Struggling, Hustling, Script-writing

Currently the whole gang is working together on our film-to-be Friend of the Night. As the script writer of the crew I feel like my job is mostly done. I learned that you have to be very flexible about your script. You cannot just assume everything is going to be according your script or plan. Things change and problems occur.

In my case just when I thought my script is going to be good and soon to be recorded I had to make changes in the characters as the cast was not suiting the description that we wished for. Rob Hardy suggests that :

“Keep an open mind in the casting process. Rarely will you find exactly what you’re looking for. Sometimes, however, you may find something better. But you have to be open to seeing it.”

And that was exactly the case for me. I had a mother-daughter relationship in mind but soon came to realisation that this combination is not going to work due to time reasons and availability of actors for casting. We found actors that were really talented in acting but they did not fit the description. I came to the conclusion that the actors should not change but rather the script, as it is easier to adjust a text than an entire human being.

Luckily the script is not really character heavy and the mother-daughter relationship could be changed to a father-daughter story. Obviously I had to adjust the dialogue according to a controlling father rather than a distrusting mother.

Although it was hard for me to separate myself from the text I managed to find different aspects to adjust the text without losing meaning or to write an entire new script (nobody has time for that anyway).

Resource:

https://filmmakerfreedom.com/blog/casting-mistakes

Drama is such a Drama

Currently I am making my first baby-steps towards writing a short film script. Usually, I would park my bottom in front of a drama regardless if film or novel and just let it entertain me and my emotions. Now that I am on the other side of the water I will list a few things that I did not expected to be so difficult and how I will try to tackle it.

Separate yourself

Coming up with the general idea was not as hard, as destroying your character’s life. I put a lot of personal experience in my story from true happenings and how a lot of people around me were treated by their family and how they dealt with it. And of course I cannot just put their life story into a short film but while I was developing my character I had a hard time to put this fictional person into misery. Basically I had to think about what is the worst that can happen to a person like that and what she/he is struggling with to solve their fictional issue.

Basically, what I am trying to say is that I needed to learn to distant myself from the character, story and the personal history that I associated it with. Unfortunately, I could not find any academic resource to help me with this issue but I think that is something you need to cope on your own. I believe this feeling of mine (in hope anybody can relate) hopefully will fade with more experience and knowledge about screenwriting and creating drama pieces.

Use your imagination / Climax doesn’t only exist in bed

When I was over-writing my script I did not think about how I can let thinks explain themselves. I thought about the conversations and settings but did not think about to give anything a deeper meaning that interprets itself. Kim Garland gives a great example of what I was missing in my progress as a screenwriter

“As you develop your short film script, look for the themes, motifs, and symbols that naturally crop up, and embellish and repeat those that enhance your story. Don’t underestimate your audience’s intuition and their desire to use their own powers of deduction to help piece together your tale. A story told through subtext, in addition to text, is often a more satisfying experience for the viewer.” (Garland, 2015)

I tried to take that advice and embedded it in my story.  Unfortunately, I did not concentrate on my climax in the text which did not blow my lecturer out of his socks, instead resulted in a not fully developed story. While working on the script I will bare in mind what the climax stands for and how it affects your script.

“Climax is the term used to refer to the part of story or play where the tension or action reaches its highest part. Sometimes, the climax is a “crisis” point in the plot. Sometimes, it is just where things “come to a head” and something happens or the main character must make a decision that will lead to one outcome or another.” (Softschools, n.d.)

I will keep on developing the script and try to get as much feedback from lecturers and team members as possible to fully develop this script.

Resource

WRITE, DIRECT, REPEAT: Write a Compelling Short Film Script By: Kim Garland | August 12, 2015

www.softschools.com/examples/grammar/climax_examples/147/”>Climax Examples</a>

New Year, New Chances, New Experiences

“Attending tutorials and seeking guidance demonstrated that you were willing to take advantage of all resources on offer with evidence of considerable planning ahead and the ability to work independently, showing a professional attitude in regards to group working and collaboration.”

There you have it. My feedback for my last project. And my secret formula for crushing the next semester with even bigger motivation. But what does it really mean to seek guidance and how does it help you and your grade? Or to planning ahead? And what will be my goal for this semester?

Seeking guidance is not only benefitting you but also your lecturer. Throughout my first year of university I was a book full of questions. Almost no class would go over without my hand rising and asking the most stupid questions. It was not always the easiest thing to do but it is probably the best thing I could challenge myself to. Not only would I ask questions and get the answers but my teachers could see the effort and be sure that I am taking my studies serious. In my second year I did not stop to use this quality and interacted with my lecturers on a weekly basis to be assured I am on the right track with my projects.

