The Reason for Horror (and why it's so bad lately)

Aliens' final shot: Ripley and Newt can dream again

NOTE: the following was originally written as a response to a friend's blog. But considering how infrequently I blog here, I decided to capitalize on my splurg. There has been some editing for clarification.
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As a former-and-sometimes-still horror and SF movie fanatic, I no longer find the perverse pleasure in grueling movies and books to the extent that I used to. I will cop to once in a while watching a bloody-as-fuck B-movie and getting kicks out of it, but for the most part, I demand my horror to be purpose-driven.

Horror is essentially a descent into hell, in the classical sense. Whether the story is "The Descent" or "Black Swan", they're horrific "descents" of one kind or another.

The thing of it is, 99% of horror movies, including those two, only stole the superficial aspects of the classical Descent into the Land of the Dead. They didn't steal the purpose a Land of the Dead serves in a story. It is this missing purpose that makes those old stories tick, and it's why many of us have crawled to the bottom of that genre's barrel, and ultimately find it so lacking.

In The Epic of Gilgamesh, the hero travels to the underworld to find his dead friend Enkidu. Once there, he meets Enkidu but cannot bring him back. Instead, Gilgamesh is given great wisdom (read the epic yourself to see what wisdom, exactly). He brings this wisdom back and shares it with his people. This is the purpose of the Land of the Dead. Classically, the dead always possess greater wisdom than the living, so if we are to go there, we go there only for wisdom. No one goes to hell because it's fun. You endure that hardship to find something to bring back with you. You cannot return from the Land of the Dead without wisdom. The struggle to enter and exit the Land of the Dead is so great that you will gain wisdom simply through attrition. And once gained, is your responsibility to share it with the living. To gain but not to share this wisdom is selfish.

To think of it another way, when life sucks we frequently call it "meaningless" or "futile" -- we're trying to find the wisdom in our own Descent and have yet to find it. Some people spend their entire lives searching for that wisdom. And many of them return to share it, once found, whether through movies, books, short stories, or Alcoholics Anonymous.

But when fictions like a Saw or a Black Swan or even, yes, a Hurt Locker ("war is hell", right?), take us to the Land of the Dead, the unspoken contract for enduring that experiential pain is that we will in return be given great wisdom. But none of these movies fulfill their end of the contract. Even listen to how most of their makers' talk about them -- it's always "I wanted to put the audience through X" or "I love fucking with people". Where do you think these expressions come from? Not from nowhere. To be taken to hell and not given wisdom is to "be fucked with".

There are really only five horror films of any kind that truly try to fulfill this contract: "Aliens", "The Exorcist", "Poltergeist", "Rosemary's Baby", and "The Thing".

"Aliens" takes us to hell in order to show us how we can conquer our deepest, darkest fears. This is not meta-text. It is right there on the screen for everyone to see. The movie opens with the hero having a nightmare. She tries hard not to return to their source (the Land of the Dead). And when she does, it is because she literally can't sleep. Once in the Land of the Dead, she finds a Jungian Innocent in need of protection. The hero now has cause to conquer her fear, beyond her own well-being. The hero and innocent even bond over how their nightmares have come true. When the hero finally faces her fears to rescue the innocent, she literally descends through flame straight into the heart of the story's Land of the Dead. And the final dialogue exchange of the film is from the Innocent: "Can I dream again?" The hero answers, "I think we both can." Shot of them sleeping peacefully. Boom -- done. Through facing her fears, she defeats them and inspires others to do the same.

Many people have had nightmares because of "Aliens", but not a single person is disgusted by it the way so many are by "Saw" or "Hostel". No one feels guilty or corrupted for having sat through it.

"The Exorcist" offers an even more punishing experience, but it still provides wisdom and catharsis such that by the end of it, you're exhausted, but you're not sickened. And remember, this is a movie in which a 9-year-old girl masturbates with a crucifix. We're not sickos, so rough as it is, how does that not leave us feeling ill and dirty? Because on an emotional level, we understand that we've gained something from experiencing it. And this isn't a religious "God exists" kind of wisdom. In fact, for all the evidence the film gives us, "God" may never have existed to begin with in this story's world. All the good, positive action in "The Exorcist" is carried out by simple people, struggling to overcome their faults in order to defeat this ultimate evil. "God" gives them no strength except that which they already possess. Their strength always comes from within, out of love of a child or compassion for suffering. For all "The Exocist" 's supernatural aspects, the film is a completely humanist experience. It takes us to the very depths of hell and brings us back to the Land of the Living, wisdom in hand. Wisdom we can use here, whether there's an afterlife or not.

The other three of those five films I've mentioned don't come as close to fulfilling their contracts as "Aliens" or "The Exorcist", but of them "Poltergeist" probably comes the closest. It's wisdom doesn't have the depth or density the other two provide, but it doesn't take you as deep into hell as them either, so its wisdom is still more or less proportional. "Rosemary's Baby" and "The Thing" offer regressively smaller glimpses of wisdom. But considering that wisdom is something literally nothing else even tries for anymore, that's still saying something.

"We will endure pain in exchange for reward" is a contract between producer and consumer that is thousands of years old. But when pain becomes the reward, as in movies other than those five, the story/experience is corrupt and malicious. As a society, we give tacit approval of mild S&M behind closed doors, but no one would say a person who likes having their flesh flayed for no other reason than the experience itself, is a well-adjusted person. And we certainly wouldn't appreciate being exposed to it in public.

Pain is not a reward. The further into the Land of the Dead, the greater the wisdom must be. This is how it has been and must always be.

Daily Productivity Blog #11

Today, I took the following actions in pursuits of the cinematic storyteller's craft:

1) I worked on the edit for my friend-colleague's theatrical project. I didn't accomplish as much as I ought to have, but some is better than none.

