The 21st Century Film Student

INSPIRING FUTURE FILMMAKERS

THE TEACHER IS THE EDUCATION

The teacher is responsible for the content of the course and delivering it in an engaging manner. They are the student’s partner in learning. Film school can be a vital and memorable experience when the instructor has a depth of knowledge, a command of the material, and the skills to connect with a class of creative individuals: these are fundamental requirements.

The teacher sets the standard of professionalism for their discipline, their course and their school. Fulfilling the industry expectations of a creative position in film production requires a broad knowledge of filmmaking skills and tools, along with other important qualities: rapport, empathy, confidence, stamina, leadership, and a sense of humour (to name a few.) The student benefits when they see these qualities demonstrated by the teacher and can apply them to their own creative process.

The teacher shapes the tone, pace and dialogue of the learning environment. They create the classroom experience for the student. In The Courage to Teach, Parker Palmer writes, ‘To educate is to guide students on an inner journey toward more truthful ways of seeing and being in the world.’ This is powerfully relevant for the 21^st century film student, and a roadmap to great treasures for filmmakers and storytellers.

Like an actor, the teacher needs to be ‘in the moment.’ Workshops and screenings are a forum for the teacher to provide perspective and feedback to the student’s work — and this helps the student learn to filter criticism and develop their own critical point of view. A robust critique from a respected source, and the opportunity to then take it, test it, and potentially improve the work is what filmmaking, and film education, is all about: listening, communicating, and connecting ideas.

FILM IS ART

Film is a complex medium and needs to be broken down into bits and pieces. A good film seduces the audience. There can be many layers to its construction. So many, in fact, that a viewer is not even aware of how the tools of cinema are being used: lighting and lenses, music and silence, framing and editing. When everything comes together in an amazing scene, the filmmaker has achieved what the student must constantly search for: how to make the audience feel something.

The teacher provides evaluation. In that sense, they are the audience — but an audience of one requires constant vigilance. Grading creative work is an exercise in subjectivity, and it needs to be self-governed at the highest level. It also needs to be fair, consistent and transparent. When grading is thorough, straightforward and well-defined, it has greater substance and value to the student.

#MENTOR

The teacher must be a mentor. A good mentor holds up a mirror for the student, and helps them to trust their instincts and value their imagination. This is where powerful stories begin. It’s not about what’s easy or hard, or right or wrong — it’s about what is possible. To succeed as a filmmaker, you need to go deep: the deeper the better. This is fertile ground.

Mentoring differs from the classroom or workshop setting. The mentor/mentee relationship must be built on a foundation of mutual trust and respect. When the student values the mentor, the relationship thrives. A mentor listens, suggests, and motivates: they generate energy.

They also know that procrastination and daydreaming are part of the creative process. Yes, progress is important — but inspiration and genius can strike in a flash at the most unexpected times and suddenly turn into a marathon of all-nighters.

JUST. KEEP. GOING.

Creativity is a personal journey, and conformity has never been a badge for the pioneers of artistic expression. Audiences need new ideas, new stories and new ways of being told a story. They want unique characters in original situations. They want to see relatable emotions rendered with superior artistry: this is what drives the entertainment industry.

When the film student taps the wisdom of a teacher who has taken the risks and chances that they plan on taking, it creates the synergy to push the envelope, think outside the box, and break new ground. Mentoring in this territory requires an innate understanding of the potential of the imaginative world.

NO FEAR

Student filmmaking should be the front line for new voices. The innovators of tomorrow want to say, “Hey, look what I made!” today, and have it shine with the promise of what they can and will do in the future.

There’s not always a right way to do it or a correct answer in the creative fields; it is the searching and the willingness to explore and experiment that matters.

 

 

 

 

 

My First Cannes Film Festival

My first trip to Cannes was 25 years ago. I arrived a week before the festival was scheduled to open. I strolled around the quiet town, lazed on the beach and took the train to nearby cities — Nice, Antibes, and Monaco — all beautiful places.

Around Cannes, things changed dramatically as the global film circus rolled into town. It got crowded. The locals fled. Giant billboards advertising Hollywood’s latest offerings cluttered the boardwalk. Fences went up. Security arrived. You can imagine what it’s like this year.

