Screenwriting, Directing, Editing

I thought I'd try and jot a quick note in response to AuntieKnickers comment on my last post, and what a thoughtful comment it was! I am glad you liked The Visitor, and yes, it made me angry as well, and I think that was the point for people like you and me.

But I digress.

Here's AK's comment:

We watched THE VISITOR last night and it was every bit as good as you said, although it made me very angry (which may have been the idea). I do not yet understand editing, so I don't know if it was the editor or the director whose idea it was to have the (imaginary? perhaps) scene where Richard Jenkins would ask Tarek and Zenab back to the apartment be left out, and you just see the next day. Maybe that's why I should watch deleted scenes? Anyway, thanks to you I've probably seen more nominees than in many recent years so will be watching with some interest. I may try to see The Wrestler before Sunday night.

I'm gonna state some (probably) obvious things here, just to have them out there, and then explain how that fits in with what AuntieKnickers was wondering about.

Screenwriter: This person writes the script (duh) and with an original films, it all starts with them (that's not necessarily true, but for this lesson, let's say it is). A lot more in a film should be attributed to the screenwriter then usually is. A good screenwriter has the ability to write shots into a script in a way that makes the director think it was there idea. I suspect that the scene discussed in AK's comment was written in to the script, but it may not have been.

Director: I think it helps to think of the Director as the Artistic Director, whereas the Producer is a Managing Director (as well as a of of other things, but that's a discussion for another day). So, our director does pre-production and production. They are the person who sits down with the director of photography (cinematographer) and decides how they want to bring the script to life on the screen. Then during the production they work with the actors and look at dailies (the film shot on any given day) with the other bigwigs of the production, making sure they got what they needed how they needed it.

It is perfectly possible that the scene in question was in the script, but that at some point the director decided he/she did not want it to be shown, and so did not film it, or just told the editor to leave it out.

Side note that sometimes the director does do a lot of work in post-production, but usually it's more of a, "Yup, that was nice" or "Oh, not what I had been thinking of, but I like it!" Obviously the director and editor do need to communicate, and they do more then the screenwriter and director, but it isn't a day to day thing.

Editor: The editor takes the script and the film and cuts the film together to tell the story without all the extra nonsense. That's a super abbreviated version of events. In a lot of ways the editor has the most control, and in others the least. In my acting for the camera class, our professor told us to make friends with the cinematographer, camera operator and the editor because those three people have the most control over what you will actually look like in the finished film. Even if you are mostly filmed with perfect lighting and angles and what not, there will always be some shots that suck, and if the editor likes you they're a lot more likely to leave those shots on the cutting room floor.

With the scene we are discussing here, it is entirely possible that the editor felt that the rhythm of the film would work better without that scene, and cut it. Especially since the scene comes in at the beginning of the film, and a lot of the scenes themselves are on the slow side, in a positive way. This was done on purpose to create for the audience the feeling Jenkins has with his life - going nowhere, lonely etc., and editing out needless scenes can be a way of speeding the pace without killing the mood.


So, I would say that if this is an experienced screenwriter, or just a good one, they probably wrote it like that. But if not, then it would most likely have been a decision made in the editing room.

Again, kudos to AuntieKnickers for paying such close attention to little details! And I encourage everyone who hasn't to see The Visitor ASAP!

Slumdog and the Oscars

Who hasn't done it?  Imagining yourself giving the acceptance speech for the highest award in your field.  It just so happens that my career path is one that, if your lucky, will lead to the mother of ll award shows - THE OSCARS.

But let's be serious, it's not just about luck, is it?  No, politics have a lot more to do with it I'm afraid.

Bardem and Swinton winning for supporting actor and actress, both foreign actors, winning in the same year... coincidence?  I think not.  It was a strategic move just to have Bardem nominated for supporting and not lead, since No Country for Old Men is a very evenly played piece, but he would have been up against a slew of very popular American Actors (and one Danish-American actor, but who noticed him anyway?).

And long as we're on the subject, do you know how the Oscar nominees and winners are chosen?  A lot of people don't really get it.  They think the Academy is just some random group of people.  Basically, you have to be invited to join the Academy to be nominated or to nominate.  Then only people within a given field get to nominate their peers, i.e. editors vote for editors, actors vote for actors and so on and so forth (there are only 15 fields), except for Best Picture which everybody gets a say in from the beginning.  But when it comes time to vote the winner, EVERYONE in the academy gets to vote! 

