actually willing to bet the ratio of quality Hollywood film/TV to all Hollywood film/TV is right about in line with quality Independent film to all Independent film. For every great film to come out of Hollywood, there's like twenty terrible ones. Here, I made this to help you out if you're a visual learner.
R.I.P.D isn't out yet, but it already sucks.
Now I'm not talking about "Here's a video of my cat in a shark costume, riding around on the Roomba while chasing a duck" videos. YouTube has given us an exorbitant amount of crap to watch. In fact, it was recently shown that every minute, 72 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube. Which means in the time I've been writing this blog post, another six months worth of video has been uploaded. If you jumped off of YouTube for a week and then came back, it would take you a lifetime to catch up on what you missed. Literally a lifetime. 82 years and 289 days, or until February 2096. That is ridiculous.
What I'm talking about is cinema. Thought out ideas that are shot in a manner designed to tell a story.
And here's where I bring it back to what I originally wanted to talk about: Originality. Now that no one needs permission to make a film anymore, they also don't need permission on how to make it.
Because the entire world of cinema that is crowd-funded and shot digitally lives outside the box.
And outside the box is awesome.
Not everything sticks. Not everything is gold. But the potential to redefine it all is there. To break every single rule there is.
Does a movie need to be 90 minutes? Studios don't typically fund shorts, so until recently, yes. But not anymore.
Maybe it's short....
Maybe it's interactive...
Maybe it never ends....
A studio would never take a chance on a "found footage" horror movie that comes out in 1-10 minute segments every other week or so from now until whenever they decide to stop, based on a Photoshopped "paranormal" photo. But the Marble Hornets footage above has popularized the Slender Man character by rounding up 55 million views overall (according to Wikipedia) and now there are two video games about the series. Both are scary as hell to play.
So maybe the ability to use YouTube and digital footage shot extremely cheaply comparatively will give us some amazing new ideas on where the entire medium of film can go. More people watch shows on Netflix, Hulu, or internet video now than they watch TV. TVs are now "Smart" TVs, meaning the ability for them to connect to this media is as important (if not more so) as the ability to connect to your cable box. Every console video game system out there can also stream internet video. Video rental stores are all but extinct. Movies are going the way music has with iTunes. When is the last time you bought a CD at a store?
With that comes the ability to distribute extremely cheaply. I don't need to press a short run 50,000 units of a film, ship it to stores, keep track of units, pay printers for the jackets, etc. I just need to call Hulu and upload a copy of the film. Distribution complete.
This should allow digital distributors to be a lot more open with who they let in. I'm not costing Hulu hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars to distribute my film to potentially millions of people. It's costing them 8GB of storage.
And Lynch is right. One downside is that there is more to sift through. The bar can be lowered if it's not costing anyone anything.
But the upside is that we don't need defined lines anymore.
One of my favorite parts of film making is writing. It's the beginning. It's nothing but possibilities. It's the lump of clay that will some day be something more. Everyone has a different process for doing it, some people outline, some people just type until something happens. I do both.
The great part about the writing stage is that it's the only stage in film making that's free. Or at least really cheap, costing no more than the price of a notebook and a pen. As such, it's the part you can do the most for practice. Sometimes you just feel like writing, just like an artist feels like doodling. It doesn't have to become anything. Maybe you just write a scene, or a character or some dialog. Maybe you write an entire short film that sits on your shelf for six years until you take another look at it and then decide to do it. Maybe it's just practice.
I just recently got the writing itch and started two short screenplays. One is a "reality TV show" based on someone else's idea they told me I should write a few years back, the other is about two guys in a dive bar, one depressed as hell, the other oblivious to nearly everything around him. Last night I realized that I was writing two very different ways.
I realized this after watching last night's episode of The Walking Dead.
My muse.
I won't write about the show here other than to say it was one of my favorite episodes so far. Instead, since Lost has been off the air for almost three years, I'll compare it to that.
There are two very distinct ways of writing stories. There are plot driven pieces, "A group of survivors must get off of a deserted mysterious island," and there are character driven pieces, "Jack is an obsessive doctor, consumed with guilt over his dead father, striving for perfection and acceptance not only from his peers but from himself, and after a terrible plane crash, he is stuck on a deserted mysterious island where others look to him to be the leader."
