Submitted by by Christina Hazelwood
Although the village of Downers Grove, where I am a resident, has a fully functioning public access television station, I have been unable to get access to it. In spite of federal and local laws that specify a resident’s right to participate, in spite of the contribution that, I, as a resident make to the village in the form of taxes and cable fees, in spite of my efforts to exercise my rights, the village refuses to provide access.
The Federal Communications Commission, which regulates cable companies, gives franchising authorities like the village of Downers Grove, the right to require cable companies to set aside channels for local Public, Educational, or Governmental (PEG) use, as well as services, facilities, or equipment. Although cities and villages have this right, not all of them exercise it. The franchising authority, in this case the village of Downers Grove, is not allowed to control the content of programming on PEG stations, other than enforcement of obscenity restrictions.
Governing authorities, like the village, establish franchise agreements that specify their relationship with their cable provider. Cable companies pay the local authority, a percent of fees collected, typically from 5% to 5.5% for the privilege of providing its population with service. In its franchise agreement, the village of Downers Grove requires the cable company to provide three PEG channels, but only one is active (Channel 6). Legally, anyone who lives in the village of Downers Grove is allowed to create programming and have access to the village's television station, its equipment, and the airwaves for which the residents pay through their tax dollars and cable fees.
Downers Grove village law (Resolution 96-13) establishes rules under which residents may exercise their right to participate in the PEG station for which they pay. The intent of the resolution is to provide a method through which residents may make their voices heard. But instead the village uses the provisions of the resolution to restrict access and thereby prevent any undesirable information about the village or its activities from reaching residents.
How the village gets around the law is by putting in a clause that requires residents to take classes before they are “qualified” to have access to the station. This sounds reasonable in theory, but here’s the catch. The village then does not offer any classes, assuring that the public does not get access to the equipment, station or airwaves for which it pays.
By not providing classes, no residents become “qualified” to produce programs and all dissenting voices are squashed. In this way the village is able to eliminate public discourse and crush the rights imbued upon its citizens by law. No information or issues that may reflect poorly on the village or its activities is made public. In other countries this is called censorship. The village’s strategy insures that residents are unable to share any knowledge, information, or creative endeavors they have to offer the community at large. Programming that may potentially benefit the residents and the village is thereby made mute and void.
Not only does the village not offer classes, thereby insuring that no dissenting voices are heard, it also makes sure that the taxpaying, cable fee contributing residents are unaware that these rights to express themselves exist at all. The village flaunts its own laws of public access and takes over the station and airwaves for which the residents pay, using it as a pulpit to show a continuous stream of programming about how wonderful the village of Downers Grove and its associated governments are.
If the village was truly interested in allowing residents to exercise their public access rights, lawfully given to them and for which they pay, Downers Grove would offer classes on a regular basis, and post the dates, times, and locations of the classes on their web site, in the village newsletter, in local newspapers, and on the public access television station that it has commandeered. Instead, the village colludes to prevent its residents from knowing about their rights and gaining access to them.
The village and its representatives provide lip service about what an open, wonderful community Downers Grove is and then take measures to assure that the status quo is maintained. The few programs that get aired in which residents participate (to my knowledge there are three of them) are done in the studio under the watchful eye of village employees.
Neighboring communities such as Wheaton and Glen Ellyn, who have similar local laws, manage to provide regular open classes to their residents, allowing them to be “qualified” as producers and share valuable information in the form of programming. These villages seek out the participation of their residents and actually demonstrate an interest in hearing what their taxpaying, cable fee providing residents have to say.
In Downers Grove if a resident wants to take the required classes in order become qualified, the resident is placed on a “list” and is told that the village will be in contact when it decides to have a class. I requested to be placed on this list four years ago, have made several follow up telephone calls, and have yet to be contacted about a class. And further, although I've made movies, videos, and commercials, in the eyes of the village I am not qualified to produce cable access programming. This is in spite of village law which states that persons already familiar with equipment may be waived from taking the village's nonexistent classes.
In America, as well as in the rest of the world, just because we, the people, have both inalienable and lawfully provided rights, there is no assurance that they will be honored. Bullies who trample and disregard the rights of its citizens do not only exist only in other countries, but may be right in your own backyard.
Tuesday, April 29, 2003
Tuesday, April 15, 2003
Why I Made A Film
Submitted by Christina Hazelwood
”You’re going to undergo some type of training or study,” the psychic said.
I rolled my eyes and figured the woman had a bad connection or something. Having recently graduated from college, I was happily working in my chosen profession and had no intention of going back to school. Nay, I knew I wasn't going back.
“You’re going to study...” she paused, apparently re-tuning. “...film. Film scripts. You’re going to become very interested in scripts and scriptwriting.”
This woman must be picking up vibes from the last guy that was in here, I thought. But the woman turned out to be right. It just took another ten years to happen.
At the time I was working as a reporter for a regional newspaper and had my life mapped out. Eventually I’d join the staff of the Chicago Tribune and become a salty dog, hobnobbing with police detectives and political insiders, uncovering truth, justice and fighting for the American way. But I took a series of wrong turns, uncovered numerous dead ends, and wound up, just where she said, absorbing any information I could find about scriptwriting and making films.
It’s as though the thing got under my skin, like some nasty filmmaker virus that I couldn't shake. I searched out books, magazines, seminars, every tidbit of information. I even managed to get a few non-gratis (hang-around-the-set-and-we’ll-call-you-if-we-need-you) positions on some films. But I had to face facts. I was not, and had never been, a fresh-scrubbed UCLA film school grad. So if I ever did actually manage to slog my way through the Hollywood jungle (of course I’d have to move there first) and make something of myself, success would not occur prior to the age of ninety-three. And at that point I would no longer be able to see or hear the movie I'd just made.
There was only one possible way for me to become a filmmaker - make a film. Needless to say, this was an utterly horrifying thought to my loved ones. The sheer audacity and utter folly, of believing such a thing was in the realm of the possible, was in itself a shock. Not to mention the financial burden, overwhelming responsibility, logistics, technical demands, people issues, and all else. But being the lone lemming that I am, I decided to jump off the cliff.
I looked at it this way. If I wind up flipping burgers at the local diner, looking at another twenty to thrity years before I pay off that last credit card bill, at least I could say, “I did it.” As opposed to spending the rest of my life wishing I had.
”You’re going to undergo some type of training or study,” the psychic said.
I rolled my eyes and figured the woman had a bad connection or something. Having recently graduated from college, I was happily working in my chosen profession and had no intention of going back to school. Nay, I knew I wasn't going back.
“You’re going to study...” she paused, apparently re-tuning. “...film. Film scripts. You’re going to become very interested in scripts and scriptwriting.”
This woman must be picking up vibes from the last guy that was in here, I thought. But the woman turned out to be right. It just took another ten years to happen.
At the time I was working as a reporter for a regional newspaper and had my life mapped out. Eventually I’d join the staff of the Chicago Tribune and become a salty dog, hobnobbing with police detectives and political insiders, uncovering truth, justice and fighting for the American way. But I took a series of wrong turns, uncovered numerous dead ends, and wound up, just where she said, absorbing any information I could find about scriptwriting and making films.
It’s as though the thing got under my skin, like some nasty filmmaker virus that I couldn't shake. I searched out books, magazines, seminars, every tidbit of information. I even managed to get a few non-gratis (hang-around-the-set-and-we’ll-call-you-if-we-need-you) positions on some films. But I had to face facts. I was not, and had never been, a fresh-scrubbed UCLA film school grad. So if I ever did actually manage to slog my way through the Hollywood jungle (of course I’d have to move there first) and make something of myself, success would not occur prior to the age of ninety-three. And at that point I would no longer be able to see or hear the movie I'd just made.
There was only one possible way for me to become a filmmaker - make a film. Needless to say, this was an utterly horrifying thought to my loved ones. The sheer audacity and utter folly, of believing such a thing was in the realm of the possible, was in itself a shock. Not to mention the financial burden, overwhelming responsibility, logistics, technical demands, people issues, and all else. But being the lone lemming that I am, I decided to jump off the cliff.
I looked at it this way. If I wind up flipping burgers at the local diner, looking at another twenty to thrity years before I pay off that last credit card bill, at least I could say, “I did it.” As opposed to spending the rest of my life wishing I had.
Nobody Knows Anything, The Golden Nugget of Hope
Submitted by Richard Hogg
It seems that a lot of wannabe screenwriters daydream about getting up to accept an Oscar. This is the pinnacle of all the effort and creativity they pour out onto the page. For me, the end goal is to sit down at the screening, doubters at my side, and have the 20th Century Fox fanfare blast out announcing to myself more than anyone else that I should never have doubted myself.
Looking at the endless amount of screenwriting information, articles, script services available there seemed to be a lot of information to take in order to guarantee success. A word which is rarely whispered over here in Britain.
But do we need all of this. If on average I take in less than five percent of what I read (no I’m not irretrievably stupid, this is a average for most people) then think of all that wasted time spent on act structures, plot lines, climaxes, and dialog do’s and don’ts.
One day I began reading William Goldman’s now renowned “Adventures in the Screen Trade.” And in it’s pages I found a voice that gave me more hope than any of the other books on the market. Here I wasn’t being told the rules that I could learn then break, a phrase that has proved to me to be as useful as a chocolate teapot. Here I discovered a truth I still believe in today and one which I had probably read before but had been lost with the other ninety-five percent. Goldman says “nobody knows anything” and then goes onto include himself in that phrase. HE HAS NO IDEA OF HOW HE DOES WHAT HE DOES. This from the man who gave us Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid.
I looked up at a shelf groaning under the weight of other how-to books and heavyweight texts like “Story” or a Syd Field volume. Now I didn’t have to struggle with the feeling that I couldn’t be a writer because I didn’t fit the type. I never got so into my writing that I stayed up all night like they did. In fact, I seemed to self-destruct and in the middle of a creative burst of pure inspiration would find myself pacing the house just to get away from the keyboard. Was I afraid that I would mess it up? That I couldn’t get down on the page what was in my head?
I never used the techniques they mentioned and their logical train of thought seemed lost on me as I spent time writing.
Even writing this very short article I am struggling to think of things to say. Is my point valid? Do I have a point or am I just writing for the sake of writing? Why do I always end up raising more questions than I answer? But how can there be any answers if Goldman is right?
If you have read this little rant (it would be wrong to call this thought fart an article) then well done. Reading it again I realize that it will not solve any script problems or provide any inspiration. Perhaps the only thing to glean is that you either have it or you don’t. Or maybe that there are others who do what they do but not in the way they’re supposed to.