I was there because my first feature was selected to open the Critic’s Week, one of the 7 films chosen from first and second features around the world. This is the icing on the cake for a low-budget independent filmmaker. It was amazing, and you can’t compare it to anything else.

I have lots of memories, but two important things were that my Mom was able to go, and I got a great review in Variety:

When the festival finished, I stayed on for another week. I watched the signage come down, the crowds go home, and the locals return to the little town they enjoy for 50 weeks a year.

Cannes is a nice place to visit, but for two weeks every year, it’s a crowded madhouse.

I loved it.

You’ve been warned!

 

 

The Lost Tapes: Frank Daniel Q&A (pt 1)

Sorting through one of my time-capsules of collectables, I’ve found personal recordings, micro-cassettes and VHS tapes with some truly priceless content. I hadn’t forgotten that I had dictated my observations about the first film sets I was on, or my university days in theatre and film – I just stored them in the basement. Until now.

I started collecting info on film education, film schools and film teachers in the 80’s. Everything from newspaper and magazine articles to out-of-print books and esoteric recordings. I’m unpacking those goodies and leaving some of them here for posterity. WordPress – my new time-capsule.

Frank Daniel is American cinema’s direct link to the original curriculum developed at the All-Union State  Institute of Cinematography in Moscow – the birthplace of film education. He left Europe in 1969. He headed up various film schools in the United States and was a major influence on filmmakers from the 70’s to the 90’s. Screenwriting students had a chance to Q&A with Frank Daniel when he was at Columbia University (circa 1986.)

THE LOST TAPES (pt 1)

Sound, Color, Props, Costumes

Q. You were talking about sound, color, props and costumes, and that’s the place where I feel a little weak. Can you tell me some directors that you think are really good at doing that?

FRANK DANIEL: Wilder is the best. If you look at Lost Weekend or Sunset Boulevard you’ll see. Lost Weekend starts with a pan over the New York skyline, and the camera stops and sees a bottle hanging from a window. In the room there is a guy packing, and his brother is talking about their forthcoming long weekend, and convincing him how, after all those things he has been through he’ll have fresh air, water, and milk, and the guy is suddenly upset. He doesn’t want to hear about those dull liquids. Immediately you make a connection between the bottle outside, and then, when he tries to smuggle the bottle into his suitcase you are hooked. From that moment, the bottles, glasses, jiggers and snifters are props that go through the whole picture.

There is one scene in the movie when the main character first meets his girlfriend at the opera. He watches the drinking scene in La Traviata. People are standing with champagne in their hands, sipping it and singing. That part of the movie you should especially look at. It has some brilliant staging. In the center of the image there is always some drink. Bottles, glasses, more bottles, and more glasses, and people with glasses. Finally the poor guy can’t take it anymore and he just leaves and goes to the cloakroom for his coat, because he has a bottle of whisky in the pocket, but he cannot get his coat. Because of a mistake with the tickets, he is given a ladies fur coat. He has to wait until the whole opera is over to get his coat back, and that’s how he meets the girl.

They exchange coats and the coats begin to play a part in the movie. At the end of the picture he takes her coat and goes to the pawn shop. You believe that he is going there to get money for it, but he is going there to get his gun, to kill himself. She comes to get her fur coat back, and she is in his raincoat!

If you look at the way alcohol is presented in that movie you’ll see that it became a character. It goes through the whole story and the glasses and bottles and the circles they leave on tables express things that otherwise would have to be stated in dialogue, in words.

In Lubitsch’s Ninotchka, the hat that Ninotchka buys elucidates her whole character. It expresses the change of Ninotchka from a dogmatic Russian commissar into a loving woman completely. That’s the use of props, not for the purpose of more interesting acting business, but for dramatic emphasis, for creating poetic images, and metaphors.

Subplot

Q. Would you talk a little bit about subplot and how to know if your subplot is actually moving the story towards a culmination?

FD: It’s not that difficult. You check each scene as you write, or better when you finish the first draft against the main tension of the story. See if it helps, or if it leads somewhere else, or if it’s actually diluting the tension. Then you can decide if it’s used properly. That’s what needs to be done, and you always try to find out what the thematic connection of the subplot with the main theme of the story is. Is it a variation? Is it the opposite of the main character’s? Is it preparing new obstacles eventually? How does it relate thematically and plotwise to the main theme and the main action? Does it heighten the tension?