2) My co-writer and I put in three hours' work on our feature, after being stalled on the inelegant but apparently unavoidable structure of our film's teaser. I went into idiot-savant mode and tore through our third act, looking for anything and everything that might require any kind of connective tissue in the first act. My co-writer classified my savant-isms and then we went to work analyzing them. This enabled us to do some wonderful refining to the connecting points in our 1st and 3rd acts -- which is a milestone of sorts, being at the stage we can definitively state that we're refining our outline. Of course, our second act has an enormous amount of work that needs to be done to it directly, but because so many of our refinements are about alleviating the burden on our 2nd act, our 1st/3rd act work actually sometimes doubles as indirect 2nd act work as well.

3) And I watched THE QUIET MAN, which is a phenomenal film. But I am conflicted over how Ford deals with the boxing back-story, primarily because it seems to me we should be understanding why Thornton won't fight for his wife so that we can feel his internal conflict as it reaches its boiling point. Instead, we're left on the outside for the better part of the film, observing a man who seems frustrated and conflicted, but being unable to connect with why he feels this way. Ultimately, it makes Thornton look like a cipher at best, an unsympathetic coward at worst -- until, that is, we're given his backstory. It just doesn't make any narrative logic, given Ford's storytelling preferences and presumed intentions, that he would deliberately make this film 1/2 observational "character study", 1/2 passionate romance. I don't want to kill one of my heroes, but I do think this may be a mistake. If nothing else, I think it's telling that the backstory has to be revealed on the back of the box in order to sell the film's story coherently. It's no SEARCHERS or STAGECOACH, but it's still a good film.

4) The making-of also gave me what is likely the best, simplest acting lesson I've ever been given: "[Maureen O'Hara] looks me in the eyes... [and] makes me act by making me react." -- John Wayne
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Hasta manana.

Daily Productivity Blog #10

It is so much easier to do this regularly when I'm working a regular schedule.

I've accomplished much since I last wrote in here -- so much that I'm not even sure what I've already mentioned or not.

To catch things up, I'll mention the following:

1) I cut my short film to pieces and stitched it back together. It's now a lean, mean motherfucker. It still has some residual issues, but the key is that I cut out 1/4 of the material and it still works. from 25minutes down to 17 -- and it makes sense that it works at 17, because the script was 17 pages. Who knew?

2) My co-writer and I have continued our trend of radical albeit essential revisions to our feature. It goes well. Today we re-visited our teaser and I'm quite happy with it now. It's not locked yet, but it's a step-and-a-half in the right direction.

3) NEMO is truly brilliant. The more I study it's construction, the in awe of it I am. Say what you will about it's family-friendly-ness, but it's made by some incredibly smart, skilled, and talented people, working at the top of their form to tell a story they felt in their bones. May I strive for a story so well-constructed, anthropomorphism or no.

4) I revisited POLTERGEIST yesterday and that was an eye-opening experience. My god, I hadn't seen the film in at least ten years and it's incredible how it holds up. Hooper drops the ball in the finale with the real estate boss and considering that was the only portion of filming Spielberg wasn't present for, I guess I'm not surprised. POLTERGEIST is nothing like any of the Tobe Hooper films I've seen, and is clearly a through-and-through Spielbergian effort. I can't believe that man was ghost-directing (pardon the pun) POLTERGEIST at the same time he was working on E.T. That's incredible. I also had an epiphany about Spielberg's visual sensibility, but I've neither properly digested said epiphany yet, nor would I be up for regurgitating it if I had.
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Night, all.

A lesson in humility

"The humble improve" -- Wynton Marselis

Not wasting time by learning from less than the best is common sense, but the temptation is always there to lower your standards, or see if you can see what other people see in pieces of shit -- such as my recent [redacted] revisit.

I have to admit, in this flawed spirit, I recently watched what I'd always assumed was a bad '80s B-horror film. I had never seen this film, however. Well, I watched and it is in the final summation a bad 80s horror film. The story is garbage, the performances not particularly good. But -- the visual storytelling, while not great, was still pretty impressive considering the kind of movie this was for. While watching this above-par-for-its-ambitions movie, I found myself realizing that I likely could not tell a story that well. For all the credit I sometimes give myself, I couldn't do better than a bad 80s horror film. This was humbling. What was more humbling was that I immediately looked up the director's filmography thinking, "Surely, this guy must've moved on to something because he at least shows promise, if not mastery here." His IMDB page was empty. There or four DTV flicks, a low-rent reality TV show. Then nothing.

If this guy who directed what must've been received as surprisingly solid when it came out in 1987, couldn't make a career out of it -- then what does that say about me, who probably couldn't do that well at this point in time?

Now, it's possible there are a hundred and one reasons why the guy went nowhere -- addiction, trauma, disinterest -- but the thought was still humbling. It reminded me that making a decent film is not enough. You have to make the best possible film you can -- and even then, continue to better yourself.

It made me realize how rare a Duel or a Terminator are straight out of the gate. Either of which I'll be lucky to make at any point in my career.

Daily Productivity Blog #9

The weekend.

Saturday I took the following actions in pursuit of the cinematic storyteller's craft:

1) My co-writer and I put in hours on our feature. Definite progress.

2) I edited my short film, cutting together the final scene that was lost when FCP crashed a few posts ago. It's better now. Much. I'm glad I got a "re-do".


Sunday I took the following actions in pursuit of the cinematic storyteller's craft:

1) My co-writer and I put in three hours on our feature. We have locked the 'Kansas" component of our first act. And worked out the entire arch of the mentor's supporting plot. We are ready to begin "Oz" Tuesday (Monday being Valentine's, we won't be working. But not because he has a date, poor bastard. I'm the married one.)

2) I spent ten hours editing my short film. I made some very savage cuts to the thing. The good news is it's now structurally sound. Act breaks all fall at the points in time where they should. The mini-epiphany I got out of this, however, is that not every scene can be approached as a complete film. That's good in theory, but then you work your way into the scene the same way you work your way into the film. Entire films and maybe even individual acts can suffer a gentle opening, a gradual easing into the piece, but scenes cannot. The majority of my cutting was removing these elegant albeit time-consuming entrances.. It's possible I've taken out too much though. We'll see in the AM. The version in question is 17 minues, 41 seconds long. If brevity is truly the soul of wit, then it should unquestionably be better than the 25 minute version.