Planning ahead makes life and projects so much easier. Especially in group work planning ahead is crucial for a fair task division. When working on a film project getting in contact with staff, agreeing on location, story line, etc. should all be planed ahead as there won’t be anytime to do these things the last-minute. An excellent guideline from the Video Production Handbook suggests the following

THE IDEA – Find sources of information on the subject (people, books and publications), Consider the program development by forming a rough script or a shooting script.

PRACTICALITY – Determine the best location for shooting. Where can the program be shot? Are there any regulations to be considered?

THE EQUIPMENT – Single camera or multicamera? What equipment, beyond the camera, will be required to make the production a success?

FEASIBILITY – Are the ideas and treatment being developed reasonable for the available resources? Is there another way of achieving similar results more easily, more cheaply, more quickly, or with less labour?

(Owens, 2017, 45)

Books are the best resources, period. Don’t rely only the internet when you are writing an essay or any kind of academic piece in regards to your project. Not only does it underline you are using all the resources available to you but also shows your lecturer that you engaged with the theory and advice of professionals and not the no-name-websites of wanna-be film experts.

Goals for this semester is to survive this academic year by shovelling as much knowledge about film drama and short film sound scape in me, to emphasize the subject. In order to do this I will get as many books from the library about drama and how I can apply it to story telling and the organisation of these projects. For the sound scape I will talk to my previous Audio lecturer and book a tutorial so that he can give me tips and further resources on the subject. I will try to put all the collected knowledge into a blog post before spring break begins.

The Simpsons and their audience

We all know and love the Simpsons. In fact, The Simpsons achieved something that not a lot of TV series could, airing for nearly 30 years. I had a look on different statistics to see how the success story evolved over the years.

The following statistic was held to find out which character of the TV show is the audiences favourite. This survey was hold in June 2018 in Great Britain and displays that Homer Simpson is the most popular character of the show with 33% votes. Right after Homer comes his children, Lisa with 15% and Bart with 13%.

 

A different study displays that 27% of the audience states that „I still like it, but it used to better than it is now“. For this study the respondents were 18 years and older and was held in June in Great Britain. They were asked “Which of the following describes how you feel about the animated TV show The Simpons“? Only 10% said that „I still like it , and I think it‘s better than it used to be“.

 

 
So far we can see that the Simpsons success is still ongoing but not as constant as t might have been 10 years ago. To have a look closer on this subject, I found a table that displays the increase and decrease of viewers from the first season in 1989 until 2016. Continuous decline of viewers in the overall 27 seasons. A significant drop of almost 10 million viewers occurs from season 9 to 11. No important fluctuations happen during season 20 and 27, whereas the viewers number drops from less than 8.8m to 4.0m viewers.

 

An explanation for that has Neill McCarthy “Currently, viewers have a much bigger selection of content to watch, along with considerably more ways to watch it. With the onset of Netflix and on demand content, it could well be that show’s decline is a natural result of this trend.“ (2017)

Reference

https://www.statista.com/chart/9035/30-years-on_-the-simpsons-isnt-aging-well/

YouGov. n.d. Which of the following best describes how you feel about the animated TV show ‘The Simpsons’?. Statista. Accessed October 6, 2018. Available from https://www.statista.com/statistics/879662/the-simpsons-public-attitude-in-great-britain/.

YouGov. n.d. Who is your favorite character in ‘The Simpsons’?. Statista. Accessed October 6, 2018. Available from https://www.statista.com/statistics/879685/the-simpsons-favorite-characters-in-great-britain/.

 

Come and get me, new academic year!

When I look back to my last academic year, I get proud of myself. I don’t want to show off but for my first year in a British university, I think I rocked it. But fortunately that was not the end of my university journey, for this year there will be  new challenges waiting for me. My lecturers feedback will be in my mind though throughout this year.

What really worked great for me was to organise myself and doing the research that was asked by the lecturers. I wasn’t only always up to date in the lessons but also had discussions and asked the lecturer what it was all about in the first place. So this will be one thing I am trying to maintain throughout my degree, so I won’t mess up.

I really enjoyed the times when we worked with real life clients for our projects and the spontaneous creative ideas that come with it. That moment, when you have 100 thoughts and ideas in your head, after you heard the job proposal and the main idea for the first time.

 

What I am going to work on is my eye for camera angles and B-role. My last video was not a disaster but still not a 100% right on my satisfaction scale. I guess if there were different conditions and the fact that I basically was working alone, it could have been way better than what I was imagining in my head. As well as, the sound editing, which according to my lecturer needs to „neaten up“ (Hughes, 2018).

