How the film boyhood was written

So we all know about the stunning movie that took 12years make known as "Boyhood". Well if you're interested in how such a story gets created, you've come to the right place. An exclusive interview with the writer of Boyhood, Richard Linklater, will let us learn the way to create such a film ourselves... or at least appreciate the creative genius behind it. Attached is a 9minute interview explaining how Richard wrote this film but I will divulge a few details prior to taking a gander. Richard knew the ending of the film 11 years before he was finished writing it, but he needed to know how to get to that end.

Initially Richard wanted to make a film about childhood but he did not know how to incapsulate but all the sudden wants his finger hit the keyboard the idea came to him. From the beginning he knew the idea was impractical but he decided to keep pursuing it. When he decided to start filming it he said he spent about 3 days a year filming it but it took about 2 years of preproduction before he could start filming. He also had the luxury of spending two years in post production so he had a lot of time to perfect his production.

When making the film he decided he did not just want to show content that built upon the characters but just to show daily life during the time of production. He believed that this build up of information would naturally be impactful. Richard tried to take those little forgettable moments and make them memorable. The child she chose to be in the film was someone from his town who he now views practically as his nephew. He told the kid to write down his life events when something significant happened and utilized those memories to write his script. At the begging of the film the now adult was 7 years old. Richard made sure to think about the current time period when writing the script rather than the future or the past. It took creative genius and determination to create such a script, for more details I urge you to watch the short interview which can be found at the attached link.

http://nofilmschool.com/2014/08/write-movie-12-years-richard-link-later-boyhood

Waking Life

Last night I decided to watch "Waking Life," a film by Richard Linklater ("Dazed and Confused," "School of Rock"). It's a sort of animated film using rotoscope, meaning that it was shot with actors and then animated over.

The film stars Wiley Wiggins (Mitch Kramer in "Dazed and Confused") as the Dreamer. The movie basically follows the Dreamer from one conversation to the next, making it comparable to Linklater's "Slacker" or even "Dazed and Confused." Wiggin's character is involved in some of the conversations, while the other he seems to be watching from afar, which is something common in dreams. The movie is a dream from beginning to end, featuring false awakenings and surrealistic moments. The Dreamer wants to wake up, but finds that he keeps going deeper into his lucid dream.

The overall reality is strange in this movie. For example, one character talks about the human body being mostly water while water starts to fill up his outline. Another character becomes redder and redder as he becomes angrier.

The conversations range in their topics, including lucid dreaming, existentialism, and even politics. Many of the conversations were interesting to listen to, but not all of them stick as Linklater throws each one at you, one after the other. The one that really stuck with me featured Julie Deply and Ethan Hawke playing their characters from "Before Sunrise." In this scene, they touch upon dreams and life after death, and the connection between the two topics.

 I think that the movie is well made and interesting and leaves us with some interesting concepts and ideas, which movies should do, but I feel that it goes on for too long and some scenes were boring enough that they could have been cut out entirely. "Waking Life" would have made been better as a series of shorts in my opinion.

Here's one scene that I really enjoyed (the man with the ukelele is the part I am talking about).

And here's the trailer.