Do you write knowing that it’s not really up to standard but that it’s what you always wanted to do? Maybe you are talented enough but haven’t quite got to grips with business side of things. All I know is I get a sense of total satisfaction when I write something that I would pay to see. So I guess what I’m saying is JUST WRITE. Your imagination is the key, the books just help tidy things up.
It seems that a lot of wannabe screenwriters daydream about getting up to accept an Oscar. This is the pinnacle of all the effort and creativity they pour out onto the page. For me, the end goal is to sit down at the screening, doubters at my side, and have the 20th Century Fox fanfare blast out announcing to myself more than anyone else that I should never have doubted myself.
Looking at the endless amount of screenwriting information, articles, script services available there seemed to be a lot of information to take in order to guarantee success. A word which is rarely whispered over here in Britain.
But do we need all of this. If on average I take in less than five percent of what I read (no I’m not irretrievably stupid, this is a average for most people) then think of all that wasted time spent on act structures, plot lines, climaxes, and dialog do’s and don’ts.
One day I began reading William Goldman’s now renowned “Adventures in the Screen Trade.” And in it’s pages I found a voice that gave me more hope than any of the other books on the market. Here I wasn’t being told the rules that I could learn then break, a phrase that has proved to me to be as useful as a chocolate teapot. Here I discovered a truth I still believe in today and one which I had probably read before but had been lost with the other ninety-five percent. Goldman says “nobody knows anything” and then goes onto include himself in that phrase. HE HAS NO IDEA OF HOW HE DOES WHAT HE DOES. This from the man who gave us Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid.
I looked up at a shelf groaning under the weight of other how-to books and heavyweight texts like “Story” or a Syd Field volume. Now I didn’t have to struggle with the feeling that I couldn’t be a writer because I didn’t fit the type. I never got so into my writing that I stayed up all night like they did. In fact, I seemed to self-destruct and in the middle of a creative burst of pure inspiration would find myself pacing the house just to get away from the keyboard. Was I afraid that I would mess it up? That I couldn’t get down on the page what was in my head?
I never used the techniques they mentioned and their logical train of thought seemed lost on me as I spent time writing.
Even writing this very short article I am struggling to think of things to say. Is my point valid? Do I have a point or am I just writing for the sake of writing? Why do I always end up raising more questions than I answer? But how can there be any answers if Goldman is right?
If you have read this little rant (it would be wrong to call this thought fart an article) then well done. Reading it again I realize that it will not solve any script problems or provide any inspiration. Perhaps the only thing to glean is that you either have it or you don’t. Or maybe that there are others who do what they do but not in the way they’re supposed to.
Do you write knowing that it’s not really up to standard but that it’s what you always wanted to do? Maybe you are talented enough but haven’t quite got to grips with business side of things. All I know is I get a sense of total satisfaction when I write something that I would pay to see. So I guess what I’m saying is JUST WRITE. Your imagination is the key, the books just help tidy things up.
War, Sex, Spiders, Singing, and the Culkin Spawn
Submitted by Melinda Murphy
Well, the annual Hollywood self-congratulation convention is over and, aside from Michael Moore’s passionate rant, the Oscars were duller than usual. No terrorist attacks on “America’s royalty.” Who cares whether Joan Rivers gets a whiff of sarin gas anyway?
A movie adaptation of a dated Broadway musical, Chicago, rolled off with most of the little gold-plated men. And a long-suspected child rapist, who made yet another movie about the Holocaust, scored brownie points with the decrepit white men who run the Biz.
This was another year when filmmakers seemed torn between playing it safe and some sense of originality. Because they are so scatter-shot across the crap-o-meter dial, I left a lot out. I haven’t seen several of the blockbusters. Here’s my take, roughly in order of quality but mostly just in order of what I had to say about them.
One-Hour Photo: Robin Williams finally let his wife stop picking his roles for him and it shows. Along with Insomnia, this was his ode to weirdos. ER Honcho, and one-time WGA president, John Wells exec-produced. Williams played a tight-lipped, terribly dysfunctional loner. Still, there’s something a bit art school about this; maybe it’s the terrifying lighting in the Wal-Martesque scenes.
Lord of the Rings - The Two Towers: Swashing, buckling, and then more swashing! Gollum is the creepiest CGI ever. Repetitious beautiful shots of New Zealand had me asking if Peter Jackson is working for the tourism commission? I think so. And then giant talking trees beat Saruman to a pulp! I’m holding out for the Treebeard coffee mugs.
Possession: A great romantic drama from the unlikeliest director, Neil LaBute. Two different couples from two different eras struggle to love one another within a sub-plot about historical letters and an attempt to steal them. Aaron Eckhart is an affable grad student, Jeremy Northam is typically intense as a fictional Victorian poet, and Jennifer Ehle is his fiery and sensuous lover. Gwyneth Paltrow is...Christ, why do people keep making movies with HER in them? How long before a London bus doing sixty miles per hour takes out this whiney anorexic?
About A Boy: Damn funny. Hugh Grant found a part to follow up his demonic turn in Bridget Jones’ Diary and he’s equally hilarious in this. Toni Collette is a screamingly funny London hippie who feeds her boy “Ancient Grains” cereal, dresses him in dorky organic wool and then tells him, “You’re not a sheep.” I laughed out loud the first time Grant’s character zeros in on the flier for SPAT, Single Parents Alone Together.
Igby Goes Down: I liked this! It’s about The Rich, but give it a chance. Get past the polo shirts and blazers and it’s Susan Sarandon being wonderfully evil. Ryan Phillippe does his best I’m-bored-now accent and that Caulkin kid does all right. I even liked Amanda Peet, another model-turned-actress, except she can actually emote, so I can’t really bag on her except to say anorexics really should keep their clothes on in movies. The ending is good! Give it a spin on the DVD player.
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: He’s back and he’s driving without a learner’s permit! This one is an improvement; we aren’t dragged through the long list of who’s who. However, the elf engaging in a sadomasochism kind of freaked me out. If a CGI-generated character ever needed a Valium, it’s that one. He makes Gollum look calm. Oh, and there’s S-P-I-D-E-R-S!
The Hours: Heavy-handed chamber music, Nicole Kidman dons a fake nose, Julianne Moore smiles in a skeletal, grimacing way and Meryl Steep enters stage left. Ed Harris is a tortured writer/artist again. But what zapped me was the little kid, Jack Rovello. The boy who acts opposite Moore in the 1950’s scenes was mesmerizing. I haven’t seen a pre-teen that intent on industry recognition since Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense.
Insomnia: Another gutsy, mainstream-pretending-to-be-indie flick from the man who brought us Memento. Al Pacino had me twitching in a way he hasn’t since Dog Day Afternoon. Robin William’s voice drones away on the voiceover, driving Pacino and the audience nuts.
Y tu Mama Tabien (And Your Mother Too): Funnily enough, the male critics who gushed about Mulholland Drive last year mightily dissed this Mexican art house flick. Gael Bernal and Diego Luna are flaky, rich Mexican teens who set off on a road trip to impress their companion, a stunning older woman from Spain, who’s harboring several painful secrets. Of course, the MPAA had no problem with the almost pornographic Mulholland Drive (hot lesbian action!) but they put the smack down on this (possible man-on-man action) and the version I saw was severely edited. Ironically, it just took Best Foreign Language Film at the BAFTAs.
Orange County: Sooo cute. I don’t care if this was a send up of all the “inherited” talent in Hollywood. There’s good comedic delivery and even better lines, like “Hello coyote ugly!” and “If it weren’t for your step-father, we’d be living in a condo eating processed cold cuts!”
The Salton Sea: This missed broader distribution, which is too bad given the appalling crystal-meth boom sweeping America. Val Kilmer is appealing as a broken man on a revenge crusade and his sidekick, Peter Sarsgaard, is amazing as the most naive junkie ever. ER’s Eric LaSalle produced and the movie has a wide ethnic cast, which is ironic given the long-time penchant for meth among bikers and skinheads (it was Hitler’s drug of choice). Vivid imagery and a little plot twist makes this a good video rental.
Rabbit-Proof Fence: Australia does a nice send up of the true story of three girls who escape an Aboriginal boarding school in 1931 and walk 1,500 miles through the outback to find their mother. The school is run by a racist creep, Kenneth Branagh, who wants to breed the black out of the Abo kids, a la the U.S. and Canada’s domesticating of the American Indian. Just like Indian kids, they’re beaten if they speak their own language and when they’re trained, they’re farmed out to white families as domestic help. What’s more amazing is, Aborigines didn’t even have the right to vote in Australia until just a few decades ago.
Minority Report: Stephen Spielberg FINALLY gets dirty. Some scenes in this pricey, slow-to-finish-production are seedy and unsavory - and that’s good! I was beginning to think the Peter Pan of Cinema didn’t know what sex was.
The Bourne Identity: Matt Damon dices, slices, and - ouch! - stabs people with ballpoint pens. Franke Potente does well as his sort-of romantic interest but doesn’t scream enough when they’re driving the Euro-beatermobile through France on one wheel and no brakes. Plenty of white-knuckle fun.
Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys: That Caulkin kid wrestles with puberty and, in this case, a nun played by Jody Foster who he perceives as Satan. Literally. Large chunks of the film are played out Saturday cartoon style as a comic book story. It’s a little disjointed but has a nice indie feel.
Enigma: (2001 but came here in 2002) A very Brit production, complete with backing from Mick Jagger, about England’s race to crack Nazi Germany’s enigma code. Loosely based on real events. Dougray Scott decided that math geek meant he shouldn’t wash his hair and then stare slack-jawed into space a lot. Uber model Saffron Burrows does a brief turn as an amorous femme fatale and Kate Winslet (who was preggers at the time) is carefully dressed down to look ugly next to statuesque Burrows. But cool Jeremy Northam’s weasely secret agent man is the only real reason to watch this made-by-a-rock-star film.
Signs: M. Night Shyamalan follows up Unbreakable and trades in Bruce Willis for Mel Gibson as a lapsed minister who lives on a Pennsylvania farm when this War of the Worlds scenario unfolds. Gibson’s minister is the ONLY person in all of America who doesn’t own a gun! Shyamalan spends a lot of time building his characters and letting them drive the bus, which works, especially in the scene where Joaquin Pheonix is watching TV. There’s some laughs too, with the kids, including another Caulkin spawn.
Blue Crush: A girls-have-fun-too flick with a tired old plot, but the actors, the setting, and the photography almost make you forget you know exactly how it will end. Michelle Rodriguez and company make the most of bikini bathing suits, gettin’ loaded and hangin’ with the howlies. I like this because I have a thing for surfer movies. There’s something far more mystical about surfing versus mountain climbing or pogoing off a cliff on a mountain bike. Any boy can do that.
