Ninja vs Penguin

Penguin June 27th, 2008

Mark Gill, the CEO of The Film Department and former President of Miramax Films, declared provocatively, “Yes, The Sky Really Is Falling.” Speaking at the L.A. Film Festival’s Financing Conference, he starts with the bad news.

[O]f the 5000 films submitted to Sundance each year– generally with budgets under $10 million–maybe 100 of them got a US theatrical release three years ago. And it used to be that 20 of those would make money. Now maybe five do. That’s one-tenth of one percent.

Put another way, if you decide to make a movie budgeted under $10 million on your own tomorrow, you have a 99.9% chance of failure.

He continues on to offer a harsh solution, the one that we know deep in our gut, but wish there was an easier path.

A good title should have many of the attributes that a movie needs to embody now:

*Succinct & Descriptive: the film has to lend itself to brief encapsulation. A high concept is no longer the thing that studio movies do and independent films shun. In this age of info overload, it’s crucial for every picture to have this. Without it, your odds shoot through the floor.

*Distinctive: not the same story we’ve heard five times before; something that at least takes the cliche and twists it; not something we get too much of somewhere else in our lives (Exhibit A: Iraq movies; who wants to see more of that mess? We already get too much of it every day in the news media).

*Provocative: something that cuts through the clutter, stands out, gets attention; not “So then Phoebe sat by her mother’s bedside, suffering in silence for eight weeks.” Give us incident, conflict, excitement, ideally something that hits a cultural nerve.

*Memorable: this is essentially an accumulation of the other traits, or sometimes altogether separate. It’s the avoidance of cotton candy. The possibility of resonance. Something sticky.

*Not too dark: these are very dark times, for audiences the world over. Audience enthusiasm for dark films is as low as I’ve ever seen it. There are a lot of reasons for this, of course. But the one I hear almost nobody articulating and everyone feeling is this: in the western industrialized world, wages haven’t even remotely kept up with productivity demands, and that stresses us out.
[...]
If you want to survive in this brutal climate, you’re going to have to work a lot harder, be a lot smarter, know a lot more, move a lot faster, sell a lot better, pay attention to the data, be a little nicer (ok, a lot nicer), trust your gut, read everything and never, ever give up.

- IndieWire

It’s stark sobering news and just a little discouraging. But just like everything else, if you’re in it for the money, you’re in it for the wrong reasons. My hope is that I’ll be able to continue learning and honing my craft so I can get the budget to make something worth seeing. That may take years, but like JFK said, “We don’t do it because it’s easy, but because it’s hard.”

-Penguin

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Penguin June 26th, 2008

From Wired: Google’s Open Source Android OS Will Free the Wireless Web:

[Android] is the re-creation of the Internet.
- Eric Schmidt

The internet is huge, powerful, awesome, useful; it’s been a boon for all content creators: filmmakers, artists, musicians, and writers. Imagine where it would be if we understood this internet thing early on? The internet is still growing, it hasn’t even really come into it’s own yet. But as we try to capitalize on the internet, specifically through PCs, are we missing out on something bigger?

The mobile market is growing, adding 3 million users a year. When you leave your home, you bring 3 things: keys, wallet, cellphone. The iPhone, Blackberry, and other smart phones have made it so you can carry the internet with you. By extension, phones will eventually eclipse PCs in usage. I’m not saying they’ll replace PCs, but there are millions of people in the 3rd world who can’t afford a PC, but have a phone.

David Lynch said that as the screen size reduces, so does the experience. When I watch Youtube or any other online video, I have very little patience for the short or video to hook me. If there’s nothing compelling in the first 30-60 seconds, I move on. Cell phones are even smaller, so the attention span will be even faster. The fact that it’s mobile also changes the way things are utilized.

I love my Nintendo DS. I use it more than my Playstation 2. But the only game that I really play is Tetris. Tetris is a great game because each time I play is localized. There’s no ending, so I can stop playing at any time. I don’t have to worry about a story or where I need to go or do after a week or two of inactivity. I don’t have to worry about saving, so I can play while I wait for people and just close it when they come.

The mobile market will teach us new things about filmmaking. Video will be there, but we may not be able to tell the same sort of stories or tell them in the same way. But we can’t miss this opportunity.

Newspapers are dead. Magazines are dead. DVDs and CDs are dead. All have been replaced by the internet. And when information is free, we need to figure out another way to make money.