At the end of the day, I am planning to keep my organisation, motivation, inspiration, determination and eagerness up to the limit and keep on improving my flaws in the video making aspect, as well as to gain more practical experience.

Leni Riefenstahl – A Misunderstood Film Genius

Leni as Dancer

Dancer, artist, director, and editor, she could do it all. On August 22^nd in 1902, Leni Riefenstahl was born in Berlin. Her carrier started lifting after she studied painting and started as a Dancer. On her very first dance performance, she was so successful that she was hired by Max Reinhardt to perform in the German Theater.

Unfortunately, her dancer carrier finished due to a severe knee injure but therefore a whole new world was opening up for her. She started to act in movies like The Holy Mountain (1926), The Great Leap (1927), White Hell of Pitz Palü (1929), Storm over Mont Blanc (1930), The White Ecstasy (1931). She became world famous for her extraordinary performances, as those movies where the first of its kind. In an interview Leni explains, that Mountain Movies where something completely new back then and that they were recording on actual mountains and not only in a studio.

While she was acting, she learned how to direct and edit movies and soon started her own movie The Blue Light (1932), that she would direct and play the main role in.

The brilliance of this movie is in not only its location but also new techniques that weren’t common in Germany. Although the movie is in black and white, the exposure is extraordinary. Scenes like the Moon Rise, needed to be filmed with special equipment from Hollywood.

Moon rise

Shots like the the closing of the windows was a new approach that wasn’t usual and is one of the many things, that made Leni an extraordinary Director and Editor.

Closing windows

Riefenstahl said in an interview that Hitler was fond of her talent for acting and directing that, before World War 2, he wanted to be filmed by her. So, it happened that in 1935 the movie Triumph of the Will was produced and screened and awarded with several movie prizes. The movie is a documentary named after the Reich Party Congress 1934 in Nuremberg. For the movie she spent up to 20 hours a day for the editing, to achieve a fluent and continuous film. By using different standpoints, like the elevator, the movie shows how massive and impressive the scenery looks like.

Unfortunately, the movie was accused of National Socialist propaganda after the war, which damaged Leni Riefenstahl’s image and carrier. She stated that if she wanted the movie to be propaganda, there would be somebody talking and commenting (i.e. The Eternal Jew). All she wanted to, was the movie to be perfect, which she states was not the case. Yet the movie, was awarded and screened in different countries.

Another success were the Olympia movies Fest der Völker and part 2 Fest der Schönheit. These two movies were masterpieces of their time and I believe they still are. The amount of creativity and preparation is astonishing. For this film Leni trained a film team to her standards, invented new methods to capture different angles, invented new equipment and spend almost 2 years to edit and cut 400.000 metres of film material for the Olympic games film with this little Lytax.

Cutting in the good ol’ days

When they offered Leni the opportunity to make the film, Leni states she thought instantly of the old Olympic Games in ancient Greece but not only the stadium, rather the whole culture, temples, sculptures. The transformation from the antique to the modern had wonderful dramatic possibilities. She said that it was easier to present it in purely visual terms rather than a series of actions.

Graphic match

In regards to my own studies, it is interesting how quickly she finds a story to her film. As we’re making our own documentary, I already have a theme, yet the story is something else. I realized that the topic and the story are two different things. Like Leni’s topic was the Olympic Games in Berlin, but her story was the comparison or rather a travel back in time to ancient Greece and make normal athletes to athletic Gods.

Leni Riefenstahl is truly a fascinating woman, who in her 70s lived with the Nuba tribe in Sudan , went diving in the ocean, and became almost a 101 years old.

 Reference

Leni Riefenstahl, http://www.leni-riefenstahl.de/deu/bio.html#oben [viewed 15.03. 2018].

Mother of All Spectacles: Ray Müller’s The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl, 1997

The Cross-Cut and Parallel Action

Remember the Godfather? Well, it is hard to forget, with the horse head in bed and the chill that Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) is exuding in this top performance. But, I believe the movie is not as good as it is, just because the actors did their job good. No, the way they cut the scenes and the movement of the camera is extraordinary.

Let’s examine the Baptism scene in the Godfather with a fine tooth-comb

You can not ignore, the cutting from the church to prepare the gun. Back to church then other action is going on and back to church etc. This kind of film editing is called Cross-Cut or Parallel Action.