Full Frontal: Over-blown indie look-alike by Soderbergh. A vanity project where he dazzled us with namedropping. Julia Roberts acts confused, and so was I. Blair Underwood is...well, uh...he’s no Denzel. He’s certainly no Jeffrey Wright, either. He’s pretty but, well...David Hyde Pierce is a writer who’s marriage is floundering. He doesn’t pull a Whiney Niles thanks to hashish brownies. David Duchovny is ultra-sleazy as a movie exec who misses his own party for unsavory reasons. I’m wondering if Duchovny and Soderbergh didn’t create this character deliberately after the gossip about Duchovny and massage parlors while he was still in Vancouver waving flashlights around for Chris Carter?
The Pianist: I haven’t seen this and here’s why - Roman Polanski. I just don’t like him and I like his writing and filmmaking even less. Remember Johnny Depp and The Ninth Gate? How about Tess? Rosemary’s Baby? “Hail Satan! Hail Satan!” Please! I know he co-wrote Chinatown but I’m still not impressed, maybe because of what he allegedly did to a pre-teen all those years ago. Once again Hollywood has proven that it is still run by very old, white Jewish men who reward subject matter first, quality second. The Holocaust was a terrible tragedy and one of the cruelest periods in Western history. Society will never be the same, but how many times can you shove extras into bread ovens and not have it become trite?
Lovely & Amazing: Catherine Keener is a screwed-up daughter in a family of screwed-up women who are, really, like everybody else. They’re obsessed with their weight, so much so that the matriarch, British actress Brenda Blethyn, gets liposuction. She ends up in the hospital in critical condition. Dermot Mulroney is the narcissistic, befuddled Hollywood actor who beds one of the dysfunctionals. Turns out, he’s just as concerned about his physical appearance as she is. Blethyn’s matriarch has an adopted daughter. The daughter is African-American and obese. The film asks hard questions about the objectification of women, stereotypes, race, age, etc. and tries to answer some of them. Guys will hate this flick.
Unfaithful: One of my favorite actresses, Diane Lane, who has certainly aged better than me (we’re both 37), has sex with a dangerous Frenchie on the stairs, in a public toilet, on a table, under a table...let’s see...anyhow, yoga can help anyone except Richard Gere’s character. But I did like the ending.
Reign of Fire: The British Isles get eaten by dragons. Matthew McConaughey must save everyone because he’s the ‘Merikun; thereby, tougher and more macho. The lizards are great! The plot - what plot? I heard two guys wrote this as a spec script submission. Get crackin’ on those soulless, plotless action-packed stories.
The Rules of Attraction: In the beginning, Shannyn Sossamon’s character gets viciously date raped...or does she? James Van Der Beek is a misunderstood, impoverished drug dealer. Ian Somerhalder is the hot gay guy who’s moping after Van Der Beek. Kip Pardue is unconvincing as a recently-returned-from-fucking-everything-in-Europe ex-boyfriend. Why would anyone line up to fuck Pardue? He looks like he asks customers if they want fries with that order. Russell Sams is underused and a standout as Dick, Somerhalder’s occasional lover. Sams acts drunk and obnoxious better than anybody else and drunk and obnoxious is the main theme! Roger Ebert was gushing on his television show that “no college boys on Earth would ignore half-naked coeds making out in a lesbian fashion.” Obviously, this is going on Ebert’s top shelf right next to Mulholland Drive. In fact, there’s so many stark nekid girlies in this, I’m guessing Avary went to a strip club and asked everybody to come be in his movie. I have faith most real coeds aren’t this stupid despite what slimy creep Brett Easton Ellis pens.
Kissing Jessica Stein: All aboard the silly Greed Train for $elling Lesbian $tereotypes to $traight Men! Our conductor is Howard Stern.
The Ring: I don’t know what Jane Alexander or Brian Cox were doing in this - making a house payment? Naomi Watts manages to keep some of her clothes on. Renting videos can kill you and the “new” formula for horror flicks is to flash gross and unsettling images. Here’s the plot: BLOOD, SCARY FACE, BUGS!
We Were Soldiers: God help us, writer/filmmaker Randall Wallace is at it again. Mel Gibson gives one of his sloppiest performances as a stalwart commando who leads his “boys” into Vietnam. Since HBO hit the ball out of the park with Band of Brothers, these war pictures are just pathetic. And I’m a girl who likes war movies! Just buy Band of Brothers on DVD.
Black Hawk Down: Ridley Scott is Bruckheimer’s new bitch?! The man who made Alien and Thelma and Louise, spews out a celluloid mess about heat, dust, and bad lighting. See above.
Well, the annual Hollywood self-congratulation convention is over and, aside from Michael Moore’s passionate rant, the Oscars were duller than usual. No terrorist attacks on “America’s royalty.” Who cares whether Joan Rivers gets a whiff of sarin gas anyway?
A movie adaptation of a dated Broadway musical, Chicago, rolled off with most of the little gold-plated men. And a long-suspected child rapist, who made yet another movie about the Holocaust, scored brownie points with the decrepit white men who run the Biz.
This was another year when filmmakers seemed torn between playing it safe and some sense of originality. Because they are so scatter-shot across the crap-o-meter dial, I left a lot out. I haven’t seen several of the blockbusters. Here’s my take, roughly in order of quality but mostly just in order of what I had to say about them.
One-Hour Photo: Robin Williams finally let his wife stop picking his roles for him and it shows. Along with Insomnia, this was his ode to weirdos. ER Honcho, and one-time WGA president, John Wells exec-produced. Williams played a tight-lipped, terribly dysfunctional loner. Still, there’s something a bit art school about this; maybe it’s the terrifying lighting in the Wal-Martesque scenes.
Lord of the Rings - The Two Towers: Swashing, buckling, and then more swashing! Gollum is the creepiest CGI ever. Repetitious beautiful shots of New Zealand had me asking if Peter Jackson is working for the tourism commission? I think so. And then giant talking trees beat Saruman to a pulp! I’m holding out for the Treebeard coffee mugs.
Possession: A great romantic drama from the unlikeliest director, Neil LaBute. Two different couples from two different eras struggle to love one another within a sub-plot about historical letters and an attempt to steal them. Aaron Eckhart is an affable grad student, Jeremy Northam is typically intense as a fictional Victorian poet, and Jennifer Ehle is his fiery and sensuous lover. Gwyneth Paltrow is...Christ, why do people keep making movies with HER in them? How long before a London bus doing sixty miles per hour takes out this whiney anorexic?
About A Boy: Damn funny. Hugh Grant found a part to follow up his demonic turn in Bridget Jones’ Diary and he’s equally hilarious in this. Toni Collette is a screamingly funny London hippie who feeds her boy “Ancient Grains” cereal, dresses him in dorky organic wool and then tells him, “You’re not a sheep.” I laughed out loud the first time Grant’s character zeros in on the flier for SPAT, Single Parents Alone Together.
Igby Goes Down: I liked this! It’s about The Rich, but give it a chance. Get past the polo shirts and blazers and it’s Susan Sarandon being wonderfully evil. Ryan Phillippe does his best I’m-bored-now accent and that Caulkin kid does all right. I even liked Amanda Peet, another model-turned-actress, except she can actually emote, so I can’t really bag on her except to say anorexics really should keep their clothes on in movies. The ending is good! Give it a spin on the DVD player.
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: He’s back and he’s driving without a learner’s permit! This one is an improvement; we aren’t dragged through the long list of who’s who. However, the elf engaging in a sadomasochism kind of freaked me out. If a CGI-generated character ever needed a Valium, it’s that one. He makes Gollum look calm. Oh, and there’s S-P-I-D-E-R-S!
The Hours: Heavy-handed chamber music, Nicole Kidman dons a fake nose, Julianne Moore smiles in a skeletal, grimacing way and Meryl Steep enters stage left. Ed Harris is a tortured writer/artist again. But what zapped me was the little kid, Jack Rovello. The boy who acts opposite Moore in the 1950’s scenes was mesmerizing. I haven’t seen a pre-teen that intent on industry recognition since Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense.
Insomnia: Another gutsy, mainstream-pretending-to-be-indie flick from the man who brought us Memento. Al Pacino had me twitching in a way he hasn’t since Dog Day Afternoon. Robin William’s voice drones away on the voiceover, driving Pacino and the audience nuts.
Y tu Mama Tabien (And Your Mother Too): Funnily enough, the male critics who gushed about Mulholland Drive last year mightily dissed this Mexican art house flick. Gael Bernal and Diego Luna are flaky, rich Mexican teens who set off on a road trip to impress their companion, a stunning older woman from Spain, who’s harboring several painful secrets. Of course, the MPAA had no problem with the almost pornographic Mulholland Drive (hot lesbian action!) but they put the smack down on this (possible man-on-man action) and the version I saw was severely edited. Ironically, it just took Best Foreign Language Film at the BAFTAs.
Orange County: Sooo cute. I don’t care if this was a send up of all the “inherited” talent in Hollywood. There’s good comedic delivery and even better lines, like “Hello coyote ugly!” and “If it weren’t for your step-father, we’d be living in a condo eating processed cold cuts!”
The Salton Sea: This missed broader distribution, which is too bad given the appalling crystal-meth boom sweeping America. Val Kilmer is appealing as a broken man on a revenge crusade and his sidekick, Peter Sarsgaard, is amazing as the most naive junkie ever. ER’s Eric LaSalle produced and the movie has a wide ethnic cast, which is ironic given the long-time penchant for meth among bikers and skinheads (it was Hitler’s drug of choice). Vivid imagery and a little plot twist makes this a good video rental.
Rabbit-Proof Fence: Australia does a nice send up of the true story of three girls who escape an Aboriginal boarding school in 1931 and walk 1,500 miles through the outback to find their mother. The school is run by a racist creep, Kenneth Branagh, who wants to breed the black out of the Abo kids, a la the U.S. and Canada’s domesticating of the American Indian. Just like Indian kids, they’re beaten if they speak their own language and when they’re trained, they’re farmed out to white families as domestic help. What’s more amazing is, Aborigines didn’t even have the right to vote in Australia until just a few decades ago.
Minority Report: Stephen Spielberg FINALLY gets dirty. Some scenes in this pricey, slow-to-finish-production are seedy and unsavory - and that’s good! I was beginning to think the Peter Pan of Cinema didn’t know what sex was.
The Bourne Identity: Matt Damon dices, slices, and - ouch! - stabs people with ballpoint pens. Franke Potente does well as his sort-of romantic interest but doesn’t scream enough when they’re driving the Euro-beatermobile through France on one wheel and no brakes. Plenty of white-knuckle fun.
Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys: That Caulkin kid wrestles with puberty and, in this case, a nun played by Jody Foster who he perceives as Satan. Literally. Large chunks of the film are played out Saturday cartoon style as a comic book story. It’s a little disjointed but has a nice indie feel.
