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I can’t seem to leave good enough alone. Previously I worked hard to list out the qualities that I felt lifted a mediocre work into something more crucial, and ushered a good one into greatness. I hit 32 qualities of better film. But I have known I have left some things out. Today I will try to expand the list. Luckily I had some helps from the good people on the comment section too.
“Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.”
– Neil Gaiman (via Brainpickings).
Read Neil Gaiman’s Full 8 Tips on Writing here.
Today’s guest post is from writer/director J. Blakeson. J’s THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ALICE CREED opens TODAY!!! If you haven’t read yesterday’s part one, please read that first.
As I was writing I was always looking for tricks to make the film even cheaper to shoot. But I had a strict rule that they also had to make absolute sense to the story. I smuggled quite a lot of tricks in. Here are a few of them…
Today’s guest post is from writer/director J. Blakeson. J’s THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ALICE CREED opens tomorrow, and is the latest in a glorious wave of incredibly strong genre films from all over the world that have graced our shores of late, including MOON, THE SQUARE, BRONSON, HOUSE OF THE DEVIL, and THE PROPHET. This is part one of a two parter that will finish up here tomorrow. Part Two is here.
No-one was going to give me money to make my film. That was a near certainty. I started with that fact in mind, then I began writing the script. People are always telling budding film-makers to” write something that can be achieved on a low budget”. That sounds like pretty good advice, but it’s also dangerous advice. Because it assumes you’ll actually somehow manage to get yourself some kind of a budget at all– albeit a low one. It presumes someone will actually put their money into your movie. And that tempts you into trying to squeeze a bigger budget movie into a smaller can. This is a mistake. Because the end result will most likely be a scrappily made, cheap-looking movie that needed more money behind it. What these advice-givers should tell you instead is this: write for no budget at all. Write as if you were going to make it yourself with your own money. Write as if every frame of film was coming out of your own pocket. Only then will you realise just how expensive even little things are. Like feeding an extra actor for 4 weeks. Or blowing shit up. Explosions sounds like they should be cheap and easy, but actually they’re expensive and complicated. So don’t blow shit up. Concentrate on what you already have and what comes for free. Story and character are free. Dialogue is free (except recording and filming it isn’t… so avoid being too self-indulgent on the speechifying, because you’re only wasting your own money). But always remember that writing within your own limitations doesn’t mean you have to be less ambitious with your movie. It actually means you have to be more ambitious, just smart about it. Look at films like “Primer” or “Brick”. They’re both ambitious as hell, look and feel cinematic, but cost next to nothing to make.
When I wrote the script for “The Disappearance of Alice Creed”, I assumed that if I wanted to direct it myself, I would probably have to pay for it myself. So I knew I had to keep it small and contained. Even before I had a story, I had a set of rules…
But why these rules? Purely practical reasons: There are only three actors (and not, say, 4 actors) in my film because I happened to know 3 actors who might agree to be in the film. The reason I wrote most of the film’s action in an apartment is because I live in an apartment. So I had a free location. No expense. You get the idea…
And with these rules in mind, I started thinking about a story that would be as dramatic and cinematic as possible. With limited locations and actors, there is a risk it will feel like a stage play rather than a film. So I wanted a story that would lend itself to cinematic sequences and set-pieces rather than extended talky scenes. Very quickly I thought about a kidnap story. Not only was it immediately understandable (no “Inception” style exposition scenes needed to describe the hard-to-understand jobs of the protagonists… everyone knows what a kidnapper does. Everyone understands the stakes from page 1), a kidnap story also has drama and tension inherent in it from the get-go.
So I started writing. And as I was writing the script, I enjoyed having the limitations I set myself. It was like a game. It gave me boundaries to push against. Gave me a strict focused framework within which I was free to do anything I wanted.
But all the time, in the back of my mind, was the fact that I had to make it for no money. So I set all the exterior action in manageable locations – places that required no extras and where I could probably shoot with a skeleton crew without permits (if need be). So instead of setting it in crowded streets or train stations, I set it in wasteland, empty car-parks and abandoned warehouses. Of course all these locations make narrative sense in the movie, but this is only because I chose a story that works for these kinds of locations. This is one reason why early on in the script process, I decided to not show all the usual moments you see in a kidnap film – police, phone-taps, a money-drop in a crowded place – because I simply knew I couldn’t afford to shoot them with my own money. But then I embraced this idea and made it the defining characteristic of the film. Instead of trying to hide the confined nature of the film, I played to it. I’d always loved the fact that “Reservoir Dogs” was a heist movie in which you never saw the heist. So I decided my film would be a kidnap movie where you don’t see any of the kidnap (or rather, you don’t see the stuff you expect from a kidnap movie). And when I decided to go that way, the idea came alive for me.
End of Part One. Part Two concludes tomorrow with “Tricks To Make It Even Cheaper!”.
“The Disappearance of Alice Creed” is out in selected theatres Friday August 6th.
www.thedisappearanceofalicecreed.com
Twitter: twitter.com/jblakeson
twitter.com/FindAliceCreed
Back in the day, back when indie film was a workable financial enterprise, back before I ran the San Francisco Film Society, back before there was a Double Hope, back before I was part of This is that, I had a production company called Good Machine. James Schamus and I founded it together, and we later partnered with David Linde. Mary Jane Skalski and Anthony Bregman were also partners, and we had the good fortune to work with a host of other talents including my later partners Anne Carey and Diana Victor, and Ross Katz, Glen Basner, Heta Paarte, Lamia Guelatti, Melinka Thompson-Gody, Jean Castelli, Kelly Miller, Dan Beers, Eric Papa, Jawal Nga, and many other later-legends to be.
As good as the films we made, as great as the individuals we got to collaborate with, we also had a genuine fondness for memos and how-to’s. Those were the days when you stored things in file cabinets. The 90’s are in boxes now in my garage. Once things went digital, it as if they are lost. I stumble through less. When they were paper I occasionally had the pleasure of sorting through the files, finding choice nuggets. My madeleines… like this.
1) Cut at least another 10% of the script. Even when you think you are finished, there’s always another 10% that can come out.
2) Clarify what you feel the themes are and how they evolve during the course of the narrative.
3) Figure out some of the ways that the story can be expanded onto other platforms.
4) Know what the historical precedents are for your story and how you differ from them in how you have chosen to tell it.
5) Review the script from each characters’ point of view and make sure that their dialogue and actions remain emotionally true for each of them in their different situations.
6) Recognize what some of the mysteries contained within both the characters and story are that you are committed to protecting — as not everything should be explained.
7) Understand why you are truly prepared to tell this story at this time – or not.
8) Make the world that the characters inhabit truly authentic; don’t just give them jobs or apartments or hip music to listen to.
9) Make it somehow provocative, intriguing, audacious, or thought provoking — something that will make it stand out.
10) Make sure it is more than just a good story told well. Be truly ambitious. Take us somewhere new, or take us there in a new way.
