In answering Maria’s question, we realized that our response took us in two different directions.  Aside from the pleasures of storytelling, we also wanted to consider the practical aspects of filmmaking.  Playing with ideas between the two of us is easy; sharing our ideas with an audience via film?  Much more difficult.  Before you can get someone to sit through your movie and consider your ideas, you have to keep them entertained and in their seat.  You have to make it worth the audience’s time.  Therefore, in order to get our stories told, we have to improve our abilities as filmmakers.  The best way to do that: make films.

We’ve made numerous shorts, but they’re not all gems.  They’re all, even the decent ones, experiments with varying degrees of success.  We’re brutally honest about what works and what doesn’t.  And if something doesn’t work, you can be sure that we take a step back and reassess. What’s the problem? Is it the acting, hence our directing or casting choices?  Is it a technical issue?  Or is it the writing?  Sometimes an idea exists in our heads, but isn’t fully fleshed out in the script.  This can be disastrous.  And…not disastrous.  Why? Because a mistake made in today’s movie is something we’ll get right in tomorrow’s.

Last summer we embarked on the Idville Collection – two short films about the Id run rampant.  Out of the two, Libidoland was the more successful experiment.  While there are still some kinks in the film, we managed to create narrative tension and to balance that tension with humor and humility, which was one of our goals.  Anxiety Acres, on the other hand, is fun but much more flawed.  There are several spots where both Julie and I cringe at our failure to carry off certain jokes.  The problem wasn’t our actors.  It wasn’t our low-budget.  It was our script.

Below I’m going to provide a bit of the script and the short sequence that contains one of our most blatant failures.  But, first, let’s set it up:

The film is about a couple who has recently moved from the city to the country.  Midway through the film the husband (Kevin) runs into town for sandwiches.  While out, he imagines many horrible things happening to his wife, Casey, who’s back at the house. Distracted by his nightmarish imaginings, Kevin becomes clumsy and ends up smashing and disfiguring his face.  Casey, in the meantime, is safe on the couch catching up on her favorite zombie novel.  When Kevin returns to the farm and Casey spies him from afar, he looks an awful lot like one of the zombies in her book.  She promptly freaks out and gets ready for the fight of her life.

Here is the script excerpt and the scene:

Click here to view the embedded video.

This was meant to be a very funny moment in the film.  We dropped the ball.  Problem #1, we developed Kevin’s character more than Casey’s.  We didn’t write it in a way that built up the possibility that Casey would actually be scared by one of her books.   The script should have set Casey up to be on edge and jumping at random noises prior to Kevin’s unexpected and disfigured return.  We let her be too nonchalant, and, thus, it isn’t believable that she thinks she sees a zombie.  It’s a surprise, when we should have built suspense.  If you frame it in terms of Hitchcock’s bomb theory, we set off an unexpected bomb, a fizzler.  If we’d cued the audience about Casey’s growing disquiet, it would have been much more satisfying to watch her lose it, especially after Kevin nearly killed himself for the same reason.  This idea was in our heads, but it wasn’t fully developed in the script – and thus it didn’t make it into the film.

What did the flaws of Anxiety Acres teach us?  For one, we need to think more about character development and make sure our characters’ motivations are clearer.  We also need to think about setting up jokes, letting expectations and tensions build, and allowing the joke to release the energy and tension,  leading to greater audience satisfaction.

The best advice I have for a burgeoning screenwriter: MAKE A FILM.  Make 20.  Sure, you can do a lot to prepare. You can study the rules of narrative structure; you can read about comedic timing; or you can supplement your understanding of archetypes with a deep understanding of Carl Jung.  But that book knowledge is useless if you don’t have a firm idea of how your words actualize on film.  The more we try our ideas out – in the real world, with real people – the more we understand about how to write in a way that is cinematic, in a way that is going to translate into a good film.  Each flawed film you make gets you closer to your first really good one.  So grab your camera, and go!

In Part 2, we explored how audiences don’t like it when movies remind them that they are fake.

In Part 3, we examined how audiences react when either the acting style or the character depictions fall too far outside of the norm.

In Part 4, we looked at how non-realistic characters and situations can actually be enjoyable.