Enigma: (2001 but came here in 2002) A very Brit production, complete with backing from Mick Jagger, about England’s race to crack Nazi Germany’s enigma code. Loosely based on real events. Dougray Scott decided that math geek meant he shouldn’t wash his hair and then stare slack-jawed into space a lot. Uber model Saffron Burrows does a brief turn as an amorous femme fatale and Kate Winslet (who was preggers at the time) is carefully dressed down to look ugly next to statuesque Burrows. But cool Jeremy Northam’s weasely secret agent man is the only real reason to watch this made-by-a-rock-star film.
Signs: M. Night Shyamalan follows up Unbreakable and trades in Bruce Willis for Mel Gibson as a lapsed minister who lives on a Pennsylvania farm when this War of the Worlds scenario unfolds. Gibson’s minister is the ONLY person in all of America who doesn’t own a gun! Shyamalan spends a lot of time building his characters and letting them drive the bus, which works, especially in the scene where Joaquin Pheonix is watching TV. There’s some laughs too, with the kids, including another Caulkin spawn.
Blue Crush: A girls-have-fun-too flick with a tired old plot, but the actors, the setting, and the photography almost make you forget you know exactly how it will end. Michelle Rodriguez and company make the most of bikini bathing suits, gettin’ loaded and hangin’ with the howlies. I like this because I have a thing for surfer movies. There’s something far more mystical about surfing versus mountain climbing or pogoing off a cliff on a mountain bike. Any boy can do that.
Full Frontal: Over-blown indie look-alike by Soderbergh. A vanity project where he dazzled us with namedropping. Julia Roberts acts confused, and so was I. Blair Underwood is...well, uh...he’s no Denzel. He’s certainly no Jeffrey Wright, either. He’s pretty but, well...David Hyde Pierce is a writer who’s marriage is floundering. He doesn’t pull a Whiney Niles thanks to hashish brownies. David Duchovny is ultra-sleazy as a movie exec who misses his own party for unsavory reasons. I’m wondering if Duchovny and Soderbergh didn’t create this character deliberately after the gossip about Duchovny and massage parlors while he was still in Vancouver waving flashlights around for Chris Carter?
The Pianist: I haven’t seen this and here’s why - Roman Polanski. I just don’t like him and I like his writing and filmmaking even less. Remember Johnny Depp and The Ninth Gate? How about Tess? Rosemary’s Baby? “Hail Satan! Hail Satan!” Please! I know he co-wrote Chinatown but I’m still not impressed, maybe because of what he allegedly did to a pre-teen all those years ago. Once again Hollywood has proven that it is still run by very old, white Jewish men who reward subject matter first, quality second. The Holocaust was a terrible tragedy and one of the cruelest periods in Western history. Society will never be the same, but how many times can you shove extras into bread ovens and not have it become trite?
Lovely & Amazing: Catherine Keener is a screwed-up daughter in a family of screwed-up women who are, really, like everybody else. They’re obsessed with their weight, so much so that the matriarch, British actress Brenda Blethyn, gets liposuction. She ends up in the hospital in critical condition. Dermot Mulroney is the narcissistic, befuddled Hollywood actor who beds one of the dysfunctionals. Turns out, he’s just as concerned about his physical appearance as she is. Blethyn’s matriarch has an adopted daughter. The daughter is African-American and obese. The film asks hard questions about the objectification of women, stereotypes, race, age, etc. and tries to answer some of them. Guys will hate this flick.
Unfaithful: One of my favorite actresses, Diane Lane, who has certainly aged better than me (we’re both 37), has sex with a dangerous Frenchie on the stairs, in a public toilet, on a table, under a table...let’s see...anyhow, yoga can help anyone except Richard Gere’s character. But I did like the ending.
Reign of Fire: The British Isles get eaten by dragons. Matthew McConaughey must save everyone because he’s the ‘Merikun; thereby, tougher and more macho. The lizards are great! The plot - what plot? I heard two guys wrote this as a spec script submission. Get crackin’ on those soulless, plotless action-packed stories.
The Rules of Attraction: In the beginning, Shannyn Sossamon’s character gets viciously date raped...or does she? James Van Der Beek is a misunderstood, impoverished drug dealer. Ian Somerhalder is the hot gay guy who’s moping after Van Der Beek. Kip Pardue is unconvincing as a recently-returned-from-fucking-everything-in-Europe ex-boyfriend. Why would anyone line up to fuck Pardue? He looks like he asks customers if they want fries with that order. Russell Sams is underused and a standout as Dick, Somerhalder’s occasional lover. Sams acts drunk and obnoxious better than anybody else and drunk and obnoxious is the main theme! Roger Ebert was gushing on his television show that “no college boys on Earth would ignore half-naked coeds making out in a lesbian fashion.” Obviously, this is going on Ebert’s top shelf right next to Mulholland Drive. In fact, there’s so many stark nekid girlies in this, I’m guessing Avary went to a strip club and asked everybody to come be in his movie. I have faith most real coeds aren’t this stupid despite what slimy creep Brett Easton Ellis pens.
Kissing Jessica Stein: All aboard the silly Greed Train for $elling Lesbian $tereotypes to $traight Men! Our conductor is Howard Stern.
The Ring: I don’t know what Jane Alexander or Brian Cox were doing in this - making a house payment? Naomi Watts manages to keep some of her clothes on. Renting videos can kill you and the “new” formula for horror flicks is to flash gross and unsettling images. Here’s the plot: BLOOD, SCARY FACE, BUGS!
We Were Soldiers: God help us, writer/filmmaker Randall Wallace is at it again. Mel Gibson gives one of his sloppiest performances as a stalwart commando who leads his “boys” into Vietnam. Since HBO hit the ball out of the park with Band of Brothers, these war pictures are just pathetic. And I’m a girl who likes war movies! Just buy Band of Brothers on DVD.
Black Hawk Down: Ridley Scott is Bruckheimer’s new bitch?! The man who made Alien and Thelma and Louise, spews out a celluloid mess about heat, dust, and bad lighting. See above.
Tuesday, April 01, 2003
Bollywood 101
Submitted by by Mark Leeper, originally written for the MT VOID
A reader wrote to me about my review of Devdas, a Hindi film. In the resulting discussion I talked a little about Hindi films in general. It occurred to me that I haven't said much about the rising popularity of so-called Bollywood films. These days fairly frequently you can see a Hindi film playing at some local theater. I am told that Hindi films are even bigger in Britain than in the United States, and that they are starting to make inroads with a non-Indian audience even here. I am a non-Indian and they are making inroads with me. Some Bollywood filmmakers are now even making films with an international audience in mind. I am not talking about art filmmakers like the late Satyajit Ray. His films were always made for international release. But the neighborhood films, which can be a lot of fun, are now also frequently made for international audiences and some get released over here. This article will probably seem naïve to Indians, but it is an American perspective on Bollywood films.
First of all what am I talking about? Does India even have a film industry? You bet they do. For those who are unaware it is the biggest film industry in the world. They output about 800 feature films a year, two films for every film released by Hollywood. And these are longer films. Most are in the 160-minute range. The center of the Hindi film industry is Bombay or “Mumbai” as insiders call it. Bombay is their equivalent to Hollywood and the “Bombay Hollywood” is called “Bollywood.” They sell tickets to 14 million movie patrons in an average day. That is considerably more people than live in Pennsylvania. That is just the Hindi film industry. There are lower-profile film industries making films in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Gujarati, Marathi, and Bengali. But the Hindi films have the widest audience within India and so the filmmakers can afford to mount opulent productions to recover costs.
For many Indians, films are the only forms of entertainment. Movie theaters range in quality from little neighborhood ramshackle affairs to some pretty impressive movie palaces. The most fabulous movie palace I have ever seen is the exquisite Raj Mandhir in Jaipur. In my India trip log, I say “The Raj Mandir is an impressive building, with mirrored interiors, pink decor, and rounded rampways to higher floors. It might even rival Radio City Music Hall. It's a combination of art deco and Hindu statues (well, mandir does mean temple), with lots of pink glass thrown in. With a capacity of about 1300 people, and a screen about twenty-five feet high and fifty feet wide, this is the big screen experience, this is not your local movie theater the size of your living room.”
Are the Hindi movies any good? That is a very interesting question. Certainly some are. The vast majority are made purely for entertainment. They are a way for Indians to shed their troubles and have a good time. Indians love musical production numbers and just about every film regardless of subject matter will have at least three production numbers and most will have as many as six or seven. The plot stops cold and instead they have a knock-your-socks-off dance number. And these are rarely just two people standing still and singing. There will be extravagant costumes and maybe several dancers.
Nearly every film will have comic elements, though a few filmmakers will try to keep those to a minimum. The music and the comedy are elements that Indians look for and expect. Bombay is a serious film about the Bombay riots. There are some fairly harrowing violent scenes toward the end of the film. Yet it starts out as a comedy and a musical with a Hindu boy dressing up as a girl to woo a Muslim girl. The musical comedy is part of the artistic form of the Bombay film. You might as well write a four-line limerick as make a Bombay film without songs and jokes.
Another factor is differences in taste between Indians and non-Indians. What is good for an Indian audience is not necessarily what plays well with an American audience. While some Hindi films may look like they are aimed at children, Indian audiences will just eat them up. There are just differences in predisposition. On the other hand, when I saw Asoka at a film festival, I was much impressed with the expensive look of the picture and the historical adventure. Asoka was an Indian conqueror who did much to spread the faith of Buddhism in India. This was sort of a melodrama based on history. Some of the dance numbers seem a little modern for the period, but the film is glossy and a lot of fun. The film did not play nearly as well with Indian audiences, most of whom knew the history and knew this wasn't it. Incidentally, the film starred Shahrukh Khan who seems to be very popular at the moment. I suppose he looks something like Tony Curtis did in his youth. His acting is on par with Curtis but his looks do sell tickets. Khan is currently in something like five new films a year. If you go to Indian video stores it is hard to avoid his face on boxes and posters. Khan is also the star of Devdas as well has having an important role in Hey Ram.
Bollywood filmmakers tend to shun science-fiction and horror for melodramas. While Indians love science-fiction, they have to import most of the science-fiction films they get. In large part this is because Indian filmmakers cannot really match Western counterparts for providing special effects. Occasionally an enterprising filmmaker will go into those fields, but not a lot do. I have on tape The Jungle, a 1952 Hindi science fiction film that required little in the way of effects. The idea is that animal disturbances are being caused by something strange in the Indian jungle. In the final reel we discover that it is prehistoric mammoths living deep in the Indian jungle. More recently I am told that there is an Indian film patterned on The Matrix. While horror has been rare in India, an article I have just read indicates that it is in vogue right now and many Hindi supernatural horror films are being made.
