Filmmaking Quote of the Day #5 (Robert McKee)

The other day I was driving to a shoot and listening to an old Robert McKee CD on screenwriting based on his book Story and I stumbled upon this little passage that made me stop and repeat it three times:

“Success in the Art Film genre usually results in instant, though often temporary, recognition as an artist. On the other hand, the durable Alfred Hitchcock worked soley within the Archplot and genre convention, aimed for a mass audience, and habitually found it. Yet today he stands atop the pantheon of filmmakers, worshipped worldwide as one of the century’s major artists, a film poet whose work resonate with sublime images of sexuality, religiosity, and subtleties of point of view. Hitchcock knew there is no necessary contradiction between art and popular success, not a necessary connection between art and Art Film.”
Robert McKee
Story

Filmmaking Quote of the Day #4 (Will Smith)

“I’ve never viewed myself as particularly talented. I’ve viewed myself as…slightly  above average in talent…Where I excel is with (a) ridiculous, sickening work ethic. While the other guy’s sleeping , I’m working. While the other guy’s eating, I’m working.”
Will Smith
Producer, writer, & two-time Academy Award nominated actor
(The Pursuit if Happyness, Ali)
60 Minutes Interview

Screenwriting Quote of the Day #111 (Ernest Lehman)

Did you know that before screenwriter Ernest Lehman wrote North by Northwest that he actually went to South Dakota to research climbing Mount Rushmore? It all started with a suggestion by Alfred Hitchcock who told him,  ”I always wanted to do a chase across the faces of Mount Rushmore.”

So Lehman took a train to Rapid City and hired a forest ranger to help him climb to the top just to see the view. But Lehman didn’t make it as he realized the danger involved and gave the ranger a Polaroid camera to take some pictures for him instead.

And just as Leham had trouble climbing to the top of Mount Rushmore he also had trouble writing the script for North by Northwest. Though he was over forty at the time and had over ten film and TV writing credits including the feature The Sweet Smell of Success Lehman later admitted;

“The truth is, even with all my experience, I really didn’t know how to write the script. I’d never written a movie like that before, but gradually I eked it out — or, at least, the first sixty-five pages — and then Hitch went off to make Vertigo. So I’d sit there in my lonely office, and many times I’d go home at night having written less than half a page, completely discouraged. And several times I tried to quit while he was away, but my agent wouldn’t let me, saying, “You’ve already quit The Wreck of the Mary Deare, you can’t quit this one too.” So I was kind of trapped into doing it…wondering, “How can I get out of this?” And the only way I could get out of it was to write my way out of it. And I think that, despite the unpleasantness of having to work under those conditions, I wound up at the top of my form as a writer, and, later, Hitch was at the top of his form when he directed the picture. In a sense, it’s unlike any picture he ever made. And it seems to have legs…It’s just incredible what endurance it has. It’s kind of timeless.”
Ernest Lehman
Creative Screenwriting Journal

His endurance paid off on North by Northwest and he received an Academy Award nominations. And in 2001 he received his an Honorary Oscar for his body of work that included West Side Story, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Sabrina, Hello Dolly!, The King and I, Black Sunday, Somebody Up There Likes Me, and The Sound of Music.

Mountain climbing and screenwriting—both are a tricky business that require endurance.

Scott W. Smith

Filmmaking Quote of the Day #3 (Edger J. Scherick)

Edger J. Scherick (1924-2002) is listed on IMDB as producing over 75 movies and documentaries including the ‘74 version of The Taking of Pelham One Two Three and the documentary He Makes Me Feel Like Dancing for which he won a Primetime Emmy in 1983.

“Audiences respond to, are touched by yarns spun around men and women who act in response to their humanity. And when touched, the audience will leave the theater anxious to share their experiences with others. The yearning, thrilling, healing—whatever it is—that we bring to a boil within their hungry soul makes people proud of their humanity. Give them pictures that remind them that they are made of better stuff than what they see on the streets, in our newscasts, and populating our government. Picking pictures is plucking heartstrings. My heart leaps up when I am told a story of triumph of the human spirit. I assume you that I am not alone.
Edgar Scherick
Writers Guild of America Seminar. February 4, 1994
(via Story Sense by Paul Lucey, page 7)

Screenwriting Quote of the Day #110 (Paul Haggis)

In 2006 the first person in more than 50 years to win back to back Oscar Awards in screenwriting was Paul Haggis. He then followed his award-winning scripts Million Dollar Baby and Crash with another Academy Award nomination in 2007 for his screenplay Letters from Iwo Jima.

