bookmark_borderMountains Out of Molehills

Mountains out of molehills

 

Mountains out of molehills
First published on Social Media: Mar 1, 2016


I had many titles for this post. The ass-u-mers, The Bore Who Cried Adolf, A Pipe is just a Pipe, but most of them were, well, a bit hyperbolic.

Anyway, take a look at the image above for a few seconds, and register in your head what it is.

Done that? Good, now scroll down so you can’t see it.

Done that too? Good, now get out a piece of paper and a pencil and see if you can draw the image from memory. This isn’t a test of artistic skills, just see if you remember what the image was of.

Have you finished with that? How well did you remember the image? Continue reading “Mountains Out of Molehills”

bookmark_borderThe Disaster Artist (review)

At Ptara, I directed two microbudget feature films. Make that nanobudget.

One had a crew of two (excluding the three actors, who also crewed, and a few kids who helped out on sound one day), and the other was basically me editing a large variety of footage to make it coherent. There were challenges in both, and everyone learned a lot.  And, what these films lack in production values is made up for in performance and storyline.

By contrast, Tommy Wiseau’s “The Room” had a budget that was about 1000 times either of my films.  He worked with a much more expensive kit and a more experienced cast and crew. Yet, “The Room” was filled with continuity errors, bad acting, and an incoherent plot.

Continue reading “The Disaster Artist (review)”

bookmark_borderReview: WPR rebuttal

“SenatorJPO” appeared to be going places.  He was an honors student at Wisconsin’s finest Universities, with a BA and MA to his name.  Then he graduated and appeared to be lost in the reality of underemployment.

He’s now taking on the educational establishment, as well as public radio, with his own public service radio show.  For two hours every Friday, SenatorJPO gives his “rebuttal” to the information (or misinformation) supplied by the WPR radio station run by the university. Continue reading “Review: WPR rebuttal”

bookmark_borderName calling can lead to success in business

Scientists in Nevada have proven that insulting people actually makes them want to do business with you.

If you accuse conservatives of being racist, or liberals of being traitors, they start to like you, says Dr. Maidup of Jusjoshing University in Southern Nemoland County.   Generalizing about people who disagree with you, or labelling people who you disagree with as “bad people”, actually wins business.

Dr Maidup came to this conclusion by observing behaviour on LinkedIn.  He observed many people who claim to be successful, and discovered that spend all day calling each other names and posting insulting political memes.

These people are so successful, that most of them don’t appear to have to work for a living.  Rather than having jobs, they are consultants, bloggers, or have other professions that free them from doing any activity that may actually earn an income.  They may complain about not having clients, but really, they don’t need any.

“Being a total jerk to everyone you meet is a good way to be successful,” Dr Maidup said, “Hey, it seems to work for politicians and talk show hosts.”

Other success secrets of Dr Maidup include proving that you’re a genius by solving simple maths problems, taking online personality tests, and sharing your email with data-miners who claim that it will get you a job.

One way to test if you are successful is to put your hand in front of your face, to see which is bigger.  This works best if someone else is in the room, and able to slap said hand to said face.

bookmark_borderRIP Dream Repairman

There are too many books out there that tell you how to write a screenplay.  In fact, there are more books that tell you the “secret” of selling the Hollywood screenplay than there are working screenwriters.  That’s not to say that screenwriters don’t write their own: Joe Eszterhas, William Goldman, Nora Ephron, George MacDonald Fraser and many others have made their memoirs available, and I’ve read many of these in my local library.

What we might have a lack, however, is the point of view of the editor.    Most editing books concentrate on the technology, and the technique involved in using that technology.  Most of what I’ve read on how to thread film into its spools, or even how to use Final Cut Pro 6, is now irrelevant.  Walter Murch and Jim Clark have bucked that trend and gone beyond a simple “how to” book.

Murch’s book, “In the Blink of An Eye”, is considered a classic.  It outlines the thought process, the philosophy behind his editing and the length of a cut.  Jim Clark’s book “The Dream Repairman” was more of a memoir, the stories of human relationships, but it also touches upon the actual process of film editing.

Clark’s book teaches things are valuable to the aspiring editor, or producer or director, including:

1. “Filmmaking is boring”, or, can be at times.  Clark wrote about pranks he and others played on each other in the editing room, and how some of those pranks ended up being used in films.  These pranks resulted from the tediousness of the job of editing.    If you want an exciting job, perhaps you should be a war reporter instead.

2. Getting jobs is about humility.  Even after gaining experience, Clark had to sometimes take jobs as an assistant, to start at the bottom again.

3. Method Actors are difficult to edit.  It’s great to be spontaneous on the set, to come up with new ideas for each take.  However, if you do that, remember to budget enough extra time in the editing room.

4. Editors can give useful feedback.  Some people wait for the film to be finished before talking to an editor.  Well, if you have someone like Clark available, then don’t wait.  Have him working on the picture when the first rushes are available.  An experienced editor let you know when something appears to be out of pace, and your production can save a lot of hassle by fixing what’s wrong ahead of time.

Murch’s book, and small articles here and there, have told me a lot more about editing.  There’s always the Soviet Classic about film editing and film acting, which goes over the basics.

But, what did Jim Clark do?  Why are editors so important?

Well, let’s say you start with an idea.  This could be a book you want to adapt, or a scene you have in your mind.  Stage one is that you either write this idea as a script, or you hire someone else to write it.  (If you can’t afford to hire someone, write it yourself.  You’ll understand it better.)

