Stand-Out Shorts
Page 20
Best channels to watch:
Live Action Sci-fi at Vimeo:
“Live-action Science fiction Themed Videos.”
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Experts’ Tips
Blanca Escoda, film director, The Arrival, London
“The purpose of sci-fi movies is to make people think about the universe and humanity. These films have to bring the most basic philosophical questions to the audience’s mind: who are we and what are we doing here. If the premise of a sci-fi film is good and original you might have a potentially interesting film even if you haven’t got a great amount of money to shoot it. You should aim at having striking visuals in the film as well, but that doesn’t mean you have to have expensive special effects. If you are going to shoot a genre movie but you use visuals of a different genre you will already be doing something different that might just intrigue the audience. The film Let the Right One In by Tomas alfredson is a fantasy movie but some of its visuals seem to be more characteristic of a social drama. This mixture gives depth and interest to the film and makes it stand out.”
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SCI-FI SCHEDULE
This movie fits into any length of schedule, from 48 hours to 28 days.
Chapter | Thirty-Six
Comedy
FIGURE 36.1 Jason Korsner’s 2 Hour Parking (2007) in which a date gets continually disrupted by Los Angeles’ parking enforcement rules.
WHAT IS IT?
A movie designed to make you laugh, smile or see the funny side.
Bad times need good laughs. Comedy is huge business now and more comedy clips go viral than any other, with phone to phone sharing a great way to pass on an original, funny or plain stupid clip. The craft of hitting the right note in a comedy is still as elusive as it ever was – so when you see something that makes you laugh you have to pass it on. Quick skits, funny visual gags, TV rip-offs or street performers, all get around the world faster online than in a prime-time broadcast.
But comedy is not just laughs – it’s also a place to get angry, to yell about what matters, to provoke new ideas and make yourself heard. Comedy is like a loaded weapon, ready to take you hunting on a big safari of smooth shysters, corporate scammers, political whitewashers or good old fashioned hypocrites. More than other type of movie, you make your point a hundred times stronger when the audience laughs.
MY KIND OF MOVIE?
You have a leftfield point of view, you were born to see the world in a different way. Before you could read you were a seasoned observer of the weird things we all do. You watch, you see all, you notice everything, you eavesdrop on the bus, and it all goes into the big mill that is your imagination.
Just like a stand-up comic, the best of your observations are of the Martian variety – hey, do you know what these humans actually do? When we watch your movie, we’ll see the world your way, and understand why you have that occasional mock-scared expression when you look around you.
WHAT’S IT FOR?
You’re going to make friends from this movie, make no mistake. You’ll find it easier to get crew, and to be downloaded widely to get the movie seen. And, if you shoot in higher quality, you can be a contender for sales companies, selling your short movie to cable channels, airlines and other slots.
Even better, film festivals almost always like comedies. They like to kick off the first night with one, sprinkle them throughout the proceedings and use as dessert to close the festival. Distribution should be fun.
HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE ME?
The work starts here – the script needs your loving care and attention. It needs redraft after redraft, reading through with a few friends, and you’ll be ready to take it on the chin when no one laughs at your favorite parts. Expect to spend a couple of weeks honing the script, working both on the dialogue and visual gags.
Then check you’re not going to get sued by anyone if it’s a satire or spoof, so check Chapter 9, Law and the Movies for more guidance on defamation.
Shooting might need more takes than other movies, as you try to get exactly the right timing and comic effect. Get multiple takes so you can decide which one you want later in the quiet of the edit room. The trick is to make it look easy, casual and relaxed, but just like a drama, it needs careful rehearsal and shooting.
Edit at your leisure but run through the movie at a small screening for friends – pre-drinks.
HOW HARD IS IT?
Difficulty level:
Challenging, but more rewarding. Comedies need to be governed with an iron fist, as it’s all too easy to let it go off into wild, funny-to-make-but-not-towatch territory. As a rule of thumb, the more sober you are making it, the more you can keep us laughing later.
You need:
Good sense of humor
To have an eye for observing and remembering the weird stuff people do
To be able to see the movie just as an audience would
To love writing
To enjoy working hard to get the movie right
Being original and unusual in your ideas
To work as part of team
WHO ELSE DO I NEED?
You need to be freed up from technical duties to focus on the movie. What is in the script won’t always appear as you thought it would, and you need to be on a state of high alertness to make changes as you go.
Sound recordist
Camera operator
Producer
AND:
Test your script on other people way before you shoot. In comedy the writing is everything – even if there are no spoken words and all gags are visual.
WHAT KIT DO I NEED?
Camera
Tripod
Hand-held mic
Lavalier mic × 2
Basic lighting kit for indoor shooting
IF YOU LIKE THAT WATCH THIS
Funny to some is dull to others, and comedies only thrive when they find their own bespoke audience. Some of the best comedies have taken a while to find their own elusive audiences of fans, but they have lasted longer, like Withnail and I (1987), Clerks (1994), Fargo (1996), or Napoleon Dynamite (2004).
