Filmmaking is fading…..

All you dutiful film students know what I’m talking about.  All you online reviewers and movie geeks and talk-backers… you’re with me on this.  I can feel it.

Filmmaking is fading…..

Can you imagine someone telling a Michael Bay story around the campfire?   Picture a campfire story told as a run-on sentence while the narrator runs circles around the firepit.  Makes for an exhausted listener – who cares if the story makes sense?

The funny thing is that's actually how Michael Bay introduces himself to people...

Remember that guy on the second season of Survivor who passed out from smoke and fell into the fire and burned the skin off his hands?  Now imagine… a whole troop of Boy Scouts listening to their troop leader trying to verbally recreate TWILIGHT by firelight.  And imagine a whole troop of Boy Scouts passing out from a case of ‘what-the-fuck?’ and l anding face first into the fire.

"So wait... vampires sparkle and werewolves are shirtless and in jean shorts? Did Joel Schumacher makes this up?"

And I dare someone to try and recite any movie that begins with the oxymoronic credit “A Brett Ratner Film.”  Babies will have strokes.

Today's ridiculous Hollywood captured in a single shot.

Babies will have strokes.

The visual language that filmmakers use to indulge our emotions, build suspense, suspend disbelief, and have us leaning in closer to the campfire is travelling down the same road towards extinction that Latin, Aramaic, and jive did.   A dead language, if you will.

Filmmaking is fading…..

I’m a staunch advocate that if it’s not on the page, it’s not on the stage.  But what if your stage is a piece of shit?  KING LEAR is one of the great masterpieces… but who’d know that if they staged the play during a rave?  Shakespeare with glow sticks, DJ What’s-His-Face, and a bucket full of ecstasy!   Bring on the whip-its! All substance would succumb to flashy distraction, and a great story would lose its’ chance to find a new audience.

Conversely, I’m not lamenting the new digital age.  CGI has its’ place.  Motion Capture has its’ place.   I’m as huge a fan of the ’super-new-cool-wow-amazing- special-effects’ as the next nerd, but like every great new prescription drug, there are side effects.

The main one being:  no limitations.

Filmmakers need limits to tap into creativity.  It’s similar to why many writers work best on a deadline.   It’s also similar to the reason a good parent will refuse to spoil a child.

“Ah, who needs to storyboard?  If it doesn’t work, we’ll just fix it in post with CGI later.”

If you spoil a filmmaker, and give him-or-her every available tool at their disposal before they’ve grounded themselves with the proper foundation of ‘film language,’ then they’ll become undisciplined and indulgent and lazy.

No Limitations = Lazy Filmmakers.

Take this quote from JURASSIC PARK for example, where Ian Malcolm is explaining why DNA and dinosaurs don’t mix:

“I’ll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you’re using here: it didn’t require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn’t earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don’t take any responsibility… for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could and before you even knew what you had you patented it and packaged it and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now – you’re SELLING it, you’re SELLING it…”

Kind of sums it up for me.

In today’s world… all the best shots and angles of a film are in the trailer.  Hey, you only need a few good shots to sell a movie, right?  I mean, hell, TRANSFORMERS became a huge hit, not because of cool robots, but because of this shot:

Hell, I was sold.  It’s my favorite shot of the whole film.  But it’s really Megan Fox who’s doing all the heavy lifting here.  All Michael Bay had to do was point and shoot.

Now, for contrast, look at some of these shots from Robert Rossen’s THE HUSTLER.

Never mind the rich black-and-white photography.  Never mind how goddamn cool Newman looks playing pool.  The blocking alone would’ve had me… everyone in the frame is perfectly positioned for maximum effect.  You could frame each and every one of those shots and sell it as art.

I miss movies like this.  I miss filmmakers like this.  I miss storytellers who are more concerned with visually crafting a story with elegance, dignity, grace and style, and less concerned with simply ‘blowing up that story good.’

But I refuse to give up.

I refuse to believe that future filmmakers will be illiterate in the language of film.

I refuse to fathom a cinematic existence where shot composition and fluid master shots and mise-en-scene and the simple art of blocking actors within a frame will cease to be appreciated.

And I refuse to submit to the popular opinion that a modern day audience is too impatient to enjoy a well-crafted film.

So in effort to staunch the tide of ‘bad form,’ I’m fighting back.  I’m starting a column called THE LOST ART OF FILMMAKING.

Each week (hopefully, I won’t be tardy) I’ll present to you a clip from a film that I feel demonstrates a technique or stylistic choice or what-have-you that I feel we see far too little of in cinema nowadays.  And then three things will happen:

• You’ll watch the clip.
• I’ll tell you why that clip is obviously awesome.
• And maybe you’ll watch it a second time with new insight.

Some choices may be quite obvious or very famous.  Some may have escaped your attention.  But my intent is not only to educate (please Lord, grant me the ability to not suffer the pitfalls of pretention and high-falutin’ snobbery) but also to pay homage and respect to the examples of film that inspired me and stick out in my mind the most.   Maybe I’ll even surprise some of you along the way….

I’ll try posting each new  ‘episode’ on Wednesdays, to help get you over the hump of it all.  First up this Wednesday?   Let’s just say it has to do with a twenty-five foot fella named Bruce….

Stay tuned!

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