That brings us to one of the negative aspects of Bollywood films. Several borrow rather shamelessly from already-popular Western films. Khal-Naaikaa, the film we saw at the Raj Mandhir is almost a scene-for-scene remake of The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (with music and comedy added). As I understand it, there was no permission given to reuse the story. Other films certainly show a strong influence of Western plots. China Gate has a strong influence of The Magnificent Seven. Several other films are also strongly influenced by Westerns. Another negative aspect, by the way, is that India's organized crime syndicates do a great deal of the funding of some Hindi films.
Budgets in India are much smaller than those in the United States, but a little money goes a very long way in that country. Devdas cost about $15 million. But that makes it the most expensive Bollywood film of all time. And you see that money on the screen. Lavish does not begin to cover the sets. Much of the film takes place in extravagant mansions that are virtual palaces and more than look it. Budget money goes a very long way in India. The story, on the other hand, may be a little melodramatic for newcomers to the genre. The title character returns to India from a decade of studying in Britain. He falls in love with his neighbor, a childhood sweetheart but a woman of lesser caste played by Aishwarya Rai, a former Miss World. Of course there are pressures on the couple not to be together and this leads to problems and eventually to tragedy.
Another thing about Bollywood films is their wholesomeness. Indian censors are extremely strict. Nudity is non-existent and even kissing is rare for fear of the censors’ ire. Lovers rarely get beyond the handholding stage on-screen. On the other hand, water scenes are quite popular. The female lead will remain fully clothed, but with her clothing all wet a certain amount of human anatomy is discernable.
At the moment there is a large market for Bollywood films outside of India, particularly in places like Britain. Curiously it was cricket that brought India and Britain together in 2002. They faced off in an important tournament. It happened there was a Bollywood film at the same time, Lagaan, on the subject of British facing Indians in a cricket match. Between the cricket match and the film, many Britons became interested in Indian culture and especially the strange films the Indians make. And wherever there are non-resident Indians there will be a market for films from home. Whether this current international interest is part of a longer trend or just a bubble that will soon burst nobody knows. But Bollywood films are a good deal of fun and well worth a film buff's attention.
A reader wrote to me about my review of Devdas, a Hindi film. In the resulting discussion I talked a little about Hindi films in general. It occurred to me that I haven't said much about the rising popularity of so-called Bollywood films. These days fairly frequently you can see a Hindi film playing at some local theater. I am told that Hindi films are even bigger in Britain than in the United States, and that they are starting to make inroads with a non-Indian audience even here. I am a non-Indian and they are making inroads with me. Some Bollywood filmmakers are now even making films with an international audience in mind. I am not talking about art filmmakers like the late Satyajit Ray. His films were always made for international release. But the neighborhood films, which can be a lot of fun, are now also frequently made for international audiences and some get released over here. This article will probably seem naïve to Indians, but it is an American perspective on Bollywood films.
First of all what am I talking about? Does India even have a film industry? You bet they do. For those who are unaware it is the biggest film industry in the world. They output about 800 feature films a year, two films for every film released by Hollywood. And these are longer films. Most are in the 160-minute range. The center of the Hindi film industry is Bombay or “Mumbai” as insiders call it. Bombay is their equivalent to Hollywood and the “Bombay Hollywood” is called “Bollywood.” They sell tickets to 14 million movie patrons in an average day. That is considerably more people than live in Pennsylvania. That is just the Hindi film industry. There are lower-profile film industries making films in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Gujarati, Marathi, and Bengali. But the Hindi films have the widest audience within India and so the filmmakers can afford to mount opulent productions to recover costs.
For many Indians, films are the only forms of entertainment. Movie theaters range in quality from little neighborhood ramshackle affairs to some pretty impressive movie palaces. The most fabulous movie palace I have ever seen is the exquisite Raj Mandhir in Jaipur. In my India trip log, I say “The Raj Mandir is an impressive building, with mirrored interiors, pink decor, and rounded rampways to higher floors. It might even rival Radio City Music Hall. It's a combination of art deco and Hindu statues (well, mandir does mean temple), with lots of pink glass thrown in. With a capacity of about 1300 people, and a screen about twenty-five feet high and fifty feet wide, this is the big screen experience, this is not your local movie theater the size of your living room.”
Are the Hindi movies any good? That is a very interesting question. Certainly some are. The vast majority are made purely for entertainment. They are a way for Indians to shed their troubles and have a good time. Indians love musical production numbers and just about every film regardless of subject matter will have at least three production numbers and most will have as many as six or seven. The plot stops cold and instead they have a knock-your-socks-off dance number. And these are rarely just two people standing still and singing. There will be extravagant costumes and maybe several dancers.
Nearly every film will have comic elements, though a few filmmakers will try to keep those to a minimum. The music and the comedy are elements that Indians look for and expect. Bombay is a serious film about the Bombay riots. There are some fairly harrowing violent scenes toward the end of the film. Yet it starts out as a comedy and a musical with a Hindu boy dressing up as a girl to woo a Muslim girl. The musical comedy is part of the artistic form of the Bombay film. You might as well write a four-line limerick as make a Bombay film without songs and jokes.
Another factor is differences in taste between Indians and non-Indians. What is good for an Indian audience is not necessarily what plays well with an American audience. While some Hindi films may look like they are aimed at children, Indian audiences will just eat them up. There are just differences in predisposition. On the other hand, when I saw Asoka at a film festival, I was much impressed with the expensive look of the picture and the historical adventure. Asoka was an Indian conqueror who did much to spread the faith of Buddhism in India. This was sort of a melodrama based on history. Some of the dance numbers seem a little modern for the period, but the film is glossy and a lot of fun. The film did not play nearly as well with Indian audiences, most of whom knew the history and knew this wasn't it. Incidentally, the film starred Shahrukh Khan who seems to be very popular at the moment. I suppose he looks something like Tony Curtis did in his youth. His acting is on par with Curtis but his looks do sell tickets. Khan is currently in something like five new films a year. If you go to Indian video stores it is hard to avoid his face on boxes and posters. Khan is also the star of Devdas as well has having an important role in Hey Ram.
Bollywood filmmakers tend to shun science-fiction and horror for melodramas. While Indians love science-fiction, they have to import most of the science-fiction films they get. In large part this is because Indian filmmakers cannot really match Western counterparts for providing special effects. Occasionally an enterprising filmmaker will go into those fields, but not a lot do. I have on tape The Jungle, a 1952 Hindi science fiction film that required little in the way of effects. The idea is that animal disturbances are being caused by something strange in the Indian jungle. In the final reel we discover that it is prehistoric mammoths living deep in the Indian jungle. More recently I am told that there is an Indian film patterned on The Matrix. While horror has been rare in India, an article I have just read indicates that it is in vogue right now and many Hindi supernatural horror films are being made.
That brings us to one of the negative aspects of Bollywood films. Several borrow rather shamelessly from already-popular Western films. Khal-Naaikaa, the film we saw at the Raj Mandhir is almost a scene-for-scene remake of The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (with music and comedy added). As I understand it, there was no permission given to reuse the story. Other films certainly show a strong influence of Western plots. China Gate has a strong influence of The Magnificent Seven. Several other films are also strongly influenced by Westerns. Another negative aspect, by the way, is that India's organized crime syndicates do a great deal of the funding of some Hindi films.
Budgets in India are much smaller than those in the United States, but a little money goes a very long way in that country. Devdas cost about $15 million. But that makes it the most expensive Bollywood film of all time. And you see that money on the screen. Lavish does not begin to cover the sets. Much of the film takes place in extravagant mansions that are virtual palaces and more than look it. Budget money goes a very long way in India. The story, on the other hand, may be a little melodramatic for newcomers to the genre. The title character returns to India from a decade of studying in Britain. He falls in love with his neighbor, a childhood sweetheart but a woman of lesser caste played by Aishwarya Rai, a former Miss World. Of course there are pressures on the couple not to be together and this leads to problems and eventually to tragedy.
Another thing about Bollywood films is their wholesomeness. Indian censors are extremely strict. Nudity is non-existent and even kissing is rare for fear of the censors’ ire. Lovers rarely get beyond the handholding stage on-screen. On the other hand, water scenes are quite popular. The female lead will remain fully clothed, but with her clothing all wet a certain amount of human anatomy is discernable.
At the moment there is a large market for Bollywood films outside of India, particularly in places like Britain. Curiously it was cricket that brought India and Britain together in 2002. They faced off in an important tournament. It happened there was a Bollywood film at the same time, Lagaan, on the subject of British facing Indians in a cricket match. Between the cricket match and the film, many Britons became interested in Indian culture and especially the strange films the Indians make. And wherever there are non-resident Indians there will be a market for films from home. Whether this current international interest is part of a longer trend or just a bubble that will soon burst nobody knows. But Bollywood films are a good deal of fun and well worth a film buff's attention.
Tuesday, March 11, 2003
Boy Meets Shit Weasels
Submitted by by Melinda Murphy
I gave up on script writing last summer. While setting a personal record on unemployment insurance, I went nuts and decided to become a novelist. This was probably a good career move. I’ve got something new to put down on the welfare form under “occupation.”
I remember living with my brother in central Washington state in the late seventies when he went through the first of many novelist periods. He said, “Kid, you can write your tome, smoke pot, buy a big house, pass out drunk in your own pool, and everyone will think you’re a genius. And then you can just fuck off for five years between books because you’re blocked.”
It seemed like an agreeable lifestyle and not too different from what my brother was doing right then, minus the big house and the pool. He had a medium-sized shack in a crappy suburb and the only large body of water was the mosquito-infested Yakima River three blocks away.
So in the relentless heat of August 2002, I ploughed through what turned into a 230-page (single-spaced) contemporary romantic drama. Mind you, there’s a whole lot of classical literary references, a la Bridget Jones’ Diary and Jane Austen, I have yet to work into the novel - about thirty pages worth of Shakespeare. Every time I crack a copy of Shakespeare, I have a sophomore English class flashback where my teacher is yelling because none of us read Brutus’ speech the night before. I set another personal record - I cranked out the first rough draft in about twenty-three days. That’s right, not months or years, but days. Psychologically, the whole thing quickly turned into the same creative experience I had when I wrote the spec script, My Island, in the summer of 1998. I’ll try and explain.
First, it helps greatly in fiction writing if you’re deranged, depressed, or preferably, have split personality disorder. A good dose of abuse during childhood always helps. I became the characters. I felt what they felt, struggled with their obstacles, fell in love, perished, and got second chances just like them. It’s sort of like a psych student empathy lab without the other people. It was exhausting. I’d stop writing between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m. and go to bed with unwritten dialogue ringing in my head. I forgot to videotape re-runs of Buffy. I forgot to comb my hair.