3) Daily story study: I will read a fable.

4) Daily visual storytelling study: I will study Rockwell.

5) Daily discipline: see above.

Daily Productivity Blog #8

An Incredible family dinner. The extraordinary in the context of the mundane.

Today I took the following actions in pursuit of the cinematic storyteller's craft:

1) I worked cutting / post-ing video.

2) I met with one of my mentor's for a quick chat which turned into an epic talk (as they always tend to do). Lesson of the evening: " 'Incongruity' is a powerful took. Making the sweet looking be mean, or the powerful-looking be meek can be either funny or scary, depending on execution. But it almost always works as a way to engage people." [Paraphrased] Brad Bird used this as his guiding principle in THE INCREDIBLES: every amazing thing is grounded in something ordinary, every ordinary thing is grounded in something amazing. What incongruity does is give you immediate contrast, as immediate as contrast within a single character. This contrast gives you a stick by which to measure the extraordinary, it provides context. Incongruity is simultaneous context.

3) I watched THE CRAZIES again and confirmed that it is, in fact, pretty damn okay. Outer boundaries, connective tissue, and visual storytelling -- it's refreshing to see some actual craft put to work. Imperfect, but entertaining and competently crafted.

4) I watched MASTER & COMMANDER, the far superior high-seas adventure film and the true best picture of 2003. Its script-writing isn't as focused as it could be, but the "lesser of two weevils" lesson is pretty well elucidated through the key events of the film. The surface writing is sharp, the acting exceptional, the visual storytelling gorgeous. Possibly the most unfortunate franchise non-starter of the last decade. Besides M&C, there's really only PIXAR, Ken Burns, and THE KING OF KONG to remind us that anything even happened those ten years.

5) I fell asleep. And woke back up to blog. (Okay, not really. My wife needed to be picked up from work. I have simply used this as a second chance to blog tonight).

6) I walked a mile to meet my mentor, and then back to work to check on a render, then 3.5 miles home. That's 5.5 miles. Not bad.

7) Daily story study: I will read a fable.

8) Daily visual storytelling study: I will study Rockwell.

Daily Productivity Blog #7

This one's going to be short: no grand epiphanies. That and I'm fading fast.

Today I took the following actions in pursuit of the cinematic storyteller's craft:

1) I worked a six-hour shift editing video.

2) I saw BLACK SWAN with my family. Moving on...

3) I put in two hours' work with my co-writer on our feature, even though we were/are both frazzled at the end of a long week. We did not have any revelatory break-throughs, but we did make incremental and definitive progress: we worked out the first real sequence of the body of the film. It's not half-bad, and definitely better than our previous notion of how we'd begin. Believe me, we're doing our damnedest not to bore you folks.

4) Daily visual storytelling study: I'll study some Rockwell.

5) Daily storytelling study: I'll read a fable.

6) Daily discipline: I wrote a blog.
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'Night, all.

Daily Productivity Blog #6

Today I took the following actions in pursuit of the cinematic storyteller's craft:

1) I worked all day.

2) I walked three miles from work to my edit bay.

3) I took a still frame of what I would consider to be the anchor image in each scene of my short film. I arranged them in Photoshop and created what is in effect a comic book out of them. I shuffled them around. I cut scenes. I arranged them in chronological order, reverse chronological order, hyper-anachronological order. You get the picture. I may have found a structure that works. It works on paper at least. But after working into the wee hours of the morning when I have to get up and put in a few hours at work tomorrow, I actually feel rather dissatisfied. I completely re-cut the film's sex scene and I'm not sure I like it. At all. But my time had run out if I'm to get any sleep tonight and so I left the new verson of the film compressing with a bitter taste in my mouth... (cont'd at bottom)

4) I'm going to study Rockwell if it's only a fleck of paint.

5) I'm going to read a fable.
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(cont'd) ...so I'm going to go brush my teeth now.

Daily Productivity Blog #5

Chess legend Bobby Fischer

Day 5 in a row (mostly). How long does it take to form a habit?

Today I took the following actions in pursuit of the cinematic storyteller's craft:

1) I returned two prop guns to the man who was kind enough to lend them to my short film. Way overdue, but better late than never. Because he's such a boss gentleman, I'll give him a shout-out here: Shawn Anderson, a true G&E mensch. Seek him out if you're looking for a gaffer/key grip in the Seattle area. He has a grip truck at reasonable rates.

2) My co-writer and I finally managed to cram in a few hours' long overdue work on our feature script and we managed to accomplish quite a bit. It's really kind of amazing how much shit you can get done when you implement a deadline, however vague, to put a sense of urgency in your work. We made some significant structural changes tonight, locked others in solid, and discovered the nature of the four primary relationships in our film. This discovery necessitated us first admitting that one particular character was a cipher, and not in a good way. Once admitted, everything pretty much locked into place almost instantly. We had to talk it out, but it was amazing how clear the relationships became once we copped to a problem.

3) I watched about a 1/2 hour of John Ford's THE QUIET MAN, and until the later script work was done, I didn't expect anything to rival the revelation that came from watching that movie. I had no idea, til now, that the scene Elliot mirrors in E.T. when he lets all the frogs go, is the beautiful and bold first kiss between John Wayne and Scarlett O'Hara. Once it came up, it was an instant, gut recall: I immediately saw the scene playing on the TV that ET's watching, and Elliot reenacting it. What's truly miraculous about this remembrance is that I haven't seen E.T. in maybe a decade (an error I aim to soon correct). A recall so instantaneously of a film last seen so long ago is a two-fold testament to the iconic power with which Ford staged and filmed the scene in THE QUIET MAN, as well as to the emotional homage Spielberg staged for E.T. It's no Tarantino/Rodriguez ape-ing, it's an honest-to-god rearticulation of that scene for his movie's own emotional purpose. That's how you pay respect. May I have the skill, fortune and sense to do the same, should I ever require an homage. By the way, Republic Pictures' transfer on their QUIET MAN "Special Edition" DVD is easily the worst I've ever seen. Handheld bootlegs re-scans of ALIENS VS PREDATOR in Iraq had better color fidelity and sharper focus. Get on it Criterion!