By the way, another thing, I might have mentioned, that happens often in the first draft, is that the third act scenes are, as a rule, too long. They are actually dealt with in a manner that is proper for the first part of the picture, but not when the story is reaching its resolution. The scenes in the third act have to be much shorter, much more condensed, and much more energetic because of the passions that collide into one another after you have reached the culmination. Usually the beginning writer tries to say too much there, and we, the audience, have no patience at that time.

Q. So when you’re doing a first draft or a treatment, you really have to know what the subplots are?

FD: If you don’t then you have to go back and give them the proper function and meaning. In the first treatment ever written, the first script, you are not ready to deal with all the people at the same time. It is enough to be able to jump from one character’s shoes in a scene, and if you have to take care of five story lines, it’s a little too much. You have seen Fellini’s 8 1/2 where he doesn’t have any problems with it, but if you look at La Strada or White Sheik you’ll see that he was learning too! He could, at that time, develop only two main characters, because he was just gaining the muscles. Milos Forman, you know, started with small scale stories, with one character in the center. And then he develops and directs Amadeus, and takes care of the whole world. One needs to learn to be able to do that.

Features vs. Shorts

Q. Do you think there’s a difference between setting out to write a feature length or say a half hour script? Is it more difficult or easier to write a short script? Do you apply all the same logic to it?

FD: Well, to write a good short is not that simple, but it is easier because in a short you deal with just one event, one situation that the story turns around. And usually you need a very small number of characters, because otherwise you couldn’t afford to shoot it. It takes less time and less energy to write a short than a feature, and that’s why at our school it’s obligatory to write shorts before you go on to treatments, and then to a feature script. It’s also a question of those dramatic explosives that you need for a two hour story. The conflict in a feature film must be strong enough to keep people watching it for two hours. And then there is the whole question of strategy. How do you open the conflict? How do you force the characters to come with the passions and the fights and where do place the up and downs? That comes from experience, from repeated exploring, and trying. There’s a generic difference, I would say, between a short and a feature. For a beginning director it’s quite different. A director can show his directorial capabilities in a short almost completely. You can see that he knows how to work with actors, that he knows where to put the camera, that he knows how to edit, that he knows how to use music, and so on. As a director you can have a calling card that’s ten minutes long and people will know that this guy is a potential director. But a short film doesn’t do too much for a writer. It can’t show that he knows how to divide those two hours into moments of full involvement, relaxation, surprise, build up. That is something that comes only by constant studies of films and scripts, and then by writing, writing, writing.

***

Searching for an Authentic Education (part 6): Frank Daniel on Screenwriting

The transition from first to second draft – or any subsequent draft – is an opportunity to advance all of the story elements in play. Rewriting for sound, color and lighting builds more layers that help to elevate a visual story. Focusing on the further details of location, props and costumes help advance the characters, their world and their obstacles.

Frank Daniel offers up a list of tips for the re-writing screenwriter in my final part of his last lecture at Columbia University. I think it’s pure gold.

Frank Daniel on Screenwriting (part 6)

Columbia University School of the Arts, Film Division, May 5th, 1986

“Usually, in the first draft, sound is used only in the most pedestrian and naturalistic form. There are special ways that sound can help create the best metaphoric effects, for example, sound that means something for the character. You introduce it at the beginning and it pays off later. Suddenly just the sound of a train, or a jet landing, or whatever, assumes a meaning that dialogue cannot ever express. Well, pay attention to sound and explore its dramatic and poetic possibilities.

Colors

Another thing, the first draft is very rarely written in colors. It’s always black and white. It pays off to look at the script from this point of view also, and to think how you can use colors for dramatic impact. Most of the scripts, in the first draft, are lit in a television manner. Everything is clear, there are no shadows, no darks, no overly bright scenes. So that’s another element that you look at and try to use for the point of contrast and emotional reaction.

Locations

Locations in the first draft are very often completely cliché. Masters always try to figure out how to make the locations special. Do it their way. Ask how the place can help the scene, how it can work against the character, or for it, how it can create obstacles, offer difficulties, and how you can get rid of the stereotypes.

