Actors who star in this season’s big movies talk about their careers.

Happy holidays everyone. I’m sure that people are relaxing with family, taking a break from the grind and seeing movie after movie between epic meals with loved ones.

I feel that anyone in the industry should take a look at these full length interviews done by The Hollywood Reporter with this years’ oscar hopefuls. THR did a great series of interviews with directors, actors and producers who created some of the most exciting films this year.

If you’re looking for industry titans discussing in-depth technique, I’m sorry to say you won’t find it here. But I believe it’s still important to watch these videos because they illustrate how many of our heroes in the film world still have the same hopes, dreams and fears as the rest of us just starting out. Experienced actors still hate auditions and are constantly wondering if they’ll ever get a part again. Directors sit with agony when they’re not making a movie and struggle when making the film to hold morale throughout the process.

Happy holidays and enjoy!

The Directors

The Actors

The Actresses

The Writers

The Executives

Editing As It Was

Film editing was like many other art forms that have now gone digital. It was a process that involved all of your senses. The way the film glided across your fingers. The smell of the chemicals. How images looked next to each other and which piece of music fit nicely with the emotion of the scene. And I would venture to say you could taste the new batch of reels as they came into the edit suite from the lab.

There was no concept of “saving your work.” You made a cut, taped it together and it was saved. You were fine…unless the building caught on fire or something. There was also the art of methodically choosing the images you wanted. Too many edits and re-edits would easily show as the film skipped along the various tape marks and therefore revealing the process. So the editor made each edit count. The process was also simpler. You have your image and your sound. With a razor the editor cut them together (literally) and then he or she would watch it back. If you’d like to find that perfect moment, you pull over your bin of film, hold it to the light, “Ah! I found it” and cut it together.

Pretty simple. The only complex part was the imagination of the editor and their director on how to tell the story.

The Steenbeck Flatbed Editor

What Editing Has Become

Typical NLE Interface

Like so many filmmakers, I work from time to time as an editor in between my directing gigs to pay the bills and get unofficial directing master classes with other directors in New York as they sit with me in the editing room. I also tend to edit my own work. In recent years I’ve felt that on many of my editing jobs I have become more of a computer programmer than an artist. This problem gets progressively worse the bigger the project. If you find yourself editing a feature documentary with over 200 hours of footage, you may end up spending more time dealing with media management/data problem solving rather than making artistic story choices. When making “Streetball,” my wife spent late nights listening to me scream every 4 letter word to the computer as I tried to figure out which corrupt file was causing my project to crash repeatedly.

This can be said for other artforms like typography, graphic design, music composition, architecture, etc. Also because film editing now involves spending more time on a computer with a 500 page “This Particular NLE for Dummies” book, editing is attracting a different kind of person. It’s also turning away people who may have a gift for putting two unrelated concepts together to create new meaning. I have plenty of friends who are gifted at making collages, paintings or art installation pieces that would be fantastic film editors. But they put their hands up in surrender at me when I suggest they try editing because when they open Adobe Premiere, it is quite intimidating. Of course some of them wouldn’t want to do filmmaking in the first place. But others have admitted the secret desire that is buried by the intimidation of learning a complex editing software.

And of course today no one is just an editor. They’re also expected to be a colorist, a sound mixer and “can you throw in some graphics at the beginning and the end for me?” What that means is editors now have to spend that time learning another program and another. And each program has its own set of do’s, don’ts, file structures, complex interfaces, workflow, etc.

Things Filmmakers Have Gotten Used To, But May Not Make Sense

The first thing we’re now used to is having so many video tracks and other unnecessary structures. I remember when Final Cut Pro announced that it could support 99 tracks of video and Avid followed simply because it was working to sell Final Cut (although I would argue the price helped sell Final Cut over Avid). But unless you’re continually making video collages that zoom out to show hundreds of videos playing at once, why do you need this? Why is having “tracks” important at all?