Google’s model is to build a killer app, then monetize it later
- Andy Rubin

Our killer app is our content. With so many content producers out there, it’s increasingly harder and harder to differentiate our product (our films) from the noise. It’s not just the stories that we tell, but how we tell them. When I’m browsing videos, I can instantly tell by the editing, titles, shot composition, or even color-correction if the video will be any good. As important as the story is, the presentation of that story has to be just as good, if not better. This requires resources in the form of money and talent. These are either financed, or we get that little break to begin to monetize our content.

How do we monetize content? I wish I knew. The MPAA doesn’t know, that’s why they’re holding on to DVD. The TV studios are starting to understand with things like Hulu, but the ad placeholders are annoying enough to force me back to bit torrent. My gut says the solution is to take it offline.

• Connect with your audience and provide them with an experience they can’t get online. It would be an extension of your film, bringing characters to real life or bringing set pieces for the audience to participate in.
• Make the DVD special, include things that can’t be copied for free.
• Other merchandise that ties into your film. Sometimes it’s t-shirts, sometimes it’s something else.

As indie filmmakers, we need to be pioneers. We need to understand where technology is bringing us and learn from what business and other content creators are doing with it. Yes we’ll make mistakes, but we make plenty already with our films.

-Penguin

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Tags: Android, Business, David Lynch, Distribution, Filmmaking, Free, Google, Internet, Mobile, NDS, Phones, Technology, TV, Wired

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Penguin June 25th, 2008

Everything in movies is fake. That’s understandable considering the nature of the medium. But in order for a story to work, it needs to be believable. That’s where knowledge comes into play. This is especially true when you look at your premise.

Take Iron Man for example. The key to powered armor is energy. The solve this problem early on with the mini arc generator. They don’t even bother explaining how the arc generator works because if they did, all the engineers would be able to poke holes in it. Just by telling us, and then showing us that it generates massive amounts of energy is enough. We buy it.

Then you look at something like Untraceable. The premise is a killer who can’t be traced through the internet. Even basic understanding of how the internet works would show that it could never happen.

But “reality” is different in every movie. Something that could work in Star Wars may not work in Apollo 13 because they have different rules because they exist in different universes. Certain things like physics, math, etc, are still true because we accept them as universal. But there are aspects that we believe because we understand that Star Wars is a fantasy.

The moment your audience says, “No way!” with disdain, you’ve lost them. Any credibility you’ve built is out the window and they’ve written off the entire film. This is especially true with your premise. If no one will believe your premise, you’re fighting them the whole way.

So do your research. Make sure you stuff makes sense so your audience will believe the lie.

-Penguin

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Penguin June 23rd, 2008

Bryan Bertino talks about his directorial debut on The Strangers:

It seems so simple from a distance, the concepts of finding the right cast, picking a crew, finding a location. But in reality, from the minute pre-production began, I was thrust into a world I had only read about or at least seen glimpses of in DVD bonus features.

Finding your cast is about finding the right person to help you create a true character. It is about finding someone who can help the words on the paper come alive.

Questions are the key to what a director does. You are like a machine, being driven from place to place. Your life is simplified

There was nothing in the books I had studied over the years before production that could have helped me.

I needed to shut up and go work. Whether it was my first time or my twentieth, I was going to make something that people would watch, something with my name on it. It would be judged whether I was a first-timer or not.

Movie Maker

There’s some great insight that most filmmakers hope they’ll have one day. In the meantime, it’s great inspiration to keep writing, keep shooting, and keep making movies “that people would watch”.

-Penguin

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Penguin June 14th, 2008

Last night and a little bit of today, I helped my friend Andrew shoot some interview footage for the Senior Banquet. It was both of our first times working with a green screen, which made it a little daunting. I knew enough about lighting the screen evenly, but this was also the first time that I worked with lights. They’re a bunch of cheap hardware lights, but it works.

To piece it together, we shot Andrew running around. I got some pretty nice angles and shots, so I’m going to just cut it together real fast.

I also made a slide show for Senior Banquet, but I’m not that happy with it. Mainly because it doesn’t do everything I would like to have done. Oh well, it’s done.

-Penguin

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Penguin June 12th, 2008

A few years ago, some friends wrote a 70 page script that was intended to be performed live. I helped them edit and do rewrites over a course of 3 months. Then we spent another 3 to 4 months preparing it for performance. It never happened.

Coming into this summer, I didn’t really have a project to do. Some of the original actors are still keen on making this thing happen and so do I. It’s been sitting on my brain ever since we canceled the show. Was it the right decision? Should we have pushed through?