Props

Props are not properly used in the first draft. They are introduced and they are not continued. Props have tremendous power of poetically enlightening the story. You have seen it in the analysis classes, you know how they can be used. If you look at any of Billy Wilder’s or Lubitsch’s pictures, you know that props can do as bearers of metaphors. Why not learn from them and help your script to gain sophistication and cinematic magic?

Wardrobe

Costumes are never taken care of in the first draft. Again, from the analysis classes you learned that you have to be aware where change of costume becomes a part of the dramatic buildup in your story. Again, it’s something that you can play with in the second draft. The dress of a character can be more expressive than a whole monologue. It can let us know what has happened to the character. If he or she is “dressed for the occasion,” the viewer reads it, guesses the meaning of it, and becomes more involved. These are things that, if you are aware of them, can help your scripts to be better, and more professional.

Transitions

Transitions between the scenes can have tremendous effectiveness. In the first draft, as a rule, scenes are written in their entirety. People come into a room, say good morning, take their hat off, put it on the hanger, and although the scene actually starts five minutes later, you get into it at the beginning. That’s why the transition from one scene to the other cannot have that desired sparking power. Try to jump into scenes as late as possible. Ask how you can eliminate all that unnecessary early stage of the scene that makes the writing flat, banal, anti-dramatic. That’s where you see more exciting possible connections between the scenes.

You Can Master All the Tricks of the Trade

These tips are a sort of shopping list that you can keep, and use whenever you go back to your first draft with the goal of changing it into a full-fledged script. They may help you. And they may foster the realization that there are no mysteries in our craft, that you can master all the tricks of the trade.

The most difficult thing to learn, as I’ve seen it so far, is not the structuring of a story. Finally, that is based on the psychological truth of the characters’ behavior and on the logic of events. Far more difficult to acquire is the awareness of how the anticipation of the audience should be built and structured into the way the story is presented – the difference between the narrative and the dramatic, if you want. All the techniques of suspense, surprise, mystery, irony, etc., exist because of the viewer’s anticipation. If there is not anticipation, there cannot be tension, there cannot be suspense. And you learn to understand it.

William Archer, in his book Playmaking, says that dramatic writing is constant preparation. Think about it. What else are we doing but preparing the audience for the resolution of the story? Where does the viewer’s anticipation come from? What is it based upon? Somebody must put it in the picture. And who else can it be if not the writer? He tries to “use all the pointers,” all the elements that lead to the future. That’s why he weaves all the fears, all the hopes, all the desires, dreams, plans, and warnings into the texture of the story.

That’s the secret and it’s odd to see how most students resist accepting this simple truth. They have the feeling that somehow it is not necessary. But watch films. Look at the way the writer and the director keep you excited. Anticipation is the device. It’s getting you to wish, to want, to predict what’s going to happen, to make you afraid, to hope. It cannot be in the story on its own. It must be put there. It’s too late to think about these things when the picture is shot.

Another difficulty for a beginning scriptwriter is the realization that we are not writing characters but parts. As a scriptwriter you are writing roles for actors. You have to give the actors something exciting to play. Dialogue is the least valuable thing you can give an actor. Difficult action, physically or psychologically embarrassing moments, moments that require the actor to do something considerable, memorable, unheard of, chances for the characters to display their intelligence, their inventiveness, their skills.

That’s what you are obliged to offer. Actors are the first ones who are going to make the decision whether or not the film will be made, and they can become your allies in the hard world of filmmaking. And you will need allies, believe me.”

***

Searching for an Authentic Education (part 4): Frank Daniel on screenwriting

When you find an approach, a technique, or a combination of techniques that unlocks a positive flow of creativity in your work — new worlds open up. This can be a powerful discovery that leads you through the uncharted lands of your imagination. This is where the best stories and characters come from.

Frank Daniel taught screenwriting for decades. He encouraged stories to well up from the subconscious mind. Filmmakers need to go deep. The deeper the better.

If you’re wondering what sage advice he provided to David Lynch and others, read on…

[Part 4 of a bootlegged transcript from Frank Daniel’s last lecture at Columbia U.]

Frank Daniel on Screenwriting (part 4)

Columbia University School of the Arts, Film Division, May 5th, 1986

Now, let’s talk about the way you find stories. There are millions of approaches. You can overhear something, you can meet somebody, you can read something in the newspapers, you can have a conversation with somebody and suddenly an idea for a certain type of a story that no one has done comes to you. These beginnings aren’t something that can be prescribed, that you can rationally categorize, but once begun there are always certain obligations that you have to assume towards your story.

