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What kinds of films do YOU want to make?


Guest Daniel J. Ashley-Smith

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I'm not sure why this has become an argument. We're not saying anything all that different. We all agree that good films need good roots, and a film is rooted in the story. All I said is don't underestimate filmmaking as a whole. You cannot ride on a great idea, or you get some of the garbage that we've both brought up. Somehow this all turned into me saying that films don't need stories at all, which doesn't make any sense at all; films are stories. No story, no film. So of course I didn't say that. Just that you can't rely on just the initial story to carry you through the filmmaking process.

 

As for Catwoman and Elektra, I didn't watch either of them. I have no idea how good or bad the "story" was, they just both looked like overblown wastes of movies. Horrible on most every level; where they took the great comic book stories and turned them into soulless money-making ventures and failed oppurtunities to try and come out with something people would consider "cool." (ie, the McG method of filmmaking) Which saddens me a little bit, at least concerning Catwoman, because I'm a big fan of Thierry Arbogast.

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No, no, no. I completely disagree. Story isn't above anything else. Catwoman is poop because it has a poop script - yes, no argument there - but it also looks like poop. Good films can be boiled down to having good taste. That's all it is - film is fashion. And having good taste doesn't make you stick a 10mm lens and 360 around someone in a cheesy rubber suit with a Steadicam.

 

I can name a thousand movies that are revered basically for their look, their direction or their production design. I can also name a thousand movies that are not. Matrix has a better story than Days of Heaven, but that doesn't mean it's more of a classic. Alien has the most simplistic story ever. Blade Runner is incomprehensible story-wise. The Shining is a rather simplistic story when you think about it. And on and on.

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I think that David Mullen had it right in his Sept. 11 post, and that he introduced an important word into the discussion, specifically the word plot.

 

For the purpose of this discussion, I'd like to define a story as the completed elaboration of a plot. In a short story or a long story (aka a novella or novel) the elaboration is done solely with words (and occasionally, as in Tristram Shandy and some considerably more recent novels, with graphics). In a dramatic play, the elaboration is done with sets, costumes, lighting, acting and words. In a musical play, it is also done with music. A motion picture film can elaborate on a plot using the tools of theater (e.g. My Dinner with Andre, Swimming to Cambodia) but it can also use additional visual tools that the theatre cannot duplicate. Like the short story or novel, but unlike theatre with its (usually, but not always) confined space, it can also draw on action. Unlike the short story, novel or dramatic theatre, it can also effectively draw, for reasons which I have never quite understood, on music. One day, someone will have to explain to me why music, in a dramatic play, would be ridiculous, but can so effectively add to a film. Perhaps it is just a question of conditioning.

 

In other words, a story, whether embodied in a novel or a play or a motion picture, is the flesh built on a plot. The plot is a skeleton. As far as I know, nobody has come up with a new plot in centuries. Instead, the task of an artist is to take a well-worn plot and elaborate on it in a new, or at least contemporary, way. Homer's plot in The Oddysey and Joyce's plot in Ulysees are essentially the same plot, but each writer elaborates on it using a different form (epic poetry vs. the novel), a different social context (Homer's Greece vs. Joyce's Dublin) and a different approach to language. This means that plot, which is what I think some people in this thread mean when they use the word story, is in fact the least important element in a novel, play or motion picture. The important thing is whether the artist (or artists in the case of theatre and film) uses the tools at his disposal to elaborate on the plot in an effective, and hopefully artistically satisfying, manner.

 

Given my own taste, I would point to Bergman's Fanny and Alexander as a work in which the filmmaker has used his available tools to great effect, and I would say that Days of Heaven, while visually stunning, is a pretty pedestrian film. That isn't because I discount the importance of cinematography - far from it - but because I don't believe that cinematography, or any other single tool, can carry the whole weight of a movie. For me, Days of Heaven is ultimately a thin film because, while Almendros was at the top of his game, some of the other people who contributed to the film were not. For Fanny and Alexander, everybody was working on all cylinders, and they wound up making a film of wonderful scope and depth. Of course, I realize that others, having different taste, might find my assessment of Days of Heaven shocking.

 

An aside about The Great Gatsby...

 

Boone noted that this is a great novella that has yet to be made, despite two attempts, into a successful film. He blames it on the scripts and casting. My personal view is that the people who have tried to make this book into a film made a more fundamental error. Fitzgerald did not use the plot of The Great Gatsby to write a story about Gatsby and Daisy. If he had, it could be made into a film, but it would also be a completely different book. For example, I don't think that it is stretching things too far to suggest that Fitzgerald, had he chosen to focus on Gatsby, might have wound up with a book that was a precursor to The Godfather. Perhaps because Fitzgerald was a far better and more subtle writer than Mario Puzo, that is not what he did. The Great Gatsby is about the narrator, Nick, and Gatsby and Daisy are just supporting characters. It is one thing to write a novel in which the narrator is the central character, and in which everything that happens of importance happens in his head - it is done all the time - but it is another matter to translate such a book onto the screen. What you wind up with is a film in which the central character becomes a secondary character and the secondary characters become primary. That is exactly what happened in the two film versions of The Great Gatsby, and it is the fundamental reason why they failed. I think that there are other reasons - it has always struck me as downright stupid, except as a way to make a buck, to take a masterpiece of a novel, expressed solely in words, and try to turn it into a 90 minute film - but pursuing that thought would result in an even longer digression.