For indie laughs, in the so-called “mumble-core movies” (where people don’t talk like actors), laughs are at the expense of the hero and even then are more of the quiet chuckle variety. Try Garden State (2004), Little Miss Sunshine (2006), or Rushmore (1998).
Dark humor plays well to festivals and gets you the acclaim of the seen-itall variety of viewer. Try Dr. Strangelove (1964), Peter Jackson’s Braindead (1992), M*A*S*H (1972), or Shawn of the Dead (2004).
GET INSPIRED
Ideas for comedy tend to come from anywhere except funny situations. If something hurts, then it can be funny. Look at events in your own life and your friends’ lives; pick the very worst times and use them as the basis of your comedy. Many great comedy classics tend to be rooted in a kind of cathartic humor which releases tension, like Little Miss Sunshine or Dr. Strangelove.
PREPRODUCTION ESSENTIALS
Storyboards; treatment; script; location photos; release forms; budget; permission forms for locations; health and safety sheets; contracts; copyright release for music; shot list; shooting schedule.
USING THE CAMERA
Shooting comedy won’t demand any single approach for using the camera. But funny moments can be undermined by using the camera in a way that deflates the joke, so it helps if you have a general awareness of the effect of each type of camera angle or movement. Sometimes, the camera angle itself is enough to make the moment funny, such as creating pathos by showing a character alone in a wide shot.
EDITING
Sharp editing is essential in this kind of movie; comedy needs precise timing and a confident style. Timing means knowing how long to show a clip for maximum effect. If you leave a shot too long on screen it can fall flat, but too little and we miss the gag.
A lot of independent comedy films avoid jokes in favor of images. A situation is set up and then we watch as the elements of it collide. In Napol
eon Dynamite, the hero of the title has to feed the pet llama. It’s a great edit – the shots are slow, with 6 to 10 seconds each, making it all look awkward. The framing is big and wide, so we see Napoleon in center frame, looking pitiful and embarrassed. Unlike most films, there’s no cut on movement (see Chapter 21, Editing Methods: Narrative Continuity), leaving some awkward pauses in the sequence. It’s comedy because the viewer gets embarrassed, because the shots are so long, and because Napoleon is so totally incapable of filling the screen. It’s not belly-laugh comedy, but you remember the clip long after – YouTube hits for this scene exceed ratings for some network comedy shows.
LEGALESE
Treat this with kid gloves – some people get a little crabby when you poke fun at them so be careful to mask the target of your comedy. Screen a disclaimer if you are too close to reality, and if they have bigger lawyers than you.
Aside from a target, get release forms from all cast or others who appear.
Upload It
Best site to upload to:
YouTube or Revver
Best communities to join:
Web Comedy at Vimeo:
“A chance for comedians to showcase their web series, stand up, or sketch comedy. Everyone is welcome …”
Best channels to watch:
Derrickcomedy Channel at YouTube
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COMEDY SCHEDULE
Comedy movies need extra time honing the script but if you are happy with that then it suits any length of schedule.
Chapter | Thirty-Seven
Drama: Noir/Thriller
FiGURE 37.1 The West Side, a powerful web series with hints of thriller, noir and western in its setting.
WHAT IS IT?
A dark, psychological, and bleak drama often based around urban crime.
Noir isn’t just a genre, it’s a genre-for-hire, instantly lending a simple plotdriven B-movie the chance to become a work of art, to give it a philosophy. Sure, it tends to be fatalistic, downbeat, menacing, and you won’t form lasting attachments with noir characters – in fact, you’ll want to lose them soon after the credits roll. But these are movies that leave their mark, evident in the many noir films still being made. In The Bourne trilogy, the title lead is a typical noir antihero – a mysterious past, no fear and no hope, all set in a cynical and corrupt world.
Forget the fact that noir films tend to be visually dark, the real point of them is that they are psychologically dark, they have a kind of inner darkness of the soul. Writers like Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver) prefer to label these movies “dark expressionistic cinema” or “psychological melodrama.”
The genre even creeps into places you wouldn’t expect – inspiring Clint Eastwood’s The Man With No Name in the Dollars trilogy or Sean Connery’s police marshal in sci-fi thriller Outland (1981). In fact, once you think of noir as a psychological movie, it becomes a fertile place to create deep and dark characters and detailed plots in any location and any period in time.
MY KIND OF MOVIE?
You’ll enjoy drama, but are drawn to the more extreme, dark and almost gothic stories. You are fascinated by finding out what goes on beneath the facades of people and everyday life, and generally believe that what you’ll find is not too clean, or honest. There’s dirt on those streets.