Plot driven pieces define a goal and show progress or regress to it. Character driven pieces define a character and put them in a situation to see how they handle it. The best stories mix these two elements together to make something entirely believable.
The goal of Lost in a plot driven way was always something definable. Whether it was just surviving, or opening the hatch, or escaping the Others, or saving Walt. But without likable characters, no one cares if they live or die. Which is why when some characters didn't make it, it was incredibly sad. When Nikki and Paulo died, people were celebrating because we didn't have to have stories with them in it anymore.
Lost accomplished this in flashbacks, as well as on the island. Everyone hates Sawyer until they see his life before the island. Everyone thinks Locke is this heartless obsessive hunter until we see that the trap we think he is fashioning is actually a cradle for Claire's baby. Then we like him a little more. And we like him a little more not because he's a nice guy, but because he's more human than a caricature. He is introduced as a Rambo archetype, but then becomes human, a real person who acts like Rambo sometimes, but who also has thoughts, feelings, ideas and values.
From this...
...to this.
And I'm doing my best just in case anyone out there wants to watch this show and hasn't yet to avoid any type of spoilers, but if you have seen it all, Michael Emerson's character goes from the most hated character in the history of television to a guy you want to give a hug to, and he does it all in one scene. If you haven't seen the show and possibly want to, don't watch this scene because it's 10 episodes before the end, and tells a lot about what led to that point. If you have seen the show, watch this again and see the scene Michael Emerson should have won an Emmy for.
While it's slightly expository, it works because he says up front he wants to explain. And what he explains is his character. Why he is what he is, why he did what he did.
This is why Lost worked as a show. The plot was good, the mystery was enticing, but at the end of it all, if all the characters were as developed as Nikki and Paulo we wouldn't have cared about any of them. (For those who haven't seen the show, Nikki and Paulo are two characters who were shoehorned into the show in the middle of season 3 as survivors who had been there the whole time but never mentioned until that moment and after fan backlash about how annoying they were and how useless their plot line was, they were killed off right after they were introduced. I'd say spoiler at the beginning of that, but if you haven't seen Lost, know that when they first show up you can take solace in the fact that they'll be dead soon.) All the rest of the characters were developed so well that in the end, we really cared about them all. We were happy for them when they were happy, we were sad for them when they were sad. And we genuinely wanted to see them all do well because we were so invested in them as people.
Now rather than go on and on about Lost and forget what I was actually talking about (which I could do very easily. Ask my wife.), I'll point out that character development is something that is often times disregarded for the meat of a plot driven story. Most people when pitching a story, or when telling people what they're writing about, will tell you the plot. "It's about a girl who falls in love with a vampire in high school, but also there's this werewolf who likes her too." But when you get into who these characters actually are, it comes down to, "Well they're attractive. The werewolf doesn't wear a shirt most of the time."
CHARACTERS!
Look at Harry Potter. I'd argue that Harry didn't actually become an interesting character until The Order of the Phoenix, or part five. Parts 1-4 were entirely plot driven stories. He has to find the Sorcerer's Stone, or save the school from the giant snake, or stop Sirius Black or win the Tri-Wizard Tournament. It isn't until book five that he's finally lost something. It isn't until then that he knows the stakes, and is reluctant. That's when he feels the pressure. That's when we see a character start making decisions based on their personality and their experiences. It's the beginning of understanding the character as a human, not an archetype for the good guy.
It's the difference between Superman and Spiderman. Superman always does good. He never falters. He powers through whatever is going on to save the day. Spiderman lets his insecurities eat him alive. He doesn't always do the right thing, and sometimes has to live with those consequences. He can be arrogant, or flippant, he can be scared or intimidated. He can let his preconceptions alter his present and future. He can be selfish, he can be sacrificial. As such, Superman is an archetype of a hero, Spiderman is a real character.
Spoiler Alert: 1962
Going back to the two pieces I started, one is about a story within a reality TV show, the other is about two characters. The first I began writing knowing where the story was going but having no idea who the characters in it were. The second I began writing knowing the characters, but having no idea what the story would go. One is a plot driven story, the other a character driven story.