The best stories are stories about human beings, and if you find a character that you believe should be shown and seen, start the exploration of this person.

Those who begin to work on plots first always abominate this part. They think that you don’t need to do it. They fancy that you just select some fixed character units and move them around like puppets, manipulating them so they do what’s necessary to be done, fast and easy. They think you don’t need to involve yourself in the story. But when they finish the first draft there’s the problem of what to do next. They finally have to go back and start thinking about the characters, and then all the plotting becomes questionable. The characters begin to determine the direction in which the story should move. That’s why it’s much better to just accept this unpleasant must.

Know Your Characters

You need to know your character — backwards, forwards, and in depth. That’s the reason why we put together the character questionnaire. You’ve got it, and it helps you to ask all  the questions about the character — about his or her relationship to his or her family, to himself, or herself, to his co-worker, to his or her class, work, nature, art, etc. etc. They are all on the list to help you when you start exploring relationships of the character.

The moment you begin to imagine how your character dealt with and deals with his parents, how he gets along with his brothers and sisters, what are the conflicts with his co-workers, and all that, you begin to explore the world of your story, and suddenly scenes begin to emerge. You start putting the character in different situations in your mind, and you begin to hallucinate — to imagine him in the most mundane and exciting moments of his life.

The courage and audacity to deal with trivia and banalities is something you should develop. Because the best stories are made from the most banal material and if you don’t know how your character pays bills, does his laundry, what he likes for lunch and dinner, and what his little vexations are, his petty likes and dislikes, a lively, juicy story will never happen.

I had a wonderful experience this year with one of my students. You know her… She wrote a treatment last year that she brought into class at the beginning of the semester. It was dreadful. It was really very bad, and I had to tell her. So I did, and she was, as you can imagine, quite devastated. And then we sat down and talked for a good three hours. And now that she has a finished script which is really wonderful, I asked her what helped her to write it. She said that she was scared of banalities and trivialities, and that’s why the people in her first year story were cardboard figures And then there was the moment when she tried to see her characters as real, familiar, ordinary people and suddenly she felt free.

“They Will Never Recognize Themselves”

She came to me with the first outline of a new story, and I told her: Right! Use the people whom you know best. Sell all your friends, neighbors, relatives. Everybody has done it. They will never recognize themselves. They have a totally different idea of themselves, and besides your use them in a different context and there’s no danger that they will accuse you of anything. They’ll love the stories, really. Such comedy writers like Lubitsch always made people laugh at themselves without knowing it was them they were snickering at.

Tolstoy’s diary and the notes he kept while he was writing his novels are full of notes how he has combined cousins and friends, his relatives and acquaintances into the fictional personages. Some of them he used directly as he knew or remembered them, some of them he mixed with other people. that’s one of the best ways of finding characters that feel real.

The people, the things, that are familiar, the trivialities, the banalities of life as you observed them are always the spices in a story, in a sequence, in a scene. They make the script believable, they make it come “from somewhere.” The worst stories are stories that don’t have their roots in an environment, in a certain place of life. Such contes are just pure concoctions and no one can relate to them. You can avoid that by starting with exploring that one character that attracts you.

And you should ask yourself why. Why does this character ask to be in a story? What is it I feel about him or about her? Because then you begin to find out why you want to write the whole story, and what the passion of that character is, and why he wants what he wants.

Dream For Your Character

Eventually you reach a moment where you can dream for your character, where you can remember for him or her everything that happened in his or her past. When that happens then you are absolutely safe. The character will find his or her way towards the resolution of the story.

At this point the problem is how to hit that character in his most vulnerable spot. How to put him in the worst predicament imaginable, how to strengthen that predicament, and how you can increase, at the same time, his desire to achieve his dreams. Once you do that, you’ve got a story growing, and there is no problem what to do next.

You just use the rational approach and start asking yourself: what are the sequences in which this character tries to get himself out of the predicament? And you put him or her in that predicament as a rule, in about two sequences, of about 10 – 12 minutes. Then you have the steps from the set up of the dramatic situation to the culmination. When you can see the sequences and you start asking what event you can put in the center of each sequence, the story begins to unravel and then you have a chance to feel quite safe. You begin to have an outline, and you can, after that, begin to write.

