Subversion, Anger and Learning

I frequently find myself angry at the movies. The number one reason for this is when movies are dumbed down for the audience. Audiences are more and more sophisticated, but they are coddled by today’s movies. My twelve year old cousin just made a movie on his Ipod Touch, not because he was so interested in movies, just because it was an option for him. He is not unique. More and more people are aware of the things that go into a movie, but rather than accepting that, film-makers explain their stories to death and refuse to try new things. A movie like Inception, regardless of whether or not I liked it was a huge box office success while challenging its audience to understand it, as opposed to The Green Lantern, which pretended there had never been a superhero movie to come before it. So many things about almost every movie that comes out during the summer are predictable and expected that it is hard to justify spending the money to see them.
I am always trying to subvert the way that people think about things. Whether its attempting to better explain what the word “hero” means, or its trying to make ironic rap videos, I always attempt to subvert at least some part of the given morals of an issue. I do not believe that I have a monopoly on the truth about these things, but I do believe that unless someone raises the question no one will ever know what their own personal truth is. I don’t ever want to let my audience off the hook. If I have their attention, I fully intend to keep it by challenging their assertions but also treating them with the respect they deserve.
As far as learning from my mistakes. I don’t know if this is me specific or something all artists go through, but I don’t view anything I’ve done as entirely successful. Every time I make a movie, there is something that catches me by surprise. I learn from that surprise, and then the next time I make a completely different mistake.
The biggest lesson I’ve ever learned, is from the worst thing I’ve ever made. At Valencia Community College, you take fundamentals of motion picture production in two parts. In the first part, I made some of the better movies in the class but that was because I knew that I wanted to do this professionally before I even went to school. So I went into the second part with unwarranted expectations about my maturity and ability as a film-maker. I wanted to make a silly little movie about a cop with a tooth ache, but another student in my class “had a great script.” I hated the idea, but allowed myself to be talked into making a movie that I didn’t believe in. It shows in the final project. The movie lacks focus and clarity. So the lesson I’ve learned is that, I have to be fully invested in something for it to be any good. This was also the most miserable I’ve ever been while making a movie. I’ve heard some people can do things for money or any other number of things, but I don’t have that ability.

Why make this movie.

I want to make a documentary about the USS Randolph because I believe it is vitally important to tell the story of these veterans that served aboard the ship. Although I did not join the Navy, my dad and grandfather both did, so it is something that I grew up around. Often, I think we know the broad strokes of history, but never what the event was like for the people that lived it. In this film, I believe I have the unique ability to tell some of those stories and provide an insider’s look at some of the events of U.S. history from 1944 to 1975.

I think a good movie has a perspective and it communicates that idea to its audience. I think a great movie does that and is also unique. This uniqueness does not mean that the idea behind the movie whole new, only that there is something about the movie that is fresh. Many classic movies still have this freshness even after other movies have been derided from the original material. I’ve seen hundreds, if not thousands of takes on The Tramp, but Chaplin is just relevant today as it was when he was making the movies because the themes are so universal. The same can’t be said for some of his contemporaries. This is not to say that borrowing from another film prevents a work from being great, Martin Scorcese and Woody Allen have been leaving their mark on borrowed stories for the past almost fifty years.

The revolution will be torrented

http://vodo.net/

This site allows film makers to release their movie a piece at a time and raise money while the movie (really more of a television show in this model) is in production. The site claims that the productions using this delivery method have made between $60,000 and $10,000 each.

Very interesting stuff going on here.

Firsties!!

One week of grad school down....160-ish to go.