Okay, things can go wrong in step one, but then you just fire the writer and do a rewrite, or start afresh, right?

Well, let’s say you end up with the perfect script, then the “film is finished” according to Alfred Hitchcock, right?  Not so.   You might not have the budget to film everything as planned.  That location may be demolished.  Your actors might fumble on their lines, or improvise.

In all likelihood, your rushes will not look anything like the script you started with, especially if you’re using stars who became famous for their looks rather than their memory.  Even if you try to stay true to the screenplay and the storyboard (a comic book like rendition of the script, used in planning), you might not have everything you need in order to be able to.

In comes the “Dream Repairman.”

Yes, there are also a few famous female editors.  Tarantino used a female editor who went to a top film school and editing a Teenager Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, until she passed away.  Now, she is replaced by a team of people.   Scorsese and others had female editors.  You probably didn’t know that because you probably don’t know much about editors.

Most of these other editors don’t seem to have written books on their art or experiences, none that I’ve noticed in my local library anyway.

While I still like Walter Murch’s book more useful to working editors, and found Jim Clark’s speculating on the private lives of stars and other people in his life annoying, I’d recommend “The Dream Repairman” to anyone considering editing as a profession.

I’d like to see more memoirs of special effects, make up, carpentry, and other unsung heroes of the film trade.    And of course, I’d like to see more written about the art and not just the technology of film editing.

Rip Jim Clark.

bookmark_bordermidsummer nights rearranged dream

Words taken from the start of Helena’s final speech in Scene II, rearranged:

Helena:

So I am, Love’s folding mind,

wing’d Cupid looks not with the mind, but with the eyes;

Through Athens I thought Things base and vile.

But what of that? no quantity

as Demetrius thinks Love so;

He will not know:

Because in choice he is so oft beguiled

And therefore is painted blind:

And therefore is said to be a child, Love,

And as he errs, Love.

Nor hath Hermia’s eyes any judgement of taste;

doting on as she

can transpose to some o’er form and other dignity :

what all but he do know admiring of his qualities:

How happy

some can be,

not fair!

 

To the above, no words or punctuation was added or left out. Enjoy my Copy-Paste madness.

Consider this a late birthday present to Will Shakespeare, and a warning to raise awareness on the nonsense of copy-paste.

Word bubble Romeo and Juliet 

To further this, we’ve added a word-travesty of the Nurse’s speech in act I, scene 3 of Romeo and Juliet. The more used a word is, the bigger it comes up on the bubble. 

The word that jumps out to me is “Lammas.”  Juliet was weaned by the nurse 11 years before, on Lammas eve.  Lammas was a harvest festival, in a way like the forerunner of Thanksgiving.  “Pretty”, “fall”, “wormwood”, “fourteen”, and “dug”, all make reference to Juliet’s young age, but may also reference her current relationship with Romeo.  “Dug” by the way, has a meaning completely different from the modern one.

Yet, without their proper order, the meaning is lost.

 (original word bubble missing)

As you can see by the illustration, knowing how often a word appears is quite useless.  But it can be fun to see that words like “wilt” and “dovehouse” were once pretty useful.

By the way, the sentence “Wilt thou dovehouse, pretty Llamas wormwood?” doesn’t really make sense.

bookmark_borderThe difference between Development and Pre-Production

Acquiring the seed and a spot to plant it in, that is development.  Planting the seed, that is pre-production.  When it finally bears fruit, then you have a film. – Ptara

Once again, techies have been spreading misinformation on how a film is made. Just because you helped design a cool piece of software doesn’t mean you know everything, and one thing they especially seem to get wrong is the difference between development and pre-production.

The main problem is that most of them don’t seem to think that there is a difference, or they think that development is part of pre-production.  (Hint: I highly recommend Micheal Wohl\’s course on how to use Final Cut Pro X, although I take issue with some of his workflow advice, and also recommend his course on Apple Motion.  However, steer clear of his course on Production, it\’s very badly researched and poorly prepared.) Continue reading “The difference between Development and Pre-Production”

bookmark_borderAfter the movie is shot, we can begin to assemble it

“Even if I improve a film 1 percent, that’s important to me,” Sam Pollard

We’ve written the script, storyboarded the film, planned it, budgeted it, raised money (though not as much as we’d hoped), and now we shot the picture for Dara Says.

Recently, someone congratulated us for finishing the film.   “Congratulations on finishing the film.” Only, it hasn’t been finished yet.  It’s now time to assemble it.  We can still make the film better, with an excellent editor like Sam Pollard on board.  (No, we don’t have him, but we can dream, can’t we?)

Rosie and Beccy looking at a computer
Rosie de Sousa, producer, and Beccy O’Regan, Script Supervisor, consider a shot for Dara Says.

Continue reading “After the movie is shot, we can begin to assemble it”

bookmark_borderThe creativity of writing a budget

A yellow flower, common in gardens in Aberystwyth, processed in photography so the colors stand out.
Simple solutions come when you look at things differently.

Creative accounting is wrong, but it’s not wrong to be creative when accounting.

We were putting together some numbers for a project, and the budget started looking, well, bloated.  We hoped to keep total costs down below a certain threshold.  But, the budget for our project was starting to balloon to one and a half times the maximum I hoped it would be, and I hadn’t even finished costing the marketing yet. Continue reading “The creativity of writing a budget”