4) As I was leaving my old edit room tonight, after the 2 hours of story-breaking, I had a sort of revelation about the script-to-production ratio. I was thinking about how my co-writer and I have been working on our story in various forms since the end of July 2010, minus two months we took off so I could focus on reshoots for my short film. Still, with the schedule we've mapped-out for the remainder of our scripting process, by the end we will have put over 15 months of work into the script (at an average of 15 hours' work per week). Surely, this time-span would be comparable to any actual production of the film, from prep- through post-. So let's say that the script-to-production ratio of this film -- should we be so lucky -- is 1 : 1. I then compared this to what the going ratio is on my short film, which will probably end up somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 : 20. There are so many problems I'm having to fix with reshoots and clever editing, that could have easily been fixed at the script stage. Now, I'd like to mention that the first iteration of that short film was my graduating thesis project and I was on an incredibly tight deadline in an academic environment that was at times unsupportive of narrative filmmaking, at others out-right disdainful. And I will also say that the long editing and reshoots process has been extremely educational for me, especially with respect my evolving appreciation of the malleability of visual storytelling. All that said, DESERTERS will be good, but it will be a much costlier and harder-fought "good" than had I taken the time to get the script right. This is not a regret, so much as a cost/benefit analysis. I also think this is true of CAVITY, the last feature script I wrote. If we consider the drafting of it as the actual "production" of the script, and the outlining as the "writing", then that process was probably more like 1 : 100. Had I spent at least half as much time "writing" CAVITY, I wouldn't have to do so much narrative tapdancing and "reshooting". The lesson here is one of the oldest: Proper Planning and Preparation Prevent Piss-Poor Performance. CAVITY is 200 pages long and took me a week of outling and three months to script. On my current script, my co-writer and I have been working eight months on our outline, and don't plan to type a page of script until sometime in late summer/early fall. It will be between 100 and 110 pages. Lesson-learned, bitch.

5) I wrote a blog.

6) I will read a fable.

7) I will study Rockwell.

8) I will go to bed by 12:30.
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Rock 'n' roll.

Daily Productivity Blog #4

A flawless scene. Still from John Ford's Stagecoach.

Today I took the following actions in pursuit of the cinematic storyteller's craft:

1) I worked all day. Getting paid to cut & assemble video still carries a luster even though my work for them is going on four weeks.

2) I stayed late at work. I'm giving this it's own number, because staying late is its own achievement.

3) I applied to a second job for editing. Fingers crossed.

4) Though tonight was a work night for our script, my co-writer and I were buggered by a sudden domestic problem I had to take care of and so were unable to devote much time to our script. However, we still managed to talk over a connective tissue issue (say that five times fast) involving our villain and hero's final exchange and how to best illustrate their mirrored qualities: paths not taken, regrets, an apology too late, etc. My references for this were to the "Southern Gentleman" in STAGECOACH and Amon Goethe in SCHINDLER'S LIST (which has been our chief reference for the villain all along, in addition to Archibald Cunningham from ROB ROY). Matt brought up the end of KOTOR -- a game I've never played, despite being a huge BioWare fan due to MASS EFFECT -- and it seems to be perfect reference. As he describes it, it's an even better emotional articulation of the idea than what is done in STAGECOACH. There the idea, while sound, is truthfully one of that gargantuan film's very few shortcomings. But it still sorta works. Our particular notion of implementing that idea is solid, it just needs finessing. Suffice to say, if we can make you cry when Hero and Obstacle exchange their final words, then our job will have been done very well indeed.

5) I walked (most of the way) home from work.

6) I studied Rockwell.

7) I will read a fable.

8) I am calling it a night as early as possible.
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Good night, world.

Daily Productivity Blog #3

I failed to blog last evening, so I'll just consider this one a "weekend blog".

Saturday:

1) I worked for 5 hours with my co-writer on our feature script. We met our goal for the session: resolve the Outer Boundaries / Teaser issue helped in part by reading Finding Nemo's script earlier in the week.

2) I met my former neighbor for a few beers and talked movies for two hours. It was a true discussion, not just chit-chat.

Sunday:

3) I had a two-hour meeting with my short film's sound designer/composer to get the post- ball rolling.

4) Unfortunately, my second action taken Sunday in pursuit of the cinematic storyteller's craft was an attempt to deal with and overcome failure. Final Cut crashed on an edit, corrupting the file, and the auto-save vault had been inactive for the past two weeks. I lost a considerable amount of work because I wasn't adequately backing-up my files. So after a few good swings at a duffel bag, I settled in to re-cut a few of DESERTERS' scenes that were lost. It took me the rest of the day to do, but re-examining scenes I'd put to bed gave me an opportunity to play with some restructuring and to fine-tuning. There is one last "lost scene" that I didn't get to due to time, but it's the largest of the remaining ones and will have to wait until later in the week.

5) I'm watching A BUG'S LIFE and I can't believe I ever thought that ANTZ was a pimple on this film's phenomenal ass. The visual storytelling is clear, simple, and effective, and the drama is pretty good too. Considering Seven Samurai's story archetype has been an epic samurai action film, a badass Western, and a children's animated film, stories truly are in the telling. Most interesting about watching this is noticing how they've interpreted and diverged from the original material -- it's the same story, only not.

6) I will study a Rockwell.

7) I will read a fable.

8) And I will rack-out soon.
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'Til tomorrow, signing off.

Daily Productivity Post #2

Image by Jack Kirby

Today I took the following actions in pursuit of the cinematic storyteller's craft:

1) I worked a full day's worth of work. Video editing is not a bad way to earn a living, even if the hours are erratic.

