Directing

I've been attempting to direct actors for about three years. I am NO expert, it's a world of science that can be quite a mystery. It's very difficult to work with amateurs, kids, animals, and many other life things!!
This really reminds me of a facebook note from back in the day when notes on facebook were cool! I actually found it on my facebook and I love it it's so funny.

Win Wender's Golden Rules

1. You have a choice of being “in the business” or of making movies. If you’d rather do business, don’t hesitate. You’ll get richer, but you won’t have as much fun!

2. If you have nothing to say, don’t feel obliged to pretend you do.

3. If you do have something to say, you’d better stick to it. (But then don’t give too many interviews.)

4. Respect your actors. Their job is 10 times more dangerous than yours.

5. Don’t look at the monitor. Watch the faces in front of your camera! Stand right next to it! You’ll see infinitely more. You can still check your monitor after the take.

6. Your continuity girl is always right about screen directions, jumping the axis and that sort of stuff. Don’t fight her. Bring her flowers.

7. Always remember: Continuity is overrated!

8. Coverage is overrated, too!

9. If you want to shoot day for night, make sure the sun is shining.

10. Before you say “cut,” wait five more seconds.

11. Rain only shows on the screen when you backlight it.

12. Don’t shoot a western if you hate horses. (But it’s okay to not be fond of cows.)

13. Think twice before you write a scene with babies or infants.

14. Never expect dogs, cats, birds or any other animals to do what you’d like them to do. Keep your shots loose.

15. Mistakes never get fixed in post!

16. Final cut is overrated. Only fools keep insisting on always having the final word. The wise swallow their pride in order to get to the best possible cut.

17. Other people have great ideas, too.  (I LEARNED THIS LAST YEAR WITH WHITE LIGHTS!!)

18. The more money you have the more you can do with it, sure. But the less you can say with it.

19. Never fall in love with your temp music.

20. Never fall in love with your leading lady!

21. If you love soccer, don’t shoot your film during the World Championship. (Same goes for baseball and the World Series, etc.)

22. Don’t quote other movies unless you have to. (But why would you have to?)

23. Let other people cut your trailer!

24. It’s always good to make up for a lack of (financial) means with an increase in imagination.

25. Having a tight schedule can be difficult. But having too much time is worse.

26. Alright, so you’re shooting with a storyboard. Make sure you’re willing to override it at any given moment.

27. Less make-up is better.

28. Fewer words are always better!

29. Too much sugary stuff on the craft table (or is it Kraft?) can have a disastrous effect on your crew’s morale.

30. Film can reveal the invisible, but you must be willing to let it show.

31. The more you know about moviemaking, the tougher it gets to leave that knowledge behind. As soon as you do things “because you know how to do them,” you’re fucked.

32. Don’t tell a story that you think somebody else could tell better.

33. A “beautiful image” can very well be the worst thing that can happen to a scene.

34. If you have one actor who gets better with every take, and another who loses it after a while, make sure they can meet in the middle. Or consider recasting. (And you know whose close-ups you have to shoot first!)

35. If you shoot in a dark alley at night, don’t let your DP impose a bright blue contre-jour spotlight on you, even in the far distance. It always looks corny.

36. Some actors should never see rushes. Others should be forced to watch them.

37. Be ready to get rid of your favorite shot during editing.

38. Why would you sit in your trailer while your crew is working?

39. Don’t let them lay tracks before you’ve actually looked through your viewfinder.

40. You need a good title from the beginning. Don’t shoot the film with a working title you hate!

41. In general, it’s better not to employ couples. (But of course, there are exceptions!)

42. Don’t adapt novels.

43. If your dolly grip is grumpy or your electricians hate the shot it will all show on the film. (Also, if you’re constipated…)

44. Keep your rough cut speech, your cast and crew screening speech and your Oscar speech short.

45. Some actors actually improve their dialogue in ADR.

46. Some actors should never be forced to loop a single line. (Even Orson Welles wasn’t good at that.)

47. There are 10,000 other rules like these 50.

48. If there are golden rules, there might be platinum ones, too.

49. There are no rules.

50. None of the above is necessarily correct.

#4: we went over this in class today!!

#6: I have a friend I interned with two years ago that was the script supervisor for a film I interned on! It was awesome having her around because she's gone on to do AMAZING productions: to name a few- Paranha 3DD, LOL (starring MIley Cyrus), Scream 4 (2011), and A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas. Never really in big time A list movies but she does VERY well for herself and I had the privilege of working very closely with her. I also love seeing her facebook posts on what she's doing with her career. She's always got a ton going on and I think that could be the secret to her success. I've always wanted to try having a script supervisor for a film of my own! 
#17: I learned this in White Lights last year, I couldn't possibly take as much credit for what that film was with out Jackie Campbell, Josh Best, Dave Howelle, Maxwell Melhman, Courtney Herman, Harlan Green-Taub or R. Aaron Walters, or Benni Lee Janssen. It takes a crew to make a film happen you litterally can NOT do it yourself. Unless of course you're Jeffrey R. Newell.

#24: ALWAYS HAD to deal with this issue. I think it's made me a better film maker and a person. 