Haggis had a background in theater and construction before moving to Los Angeles in his early twenties from London, Ontario—which makes him almost a Midwesterner as London is less than an hour from the Michigan state line. Soon after arriving in L.A. he landed his first TV credit on Love Boat in 1985 which lead to more opportunities in television, some more memorable than others; Heathcliff, One Day at a Time, Who’s the Boss, L.A. Law, Different Strokes, The Facts of Life, thirtysomething, Walker, Texas Ranger, EZ Streets, Due South, Michael Hayes. Family Law.

He worked on hundreds of TV episodes which is a staggering amount of writing which he credits for teaching him how to write, paid the bills rather well, but also created in him a to write the kind of scripts that feed his soul. That process took a few years.  By the time he won his first Oscar he was in his early 50s with three decades of writing credits behind him.

According to Haggis the impetus for writing Crash was being car jacked in 1991 followed by wondering ten years later who were these young guys who stuck a gun in his face. Where did they come from? He explored that creatively.

“I like asking myself  difficult questions—I don’t think writers should write about answers, I think they should write about questions.”
Paul Haggis
The Dialogue

Haggis has been in the news much the last week or so because of reports of his leaving the Church of Scientology after 35 years. Find more about that reading an article by Kim Master titled Inside Scientology’s Big Defection.

Below is a ten minute version of the interview from The Dialogue.

Screenwriting Quote of the Day #109 (Shane Salerno)

According to IMDB Shane Salerno has co-written or re-written four films that have opened #1 at the box office; Armageddon, Breakdown, Alien vs. Predator, Shaft (though not always credited). He got a jump start in the business when he made an award winning documentary in high school that landed him on Larry King Live. That opened the door for him at age 19 as an apprentice on the TV program NYPD Blue.

Salerno likes to stress that he was raised by a single mother, didn’t come from money, and never went to college. He probably says those things to encourage you and help you avoid the tired excuses.

I found a couple quotes of his from Screenwriting Expo 3 held years ago which echos some favorite themes here on Screenwriting from Iowa, or wherever you live outside L.A.

“I just hope these people stay persistent because sometimes it’s six or eight scripts before they have that great script. All the people they admire went through these things and had adversity. Oliver Stone wrote 10 scripts before he wrote Platoon which got him all of his first jobs which got him Midnight Express and then he waited 10 years to get Platoon made...I attended all these (film industry) functions, the classes and the bookstores reading all the time. I have a 10,000-book library in my house from collecting books over the years. Young writers and beginning writers need to stay persistent and understand what the odds are against them succeeding.”
Shane Salerno
Interview With Screenwriter Shane Salerno
J. Freedman, FilmMakers.com

Related post: Beatles, Cody, King  & 10,000 Hours

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood…(Part 10)

Once upon a time in Hollywood…every film was shot on film. edited on film, and distributed on film. And once upon a time the studios that made the films also owned the theaters. It’s been a slow train coming but changes that began in the 50s & 60s are coming into fruition in our day.

When you break down the number of feature films that are released every year in the United States the number is actually fairly small. (Say between 400-600 films every year find their way to the theaters.) So it’s no surprise that there are only 40-60 distributors in North America.

This is the way Dov S-S Simens breaks that down in his book From Reel to Reel:

1) The major studios: These are the six or seven distributors (Universal, Fox, Paramount, Sony, etc) that make 20-30 movies a year at $10-$70 million (2005 numbers)
2) The mini-majors; The six or seven distributors (Miramax, New Line, Artisian, etc.) that make 5-20 movies a year at $5-$20 million budgets.
3) The independents; The 10-15 distributors (Fox Searchlight, Orion Classics, Samuel Goldwyn, Sony Classics, etc.) that male three to five movies a year at $1-$5 million budgets.
4) Exploitation. The 20-30 companies (Concorde, Crowe, Troma, Curb, Trident, etc.) that make 3-15 movies a year with words like “Blood,” “Zombie,” “Slime,” “nightmare,” or “Massacre” in the titles, at budgets under (well under) a million, and generate mostly foreign and video revenues.

And over the years there have be people like Warren Miller who have niche markets (like surf & ski films) and go from town to town renting auditoriums to show their movies. I have actually heard about a few independents who are doing a new version of this where they take their film into a town and then do a Q&A afterwards. I personally would love to see that model take off. Filmmaker as a traveling band.  While I could see doing one of those tours as fun, I don’t see that as a big money maker or a long term solution for most filmmakers.