2) I walked 3 miles to a meeting.

3) Said meeting was to catch-up and return favors to a friend and colleague who is in need of video edit mojo.

4) I promised to cut said friend/colleague a 30-second trailer of a past-production in order to to help win grant money to revisit it. I cut a 45-second trailer from her 55-minute show and it's pretty okay. Hope it gets the job done.

5) I had a very long and enriching conversation with my writing partner on why our ability to re-shape the world through our stories is a good and important thing. In short, there are two kinds of important stories, each kind every bit as necessary as the other: Cautionary Tales, i.e. "don't do this bad thing or this other bad thing will reult"; and what he and I called Aspirational Tales, i.e. "strive to live up to this good thing and just maybe this other good thing will result." After we both had a long, rough, stressful week, Aspirational Stories really seemed to be on our minds during this discussion. I may blog more later about this.

6) I had a long and (mostly) respectful argument with my former neighbor on Facebook about the state of modern film, and the movie producer-consumer relationship. I had a good analogy that I'll reprint here:

The onus should always be on the producer to deliver a quality product, not on the consumer to determine or define or contribute to its quality. It is the craftsman, the artisan who does the work so that the product can be appreciated and of service to the consumer for the money they paid.

A truly well-made chair does not require "some assembly", it comes fully formed: beautifully rendered, structurally sound, and lest we forget -- resplendently comfortable.

In this same way a good movie must arrive fully formed: beautifully lit and composed, structurally sound in both plot and image assembly, and ultimately comfortable to the audience. And don't confuse "comfortable" with "comfort food". Perapetia is comfort -- Oedipus, Hamlet, and The Godfather are comfortable because they generate catharsis through their release of dramatic tension.

These three different stories are products, fully-formed on delivery.

7) I studied some Norman Rockwell.

8) I read a fable.

9) I wrote a blog. Say it with me: Recursion's a bitch.

And done.

NEW RULE: Daily Post #1

I've decided that, since this blog is going on FIVE YEARS OLD, I'll probably continue to futz around with it indefinitely so, what the hell, I may as well embrace it. Even if I don't really like the idea of being a "blogger", a label I just yesterday remarked to my co-writer as referring to "old codgers with nothing to say". Prejudice against their kind aside, depending on my mood I either have too many better and more important things to do than blog, or am too lazy. Probably a bit of both, with a dash of simply-not-having-anything-to-say.

But here's the rub: from now forward, I will post here each day, and each day I have nothing to say or am too lazy to say it, I will at least write a few short words on what I've done this day to move me closer to mastery of "the cinematic storyteller's craft" -- a phrase which, if the masthead at the top of my blog didn't give away already, is my motus operandi and shall henceforth and herewith etc. be used a shit-lot.

If it's phrasing bothers you, I suggest ending your readership here.

On with it:

Today I took the following actions in pursuit of the cinematic storyteller's craft:

1) I read 70 pages of FINDING NEMO's 140-page(!) script...and thanks to this, have very likely solved the first act "Outer Boundaries"/character context issue my co-writer and I have been dancing around for months now.

2) I worked a full day's work. Surprising, I know, but what's especially great about this is that I actually got paid to further my pursuit of the cinematic storyteller's craft -- in other words, I got paid to edit "some video". Still, pretty sweet. Bonus: lots of opportunities to practice Hitchcock's "Image Size" principle.

3) I walked the 3.5 miles from work to my apartment, partly to save money, partly because it was a nice damn night, and partly because my chairborne ass needed to move. Being "fit" is also what I would consider part of the "cinematic storyteller's craft".

4) I spent a few minutes discussing Finding Nemo and the O.B. issue with my co-writer even though he's sick, I'm exhausted, and it's a Thursday, which aren't big writing days for us. A few minutes, however briefly, are better than none.

5) I finished reading a draft of Mentor A's (I have two wonderful mentors! -- one of my precious few fortunes) third, forth-coming book on storytelling.

6) I'm going to bed before midnight!* A regular, healthy sleep-schedule, while inconvenient and probably rarely ever practiced, must still be aspired to.

7) I read a fable.

8) I wrote a blog. Recursion's a bitch.

....

I guess that's all, but eight concrete actions taken in pursuit of the cinematic storyteller's craft -- should I just capitalize this and get it over with? -- is pretty damn good for a day I'd kind of written-off as a productivity-loss. And that is exactly why I've decided on this daily "productivity blog": in case it's not obvious, I'm not doing this for you. You'll hopefully enjoy the result of my labors, but this? This "daily blog" is for me.

*Note: in taking the time to proof-read this post, it is now 35-minutes past midnight.

**Final thought: should I be so candid? WWJD? That's "What Would John (Ford) Do?" or alternately, "What Would James (Cameron) Do?". I certainly couldn't imagine sonuvabitch John Ford sitting around, publicly patting himself on the back for reading a few pages of a script.

So in the spirit of Mr. Ford and in honor of yesterday being his 115th birthday, I'll offer an alternate blog:

Fuck it.

DESERTERS trailer

The trailer for my short film, pre-reshoots:



Be gentle.

DESERTERS is on final approach!

Fight the fight!

Visual Storytelling: Three Goals

Far be it from me, a humble student, to reduce the irreducible, to find order in chaos, to make rules out of random artistic inspiration -- but I'm going to give it the college try. For my own sake, if not for yours.

Before I continue with my thesis, let me first state that I base all of the below on three assumptions:

1) "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." -- Leonardo da Vinci
2) "Drama is communicating an intellectual idea on an emotional level." -- Brian McDonald
3) Your style is how you solve a given problem. -- Will Eisner
3.5) And that I'm not talking out of my ass.