OK, so anyway, I have seen three of the five films nominated for Best Picture... and I'm going to try and see The Reader before Sunday but we'll see how that goes!  I'm not as interested in Frost/Nixon, because I heard it sucked from people whose opinions I respect.  

I just saw Slumdog Millionaire yesterday with a friend and it was awesome!  The editing was awesome (side note: I have seen 4 of the 5 editing nominees, and Slumdog is one of them as it should be, but the others I saw were good as well... but I still hope Slumdog wins).

Here's what I liked the most about the editing, along with the camera work: they weren't afraid to take some risks.  Now, maybe it's because I recently saw one of the worst rom-coms ever twice (don't ask), but I am so bored with Hollywood editing!  It's like, over the shoulder, over the other shoulder, long shot, medium shot, close up, cut on even beats never break 180!  I'm so bored with it!  

A lot of the grammar of cinema is such because it helps to make a film appear seamless and lets the audience forget they are watching a movie.  But sometimes filmmakers seem so concerned with this that they ignore the film calling out to them to be different.  Slumdog definitely had the whole forget-your-watching-a-movie thing in the bag, but they broke rules while they did it.  

I want to be Chris Dickens when I grow up... who also edited Shaun of the Dead, btw.

Soundtack for the Movie of My Life

Hmm, it's been a while since I posted here, huh? Well, next week I should have a new video to post for you ( and just to catch up, you could go here and see my end of the year project from last spring...hopefully you will see some improvements with this next project!).

In the meantime, I thought I would do this crazy/fun little exercise. It entertained me and I hope it entertains you, too!

So, here's how it works:

1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc).

2. Put it on shuffle.

3. Press play.

4. For every question, type the song that's playing.

5. When you go to a new question, press the next button.

6. Don't lie and try to pretend you're cool...OK, I didn't lie to look cool, but the first time I tried this almost every song was a Christmas one or a story, so I had to go back through and un-check those because if they're all about Christmas, it's not very cool!

Opening Credits:

One Fine Day – Ann Reed performed by Calliope Women’s Chorus

Waking Up:

3am – Death Ray Scientific

First Day of School:

Goofyfoot - Phranc

Falling in Love:

Come Fly With Me – Michael Buble (creep. city.)

Fight Song:

Preparations for the Last TV Fake - The Goodbye Lenin Soundtrack, composed by Yann Tiersen

Breaking Up:

How the Day Sounds – Greg Laswell

Prom:

Garden Party – Ricky Nelson

Life's Just OK:

Whatever (I Had a Dream) – Butthole Surfers …don’t judge me.

Mental Breakdown:

Be and Be Not Afraid – Tracy Chapman

Driving:

Dry the Rain – The Beta Band

Flashback:

Hanging On Too Long – Duffy

Getting Back Together:

Someday – M.L.T.R. …OK, I have no idea who these guys are, this song is on a sampler of music in English

by Danish artists, but it’s pretty creepy since the chorus is, “Someday, someway, together we will be baby.”

Birth of Child:

Genetic Engineering – X-Ray Specs

Wedding:

Ma Ya Hi – O-Zone …hmmm, this would be fun at a wedding!

Final Battle:

I Feel It All - Feist

Death Scene:

Hurt – Johnny Cash

Funeral Song:

Always See Your Face – Love (from the High Fidelity Soundtrack)

End Credits:

Lo Boob Oscillator – Stereolab

Let me know if you try this and where I can see it!

Oh and by the way...

Whether or not you thought the papers below were worthy of it...


I GOT ALL A'S!!


That's right, I got an A in Documentary History, Topics in Cinema: Coen Brothers and Tarention, AND Screen-Writing 2! (Because I'm paranoid, I won''t be posting my screenplay on the website, though I may do a little synopsis sometime. And anyway, we aren't really graded on how good the screenplay is, but on how much we improve)

Anyway, that's my happy FilmAching news!

Jackie Brown, the Final Paper!

Yeah, here is the last of my film papers for the semester. Don't be sad, I now have more time for seeing movies, and next semester I am taking Film History 2, which covers the 50s through the present.

