The exception to the above rule: Aliens. Anyone know of any others?

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=942798092920&oid=159368299750

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=936153289160&oid=159368299750

I think one of the things that makes filmmaking so difficult, is that it’s nearly impossible to know what you’re in for until you’re already into the filming. This was especially true in our case, being inexperienced filmmakers. Even professionals though can attest to this difficulty. This is why you commonly hear of studio films going over budget or falling behind schedule. Everything seemed to take 3 times the resources we anticipated. 3x the tape (or in our case sd card memory), 3x the helping hands, and primarily – 3x the time. Everything from shooting to editing took way longer than anticipated. Unlike writing a paper, which I’ve done hundreds of times and am able to now estimate how long a paper will take me, we had very little experience to base our estimates for time necessary to produce this film.

To be continued….

Not that I wasn’t excited to begin with for his first film since Titanic. But, Cameron’s been conceptualizing and working on this film for decades (ok, at least a decade). When I first heard about this movie, I didn’t even know what an avatar was. Now, in this strange world we live in, the real economy tanked, but the virtual goods economy is stronger than ever – people spend on their avatars as their homes are being foreclosed.

I can’t think of any other film that was in development for years that actually became more relevant as time went on, before it was even released. I can’t think of many things more rewarding as a filmmaker than you’re “ahead of it’s time vision” becoming reality right on schedule. It’s  truly a testament to Cameron’s skill as a visionary.

Here’s a couple movie I’m really looking forward to:

http://www.apple.com/trailers/independent/themenwhostareatgoats/

http://www.apple.com/trailers/disney/toystory3/hd/

http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/shutterisland/

1. What do I belevee in? Jenica asked this in her interview and I’ve been thinking about it a lot since. It was initially difficult to answer this question, but I think I’ve almost got it figured out.

2. The different ways that films come together depending on how involved each person is in each stage. For example, if the same person writes, edits, and directs how does that produce a different theme vs a film where you have a screenwriter with no involvement in the filming and then an editor that also had no involvement in filming or input from the director while editing?

3. How is today’s reality different from the future presented in films of the past? What does that say about our civilization? Is it art imitating life or life imitating art?

That should be some good content to get me started again. The lack of posts certainly wasn’t due to writers block, just lack of ritual. As long as I can get back into a routine, I’ll have plenty to blog about.

Writing our screen play was different. First, being something new, I had to spend a significant amount of time researching and thinking about the form. Secondly, the collaborative group element had many distinct advantages and disadvantages. Finally, the script, scenes, and story itself evolved several times throughout our process, requiring repeated micro-iterations of my normal process.

After 17 years of school, researching the form of a paper isn’t something I often need to do, but looking at other screenplays critically before writing ours was very beneficial to our group’s process.  What makes screenplay writing so different and difficult is that you need to think about plot and character development the same way you do with fiction, but then you need to add visual direction as well; showing vs telling becomes much more literal and complex. Look at examples of other screen plays such as Star Wars and the Big Lebowski helped me understand the way writers structure the movie on the page. In those screenplays, I found they provide enough direction to get across their point, while leaving the director enough freedom to add their vision as well. Another aspect of screenwriting that adds to its difficulty is that, unlike fiction or research papers where the author audience relationship is very linear, films are open to far more angles of interpretation. For example when writing a story, the reader only see that sentence on the page. On film you still have the sentence, but then you must also think about camera angles, what’s going on in the background, and minor details such as brief facial expressions that can more easily be used to “show” than in other forms. Understanding all of this was critical to our screen writing process. Keeping it constantly in the back of our minds led to many, many rewrites of scenes as the story evolved.

Writing in a group was also a very new experience for me. Taking other people’s visions and voices into account was extremely difficult at first, but ultimately had many advantages as well. We started our writing process by throwing out ideas we’d all thought about. All of our ideas were completely different. When we played the “4 W’s and an H” game to hash out a story, my other group members said things that I honestly don’t think I would have ever thought on my own. Incorporating their thoughts was very difficult, because it meant I had to let go of some of my own preferences. I think all of my group members felt the same way initially, which made it difficult for us to get going.

