Nolan on Following

The Criterion Collection's twenty minute featurette with Christopher Nolan on Following is amazing. Nolan talks about the choices he made during the production of Following in order to create a fictional world within the financial and technical boundaries he had.
This is an important piece for young filmmakers who have similar limitations. Nolan mostly argues that one should benefit from everything he/she has around him/herself. Understanding the limitations and walking around that is crucial.
The piece is highly recommended!

I'll not date in August!

Some Inspirations

I have decided to share some of things that inspired me and I was thinking of using them in my own short film which I intend to shoot in the spring. I was fascinated by lighting, colors, composition or technique.

It is not easy to understand the shot because of the titles but it is a shot of the road seen from inside the car. On the rear window, we see the reflection of Humphrey Bogart driving. It is a close up of his face.
I thought about reproducing this shot in a way that I would shoot the road and the close up of the reflection separately and I would combine them together in the editing software. I think that would create a sort of a different surreal feeling, a combination of different shots coming together to create a linear whole within the composition. And by doing it with very clear, sharp and colorful image by using an HD camera, it will possess an absurd look. But I am not really sure how it is going to end up!
I also like a composition to have layers and hierarchy within it. I believe without those, it doesn't mean anything.


This is a shot from Almodóvar's film, I love the way he plays with color. Red always signals the victim but in this particular shot, it is the telephone. The director, here, probably refers to the character who is going to call, we don't see him, but he is the Fabula. Yet without showing that character, Almodóvar points out that he is the victim. It is very clever.
In his last film, the color red plays a major role in the film. Red presents the hierarchy between the characters and changes all the time by their power, love, lust or misery.
My favorite scene from Broken Embraces can be viewed here.

The way Almodóvar chooses to use elements of pop culture fascinates me. I decided I have to combine my own work with pop references and one of the magazine that is very important for me is "Les Cahiers du Cinéma". That magazine was very important for the foundation of the New Wave French filmmakers and it is still a very important film magazine for world cinema. I don't know how am I going to use it but I just want to combine it with a very self reflexive way!

Through Hockney's Eyes

Are we in danger of forgetting how to look properly at the world around us? David Hockney thinks so!
Here's the link.

The Verdict: A Collaboration of David Mamet and Sidney Lumet

I was once asked during an interview about Eisenstein Montage Theory whether it has changed during the history of cinema or not? I responded without hesitation. No!
Of course, cinema is a form of art that is very much related to technology, and every new invention brings something to the craft, but essentials don't go away. When, in the fifties, American film producers chose to go with a wider and deeper screen called CinemaScope in order to make a difference against television, Andre Bazin called it "fin du montage". Of course, that wasn't true. When we think about dominant cinema, we still tell our stories within the cuts.
Here's what Mamet, the scriptwriter of "The Verdict" says about visual storytelling and montage.

There's another way to make a movie, which is the way that Eisenstein suggested a movie should be made. This method has nothing to do with following the protagonist around but rather is a succession of images juxtaposed so that the contrast between these images moves the story forward in the mind of the audience. This is a very succinct rendition of Eisenstein's theory of montage; it is also the first thing I know about film directing, virtually the only thing I know about film directing.
You always want to tell the story in cuts. Which is to say, through a juxtaposition of images that are basically uninflected image. A shot of a teacup. A shot of a spoon. A shot of a fork. A shot of a door. Let the cut tell the story. Because otherwise you have not got dramatic action, you have narration. If you slip into narration, you are saying "you'll never guess why what I just told you is important to the story." It's important that the audience should guess why it is important to the story. It is important simply to tell the story. Let the audience be surprised.

The movie, finally, is much closer than the play to simple storytelling. If you listen to the way people tell stories, you will hear that they tell them cinematically. They jump from one thing to the next, and the story is moved along by the juxtaposition of images - which is to say, by the cut.
People say, "I'm standing on the corner. It's a foggy day. A bunch of people are running around crazy. Might have been the full moon. All of a sudden, a car comes up and the guy next to me says..."
If you think about it, that's a shot list: (1) a guy standing on the corner; (2) shot of a fog; (3) a full moon shining above; (4) a man says, "I think people get wacky this time of year"; (5) a car approaching.
This is good filmmaking, to juxtapose images. Now you are following the story. What, you wonder, is going to happen next?

In that case, my shot list would be as following:
1. I leave the glass with the liquid in it in my room.
2. I have lunch in the restaurant.
3. I come back to my room.
4. A close up of the glass. Melted.
5. The expression of my face.
6. I enter in the studio, he is painting.

Well, I think that looks premising. But it can be better.
Now what Mamet argues here is interesting:

The truth is, you never have to establish the character. In the first place, there is no such thing as character other than the habitual action, as Mr. Aristotle told us two thousands years ago. It just doesn't exits...
...As long as the protagonist wants something, the audience will want something. As long as the protagonist is clearly going out and attempting to get that something, the audience will wonder whether or not he is going to succeed...

Now, after having red this, I will try to make a shot list of the very first scene of "The Verdict".