I do believe this morning, while watching DIE HARD (1988) with the sound off, that I may have sussed-out -- or perhaps, merely recycled by synthesis -- what I will call "The Three Goals of Visual Storytelling". These apply to film most readily -- but I bet with any keen study of a given visual medium's better works, you'd find that the same goals apply. Such media would include comics especially, but also painting, illustration, graphic design, etc. I'm on the fence about video games, because they're still trying to figure out just what they are as a collective medium and besides, no one can agree on what constitutes a good game beyond how they "feel" when they play it. Videogames have no "Poetics", no Shakespeare, no John Ford. Yet. But I digress, that is a much longer post for a much more lazy day.

Before I breakdown the rules as I see them, let me first define what exactly I mean by "good" visual storytelling. When I talk about "good" visual storytelling, it is usually a pretty quantitative assessment of the work's visual language, not a qualitative assessment of it's style (if there is such a thing), or whether or not I "liked it" because (for example) it's a romantic comedy starring my-favorite-actress-ever-Lindsey-Lohan.

But provided there is such a thing as "style", it's by definition not something we can quantitatively assess. Therefore we need to ask, "What criteria apply to visual storytelling beyond style?" A better way to ask this question might be to say, "What purposes do any given work's visual language serve, regardless of artistic 'interpretation'?"

If we take the primary goal of any work to be the action-objective "to communicate", then the three things any image or series of images must constantly be communicating are, in order:


1) ACTION
2) GEOGRAPHY
3) EMOTION


ACTION - "What is the character doing? What is happening to them?"
The fundamental building block of drama: a character's actions define it's story, plot, and performances. These in turn define how we, the visual storyteller, render them.

Now, before you think I've arbitrarily lumped an unnamed fourth criteria called "Character" into Rule #1, "Action", let's all remember what F. Scott Fitzgerald said about action and character: "Action IS character." [My emphasis] Any one want to challenge Mr. Great Gatsby? Didn't think so.


GEOGRAPHY - "Where does the action take place?"
In order for the audience to understand what exactly constitutes a character's actions, they also need to know where it's happening. Is Indy in the Well of the Souls, or is he hiding out on a freighter? Is John McClaine being shot at on a roof, or running through glass in a computer lab? Is Harry Lime giving his "cuckoo clock" speech on a Ferris wheel, or running for his life through the sewers of Vienna?

Each location and it's specific geography, texture and atmosphere in the above examples all contribute to how the character's actions play out -- and how we perceive them. Would Welles' speech in The Third Man have been the same if he delivered it in the sewers? I don't think so.

This also calls to mind Mr. Anonymous' adage that "[Characters] are products of their environments." Can't really challenge someone named Anonymous.


EMOTION - "How does s/he feel about it?"
Lastly, what are the psychological ramifications of the actions our characters commit -- or the actions that others commit to them? Simply put, how do they -- and by empathic extension, "we" -- feel about it all?

If drama is the application of emotion to communication, then clearly this final "rule" is at the heart of storytelling. Emotion is the "this is what it's all about" element, whether we're talking about simply a single dramatic beat or the entire work, and it's this end that the other two "rules" serve. Emotion is ineffective without first knowing "who did what", "where".

I think it's fair to say that the reason "sentiment" has become such a dirty word is because of unearned emotion -- stories wherein the audience has not been given sufficient action and geography to empathically connect to and invest in a given story's characters. This is why it feels cheap when a film clearly wants us to cry and we feel nothing. A "sentimental" work's emotional manipulation is made transparent in these cases because we're engaged by neither the drama on display, nor how the drama is displayed -- nor, frequently, both.

Alfred Hitchcock put it best: "Emotion REQUIRES information." [My emphasis] Any one want to challenge Mr. Rear Window/Vertigo/North by Northwest/TakeYourPick?


Essentially, these three "goals" or elements of visual storytelling are another way of saying, "Character A does thing B in place C because of D." Ex 1: "Sandy vomited in the bathroom because she was nervous." Ex 2: "John shot the person breaking into his home because he was scared." At a minimum, the images we construct for each of these examples must clearly show each of the ACTION-GEOGRAPHY-EMOTION elements, then embellish as you see fit. In example, we need to see Sandy vomiting, in the bathroom, and find a way to show "nervous". Likewise, with example 2, we need to see John shooting a burglar, in his home, and we need to show that he is "scared". But those are deceptively simple breakdowns. The ways you can show each of those elements are legion, their composition and chronology an order of magnitude greater.

Before you scoff at the simplicity of the methodology, I have to point out that this simplicity is their strength. It doesn't matter how you implement them, as long as you do. If, as Will Eisner said, style is how you solve a given problem, then the how of showing your audience "who is doing what (action) where (geography) why (emotion)", is what becomes your style.

If you make the communication of ACTION, GEOGRAPHY, and EMOTION the only goals your images are beholden to, then you will rivet your audience with (insert emotion here)*.

Feel free to dismantle below.

__________
*Provided, of course, that your content is given the same clear development. As my personal art school savior [see last post] said, "Art is the synthesis of form and content." Visual storytelling is the form, your story is the content.

**Everything in the above and more was handily cribbed from: Aristotle, da Vinci, Shakespeare, Mozart, Chekov, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Ford, Hitchcock, Wilder, Huston, Lumet, Spielberg, Mamet, Cameron, McTiernan (duh), McCloud, and my gracious mentors, Brian McDonald & Andrew Tsao. What is right in the above is owed to them, what is wrong is entirely my fumble.

***Of course, one of my mentors has conveniently boiled down all of the above to an even simpler, single rule: "ABC: Always. Be. Communicating." I don't think they're mutually exclusive, but that doesn't mean I'm right.

My personal art school savior

Paul Rand Retrospective from Jeremy Cox on Vimeo.

DESERTERS deluge

It has most definitely been a long and productive time since I last posted on Cine Medias Res. While I harbor no illusions about the breadth of my audience at this humble blogspot, I do know that there are a happy few of you who comprise the depth of my audience and, as such, I'm sorry to have left you so in the lurch.