Entire movies exist being one or the other. The Expendables: Very plot driven, little to no character development. Garden State: Very character driven, little to no plot. It's not a flaw in either of these films, it's how they're designed. But neither are very balanced to the middle, they exist on the extreme edges. A film like Rocky is a perfect blend of both.
It's important when writing to know how you're going to proceed. Just like driving. Are you going to follow a map to a destination, or are you going to just get in the car and see where you end up? Are you aimed at something, or are you just going along for a ride? Or both; do you know where you want to end up, but aren't following a map?
I believe your story can only get stronger by knowing who your characters are before you start writing. What I've done for our latest project (Have you found the teaser for it yet? Hint: We released it on January 27, 2013), is write an entire back story to our main characters. Pages and pages of their life before the story even happens, and before I wrote the first page of the script. That way I feel like even though the audience may never know some of the details of their life that I've created, I do. And when I write them, I know how they'd realistically react in the present, because I know how they reacted before, I know their life up to this point, I know their strengths and weaknesses, I know their fears and their loves and their proudest moments and their regrets. This keeps them consistent and believable. You wouldn't have a character who has been self serving and arrogant the entire show suddenly run into a burning building to save a cat. It would be a ridiculous stretch, and the audience would not understand why it happened. You need to understand as a writer that characters react because they're people, not chess pieces to forward your story. They need to put themselves into checkmate, not have you push them into it. They need motivations for being in your story, or else they just don't fit.
First, I'd like to apologize for lying to everyone about having a new blog last week. It just got really busy, and I couldn't get to it. At any rate, there's one now. You're reading it.
Allow me to talk a little bit about why I'm a film maker. It's because of this guy.
This is George Lucas. You may recognize him as the man who created both Indiana Jones trilogy and the Star Wars trilogy. You may also recognize him as the man who created Indiana Jones 4 and the Star Wars Prequel trilogy. Maybe you remember him for American Graffiti, I don't know. The point is this guy has been a big player in Hollywood for forty years. In case this is your first time on the internet, he also sold his company to Disney recently, and they now own Star Wars, (and no one is talking about the fact that they now also own Indiana Jones.) He then took the $4,050,000,000 he made from the sale and is donating it to charity. Pretty hard to hold a grudge for Jar Jar Binks after that.
Now growing up a child of the 1980's, Star Wars had a huge impact on my life. I once got a Yo-Yo in my stocking for Christmas, and the first thing I thought of is that I could pretend it was the little grappling hook that Luke and Leia use to swing across the big ravine while eluding Stormtroopers and escaping the Death Star. The first film I ever made was a Star Wars movie starring myself, my friend Brian and my two younger brothers (which can be found as an Easter Egg on the DVD for Twelve Page Paper, a film which features a lightsaber duel between a college kid and Napoleon Bonaparte). It's safe to say that part of the reason I got into film making was not to create films in the style of Federico Fellini, Ingmar Bergman or Terrence Malick, but because I wanted to make movies in the style of George Lucas, Edgar Wright, or J.J. Abrams.
More my thing.
While I count Lucas as an influence, it isn't the reason I specifically point him out as to why I got into this. See, George Lucas is why I can get into this.
George Lucas also created the EditDroid. The EditDroid tied for the world's first computerized non-linear editing system back in 1984. While it wasn't a success at all, it was tooled and re-tooled and eventually sold to Avid in 1993, who took the concept and ran with it making commercially viable and successful NLE systems available to the public. Soon Apple released Final Cut and Adobe released Premiere to compete, and digital editing became the only way to go.
A little history.
This is a Steenbeck editing system.
Film was shot, processed, then spun on these reels. The image was shown on the screen, and editors had to edit a film with scissors and scotch tape. Literally. Scissors and scotch tape.
Pictured: Hell.
An alternative was a smaller Moviola.
These machines were large, cumbersome, expensive, hard to come by, and most of all, required you to shoot on film, which required you to go through the process of storing, cataloging, processing, and developing film. Apart from that, if you cut a frame in a spot that didn't feel right, you had to re-tape it together, then take out your razor and re-cut it until you got it right.
This is Avid.
