The VES Handbook of Visual Effects

Books on Film

The VES Handbook of Visual Effects
Edited by Jeffrey A. Okun &  Susan Zwerman

Unlike the last book I talked about this one is long (1138 pages) and also kinda expensive (a new copy is about £40 on Amazon). I’d also call it essential reading for a lot of people, in this case people interested in VFX and also directing.

There’s the thing I see happen a lot where directors spend time learning all this different stuff about filmmaking and become experts on cinematography and editing and sometimes sound but they almost always ignore the visual effects side. I never understood it. You can even tell how much a filmmaker knows about something by watching their films. You could have the best DP in the world but if the director doesn’t know a thing about putting shots together there’ll be a big difference between what their film will look like and a director who does know. Same with anything else. Same with VFX. Not only that but directors that come from a background in VFX like Neil Blomkamp or Gareth Evans are able to bring in effects laden movies on a much smaller budget than others. 

I’ve even seen this happen on stuff I’ve worked on. I have nothing but respect for the people I’ve worked with and I’m thankful for the work I’ve gotten but sometimes things swing towards wanting stuff that is almost impossible to do or they play it so safe in what they ask for that how it’s shot is kinda unremarkable. I do what I can to advise them on how best to shoot it but I can’t help but wonder what would happen if they knew as much as I did. Not to mention that if a writer/directer knew how to do VFX they could develop the VFX and write at the same time in a way that they could complement each other (that’s how District 9 was made btw). And yeah, I know what you’re saying “It’s the VFX artist’s job to do what the director wants” and that’s true it is (and most of what I’ve learned came from a director asking for something that I then had to figure out how to pull off) but depending on what kind of budget you’re working on it’s not always possible to shoot for the moon. The flip side is that just because you don’t have a lot of resources doesn’t mean the project can’t have any effects and you’d be surprised at the kind of stuff that is relatively simple but can still add a lot.

It’s one of the pieces of advise I’d give to someone interested in directing that I don’t see being said anywhere else. Learn something about VFX. This book is a good place to start and also try and get your hands on something like After Effects or Nuke and do a bunch of tutorials and help yourself get a better understanding of it all. 

I’ve heard some people say that this book can be a little dense and overwhelming for anyone that comes to it with zero knowledge of VFX. I already knew a bunch when I first read this so I can’t comment on what it would be like approaching it fresh but I do know that I loved this book and think everyone interested in filmmaking and VFX should read it.

In the Blink of an Eye

Books on Film

In The Blink of an Eye

by Walter Murch

Walter Murch was an editor on ‘Apocalypse Now’, ‘The Conversation’, ‘The Talented Mr. Ripley’ and a bunch of others. This book is based on a lecture he gave on editing.

It’s a short book (146 pages) and only about half of it is based on the lecture. The second half is about his thoughts on moving over to digital editing. Despite the short length I’d still call it essential reading for anyone interested in filmmaking.

I saw one review on Amazon where someone was complaining that it doesn’t actually teach anything about editing apart from ‘one trick’. That’s a complete misreading of it though. He’s not trying to teach a bunch of editing ‘tricks’ but talking about an overall philosophy and I’d say the book is probably more valuable to a director or DP than to an editor.

The book is short so I can’t really get into too much detail so I’ll end by saying I loved this book and consider it essential. Buy it!

Screenwriting 101 Film Crit Hulk

Books on Film

Screenwriting 101

Film Crit Hulk

What kind of name is ‘Film Crit Hulk’?

Okay so, this always leads to an awkward introduction. This guy is easily my favourite person writing about movies right now. He works in the film industry but can’t reveal who he is so he writes anonymously under the guise of The Incredible Hulk. This includes writing in ALL CAPS and also kinda writing in ‘Hulk Speak’. He’s pretty eloquent though and at this point the hulk speak is pretty much just referring to himself in the third person. If you think being eloquent goes against the Hulk persona though, it doesn’t. Read up on the comics ;)

He also has a good reason for writing like that in that it effects how people actually take in what he’s saying. Without getting too much into it what ends up happening is that people pay more attention to the text (instead of just skimming) and they engage with the actual ideas more than how it’s written. Also, just the very idea of having a character known for being a giant rage monster advocate for sincerity and humanity and being nice and cuddly effects how people view things in terms of what’s on the surface and what’s underneath.

