It's been an eventful month. I guess it
sort of started at the end of May, when filmmaker/fundraiser Tom
Malloy spoke at the monthly Rochester Movie Maker's meeting. Malloy
identified 7 common mistakes that filmmakers make, which I'll share
with you here:
1. Not firing a pissed-off crewmember.
Especially if he's the DP (director of photography), who sets the
tone of the shoot.
2. Being too cheap on food. You should
have a great craft service table, not just pizza. A Hollywood shoot
pays people a meal penalty when they don't get lunch. (I would add to
this an unwritten rule I learned somewhere, probably in film school:
if you're not paying people then you definitely have to feed them.)
3. Making decisions too quickly, without
thinking them through. He seemed to be talking specifically about
deciding who to have on your crew. When hiring someone, you should
get references.
4. Not focusing enough on the actors and
their performances. You can fix technical mistakes in post, but not
acting mistakes. Sound is more important than picture.
5. Giving control to someone who can
shut you off in a heartbeat.
6. Not buying swag. He said that
T-shirts, hats, etc. are good things to give your team, especially if
they're not being paid well. (In the interest of balance, I should
say that I've heard other people say the opposite, that it's money
wasted promoting the film to people who already know about it.)
7. Not having a vision or taking charge.
You don't have to be a dictator or asshole, but you need to know
where you're going. You need to have a vision so that people will
believe in you and respect you.
Some of these things I've already
learned, either through experience or from being told by someone
else, but it's still advice worth hearing.
He then ended with an anecdote which
basically had the following moral: You need to have the fire and the
willingness to not listen to people who discourage you.
That's a good lesson too, and one which
I personally have found harder to follow with age. As you get older,
and farther away from the world of high school and college, you can
end up being less and less in touch with other people who share your
goals and priorities, making it more of a challenge to keep the flame
alive.
I've been thinking a lot about these
things because I recently reached a landmark birthday, one that makes
you take stock of your life. As it happened, the 1982 classic Star
Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was playing at the George Eastman
House around the same time, which seemed fitting since that's a movie
where Kirk finds himself having a birthday and thinking about getting
older. So I decided to invite some friends to have a birthday dinner
with me and then go see it.
I haven't watched much old-school Star
Trek in a while, so seeing this movie on the big screen again
made me realize something. If you were a nerdy kid in the 80s who was
into books and creativity, and alienated from the world of sports,
then Star Trek was practically your only exposure to grown-up
virtues like teamwork, leadership, courage, loyalty, and
self-sacrifice. Most other sci-fi tends to be about nonconformists
heroically bucking the system altogether, either by escaping it or by
overthrowing it. And while that can be a good message when you're an
adolescent trying to find your identity and escape peer pressure, it
doesn't always apply so well to the working world of adulthood, where
you are much more interdependent on other people.
That same weekend, the Visual Studies
Workshop had a big sale, which included tons and tons of books on art
and philosophy and so on, for dirt cheap. I picked up a fair bit of
esoteric and psychedelic reading material, to refuel the creative
side of my brain.
When I was in college, the 60s
generation still cast a long shadow. There was still a lot of
emphasis on being innovative and irreverent, and marching to your own
drummer. While that generation had become sour and snobby and
censorious by the time I was growing up, I still respected their
original emphasis on optimism and creative freedom. And I used to
think that sci-fi, as a genre, was part of that, because that was the
genre where you could make your own rules and create your own world.
As my generation has come of age and
taken over the culture, I've sensed a growing emphasis on hostility
and cynicism. It's as if people can't think of any way to make
themselves feel important except by resenting and criticizing anyone
who's actually made something of themselves. The idea that the role
of creative people is to be a punching bag for less creative people
doesn't sit well with me. My generation's attitude seems to be that
life is just one long struggle to climb back into the womb. The few
tentpole movies that aren't just nostalgic reboots of an existing
franchise tend to be about the world being destroyed. There's a sense
that the past is more comforting than the future.
But if you can manage to escape from
people who have that mindset, and look at what the next generation
are up to, there seems to be much more friendliness and sociability
and willingness to make connections. I know that musician Amanda
Palmer had a gig not that long ago where she let fans sign her naked body.
I find it hard to fathom having that kind of trust in strangers. I'm
much more used to having to have my guard up.
Rightly or wrongly, I guess I learned a
different life lesson, from my peers and from the generation before
us. I learned that you can expect other people to try to stomp you
down, and that you will survive only if you stick to your guns and
don't worry about what other people think. But I'm feeling like that
lesson has outlived its usefulness.
A lot of the experiences and influences
I've had in recent years have led me down the path of satire, of
wanting to tell stories that protest and point out what's wrong. But
with the modern wealth of entertainment options, people are much more
likely to filter out anything that doesn't speak to their existing
tastes or values.
People want to be entertained, and
that's not a dirty word. But being an artist isn't a dirty word
either.
That's the twin challenge I'm facing
when trying to write these damn novels. I'm trying to get back to the
wildness and freedom and craziness that meant so much to me when I
first became a writer and a filmmaker. At the same time, I'm also
trying to brush up on my understanding of what a story needs in order
to truly click with an audience. Is there enough action? Is there
enough humor? Is there enough character? Does it have that deeper
level that makes something truly loved, not just briefly fashionable?
There are times when it barely seems
worth the struggle, and then there are times when unexpected rewards
occur. This past month, to my great surprise, I won a Most
Distinguished Member Award from the Buffalo Movie-Video Makers group
for my work as writer-director-producer of Saberfrog and
co-producer of another feature, Bury My Heart With Tonawanda.
The latter film, from writer-producer Adrian Esposito, has a
heartwarming message of growth and acceptance and forgiveness, which
has moved audiences to tears at screening after packed screening,
most recently at the Memorial Art Gallery this past Thursday.
One of my past influences, cult
filmmaker David Cronenberg, once said that he makes films in order to
find out why he made them. Cronenberg is one of the less heartwarming
filmmakers I can think of, but he makes a good point. Art is a
journey, which takes the artists – and the people they invite to
join them – to unexpected destinations.
So that's the trick – to stay open to
new emotions and experiences as much as possible, even when other
people seem more skeptical. It may get harder as you get older, but
it is worth the effort.