And now, finally, in Part 5, we explore the connection between speed and forgetting and slowness and depth.

“There is a secret bond between slowness and memory, between speed and forgetting.”
– Milan Kundera, Slowness

When I go to the movies, I often come away feeling like I haven’t had a chance to actually see anything, an odd sensation to experience with a visual art form.  Sometimes it’s due to hand-held camera work, which can convey the skittishness of a nervous person looking around wildly to avoid eye contact.  But it can also be attributed to shot length.

In 1903 the average shot length was 35.6 seconds; by 2007, the average shot length was 2.5 seconds.  Slick, fast films keep the audience’s attention easily, because if they look away, even for a second, they’ll miss something.  Literally.  There’s no time for reflection, no room for contemplation.  You must watch in order to keep up.  And at the end of the movie, you can easily say that you saw everything but learned nothing.

Even if an emotion or an idea catches your attention in a rapidly cut film, there is no time to savour it or think about what it might mean and, due to the insistence on narrative closure, you probably won’t remember to think about it afterwards.  Everything is thus forgettable – almost like a dream: boom, flash, it’s gone.  Further, the insistence on short shot lengths makes it impossible to explore certain emotional territory: loneliness, tedium, sadness, desire, nostalgia, etc – these are emotions that require longer takes.

Consider, for instance, the films of Tsai Ming Liang.  He tends to make films about lonely alienated people.  Thus, many of his shots are long and feature people doing banal, sometimes tedious things.  Why?  Not because he’s trying to entertain you, but rather to get you to think about the nature of loneliness – how time seems endless and ultimately empty to those who have no one to share it with.

I particularly enjoy how he achieved this sense of loneliness among movie patrons in his film Good-Bye Dragon Inn.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Some, of course, would argue that they don’t go to the cinema to think about the more unpleasant feelings associated with being alive but, instead, to be entertained.  I like to be entertained just as much as anyone else; however, I also think that film can offer more than entertainment. I even think film can be both entertaining and thought-provoking at the same time.

When I was in college my hero was Marguerite Duras.  I liked her simplicity and her directness.  She wrote about desire and suffering.  Her characters, much like Tsai Ming Liang’s characters, were lonely and looking to find a connection with others.  She once wrote that while making one of her films, Natalie Granger (I think), she insisted on filming one of the female characters doing the dishes for several minutes.  Several minutes of a woman’s hands doing women’s work.  Entertaining?  No.  So why put your audience through such a thing?  Because that was how many women spent their time, their whole lives, in fact.  Tediously.  There’s no other way to express it than to show it, to make the audience feel it and experience it for themselves.

Tarkovsky is another filmmaker who relishes in the long, contemplative take.  The camera lingers, moves over things, and stops to allow the audience to look, to think, to contemplate.  Consider this scene from The Mirror (my favorite Tarkovsky film).  You may not know what’s going on, but he gives you ample time to figure it out.  And even if you don’t “get it” right away, you can certainly feel it.  The slowness of the scene evokes a sense of childish wonder and curiosity mixed with a deep sense of sadness and loss that quick cutting could never evoke.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Shot length is something I struggled with in both Snow Bunny and Sound Sleeper. Both films are about family life, which for me, has always been about tedium and entrapment.    So if I want to convey these things to the audience, how can I do it without boring them, especially when they’ve been fed a steady diet of rapid-fire cuts?

I recently hacked two minutes off Sound Sleeper.  Initially we showed a mother making and serving breakfast several mornings in a row.  You saw her frying eggs, browning sausage, pouring cereal, toasting waffles.  Mundane, routine activities that many mothers know well.  By cutting out some of the breakfast prep footage, I know that it’s more palatable to audiences, more entertaining.  But what did we lose?  The monotony of the mother’s morning chore is referenced but not experienced, which, to me, means that the overall theme might not be be fully developed or fully understood.  But I also understand that people won’t watch something at all if they think it’s boring… so it all comes down to balance.

As a filmmaker, I plan to continue exploring how to balance showing the tedium or less “fun” aspects of life with keeping the audience entertained.  And somewhere, probably not too far away, is another filmmaker trying to figure out how to cut the 2.5 second shot average to 2.25.  For entertainment’s sake.