I will say that young filmmakers today have an entrepreneur spirit today that was unheard of in the past. Perhaps it’s because the tools have changes. I have seen filmmakers not only make their own films, but design the posters and t-shirts, the DVDs, set up websites to distribute their films on top of the normal film festival route.  This stuff is changing quickly and has for at least the last 30 years.

In the 70s Betamax seemed like the future of distribution, until VHS dominated in the 80s. Mom and pop stores opened up to meet the new demand to watch movies at home until the giant stores like Blockbuster and Hollywood Video took over. Of course, DVD overtook VHS as the preferred way to view movies at home. (DVDs have held off Blu-Ray so far and now Blu-Rays machines can be found for under $100.) Meanwhile Netflix and Redbox have signaled the end of Blockbuster and Hollywood Videos as those two giants continue to close store after store.

It doesn’t take a genius to see how quickly this all evolves. The traditional way for films to be distributed is for the reels each film are shipped to each theater.  I imagine within a few years that will all switch over to some kind of digital delivery system.  One thing that slows this down is each theater has to switch over to expensive digital projectors. (This is not a good economy to do this.) Another concern is piracy. Imagine how easy it would be for people to steal & copy a high quality digital file of a feature film.

But just like the film editing process where almost all films are cut digitally, and how a growing number of films are shot digitally, and how feature films are starting to be digitally downloaded by Netflix and others, it’s just a matter of time before the theater distribution is totally digital.

Perhaps the only thing that hasn’t changed over the years is people still love movies. They still love stories. I hope that never changes.

So while there will be power shifts and jobs lost, there will be also new opportunities for creatives.

And the best news is it still all begins with a good solid script. (Well, at least it did until the success of the Paranormal Activities.) Happy Writing.

Scott W. Smith

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood… (Part 9)

Once upon a time…a 16-year-old farm girl from a small town in Iowa decided to parlay her good looks into an acting career in Hollywood. She ended up working as prostitute. I know that sounds like a classic cliche, but it wasn’t quite as it seems. For the farm girl was Donna Reed and she won an Oscar for her role as a prostitute in the classic 1953 film From Here to Eternity.

Reed is also known for her role opposite Jimmy Stewart in the Christmas classic It’s a Wonderful Life. She ended up being in more than forty films and had a successful TV program (The Donna Reed Show) from 1958-1966. (Reed died of cancer in 1986 and in her hometown of Denison, Iowa they now have the Donna Reed Foundation for the Performing Arts.)

While it’s true that Reed’s success is not the norm for most who’ve headed to Hollywood over the years, the path to Southern California is well marked from decades of young hopefuls from all over America with stars in their eyes. And there are plenty of dream come true stories of everyone from Brad Pitt to Hilary Swank doing basically what Reed had done in 1937. (For what it’s worth Swank was born in Lincoln, Nebraska and Pitt was raised in Springfield, Missouri, both in the middle of the country like where Reed was from.)

Maybe that model for actors will play out for another hundred years, but maybe it won’t. Over the past two years I written about how writers, actors, and filmmakers have done their thing outside L.A. and found success. (Sometimes great success.) I think that will be a growing trend.

Most 16-year-olds who follow their Hollywood dreams don’t end up with an Oscar to donate to their hometown when they die as Reed did.  Most don’t even get a SAG card. But here’s the thing—these days the odds are in your favor to work in production if you stay where you are and learn your craft.

Of course, there are more opportunities in L.A. but there is also much more experienced competition. And with L.A.’s high unemployment rate that’s more true than ever. (Plus harder to get any job while you wait for your break.) Cameras and editing equipment are cheaper and better than they have ever been. If you’re a writer or actor I’m sure there are production people you can connect with wherever you live (and vice versa).

There have been plenty of actors and writers over the years you have jumped over to the production side as well and this is a great time for you to do this as well.

Programs like Final Cut Pro are relatively inexpensive ($1,000.) and that is the same program that many feature film programs are cut on these days. Go to Lynda.com and for $25. a month you have unlimited use of online tutorials to learn Final Cut Pro but about a zillion other creative software programs.)

There are blogs, books, DVDs and podcasts where you have access today to information that the typical film student didn’t even think about ten years ago. You don’t have to jump into the deep-end, but you have to at least stick your toes in the water and move forward.

You don’t have to start out making a feature film, start out by making a one minute film. Make a spoof on what you think really happened to those pilots in the cockpit who lost contact with traffic controllers for an hour and a half. Show it to your friends, stick it on the web—see where it leads. (Send me a link as well, and give me a story credit.)

This is the time to try some new things. But do what you can to avoid the prostitution thing.