The writing can seem a bit much to take in at first (his articles are also super long) but I’ve been reading his stuff for years now and I can read his stuff so easily now I don’t even notice the style. I can easily read his stuff for hours at a time and often do just re-read a bunch of his articles in a row.

So anyway, what’s the book about?

It’s about screenwriting! It’s also very much about storytelling in general. A huge section of the book just deals with what most other screenwriting books don’t even bother with; what even is a story? Why do we tell them? How do you find a story to tell?

Other books, and screenwriting advice in general can also end up giving you a lot of ‘rules’. “Here’s the structure you need to follow. Here’s what you have to do. Here’s what you absolutely aren’t allowed to put in a script.” It’s all bullshit of course. Just look at any interview with a working screenwriter where any of these rules come up and they just laugh them off. Some people even try to claim they’re not telling you what rules to follow but giving you ‘principles’. “I’m not saying you *have* to do it like this, but all these successful films seem to follow this rule so…” They usually don’t give you a good reason for *why* to follow these principles except to point out a bunch of good movies that seem to follow them or to just shrug and say “hey, they just *work*”

Enter Hulk. He spends a good part of the book just tackling two of the most common things that screenwriters are told to follow ‘Three Act Structure’ and ‘The Heroes Journey’. He actually takes them apart, dealing with how they actually work and what effect they have on a story. His plan is take stuff that often end up becoming restrictive and instead make them freeing.

There’s a lot more too! It’s honestly the best thing about writing I’ve ever read and I’d call it essential reading for anyone interested in writing or filmmaking. I’d even recommend it to anyone that is just interested in movies in general. It really is great and I’ve read it 3 times since I picked it up just over a year ago (I even read it twice in the past 3 months!)

What a minute Paul, you’re not a working screenwriter! How can you know that this is better than any other book about writing? If something like ‘Save The Cat’ speaks just as confidently as this Hulk guy how can you know to recommend one over the other? Even if Hulk really does work in the industry how you know he knows what he’s talking about?

Well, I’ve been interested in writing and specifically screenwriting for years now and I’ve been paying attention to what kind of advice people have been giving about it for over 10 years now. If you pay attention that long and you specifically listen to the differences between what working writers say and what ‘script gurus’ say then you start seeing patterns. A lot of it comes down to aforementioned ‘rules’ and ‘principles’ and how they are talked about. Any ‘rule’ or ‘guideline’ should only exist to serve the story you are telling. It shouldn’t be just there because it ‘just works’ or whatever. You start learning the difference between actual advice and what’s essentially the writing version of snake oil buzzwords. Plus ‘Save The Cat’ is a fucking joke and any writer that’s talked about it has nothing good to say. If you can find a single good screenwriter that praises it I’ll buy you a house. (*)

Okay so I’m interested…

Great! Well, the great thing about this book is that it’s a pretty cheap ebook. It’s only £2.99 on Amazon. You can get it (here)

There’s more too! Since people people genuinely have issues with the All Caps stuff buying it means you get both an All Caps version and a regular text version. You don’t have to take all my praise at my word either, you can read a section from the book (here). In this excerpt he talks about Three Act Structure.
You can also check out a bunch of articles he’s written online (here). Enjoy!

(*) - not legally binding

Birdman (or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

Birdman (or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

Directed By:  Alejandro González Iñárritu

Written By: Alejandro González Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris, Armando Bo, Raymond Carver

Starring: Michael Keaton, Emma Stone, Edward Norton, Naomi Watts, Zach Galifianakis, Andrea Riseborough, Amy Ryan

Preface

I set up this blog a while ago but haven’t really written a lot for it. A big part of the reason is that a lot of the time there wasn’t really anything I had to say about a particular film that other people weren’t saying better in their reviews. So I only wrote something if I really felt like I needed to say something or get something off my chest.