Not only is it cheaper due to the fact that it's not a machine, but downloadable software, it is a million times more forgiving and useful. The Moviola and the Steenbeck edited film, and film only. And film doesn't have sound. It's just pictures. The sound is recorded separately on an entirely different machine. (Which is why clapboards exist. The assistant camera calls out the scene and take number that is written on the board so that the editor can then match that audio with no picture to that picture that has no audio. Then the clap is how they sync them. The loud clap should fall on the frame where the clapboard is closed. If you've ever wondered why they do that, now you know.) What the Avid is doing is editing picture, sound, music, sound effects, and color grading, as well as visual effects and motion graphics, all at once. This process would take weeks the old way, and cost much, much more.
The fact that this type of process is available to the public is the only reason I can do what I do.
But that's not all. I've shot nearly everything I've ever done digitally. I've used film a few times at NYFA, but I can safely say I will never shoot another film on film. (Which is an odd sentence.) It's getting to the point where it's nearly indistinguishable from digital, and once again, is extremely cheaper and more accessible.
The drawbacks of film are numerous. Storage for one. A film roll of 35mm film is about 1000 feet and can only shoot 11 minutes of footage. A film trilogy like The Lord of the Rings (which shouldn't be considered standard, because it is nearly 11 hours long when finished) used six million feet of film, (or nearly 1,100 miles. Roughly the distance from New York City to Orlando, Florida).
Then there's cost. A brand new 1000 foot roll of 35mm film from Kodak is about $640. Yeah, $640 for 11 minutes. Just for the film. Then take in the cost to process it. About $0.16 per foot or $160 per roll, bringing your grand total to get a usable 11 minutes of film to $800. Then the transfer to editable video is an hourly rate of about $300 per hour (generously). Without transfer, this means LOTR spent $4.8 million on film alone.
It also is not viewable until it is processed. Meaning you could record an entire day, and then find out there was a hair on the lens when you watch what you did the next day, making day useless, as well as the 90 minutes of film you shot (a.k.a. blowing $7,200).
Digitally, sound is automatically synced perfectly, you see what you got immediately, you can record for nearly six hours at full 1080P (a hell of a lot longer than 11 minutes) at the cost of a 64GB SD card (currently $49.95 at Best Buy). You don't need to process anything, just remove the SD card and stick it in your computer.
Now dealing with big numbers. LOTR used 6 million feet of film, at 1000 feet per 11 minutes means they had 66,000 minutes or 1,100 hours of footage shot. Shot on film, it cost $4.8 million and took up the space from Manhattan to Disney World. Shot digitally, it would have used 183 64GB SD cards at a cost of $9,167, and being that an SD card is the size of a 50 cent piece, would have taken up a space the size of a large shoebox. Or, being that SD cards are reusable and film is not, you could have bought two SD cards to interchange, and stored the film as you went on three 4TB External Hard Drives, also currently at Best Buy for $189 each or $567, plus the cost of two SD cards totals you out at $667. A savings over film of $4,799,333 (or 99.986% off) and weeks of processing time.
Nerd joke.
Other advantages current film makers have: I currently am working on visual effects for a zombie film called Wasteland, shot by a good friend of mine from NYFA. (If you have a second, and a few extra bucks, check out their Indiegogo page. They're raising money to get through the end of post production, and it looks like it's going to be an amazing movie.)
Anyway, he shot the film in England, is editing it in England, and currently lives in England. I'm working on the VFX in Lansing MI, and we're working together in real time. Using Skype and Dropbox, he'll start an After Effects project, or send me a take, I'll get it in around 5 minutes, work on it, and send it back. With film, it used to take longer to work with people in the same building, and we're not even on the same continent.
Now does this all mean the end of film? Probably. Kodak and Fuji have already stopped producing film. There are people who are upset about it, and people who are thrilled about it. Christopher Kenneally just made a brilliant documentary called Side By Side talking to directors, cinematographers and producers about the future of film and it's possible extinction. (To sum up, directors are excited because they can see what they're shooting instead of relying on the trust of a cinematographer, cinematographers hate it because no one needs to trust them anymore, producers love it because it's cheap as hell. Ironically, Side By Side is streaming on Amazon Prime for free.)
The end of Side By Side brought up a really good question though, one worth discussing. David Lynch makes a point that with the ability for anyone to shoot a film, we could flood the market with terrible movies by inexperienced hacks who are only holding a camera because they could afford one, and pirated a copy of Final Cut Pro.
