Our Director Writes:
Diary of a Mature Student: Genetically Modified Santa Time
Okay, so forget Christmas.
Let's talk about The Jacket. (Or, for the Amazon crowd, The Jacket).
I (heart) The Jacket as much as I like using the phrase "I (heart) (x)". 
(I like using the latter, because old people attempting to use current slang = perpetual fun).
I am unsure exactly how The Jacket managed to fuck up the simple "Make More Money Than The Film Costs" equation - given that, according to reliable sources (well, wikipedia, but it is Christmas Eve and I can't be bothered to do much in the way of research) it took approximately seven million less than it cost to make, which is something normally only reserved for films like Punisher: War Zone.
My question is; why does this make any particular sense? Let's run through the negative points first;
- The storyline is not that easy to follow unless you immediately swallow the concept of time travel via something similar to a Tulpa;
- There's a kind of icky undertone where the main characters meet once when one is very young then again where she's older, and the older versions have "The Sex", although it's only an undertone
- Some of the people involved get hit with the idiot hammer with alarming regularity.
But, seriously, the wattage of the film is strangely immense. You've got:
- Adrien Brody, just pre-King Kong but post The Pianist and The Village;
- Keira Knightley, post-Pirates of the Carribean, King Arthur and Love Actually
- Kris Kristofferson, post the entire Blade trilogy (although given the third film, well...) and pre-... um... nevermind
- Jennifer Jason Leigh, lovely in eXistenZ, also post Road to Perdition, similar to:
- Daniel Craig, post-Layer Cake and Road to Perdition, and just pre-Casino Royale;
- Hell, there's even Reliable Character Actor Brendan Coyle, who you may also remember from Downton Abbey
- And Steven Mackintosh, who's been in oh so so much.
You could base an entire publicity campaign on Brody and Knightley and sell it on that basis alone, and surely it'd take more than $21 million.
But apparently not.
There's a lesson here, kids, although I'm not sure exactly what it is beyond big stars do not necessarily a big film make. So... Draw your own conclusions.
And while you're at it, have a happy seasonal holiday.
Our Director Writes:
Diary of a Mature Student: Seasonal Greetings Or Not
I'm renouncing narrative filmmaking.
At least for next semester.
This, to a film student, is apparently like moving from Christianity to Satanism, but, if so, sign me up with the Horned God, because fucking hell but narrative filmmaking has become irritating to do.
It's not so much the writing - although that has it's own annoying qualities - so much as recording the dialogue.
Be the first to tell me when I'm wrong, please, but dialogue recording for student films has proved - for me, if nobody else - to be the biggest ballache this side of the Alps. It's literally almost never perfect on the day, and ADR and Looping have yet to prove particularly useful, although perhaps more useful than the alternative.
The main reason for this is that we don't have sets - every location is, by definition, a found location, and if you have electricity points, then hey, you're bouncing already.
Last year, I made four short films of a fairly low quality. The first was, curiously, the best in sound terms; four conversations over a three-minute period, decent boom work. From there, it was all downhill; the second had some ADR (and, ambitiously, some foley work), but wasn't that great in sound terms. The third was a dancing film, dialogue-free, based around the cuts and the dissolves, and was pretty fun. The final one had an entire section of dialogue that was cut out, followed by a dialogue-free opening sequence that was pretty solid - nice visuals, but the rest of the film didn't materialise anywhere or anywhen.
Of the four films, 25% had decent sound, 50% were all the better for being dialogue-free, and on the last one, the less said the better.
This year, the first film made had decent dialogue because we were, curiously enough, subbed all the best equipment for a day.
The second film, however, currently awaits editing, and I'm dreading it, because we pretty blatantly didn't have the good equipment. So continuity editing is going to be appalling, because the light changes over the course of the day, during a single conversation. The evening's filming should be fine, although it's kind of a reprise of a film from last year.
That last sentence should give you a bit of a clue about one of the major student film problems, however; time.
The filming took place over the course of a single fourteen hour day, at the end of which I was wondering why I'd thought it was a good idea in the first place, although to be fair I always ask myself that question upon making a new film.