Another is file formats. People geek out ad nauseum about video formats, compression ratios, aspect ratios, etc. And we get used to exporting things into the “proper” editing format so we can get our work done. Whether its music, sound fx, source material, etc., if you find that perfect shot you want, you may have to leave your computer compressing over night so it can be ready to play nicely with your NLE and at the end of the day the system still might jam up.

A third is saving and losing files. It almost seems like a rite of passage to work on a project for hours, have the computer crash and realize that you didn’t save it. Every editor has done this no matter how much they claim to save every five minutes. Even if you have auto save on, you still have one of those moments. And of course in bigger projects, the process of the computer auto saving can actually cause the crash. Also we’ve all lost source files. No matter how meticulously you organize your files, there is always that one file you left on the desktop or a second external drive that you didn’t remember to copy over to your work drive.

I’ve also lost files in the process of backing up! WAR STORY:

Christina and I were in the process of doing the final color correction of ”Streetball” in Brazil and the day before we were supposed to go in to the color correction suite, I decided to fix a few of the graphics to make them even better. I added extra elements, a little more sophisticated motion and tweaked the motion blur. It was after midnight when I got home and decided to copy my files to third extra-EXTRA backup drive that we were keeping at the hotel. I was excited to do so because it had been almost a month since I did a full backup of everything. I figured “One last major backup before we start color correction tomorrow.” I hit copy and the computer asked “Are you sure you want to overwrite?” and I said “Duh! COPY!” and went to take a shower. Half way through my shower I realized what I had done and ran out covered in soap hitting “STOP COPY” but it was too late. I had overwritten my real files with the backup files, loosing all the work from the previous month the DAY BEFORE ON-LINING!!!! I spent the entire night re-editing the film from a month old version.

The list goes on beyond the simple examples I’ve listed above of things that we have decided are necessary evils of editing our films. But do they have to be? Do we need complicated timelines? Do we need to worry about formats and setting our computer up to render over night whenever we’d like to edit? Should we be constantly worried about losing files or sequences because the auto-save never happened? Is it okay that for many of us, those things often times take priority over making creative choices?

What Final Cut Pro X is doing and Why I Like It.

Simple Interface of Final Cut Pro X

With Final Cut Pro X, I believe they’ve tried to go back to the art of editing without the headache of computer programming. Was the software perfect when it launched a year ago? Of course not. But its bold new philosophy of editing is a step in the right direction when it comes to putting the creativity first. For people who have spent years on other legacy NLE’s, Final Cut Pro X definitely has a learning curve. Actually, more like an “un-learning” curve. I believe that compared to any other NLE, it’s the most straight forward “just-get-straight-to-creativity” editing software around. And if you peel back the layers, you’ll find that it’s also extremely powerful and as complex as you’d like it to be.

Don’t get me wrong. If I met someone who is young and says “I want to be a professional film editor” I would tell them to learn Avid and try to get a job as an assistant editor under someone who is really fantastic at what they do. Filmmaking is just like any other craft. You have to practice and find great masters who are willing to teach you. But what about people who aren’t sure what they want to do? Or people who are trying to tell their stories and have limited time/money? Or perhaps someone who is creative and has a project they’d like to put out there but doesn’t know much about editing? Or someone like myself who wants to spend more time being creative in the editing room and less time trying to figure out why the hell something isn’t working right?

I think Final Cut Pro X fills that void and some of the other professional NLE’s are adding Final Cut Pro X features to their editing systems as well. In the next article, I’ll talk about the basics of Final Cut Pro X. For those who are pro editors, don’t worry. I’ll also talk about the things that are a bit of a headache and need a little work. This isn’t necessarily a how-to series. More like a “get to know it better” article.  Hopefully it will make a few people willing to take a stab at it and see how it feels for themselves.