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i'd like to do something that was shot entirely from first-person POV. I've heard this has been done before, but I haven't seen it personally.

 

You should check out "Dark Passage," a 1947 Bogart movie filmed in San Francisco. Bogart escapes from San Quentin and the first half to third of the movie is first person from his perspective. You never see Bogie's face until the character undergoes plastic surgery. Not the greates Bogey and Bacall movie but an interesting one nonetheless.

 

--Jim

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An aside about The Great Gatsby...

 

Boone noted that this is a great novella that has yet to be made, despite two attempts, into a successful film. He blames it on the scripts and casting. My personal view is that the people who have tried to make this book into a film made a more fundamental error. Fitzgerald did not use the plot of The Great Gatsby to write a story about Gatsby and Daisy. If he had, it could be made into a film, but it would also be a completely different book. For example, I don't think that it is stretching things too far to suggest that Fitzgerald, had he chosen to focus on Gatsby, might have wound up with a book that was a precursor to The Godfather. Perhaps because Fitzgerald was a far better and more subtle writer than Mario Puzo, that is not what he did. The Great Gatsby is about the narrator, Nick, and Gatsby and Daisy are just supporting characters. It is one thing to write a novel in which the narrator is the central character, and in which everything that happens of importance happens in his head - it is done all the time - but it is another matter to translate such a book onto the screen. What you wind up with is a film in which the central character becomes a secondary character and the secondary characters become primary. That is exactly what happened in the two film versions of The Great Gatsby, and it is the fundamental reason why they failed. I think that there are other reasons - it has always struck me as downright stupid, except as a way to make a buck, to take a masterpiece of a novel, expressed solely in words, and try to turn it into a 90 minute film - but pursuing that thought would result in an even longer digression.

I wouldn't say those are exactly the reasons I didn't like either film, though I do believe the acting in both versions was pretty poor, save Sam Waterston, and possibly Bruce Dern. I'd say both movies fail because they don't understand the book; they missed the point. I do believe it's possible to make a good adaption, but it would take a lot of work. That little book took years to write, you can't bang out a script as good in a few months.

 

Ultimately it was a shell of the book in every way, even visually, in both examples. I was even kind of annoyed by Douglas Slocombe's photography in the '74 film.

 

There were four attempts of The Great Gatsby. Two are impossible to find, though.

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Guest LondonFilmMan

Actually, I liked "French Kiss" a lot because of the two main characters who were just fantastic together. It's not the kind of film I'd want to make, because I want to do something a little different to that, although, if I could get close to equalling such snappy dialogue and whit, I'd be thrilled. Lots of film I see just lacks a good story which is what I want to see *only* I don't care about all those arty farty shots **unless** the other stuff is achieved first. Not easy, of course...that's for sure.

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my dream is pretty much

 

-War films

 

and

 

-Sci-Fi: I wish so bad I could get involved in any way for Peter Jacksons "Halo"

 

 

and maybe a few suspense films.

------------------------------------------

 

my inspirational films are

 

- Lord of The Rings Trilogy

 

- Star Wars Saga

 

-Band of Brothers: ( I know its technically a miniseries, but I like to think of it as just one big movie)

 

-All Quiet on The Western Front: (it may be old, but this film sure captured the horrors of war and the drama well.)

 

-Signs

 

-The Village

 

-The Sixth Sense

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I would love to make the Phillip Pullman trilogy of His Dark Materials. With the three movies there would be countless visual effects and annimation that would make it amazingly fun to shoot and edit.

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I`d like to shoot films like

"Saving private Ryan",

"Equilibrium",

"Black Hawk Dawn",

"Pearl Harbor" (M. Bay)

I don`t want to shoot films where people are only talking about their life, discussing phylosophies and thats all. Film is a drama. Drama is action. That`s why the film MUST be action (not as a genre).

There must be an action RIGHT NOW in the film...

That`s my view.

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I'd like to make great features of varying genres and varying styles, with exception to Horror or specifically a war movie.

 

And although I have some specific ideas in mind of how I do that, I also find that different stories dictate different style. Principally, as I'm writing my scripts I am envisioning it and acting it out in my head, so definitely visually my films will be impactful. But I suppose you could say that about every part of the puzzle...