I think, what this could mean however, is a departure from studio gatekeepers backing only multi-million dollar projects with big names, back to old Hollywood. Before the invention of the "blockbuster" (starting with Jaws or Star Wars), back in the 50's and 60's, studios made about a picture a week. Poorly thought out stories, bad sets, overall really cheap films, all in the hope of just cutting a quick profit and moving on. These films are why shows like Mystery Science Theater 3000 could exist. It didn't cover up the great films, it just gave you more options, and more film jobs. And out of that, some really great films sneaked through that made stars, instead of relying on made stars. A person like Roger Corman produced some pretty terrible films, but without them, you would be missing a lot of talent today. Corman's "Battle Beyond The Stars" featured visual effects by a young James Cameron, "Battle Beyond The Sun" the American version was directed by a young Francis Ford Coppola, 1977's "Grand Theft Auto" was the first feature film directed by Ron Howard, and "Boxcar Bertha" was the first feature film directed by Martin Scorsese. Multiple actors got their starts with Corman's films as well. Dennis Hopper, Jack Nicholson, Robert DeNiro, Peter Fonda and Bruce Dern to name a few. Today's tiny budget, all access digital films have the potential to unearth just as much talent as tiny budget films did back then.
Besides, all these movies were shot on film.
So let's not pretend digital film making is the only thing responsible for crappy films.
I think if I had a time machine, it would be totally fun to take movies from today and bring them back to the past. If I went back to November 1955 like Marty McFly, I'd bring The Lord of the Rings trilogy on Blu-Ray (as well as equipment to play it) to show all the people who just bought the newly released book. I imagine they would believe that in the future, we actually found Middle Earth, and sent a documentary film crew to record what really happened.
Look at how King Kong has evolved over 70 years.
This year is the 20th anniversary of the release of After Effects, which has become the industry standard when it comes to visual effects software. If you've seen a movie in the last 20 years, you've seen something done with AE. Chances are, if you've seen a movie in the last 10 years, you've seen something done with way too much AE.
For films like Sin City, or Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, the visual effects are part of the story. For films like Transformers or Avatar, VFX are seemingly a crutch to prop up a film with no discernible intellegent story. How many films have you seen that spend the entire budget on visual effects, and seemingly $2.00 on the screenwriter? Or have you seen a trailer for a film that every sequence they show is a $500,000 VFX sequence, and you don't really understand who the characters are or what the plot is? (Pacific Rim).
This goes back to last week's post. What is art? Specifically, what is quantifiable to executives holding all the money? After The Matrix came out, it seems like every film had that BulletTime shot in it. That's executives saying, "The Matrix made a lot of money, and had great visual effects, therefore if we want to make a lot of money, we need great visual effects." The Matrix was great because of the visual effects, but also because it knew that using them served the story about a computer generated world and a man who is able to manipulate the physics of that world with his mind. It was also great because of the characters, the philosophy, and the story.
After all, movies are stories, not a collection visual effects sequences. Those are called "demo reels."
Story, however, has seemingly been sacrificed for "realism" or in this case "hyper-realism." We watch a movie, and if it looks "fake" it's a death sentence.
Or is it?
Has anyone seen The Mummy Returns? If not, let me bring you up to speed. Somewhere, in a giant underground hidden temple, Brendan "Encino Man" Fraser is engaged in a giant battle with Arnold "almost Billy Zane" Vosloo.
When suddenly, the Dwayne "The Rock" "The Scorpion King" Johnson emerges to do battle with them both.
Dah doing doing doing...
Something strange happens at this point in the film. All the tension, all the story, all the build up suddenly dissolves. The audience suddenly doesn't care about the characters anymore or what's happening in the movie, and they begin laughing, because it's honestly terrible-looking. The Rock looks more like The Rubber. Compare that with Gollum in The Hobbit, who ten seconds after he appears on screen, you completely forget he's not real.
Or has anyone ever seen the film Birdemic? It's incredible. It's a modern take on Hitchcock's The Birds. Although Birdemic was made 47 years later, the effects are somehow infinitely worse. It doesn't help that everything else about the film is terrible too. Don't believe me? Check it out. (Want to be even more depressed, fellow indie-filmmakers? It's available on Netflix, and the sequel is in production. It also was featured by Rifftrax, so there's some justice.)