In Part 2, we explored how audiences don’t like it when movies remind them that they are fake.

In Part 3, we examined how audiences react when either the acting style or the character depictions fall too far outside of the norm.

Now, in Part 4, we look at how non-realistic characters and situations can actually be enjoyable.

Certainly the most notorious and jaw-dropping John Waters film is Pink Flamingos.  The plot revolves around a group of people actively competing to be the “filthiest people alive.” One of my favorite moments in the film is when Babs (Divine) and her son Crackers break into the Marble’s house (where the Marbles are hiding a black market, lesbian, baby-making service in their basement) to filth-ify it.  Their method?  They lick everything in the house: the sofa, the knick-knacks on the coffee table, the banisters, everything.  Then, when Connie (Mink Stole) and her husband come home, they slip and fall down when they come into contact with any of their foes’ saliva: they slip off the couch, they fall down the stairs, their drinks slide off the coffee table.  Take a look:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Now is this realistic?  No.  Not in the least.  It’s absurd, but, more than that, it’s also incredibly pleasurable, in part, because it allows the audience to be co-conspirators – we all know that a normal person’s saliva would dry in just a few seconds. However, if you accept the idea that these people are filthy, so filthy that their saliva has achieved the consistency of swamp slime that multiplies and spreads its dirty slickness all on its own, then the actions take on a much larger meaning.  I’ve never encountered anything so sublime in a film like Revolutionary Road or Knocked Up.

I would argue that a lot of Godard falls into this category as well.  For one, many of his films are not about reality: they’re about movies or ideas.  There is a playful aspect to many of his characters and their interactions that is similar to the characters in John Water’s films.  Of course, in Godard the characters are more playful and childlike than crass.  In some films, it’s almost as if the characters are giant children as exemplified in the book insult scene from A Woman is a Woman:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Another filmmaker who delights in playful expressionism is Guy Maddin.  This, of course, is obvious as soon as you start watching his films.  Because he’s embraced the film tropes and styles of early expressionist cinema, there is no pretense that he is going to deliver characters or scenes that are in any way realistic.  Even in his biographical film My Winnipeg, Maddin’s sense of whimsy and play is in no way diminished by the use of archival video or photographs.  In fact, Maddin’s ability to blur the distinction between reality and fantasy only enhances the imagination, allowing the audience the freedom to reimagine their own lives and to ponder the relationship between their own mythical histories and their concepts of self and history.  This is particularly poignant in the Horse Story scene:

Click here to view the embedded video.

In the next, and final, installment, we will explore editing styles and our ability to be patient in film.

In Part 2, we explored how audiences don’t like it when movies remind them that they are fake.

Now, in Part 3, we examine how audiences react when either the acting style or the character depictions fall too far outside of the norm.

In the same way that movie goers reject visual artifice, such as unnatural lighting, awkward angles, or over-the-top mise-en-scene, they also reject both character behavior and styles of acting (and, hence, styles of directing) that fall outside of what is considered “normal.”

Before we go on, we want to be very clear that we are in no way defending bad acting or directing.  Our focus for this exploration is on what is considered normal and acceptable as dictated by most Hollywood films and Hollywood-style realism.

For an extreme example, take the actors in John Waters films. We love John Waters, and one thing is undeniable: when you watch his movies, you can see his actors acting. Some might call this bad acting, but we ask you to consider this: they were probably just doing exactly what they were told (and the consistency of how people behave across the Water’s oeuvre supports this).  They’re not trying to replicate regular ways of talking or behaving. They’re interacting in an entirely unique world that can’t be found outside of the theater (or the home entertainment center).  This makes people uncomfortable.

Yet, it’s not simply because the characters themselves are strange or out of the ordinary.  It has a lot to do with how the actors and actresses present themselves, how they act.

Think about movies that depict completely fictional communities (talking animals, aliens). Now think about how those characters interact with each other and the worlds they live in.  Do they talk to one another?  Yes.  Do they usually have a goal similar to a goal you might have? Yes.  Do they use social niceties? Yes.  Are there blow-ups and reconciliations that need to be resolved by the end of the movie?  Yes.  All interactions in these movies, no matter how “out there” the movie’s world seems, start and end in ways that would be recognizable in the real world.