It’s been several years since I’ve held a blog and I’m excited to be back involved. This blog is to serve as both a professional and personal reflection of my journey as a young, independent filmmaker.  There are three major points of view I plan to illustrate:

Thoughts on current films

Every year there are those films that come both to large cinemas and local independent chains that really speak to me and my aspirations as a storyteller. I’ll reveal my thoughts on why some films are great even if the general public isn’t too excited about them. I’ve learned that sometimes you have to make a film to understand how much work went into another. The first two I’ve reflected on are big Hollywood films but they affected me just the same as the more intimate, indie stories. In the coming months I’ll mix it up a bit so there’s a balance between the mainstream and the art-house films.

Tips and Tricks

In the world of DIY, no-budget independent filmmaking, I’ve spent days (and sometimes months) trying to learn all sorts of tricks to make my films work on a limited budget. That includes spending hours trying to motion track images of graffiti to footage of a wall because I filmed with a DSLR with a rolling shutter; or trying to use cinema 4D in conjunction with live action footage without any formal education in 3D graphics; or even cleaning up static in wireless microphones because I couldn’t afford ADR and the actors live all over the country now.

The aim in these posts is to share the knowledge I’ve learned with other filmmakers like myself so we’re not all constantly reinventing the wheel.

Personal Filmmaking Log

I’m always looking for stories of other filmmakers’ journeys as they attempt to get their stories told and out to the public. It’s educational to know what things did or didn’t work for them. It also presents a feeling of comradery to know that people are experiencing the same pains and joys that I am. So I’ve decided to give back by putting my experiences out there for the world to read.

Thanks so much for taking the time to check out my blog. Feel free to leave comments and contact me for questions or thoughts.

Dee

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a movie that held my attention from the opening frame to the final copyright titles at the end. Especially a movie that is over two and a half hours long. But there is a film that has broken the long impasse. And that film is Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained.

I was lucky enough to watch a SAG/HFPA advanced screening of the film. It’s always a joy to see a film with a crowd that loves the movies. I took my seat, the red velvet curtains opened and the feature presentation began with no trailers to spoil the mood (OK, I usually love trailers but the pure entrance into Django was perfect).

Django has it all: epic romance, over-the-top-gratuitous violence, “make it stop” laughter, farcical representation of the atrocities of history and hauntingly accurate depictions of its reality. For this review, I’ve split it into four parts: performances, filmmaking, subject matter and conclusion.

Performances

In the first scene we’re greeted with our two stars playing drastically different roles than we’re used to. Jamie Foxx (who’s known for playing the loud caricatures that are reminiscent to his In Living Color days) is stoic, focused and grounded in a mission that gives the audience immediate empathy for our hero Django (the D is silent). If I had forgotten that Jamie Foxx is a great actor, I was reminded instantly in this film as he’s led shackled through the forest with a quiet intensity. He holds that intensity behind his eyes throughout the film. Don’t worry, there are still plenty of moments when he “hams it up” but it is always grounded in an honest character. Just be sure not to drink any liquids when Dr. Schultz allows Django to pick out his own clothes.

I was a little nervous about the Foxx’s performance when I read some of his interviews this summer about the film. He spoke with a certain tongue-in-cheek colloquialism that led me to believe he had remained on the surface with the character. I realized however that he was very thoughtful and complex in his performance. Perhaps all the nonchalant chatting was just Jamie trying to remain entertaining and humble. In this film, he is simply brilliant.

Christoph Waltz is Dr. Schultz

Then enters Christoph Waltz, that blood curdling villianous actor whose demise left America at applause by the end of Inglourious Basterds. But in this film, he rides in with the moral high ground and is instantly lovable. In Inglourious Basterds he was the very definition of the opportunist. In Django, he becomes its moral compass and plays it equally as convincingly as he played roles in previous films. There still is an element of his character that makes use of a bad situation to make money – he’s a bounty hunter after all. So at first, I was imagining that same character from Inglourious Basterds being called by another name. But as Christoph peels back the layers, you find how truly talented this actor is and how wonderfully generous Tarantino has been to write great characters for a more than capable actor. Perhaps he needs to make space for another Supporting Oscar trophy!