This paper is on Jackie Brown, Quentin Tarantino's interpretation of Elmore Leonard's Rum Punch. I really liked it, which kind of surprised me. I tend to think Tarantino takes to many liberties when it comes to pushing the boundaries of political correctness, but I didn't find to much to really complain about here that Leonard didn't do first.

But that's not what the papers about. The thesis is - "Tarantino uses art direction and character development to pay homage to these films and Leonard's writing."

Please note, diagetic is a word we cinema nerds use when we talk about the difference between music that would occur naturally in a scene (non-diagetic), i.e. a car radio, and music that is used to evoke emotions (diagetic), for example, the Star Wars theme.
So, here you go!

Jackie Brown vs. Rum Punch

Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown is the story of a flight attendant who trafficks money for a low-grade arms dealer, Ordell Robbie, in L.A. When picked up by the ATF, and knowing that Ordell will kill her to save his own skin, she hatches a plan to not only save herself from a choice between prison or death, but to get hold of Robbie's money as well. Jackie Brown is based on the Elmore Leonard novel Rum Punch, the main character based on Leonard’s character Jackie Burke. Tarantino's other influence for the film, Blaxploitation films of the 1960s and 70s, gives a unique flavor to a film set (and made) in the mid-90s. Tarantino uses art direction and character development to pay homage to these films and Leonard's writing.

The fact that Tarantino had to make significant cuts to scenes and characters comes as no surprise. However, what he does include was chosen very carefully to create the proper ambiance for his characters to develop with an Elmore Leonard feel. In the scene where the law enforcement first pick up Jackie, not only is the dialog identical, but the description could have been directly inserted into the scene as well. Brown is cool and collected right from the beginning, knowing what's coming and not bothering to fight it, lighting a cigarette instead, just like in the book. Although we are introduced to Robbie and Louis differently, the gun show scene where Robbie is showing off his knowledge of guns to Louis has a similar effect. And later when Louis is described from bail bondsman Max Cherry's viewpoint, Louis is described as having “dull eyes that didn't seem to have any life in them but never missed anything” (Leonard), which encapsulates DeNiro's performance; not saying much, keeping his head low, but twitching at every sound and glancing out from behind his greasy bangs. However, although he doesn't miss anything with his eyes, he doesn't have the competence to understand what he sees, another key component to the character and the plot, both in the novel and the film. Tarantino is able to change character attributes which to some readers/viewers would seem important, such as names or race. However, because Tarantino keeps so closely to the character's personalities, their tics and their motivations, the characters come out the same.

Tarantino's use of soundtrack stands out in many ways because it is meant to be observed by the audience. He plays with the use of diagetic and non-diagetic sound; just when you think he is using the sound non-diagetically, the character pulls over, shuts off the car and the music stops, without morphing into diagetic music, remaining silent instead. In many ways this mimics the feeling of reading a book. In the novel, when Cherry comes to call on Louis, he asks what the music playing is and Simone says that it's the Marvelettes. Even not knowing who the Marvelettes are, or if they even exist, the type of music immediately pops into a reader's mind as a background for the scene. But when the scene is over there is no more background music, the scene is set anew with no 'audible' carryover, as there often is in film with diagetic sound. Tarantino also uses sound diagetically, as in the scene when Cherry bails Brown out of jail. Seeing her for the first time, he falls for her and the music is used in a classic way, the lyrics and tone reflecting the way he is feeling. The sound is also used as a tool to evoke the 60s and 70s heyday of funk and soul use in film. Before blaxploitation films, funk and soul were rarely heard, if ever, in films, especially diagetically. Tarantino pays homage to this contribution to cinema, in that “the soundtrack clearly functions quite differently from the classical Hollywood score” (Howell), just as in blaxploitation films such as Shaft or Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song.

Tarantino's art direction is reminiscent of cinema of the 70s, without being condescending. It is hard to determine from scene to scene if the 70s feel comes from a use of cinematography techniques or simply the plastic materials. More often than not it's the latter. In the opening scene when Jackie Brown is traveling along a moving walkway, everything from the music to her clothes to the colors of the tiles give the scene a vintage look. Even the plane pulling into the gate behind her is the design used in the 1970s for United. Although many contemporary film goers see 70s film, and the blaxploitation genre in particular, as, at best, corny and, at worst, highly offensive, Tarantino saw this as a golden age of cinematic storytelling, one that shaped him as a person and a filmmaker. This gives him a unique opportunity to respectfully recreate some of the key elements for cinematic evolution. The end result is a timeless narration, where, while paying homage to the 70s, set in the 90s and viewed in 2008, the film remains cohesive and not in the least outdated.