In John Water’s movies, though, the characters do things that “normal” people don’t do.  And, as a result, the actors act in ways that “normal” actors don’t act.  They talk funny. They hump chickens. They talk in strange voices. They use weird gestures and crude language.  (Remember in Female Trouble when Dawn Davenport, angry because her parents didn’t get her cha-cha heels for Christmas, knocks a tree onto her mother and screeches, “Get off me you ugly witch!  I hate you!  I hate this house!  And I hate Christmas!”)  The actors aren’t trying to fool you into thinking that they’re your next door neighbor or your long lost love (though John Waters would like you to believe they are); they’re highlighting strangeness, uniqueness, and quirky (often over-stated) individuality.  To audiences used to sleek, relatable Hollywood characters, this strangeness is uncomfortable to watch and, subsequently, rejected.

But how could anyone want to reject this stunning, hideous family?

Click here to view the embedded video.

While John Waters has actors portray outrageous characters in outrageous ways, David Lynch comes at it from a different angle. He sometimes takes characters we know and love (the girl next door, for example) and has his actresses portay them in slightly off ways.  Thinks about Laura Dern in Blue Velvet.  Sheryl Lee in Twin Peaks.  Naomi Watts in the first half of Mullholland Drive.  They’re just as beautiful as other versions of the character.  Just as optimistic.  Just as perky and bubbly.  But all three characters are played just left of normal. There’s something slightly off, slightly awkward about these characters.  Something familiar is suddenly unfamiliar, and this scares people.  The audience becomes uncomfortable and some run for the door.

And when they’re running for the door, they’re really missing out.  We’ll explore that further in the next installment.  In the meantime, Naomi Watts in Mulholland Drive anyone?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Now, in Part 2, we explore why audiences reject movies that remind them that they are, well, fake.

The insistence on a certain type of realism, which in Hollywood comes down to slickness, truncates the audience’s imagination.  When everything is presented in the slickest way possible, it’s difficult to engage with film in a meaningful way – unfortunately, this is what people have come to expect.

Ask people why they go to movies, and many will tell you that they want to get out of their own heads and escape from their normal lives.  Reality is boring.  Movies are fun and exciting.  People love explosive disaster movies, epic battles, and sexy rom-coms with witty dialogue delivered by attractive Hillarys and Astons.  People even love extremely dramatic tearjerkers with overwrought and tragic endings.  What do all of these things have in common: they pull people intensely outside of their own experiences. People obviously want to be distracted…but there’s a catch: they want the intensity, the otherness, to appear as natural as possible.

What does this mean?  Basically, people don’t want to see the strings.  Slick Hollywood movies have similar pacing, perfect mis-en-scene, standard lighting styles, accepted acting styles…heck, we can all name which working actors and actresses fit best in dramas and which work better in comedies.  In order to meet the needs of the audiences fed on a particular brand of realism, movies need to stay within the lines.

Are all movies slick?  Nope.  Some are delightfully clumsy, awkward, and generally unreal.  And that’s okay.  As a matter of fact, it’s what we often prefer here at King is a Fink.

Movie artifice can be denoted by a number of things.  In a musical, there are bursts of song and dance.  In certain low-budget or amateur films, like the cult classic Plan 9 from Outer Space, audiences can revel in the hand-crafted mise-en-scene: cardboard gravestones, toy space ships, and overly-corseted, washed up stars.   But artifice also takes more purposeful forms: expressionistic camera angles, too slow/too fast pacing, nontraditional casting, unique lighting and set design, etc.  These things can break the spell of a movie, calling the audience’s attention to the fact that what they’re watching is not real.