1. A working class funeral. There are about thirty people.
2. A man (Funeral Director) with a black suit fills the screen.
3. Second man (Galvin) puts discreetly folded ten dollar into director's pocket.
4. They all walk to the funeral parlor.
5. Widow is crying.
6. These two men approaches her.
7. Funeral Director: "Mrs. Dee, This is Joe Galvin, a very good friends of ours and a very fine attorney."
8. Widow nods.
9. Galvin: "I knew him vaguely through the Lodge. He was a wonderful man. It is a crime what happened to him. A crime. If there is anything I could do to help..."
10. Galvin removes his business card from his pocket and hands it to her as he was giving her money. (i.e., "Take it, I want you to have it...")
11. She takes the card.
Beat

Some Books I Should Read Before The End of 2009!

Nicholas Ray: An American Journey - Bernard Eisenschitz

I was Interrupted: Nicholas Ray on Making Movies - Nicholas Ray

My Last Sigh: Luis Bunuel

The Interpretation of Dreams: Sigmund Freud

The Uses of Enchantment: Bruno Bettelheim

The Parade's Gone By: Kevin Brownlow

Picture: Lillian Ross

Hitchcock / Truffaut: François Truffaut

An Unspeakable Betrayal: Selected Writings of Luis Bunuel

Final Cut: Art, Money, and Ego in the Making of "Heaven's Gate", The Film That Sank United Artists - Steven Bach

Technique Of Film Editing - Karel Reisz, Gavin Miller

Another Shark in a Suit

Everybody loves you. Pisses me off.

Jerry Maguire: I'm finished, I'm fucked. Twenty four hours ago, man, I was hot! Now... I'm a cautionary tale. You see this jacket I'm wearing, you like it? Because I don't really need it. Because I'm cloaked in failure! I lost the number one draft picked the night before the draft! Why? Let's recap: Because a hockey player's kid made me feel like a superficial jerk. I ate two slices of bad pizza, went to bed and grew a conscious!

Okay. I am going to talk about a film which I think it will give me the opportunity to fully describe what I enjoy seeing and what I intend to do. Actually I am very much interested about male characters fighting for their goals, fighting to earn money, earning respect from the others, get a decent powerful career... If possible conquer the world. I am interested about smart characters who want it all.
The film, Jerry Maguire may seem cheesy to many but I think it is a very powerful film in case of written character and its strong visual storytelling. Jerry is a successful sport agent, he is strong, funny, dependable. He is working in a major company called Sport Management International. "Everybody loves him" is one of the tag lines of the film. But at the age of 35, after a nervous breakdown, he starts writing a mission statement in one night "The Things We Think and Do Not Say: The Future of Our Business", proposing "Fewer Clients, Less Money" but a better personal support to the clients. He delivers it to everyone in the company but of course in the next day, he is fired.
Once he is alone, he becomes the boss of himself, Jerry is so frighten that he instinctively tries to get all his clients back with his new company as opposed to his mission statement that he is about to start but like a destiny, he can only convince two of his ex-clients.He is now confronting with his writings, "Less Clients, Less Money" even he doesn't want to because he just wants to get to back to business to get a revenge from his ex-bosses. One of clients is a very young promising football player and the other one is a black, in his mid-thirties who thinks only about money to support his big family.
At the same time, Jerry who was never alone in his life breaks up with his fiancée and another challenge awaits him. Loneliness.
But the main conflict starts when the young promising football player which he was his only savor decides in last moment to make a deal with Sport Management International, Jerry is now with only one client who doesn't promise a potential as a football player, he is difficult to work with, he is aggressive and everybody finds him a pain the ass in the team. But as oppossed to Jerry, he has a very strong respect and caring for family values which Jerry in the end will learn a lot from him.
So Jerry, in his journey, will have to continue with the most difficult football player to get back in the business and will have the chance to really understand and go through all that he wrote before. In a way, now he has the chance to prove whether he was right or wrong to himself and to really understand what really matters in life. Like his mentor would say "Personal relations are the keys to this business."

Jerry Maguire: I will not rest until I have you holding a Coke, wearing your own shoe, playing a Sega game *featuring you*, while singing your own song in a new commercial, *starring you*, broadcast during the Super bowl, in a game that you are winning, and I will not *sleep* until that happens. I'll give you fifteen minutes to call me back.



Now, another thing which I would like to discuss here has got nothing to do with Jerry Maguire, but something that I shot two years ago as an exercise. I love working with maquette, small figures and stuff because it gives me the chance to experiment things that I really can't in real life because it is expensive. Therefore I like to work with actions figures, light them, direct them and creating a living environment for them. I think the most difficult part is creating the environment, for example this saloon doesn't really look to real because there is really no detail, no traces of past, time, doesn't really look like it is living. And to do that, you really have to work really detailed in order to create a living environment. And it is really a craft. It is what production designers do actually.

What I would really like to do as a long term project is actually combine both. A very well written character and a story with a very strong sense of visual storytelling. But isn't that every filmmaker wants to achieve at the end?

What Makes This Shot Believable?

   

I love production design. Actually, I love production designers. Production designers are the best and sometimes worst friends of cinematographers. Just look at this shot, from Coen's film "No Country For Old Men" which was shot by Roger Deakins ASC, BSC. If you look closely you will see the details of the wall which is dusty, dark and sticky. This kind of work done by production designers makes the visuality of the film much stronger and gives much more space to cinematographers to play with.
This is the first time that I am writing to this blog and I just wanted to share a certain shot from a film which I love and to show why particularly I love it. I will try to share more stills from certain films to discuss certain area of filmmaking and also just to talk and think about it.