There are a list of great cameos from Don Johnson and Jonah Hill that are just spot on. I never thought I’d feel bad for a KKK member but there was a little sigh when I understood how hard one of their wives worked to make sure that they looked the part and none of the men had enough sense to be grateful. And to make ME feel this way about THEM was truly a work of art in both writing, directing and of course, performance.

Kerry Washington is Broomhilda von Shaft

Both DiCaprio and Samuel L. Jackson threaten to steal the show when they show up in the second half of the film. I still have a hard time seeing DiCaprio as anything other than himself playing dress-up and putting on a funny accent. But regardless, he doesn’t dissappoint and eventually slides into the character of Candie with grace as he uses his silky southern accent to get completely under your skin. Samuel L. Jackson however surprised me. He wasn’t just the same old Sam Jackson that gets us to see films like Snakes on a Plane without shame…and yet he was. I mean, yes, there was still a lot of screaming with F-bomb’s attached and an incredulous cross eyed look…

Kerry Washington continues to shine as she finds her rightful place in mainstream culture as a great actress. She is the ultimate princess to be rescued. I’m happy that Tarantino went with an actress like her for a role that is quite small. She adds so much in the few scenes she’s in that I was immediately attached to her. Even when she is simply standing in the fields in the form of a dream, her slight smile and deep eyes make Django’s journey absolutely worth it.

Filmmaking

Tarantino has found his stride with this film. Where some of his older films have, what at times feels like meandered in long winded dialogue, this one is tight and to the point. But don’t worry. If you love Tarantino’s quick witted scenes that add texture in dialogue, they’re still there in Django. They just don’t last as long, or leave you wondering “what does this have to do with the story?” which I found to be distracting in his early work. At times, Django feels like a Coen Brother’s film with its off-beat southern/Australian/German characters who carelessly find themselves in the oddest situations. And the moment you might want to think “is this going on too long?” he snaps you out of it and back into the action of the film.

The action scenes eb and flow between exaggerated gore (which lightens the mood) to Cannes worthy craftsmanship. He has the ability to find the right music for every scene, no matter the genre or century it was written. The comedy, style, horror and romance fit together nicely. Its a cross genre film that feels just right and balanced. I love him for that.

There is also a lot more “Show don’t tell” in this film. One scene, for example, starts with Brumhilda in bed and through the cracks of the wooden shack are glimpses Django walking heroically to rescue her. As he opens the door, he casts a cowboy silhouette over Brumhilda and simply says (off camera) “Its me baby.” She turns…and the audience swoons along with her.

Subject Matter

I go back and forth between deciding whether or not to read a screenplay before I see the movie. I had several friends contact me after they read a leaked script last year and tell me it was the most offensive movie they’ve read in years. “Its going to be awful!” one friend said to me shaking his head. For that reason I didn’t read the script and wanted to wait and see the movie. I remembered people saying the same thing about Pulp Fiction when it came to racism and the use of that that word…you know the one…but in the end Pulp Fiction was fantastic to me.

And I feel the same way about Django. I applaud its authenticity. Having grown up in Mississippi, everything about this film rang true to me. I also love how he dealt with the individuals who lived in that time period. Tarantino approached these painful situations with the perfect mix of humor and horror. Where films like Crash use racial slurs to prove a point, there’s a feeling in Tarantino’s film that he’s simply showing the world that these people live in. Because of that, the film transcends being another southern slavery movie to being a very real adaptation of Brunhilde and Siegfried.

Final Thoughts

This movie has quickly shot up to the top of my 2012 list along with Lincoln, Beast of the Southern Wild and Cloud Atlas. For me as a filmmaker and as an avid movie watcher, I delighted in both the technique and its mass appeal story. The competition may be steep but if there were ever a chance for Tarantino to win Best Picture, this is it. Don’t laugh! They gave it to No Country for Old Men…

just sayin’.

I remind myself that both De Niro and David O. Russell (and every other actor/director in the industry) were just like me and my buddies in the beginning. They were making small films, handheld, shooting in locations they could get in order to tell a story worth telling. And at the end of the day, after every one of my friends leaves the bar, we are also dreaming of the day when we could make great movies for the masses.