When I first saw Birdman in January I *really* wanted to write something about it but I didn’t. When it started to do well in awards shows I wanted to write about it but didn’t. When it won a bunch of Oscars I wanted to write about but didn’t. The reason I kept resisting is because, well, I’m not sure if I can say how I feel about this movie without coming off kinda mean or insulting. I think the movie is dumb, has a gross message and is the expression of someone whose views I disagree with on a fundamental level. Lots of people though, my friends among them, think it’s really smart. Some of them called it a masterpiece and said it’s one the greatest films they ever saw. If I start taking this movie apart and laying out *why* people are being fooled into thinking this movie is smart (and that is what I think is happening) then what the hell am I saying about the people who love it so much? Nothing good I suppose.

So why now? The other day I posted a link to a news story about Niell Blomkamp signing onto an Alien movie and I made a joke about how it would just be a bunch of ‘fan fiction wanky bullshit’ and someone got really offended by it and argued with me. I clearly touched a nerve and I guess I was being crude and hand-wavy about it. What I said though, although crude and reductionist is based in how I really do feel. And I didn’t say it out of hate, I said it out of love. I love movies so god-damm much and I hate when I see the same horrible patterns and bad instincts repeating themselves. I’d love if the new Alien movie was great, I want every movie to be great but I don’t think trying to follow up Aliens is a good idea. So I said what I said the way I said it and someone got offended.

I had been making the same kind of glib jokes about hating Birdman since I saw it and I guess it was the same as what I did with the Alien story. Maybe I also touched a nerve and offended people. So clearly the best thing to do would be to actually lay out what my problems with the movie are in the best way I can. And not only that but I hope that I can do it in a way that is, well, not stuck up or arrogant. And what better movie to talk about that than with this one!

Phew! That was a long preface! And now on to the actual review? Umm..well…

First I’m going to talk about the directer a little bit

Who made the movie?

Birdman has four credited writers so if you’re going to talk about the movie as someone’s expression (which I will) you need to get into who the actual author is. And normally a team of four people (including the director) would make that tricky. How can you claim that Alejandro is responsible for this stuff when he had three co-writers? Luckily I don’t have to since he’s done that himself:

"When somebody is behind it with a vision, no matter how many collaborators he has—and there are always many—200 people in the crew and three or four writers, it doesn’t matter, it’s the vision of whoever makes the last decision…You can be hearing ideas, you can be influenced and be flexible, but in the end the last thing, the print of the film is by one person, only one. That’s the truth.”

But even if we want to take this on face value it can be a bit tricky. He had a very public disagreement with the writer of his first three movies over who should be credited. Guillermo Arriaga is the only credited screenwriter on Alejandro’s first three movies (although Alejandro has an idea credit for Babal. I don’t know exactly what happened between them but the facts that have been made public are these:

• Arriaga is against the auteur theory and believes that directors get too much credit for a film and the writer doesn’t get enough.
• Alejandro felt Arriaga was trying to take too much credit for their work together and took out an ad saying that he had an “unjustified obsession with claiming the sole authorship of a film," and "you were not - and you have never allowed yourself to feel part of this team”
• Alejandro had Arriaga banned from the set of Babel and had him stopped from being at the screening at Cannes.

So what happened? I don’t know. Maybe one of them was being unreasonable, maybe both were. Since I’m talking about Alejandro in this article I want to be fair and to try to give him the benefit of the doubt so let’s suppose that he brought a lot to those movies and Arriaga was being unfair. Then Alejandro’s quote about how the movie is by one person might just be defensiveness more than anything else. Maybe it sounds worse than it actually is. And maybe he kinda has a point too. 

One of the reasons I bring this up is that it happens in the film. After bring Mike into the play and they work on the scene a bit Mike goes to the press and tries to take credit away from Riggan (The movie is fairly autobiographical). But the important thing is that he’s the author of the film so I’m going to talk about it as his expression.

Superhero movies and ‘Cultural Genocide’

One last thing before getting into the actual movie itself and this is important. Alejandro has been very open about how he doesn’t like superhero movies. He calls them ‘cultural genocide’ and even puts that phrase into the movie. He’s talked in interviews about how he feels movies these days have too much action and not enough ‘ideas’. That they’re not like the movies he grew up watching and that kids these days never think about the movies they watched. He specifically said that these movies don’t have “ideas or humanity”. He’s an ARTIST who makes REAL ART of course! Not like those other assholes (he’s even said that he doesn’t watch movies - only films). 