This sort of film editing is used to give a scene, which would be boring on its own (a Baptism in church), a thrilling and exciting effect. It is used to build up excitement.(GABE MOURA 2014)

To clarify the definition of each term, I found Reisz book Technique of Film Editing, 2nd Edition:

“CROSS-CUT. To intermingle the shots of two or more scenes in the course of editing so that fragments of each scene will be presented to the spectator’s attention alternately.

PARALLEL ACTION. Device of narrative construction in which the development of two pieces of action is represented simultaneously by showing first a fragment of one, then a fragment of the other, and so on alternately.” (Reisz 2009)

The previous Godfather scene is one out of the four basic techniques of the Cross-Cut in Gaudreault’s Journal Article Detours in Film Narrative: The Development of Cross-Cutting. Cinema Journal.

“Cross-cutting of simultaneous actions: By the sustained intercutting of

two actions, A and B, presented successively but alternately on the

screen, as: A-B-A-B-A-B, etc.” (Gaudreault 1979)

To compare other ways of Cross-cutting, we have a different scene of the Godfather

You see what they did there?

Instead of just talking about, who Sollozzo is and what he is capable of, he is getting introduced visually beforehand and the cross-cutting goes on until they meet face to face. Felt the excitement?

If you’re thinking about making a movie and want to make rather boring scenes more exciting, then this is one out of many ways to do it.

 References

GABE MOURA, 2014. Parallel Editing [viewed 21.02. 2018]. Available from: http://www.elementsofcinema.com/editing/parallel-editing/

GAUDREAULT, A., 1979. Detours in Film Narrative: The Development of Cross-Cutting. Cinema Journal, 19(1), 39-59

REISZ, K., 2009. Technique of Film Editing, Reissue of 2nd Edition. 2nd ed. Burlington: Taylor & Francis

 

The Importance of Documentary Research

Throughout the last couple weeks, I made myself more familiar with documentaries and found out what are the key components to a successful documentary. What I learned in university is that the research is the heart of the documentary. And I asked myself

Why do we need to research in the first place? Can the research help the final edit of the film? And what is their relation?

Photo by Smart on Unsplash

To start the documentary, you’ll need to find a subject for your film. Once this is done, it is important to do some profound research about your subject. The research isn’t done by only going online and reading about it. Using all resources like libraries, journals, articles, archives, and speaking to experts will give the research more depth. The research process might last the whole production of your movie, but it is crucial that you know your subject area as well as possible. This step of your documentary will take from the overall to the explicit and will help you to set the fundamentals for putting your ideas into a practical documentary film.

There is more than one reason why you should have an in-depth research for your topic.

1. Without much knowledge about your topic, it probably won’t become a good film. Research is a form of preparation that will help to find the focus of your film.
2. The more information you have, the easier it will be to “facilitate engagement and rapport building with your subjects.” (Glynne, 2008)
3. If you want your film to be financially supported, you need to prove that you know your subject well and convince them that you know what you’re going to do. Likely you’ll need to explain your subject in greater detail and the more you know, the more convincing you appear.
4. While researching you’re already getting ideas on how to structure your film and you will know which resources are available. That will help to script your film and which visual medium (interview, pictures, etc.) you’re going to use. (Glynne, 2008)

I have noticed these steps during my research of Evacuees in WW2. While doing research, I had all these ideas in my mind of how to structure the film and what I can include to make the film more visually interesting. As the subject is about past events, the best medium would be an interview with somebody who has been evacuated. Therefore, I needed to plan what the interview is going to include and what questions will get the most information out of him. The editor Steve Audette said in an interview once

“There’s a long period of research, reading, talking and making draft story boxes, where we try to figure out the story and therefore the beats before we go into the edit room, because you’ve read everything, done your journalistic homework to such an extent that you know almost what people are going to say, generally. They may say even cooler stuff in the interview, but you know basically what their position is.”

Photo by Radek Grzybowski on Unsplash

To sum up, research is an ongoing process and crucial to find the focus of your documentary, to make a good film. It can help the final edit by visualizing ideas that can be put in action during the post-production. To be well-informed about your subject, let’s you look more professional and you will know what to expect from your topic. Also, once you know a lot about your topic, you can make other people curious about your documentary and have more viewers and therefore get more feedback from the audience, to better yourself for the future.

Reference

Editing Documentary – Interview with Editor Steve Audette ACE 2017. [viewed Feb 8, 2018]. Available from:https://jonnyelwyn.co.uk/film-and-video-editing/editing-documentary-interview-with-editor-steve-audette/

GLYNNE, A., 2008. Documentaries…and how to make them. Harpenden: Kamera Books