Silver Linings Playbook has all the hallmarks of a modern indie film: handheld camera work, natural  lighting, improved scripts, interesting family dynamics, a lost/confused protagonist and stars Jennifer Lawrence. But also it has many of the things we’ve come to love in Hollywood films: lovable characters that know the right things to say, good wins in the end, serendipitous meetings, great monologues to get our protagonist to run after the love of his life and… stars Jennifer Lawrence.

Bradley Cooper gives a nuanced and lovable performance as Pat.

What makes this movie work well is its use of humor in the beginning to get you to fall in love with this completely dysfunctional person and all his friends/family. This is one of the ways that many of my independent film contemporaries falter in the beginnings of films. Characters have to make you smile before they can make you cry. Sure it would be easy to have the first thirty minutes of this film depict Pat’s (Bradley Cooper) pain and isolation. Instead, he greets us with a smile as he yells his anxieties in his attic bedroom. Its important to remember that before the Hangover, Bradley Cooper was a serious actor studying at the Actor’s Studio. Sure he did a lot of comedy to get started but there has always been meat underneath. And comedy has to be smart first.

The same is true with Jennifer Lawrence who pulls off her character with such ease. She never goes too crazy or too overly sincere. Her eccentricities are over the top at first and her dead pan delivery of life’s problems lighten the mood. There is also a timeless quality of Jennifer Lawrence. She can comfortably slide between a misunderstood teenager to a woman nearing her 40′s with life’s bruises to show for it. Of course you believe each version.

Robert De Niro feels as though he read the script once and said, “Okay. I got it.” There is this feeling that he was being himself and filling in the holes of the character with whatever little gems he could come up with in the moment. David O. Russell talks of a scene when De Niro holds a handkerchief in his hand before the football game. Bradley Cooper asks “what’s that?” and De Niro just gestures nervously, a hint of embarrassment flashes over his face and then he simply points to it before dismissing his son. There was surely a line in the script there but De Niro felt all he needed to do was gesture to say the entire missing monologue. And that’s why, if you can, you hire De Niro.

Chris Tucker is a joy to watch in the film.

I couldn’t finish this review without applauding the secondary characters. Julia Stiles as the bitching wife of Pat’s best friend. John Ortiz as her anxiety ridden husband who fake-smiles his way through life’s problems before having constant mental break downs. Paul Herman who makes you think “Yep. That could be De Niro’s best friend/nemesis.” Jacki Weaver is the perfect mother of that generation. And of course the return of Chris Tucker. Think if the character Smokey from Friday grew up, got a real job…but landed in a psych ward. All great performances from everyone involved.

David O. Russell has admitted that with each film he gets better and better. I believe in this film he’s found the right mix of slap-stick humor rooted in honest relationships. No matter how absurd situations get, they always feel real and true to life. There are plenty of moments that cause you to say “Oh yeah. I guess this is a movie so its okay that happened.” A friendly cop that shows up in every location to add both tension and let everyone know that it’s going to be okay. A therapist who has no problem becoming friends with his patient. A final scene that has all of your main characters meet up in one location to watch our heroes win the tournament.

This film was to be David’s follow up to I Heart Huckabees. But he took a small film called The Fighter first. In between that time, he has truly matured as a filmmaker and returned to a film that’s close to heart. And it shows with every scene. The result is the perfect mix of indie style storytelling with a hollywood style ending. I loved every second of it.

]]> http://www.demetriuswren.com/2012/12/thoughts-silver-linings-playbook/feed/ 0 http://www.demetriuswren.com/2012/11/daniel-tiger-shoots/ http://www.demetriuswren.com/2012/11/daniel-tiger-shoots/#comments Mon, 26 Nov 2012 00:35:41 +0000 admin http://www.demetriuswren.com/?p=387 A year ago I was a newlywed and my wife and I were asked by the Fred Rogers Company to make live-action interstitials for their next show. At the time, I didn’t even know what an interstitial was. But I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to work with the company that helped shape my child hood with Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood. Tina and I signed up to do 40 episodes / 80 segments of short documentary style films for their new show called Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood. We were quickly given scripts for the show in our dropbox, an equipment request form and flown to Toronto to meet up with the company creating the music and animation for the show.