When it was done, I gave the mess to a half dozen friends. I got mixed reviews that I’m still dealing with in therapy. Overall, everybody thought it was good but rough. There was this weird separation anxiety afterward, like I’d had a relationship with the novel and it had come to an abrupt end. The novel had skipped town, darted out the door when I’d gone to sleep, gotten on a bus, Gus. I couldn’t even have a successful relationship with imaginary people.
So it’s interesting that this last movie season seemed to pick up the cumbersome idea of writers and their inner demons and run with it...for about three feet.
One of my favorites was Neil LaBute’s Possession, which was based on the Booker-winning novel by A.S. Byatt about a fictitious Victorian novelist with fluttering lamb chop sideburns who has an affair with a lesbian (okay, people person) poet. LaBute (who used to be an indie film darling before he actually started making a living as a filmmaker) once again waded deep into unfamiliar water and, despite what those sniping prigs at The Guardian newspaper said, did a bang-up job. I like his work. I hated, hated, hated In the Company of Men simply because no deaf woman alive is that stupid, but I liked his other flicks. Your Friends and Neighbors was flawless in an ferocious sort of Harmony Korine way and Nurse Betty pushed and pulled at stereotypes.
In Possession, smoldering Jeremy Northam and elfish Jennifer Ehle struggle with writing but mostly just sex and the fairytale idea that two writers can live and love together without heaving typewriters or pitching ink bottles at each other. Oh, and they totally skip the whole Victorians-didn’t-bathe-much issue. I heard rumors that guys dragged to this film on dates actually stayed awake through two-thirds of it, but those were only rumors.
A few weeks back, The Hours premiered, trumpeting the arrival of a movie that looks at women writers and how they deal with sex, the heaving of typewriters, and that whole split personality thing I was talking about earlier. This was sort of an update on Julia, the film where Jane Fonda wandered around with a bottle of gutrot under one arm and complained to Jason Robards, “I need to write!” Nicole Kidman put on an impressive prosthesis, Julianne Moore became even more manic-depressive than she was in either of those P.T. Anderson’s films, and Meryl Streep was a freaked out New Yorker who shopped a lot. Half the characters smoked like chimneys (apparently that’s what writers do when they’re not pinning those inner demons to the mat, they’re becoming emphysemic) and Virginia Woolfe became just another apprehensive suburbanite who missed the smog of London. The Hours will probably roll off with a wheelbarrow of Oscars.
Of course, not just writers, but the novels they create have been the fodder for films good, bad, and mediocre for ages.
After watching these films I read two books by contemporary, pulp fiction writers; both extremely successful. One is one of the most successful fiction writers of all time. The first was Clive Barker’s twisted horror-erotica Coldheart Canyon and the second was Stephen King’s Dreamcatcher. Barker is so determined to see his made into a film, he dropped enough names in the book to fill the Shrine Auditorium. In Coldheart Canyon, all the A-list stars from the thirties are sexual deviants and both Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt are “present” when the lead character has a meltdown at a Malibu party. There’s the obligatory asshole studio exec, the morally lost talent agent, ad naseaum. There’s also some good character description, although the book is cumbersome and the lead, Todd, steps out of character halfway through without so much as a backward glance at his motivations. I’m certain Barker, another ex-pat Brit now ensconced in balmy Hollyweird, has already had his first sit-down with someone at Fox or Universal about Coldheart Canyon. So I’m thinking now the whole novelist thing is probably a good idea. Not really the back door into filmmaking, but not quite so thoroughly beaten a path as spec scripts and the whole script contest merry-go-round.
King’s Dreamcatcher surprised me. He was back to his “aw shucks” Maine roots again and the tried-but-true buddy story. He eternally takes us all down memory lane, ever since River Phoenix and company brought the short story The Body to life in Stand By Me. In King’s literary memory, the music was better, the soda was sweeter, and the friendships were always true, a la the maudlin Hearts in Atlantis. This must really hit a nerve with baby boomers; he’s worth something like thirty-five million and, as my college writing professor said years ago, “King never misses a house payment, ever.”
The nice thing about Dreamcatcher was I got caught up in it in a chilly winter night, fat pulpy novel kind of way. You root for the flawed heroes from the get go and the bad guys are nicely over the top, though a few are just average Joes who’ve gone astray.
Of course, the movie rights to Dreamcatcher were optioned before the ink on the front cover was dry. Lawrence Kasdan filmed it in British Columbia last winter and it’s slated to hit American theatres at the end of March 2003. (British Columbia in January? Kinda like sending the cast and crew of The Mummy to Tunis in July.) And - this was a thrill to those who read the book - there will be special effects bad guys. That’s right, America’s favorite author has envisioned the ultimate movie baddy - shit weasels from outer space. No vamps, no demons, no E.T., just full-on shit weasels.
King has inspired me. I’m no longer snubbing mainstream movies or novels. Now if I can just incorporate a few shit weasels into my romantic drama...maybe boy meets girl, boy meets...shit weasel?
I gave up on script writing last summer. While setting a personal record on unemployment insurance, I went nuts and decided to become a novelist. This was probably a good career move. I’ve got something new to put down on the welfare form under “occupation.”
I remember living with my brother in central Washington state in the late seventies when he went through the first of many novelist periods. He said, “Kid, you can write your tome, smoke pot, buy a big house, pass out drunk in your own pool, and everyone will think you’re a genius. And then you can just fuck off for five years between books because you’re blocked.”
It seemed like an agreeable lifestyle and not too different from what my brother was doing right then, minus the big house and the pool. He had a medium-sized shack in a crappy suburb and the only large body of water was the mosquito-infested Yakima River three blocks away.
So in the relentless heat of August 2002, I ploughed through what turned into a 230-page (single-spaced) contemporary romantic drama. Mind you, there’s a whole lot of classical literary references, a la Bridget Jones’ Diary and Jane Austen, I have yet to work into the novel - about thirty pages worth of Shakespeare. Every time I crack a copy of Shakespeare, I have a sophomore English class flashback where my teacher is yelling because none of us read Brutus’ speech the night before. I set another personal record - I cranked out the first rough draft in about twenty-three days. That’s right, not months or years, but days. Psychologically, the whole thing quickly turned into the same creative experience I had when I wrote the spec script, My Island, in the summer of 1998. I’ll try and explain.
First, it helps greatly in fiction writing if you’re deranged, depressed, or preferably, have split personality disorder. A good dose of abuse during childhood always helps. I became the characters. I felt what they felt, struggled with their obstacles, fell in love, perished, and got second chances just like them. It’s sort of like a psych student empathy lab without the other people. It was exhausting. I’d stop writing between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m. and go to bed with unwritten dialogue ringing in my head. I forgot to videotape re-runs of Buffy. I forgot to comb my hair.
When it was done, I gave the mess to a half dozen friends. I got mixed reviews that I’m still dealing with in therapy. Overall, everybody thought it was good but rough. There was this weird separation anxiety afterward, like I’d had a relationship with the novel and it had come to an abrupt end. The novel had skipped town, darted out the door when I’d gone to sleep, gotten on a bus, Gus. I couldn’t even have a successful relationship with imaginary people.
So it’s interesting that this last movie season seemed to pick up the cumbersome idea of writers and their inner demons and run with it...for about three feet.
One of my favorites was Neil LaBute’s Possession, which was based on the Booker-winning novel by A.S. Byatt about a fictitious Victorian novelist with fluttering lamb chop sideburns who has an affair with a lesbian (okay, people person) poet. LaBute (who used to be an indie film darling before he actually started making a living as a filmmaker) once again waded deep into unfamiliar water and, despite what those sniping prigs at The Guardian newspaper said, did a bang-up job. I like his work. I hated, hated, hated In the Company of Men simply because no deaf woman alive is that stupid, but I liked his other flicks. Your Friends and Neighbors was flawless in an ferocious sort of Harmony Korine way and Nurse Betty pushed and pulled at stereotypes.
In Possession, smoldering Jeremy Northam and elfish Jennifer Ehle struggle with writing but mostly just sex and the fairytale idea that two writers can live and love together without heaving typewriters or pitching ink bottles at each other. Oh, and they totally skip the whole Victorians-didn’t-bathe-much issue. I heard rumors that guys dragged to this film on dates actually stayed awake through two-thirds of it, but those were only rumors.
A few weeks back, The Hours premiered, trumpeting the arrival of a movie that looks at women writers and how they deal with sex, the heaving of typewriters, and that whole split personality thing I was talking about earlier. This was sort of an update on Julia, the film where Jane Fonda wandered around with a bottle of gutrot under one arm and complained to Jason Robards, “I need to write!” Nicole Kidman put on an impressive prosthesis, Julianne Moore became even more manic-depressive than she was in either of those P.T. Anderson’s films, and Meryl Streep was a freaked out New Yorker who shopped a lot. Half the characters smoked like chimneys (apparently that’s what writers do when they’re not pinning those inner demons to the mat, they’re becoming emphysemic) and Virginia Woolfe became just another apprehensive suburbanite who missed the smog of London. The Hours will probably roll off with a wheelbarrow of Oscars.
Of course, not just writers, but the novels they create have been the fodder for films good, bad, and mediocre for ages.
After watching these films I read two books by contemporary, pulp fiction writers; both extremely successful. One is one of the most successful fiction writers of all time. The first was Clive Barker’s twisted horror-erotica Coldheart Canyon and the second was Stephen King’s Dreamcatcher. Barker is so determined to see his made into a film, he dropped enough names in the book to fill the Shrine Auditorium. In Coldheart Canyon, all the A-list stars from the thirties are sexual deviants and both Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt are “present” when the lead character has a meltdown at a Malibu party. There’s the obligatory asshole studio exec, the morally lost talent agent, ad naseaum. There’s also some good character description, although the book is cumbersome and the lead, Todd, steps out of character halfway through without so much as a backward glance at his motivations. I’m certain Barker, another ex-pat Brit now ensconced in balmy Hollyweird, has already had his first sit-down with someone at Fox or Universal about Coldheart Canyon. So I’m thinking now the whole novelist thing is probably a good idea. Not really the back door into filmmaking, but not quite so thoroughly beaten a path as spec scripts and the whole script contest merry-go-round.
King’s Dreamcatcher surprised me. He was back to his “aw shucks” Maine roots again and the tried-but-true buddy story. He eternally takes us all down memory lane, ever since River Phoenix and company brought the short story The Body to life in Stand By Me. In King’s literary memory, the music was better, the soda was sweeter, and the friendships were always true, a la the maudlin Hearts in Atlantis. This must really hit a nerve with baby boomers; he’s worth something like thirty-five million and, as my college writing professor said years ago, “King never misses a house payment, ever.”
