Photos from the Past

From Boston.com:

Between 1909 and 1912…Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii…used a specialized camera to capture three black and white images in fairly quick succession, using red, green and blue filters, allowing them to later be recombined and projected with filtered lanterns to show near true color images.

Click the link to see a full collection of these images. This is Russia, over a hundred years ago. This is the distant past, as we have never seen it: in crisp, vibrant color.

It’s startling to look at the picture above and realize it’s over a hundred years old. There’s some kind of time travel involved: the man above is from his own time, but he’s posing in MY world. My trees and grass and rocks.

Absolutely breathtaking. See the full collection here.

Matt Wallace’s Top 10 Points for Professional Writers

Would-be professionals: take “writer” and put “director / actor / editor,” etc.

Matt Wallace’s Top 10 Points for Professional Writers

The Danger of a Single Story

From TED.com: Chimamanda Adichie discusses the danger of having only one story about a person or place.

The video and my comments after the jump.

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Film Studies – Recommended Reading

This isn’t actually a post, but a list of recommended readings for beginning and intermediate filmmakers.

This list is in no particular order.

Full disclosure: the Amazon.com links are associated with my affiliate account, and I will see some small percentage of return if you click these links and buy the book. If this makes you uncomfortable, don’t hesitate to pick up the book yourself via Amazon.com.

1) On Directing Film by David Mamet
Most of this instructive and funny book is written in dialogue form and based on film classes Mamet taught at Columbia University. He encourages his students to tell their stories not with words, but through the juxtaposition of uninflected images. (Amazon.com)

With my background in theatre, Mamet was one of the first people that drew my interest.  While you will probably leave  a lot of his theories behind eventually (as I did), he rigorously demands you understand each building block in your story, and that’s essential.

2) In the Blink of an Eye by Walter Murch
Walter Murch’s vivid, multifaceted, thought — provoking essay on film editing. Starting with what might be the most basic editing question — Why do cuts work? — Murch treats the reader to a wonderful ride through the aesthetics and practical concerns of cutting film. (Amazon.com)

Walter Murch (Academy Award-winning editor of Apocalypse Now, The English Patient, and scads of other classics) is the Man of a Thousand Movie Theories.  The difference is, with Mr. Murch, every one is correct.  He’s a great example of someone who studies everything.  He loves editing, and he applies his whole life to it.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough.  Knowledge of editing is essential to a cinema storyteller.  Screenwriters begin with words and dialogue, directors with real-world staging and blocking.  The editor is the only one of the triumvirate who, from beginning to end, is working on a movie, and telling a story in cinematic terms.




3) Backwards and Forwards by David Ball
“In fewer than 100 pages [Ball] shows how to unlock the secrets of plot, character, theme, exposition, imagery, motivation, conflict, theatricality and pacing…” (review, Stage Directions)

Storytelling is about knowing which questions to ask. Answers are usually very easy, once you know the right questions. David Ball elegantly walks you through the storyteller’s most difficult challenge: understanding a script in simple, explainable terms.

4) A Sense of Direction by William Ball
By and large, I prefer my creative textbooks with concrete advice. I want books that crystallize the real experience of doing the work. I want the nuts and bolts.

In William Ball’s book, he warns new directors that one of their biggest jobs will be keeping the leads from sleeping with each other before opening night. It doesn’t get more nuts and bolts than that.

Ball’s book is full of useful advice garnered from a lifetime in the directing community. Technically a manual for theatre directors, but I found very little that couldn’t be applied to film.

The MacGuffin Exposed

“In crook stories it is almost always the necklace and in spy stories it is most always the papers.”
- Alfred Hitchcock -

If you’ve ever taken a film class, you know what the MacGuffin is.

(I actually got into an argument once with a teacher who insisted the MacGuffin was the most important element in a film.  While it’s important to the characters, it is almost irrelevant to the actual film, or to the audience’s experience.)

TVTropes.com has a great wiki set up about the MacGuffin and the sub-groups they’ve discovered.  It’s a fun read, especially for avid story theorists.

TVTropes.com -> The MacGuffin

(discovered this link courtesy of the lovely archives at JohnAugust.com)

Running a Television Show

Found this blogpost on Twitter, courtesy of Matt F’n Wallace. It’s a piece by Kurt Sutter, a TV showrunner, and it digs into the little-mentioned world of television runners. It’s a world I’m currently fascinated by. Film directors brag about shooting a 2 hour film in 30 days. A television showrunner could be overseeing the production of between 13 and 22 hour-long features, each of which will be turned around in a matter of weeks. In short, these guys know the process, and they know how to multi-task.

Read more here: The Show Must Be Run

Google’s Coming Monopoly on Knowledge

Found this (admittedly somewhat slanted in tone) breakdown of the Google Books lawsuit currently underway:

The Fight Over the Google of All Libraries

It’s worth reading for yourself, as well as following the most recent update here (as of Sept 25).

Key points to consider:

• “Google’s mission is to ‘organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.’”  It doesn’t say what that will cost, and it begs the question: if one has a monopoly on all the world’s knowledge, do they have a right to charge for it, especially when it can be transferred to anyone else at zero cost?
• Google isn’t known for charging for its services…up to this point.  Right now, thanks to “free,” Google has been able to stake claims in the markets for email software, office document processing, telephony, and a lot more.

Whenever I hear about something Google is doing, I think back to an old Star Trek episode my father used to tell me about (Ep 41: I, Mudd).  A group decides the human race is too dangerous to be free, so they decide to take control of us. When asked how they will do it, they respond thusly:

Makes you realize how open to interpretation a phrase like “Don’t be Evil” can be.

Juggling Real Life and Writing

Mur Lafferty (author of Playing for Keeps and the Heaven series, amongst other celebrated works) posted a terrific article about the problem of juggling “real life” and writing*.

Welcome to Real Life

* replace writing with drawing, composing, editing, dancing; whatever your particular passion is.

John August: Breaking Storytelling Conventions

MakingOf.com has an interview with John August about his screenwriting process.  As always, John August demonstrates his knowledge of the craft by breaking down concepts into relatable terms, and sharing really original insight into the craft — no respun Syd Field here.

Normally I’d embed the video here, but MakingOf.com has some weird Iframe code going on, so I’m just providing the link.

John August on Breaking Storytelling Conventions

And, as a screenwriter, you should already be a regular visitor to JohnAugust.com.

Read More Screenplays (And How)

It’s a commonly-held bit of wisdom that if you want to become a better screenwriter, you need to read a lot of screenplays.

Well, Don Boose over at Simply Scripts.com has made that pursuit a whole lot easier.  Simply Scripts.com has compiled the WGA’s Top 101 Screenplays with links to nearly all of them (some with multiple drafts available).  The list is a comprehensive blend of great writing from the last hundred years: Pulp Fiction stands shoulder-to-shoulder wth North-by-Northwest and Dr. Strangelove.

So get over there and start reading.  There’s no better place to learn than the footsteps of the masters.

Some interesting facts…

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