A year later, I look back on the experience with such pride and humility. The show appears to be a huge success for the target age group within the first three months on the air. This has surpassed all of our expectations. In that year I have filmed baking birthday cakes, crawled on my knees with pigs and goats, seen how crayons are made, ridden a turn of the century steam engine train and caught every single version of the cold virus that kids in Pittsburgh have been carrying with them. What can I say, I love giving high fives after filming with the kids. And I don’t care if those hands were just in the kid’s mouths minutes before!

For those of you who don’t have toddlers, “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood” is an update to the show “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.” The Fred Rogers Company and producing partner, Out of the Blue knew that it was impossible to re-cast Fred Rogers. So instead Angela Santomero and her team pitched a completely different idea. Angela was the creative mind behind the hit shows “Blues Clues” and “SuperWhy.” Angela and her team thought, “What if the characters in the Neighborhood of Make Believe grew up and had children of their own and those kids are now toddlers?”

But the team felt that one of the strong points with Fred Rogers was how he was able to show children dealing with emotional issues in their life in an honest way. They suggested doing small live action segments showing real kids dealing with situations from the animated show. Sometimes the mini-documentaries can be directly on theme such as knowing it’s okay to use the potty. Just stop and ask someone! Or maybe it can be about a really cool location like visiting the crayon factory. This is what an interstitial is.

A year into production, we’ve filmed about seventy of these small videos. In that time I’ve learned so much. Working with 4-year-olds is as challenging as it is rewarding. It’s made me get back to the basics of directing and storytelling. A 4-year-old doesn’t know or care about their motivation. They haven’t gone to acting school. And because our mantra was use real kids with real families instead of actors, they don’t do too well with scripted dialogue. Also, there is the issue of attention span. When you’re four, do you really understand the meaning behind “takes” or “coverage?” If you’ve already done the action once in a master shot, does the 4-year-old understand “okay! Time for your close up!”

Of course not. I’ve had to learn how to shoot differently and to be patient. And you know what? The kids always surprise me with things you could never script. A laugh or a moment that is an example of the skill we’re trying to illustrate better than anything we could have ever staged.

Don’t get me wrong. Not every episode is perfect. We’ve had our complete melt downs from kids or concepts that people just don’t understand. We’ve had edits without enough coverage or ones that were too chaotic to make sense of (try editing an hour of footage with five kids squealing in delight while playing with props in a living room down to two minutes with a coherent story to follow).  But in the end, this first season was absolutely magical and 120% rewarding. I hope we’ve made Fred proud and that kids are learning important life skills from the show.

Are you a parent who watches the show? If so, let me know what you think about both the animation and live action. We’re always working hard to make things better for upcoming episodes and the next. We also want to know if we’re doing the right thing. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”

But quickly I was able to make an edit of a trailer in one night on Final Cut Pro and decided that it wasn’t so bad. Also the price made my decision back then because at the time Avid was several times more expensive and you needed to have that Mojo box to edit with it (remember those!?).

Then came FCP X. I kept all of my professional gigs on FCP 7 but got a copy of FCP X because I assumed that eventually everyone will switch to it. I was one of those people who purchased FCP X on the day it appeared on the app store and have spent the past year and a half slowly switching all my pro gigs to the new software as each update made me feel more comfortable about it.

And guess what? I love it. It might be my favorite NLE. This is an introduction to a series of posts about the joys (and headaches) of Final Cut Pro X. I’ll share my experiences with it on all sorts of projects: Shorts, documentary, commercials and features. I trust that when I’m done, a lot of you will have the same opinion I have.

Final Cut Pro X isn’t perfect but its definitely professional. And for the right project it can save you lots of time (and therefore money!).