|
Feature Films |
| |
| |
 In the beginning was the word. Unless complete abstractions of flickering light and color, even the most experimental and poetic films begin with some notion of narrative, of storytelling. As a filmmaker with nine short films and now a second feature-length work under my belt as producer, writer, director, and editor, the importance of conceptualization and the writing process has become increasingly apparent to me. Even my musical, dialogue-free shorts which seek to mimic silent-era film techniques have always been scripted and, more often than not storyboarded, to ensure that there will be a minimum of guess-work and set-up time on location. As long as I can remember, I have fancied myself a writer, my passion for literature rivaled only by a love of the cinema. By applying pen to paper, anyone can be a writer; and critics often attribute a cinematic style of “camera shots” to novelists like Graham Greene (who, tellingly, had an intense love affair with the cinema, was a film critic, and whose books have enjoyed many successful screen adaptations). This suggests to me that what many writers are really up to is making virtual movies on the cheap and in the comfortable solitude of their homes. In contrast, making cinema requires expensive equipment, savvy social skills, much collaboration with other would-be artists and technicians, and also demands greater discipline, technical skill, dedication and perseverence than the mere scribbling of unpublished (and often unpublishable) manuscripts.
|
| |
| Despite romantic misconceptions to the contrary, I contend that art doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and that any artist, or would-be artist, in his right mind desires an audience. Filmmaking, even no-budget filmmaking, providing the project is sustained and eventually edited into some sort of coherent form, contains it’s own built-in audience: the actors, musicians, crew members and location providers that help bring the project to life. These contributors will also want their families and friends to see the film they were involved with, and the managers of shoot locations like bars and coffeeshops are likely to offer public screenings. Try passing off the manuscript of your unpublished novel to family and friends and see how quickly (if ever) they get around to reading it. Movies are decidedly different. While literacy and general interest in reading continues to decline, one rarely meets an individual with no interest whatsoever in the movies. Films are accessible, in most cases requiring little more than a two-hour commitment and little effort on the audience’s part to enjoy them. With digital video technology becoming at the same moment both greatly advanced in quality and increasingly inexpensive, I offer some friendly writerly advice: Read about filmmaking; study your favorite films; decide on a compelling story that can be filmed with little or no money; script it, buy, beg, borrow or steal production equipment; swallow your shyness and anti-social tendencies; leave the solitude of your darkened room and the gloom of the desk, and start casting and location-scouting. Unlike that umpteenth unread great American novel languishing away with its comrades in a filing box, someone, many in fact, will see your film. Providing you are a finisher, you are now a poet or novelist, or visual artist even, with a guaranteed audience. |
| |
| But one must begin with the written word. In the case of the fictional feature film, the creator’s influences, literary and artistic passions, and scholarly interests will inevitably (if subconsciously) contribute to the themes and structure of the story, and the production itself becomes the challenge of how best to convey these disparate elements and tie them together into a cohesive whole. The finished film, or the rough cut at minimum, will stand as testament to whether he has succeeded or failed in this endeavor. In 1999, I had been out of the Navy for two years, had recently moved from Austin, Texas back to my hometown Fort Worth, had just gotten married, and was managing a travel supply store and agency while working a bar on weekend nights. I became fast friends with a regular patron of the bar, one Chris Connolly. Our relationship was based solely on our mutual love of the movies. One evening as we chatted about Welles, Scorsese, Raimi, Cohen Brothers, or whoever, Connolly informed me that he owned a video production company, and that if I ever wanted to make a movie, he had all the equipment. He had apparently been waiting on the muse to try his hand at feature film. I immediately thought of a story I had written while at sea called “Uncle Fred” and that evening dug out my salty water-logged notebooks in order to locate it. I knew this was a story that could be transferred to the screen with almost no cash investment, providing we could get cast, crew, and locations for free. With my mother acting as secretary, I was able to adapt a screenplay within the week and presented it to Chris at the Black Dog the following weekend, much to his shock and perhaps horror. I was serious. We then went immediately into preproduction. |
| |
| While I had quite a bit of stage acting experience, my film work up to that point had consisted of public access television production in high school, some long-lost super 8 horror-comedy shorts I had collaborated on during a wacky two years living in Denton, and recently working as a grip on two music videos for Asylum Records in Austin. Writing and directing my own films seemed an impossible fantasy, something you had to work your way up the ladder to do. On some subconscious level, it was my lifelong dream, but one I had been too lazy to pursue when young, and perhaps too cynical when older. The combination of the rise of new digital video cameras and editing software and the providence of meeting Chris Connolly at the right time and place set me on a new path. Had these factors not come together at that moment in time, the film Uncle Fred and all my films since would never have been made. Fortunately, the Navy had taught me the art of discipline (at sea, I had fantasies of saving the floundering Mexican film industry when I left the service) and I was still filled with the inexhaustible energy of youth, a combination that ensured I saw the project through to the end. Instead of being daunted by the task ahead of me, I never doubted I could pull this off, the opportunity was simply too precious for me not to put my whole body and soul into it. The production of Uncle Fred provided a blueprint for taking on the much more ambitious and complex project that became Welldigger six years later. |
| |
| |
| |
| |
|