When a film is inspired by a book, the idea should be to reformat the story for the screen, though some simply see the scenes and complain that they are changed from the book. Quentin Tarantino manages to satisfy both these requirements in Jackie Brown, using direct dialog and description parallels where he is able, but otherwise focusing on carrying over the overall sense of character and plot, motivation and moral.

Paper Three

This paper was supposed to be about an over arching Coen Brother's theme. I wrote about the American aspects of their film making, things that make them American Filmmakers, versus just Filmmakers.

To see this trend, it really does help to see a bunch of their films in a row (or, like me and my class, all of them)

Here's the paper! Oh, and keep in mind that I wrote this in an hour and I am not at all saying I did a great job on it!

That American Feeling

The Coens’ films have long been hailed for their eccentricity, their refusal to bow to the whims of those footing the bill, and their over-the-top, bloody plots. Sounds a bit like a country I once knew. A quintessentially American feeling permeates the Coen library. Through a combination of bleak landscapes that become characters, plastic materials that accentuate the satirical, and their ability to both ridicule and praise the American Dream, the Coens create an America that is more raw and honest then mainstream Hollywood films.

America is one of the few countries in the world that can look at the nature of anything from snowy-peaked mountains to rain forests to deserts and claim ownership. The Coens use this to give their films a distinct feeling. Raising Arizona and No Country for Old Men, with their stark rolling deserts and Fargo with its mimicking tundra; Blood Simple and O Brother, Where Art Thou? with their farmlands and forests; even the skylines of Hudsucker Proxy and the suburban monotony of The Man Who Wasn't There. Dialog scenes don't always hide indoors (with the notable exception of Intolerable Cruelty), and action isn't relegated to jumping over empty parking ramps. The use of desolate landscapes is often indicative of the characters’ situations, as in Fargo, or their personalities, as in No Country, where the harsh, unforgiving Texas desert mirrors the cold nature of Chigurh. In this way, the Coens utilize all the visual advantages that come with setting a film on American soil.

Plastic material is used as everything from McGuffin to social commentary in the Coens’ films. One of the reasons Blood Simple was such a hit with cineastes was the way they used conventional cinematic wisdom. In one piece of plastic material, a lighter left on a table that had no real pay off, they were able to utilize the rule of three and the McGuffin, not to mention the way in which it gave us more insight into one of the main characters. In Burn After Reading, plastic material is used throughout as a social commentary about the Bush administration. For instance, when Clooney and Swinton are lying in bed discussing their affair and possibly leaving their spouses, the bedding is made of American flags. The Coens are ever so subtly saying that our leaders screwed around us, and then lied about it not only to us but to those they screwed around with, too. Similarly, the horrific mess that is created with Washington D.C. as a backdrop is used to comment on the fragility of our nation’s capital.

The “American Dream” is an ever-evolving phenomenon, but its basic principle is that anyone can 'make it' – it's the definition of making it that changes. In recent history, America has had a habit of making celebrities out of regular people based on their wealth and/or status, creating a false sense of intimacy with the general public, as well as a hope that it could happen to you. The Coens mock this in their films by highlighting the lives of the average person who doesn’t make it big, but still has big things happen to them. In Raising Arizona they juxtapose the story of two average Americans, Ed and Hi, with the Arizonas, who are twice famous, once for their fortune, and again from their multiple birth. (The Arizonas are not unlike the oil mogul Kardashian family or the Hiltons). In The Man Who Wasn't There, they again turn it on its head by showing a man whose life fits the American Dream almost to a tee on the surface, but who upon further examination has a lot of issues. Some of the influence for this could have come from families they observed growing up in suburban Minnesota, the crime and violence of their films a way to “compensate for the fact that [their] lives were incredibly mundane” (Coen, J. - Levine)

None of this is to say that the Coens have not been influenced by foreign film, simply that they play out their influences in a different way. With a filmmaker like Tarantino, for example, you may get a hodge-podge of American, Hong Kong and New Wave film story-lines, whereas the Coens seem to have been influenced in practice more than style or story line. With World Cinema becoming more and more accessible to a general audience, the desire to have talented and thoughtful American filmmakers has increased, welcoming the advent of a mainstream embrace of the Coens’ films. The Coens learned early on what foreign filmmakers have known for sometime – a filmmaker cannot deny that where they came from has an effect on their storytelling and therefore on their audience. Hopefully, American moviegoers will catch up, too.