 

I've seen bad actors in films and good actors with terrible direction, I can't have that.

 

I've heard horrible sound and even been responsible for some myself, can't have that either.

 

I've seen directors who think every single shot needs coverage and they don't know the meaning of "onner". Me, I'm quite a bit more forgiving than that because again I know what I want to see.

 

I take many films for inspiration, but in the end I'm not sure I can directly relate what I have done or will do as a direct rip off of anything I've seen, and I suppose thats a good thing.

 

But they will be great. And due to my continuing disgust for terrible dragging dialogue scenes, I will do my best to write fantastic dialogue and make it what it should be, both on paper and on screen.

 

Finally, I like organization to films. Purpose. Scenes that drive the film forward. Epic storytelling, even if it is an epic within a microchasm.

 

We'll see whether I can keep my word :)

Edited by Trevor Greenfield
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I would love to shoot a action trilogy liket the Matrix. I love those types of movies. Anything action oriented I would love to dp. i also like science fiction, so maybe a weird dramatic, action, science fiction movie would be the type of movies I would love to dp. I think all dp's would want to make a war movie

I am a big fan of Conrad Hall, Bill Pope, Zhao Xioding, Paul Cameron, and Mauro Fiore

Mario Concepcion Jackson

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Guest Film Idaho

Quentin Tarantino did win an OSCAR lest we forget. I doubt the Academy handed him one just for ratings. As for the bitterness for his work we should be happy that one of our own (an indie director/writer) made it big. So I would rather not have a dish someone who has brought the indie world into mainstream Hollywood. I know that the Kill Bill volumes helped me into film making.

 

Peace,

 

-Alex M.

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I read this tread and found it very interesting especially the cinemtography vs the story debate. There an old saying what makes a great movie- Story, story, story. The story is the alpha and omega of a film but what David had to say rang the most true of anything else I read. John Cassavetes didn't seem to give a damn about cinematoraphy but without the sweeping vistas of a John Ford western how could those films have been made? They are another character in his movies and who can say who's more valid a filmmaker, Ford or Cassavetes? I want to make my own films, find my own voice. I think the greatest film ever made is "Apocalypse Now Redux" Coppola's director's cut (I don't even acknowledge the first studio release) because he did something I've never seen anyone else do or even come close to doing with the exception of Hitchcock's "Vertigo" . He managed to actually capture a nightmare on film with all it's vivid beauty and horror. Now THAT'S cinematography and could have been done by NOONE else. That's what I want to do. Ridley Scott's Alein was amazing but he couldn't have done the same thing with Aliens" that James Cameron did nor SHOULD he and this is after seeing Black Hawk Down. I admire the hell out of Stanley Kubrick, The Shining and 2001 were masterpieces. Hitchcocks Psyco and Vertigo, Speilberg's Shindler's List, Jerrasic park, Jaws, Close Encounters, E.T.and Saving Privite Ryan, Lusas's Star Wars and American Graffetti, David Leans Lawrence Of Arabia, David Lynch's Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart, Rauol walsh's White Heat, Serge Gainsbourg's Scarface, Sergio leone's The Good-The Bad and The Ugly, Peter Jackson's The Lord Of the Rings, Howard Hawks' The Thing, Mel Brook's Young Frankenstien, Quenton Terrintino's Pulp Fiction and From Dusk Till Dawn, Keneth Banaugh's Hamlet and Franco Zefferelli's Romeo and Juliette, Micheal Curtiz's Casablanca, Davis O Selznik's Gone With The Wind, Victor Fleming's (among other's) The Wizard of Oz, Nicolas Ray's Rebal Without a Cause, Fred Wilcox's (and Gene Roddenberry's) Forbidden Planet, Cicill B Demille's The 10 Comandment's, Byron Haskin's War of the Worlds, Ron Howards Apollo 13 and a Beautiful Mind, John Surges' The Great Escape, Mike Nichols Catch 22, The Grduate, Who's Afraid of Virgina Wolfe and Carnal Knowlege, The Coen Brothers Blood Simple, The Marx Brothers, Coconuts, The Farlley Brothers There's somthing about Mary, Fellini's Satyricon John Turney's Preditor and Die Hard, James Cameron's The Terminator and Titanic, John Huston's The Maltese Falcon, Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show, Cassavetes Faces, A woman under the Influence and the Killing of a Chinese Bookie, Ingmar Bergmann's tThe Seventh Seal and lirterally Thousands more (I watch a lot of Movies) Have influenced, made an inpression or inspired me. The way the were lit or the way they were cut or the way they were framed. But I'm not David Lynch Or Steven Speilberg or Woody Allen. I may admire Sergio Leone but I'm not going to make a spagetti western the way Sergio does. All of these men and women that I admire can only take me so far. If you want to know what people pay for it's originality. So I want to make films that look like mine.

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