I want to edit it, because there are some odd little moments of beauty in there. I've uploaded the footage - a process made laborious because the computer here in the Eton Crow offices with a working firewire port has a tiny hard drive and the computer with a large drive doesn't have a working firewire port, which meant transferring all the footage piecemeal from one to the other. But it's done, now, and ready, now, and I'm not ready, now, at all.
Instead, I'm ready to renounce my faith in narrative filmmaking. From now on, it's all music videos and maybe documentaries, baby, because no dialogue means no worries...
... At least, in theory...
Our Director Writes:
Diary of a Mature Student: Mistletoe and Wine
In some ways, what I basically miss is The Sofa.
Way back when, in the mists of time, I used to visit friends in London fairly regularly - initially when I was still living there, then afterwards I'd travel down to see them, do the social thing. All very nice.
It was an interesting little flat - I was friends with one of the male residents (and by extension his girlfriend, later fiancé, later wife), and he was dating one of two sisters, the other of whom lived there with her soon-to-be husband.
What would happen is that, after a night with a few drinks, or a meal (with a few drinks), or just an evening in general, is that myself and my friend would sit down and watch some of the trashiest, worst films known to man.
I can't honestly remember how it began - I think, although I have no proof, that it was X-Men 2, which is in no way trashy or bad. (It is, however, pretty long for a blockbuster, superhero film. But that's another thing.) However, after that, things took an ominous turn when I discovered that Starship Troopers 2 was being released straight-to-dvd. It sounded, from the ancillary material, so bad that it kind of had to be seen.
Having seen the film all those years ago, I can't recall much, if anything, about it, because I'd had what might charitably be called A Little Too Much to drink. I remember, however, having the hiccups. This is probably not relevant.
What began with Starship Troopers 2 - a film which I may now have to watch sober, to see if any 1960s-style acid flashbacks pop up - continued as a kind of challenge; I'd thrown down a gauntlet, with that, and because my friend is oddly competitive, we started trading back and forth with films that inhabited a certain level - basically so bad but still watchable, rather than so bad as to be completely unwatchable whatsoever.
If I recall correctly, he then responded with a double whammy - Alone in the Dark, which was so bad as to be unwatchable, but then immediately made up for with Doom, which has few enough redeeming qualities but is certainly enjoyable enough if you're in the right frame of mind.
I responded to this with Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire, which is an interesting film on many counts, to which I was duly responded to with Kingdom of the Spiders, starring the truly great William Shatner.
The last two, however, were done by postal correspondance, and that saddens me a little, because I kind of miss the significance of the sofa.
Don't read too much into this, because all I mean is that that type of film watching was done just for the fun of it, not because I had to study it, or write about it, or give two tugs of a dog's tail about it in any way, shape or form.
Now, when I watch a film, I see continuity errors, plot holes, narrative function; it's like watching a magic show from behind the curtain, on occasion.
You shouldn't mistake this for any yen for a simpler time, a less complex time, a time when the rain was never cold and the summers went on forever; it'd just be nice to find films to watch just to watch, that's all.
Thankfully, I have the kind of family that insists on buying me these odd collections of B-movies - The Last Man On Earth and The Prehistoric Planet were Christmas Presents Of Choice this year, along with, during the year, The Wasp Woman, and Attack of the 50ft Woman among others.
Maybe I should just start watching them, instead of films laden with portentous significance dedicated to communicating. The films I've had to watch feel recently feel a lot like being buttonholed by someone at a party who thinks that they're talking about the most interesting thing ever, and can't wait to tell you about it.
The kind of film I'm looking for is more like a conversation with a half-drunk friend, not perfect, not insistent on anything, and certainly not looking to impress.
For any prospective film students out there - Hi! Watch your feet, try the additive dissolve, don't try the whip-pan - what I would say I've really learnt from this course so far is that watching a film is communication; the film is trying to tell you things above and beyond what's seen on the screen. The basics are that you can tell a films' budget, its' politics, its' production values, and maybe a few other things besides.
The rest - to end on a portentous single sentence - is more or less up to you.
Except I can't stand to end that way, so... Go and watch, say, The Godfather, or The Graduate, or any films listed in various categories of Best Film, or whatever.
Then go watch Starship Troopers 2.
See which one you have more fun with.