If glossy Hollywood happy endings or cheery moral tales leave you unconvinced, noir seems more realistic to you, like it lifts the rock of society and shows you the teeming low-life underneath. It may not be pretty but to you this is the truth, and underneath that tough exterior of yours that’s something you can believe in.
WHAT’S IT FOR?
Noir and thrillers have a high audience rating – people know what to expect and they enjoy the grown-up mix of thrills plus psychological undertones. They like a strong plot, driving forward at a fast pace.
Noir also exports well – try clashing it with other genres, updating it or moving it to unexpected settings.
Aside from traditional audiences, noir fits well into short webisodes, with enough action and dialogue to make a quick hit in just a few minutes.
HOW LONG WIll IT TAKE ME?
It’s heavily dependent on script and ideas, so take a long while to develop both. Characters need to be fully developed, with a full backstory to refer to, but at the same time avoiding regular clichés you tend to find in genres that have been around for a long time.
Expect to spend three times as long on script as on shooting, just like with dramas.
HOW HARD IS IT?
Difficulty level:
Noir and thriller movies demand a lean, clever script, honed into good shape over time. During shooting, the camera can’t be an innocent bystander – it has to show a lot of the meaning in each scene by the way you frame the action. So spend time working on your camera technique, especially how to create atmosphere and mood using lighting. Editing is less taxing than some genres, since it needs to be led by the action and dialogue.
You need to:
Be able to write good dialogue and create believable characters
Shoot expressive images
Work well with actors
Keep a plot-driven movie managed well – making sure you get the shots you need, and stick to the plans
Organize and work well with teams
Believe in your own vision for your movie
WHO ELSE DO I NEED?
You need all the usual suspects:
Producer
Sound recordist
Camera operator
Editor
WHAT KIT DO I NEED?
Camera
Tripod
Boom mic
Set of lamps, including large key lamp, and any improvised lamps you can get hold of
Lavalier mic
IF YOU LIKE THAT WATCH THIS
Check out anything by the German wave of directors who fled to America in the ’30s and ’40s and brought with them a dark style, a pessimistic plot and a low budget – Fred Zinneman (High Noon – a kind of western noir) Billy Wilder (Double Indemnity) and Otto Wilder (Laura) Preminger.
For a crash course in how to get expressive lighting, try Mildred Pierce (1945), by Michael Curtiz, another mid-European director.
Into the twenty-first century, noir thrillers have found a new lease on life in the retro Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005) and in the unlikely shape of high school noir Brick (2005).
GET INSPIRED
Go back to basics with the writers who inspired the movies, like James M. Cain, Ed McBain, Jim Thompson (The Killer Inside Me), or James Ellroy.
Check out the very noir-like graphic novels created by Alan Moore and others such as the sci-fi series Watchmen, and the Dark Knight Batman series.
PREPRODUCTION ESSENTIALS
Storyboards; script; location photos; release forms; style sheets/designs; costume designs; backstory; treatment; lighting designs; budget; permission forms for locations; health and safety sheets; contracts; copyright release for music; shot list; shooting schedule.
See Chapter 11, Brief Directory of All the Paperwork You Need.
To make sure that your themes are coherent, try writing the subtext first, leaving spaces between each line to add in dialogue later. You’ll have explicit lines saying what the real underlying theme is (the subtext – see Chapter 1, Ideas) in each scene. Then later you can write the best way of showing this more subtly.
When you are certain you have this core theme watertight, and that no scene happens that doesn’t push this theme forward in some way, then is the time to turn this subtext into dialogue – with hints, innuendo, and symbols. For example, in one scene in Double Indemnity, the seen-it-all hero Neff realizes that he has not quite seen everything coming and that the culprit of a murder is right under his nose, as femme fatale Phyllis. If that is the subtext, then the spoken text has to be more interesting to hear: “How could I have known that murder could sometimes smell like honeysuckle?” he says.
Also try these ideas that crop up in noir movi
es:
THE NONHEROIC HERO
Your main character rejects heroism, and is flawed after realizing the futility of bringing order to a chaotic world. They should be people who have been through bad times, who’ve suffered, and who now fear nothing but also hope for nothing.
ALIENATION AND LONELINESS
This is a great theme to use in a noir. It’s every man for himself, in a world where community is lost and no one trusts anyone else. Think Swamp Thing meets Shawshank.
FATE
The gamble of the dice plays both ways: blind chance helping produce a clue to reveal a crime or instead sealing a death. In He Walked By Night (1948), an escaping man is shot by police in the sewers all because a parked car blocked his escape via a manhole cover.
VIOLENCE AND PARANOIA
As in Taxi Driver, keep the audience guessing whether the seemingly paranoid delusions of the hero are to be believed or not. Use a voiceover to help us identify with the hero. And when the violence starts, don’t hold back.