Each of us pulling the story in a different direction was counterproductive at first, though once we got into a rhythm, it became beneficial. I found that collaborating significantly increases the likelihood that your story will appeal to a large audience, as opposed to one with all the same tastes as myself.  The story we created as a result of our collaboration was better than what I think I would have been able to produce individually.

Finally, the combination of screenwriting unfamiliar and collaborating in a group, led to our process involving several complete rewrites of our script. This was absolutely necessary as our finished product was a far better and strong story than our original draft. I don’t often turn in a paper much different from the one in my first draft, but it’s very easy to see why this was beneficial to our process. First, there is the compounding of ideas. We had four members constantly thinking about the script pulling it in different directions. Each of of would come to class with 3-4 thoughts on our last draft and then each of would come up with 3-4 thoughts on everyone else’s feedback. With so much input, the story is bound to evolve and as writers we had to embrace that to improve it. The ideas we were thinking of ranged from story line changes to realistic filming concerns. As we embraced each new direction, we often had to rewrite many ideas that came before it. The screenwriting process was a completely different formula than what I’m used to. Generally when I write, I just continue to build and build on previous ideas. With film writing, I found when I change one element or variable of the equation, everything else changes a little bit too to balance everything back out. Thus, all the rewrites.

Looking back on this process, I think it would be very beneficial for me to try to apply some of these screen writing techniques to my other writing processes. For example, I can see how looking back over the entirety of a research paper after making a minor change anywhere can be beneficial because it might give it a more organic feel; it could help insure that every word contributes something as is absolutely necessary in film. Looking at examples of other’s work is something I haven’t done recently when writing academic papers, but with how much it helped to get me going with screenwriting,that is something I should also try.

Overall, the most important thing I learned about writing processes with this project was to go with the flow. Screenplays are very much alive in that you are literally writing people into existence. Naturally, the screen play grows and matures as does every person. Sometimes its going to decide to leave home and runaway or quit its job and change careers or go through a midlife crisis. If you try to force it to stay with your original path ,it just won’t feel right. You really have to listen to your characters and let the screenplay take you where its heading on its own.

I am also not, nor have I even gone by the alias, Andres Santamaria. Upon closer inspection of these receipts, it appeared to me that an individual, Andres Santamaria of 3611 18th St San Francisco, Ca 94110, for some reason (and some how) used my work email address to register his itunes account. The receipts show that all he ever downloads are free applications, so my initial reaction of fanatical anger at the stealing of my identity quickly turned to genuine puzzlement.

Why in the world would this Andres Santamaria register his itunes account to some random email address? I’ve spent more than a few minutes of my day over the past couple months pondering this question. Maybe he doesn’t have an email address? But then how does he have a computer and itunes? Maybe it wasn’t random at all? But it’s not actually harming me in any way, so why would someone do this?

I have not being able to answer a single one of these questions, but have made several attempts to make the emails stop. The first thing I did was attempt to change the password on the account. I figured alright, I’ll change the password, Andres Santamaria will know I’m onto him and he’ll back off and be locked out of the system. So I went through the “forgot my password” steps on apple.com and was able to get a new password setup. Unfortunately, there are two ways to retrieve a password for an itunes account – by having a link sent to your email to change the password, or by answering security questions. There is no possible way to change your security questions after the account has been created. A couple weeks after this, Andres Santamaria did not get the message, but instead went through the requisite steps, changed his password back and begin using the account linked to my email address once again.

I then tried calling apple support, but they were no help – there is no actual support center for itunes, only mobile me.

I have thought about what I can do and if I should do anything at all to reclaim my email address each and every time I get one of those emails with the subject “Tu recibo…”

I decided to write about this because I thought it might make for good scratching material for myself or someone in the future.

Joey: Well check it out, I was with this really hot girl who just moved in right across the street!

Chandler: Really? Right across the street?

Joey: Yeah!

Chandler: When’d you meet her?

Joey: Two days ago.

Chandler: Excellent! Y’know Ross met somebody too!