But then there's Jaws.
What's different about that one? The shark looks fake, sure. But no one seems to care. It's still considered one of the most thrilling movies ever made.
I believe the difference with Jaws is simple: The movie isn't about the shark, and Spielberg knew it. The movie is about characters. A cop trying to protect his town and save his family. An old sailor, drunk and destroyed from some horrible tragedy in his past. The shark isn't the main character, it's just a device the others use to complete their arcs. And thus, showing the shark isn't important. And when we do see it, it's not important either. It's better when it's obstructed, or just a fin, or not seen at all and our imaginations are left to picture it while John Williams two note masterpiece plays over and over. The shark never gets a close up, full frame like the Rubber Scorpion Man does. The film isn't trying to wow us by showing us this special effect beast it created. It's trying to wow us with the story and characters it created. So the shark is almost an afterthought. It's forgivable that it doesn't look perfect, because showing it was not supposed to be the thing that made us all remember the film. They weren't hoping you left thinking "wow, didn't the shark look awesome?!," but rather, "I jumped out of my pants when it popped out of the water, and it was totally sad when Quint died."
Has anyone ever watched The Empire Strikes Back and couldn't get past how fake puppet Yoda looked? Because people sure had a hard time with CGI Yoda. Was it because the story was so much better in Empire? When a film sets itself up to look real, and can't pull off the VFX to match the real footage, it's jarring (like Attack of the Clones). But if you set up that your movie is going to be full of puppets, your mind just accepts it (like Empire Strikes Back.)
Fake is the wrong word. Nobody cares if it looks fake. They care if it doesn't match.
Technically, only one of these is real.
Have you ever watched The Wizard of Oz with someone and heard them say, "You can totally tell that isn't a real lion." Of course not. The human imagination can suspend disbelief if it is expected to. That's why live theater still exists. No one has had trouble believing a play because it looks fake.
FAAAAAAKE.
Fake isn't the problem. Matching the rest of the film is. VFX artists want to be known for their work, but it's a job where doing it right means hiding the fact that you did anything at all. Forcing VFX to do something they can't do draws attention to them and can ruin the experience.
So to that end, film makers must know and accept their limitations.
Knowing your limits can make your film. Take a look at a film like Kevin Smith's Clerks. Smith had a convenience store, a video store, some friends, and a black and white 16mm camera. You aren't going to make Jurassic Park with that. If Clerks was about two store clerks living through a massive alien invasion that had destroyed New York City and turned everyone into zombies, and to defeat the alien army they had to fly an F-16 into the heart of a UFO and blow it up, that movie would be terrible if all he had to make it with was a convenience store, a video store, some friends and a black and white 16mm camera. So instead, you make a film about some of your friends working in a convenience store and a video store. Seems simple enough.
So when indie people say they're going to make a movie about giant killer robots after the apocalypse, and they have a budget of $5,000, it's already going to suck. Unless it's animated. Or unless they get really really creative.
Limits are what made the Paranormal Activity franchise. A film about a haunted house made for $11,000 (or for $2,500 more than I made Being From Another Planet) makes back $115 million, (or $114,997,000 more than I made back on Being From Another Planet… if only I had $2,500 more.) How? By using it's limitations to make the story. If you only own one digital camera, no lights, and you can only use your house as a set, and don't have the budget for big name actors, you make a docudrama about your own haunted house with two of your friends as the leads. You don't try to make Gone With The Wind.
Limitations are not a bad thing in film making. So often you hear indie film makers get discouraged because they don't have a $15 million VFX budget and therefore can't "compete" with Hollywood blockbusters. That's just an excuse. VFX can't make a film. And to bring it back to art again, Picasso never looked at Michelangelo and said "He had the entire ceiling of the Sistine Chapel to paint on, and I only have these tiny canvases. I'll never be able to compete. I might as well quit."
Besides, being unlimited in film making can sometimes be just as much of a curse.
