Enjoying a movie when you know too much about movie-making

Gone are the days where I will be simply entertained while eating popcorn and watching a movie.  I just know too much now. 

With all of the hullaballoo around the movie “Argo,” and the fact that it was available on Netflix I decided to see what the excitement was all about.  When I watched the movie, I wasn’t thinking about writing this blog so I really wasn't thinking about how the movie was actually crafted.   In retrospect, I believe the same holds true for “Argo” as it does “Skyfall” and probably most movies.  The opening segments typically are of scenery or the actors sliding across the screen, text overlaid with the names of the contributors of film-making.  There is music.  There are different camera angles.  There are changes in the lighting.  Once the opening credits are past and we get to settle into the good part of the movie – the story, it’s easy to forget all that went on behind the scenes to make the film. 

Someone had to write the script and keep in mind, the script isn’t just dialogue; it is for example, description (what is the actors are wearing, what is the background), timing (how long a pause before the next actor speaks), emotion (adverbs/adjectives to describe how the words should be spoken).  Ok, now you’ve got this killer story written and you want to make a movie out of it.  Everyone is going to want to make your movie – you’re going to be rich!

Whoa, it’s not quite that easy.  According to Owen Palmquist and Ted Serbinski the chances of your story being produced are about 1 : 140,000.  So why even go there?   You go there because you are passionate and why wouldn’t you be the “1”?  Here are a few tips to make your odds go up a bit. 

First, make sure you know what you want - what does success look like?  Did you write a low-budget ($1-5 million) or high-budget (exotic locations, special effects) kind of film?  Know your audience.  Market your script to the right guys.  Make sure you know who the individual is at the studio – maybe it is a story editor or creative director.  Never send it “to whom it may concern” because nobody’s going to be concerned about someone who didn’t do their homework.  Your query letter, letting Ms. Editor know that you believe you have a compelling story and profitable, too – will help wedge your foot in the door.  Movie studios like the word “profit.”   Oh, and don’t forget to register your script just in case someone with sticky fingers decides the get there first.  The Writer’s Guild suggests your take as $36,000 (the minimum for a low budget film) and $69,000 (for a more exotic one) – but that was in 1998, so imagine the values have climbed a bit.

As in making a big studio movie, our process is similar, without the financial stipend.  But the key to a successful film is planning.  Write and edit, rinse and repeat.  Create a shooting script next – something with lots of detail (who, what, when, where, and why?) and then finally your story board.  A storyboard is kind of like a comic book where each shot is depicted in a visual story listing movie notes, dialogue, sound – the descriptive information.  This process will save a lot of production costs because comic book characters are usually less expensive than actors.

The next step in the six steps in movie creation is Production.  Ever wonder why a movie that takes 2 hours to watch takes months to film?  Crews spent up to 12 hours a day, every day, filming in what can be uncomfortable situations.

Lighting comes next. Bright light?  Darker light?  Shadows? It all depends on the feel of the film.  What do you want viewers to experience?  Happiness or fright?

So now we’re got good light and it’s in focus, what next? Composition of course! Even as video technology advances to point where it sometimes becomes difficult to distinguish between an image shot on film and an image shot by a camera there will always be ways to tell home movies from feature films, composition. This is where those “how to” film books get really worthless. Composition is how the image looks on your camera. Composition takes years to master, but this is a just a basic guide to filming, so here’s a few pointers.

There are five basic shots. Extreme long shot (ELS), Long Shot (LS), Medium Shot or Bust Shot (MS), Close-up (CU), and Wayne and Garth’s favorite, the Extreme Close-Up (ECU).

Extreme Long/Establishing Shot

The extreme long shot and long shot are often used as establishing shots.

An establishing shot is the shot that gives the audience its sense of orientation in a scene. This is especially crucial when you have dialogue, so that when a character talks to another character off-screen, it doesn’t look he or she is talking to empty air.



Long Shot



The long shot will show all of most of an object and have a sufficient amount of the background on either side of the person.  This shot focuses on the subject.

The medium shot is one of the most common shots, as it allows a great deal of flexibility while eliminating much of the useless parts of image, such as a characters lower half, which typically has little to do with the scene.

Close up

 The close-up is used to create a sense of intimacy between the character and the audience and to highlight important thoughts or emotions in a character. This is even more so with the extreme close-up.

Camera angles are also extremely important. The two main angles are high angle and low angle. A high angle shot means that the camera looks up at the subject, often endowing the subject with a sense of power.



High Angle

Low Angle

A low angle looks down on the subject reversing the effect of the high angle and making it look small or weak.

For excellent illustrations of the effects of camera angles study High Noon directed by Fred Zinnemann.   I studied this movie in 7th grade and can still feel its impact.   You can watch the trailer here or below.
  

A third specialty angle it the Dutch angle. This is achieved by tilting the camera slightly, which conveys a sense of urgency or fear to a scene especially when it illustrates a characters reaction.

There is much more to movie making and I want to leave you hungering for more.  So tune in to my next post when I share the exciting Rule of Thirds,  and explain what happens in Post-Production.  That's where the fun really begins.

Until next time remember to quiet your cell phones and refrain from talking.