#28: I learned this in script writing last semester! It's ver difficult to deviate from thinking your actors need to explain everything they're doing. They don't need to! Trust me it makes it a lot better when they don't explain anything: as we've seen in The Artist (oscar winning best feature film 2011).  (see above video)

#41: When I directed a short adaptation called "The Flea" in 2010, it was a HUGE mistake casting a couple that was together to play my main couple. It was also a mistake trying to edit my film on a crappy old computer using a bootleg copy of a really lame editing software, but that's another story for another day! In the middle of my shoot the couple had broken up (WHICH would have been AWESOME for believable acting since it was a break up story), but He decided to screw my film because he was too broken hearted to leave his room to do a one hour shoot (tops) and have it be the end of it! My film sucked but it was the best I could have done given the circumstances! I can't say I regretted this film because I learned more doing this film alone than any other film I've ever done (directing). (see above film...and please!!! don't judge)
#42: This leads me to my next point. NEVER EVER EVER adapt a novel unless you have a bjillion dollars and you don't care what people think of your films anymore because you have so much money that you don't need fans anymore. It's so hard and I don't think the general public will ever understand how hard it is to adapt a screen play from a novel. Therefore, they automatically won't appreciate anything you put out there. If a film maker adapted a novel word for word it would literally be a three day film. It takes a magical person to please anyone when adapting a novel to screen. I took a class on it the year I made The Flea! I honestly believe that the only way to appreciate a film based on a novel is by being extremely open minded, not expecting anything upon entering, and understanding the film as a "take" on how they saw the novel visually and how they made it work. I personally don't like to read a book before I watch the adapted film, because, this way I don't form my own visuals before I see others take on it. I like to see the film first and then read the book because then I can see more clearly how the film maker had seen it that way. I also enjoy the experience of reading it and seeing the story in more depth, rather than seeing a summarized version of the story after you already know what happened and why it happened. To me it's just not worth risking my career over someone being too close minded about my take on a novel. So I personally try and avoid it at all costs. However, some may strongly disagree with me on so many levels. They can go make their films and I wont judge them for that adaptation, in fact if anyone does it, I have a whole new respect for them. However, I feel most people dont see it the same way I do.
#49+50: None of these rules need apply to anything. Do you're own thing. This is more of a good advice list from a professional. By all means go out and make mistakes, it's great to learn from them! I wouldn't have agreed with any of this if I hadn't made mistakes thus far in my own career.

I 'm learning about my self, I have learned that I don't personally take enough risks, I don't like to leave my comfort zone. No one has ever made anything of themselves by just waiting for miracles. Some how, I need to do what I don't want to do so that I can do what I love.

Anyways, I found this mostly relevant and fun too!

8 1/2: Breaking the Rules and Paving the Way for the Future

For this week’s blog post, we were asked to read a chapter from Closely Watched Films by Marilyn Fabe. In the chapter it focuses on Federico Fellini’s film 8 ½. This unusual film broke a lot of the “rules” of cinema and helped pave a road for creative pieces of entertainment in the future. Overall after reading this chapter I came away with that certain “rules” of cinema could be broken with good reasons and intentions like how Fellini broke many of them in his strange and baffling film 8 ½.

8 ½ is a film about “director’s block” and tells the story of Guido Anselmi, a film director, who during the filming of his latest film, suddenly loses inspiration and worries he will not be able to finish and fail. One of the first “rules” Fellini “broke” was the non-linear story. The linear plot is constantly interrupted with Guido’s dreams, fantasies, and childhood memories that are triggered by present problems. This helps create a world of fantasy and makes it clear to the audience that this film is not about life but the make believe world of film. When first reading about this it reminded me of Christopher Nolan’s film Memento. That film is about Leonard Shelby who has anterograde amnesia searching for the killer of his wife. The film’s events are told in two separate narratives. One is told in chronological order in black and white and the other is told in color in reverse chronological order. As each sequence begins the audience is unaware of the preceding events just like the main character. Finally at the end the film’s narratives converge and everything makes a lot more sense. Memento in comparison seems a lot easier to understand and follow than 8 ½ and since I was confused during Memento I can’t even comprehend my level of confusion if I watched 8 ½.

Another “rule” 8 ½ breaks is with editing. For example objects in the background and the orientation of people in the room move from shot to shot. This disrupts the viewer’s illusion of “reality” because in real life these kinds of things would not happen. However it makes perfect sense in the film because it helps capture the disoriented process of recalling memories, which the main character is doing. Try it yourself. It is hard to pinpoint the exact location of people and objects when recalling memories. In other words “rules” are meant to be broken but only with good reasons like Fellini had.

Like Memento, 8 ½ reminded me of a lot of other movies and television shows I have seen. First it reminded me of Six Feet Under when sometimes Fellini creates dream sequences or fantasies that are not really happening. Six Feet Under would use this method all the time to show what was really going on in their characters’ heads. Overall the plot of the film reminds me of two movies; Adaptation and Tropic Thunder. Adaptation is a Charlie Kaufman film about Charlie Kaufman’s difficult struggle to adapt The Orchid Thief novel into a film. It turns out it is based on upon his actual struggle when hired to write the film’s screenplay. Tropic Thunder is about a bunch of prima donna actors who are making a Vietnam War film based on the fictional novel Tropic Thunder. When their director becomes frustrated he decides to skip the script and drop them into the middle of the jungle to survive real action and danger. In the end the making of the film becomes the actual film in the film’s reality and is a worldwide smash! Sound familiar? Between these four movies and shows it is clear to see that Fellini’s movie paved the way for future strange and creative projects. It can take just one person to change the way we think and Fellini was definitely one for many people.