In 2007, the Washington Post received a Pulitzer Prize for Gene Weingarten's social experiment conducted in a Washington DC metro station. The experiment consisted of watching a musician play the violin in the subway station. The study was really monitoring the people who passed him by, the other patrons in the station. Perhaps you've heard this story through Facebook or an email forward, but for once this story turns out to be completely true. For those of you who haven't heard of this, the man played for 45 minutes, all while being recorded by hidden camera. In that time seven people stopped, but for never more than a few seconds, to watch him play, occasionally depositing a dollar or some change in his open violin case. At the end of the 45 minutes, the violinist had made $32.17 from 27 passersby, out of thousands who walked past him during Washington DC rush hour subway traffic.
People walked right by those dreamy eyes.
The musician's name was Joshua Bell, widely regarded as one of the greatest musicians on Earth. The violin he was playing was a 1713 handcrafted Stradivarius violin worth $3.5 million, and the six pieces he played are considered some of the hardest to play in the world. Three days earlier he had sold out the Boston Symphony Hall selling seats for $100 each. But of those thousands of people who passed him by in the subway, only one recognized him, and he only made $32.17 from people who didn't bother to stop to see what should have been a grand display of art they could have told their grandkids that they were privileged to witness.
Now the conclusions of the experiment as interpreted by Weingarten were that we as humans walk around with our heads down, and pass by so much that we don't see. People didn't notice a once in a life time opportunity because they were in a rush to get to a menial job on a day they'd forget in two weeks. We should all stop and smell the roses more. Look around us and see the beauty in the world, instead of hurrying around with blinders on.
I'm going to propose a separate conclusion. One a little more cynical. What if we only know what art is because someone tells us it's art?
Maybe it's ignorance of violinists, but to put it in context of something more people know about, let's say you had a time machine, (or a TARDIS, now that I'm a Doctor Who fan), and you went back to the late 60's and picked up John Lennon and Paul McCartney, put them in disguises with make up and prosthetics, and brought them to today, placing them on a street corner with two guitars. Do you think you'd notice them? Do you think you'd hear them and say, "Wow! Those two are quite possibly the greatest rock musicians the world has ever known!" Or would you listen for a second, thinking how close they sound to late Beatles, and drop a dollar in their case on your way in to Jimmy John's?
Choose wisely.
I think if we're being honest with ourselves, you'd see that the very most of us fall into the latter category.
But why?
Is it because we aren't smelling the roses, or is it because out of context (or even within context), art is completely subjective? Are Lennon and McCartney REALLY that good if we wouldn't notice them on our way to get delicious sandwiches? Are they really that amazing if we aren't told they are? Are our opinions on art our own, or are they heavily influenced by people who we don't want to look stupid or uncultured in front of?
Now, I'm not disputing that Lennon and McCartney were/are talented musicians. And the purpose of this blog isn't to make people defensive about what is and isn't art. The purpose is to raise the question on why we communally agree on what is and isn't art. To question why we call a creative person a genius (an objective term), when creative art is completely subjective concept.
You may wonder why I'm writing about music on a filmmaking blog. It's really all the same with any creative field. There are films I hesitate to admit I hate in certain company, because people tell me that they're art. There are films I hesitate to admit I love because people tell me they're garbage.
We also get defensive and use incorrect phrasing when talking about creative pieces. I've been guilty of it too. There's a difference between saying "Stanley Kubrick is a genius" and "I think Stanley Kubrick is a genius." The first is subjective, and thus unprovable. The second is objective and the only proof needed is for me to say the sentence out loud. (And actually the second is a lie.) But then we kick it up a notch further by saying things like, "If you don't think Rubber Soul is the world's only perfect album, then you're a moron," or "If you don't think Stanley Kubrick is a genius, then you must only like movies for dumb American audiences with explosions and boobs."
Pictured: A certain "je ne sais quoi."
The thing is this: I love Galaxy Quest. It's one of my favorite movies. Does that make me uncultured or somehow less than someone who loves to point out how they have seen a bunch of foreign short films and can say words like "denouement" to describe them? No. Not at all. It means we have different tastes. I like films that are classically good as well. Casablanca for example, is also one of my favorites. But if you don't like it, I don't think that gives me the right to make you feel bad about it. I can't understand that impulse.
That's the great thing about art. We don't all have to agree. It's like ice cream. I love Cherry Garcia. If you don't, you're not wrong.
Okay... maybe a little wrong.