In any event, I thought the least I could do was tell you that I did indeed get a short film made, it is indeed not bad by half, and it is indeed going to be seeing some kind of festival life once it's finished -- though to what extent remains to be seen. Oh: and I am indeed in five-digits of debt as a result. And that's just the debt, not including what I spent that I could actually afford.

C'est la vie.

Until I have a finished film for which to post a link here, I'll simply add a sort of "creative" summation. I wrote the following as part of my thesis submission in June. I've done quite a bit of work on the film since then, in numerous small but crucial ways, such that the final film will no doubt look like the film I discuss having made in the below, but won't exactly feel like it.

Bear that in mind when reading the following about my June 01, 2010 edit of DESERTERS:

I am a cinematic storyteller. Which is to say, I tell stories through the medium of film. The goal of my evolving process is to move away from the disingenuous aspects of the post-music video & -commercial visual language, and reconnect to the Aristotelian and Aesop-ian roots of dramatic storytelling. All of this via the moving image.

Storytelling is by necessity a populist art, the goal being to communicate with the largest possible audience. So I’ll make no bones about it: the only modern referents whose work holds much interest for me are two unapologetically populist visual storytellers: Steven Spielberg and James Cameron. That said, I draw a considerable amount of my creative guidance from the pillars of 20th Century filmmaking: guys like Alfred Hitchcock & John Ford, John Huston & David Lean, Billy Wilder & Elia Kazan, and Sidneys Pollack & Lumet. Hitchcock and Ford in particular had an ability to construct by turns disciplined and playful stories, each told with a visual rigor that communicated clearly without being vanilla. The breadth and depth of their combined filmographies provides a creatively rich well for the aspiring professional filmmaker to draw on. This is a well I have only begun to fully explore.

Following these examples, I start with the story. The majority of the time spent on DESERTERS was spent studying, conceiving, and developing -- to the best of my abilities -- a strong story. From that solid foundation evolves both the basic visual language and the dramatic tenor of the performances. As the director, it is my job to orchestrate a push-pull dynamic between these two aspects of filmmaking, an orchestration that aims to arrive at a creative harmony. Equilibrium. DETENTE.

The fundamental rule of visual construction for this project was simple: no hand-held photography. "If the camera is moving it will be on a dolly. If it is not moving it will be on a tripod…” were the first words shared with my cinematographer. And we stuck to them, however in need of a crutch we may have been at points. This forces the visual storyteller to focus more on composition and content, relieving us of a technique that in the best of hands amounts to little more than punctuation.

From that simple declaration, I moved straight into casting and rehearsals. Rehearsals at their best are a process of discovery. The actors and I work the text, combing it for issues to fix and strengths to exploit, first through discussion and table readings, and then through physical staging. In the case of DESERTERS, the two-character argument that comprises the bulk of the second act was a particularly difficult nut to crack. But like the best staging solutions, when we added the physical obstacle of the door, the actors’ beats fell into place like dominoes. The only work left to do was simple finessing.

When we’re comfortable with the rhythm and staging of the scene, I have the actors run their blocking by rote, while I use a still camera to compose as many different kinds of shots, with as many different lenses, from as many different angles as possible. I may take over 150 photos during a two-minute scene, all while keeping in mind two things: 1) Ford’s methodology of composing for the master; and 2) Hitchcock’s principle of “image size” orchestration (essentially: save the close-up for the moment it will create the greatest possible impact). The construction of the final shotlist is derived from this surge of stills, and represents a distillation of an improvised process. After collating the stills from a run of a scene, I may run the same scene again at the next rehearsal to address missing shots or to try a different point of attack in the staging or visual language.

At the end of this preparatory process, the hope is that the script, performances, and shotlist are all working in unison, the one neither fully at the mercy of the other two. Though we will always return to the story and the basic dramatic throughline or “armature”, the intent is to have developed a complete vision in which all parts are serving the whole.

Our homework done, we shoot. Directing on-set is a lot like an improvised endurance test: you craft your plan to the best of your abilities, yet everyday presents a potentially-crippling challenge you couldn’t possibly have foreseen but in hindsight seems clumsy to have overlooked. Locations and actors come and go; what worked on the page and even in rehearsal doesn’t work on the day; you lose the light; you lose the crew; you lose time; you lose your mind. So you adjust fire, always keeping in mind the end product. “Does it work? Do I buy it?” If so, we move on. We shoot. And shoot. And shoot. And then, maybe, we re-shoot. We averaged no less than six 12-hour days during the DESERTERS shoot.

On one day in particular, we worked for 16 hours, including the striking of the set. That we were able to get not only usable but quality material in the latter 1/3 of this day is a huge testament to a vetted plan of action and a dedicated cast & crew.

Editing is a process that still possesses a bit of alchemy for me. I tend to read a lot by editor and sound designer Walter Murch, not just because he is good, but because he is also the most out-spoken of any cinema editor. Hitchcock’s image size principle returns to mind as well. In all, it is a process of selecting the best takes, and moving from one shot to the next in a way that follows the beats of the story and performances, and balancing those beats with the need for tempo and momentum in the telling. The final part of editing tends to be the culling of other takes for little bits that could be useful somewhere or could replace a quick cutaway. In the case of DESERTERS, these allowed for the creation of what could be called epic similes: the insertion of out-of-context shots to create thematic contrast, plant visual fuses, and/or illustrate a character’s thought-process. In a way, these similes feel a bit like cheating – they’re out of the modern film playbook, and don’t feel quite of the fabric of the piece, however well-woven they may be. Ultimately, they’re substitutions for material I failed to write clearly enough or failed to get on the day – whether it be an insert, a close-up or an additional beat out of the actor.

The final stage is the design and mixing of the soundtrack, generally regarded as the filmmaker’s last chance to affect the telling of the story. I pushed my sound designer well beyond the point of exhaustion in the hustle to record additional dialogue, get foley, mix sound effects, and create a smooth mix-down. After three-straight days of work on both our parts, even with working to the absolute last minute – we still failed to lay-down a final soundtrack. The sound for the body of DESERTERS is only the temp track. Sound has always been my greatest weakness and it is probably this piece’s greatest failure – but it wasn’t for lack of trying. All I can do is learn from this particular mistake and push-on with the creation of a polished mix-down apart from the my thesis exhibition.

