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Fix it in Post

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.

Never forget.

Art vs. Entertainment

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?

Please discuss.

Hello 2013!

Well hello everyone!

It's 2013, which I believe means it's officially the future.  And now that it's the future, expect to see us much more.

This year we've got a few projects on the docket.  We'll get to that in a second.  First let me officially welcome you to our new website.  Hopefully you'll find it more streamlined and easier to understand than our last one.  This blog has just been added to it, and the goal is to post something here at least every week.

Redesigning it was something I had planned on doing ever since I put up the first one.  But 2012 was quite the busy year.

We've been working closely with Light Films LTD in the UK on their feature film, Wasteland.  It's our second collaboration with them doing visual effects work, as we had done some for their short film Coming Home. Look for this feature film in 2013.

In February, we filmed White Wine. We did it as part of the East Lansing Film Festival's 48/5 competition. For those who don't know, the 48/5 is a competition where you are given 48 hours to create a five minute film.  We've participated in these before.  In 2008 we did our first one with a film called Acceptance.  In 2010 we did both Curiosity and What I've Taken in these competitions.  Cutting the films down to five minutes after shooting them is my task on the last day, and it's never easy. The first cut usually comes in around seven minutes, and it's usually the version I like most.  But then I have to cut an additional two minutes out.  So our protocol for the 48/5 films is to go the Peter Jackson route and submit the short version to show in the theater, and then releasing the extended version for home viewing on the internet, and for film festivals.

For White Wine, we did something a little more ambitious. In one day, just about nine hours, our cast, Matthew Dennis, along with Brian Hosler and Liz Nolan (both alumni from 2011's Being From Another Planet) filmed two versions of one script.  Our five minute version took second place in the competition. The final version, which clocked in just under eleven minutes, there were entirely new scenes, and there were alternate versions of scenes in the five minute cut.  The cast and crew did an incredible job keeping up with the shoot, which was confusing at times.  ("Is this the scene 8 after scene 7 when I walked into the Kitchen, or after scene 5 when I walked into the Kitchen?")

Our extended version of White Wine played in the 2012 Blue Water Film Festival, giving us our sixth entry into the festival, and marking our fourth straight year.  We've been so honored and proud to be a part of this great event every year, and hopefully can make it five in a row...

Which brings us to 2013.

While we've dropped a few hints as to what is on the horizon at The Coughing Dog Pictures, we've been careful not to be too specific.  Unfortunately, if you're looking for spoilers, you won't find them here.  We want to keep some things a surprise.  However, perhaps we can drop a few more bread crumbs.  What can I say, we like to keep things close to the chest.

We plan on doing our best at utilizing the ELFF 48/5 competitions again this year.  They're a load of fun, and some good work has come out of them.  If anyone is interested in participating in the Lansing area, get in touch when they come around.

We have another short film we plan on making this year, tentatively titled My Town.  It's us getting back to the darker films we've done in the past.

Our next big project we announced at the 2012 Blue Water Film Festival in Port Huron. So if you missed it, one of the other things that kept us busy in 2012 was writing our webseries which is going into production this year, called Blue Water. It's going to be the biggest thing we've attempted to date, dwarfing Being From Another Planet.  I have to admit, at this point it's a little intimidating, but they always are this early on.  The script is written, the story is planned.  Soon we move to the next phase.

2013 is going to be pretty exciting.  We hope you join us on the ride.

All our best,
Joseph Parcell