Joey: Oh yeah?

Ross: (returning) Hey.

Chandler: Hi! How’d it go?

Ross: Oh great! We’re going out again Saturday. But I just found she’s also seeing some other guy.

Chandler: (sarcastically shocked) Really?! Joe? What would you do if you were in Ross’s situation?

Joey: Well, I sorta am. I mean yeah, I’m dating this girl who’s also seeing another guy. But, I don’t know, I’m not to worried about it.

Ross: Well you shouldn’t be. Believe me I wouldn’t want to be the guy who’s up against you. (Chandler laughs.) I mean that doofus is going to lose!

Chandler: So this is nice! I wish I didn’t have to go, believe me! But unfortunately I have to. (He gets up and Joey moves over next to Ross.) Oh uh, by the way, what’s the name the girl you’re dating?

Joey and Ross: Kristen Lang.

Chandler: Bye! (Exits.)

[Scene: Central Perk, time lapse from the earlier scene.]

Ross: Well obviously only one of us can keep dating her.

Joey: Obviously! So, how do we decide?

Ross: Well now let’s-let’s look at this objectively, I think I should date her…

Joey: (not buying it) Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Or, or I’m the one who dates her.

Ross: That’s interesting, but check this out. I date her…

Joey: Yeah-yeah I like that but just to go in another direction…

Ross: Okay, okay. This can go on for a while.

Joey: Yeah well we should order some food then.

Ross: No Joey! Look why don’t, why don’t we just let her decide? Okay? Hey-hey, we’ll each go out with her one more time. And-and we’ll see who she likes best.

Joey: (smiling) That sounds fair.

Ross: Maybe I’ll take her to that new French restaurant down the street…

Joey: Ah yeah—wait a second now! Look we’re gonna have to set a spending limit on the date. I don’t have the money to take her to a fancy place like that.

Ross: Well sorry, that’s what I do on dates.

Joey: All right, well I guess I’ll just have to do what I do on dates.

Ross: So let’s decide on the spending limit…

Joey: Yeah. Uh, (thinks)…a slice…(Thinks)…six dollars?

Ross: I was thinking more like a hundred.

Joey: Okay. Can I borrow 94 dollars?

I think Quentin Tarrantino’s films are a great example of not especially innovative but certainly awesome films. Pulp Fiction for example is pretty simple movie in terms of film and story telling techniques. Sure it uses multiple story lines set at slightly different times to weave the tale as a whole, but this is just rare at the time, it wasn’t the first film or story told this way. There’s very little special effects and the shots aren’t especially innovative in and of themselves. What makes Pulp Fiction, so enjoyable to watch its it’s awesomeness factor. The dialog is riveting, thoughtful, humorous, casual and ultimately completely unexpected when considering the characters.  The topics discussed on screen are quite simply fun to watch. He manages to make John Travolta a bad ass that the audience loves. I could go on and on, but the point is, Pulp Fiction doesn’t reinvent the wheel of film making the way  Star Wars or the Matrix did, but it succeeded greatly because every detail is just awesome.

Another more concrete example comes from comparing the films Armageddon and Deep Impact. Both are stories about an object from space about to collide with earth and wipe out humanity. Armageddon has huge explosions (courtesy of Jerry Bruckenheimer), hilarious and relateable characters (played by Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck, Billy Bob Thorton, Michael Clarke Duncan and others) and a story line where America saves the world, stirring up feelings of patriotism and pride in its audience. Deep Impact on the other hand I remember very little about because it didn’t resonate  at all with me; there was nothing awesome about it. I don’t remember being impressed by big explosions, any memorable characters, and at the end of the film half of the comet actually hits earth. Armageddon had a larger than life production, which was awesome, and that’s a large part of the reason it succeeded more than Deep Impact.

I think the lesson for film makers, especially writers, is that they aren’t going to be able to tell a story that’s never been told before, but that shouldn’t even be their goal. Their goal should be making a film that makes a full theater audience go, “Wow!” and say “Yes!” when the main characters do things they can relate to.