The Thread of Your Story

There are people who don’t believe in outlines, so they start writing the script without knowing where they are going. What they end up with is something that resembles a script, because it’s typed in the format, and looks like a script, but it’s not a script, and it’s not a story, although it resembles it, and then, although they have written over a hundred pages and discovered something, they have to go back and decide finally what it is that they want to write about. Eventually, they have to throw away most of the scenes they have written, because the scenes don’t fit in the the new story.

The moment you know what the thread of your story is, you see why those etudes, those hallucinations that you should do before you begin to write, are so important. You all know that actors, for example, when they begin to explore a part, make all kinds of etudes for themselves. They go shopping as the character. They wake up as the character, do their toilet, go to a party, or whatever, as the character. They make up scenes that don’t exist in the script, but these explorations, these etudes, help them to understand all the trivia, all those elements that an actor needs to perform the part. You need to do the same thing.

You better know everything that could and might happen to your character. It’s not writing yet. It’s just the ideation, just the thread count. It needs to be combined with this other side of the process which is asking sober-minded questions like: what is the story about? What is the main character’s problem? What is the difficulty, the stress, in which the character can be put and how can the character solve it?

First Drafts

Personally I believe in a first draft written as fast as possible. When you polish each scene as you go, you stop the flow of your imagination. If you start taking care of every line of dialogue and every adjective in the descriptions, you are under restraint in imagining the total, the whole story. Well, the moment you feel that your character is ready to go on the trip, just start writing.

The best advisable way is to write the first draft without stopping.

And there — it’s only again, my advice, some do take it, some don’t — but my advice is to get used to regular writing hours, and write at least one page a day. For me the best thing is to write in the morning when your mind is more or less fresh, and if it’s not, if you have a hangover, for instance, then you write from a feeling of guilt, and that’s not bad either.

But if you have one finished page written every day that means 360 pages a year, which is enough. That’s three drafts of a script, if you rewrite it completely. But you will learn that the second and third drafts are usually written much faster, so 360 pages can be two scripts a year. That’s just writing one page a day. It gives you a feeling of freedom. You can waste the rest of the day and nothing happens. You have done that one page and you feel comfortable and relaxed.

At the same time something else is happening. You don’t necessarily think consciously about writing for the rest of the day, but subconsciously you still do. Your imagination is at work, unforced, at its leisure. And the next page next day is better.

Also, you shouldn’t ever try to finish everything that is clear in your mind in one writing session. If you do you will find yourself at an impasse. You’ll be stumped. But if you leave part of the scene, or part of the sequence that’s clearly in front of your eyes for the next day, you won’t have that awful feeling of getting started again, because you just continue, and the moment you begin to continue with the things that were clear the day before, new horizons usually open immediately. That’s because the imagination begins to work.

So one page a day — and that’s it. Next day, again.

***

Days of Grain and Processing

Not so long ago, film was dangerous. It was mechanical, chemical and physical – and there was always a sense of risk. Film labs used to be one of the key links in the filmmaking chain. You would bring them your hours of work and trust them with all of the magic from set. Next day you’d be back to screen it. I loved that routine.

We still call it filmmaking, even though we’re not really touching a lot of film anymore. It was great to revisit 16mm B&W prints of my first feature. I hadn’t been at a rewind bench in years and the memories came flooding back. I loved my split reels and splicers!

I was inspecting two prints that were now 25 years old. I remembered that the lab had difficulty in processing my black and white 16mm film. (Their business was mostly 35mm color.)  They struck a “first answer print” which I screened, but wouldn’t pay for. They agreed it was dark, but rather than throw it away, they gave it to me.

The next print was better. Comparing them side by side, you can see just how different the one print is: the contrast is high and there’s a lot of grain. Even the perforations are black.

Watching that print gave the story a completely different feel. Yes, some narrative elements were lost in the shadows, but there was an overall sense of foreboding and creeping dread that I liked. It kept me watching for different reasons. I’m glad I preserved it.

Unleashing the Power of Hallucinogens

Before microdosing became the trend in Silicon Valley, some people used to just watch my film. The National Library and Archives has the last remaining 35mm print – and they won’t loan it out. But they made a digitized copy and we’ll be screening it for the first time tomorrow night.