However flawed the resultant product, a viewing of DESERTERS will show pretty definitively that I’m not particularly interested in art for art’s sake or any other Art World “movements” to speak of. I mostly just want to make a good movie that a functional human being can emotionally connect to, invest in, understand, and -- just maybe -- enjoy.

For comparison's sake, the June 01 edit ran (with credits) 18m19s. With credits, the current (Sept 30) edit runs 16m48s. That may not, at first blush, sound like a helluva difference, but when you consider the 18:19 edit was already a rather brutal culling of an initial 22:00+ edit, you should have some idea of how compressed things are becoming. In effect, I've cut-out more than 1/4 of the original cut, without losing virtually any story.

Enough said for now. More updates as they're available. If a single soul has read any of the above, let alone this far, I'll say only this: THANKS.

Erik LeDrew

Timeline for DeconstruXion ARTS Thesis

I've been lost in story/script and casting land these past two weeks, both of which have been really fun and rewarding. I had a 20-hour day this past Sunday, in fact: casting from 930am - 700pm, then writing from 9pm - 5am. It wasn't as hard as it sounds actually, because the casting process was so fun and the writing process so rewarding (see what I did there?).

But now it's great to take a brief break from creativity and focus on locking down a timeline that's been kicking around in my head this past month.

WEEK 3: CASTING & REWRITES
April 14 - Timeline presentation; Script revisions
April 15 - 1-on-1 production meetings; Script revisions
April 16 - 1-on-1 production meetings; Script revisions; Anchor images #1 - key image
April 17 - Final callbacks for casting; Anchor images #2 - five images
April 18 - Logistics breakdown w/ co-producer; Groundplan #1

WEEK 4: REHEARSALS & PREP
April 19 - "Cam" & "Jamie" cast; Production meeting #2; Shotlisting #1
April 20 - Rehearsals: 1st table read w/ "Cam" & "Jamie"; Groundplan #2
April 21 - Class @ Fremont; Rehearsals: 2nd table read; Shotlisting #2
April 22 - Production meeting #3; Rehearsals: 3rd table read; Groundplan #3
April 23 - Rehearsals: 4th table read; Location scout #1; Thumbnails #1
April 24 - Rehearsals: final table read, initial staging; Groundplan #4
April 25 - Production meeting #4; Rehearsals: staging cont'd; Thumbnails #2

WEEK 5: FINAL REHEARSALS, PREP & SHOOTING
April 26 - Production meeting #5; Rehearsals: staging & business; Groundplan #5
April 27 - Production meeting #6; Rehearsals: staging, combat choreography; Thumbnails #3
April 28 - Rehearsals: staging, combat choreography cont'd; Location Scout; Storyboards #1
April 29 - Production meeting #7 ; Rehearsals: staging, combat choreography cont'd; Final Groundplan - w/ camera positions; Storyboards #2
April 30 - Final rehearsal on-location: final choreography; Tech scout; Storyboards #3
May 01 - Final production meeting #8; Final prep
May 02: Principle Photo DAY 01

WEEK 6: SHOOTING, EDITING WK1
May 03: Principle photo DAY 02
May 04: Review dailies
May 05: MIDTERM: proof-of-shoot & ruff aesthetic crit
May 06: Editing
May 07: Editing
May 08: Editing
May 09: Editing

WEEK 7: EDITING WK2 & RESHOOTS
May 10: Editing
May 11: Editing
May 12: Lock Rough Edit
May 13: Review edit for reshoots
May 14: Prep for reshoots
May 15: Reshoots
May 16: Review material

WEEK 8: EDITING & POST-
May 17: Editing
May 18: Editing
May 19: Lock 1st sequence to pass-off to sound & post
May 20: Lock 2nd sequence to pass-off to sound & post
May 21: Lock 3rd sequence to pass-off to sound & post
May 22: Lock 4th sequence to pass-off to sound & post
May 23: Lock 5th sequence to pass-off to sound & post

WEEK 9: FINAL EDITING, FINAL CRIT, FINAL POST-, PICTURE LOCK!
May 24: Semi-final editing
May 25: Lock semi-final edit
May 26: present unpolished semi-final cut
May 27: Final editing; final sound & post
May 28: Final editing; final sound & post
May 29: LOCK PICTURE
May 30: Initial reel test

WEEK 10: TWEAKS, REEL, TEST, EXHIBITION!
May 31: Final reel rendering & final reel test
JUNE 01: EXHIBITION

Speed Bumps

I've been working pretty intensely these past two weeks on putting together a "pitch" video for fundraising. It's shaping up to be a pretty professional bit of "pitch" cinema and I think it gives me a real shot at raising the money I need to make Trigger a reality.

It's also serving as the Trigger prototype that the "trailer for a film that doesn't exist" was originally envisioned as being.

The big shake-up has been the determination that, in order to do Trigger justice, it really needs to be shot this summer. This would give us 4 months to cast the film, crew it, fund it, and generally just prep it into something exquisite. Pushing my thesis back caused a lot of drama with my department and raised the question of whether or not I'd graduate on time or have to wait an entire year when the next BFA exhibition rolled around. We arrived at a compromise with very few arrows loosed in either direction: I'll shoot a 4-7 minute short with the same characters and setting, but on a much more contained scale.

This 4-7 minute short will serve as both my BFA thesis, and as a part of preproduction for the much larger Trigger. It will be a trial run for working with my cast/crew and developing the non-docu "look" of the film. Most importantly, it will give the actors a chance to get comfortable with their characters, collaborating with the other actors, and working with myself. It's exactly what should be done on larger studio films.

Of no small consequence: it will also be a huge tool to use for the last-minute, June fund-raising push.