Paper Two

Now here's a paper that was due at the beginning of the semester and I just couldn't seem to come up with anything worth writing about, until it was past time for me to do so!

The Coen's most recent film, Burn After Reading, is pretty funny. It's not as artsy-fartsy as a lot of their other work, but really, we all need to take a break from those sorts of films, even the people who make them.

And without further ado, the paper!

The Coen brothers’ 2008 Burn After Reading tells the intertwined stories of a diverse group of people including gym workers, CIA agents, their love interests and the complete debacle they get themselves into. As with Coen films such as Blood Simple (Film Noir), Miller’s Crossing (Gangster), and Intolerable Cruelty (Romantic Comedy), Burn mimics a film genre, the spy thriller. Moreover, as in many of their films, Burn is infused with over the top characters and challenges to the status quo.

In their comedies more than their dramas, the Coens like to play with the audience’s assumptions about the complexities and non-complexities of their characters. For instance, when asked about the deficiency of their characters in Fargo, Ethan responded, “...to go against the Hollywood cliché of the Bad Guy as a super-professional who controls everything he does” (Allan). Admittedly, it is hard to tell who the bad guy is and who the good guy is in Burn After Reading, and that's another Coen element in and of itself. Frances McDormand’s character, Linda, appears to be just what is expected; a shallow middle-aged woman looking to improve her appearance and thereby her chances for romance. However, Linda is the only character with any goals in the film, goals which she achieves in the end, however superficial they may be. Other characters are driven by different desires – Clooney by sex, Malkovich by recognition, Jenkins by love – but Linda is the only one who takes her desires and creates a goal, to re-invent herself, thus leading to her victory, being one of the few who lives and the only one whose desires are fulfilled. Pitt’s character appears to be devoid of even desires. He simply floats through life, much like a dog, without any concerns, and doing whatever his friends tell him to. When he first calls Malkovich, his only real intent is to return the CD-ROM, and by inspiration from McDormand, he thinks a reward may be in order. The response Malkovich gives him is expected (by the audience), but Pitt's reaction is devoid of any organic emotion – it is entirely supplied by McDormand, her emotional response at having this chance at money slip past her. Pitt's lack of motivation and willingness to be led by others leads to his sudden demise, the first killing in the film. But, here too, the Coens turn our assumptions of what an empty character without motivation looks like. Pitt is empty, but not bland. His character still has little things that make him stand out, such as his insistence on trying to be a Good Samaritan or his affinity for biking and pop-dance jams. These are the kinds of motivations a writer can give an actor to enable the actor to bring the character to life, and the kinds of motivations the Coens are so good at.

A concept often seen in CIA films is a character knowing the full story, someone who has all the pieces of the puzzle, or has at least pieced it together. The Coens play with this concept by showing the meetings between the two CIA officers ranked higher than Malkovich. The two know the entirety of what is happening, but they never quite get a handle on why. The Coens use this for a few reasons. The first, and most obvious, being a slap in the face to critics and film theorists who consistently ask why. Their point is that sometimes the ‘what’ can stand on its own – even though it never does in their films. A simple, satirical, rationale is that the supposedly sophisticated espionage professionals really don’t know what they are doing, and their overriding goal is always cover-up. Which leads to yet another advantage to including these scenes - it allows the Coens to involve a clean-up crew in their story. In some of their earlier films, questions arise; “Where are the police?” “Why hasn’t anyone noticed all these dead bodies?” Much hilarity comes of seeing the ways in which the CIA agents try to clean up this mess, a mess whose origin is a complete mystery to them. They work triage like medics in the field, taking a lot of the omnipresent power the CIA is usually shown to have, and turning it on its head.

Although Burn will most likely not go down in the film theory books as one of the Coens’ masterpieces, it contains enough of their standard elements to come out on top, containing that Coen Brothers feeling, if you will. As Ethan Coen once said, “...you have the feeling you're attending a congress of misfits!” (Allan.)