Don't Rely on the Gloss

A couple years ago, my wife and I spent the better part of a weekend sanding, staining, and finishing a pair of cheap old Ikea bookshelves. For just a little extra sweat and effort, the immediate results were pretty darn impressive. A couple months of regular use, though, broke that spell real fast. In spite of the new finish, there was no covering up the fact that these were still some cheap old Ikea bookshelves.

It wasn't long ago that only a select few - those with lots of money, equipment, and technical know-how - could make motion pictures. Now, if you've got a decent camera, a computer, and some editing software, you, at home no less, can create pretty professional-looking work. But now more than ever, aspiring to slickness, to gloss for its own sake, won't cut it.

That doesn't excuse poor execution. But just remember, the most beautifully-produced work can't hide what's going on, or not going on, inside.

Film Forward!

A few weeks ago, I found myself eavesdropping on a pair of film students debating the merits of the digital filmmaking revolution. One of them reasoned that because more people have access to the tools of filmmaking just means that a whole lot more crap is getting out there. That the exclusivity of the film industry was actually a good thing, since it ensured some measure of quality control over the films that get made and seen.

I call bullsh$#. Yes, as any half-hearted search through YouTube would prove, the fact that we can shoot, upload, and share video with such ease does mean that a whole lot more crap is getting out there. But the notion that, especially at this unique moment in time, the Hollywood model, the independent model, hell, anything calling itself a "model" of production and distribution is somehow all we need to accommodate the stories told through motion pictures is, at best, ridiculous.

I could be wrong - and it very well could be a consequence of living in L.A. -  but I sense that there's some unwritten assumption in motion pictures that you should strive to reach mass audiences with your work. But there's not now, and certainly won't be into the foreseeable future, any shortage of stories that cater to audiences of millions upon millions upon millions of people.

What is in short supply are stories that are personal, imperfect, idiosyncratic, truthful, and yes, not crappy.

Outdated terminology

Can we come up with another name for "film"? And while we're at it, let's add "filmmaking" and "filmmaker" to the list. And all those job titles which seem to say more about the specialization of the film industry - writer, director, editor, cinematographer, sound designer, and on and on - let's rethink those too.

There's such a huge gap beween how movies (and television, documentaries, music videos, short films, etc.) have been made up until now, and how they can be made, that much of this terminology feels stale and outdated.

Don't get me wrong. As long as they have any say, the film industry's not going anywhere.

But as for this next generation of artists using moving images and sound as their raw materials, until we come up with something better, all of these titles and terms are, at best, approximations.

Film as Experience

Have you ever listened to a piece of music that just held you completely captive? Kept you suspended is a state of... rapture might be too strong of a word, but maybe not. And when the music ends, there's no cerebral dissection of the experience. No breaking down of the music into its constituent components. The experience of listening is the meaning.

I'm for filmmaking, for visual storytelling, that communicates in this way.

I watched Upstream Color for the first time a few days ago. The promise of smart science-fiction, produced and distributed entirely outside of the Hollywood mass-market movie extruder had me more-than-excited to see this film. And it delivered on a lot of that promise.

But it also reignited an internal debate I've grappled with for a while, that revolves around this idea of "film as riddle." 

Both Upstream Color and writer/director (and actor, editor, and music composer... hell yeah!) Shane Carruth's first feature Primer come with a built-in assumption that they require figuring-out. That for the film's meaning to be imparted, it must be further unraveled and examined (so much so, that Primer has inspired several fan-produced diagrams - see below). 

While it's undeniably empowering for an audience to receive a film as a puzzle to be solved, I can't help but feel this comes at the expense of true and meaningful exchange.

This doesn't preclude a film from speaking in abstraction, however. Quite the opposite. But there's a distinction to be made between films that do so and accept analysis, and those that are beholden to them. One is open, the other impenetrable. I'm thinking of the difference between David Lynch's Mulholland Drive and Christopher Nolan's Inception. Both films explore dream states and layers of reality, but whereas Mulholland Drive is held together by an abstract emotional logic, Inception is a deliberately crafted (and exquisitely so) jigsaw puzzle of narrative wizardry. Mullholland Drive invites you to make sense of its meaning. Inception demands it.

Films are at their best when they engage us as full body experiences, when they speak to both our brains and our guts. It's then that we can disappear into that magical, spellbound state where the experience of watching the film is the meaning itself.

Note on using voiceover

So I'm working on this short film right now that is basically a story told in voiceover. And the whole time I'm trying to shake this sense of shame and embarrassment that using voiceover is somehow cheating. Or that it's too easy.

Where did this come from? Robert McKee (or perhaps the Robert McKee character in Adaptation)?

Whether it was Robert McKee or some other screenwriting guru who came up with this edict against using voiceover, it's worth remembering that they're talking about story and screenwriting in the strictly Hollywood-production-model, film-industry sense. It's about sales and moving units. It's about mass audiences. 

Thankfully, Hollywood is no longer the gatekeeper when it comes to creating and releasing films. So if using voiceover helps to tell your story and move your audience, use it. Of course, be smart about it.

But never lose site of what you're working with: oving images and sound.

Make it work.