How are we thinking about next semester already?

I registered for classes this morning. Next semester I'll be taking Production II, Thesis Preparation (I've no idea what that'll be about), Advanced Directing, and Cinematography. I think that's going to be a lot of fun.

In the meantime though I have to get through the second half of this semester. I have this weird feeling today of being ready and at the same time being sure it's all going to fly and I'll be rushing through everything. I still need to write up/sort out what I'm going to say for my presentation next week, but I finished all the reading for it so it's just a matter of getting my head together and I'm feeling good about that. This afternoon I finished reading the book I need to give a report on for Acting. So I have to write that up, but am largely ready for it. So most of what's left for the next 6 weeks is doing stuff rather than passively receiving stuff (if you know what I mean). That's great, I like doing. But a few of the things to do - particularly writing the ghost tours script, and producing the final project for Production 1 - are things I would have taken more than 6 weeks on even if they were the only thing I was doing.

I was talking to Debbie yesterday and said the best thing about school has been the concentrated creativity. In 3 and a half months I'll have created 2 scripts and 3 very short films (plus written a couple of papers and watched a ton of movies). I love not having a job. When I was working full time I would spend twice as long and get only one of those things done.

While I wait for the lights to go out

It's been a weird 24 hours or so. Everyone was preparing for the hurricane yesterday, so I did too, and a bit more this morning. And everyone I know up and down the coast has been off school and/or work today, which was generally announced last night. So I've spent all of this time trying to get stuff done before the power goes out. Now according to the Globe there are over 350,000 people in Massachusetts without power, but so far I've had a nice quiet productive day. It just feels a bit weird, like I've been rushing to get stuff done when in fact I apparently had plenty of time.

A Fresh Start

Well, the 600 or so  pages of reading and the 3 films that I never managed to cross off my to-do list can now be set aside and I have a new chance to not fall behind. Of course I didn't do any of the reading or watching for today because I was studying for the exam so I'm already behind, but not so far as to be unrecoverable.

The same but different

We had an exercise for screenwriting where we were all given the same backstory and characters and premise and then had to write a scene for it. Part of the point of the exercise was making sure we all know how to properly format things. And part of it was to prove a point: there may not be any new stories, but every old story told by a new person is unique. They're all up on the class web page now so we can read them before tomorrow and that point is very well proved. One was set in 1944 (mine), one was set in 2114, the rest were contemporary. And if you had stripped the names off I probably still could have said who had written what. We all bring ourselves to our work and so it has to be unique.

Mom was having a similar experience this week in her pottery class. They were making mountains. And that was the assignment: make a mountain with a house. And she said she was really entertained by how different everyone's mountains were.

I think that's what I like about art and creativity. It has to be unique even when it's similar just because every artist is unique. But also every viewer is unique and everyone will look at the same thing and get something different out of it. So no, there may not be any new stories, but every telling, and every hearing has its own newness.

films of the week and the upcoming exam

I've watched a bunch of things this week in an attempt to catch up on all the required viewing before next week's exam. I saw Force of Evil (Abraham Polonsky, 1947), but to be honest sitting here right now I can't tell you a thing about it. This is a problem, they're all starting to blur. The Battle of San Pietro (John Huston, 1944), a documentary that was trying to be supportive of the war effort, but was so brutal they didn't actually show it until after the war ended. The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (Lewis Milestone, 1946) a noir film that I liked a lot and we talked about in class today. A Letter to Three Wives (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1949) a women's film that I also enjoyed, particularly in contrast to Ivers. Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1950) that is where the famous line "I'm ready for my closeup Mr. de Mille." comes from. And Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren, 1943) which is an Avant Guard short film that we watched in class today.

a good quote

There seems no doubt that a group can make or break its members, and that it's more powerful than the individuals in it. A great group can propel its members forward so that they achieve amazing things. Many teachers don't seem to think that manipulating a group is their responsibility at all. If they're working with a destructive, bored group they just blame the students for being 'dull', or uninterested. It's essential for the teacher to blame himself if the group aren't in a good state.