The nice thing about Dreamcatcher was I got caught up in it in a chilly winter night, fat pulpy novel kind of way. You root for the flawed heroes from the get go and the bad guys are nicely over the top, though a few are just average Joes who’ve gone astray.
Of course, the movie rights to Dreamcatcher were optioned before the ink on the front cover was dry. Lawrence Kasdan filmed it in British Columbia last winter and it’s slated to hit American theatres at the end of March 2003. (British Columbia in January? Kinda like sending the cast and crew of The Mummy to Tunis in July.) And - this was a thrill to those who read the book - there will be special effects bad guys. That’s right, America’s favorite author has envisioned the ultimate movie baddy - shit weasels from outer space. No vamps, no demons, no E.T., just full-on shit weasels.
King has inspired me. I’m no longer snubbing mainstream movies or novels. Now if I can just incorporate a few shit weasels into my romantic drama...maybe boy meets girl, boy meets...shit weasel?
Tuesday, December 10, 2002
An Insider's View of Triggerstreet.com
Submitted by Peter John Ross
I have just uploaded my fourteenth movie to Triggerstreet.com, Kevin Spacey's attempt to imitate Matt Damon and Ben Affleck's highly successful Project Greenlight, which recently completed it's second run. I've been to countless film festivals, screenings, and networking events. I have submitted my films to every short film site on the web, but I have never experienced anything like Triggerstreet.com.
It costs nothing, and in a strange ironic twist, Budweiser is picking up the tab for once. You can upload and review short films for free. Similar to Project Greenlight's recently completed Director's Contest, you must review two other shorts before you can upload one. You can upload RealMedia or QuickTime files. They also accept feature length screenplays in addition to short films. Short films must be less than ten minutes long, in RealMedia or QuickTime format, and under 15MB in size.
So far every single one of my movies has been universally panned. Sometimes I got slammed and complimented for the exact same thing. For instance, on the same short I heard comments like "your actors are so horrible" in one review, while the next reviewer says "the only thing redeeming is the performances from the actors who outclass your pathetic script." Even worse is when I get a review like "you suck... you suck... you suck..." This is repeated until there are fifty words, the minimum requirement for a review. If you have never lived in Los Angeles or New York, Triggerstreet.com is the next best thing. You'll get slammed by anonymous reviewers with screen names like "Dogmatic Carl" and "Digital Bonzai," and believe me, anonymity can bring out brutal honesty. In one review of my movie Friend or Foe, I even had someone claiming they would seek out my characters and attempt to strangle them. I would file assault charges except for the fact that they are fictional characters.
Having reviewed twenty-eight movies and viewed even more, I can say the quality ranges from high end 35mm shorts that are well shot with great scripts and performances to some of the crappiest digital video shorts ever conceived. Apparently, those are mine.
Unlike Project Greenlight, the only reward a filmmaker or screenwriter can receive for exposing their work to potential theft is getting your work included on a DVD. Big deal, I can do that at home with a two-dollar DVD-R, but I like getting my work seen, even if every bit of it gets slammed by other wannabe filmmakers with a chip on our collective shoulders. The real goal is to become "discovered" by getting your work seen by Hollywood bigwigs and/or agents with some clout. Since the highest rated shorts are the ones that draw the most attention, the urge to critique and nit-pick suddenly turns into a need to draw blood.
Opinions are like assholes, everybody has one. Apparently opinions and assholes alike have found a home on the internet at Triggerstreet.com.
There is a series of shorts on the site called Cap'n Ken's Corner that is driving me mad with laughter. It's a spoof of a series like Blue's Clues, but with a very dark edge. After reviewing a lot of movies on the site thus far, it's the best thing on there by a long shot, including my own movies. I am really rooting for their production team to make it because both the concepts and execution are brilliant. It's worth registering just to see. They call themselves "Twisted Mojo." They have other shorts that are good too, but the Cap'n Ken series stands out. There's something about that ultra cheery guy looking through the "reality scope" and seeing a doctor trying to convince him he is not the host of a children's show. Even though I should be cynical as hell of any competitor on the same playing field with me, I can't help but applaud these guys and send out happy thoughts that they will be whisked away from obscurity and into the limelight where they belong. Best of luck and kudos the "Twisted Mojo" team. Overall, their movies are getting good reviews, but there are also some severe criticisms as well.
Overall, the Triggerstreet.com site is a slick idea. It's an eye opener to every slack ass with a camcorder that fancies themselves the next Kevin Smith. Stop getting compliments from your friends and family and let a few film school brats take a crack at reviewing your short, then see if you still want to be a filmmaker. My mom once told me "if you can't stand the heat, then get out of the kitchen." She also told me that I was neither planned nor wanted, so maybe my confidence is not what it should be. But at least I can look in the mirror and still call myself a filmmaker after every one of my flicks gets a horrible review on Triggerstreet.com. If you think you'll win the contest, don't bother submitting. If you want to have your movie seen and probably ripped apart, then this is the site for you. I guess I view it as looking into the abyss and finding out why I really made the movies.
I have just uploaded my fourteenth movie to Triggerstreet.com, Kevin Spacey's attempt to imitate Matt Damon and Ben Affleck's highly successful Project Greenlight, which recently completed it's second run. I've been to countless film festivals, screenings, and networking events. I have submitted my films to every short film site on the web, but I have never experienced anything like Triggerstreet.com.
It costs nothing, and in a strange ironic twist, Budweiser is picking up the tab for once. You can upload and review short films for free. Similar to Project Greenlight's recently completed Director's Contest, you must review two other shorts before you can upload one. You can upload RealMedia or QuickTime files. They also accept feature length screenplays in addition to short films. Short films must be less than ten minutes long, in RealMedia or QuickTime format, and under 15MB in size.
So far every single one of my movies has been universally panned. Sometimes I got slammed and complimented for the exact same thing. For instance, on the same short I heard comments like "your actors are so horrible" in one review, while the next reviewer says "the only thing redeeming is the performances from the actors who outclass your pathetic script." Even worse is when I get a review like "you suck... you suck... you suck..." This is repeated until there are fifty words, the minimum requirement for a review. If you have never lived in Los Angeles or New York, Triggerstreet.com is the next best thing. You'll get slammed by anonymous reviewers with screen names like "Dogmatic Carl" and "Digital Bonzai," and believe me, anonymity can bring out brutal honesty. In one review of my movie Friend or Foe, I even had someone claiming they would seek out my characters and attempt to strangle them. I would file assault charges except for the fact that they are fictional characters.
Having reviewed twenty-eight movies and viewed even more, I can say the quality ranges from high end 35mm shorts that are well shot with great scripts and performances to some of the crappiest digital video shorts ever conceived. Apparently, those are mine.
Unlike Project Greenlight, the only reward a filmmaker or screenwriter can receive for exposing their work to potential theft is getting your work included on a DVD. Big deal, I can do that at home with a two-dollar DVD-R, but I like getting my work seen, even if every bit of it gets slammed by other wannabe filmmakers with a chip on our collective shoulders. The real goal is to become "discovered" by getting your work seen by Hollywood bigwigs and/or agents with some clout. Since the highest rated shorts are the ones that draw the most attention, the urge to critique and nit-pick suddenly turns into a need to draw blood.
Opinions are like assholes, everybody has one. Apparently opinions and assholes alike have found a home on the internet at Triggerstreet.com.
There is a series of shorts on the site called Cap'n Ken's Corner that is driving me mad with laughter. It's a spoof of a series like Blue's Clues, but with a very dark edge. After reviewing a lot of movies on the site thus far, it's the best thing on there by a long shot, including my own movies. I am really rooting for their production team to make it because both the concepts and execution are brilliant. It's worth registering just to see. They call themselves "Twisted Mojo." They have other shorts that are good too, but the Cap'n Ken series stands out. There's something about that ultra cheery guy looking through the "reality scope" and seeing a doctor trying to convince him he is not the host of a children's show. Even though I should be cynical as hell of any competitor on the same playing field with me, I can't help but applaud these guys and send out happy thoughts that they will be whisked away from obscurity and into the limelight where they belong. Best of luck and kudos the "Twisted Mojo" team. Overall, their movies are getting good reviews, but there are also some severe criticisms as well.
Overall, the Triggerstreet.com site is a slick idea. It's an eye opener to every slack ass with a camcorder that fancies themselves the next Kevin Smith. Stop getting compliments from your friends and family and let a few film school brats take a crack at reviewing your short, then see if you still want to be a filmmaker. My mom once told me "if you can't stand the heat, then get out of the kitchen." She also told me that I was neither planned nor wanted, so maybe my confidence is not what it should be. But at least I can look in the mirror and still call myself a filmmaker after every one of my flicks gets a horrible review on Triggerstreet.com. If you think you'll win the contest, don't bother submitting. If you want to have your movie seen and probably ripped apart, then this is the site for you. I guess I view it as looking into the abyss and finding out why I really made the movies.
Tuesday, November 12, 2002
Filters
Submitted by Peter John Ross
I have used several filters on my Canon GL1 but the main one used for New World was an enhancing filter from Tiffen. This particular filter brings out flesh tones and the gradation of the color of leaves in the fall, namely oranges, yellows, and browns. We also used neutral density filters to soften the video look, but it darkened the image, so be sure and open up your iris on the camera.
For other projects, unrelated to New World, I have used red, yellow, and blue filters to get a look similar to Steven Soderbergh's film Traffic. Using filters during the shoot saves time in post if you already know what look you want ahead of time. I also use an 80A filter when I know I am going to convert the footage to black and white. In the title sequence for a short film called Concupiscence (www.sonnyboo.com/othershort.htm) I used a horizon filter, often employed by Tony Scott and Michael Bay in their commercials and feature films to make the horizon line look a gradient colored sky. I used it for an effect I wanted on the titles. Shooting this way saved me hours of Adobe After Effects render time.
Filters may say "for daylight use" or "black and white still photography use," but experiment and try them anyway with color video. One filter can have multiple uses and give numerous looks. A circular polarizer filter is made for two things. One, it kills reflections on glass surfaces shot at an angle. You can rotate the filter until the reflections are cancelled out. A second use for a polarizing filter, which is why I bought one, is to get the richest, most realistic blue skies from whatever camera you use. I used a polarizing filter on my Super-8 film camera for a thirty second commercial I did (www.thecfc.org/movies/PSA33B.mov). Shooting in July, aiming at the sky, the filter brought out so much blue that the sky looked perfect, without compromising the other colors.
If you can't afford the cost of numerous filters for your lenses, you can use your camera's manual white balance to achieve filter-like effects. If you white balance to colors or even gray sheets of paper, you can get some really wild results and cool looks if you need something a bit more radical. If you want something subtle, try using soft yellow or off-white colors to set the white balance. Tinker around and find what works and what doesn't.
Too many digital video shooters don't study cinematography in general or bother to learn some basic techniques borrowed from still photography. Filters work on digital video lenses and come in a variety of sizes, and can be used with even the cheapest cameras. I learned about filters from Emmy Award winning director of photography Scott Spears. He taught me a lot about filters and affecting the image with light, the cinematographers best friend, even when shooting digital video. Too many people take the nearly automated process of digital video for granted and forget that the use of focus, light, filters, and zoom are brushes in the hands of artists, not buttons on a machine.
For additional information on filters check out the Tiffen page at www.tiffen.com/filters.htm.
A sampling of what the Tiffen site has to offer:
Ultraviolet Protector - Protects lens from dust, moisture, scratches, and breakage.
Sky 1A - Popular general use protection filter. Absorbs a significant amount of ultraviolet light. Slightly warm-tinted for better colors. Useful when shooting outdoors in the shade and on overcast days.
Haze 1 - Reduces excessive blue haze caused by ultraviolet light by absorbing 71% of ultraviolet radiation. Great all-around ultraviolet control.
Haze 2 - Absorbs all ultraviolet light. Reduces haze and maintains color and image clarity. Best for high altitude and marine scenes.
Polarizer and Circular Polarizer - Essential for outdoor photography. Deepens intensity of blue skies and reduces or eliminates glare. Use circular polarizers for auto-focus cameras as recommended by the camera manufacturer.
Warm Polarizer - For color imaging, a combination of an 812 filter and polarizing filter. Warms skin tones and scenics.
Neutral Density - For all film types, color or black and white. Absorbs varying degrees of light. Provides balanced exposures and depth-of-field control. Eliminates overly bright, washed out images. Great for video.
Soft - Ideal portrait filter. Softens and minimizes facial imperfections while retaining overall clarity.
Warm Soft - Combines a soft and an 812 warming filter. Smoothes facial details while adding warmth to skin tones for color imaging.
Center Spot - Clear central area for dramatic focus, surrounded by ring of moderate diffusion to minimize distracting background detail.
Warm Center Spot - Combines a center spot filter with an 812 warming filter. Clear central area for dramatic focus, surrounded by ring of moderate diffusion to minimize distracting background detail. Warms image for more vibrant results.
Pro-Mist - Most popular motion picture effect. Creates special "atmosphere" by softening excess sharpness and contrast. Creates a soft glow around highlights. Great for portraits and landscapes.
Warm Pro-Mist - Combination of a Pro-Mist filter and an 812 warming filter. Warms and softens image giving skin a healthy, natural glow.
Black Pro-Mist - Similar characteristics to the Pro-Mist filter, but providing a more subtle effect. Less lightening of shadows and a reduction of contrast.
Ultra Contrast - Recognized by an Academy Award for Technical Achievement, this filter series redistributes ambient light to capture details that would be lost in shadows. Lowers contrast evenly throughout image with no flare or halation.
Low Contrast - Spreads light from highlights to darker areas and leaves bright areas bright, lowering contrast and muting colors. Makes videos look more like film.
Star - Achieve dazzling star effects from any direct or reflected point light source. Add sparkle to water scenes, candle flames, product shots, and more.
Fog - Adds drama to your scene by producing a misty atmosphere. Lights flare while softening contrast and sharpness.
Double Fog - Creates the natural look of fog, especially on overcast days.
Sepia - Creates a warm brown tone for that old time feeling.
Grad - Half color, half clear with a graduated density transition for a smooth blending of color. The perfect solution to transform a pallid sunrise or sunset into something spectacular. Available in a rainbow array of useful colors.
80 Series - Use with daylight film to shoot indoors with tungsten lighting to achieve the correct color in your image.
85 Series - For shooting tungsten corrected film outdoors. Produces natural colors in your images.
FL-D and FL-B - Provide pleasing skin tones and corrects color under fluorescent lighting. Use the FL-D with daylight-corrected media and the FL-B with tungsten-corrected media.
812 Color Warming - Improves color of all skin tones. Absorbs blue cast often caused by electronic flash or outdoor shade. Adds warmth to pale, washed-out flesh tones. Ideal for portraits.
Enhancing - Creates brighter, more saturated reds, browns, and oranges with minimal effect to other colors. Ideal for fall foliage, earth tone rock formations, and rustic barns.
Magenta - Balance excessive green cast and produce creative effects. Great for early morning tint.
I have used several filters on my Canon GL1 but the main one used for New World was an enhancing filter from Tiffen. This particular filter brings out flesh tones and the gradation of the color of leaves in the fall, namely oranges, yellows, and browns. We also used neutral density filters to soften the video look, but it darkened the image, so be sure and open up your iris on the camera.
For other projects, unrelated to New World, I have used red, yellow, and blue filters to get a look similar to Steven Soderbergh's film Traffic. Using filters during the shoot saves time in post if you already know what look you want ahead of time. I also use an 80A filter when I know I am going to convert the footage to black and white. In the title sequence for a short film called Concupiscence (www.sonnyboo.com/othershort.htm) I used a horizon filter, often employed by Tony Scott and Michael Bay in their commercials and feature films to make the horizon line look a gradient colored sky. I used it for an effect I wanted on the titles. Shooting this way saved me hours of Adobe After Effects render time.
Filters may say "for daylight use" or "black and white still photography use," but experiment and try them anyway with color video. One filter can have multiple uses and give numerous looks. A circular polarizer filter is made for two things. One, it kills reflections on glass surfaces shot at an angle. You can rotate the filter until the reflections are cancelled out. A second use for a polarizing filter, which is why I bought one, is to get the richest, most realistic blue skies from whatever camera you use. I used a polarizing filter on my Super-8 film camera for a thirty second commercial I did (www.thecfc.org/movies/PSA33B.mov). Shooting in July, aiming at the sky, the filter brought out so much blue that the sky looked perfect, without compromising the other colors.
If you can't afford the cost of numerous filters for your lenses, you can use your camera's manual white balance to achieve filter-like effects. If you white balance to colors or even gray sheets of paper, you can get some really wild results and cool looks if you need something a bit more radical. If you want something subtle, try using soft yellow or off-white colors to set the white balance. Tinker around and find what works and what doesn't.
Too many digital video shooters don't study cinematography in general or bother to learn some basic techniques borrowed from still photography. Filters work on digital video lenses and come in a variety of sizes, and can be used with even the cheapest cameras. I learned about filters from Emmy Award winning director of photography Scott Spears. He taught me a lot about filters and affecting the image with light, the cinematographers best friend, even when shooting digital video. Too many people take the nearly automated process of digital video for granted and forget that the use of focus, light, filters, and zoom are brushes in the hands of artists, not buttons on a machine.
For additional information on filters check out the Tiffen page at www.tiffen.com/filters.htm.
A sampling of what the Tiffen site has to offer:
Ultraviolet Protector - Protects lens from dust, moisture, scratches, and breakage.
Sky 1A - Popular general use protection filter. Absorbs a significant amount of ultraviolet light. Slightly warm-tinted for better colors. Useful when shooting outdoors in the shade and on overcast days.
Haze 1 - Reduces excessive blue haze caused by ultraviolet light by absorbing 71% of ultraviolet radiation. Great all-around ultraviolet control.
Haze 2 - Absorbs all ultraviolet light. Reduces haze and maintains color and image clarity. Best for high altitude and marine scenes.
Polarizer and Circular Polarizer - Essential for outdoor photography. Deepens intensity of blue skies and reduces or eliminates glare. Use circular polarizers for auto-focus cameras as recommended by the camera manufacturer.
Warm Polarizer - For color imaging, a combination of an 812 filter and polarizing filter. Warms skin tones and scenics.
Neutral Density - For all film types, color or black and white. Absorbs varying degrees of light. Provides balanced exposures and depth-of-field control. Eliminates overly bright, washed out images. Great for video.
Soft - Ideal portrait filter. Softens and minimizes facial imperfections while retaining overall clarity.
Warm Soft - Combines a soft and an 812 warming filter. Smoothes facial details while adding warmth to skin tones for color imaging.
Center Spot - Clear central area for dramatic focus, surrounded by ring of moderate diffusion to minimize distracting background detail.
Warm Center Spot - Combines a center spot filter with an 812 warming filter. Clear central area for dramatic focus, surrounded by ring of moderate diffusion to minimize distracting background detail. Warms image for more vibrant results.
Pro-Mist - Most popular motion picture effect. Creates special "atmosphere" by softening excess sharpness and contrast. Creates a soft glow around highlights. Great for portraits and landscapes.
Warm Pro-Mist - Combination of a Pro-Mist filter and an 812 warming filter. Warms and softens image giving skin a healthy, natural glow.
Black Pro-Mist - Similar characteristics to the Pro-Mist filter, but providing a more subtle effect. Less lightening of shadows and a reduction of contrast.
Ultra Contrast - Recognized by an Academy Award for Technical Achievement, this filter series redistributes ambient light to capture details that would be lost in shadows. Lowers contrast evenly throughout image with no flare or halation.
Low Contrast - Spreads light from highlights to darker areas and leaves bright areas bright, lowering contrast and muting colors. Makes videos look more like film.
Star - Achieve dazzling star effects from any direct or reflected point light source. Add sparkle to water scenes, candle flames, product shots, and more.
Fog - Adds drama to your scene by producing a misty atmosphere. Lights flare while softening contrast and sharpness.
Double Fog - Creates the natural look of fog, especially on overcast days.
Sepia - Creates a warm brown tone for that old time feeling.
Grad - Half color, half clear with a graduated density transition for a smooth blending of color. The perfect solution to transform a pallid sunrise or sunset into something spectacular. Available in a rainbow array of useful colors.
80 Series - Use with daylight film to shoot indoors with tungsten lighting to achieve the correct color in your image.
85 Series - For shooting tungsten corrected film outdoors. Produces natural colors in your images.
FL-D and FL-B - Provide pleasing skin tones and corrects color under fluorescent lighting. Use the FL-D with daylight-corrected media and the FL-B with tungsten-corrected media.
812 Color Warming - Improves color of all skin tones. Absorbs blue cast often caused by electronic flash or outdoor shade. Adds warmth to pale, washed-out flesh tones. Ideal for portraits.
Enhancing - Creates brighter, more saturated reds, browns, and oranges with minimal effect to other colors. Ideal for fall foliage, earth tone rock formations, and rustic barns.
Magenta - Balance excessive green cast and produce creative effects. Great for early morning tint.
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