I reread the script a few months ago and realized how dated it all sounded. So I’ll be spending the next few weeks rewriting it and refocusing it. Luckily, I still have access to the original writers. I want to keep it as faithful to its original themes and intentions as possible.

But even if I finish, I may not have enough actors to do it. Even if I don’t get to shoot it, writing will be good practice.

One step at a time though.

-Penguin

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Penguin June 11th, 2008

Gladwell writes about Kaplan and the SATs. There’s one part where he talks about piano students. When given a test, the instructors were shocked that practice had proved more important than talent.

It requires practice, practice, practice. Repetition breeds familiarity. Familiarity breeds confidence.

This is not to say that filmmaking is a completely structured task. But we often talk about the structure of the screenplay, and even getting into production and post-production, there is the mechanics of filmmaking that needs to be learned. Even writing, there’s a discipline to it as much as there is an art to it.

I’ve thought about going to film school, but the benefits always seem dubious. This is not to say there aren’t any benefits or reasons to go to film school. It just may not be worth the time or money to me. Every where I look and the people I ask all say the same thing: “Just keep making movies.” I think the point is, once you learn the mechanics of it, and become familiar, is when you can start pushing it with confidence.

-Penguin

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Penguin June 10th, 2008

I’m used to the whole concept of screenplay structure. You have 3 acts, hero’s journey etc. But what if there was an underlying formula that could tell if your script would be good or not? It seems like they’ve done just that. Created a formula for the blockbuster.

Dick Copaken and Nick Meaney created Epagogix, a neural net that guesses how much a movie will take in at the box office. The most interesting part about the article, is that even if the software can identify areas where a script can be improved, it still needs a writer to improve it. What else is interesting is that it doesn’t seem to care about structure at all. The software seems to care about details.

At the center is the creation of art is the question, “Is there a basic formula?”

“Beauty is no quality in things themselves,” the eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher David Hume wrote. “It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty.”

But Hume had a Scottish counterpart, Lord Kames, and Lord Kames was equally convinced that traits like beauty, sublimity, and grandeur were indeed reducible to a rational system of rules and precepts. He devised principles of congruity, propriety, and perspicuity: an elevated subject, for instance, must be expressed in elevated language; sound and signification should be in concordance; a woman was most attractive when in distress; depicted misfortunes must never occur by chance.

Granted, there may or may not be a formula for the blockbuster. Even if there is, you still have to write it. But how can we use this knowledge to improve our writing? We watch great films and ask, what makes it great? We watch terrible films, and ask, what makes it suck? Most importantly, we live life so we can find those memorable moments. Build up our library of small stories that we can link together to make something great.

-Penguin

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Penguin June 9th, 2008

This weekend, we went to the Met to see its latest exhibits. Although I enjoyed Koons on the roof (when I first heard of it, I was thought “raccoons”), there weren’t as many pieces as I would have liked. The balloon dog is as cool as it looks (if you go to the back, it looks like the dog has an anus).

As I walked through the superheroes exhibit, I thought to myself, is this art? I loved Iron Man, and Batman is one of my favourite superheroes. Granted, comics has influenced mainstream pop culture tremendously in the last few years. Just because it’s influential and it’s put in a gallery doesn’t necessarily make it art.

When we went to the Guggenheim, Ninja and I talked about Art and Commercialization. I posed the question: Is it art if it’s commercial? I cited the example of movies and commercials. This is not to say these endeavors have artistic qualities, but the fact that it’s mass produced no longer makes it unique.

I hugged a $25 mil piece of art. If the “flower” wasn’t a one of, and instead mass produced for the gift shop, it would probably go for $25 instead. Because it is no longer unique, it is no longer worth as much.

As a filmmaker, I struggle with this idea of making art in a medium that wants to be commercial. I’ve watched great movies come out of the studio system. I’ve watched great movies come out of the indie system. Some of it is art, some of it isn’t. And I find that the two are inversely proportional to each other. The more commercial something is, the less it is about art, and vice-versa. Where do I strike the balance?

I don’t think I have any good answers.

-Penguin

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Penguin June 7th, 2008

Moving Image Source is the online presence of the Museum of Moving Images. They have a wealth of in depth articles and research guide for learning about film and film history.

The research guide is especially helpful because it so neatly categorizes information into a nice tree structure.

I had the opportunity to read a few articles and they are expertly well written.

-Penguin

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