Normal schooling is intensely competitive, and the students are supposed to try and outdo each other. If I explain to a group that they're to work for the other members, that each individual is to be interested in the progress of the other members, they're amazed, yet obviously if a group supports its own members strongly, it'll be a better group to work in.

This comes from Keith Johnstone's book Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre. He's an acting teacher and that's what the book is mostly about, but earlier in his life he'd been an elementary school teacher (8 to 10 year olds). He's British and he was teaching school in the 50s and acting in the 60s and 70s. (Maybe later, but the book was copyright 1979.) What I find interesting is how much he seems to be describing the American educational system. And America generally, really. We are so competitive, so individualistic. I can and will make it on my own. I can't win unless you lose. And yet to me his point seems so obvious. If we work together we will achieve so much more than if we rely only on ourselves.

I think that's one of the things that draws me to filmmaking. It's a team sport. you can't really do it alone. And in my experience the ideas that start out just in my head end up so much better after the collaborative group gets involved.

Company Man

We reviewed my first film project in class this morning. I used my phone to record it when it was projected (see below). The assignment was to tell a story in 1.5 to 2.5 minutes. There would be no sound. We had certain shots we had to have (use each lens at least once, do a pan, do a tilt, do a POV shot, stuff like that). And we had to do "in camera editing" which means you only get one take for each shot and then have to move on. I think, considering the limitations of the assignment and the fact that we were all just helping each other so I didn't actually have an old man in the park which would have been better, it came out pretty good.

Writing outlines

I think screenwriting is my favorite class. Once again I walk out feeling really energized and ready to write. Sadly the assignment for this week is to write the outline for our longer film and it's the shorter one that I have better figured out and ready to go. I'm posting the first draft of my outline below. It's due on Thursday preferably or Monday at the outside. I'm having trouble figuring it out so comments and brainstorming will be very welcome. I'm not married to the idea of flashbacks and I'm not sure about Sarah's 3 ideas or the consequences of them.

EDIT: 9 hours later and a bit of brainstorming with 2 different people and some progress has been made. I've posted all the changes below. If you missed the first draft that's probably just as well.

Naked City

I'm jumping around in my to-do list, half of which is stuff that's past due and half stuff that's due over the next week. I actually intended to finally watch Scarface tonight which was from last week but Netflix wouldn't stream it so I watched Naked City instead. As a person overly fond of the detective genre both on TV and in films this was right up my alley. It wasn't film noir or the hard boiled detective and I'm wondering if it was the precursor to both. We'll find out more next week. In the meantime it was just a fun film. It had this wonderful narrator with a mix of telling us what's going on and sort of "talking" to the detectives. But it's a style you don't see any more. And it ends with that great line: there are 8 million stories in the naked city, this was one of them. 

today's films were depressing

On Thursday we watched Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) which was a post-code gangster movie. What makes it post-code? The gangster redeems himself in the end. The code says you can't have any drugs, can't have too much violence, and certainly can't glorify violence. So there's often people getting shot, but there's never any blood. And at the end of the day the gangster has to do something to make him the bad guy with the heart of gold. In fact in this one there were moments well before the end. We ended up on a discussion of Gangsters vs Westerns. Both are full of men prone to violence. In the Western he comes to town, uses violence to help the community, and then leaves at the end because he's far too violent to actually be part of any civilized community. All the classic westerns end with the hero riding off into the sunset. The hero in a Gangster however doesn't have anywhere to go. He starts out a part of the community. In Angels very early on he gets back to town after having been in and out of jail for 10 years and the community welcomes him back. "Sure I'll rent you a room in my boarding house even though I know exactly who you are and what you've done." He grew up there. Since civilized society can't therefore send him on his way he has to become civilized somehow and/or die. In this case both.