This happens in music, in literature, in painting, in sculpture, in film and television, as well as any other creative medium. It's all subjective. You can have an opinion that's unpopular, but you can't have one that's wrong. There's no such thing as a wrong opinion, only wrong facts. I can tell you that I don't like Stanley Kubrick films. It's not a popular opinion to have in the independent film scene, but it's not wrong. It's the truth. I don't like Stanley Kubrick films. Does it make me stupid, or ignorant or uncultured? Not at all. Hating them without watching them would. Loving them without watching them would. Watching them and having an opinion about them, not at all.
Nothing can define art. That's what makes it art. It's non-quantifiable. People try. Oh, do they try. Every time you see a movie that's a direct rip-off of the last big thing, that's a financial backer trying to mathematically quantify art. Mainstream Hollywood has become saturated with remakes and reboots and sequels. People trying to do the last big thing that has already been done. But they're missing the point. The reason the last big thing was the last big thing is that, before it was done, it was the next big thing, not just a copy of the last big thing. Most indie film makers point this out and lament that creativity is dead in everyone but them. But here's the rub: they're usually guilty of it too.
To take it back to music for just a second to explain that: TV is filled with these reality singing competitions. How many times have you watched a show like American Idol or something and thought, "Man that person can really sing!" Probably quite frequently. They're talented singers. How often have you thought, "That person is an artist!" I'd guess a lot less. Susan Boyle blew up YouTube when she sang "I Dreamed A Dream" from Les Miserables. And she was great singing it. But there's a difference between singing a song, and singing the lyrics. Singing what is possibly one of the saddest, most desperate songs ever written with a giant smile on your face shows you can sing, but not that you understand why you're singing it. (Granted, it's a singing competition on TV, not a Broadway audition. She obviously did what she was supposed to do).
They're singing the same song.
That concept of ability vs. artistry translates into film all the time. Just because you can do something doesn't mean that you're doing it right, or even that it's to be done. Directors imitate other directors in films that aren't even similar, just because they think the other director is an artist, and to be an artist, you have to do the same thing. I can't tell you how many times I saw the "vertigo" shot in film school by people who thought Hitchcock and Spielberg's use of it was awesome. So when the pizza delivery guy knocks on the door, we cut to a vertigo shot of the guys face as he gets ready to pay him. Why? they don't know, they just thought it was cool and artsy. And Hitchcock and Spielberg did it.
$14.99? But I have a coupon!
It's not artsy. It's just as unoriginal as any Hollywood rip-off. It's parroting. Here's a YouTube video of a parrot singing "Let The Bodies Hit The Floor." It doesn't know why it's doing it either.
So what is art then? Is it okay for something to just be entertaining, but not art? Is it okay for something to be art, but not entertaining?
I'd say yes to both of those things. Because nothing creative should need permission to exist.
Is it okay to like Police Academy and not Citizen Kane? Absolutely. And anyone who makes you feel less than for it is insecure in their own right. Art is made for everyone, and snob is not a positive term. Know what you like and own it. And even more, own why you like it. Anyone can say they like Kubrick. More so, anyone who went to film school can regurgitate that it's due to his use of space. Beyond that, you're going to get a lot of drop off when you ask for an explanation on his use of space, because most people only remember the Cliff's notes version of what they're supposed to say to sound like a cultured expert. If you legitimately love Kubrick, that's terrific. I don't think most of his films are terrible. If you say you love Kubrick, but you're just saying it to fit in, you're just like that kid in junior high who said he loved Metallica to his friends so he could fit in, and then went home and listened to Genesis' "A Trick of the Tail" album from 1976, the first to feature Phil Collins as lead singer after Peter Gabriel left the band. (a.k.a. Me.) The thing is this, I wish 13 year old me would have spoken up, because I still think A Trick of the Tail is a much better album than anything Metallica ever did. I was just too afraid to say it because I didn't want to seem "uncultured" to my fellow 13 year olds on the merits of Metallica. Seems pretty stupid now.
Well...
So I open it now for discussion. Either here or on Facebook. What is art to you? What is art at all? Have you ever said you liked something that you really didn't, or been silent about something else you liked because you wanted to fit in? Do you think art is definable? Is it quantifiable by value? Vincent van Gogh couldn't trade a painting for a cheeseburger while he was alive, and recently one of his original works went for $71 million at auction. Why does that happen?