Melodramas are excellent examples of movies that call attention to their movie-ness. In the 1950’s, Douglas Sirk pushed the melodrama to the nth degree, allowing his actors to overdramatize their feelings, his lighters to over light, and his costume and set designers to use color and kitsch to their hearts’ content.  For some, Sirk’s melodramas call too much attention to themselves, and are rejected.  His films look fake, yes. But they’re supposed to be fake.  Sirk was unabashed in his insistence on allowing film language to present his thoughts and provoke the audience’s response.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I don’t know that I would have come to love movies so much if it weren’t for the pre-school-esque playfulness of filmmakers like Michel Gondry, the expressionistic angles of Orson Welles, the bold colors and colorful characters of Pedro Almodovar, the strange combination of noir lighting and overwrought drama of Douglas Sirk, the irreverence of Godard, or the outrageous crassness of John Waters.  It is the filmmakers who’ve embraced the cinema as a creative playground, those who take risks in inviting the audience to play along, that have inspired me the most.

The problem with realism, or at least with too much realism, is similar to the problem caused by tidy endings.  When movies only show reality in certain ways, the audience’s imagination, and thus engagement, is cut off.  There’s no chance to imagine, to wonder, to project, or interpret when everything is wrapped in a nifty (and all too familiar) package.

I thought I’d end today with something supremely artificial.  How’s this for artifice: a murder-mystery, musical melodrama by Francois Ozon! Yes, I know it’s in French, but you don’t have to know the language to delight in Ozon’s “8 Femmes”, groove to the music, giggle at the cheezy dance moves, or celebrate Catherine Deneuve’s stint as a back-up dancer.  Stick through it to the end to see Isabelle Huppert’s entrance as Deneuve’s uptight sister-in-law, as denoted by costume, hair-do, and…yes, over-the-top acting.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Ready for Part 3?

When they watch a movie, they want a blockbuster: they want guns; they want explosions; and most of all, they want slickness. If anything interrupts or calls attention to the illusion of cinema, they become enraged.  They particularly hate it when movies end – no matter what happens at the end, they yell, “That’s the end?!” and then they pout while we shift from illusion to reality.

Slick Hollywood movies share an illusion with the audience…but only for the length of the movie.  Their endings are clean, obvious, and satisfying.  “The bad guy got caught.” “The lovers got married.”  “ET found his way home.”  Nice.  Neat.  No thinking required.  Next movie.

So what happens when we encounter movies of another sort, ones that leave the fate of the characters to the imagination of the audience?  Examples include The Graduate, The Birds, Blade Runner, 2001, No Country for Old Men, and Before Sunset.

Some people like these movies. They take the illusion home with them and explore it via discussion with friends or private contemplation.  They ponder different options, consider different forks in the road.  In essence, they have to think in order to finish their experience with the movie.  And this requires work.  Other movie-goers leave these movies crying, “Then what?”  They’re distraught.  They’re disappointed. They feel cheated of their easy, entertaining movie escape.  And they’re very vocal about it.  “That movie was stupid.”  “That movie didn’t make sense.”  “That movie felt unfinished.”  Well, maybe it did…but that’s because you have to finish it.

“Then what,” indeed.

Consider the open-endedness of two recent indie films vs. a recent Hollywood franchise: Chop Shop and Ballast vs. Michael Bays’ Transformers.  The indie films end with simple, mundane activities that emphasize the importance of the protagonists’ newfound closeness with family: a brother and sister scare pigeons and watch them fly; a boy sleeps in the backseat in a car containing his new family.  In Transformers, the good guys beat the bad guys. The end.  One might argue that Transformers ended with a little ambiguity (were all of the bad guys eliminated?) but that person would also have to admit that’s for the sake of sequel generation rather than thought provocation.  Very few sequels actually develop and deepen a storyline. Transformers 2 is just Transformers 1 revisited, with better special effects.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

So, what’s the final word on movies with open endings?  Think about them.  Talk about them with your friends.  Decide for yourself what happened.  And don’t be turned off by the fact that this requires thinking (ugh), consideration of the artist’s statement (boring), and, maybe, reflection on our own lives (no, thank you.)

Now…are you ready for Part 2?

Everything wasn’t as smooth as we’d hoped.  We hit some roadblocks and felt discouraged, but then we backed up, charged through, and hit our mark.  And it felt good.

Now both parts of The Idville Collection, Anxiety Acres and Libidoland, are finished, and we’re getting rough cuts to our music guys.

Here are some picks from our final day of shooting: