Who: New Technologies Market Impact

Before I get deep into the Deleuzian nature of this project, allow me a bit of rope to hang myself by suggesting I know something about the future (and full disclosure: I don't).

"So I have this feature I shot . . ."

 

I'm putting together the trailer and marketing package for a feature I completed with $4,500 and the above "camera package".  Right now it is being looked at by a major studio in town.  Why?  Not because they think it will make millions or be an Oscar contender.  I don't even know if they are interested in buying it (others are interested, so we'll see when it comes time to put cash on the table who shows up).

I do know that what they see is a feature shot with a phone at the cost of a used car that, at mobile device size, looks as good as their $4.5 M product.  That concerns them.  They see that in the 36 months since I shot my first frames there have been massive leaps in hardware and software for both Hero and Apple.  And those will continue along with more and more software automation of the post process.  We have hit a major fulcrum point in the history of filmmaking.

"You youngsters don't know how good you got it . . ."

Before this point, filmmaking was a VERY expensive process, thus very few people knew how to do it, and even fewer had significant experience in the process -- they were studio employees for the most part.  A very exclusive club.

I picked up my first Bolex in college in 1980 and quickly learned to shoot in a miserly fashion, then wait two weeks for lab processing.  Video came into its own in the 80's so I began to use it for all my work except an occasional short.  But it wasn't until the late 90's when 1080HD really came on that video began getting good enough to project large in a movie theater.  When I was at Digital Domain in 2001 we were compositing 1080HD files into A-list VFX sequences.

"Well hell, I'll just shoot a movie with my frickin' phone . . ." 

By 2010 1080HD was the format phones were using.  At this moment, today, my iphone 6S shoots 4k.  I don't even own the hardware to edit and view 4k, but some day soon I will because it will be standard.  The studios know this.  Their massive investment in production infrastructure is going to look very expensive on their budget sheets.  They've seen what happened before.

Most of them are attached somewhere up or down the corporate chain to a music company.  In the 90's they watched those companies go under, one after another, as audio software and hardware improved to the point where anyone could have their own recording studio that to most people sounded no different than the best studio up at Capitol Records.

"I'm sittin' on the fault line, waitin' for the twenty year flood . . ." 

The studio sees in Holiday, the future problem of generating revenue when the market is flooded with product.  With billions of people owning a cell phone and their children growing up with that technology and its constant improvements, being trained on how to make videos since grade school, when this next generation becomes adults there will be an endless supply of product out there.

Now most of that product will be of modest quality and for the moment, there is an explosion of work possibilities for established directors as Amazon, Netflix and others begin creating their own content.
It looks like to me, however, that in twenty years it will be very difficult to distinguish yourself as a filmmaker from any other filmmaker.

So although almost all projects will generate some revenue, there will be too much product flooding the market to make a living.  And there will be a generation of people who will be quite comfortable in roles from producer and director, to editor and on down to PA.  With that huge increase in the number of people with moving picture experience the rates for these jobs are going to fall.

"Back in the day, lad, we was kings . . ." 

Real life example: my dayrate as an unknown, 20 something Dallas photographer in the late 80's when I quit, was about the dayrate most photogs here in LA get -- today.  The editorial rate I got paid then for US News, Essence, Vogue, et al, is only $100 more today than it was then.  Every billboard advertising a customer's use of the product -- Apple "shot on iphone" that would be you -- diminishes the potential of a professional to house and feed a family.  I could also use real life examples from friends in the music recording business, but get the idea.

Maybe it's sad, I don't know, but it is a difference.  Instagrammers (what we used to call photographers) can reach a massive audience, but the ability to make a living as a photographer is rapidly disappearing.  And for the few that do somehow find a way to make it professionally, the pressure to stay employed increases with the long string of others waiting to take their place at a lower rate.  Pop music?  There is less diversity of artists in the top ten this year than there was ten years ago and a significant difference from 20 years ago.  Fewer and fewer make all of the revenue while thousands of bands vie for just a little traction.

The same will happen with filmmaking.  Soon.

In the meantime, I hope to make a little money.

What: Abduction Narratives Part Six Affect as Conflict

Deleuze's five conflicts are based on relational affects, not cause-and-effect.  Developing conflicts using affect means there is a focus on character becomings, in the Deleuzian sense.

In Deleuze and Guatarri’s Thousand Plateaus they argue: “We know nothing about a body until we know what it can do, in other words, what its affects are, how they can or cannot enter into composition with other affects, with the affects of another body, either to destroy that body, or to be destroyed by it, either to exchange actions and passions with it or to join with it in composing a more powerful body” (257). What D+G mean by “know” is via Ethos, not Logos or Pathos.  Ethos is the measure of affect.

Thus the ethos of various characters in Holiday influenced where the narrative could go.  There is a cause and effect plot: an old Russian mobster seeks revenge by setting up the abductor, Graham, for sharing a past with the Russian’s lover.  But neither the Russian, nor Graham, nor Anne, the young woman abducted, are on any cause and effect hero’s journey.  The story wrapped around that plot was created considering the ethos of the characters.  These characters are in a process of being affected, of becoming, as D+G state, “Affects are becomings” (256). 

D+G assert they know nothing about a body until they "know what they can do".  This calls for a certain kind of empiricism, that is, observation asking the question, "What does the body do?"  I used this to develop my characters asking the question: “What does the character do?”  What affects influence that character and what affective influence does that character have on the world around them?

What do they destroy and what do they align with?  Graham aligns with a machete and drugs.  Anne aligns with patience and speed.

This is a first step to building a story about injustice done without relying on a victim narrative.  The abduction of a young woman is certainly unjust, worthy of a righteous victim narrative, but does that ethos lead to anything except more violence?  Can we tell stories of personal atrocity that suggest another type of revenge?  A revenge of will, of not allowing that moment to destroy who the victim is, yet acknowledges the injustice, where violence is the last resort as opposed to the first choice?

Anne is a character becoming in a way that is life affirming.  Graham is a character becoming in a way that is destructive not only to those around him, but to himself.

Anne's ethos is her own best hope.  Yet even so, she is not a hero.  Whether she lives or dies makes no difference to the conflict between the Russian and Graham.

Nor is she the sole creator of her destiny.  She is connected to everything around her.  She exists in a context of affects, a place, landscape, environment that maintains its own affects and intensities that have no position for or against her.  She will ally with whom/what she must in order to escape—as well as destroy, affectively or physically, if she has no other choice.

In the conflict between her and Graham, she is combat, not war.  In the conflict between the Russian and Graham, she is collateral damage of no consequence.

What: Abduction Narratives Part Five Beyond Good V Evil

14^th century B.C. Greek king Menelaus laid siege to the city of Troy for ten years to revenge the abduction of Helen, a woman he had paid handsomely for.   Even today, we continue to assure ourselves through popular narratives that revenge feels good.  as I mentioned, Liam Neeson has made a career of it, just as Charles Bronson did a generation before.  Revenge as payment for the loss of a loved one is one of the true ur-narratives.  But revenge only feels good when the good guy wins.  Otherwise, it is nothing more than human lives as an accounting exercise.  And who is Good and who is Evil is, at best, relative, so whose justice is it?  The bottom line is revenge only leads to death and collateral damage, never justice.

As an experiment, I made a revenge film meant to lay bare the power relations in such narratives and how those feed into the culture more broadly as either validating or normative.  The film confronts the audience at every turn; a beautiful assault on their conscious.  They should feel repulsed and shaken out of their suspension of disbelief into the real horror of a young woman being abducted and forced into a conflict she had nothing to do with, all for their entertainment.  It is not a story of hope, of good triumphing over evil, or the virtues of revenge.

Holiday, is an aesthetic experiment created to explore revenge through several propositions put forth by Gilles Deleuze.  In an essay on the need to do away with judgment, he offered five conflicts of forces, of affects, that either encourage vitality or shut it down.  As a result, affect was favored over cause-and-effect in character development, plot, and in consideration of audience.  The five conflicts Deleuze's essay discusses are: 1) cruelty versus infinite torture, 2) intoxication versus the dream, 3) vitality versus organization, 4) the will to power versus a will to dominate, and 5) combat versus war.  The main characters in Holiday dramatize these five conflicts, not Good v. Evil.  And what is film storytelling but conflict dramatized via images and sound?

What: Abduction Narratives Part Four Good V Evil

Implicit in the Good vs Evil conflict is judgement about right and wrong.  We like these stories because we wish we were these "good" characters and life were this clearly defined.  And we especially like the Good v Evil conflict with sex trafficking stories because anyone with even a minimal sense of justice would agree that the abuse, sale and/or ownership of people is wrong and destructive -- evil or no.  This is the difference between judgment and discernment.

So I asked myself why not pick the genre that most depends on judgement to unhinge Good v. Evil?  What could possibly go wrong?

Of course the storytelling consequence of this unhinging -- only a slight blurring, really -- is devastating.  First, there can no longer be a clear protagonist and antagonist -- as is the case with Holiday.  Anne is as close to a protagonist as the story gets, but she's only semi-conscious for a third of the story.  Also, since the story tracks emotionally from Anne's POV, the audience is made to start liking Graham just like she does.  But audiences hate being fooled and they don't like developing empathy for the Evil character.

What I'm getting at is that without a conflict to move the film forward, the story mushes to a halt, leaving only unmotivated character actions moving us through plot points.  You need conflict to keep the audience pulled forward into the future -- without getting too Heideggerian -- to keep them interested.

There is conflict driving Holiday -- five of them in fact -- all interweaving throughout the story based on ideas put forth by 20th century French philosopher Gilles Deleuze.

I have no intention to create sympathy for abductors and rapist.  Quite the contrary.  What I'm calling for is discernment instead of judgement. If anything, what I'm telling a story about is a man and a woman who dream of being/doing something else.  We are watching both in a state of Deleuzian becoming.

In both cases, everything goes wrong.  One reacts with rage and violence, the other with cunning and violence.  Judgement in either case is hardly justice.  Judgement condemns us to infinite failure against an ideal standard.  Discernment, which acknowledges we possess both the life-affirming and destructive, asks the question, what are you doing?

What: Abduction Narratives Part Three Good V Evil

Any good story must have conflict of some sort driving the characters and plot forward, no matter how vague or subtle.  In the abduction genre knowing who is good and who is evil is essential and usually fairly straightforward since almost always, the victim represents "good".  Who is really "bad", may not be revealed until the end, of course, but the boundaries are always clarified by the ending.

Clearly Anne is, in essence, a "good" character and Graham is certainly a "bad" character.  Her choices seem innocent and harmless enough, and his seem calculating and deadly, so on a fundamental level there is a good v. evil conflict.

But do "good" girls get high and make out with a stranger on his boat?  Yeah, sure, occasionally.

Conversely, do "bad" guys ever really develop empathy?  Ur, probably not since lacking empathy is a shared sociopathic trait of abductors in general -- I would hazard to guess -- but maybe if that character connected with someone, then lost her . . .

In any case undoubtedly Graham values himself over all others -- yet he's lost his mojo.  That doesn't make him "good" or likable.  But is he evil?

Then there is the Russian.

Is Death good or evil?

The Indian?  He thinks it's a celebration.

Keeping humans captive is nasty business and unfortunately has not been totally eliminated in the world.  Evil?  I don't know -- that begins to make judgements, instead of distinctions.  God fearing Christians kept Africans as property for centuries in this country with no moral conflict.  Abduction and slavery of people is "bad", but what if we shift away from Good and Evil?  Does that make slavery acceptable?  Are all things relative at that point?  Absolutely, not.

The "good" and "bad" categories in Holiday are merely feathered soft on the edges -- this is no relativist equivocation.  I'm not saying Anne is not a victim here.  What I am asking is, can we tell an abduction narrative without judging that the act is Evil?  A victim narrative not defined by the victimization.  Is that possible and still not condone the act as anything but harmful?

What: Abduction Narratives Part Two Genre Conflict

Audiences don't feel good when people are murdered in Holiday, perhaps because the deaths seem unjustified.

But the Russian is merely Death itself, real and non-judgmental.  The rubric that controls his character is that anyone he or his assassin interact with dies.  Death is an event we all will experience.

Graham murders out of frustration and rage at his loss, not revenge.

Anne is collateral damage in an ongoing battle between Graham and the Russian, a victim.  Her case certainly calls for justice.

However, unhinge as I did, ever so slightly who is good and who is evil and the power relations within the narrative deconstruct as the story rolls forward.  That process makes for some interesting, challenging storytelling.

Just a warning: this sort of genre twisting will generally limit your audience.  I had a very accomplished studio director ask me one time what kind of movies I wanted to make.  I said, "intelligent ones."  The director laughed at me -- and rightly so.  Set ups for dick jokes will win you far more audiences than a 90 minute visual jigsaw puzzle that might take more than one viewing to catch everything going on.

But here's what I know from my own history -- in past films I always stayed within genre boundaries and had many people like my films and I won awards for them and they got me no paid director gigs.  I'm now completing a feature where I intentionally unhinged the genre and people are noticing.  That doesn't mean I can make a living doing this sort of narrative, but maybe I'll still get to make one every once in a while.

What: Abduction Narratives Part One Genre Conflict

Among other things, Holiday is an abduction narrative.  Generally, the worst that can happen in these stories is death.  But this plot is informed by the Helen myth where rape is the limit of the threat because Anne is to be sold -- pure object commodification -- thus the goods need to have not suffered too greatly in transit.

Her journey is a dark, challenging one that spirals down into a hallucinogenic nightmare, then winds back out into Reality with real consequences -- an adolescent Alice through the looking glass in all its brutal adult horror.

The abduction of women as an opportunity to create a bit of entertainment is creepy, as in perverse creepy.  Yet the "loss of a loved one" revenge plot has always been a crowd fave.  Liam, Bronson, all those guys have made millions doing those stories -- all the way back to the Greeks.  The only way the modern genre works, however, is if the audience knows who was good and who was evil -- at heart -- by the end of the film (the Greeks were much more ambiguous about this distinction).  These stories reinforce the idea that revenge leads to justice.  I assert revenge only leads to death and chaos.

Good, honest, self-righteous justice is served when Liam murders 47 people to get to the bad guy's inner liar in order to save his daughter from being sold into the sex trade (well, a rather tarted-up version, I'd say -- I don't know for certain, but I think the reality is much uglier, much more like what we created in Holiday).  But the truth is all those "bad guys" Liam killed where just people.  Perhaps they were all hired by an evil mastermind because they were generally incompetent with firearms (or so it would seem), but in any case, they were people with families, moms, dads.  But their murder is justified, yes?

Culturally, this is dangerous.  Any injustice perceived is then righteous cause for revenge to the death.  We love these stories and I even enjoy a good revenge tale now and then as a guilty pleasure, but they validate acts of unspeakable violence by assurances of easily defined good and evil characters. 

What: Character Rubrics Part Two

Graham -- One of the controlling rubrics for Graham is that he ages as the story progresses.  He uses clothing, accessories, and changing his hair color to alter his appearance.  He is a man becoming middle-age with a dead-end job he can't find a way out of.  This tragic fate collapses his world.

Imagine Graham as a modern day Paris (from the Greek Helen myth), living into middle age, doing the one thing he knows how to do well -- abduct women -- but since he fell in love with the tattooed woman (present day Helen), he has lost his mojo and he wants to cut his losses.  Each moment and challenge makes him feel older.

At the very beginning, we see him presenting himself as mid 30's:

Then a little older:

Even older:

And for his last, oldest look, a disguise.  A mustache and baby powder in the hair for some grey.  I told him I wanted him to look like a Mexican Willy Loman:

Graham's choices to age in appearance over the course of 48 hours offers a compressed mirror of the responses of someone that age -- denial, resistance, acceptance.  As he moves through those responses his anger and frustration about what he's doing for a living and how it is falling apart around him leads to a murderous rage.

Creating these changes in his character helped develop an emotional arc from beginning to end.  The Russian's desire for revenge of the abduction of Helen, the tattooed woman, is Death as vengeance, judgement with impunity, clearly defining his actions in any scene.  And Bhatia desires a past he never was allowed to experience due to his lowly upbringing.  Now he will possess that dream at any price.

None of the male characters, Bhatia, Graham, or the Russian get what they want in the end.  Bhatia doesn't get the girl.  Graham doesn't get the cash.  And the Russian doesn't get Graham.  They are all trapped in the black hole of nostalgia.  Only Anne's character gets what she wants -- freedom.  Her character develops becoming in the moment with her only two weapons -- patience and speed.

What: Character Rubrics Part One

You need to create character rubrics to guide you in your story telling.

These are not character histories, familial relations, etc.  This is not a character profile (although you will need something in mind along those lines in order to do proper casting).  These are guidelines to help you with character choices you will make in the outlining stage, on set, and in the editing room -- all the way to the end.

Rubrics generate character tendencies -- traits, but only in a very generalized way.  They will influence not what each character does or says, but how they say it, what they lie about, etc.  They have to be defined enough to be useful, yet malleable.  This is nothing new to film making -- Mike Nichols did this all his career.  You create a character rubric, then place it in a context for possibility and play out the choices you made.

Since I only had one experienced actor, it was important that I know who all the characters were and what's driving them at any point in the story.  This allowed me to be totally present to the moment for the actors playing those roles.  I could then give direction and feed lines, if necessary, while I was shooting.

Here are some rubrics I used that have to do with the theme of middle-aged male lunacy.  Mr. Bhati, The Russian, and Graham all want (different than what they need) a new life (and/or a new wife, as it were) for different reasons.

Among other things, Holiday is a story about men hitting middle age.  It is an age where one first senses Death somewhere out there -- not all that real, but a presence pushing in.  A thought that had never been given much consideration before.  This moment informed the creation of rubrics for the three main male characters.

Mr. Bhatia -- wants to own a young beautiful wife.  This is full onset of middle-aged craziness fueled by a world viewed from the point of view of a lack.  You can't get a young woman like Anne to fall in love with you, but you can purchase one and keep her in an ivory tower lost in the chaos of Mumbai.  Having fought his way up from the slums to corporate overlord, his character will always lie, cheat, and fight to get a better deal, regardless of the consequences for those around him.

The Russian -- wants to be with a young beautiful woman who is gone.  Nostalgia fuels his destructive rage against Graham.

The Russian is Death -- someone Graham has been cheating for a long time.  Graham can feel him closing in -- and once he sees the Russian's gunman, he knows it is only a matter of time.  Of course the abduction of Anne is all a ruse, a Trojan horse to lure Graham to meet Death face to face.

This is Death -- not riding on a pale horse, but in the back of a black limo.  The rubric used with the Russian: anyone he or his gunman come into contact with -- in person or by phone -- must die (at the marina Graham sees the gunman, but the gunman doesn't see him -- ironically, the gunman, due to his contact with the Russian/Death must die, as well).

Neither Graham nor Anne are seen by Death or his assassin so in the end they escape and Death is left stranded, impotent for the moment.

But he'll meet up with them again one day.

How: iphone is not IMAX Part Three

iphone aesthetic v IMAX aesthetic
#iphonenichtimax

Although an iphone camera gives you great speed there is also a major disadvantage -- lack of lens choice.

No matter what sort of doo-dad you mount, tape, whatever to your cellphone, you will only get what the fixed size lens and sensor chip in combination with Apple software allow you to get.  These are technological issues, but cropping in on a sensor chip and calling it a "zoom" will not get you the same image as using a long focal length lens.

At some point I'm sure you'll be able to "dial in" the lens look you want -- say a long Panavision lens -- and the software will emulate that lens and transform the image much the same way you can plug your $50 Strat knock-off into your phone and dial in a Marshal stack at full volume and sound awesome -- or loud anyway.  But doing that with images is much more complicated and will require a little 3-D info from a second lens -- something some smartphones can already shoot.  All you need is the software . . . but remember playing a digital sampler to give you a Marshal at 11 is not anything like playing a '59 Strat through a Marshal at 11, so don't get too excited.

What I'm saying is, until the tech changes radically, you have an iphone that is optimized for a particular focal length lens, whereas IMAX has interchangable lenses -- and this is important.

You are telling a story in images, that is, transforming the world into an edited 2-D resemblance of reality.  Like in music, where a minor chord makes you feel sad and a major makes you feel happy, different focal lengths make your audience feel different -- and you need this full range -- making a feature with a single focal length is risky.  I tried some in-front-of-lens add-ons and didn't like what I got.  There are only a few shots where I used a telephoto attachment and mostly it because there was little movement:

For techies out there this was shot with the actor sitting in a folding chair just outside his open front door.  The sun is diffused by a high thin layer of clouds and there was a short awning over the door casting a faint shadow.  I had him sit just inside the shadow of the awning.  I draped a black cloth behind him and used the telephoto add-on with the iphone on a tripod.  As I rolled camera I told him to think of different moments in his life like when he lost someone he loved, or some moment when he wanted revenge.  Great face to photograph.

I found the telephoto attachment gave me the compression of space I wanted, but basically cut the scan rate in half.  Since he was to be mostly static in this image, it worked.  This is a different image than if I had "zoomed" in with the camera.  Those zooms are only cropping the scan of the chip.

I needed a real telephoto lens to get certain kinds of shots, especially in low light:

So I brought in a second shooter.  He shot on three afternoons and one evening.  About 100 of the shots in the project were done by him.  He used a Canon 5D.  In a chase movie like this one, the ability to change the audience's psychological distance is one of the most powerful tools you have as as filmmaker.

Most of the project was shot with my iphone 4S at its widest giving me what I used for my "normal" lens.  It is very close to a 35mm on a 35mm film camera.  I shot for many years with a Leica M3 double-stroke using a 35mm Summicron lens and really like that focal length.
It gave me a bit of compression:

but also created visual space like a wide:

But I still needed a wide angle.  I had tight interior spaces on numerous vehicles and locations.  My iphone was too long in focal length to be useful for really tight spaces.

Almost 20% of my budget went to the purchase of a GoPro Hero 3+ and all sorts of mounts.  I used it for car interiors:

And for landscapes:

And since I could do underwater shots, I used a GoPro submerged in water dyed red to create one of Anne's nightmare images:

I also kept using the same focal lengths over and over.  I never zoomed the iphone.  My second camera guy was doing my long shots for me (here's a case where having your out line done will inform you as to when you need to bring in someone or something special).  And the GoPro had three wide angle settings.  So when I got in the editing room, I had shots from five focal lengths.  This makes the shifts from one shot to the next easier on the eye.  I don't care for zoom lenses -- unless the DP is willing to limit themselves to only using four or five specific focal lengths.  Attention to these choices while shooting will make your life in the editing room much easier.

How: iphone is not IMAX Part Two

iphone aesthetic v IMAX aesthetic
#iphonenichtimax


The main advantage an iphone has over IMAX every time -- speed.  At this level of film making, speed is everything.  With $4k you aren't going to shoot for very many days.  Including a great deal of camera testing we did in the first month, some of which we used, we shot for a total of one year.

Most of the shooting we did in April and May, then some pick up shots in Aug, and finally the stragglers for various reasons.  59 days.  And a whole year.  Sounds like a lot.  But not when you do the math.

Let's round to 60 days to make it easier.  These are almost all (2 exceptions) half day shoots.  This is because there was no budget to feed people and the light is best here from 2pm until sunset.  The GoPro and iphone both were unreliable for shooting in low light so we were generally done before sunset because the sun dropped behind the mountains -- usually about 4 hours of shooting.  So that's 240 hours of shooting.  Divide that by a 60 hour six day production week and that's a four week shoot.  Which is about the standard length for modestly budgeted indie projects.

Our year shoot gave us lots of time to edit and shoot and re-edit and re-shoot, which sounds awesome until you try to maintain continuity.  The seasons change, even in SoCal and northern Mexico.  Weather shifts.  Construction develops.  Actors move away.  The light changes a little bit every day, even if, and perhaps especially if, it is a bright sunny day.  Again, not saying you should take a year, but plan on it (I planned on six months of shooting . . .).  All sorts of reality impinges on you when, just as one example, everyone is working for free.  If paying work materializes, it must take priority.  Even when everything worked out for us, occasionally, at the last minute, someone would have to bail out and we'd have to push the shoot.

But back to speed.  I had a chase movie that needed to visually move at a quick pace which means lots of shots.  Around 1600 shots were used (averaging one every 3 seconds).  To get to that I shot 4,000 GoPro shots, 2,100 iphone shots, and had a second camera shoot another 400 shots.  In the final edit I used about 400 GoPro shots, 1,100 iphone shots, and 100 of the second camera.

Basically I pulled the trigger on a shot about 6,000 times in all that shooting.  In 60 half days, that's 100 shots a day, that is, about 25 shots an hour.  I was "tripping the shutter" an average of once every 2.4 minutes.  Now that's not entirely true because occasionally I had two cameras rolling, but the point is, I moved fast to get the number of shoots I was looking for.

Why? Because I needed those shots.  If you are using inexperienced or non-actors, you need coverage of every scene to be able to edit a good performance out of them.  If you are doing any action sequences, you will need massive numbers of shots to keep the energy moving.  So drama or action, you need coverage.  Not having coverage was the killer of some of my earlier dramatic short films shot on 16mm.  A 16mm Arri is slow to move around, set up, light for, etc.  I could throw a tripod on the ground with a GoPro or iphone on it, level it with my iphone level app, compose a shot and call action in less than a minute.  A whole minute if I had the opportunity to practice the camera move, first.

So it may sound awesome to "have had the luxury" of an entire year to shoot a film, but down at the fine-grain level, day-to-day, we were moving very fast.  This project would never get completed if it was shot on IMAX.  It would take a decade.

Use the format's strengths to the max.

Which is not to say I found everything it did or didn't do acceptable.

What: Structure and Sequencing Part Two

So how do you create a sequence?

This is what I did:
Break it down on a spreadsheet with one line representing each minute.  Number each line until you get to ninety.  Now go in and bold the lines that are the beginning of your sequences.

In this early story version I was working with six 15 minute sequences. 

Those 15 min seqs got split in half and I began working with 8 min seqs with the intent of growing a few of them to as much as 12 mins.

Regardless of how long the sequences are for the moment, what is important is that you fill in what your main character is doing at the end of each sequence -- not thinking, saying, considering, or wishing for -- what is the character doing?  It should be a point the character is moving toward in the next sequence, brought into focus by what the character wants (not what they need).  The ending of each sequence should move the audience forward with a shift in the dramatic question.

If you don't fully understand dramatic question, the easy answer is: So what's going to happen because of that choice?  For details, check your McKee for the "story gap", as he calls it.  It is largely modulated by the differential between what the character knows and what the audience knows.  In essence, it is the old mantra of always keeping the audience asking the question: But what happens next?

In Holiday, here's what Graham wants, the dramatic question, and what he does at the end, for each sequence:
Seq 1) Wants someone to abduct -- Who will he abduct?/Makes contact with Anne
Seq 2) Wants to abduct Anne -- How will he abduct her?/Abducts Anne
Seq 3) Wants to escape the Russian -- Will he escape the Russians?/Takes Anne to Mexico
Seq 4) Wants to sell Anne -- Will he sell her?/Leaves Anne to set up sale
Seq 5) Wants a car -- Will he return before she escapes?/Returns in car
Seq 6) Wants deal over and done -- Will he catch Anne?/Loses Anne
Seq 7) Wants to find Anne -- Will he sell Anne?/Drives Anne to sale
Seq 8) Wants his money -- Will he survive?/Slithers away into the brush

Some of these are weaker than others so don't use this as anything more than a good attempt -- I want to document what I did, not what I wish I did, so this is what I used.  If you cannot begin with defining six to eight points your character is moving toward, your story will wander and lose your audience.  Begin by considering what might be the important moments to the character in the story you want to tell.  I ended up using only three of my original six sequence endings, adding five new ones as the project developed and it became clear what was going to being interesting as we explored and shot each sequence.

So once you have those anchor points, you know where every scene needs to lead.  Begin to fill in various moments that might lead up to your first anchor point.  Remember one line is one minute and most scenes last at least one minute, but rarely more than 5.  An easy way to start is break the sequences into thirds just like a three act script -- 1/3 for a beginning, 1/3 for the tension to build, and 1/3 for your resolution and wind up to the next scene.

How: iphone is not IMAX Part One

iphone aesthetic v IMAX aesthetic
#iphonenichtimax

IMAX is awesome.  Great format, great camera and lenes, great sound.  Rich.  Powerful.
And very expensive.

We often use the best as the measuring standard and moviemaking is no different.  And even though my iphone now shoots 4k images that look great, an iphone camera is not an IMAX camera.  Since you have $4k, you will not be shooting on IMAX.  Does that mean your project will look "bad" and thus be unmarketable?  Not necessarily.  It won't be mistaken for an IMAX movie, but that doesn't mean you won't have something marketable.  The first step in this process is to accept what is so about the format you chose and know when and how to get the results you want within the limitations of the format, IMAX or iphone.

Back a long time ago I shot landscape photography with a Rollei medium-format film camera, but I also shot Polaroids.  Each had their virtues and their limitations, but no one said work done with an SX-70 (by the likes of Warhol and Ansel Adams, to name a few) was "not as good" simply because it didn't meet up to a different format's standards of excellence.  It was just a different aesthetic.  iphone is not IMAX.  That's better in some ways, worse in others.  Embrace it for its advantages and in the areas where it falls short of IMAX, do what you must, then allow it to be whatever it is.

Using an iphone creates an aesthetic with its own calculus.  For the moment, it is most certainly an "outsider aesthetic", due to certain technical specifications compared to studio output, but it will quickly become the norm.  With the transition from scheduled network tv to internet-based delivery there is a growing appetite for content -- but at a much lower rate.  It will be interesting to see what is "outside" at the point of complete digital conversion and content shot on cell phones becomes the majority of the product consumed.  For now, if you make a film for $4k, you are part of an "outsider aesthetic".

Which is not to say that working in an "outsider aesthetic" means the work is, by default, interesting.  Not all punk bands were interesting.  You still need to create something worth a response.  This is about discernment, not a judgement.  Good vs. bad is a lame, lazy way to breakdown the world.  Don't think that you'll magically end up with a hip indie movie just because you shot it on an iphone.  And besides that, very cool work is done every year in IMAX, almost always using an "insider aesthetic" (the business calls them genres).

So don't think that because you edited together 85 minutes of iphone footage you have something watchable, or a project you can sell, because it's "outside".  If no one wants to sit through it, maybe it's not because it's too hip for your audience; maybe it's just boring.  For me, an outsider aesthetic comments on insider norms by turning those norms in on themselves, calling their authority into question.  For certain, your $4k project is going to have an "outside aesthetic", no matter what you do.  How you play in that aesthetic is what will distinguish you.

For the most part, my iphone 4S and GoPro cameras did what they did and I went with it.  The image I got was the image I worked with.

Sometimes it was really good and sometimes with the iphone the contrast range was too much and either shadows went dark or highlights popped over 255.  Sometimes the focus drifted -- not an issue with the GoPros since they are fixed focus.  The GoPros, however, when I was first started using them, I didn't know what I was shooting because I didn't have a display for the cameras (I later bought one for the Hero 3+).  I could see through the lens with an app on my iphone (as long as I wasn't also shooting with my phone), but when the camera rolled the image blanked out.  Some worked, some didn't.   

Most of the time I didn't use less than technically well-executed images, but sometimes I did.  The only question was: "Does the image effectively convey the emotion of the moment?"  I had one person tell me those shots were "bad" shots.  Sure compared to IMAX.

I did pay attention when it came to the lighting, especially with the iphone.  The GoPro was awesome -- I sometimes pointed right into the sun and still got a good image.  At this level of filmmaking you need to just go with what it gives you.  The auto-focus, auto-exposure, auto color balance all solve many issues, but create new ones, as well.

I loved having an instant synced production soundtrack and it was great to shoot around crowded areas without attracting attention -- I just looked like another tourist with a cell phone.

But the main advantage an iphone has over IMAX every time -- speed.

What: Structure and Sequencing Part One

You must have a structure to your project.

I was taught this the very first day of MFA screenwriting school and will spend the rest of my life refining and toying with story structure.  Otherwise your story will be singing the ramblin' blues . . . if you want to know how to create a structure read your McKee.  There is no why, only do.

Novels have chapters, features have sequences.  Run a sequence too short and the audience will feel cheated.  Run a sequence too long and audiences will get antsy.  It is difficult to maintain an idea for 90 minutes so you need to be organized.  And although you should not write a screenplay, you will be doing all the storytelling work you should be doing in your screenwriting anyway, so don't think you'll be getting out of any writing . . .

Holiday is structured into 8 sequences running 8-12 min for a total run time of 84:30 with credits (or at least at this post).  It didn't start out that way.

My Co-producer came to me and said he wanted to do a movie about an abductor of women who fools a naive young woman into falling for him, then drugs her, takes her to Mexico and sells her to a slimy Indian businessman.  I agreed, for a number of reasons I'll get into later.

I was interested -- in a car wreck horrified way really -- what sort of person my co-producer thought a women abductor might be.  I'd never write a script about such a character because I would have no idea what sort of person I was writing about.  So I started asking questions.

The structure of the story developed by me asking my co-producer the question of "What does Graham do?"  That is, by asking the Deluezian question of "How does it (he) work?"  That is, how does Graham's character work in the story?  Graham's actions drive the story, so "What does he do?" is the most important question to ask.  More on that later.

For a plot generator, I used the Greek story of the abduction of Helen as my model -- one of the ur-texts of the revenge genre in all its glorious ambiguity.  More on that soon.

Originally, I planned on six sequences 15 to 18 minutes each.  The six sequences in my diary:

That developed into an excel spreadsheet to create a detailed outline:

By the time we started shooting, I modified the six sequences into eight that breakdown this way --
Each sequence ends with an event for the main characters that moves us forward:
Seq 1 ends when Graham speaks to Anne/Anne lost
Seq 2 Graham drugs Anne/Anne trusts Graham
Seq 3 Graham carries Anne into blackness/Anne drugged, unconscious
Seq 4 Graham leaves Anne/Anne drugged, hallucinates
Seq 5 Graham returns for Anne/Anne runs
Seq 6 Graham loses Anne/Anne goes with Hermit
Seq 7 Graham stops car/Anne waits
Seq 8 Graham crawls away/Anne escapes

The excel outline I developed later was used for editing and later, scoring:

All this began with notes in a diary.  The details of what happened sequence to sequence changed as opportunities to shoot both materialized and dematerialized, but the structure of the sequences remained consistent.

You need an outline to begin or you won't even know what time of day to be shooting or who needs to be where and when.  It doesn't have to be fancy -- just a starting point.  Shooting pictures is the best way to generate ideas for your outline.

What, How, Who? Recap

So now let me get into details.

My intention is to post what I did to get this project done and once I have commented on all that I think someone might find helpful I will close out the blog.

As to the current status of the project, we completing a rough sound mix and may try and throw the project out there to one or two people in February to test the waters on our potential reception.  More as that moves forward.

If you are just starting your own project, develop broad general answers to these questions and spend the rest of your project refining and detailing them:

1) What is your story?
Focus on this: A detailed outline and a main character rubric

2) How will you record your story?
Focus on this: Maximize what shows up for your camera each day

3) Who is your audience?
Focus on this: Consumable vs. confrontational for your audience

I'll categorize my posts across the three questions: What?, How?, and Who?