Scott W. Smith

Paranormal Box Office

“I learned a lot about the process of filmmaking and that if you’re totally persistent and want to follow through with something, you’ll get it done.”
Oren Peli

For Halloween day I’ll step away from my Once Upon a Time in Hollywood posts to interject an update about the movie Paranormal Activities. The seven day results fro Friday October 23 through Thursday October 29 had Paranormal Activities number one at the box office.   I wouldn’t call it paranormal but that is highly unusual. Especially for a movie that opened five weeks ago and had yet to have a number one week.

That’s the power of word of mouth and a great marketing plan.  On halloween night the film will also pass the $70 million mark. Keep in mind that the budget has been said to be between 10,000-15,000. No typos there. Less than most used cars. I saw the movie this week and they keep the budget down by shooting in just one location (the writer/directors house) and using just four actors (two of which are on the screen for just a couple minutes). And one of the actors doubled most of the time as the cameraman using just  a $3,000 video camera.

So the film made for $15,000 bringing in $70 million in the box office according to several sources is now the new box office record holder as the most profitable movie ever made. Ever. A film made by the  39-year old Oren Peli, a first time filmmaker who was born in Israel and living in San Diego. (Passing the decade old record set by The Blair Witch Project.)

I’d like to say it was in the spirit of what I’ve been writing about for two years hear at Screenwriting from Iowa. Something big happening by an outsider to the Hollywood film industry. The only problem is there wasn’t a screenplay written—at least in the traditional sense.

“There was no dialogue. There was only an outline of the story, the actors never received any script. They didn’t know about anything they were getting into. All they knew is they were going to do something about a haunted house and basically discovered everything as they were shooting. There were no lines for them to follow. Everything was spontaneous.”
Oren Peli
shocktillyoudrop.com

The film was shot in just seven days in 2006, but took 10 months to go through the 70 hours of footage. The first version of the film was made in 2007 and several different versions were completed and tested a various film festivals. The film hit the jackpot when a DVD found its way to Steven Spielberg. DreamWorks picked up the film first with the intention of Spielberg remaking the film but then it was decided that that wasn’t needed. Like The Blair Witch Project hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent to enhance the film that eventually made the theater. But essentially it’s the film Peli made for $15,000.

They did a masterful of using social media, most notably Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. While the success of Paranormal Activities is off the charts and against all odds, I think you will see more of its ilk in the future. Not just horror films, but films in general where lovers of film tap into the resources that are out there and make a film that finds an audience. I’ll talk more about those resources tomorrow in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood… (Part 9).

Scott W. Smith

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood…(part 8)

“I had been thinking about this project for a long time.  As a camera fanatic and a product builder, this was something I seemed destined to do.”
Jim Jannard on developing the RED camera

Today the folks over at RED announced plans for the release this year of their RED EPIC camera.  To date RED cameras have been used on over forty feature films including The Informant! starring Matt Damon, District 9, and David Fincher’s The Social Network. What’s amazing about that if you don’t follow such things is the RED Digital Cinema Camera Company hasn’t even existed for five years.

Jim Jannard founded the compnay in 2005 and when he released the specs for his newly designed camera many laughed. Jannard didn’t come from a Hollywood background or with lots of camera experience. What he did have was passion and vision. As well as some cash, investors, and  business expertise that included running and founding a company he used to own; Oakely sungalsses.

He pulled together a team of expert engineers and designers and the like to make something special.

“We needed a bunch of guys who were inventors to come up with entirely new ways of getting to the finish line.”
Jim Jannard Wierd magazine

His new RED  company began taking deposits for the camera in 2006. At the 2007 NAB convention they released footage that (Lord of the Rings) director Peter Jackson had shot on the yet to be released RED camera. The footage stunned a lot of people and it caused a backlog of orders.

“There’s talent on the streets, kids with ideas who have stories to tell and never get a chance. Up to now, they’ve been limited to tools that confine their stories to YouTube.”
Jim Jannard

Maybe Jannard and his team haven’t changed Hollywood yet, but the fact they are even mentioned at all in an eight part series (so far) on an overview of film history shows the potential they have to change the future. Keep in mind that the company has been in business less than five years and has only been selling cameras for a couple years now.

But its combination of high quality images and low costs to own many have said it is the film blow for films to technically still being shot on film.

“This is the camera I’ve been waiting for my whole career: jaw-dropping imagery recorded onboard a camera light enough to hold with one hand. I don’t know how Jim and the RED team did it–and they won’t tell me–but I know this: RED is going to change everything.“
Steven Soderbergh

Soderbergh’s last few films have been shot with the RED camera.

Scott W. Smith