It’s a horrible attitude that seems to have been around forever (even Hitchcock was looked down on for making popular trash in his day) and doesn’t show any sign of going away. Sometimes it’s hating of superhero movies, sometimes it’s about how many sequels and remakes we have now, sometimes it’s how they haven’t made any good films since the 70s. It always comes down to the same thing: that movies have tiers; there is art and there is trash and they should be separated. I could go on for ages about how much I hate this attitude but honestly James Gunn recently put it best. (link)

I also find this ironic since not only is Birdman lacking in smart ideas and humanity, it’s gross in the same way as the worst superhero movie of 2014. But I’ll get to that in a bit.

The shooting style

Finally! Talking about the actual movie (and only 1,300 words in! yay!)

I want to get this out of the way first. For good reason too. I think it’s nothing more than a gimmick. I know a lot of people love the style and how it was made but it just doesn’t work. There’s no reason for it. I’ve heard a few defences of it over time so it’s best to just talk about it by addressing them.

It took a lot of work

Yeah, I don’t care. Sorry, but giving yourself a bunch of extra work doesn’t make something better if it’s not in service of anything. You could shoot a whole movie with your arms tied behind your backs and turn the camera on with your nose every day if you like but it wont make your movie better

It replicates the no-sleep fever dream that Riggan is going through

When I first watched it I thought this might be what they were going for but the movie doesn’t stick to it being subjective. I even thought that maybe when the camera followed other people it would be showing what Riggan *imagines* they are doing/saying but there’s ultimately nothing to indicate that. Plus the movie very purposefully steps away from Riggan’s experience when it shows that he actually took a cab instead of flying and when it shows that his telekinesis is really just them thrashing his room. It keeps the one-shot style but jumps back and forth between being outside and inside Riggan’s head so that doesn’t work as a reason for having it.

It makes it like a play

I like this defence the most and I do like the idea of having long scenes of two actors just interacting with each other (and the actors are great here) but I feel it still takes away from the movie more than it adds to it. For one, it adds a bunch of unnecessary walking around plus the main problem is it takes the decision making out the shot construction. When you have one style over the entire movie then it kinda stops becoming an actual decision. It just becomes how things are. So there’s no motivation for the shots any more. If they mixed it up more and had sections that were one long take and sections that weren’t it would have worked better and I’m sure people would have still been impressed.

“I just really like long one-take shots”

Ha ha, I know man, me too. I really do, but they need to be motivated. They need to actually serve the story.

Ideas and Humanity

So what are these ideas that he put into the film? In his words:

"I think intelligence basically can be in a way defined by the possibility of having two opposite ideas living together and at the same time functioning. That’s why I think a smart script has two things living in the same place and they’re absolutely contradictory." and talking about the main character "He thinks that he is a great fucking artist half the time and half the time he thinks that he is a fucking jellyfish”

And that’s basically everything that Birdman is over and over again, two different ideas in the same space. But it gets into weird paces when you start looking at what those ideas actually are because Alejandro can’t help but put his own thoughts and beliefs in there. He’s stated that everyone is partially right, everyone makes a point. But then nobody in the movie advocates for something Alejando doesn’t himself strongly believe. Nobody in the movie advocates for superhero movies except to say that they’re popular and idiots like them. Every character just becomes a different part of Alejando’s belief that certain pieces of art and in turn the artists belong on a higher level than others. It all goes back to the idea of tiers. Some art is better than others, being ‘real’ is what art is really about. Everything in the movie just becomes an extension of his own beliefs. What kind of smart ‘idea’ is it to just shit on superhero movies for not being ‘real’ and where’s the humanity in placing yourself above everyone else and acting like a huge section of people are beneath you? If you really cared about 'ideas and humanity' wouldn't the smartest and most humane thing to do be trying to understand why these movies are so popular and why they resonate with people so much?

Riggan’s character arc

So what’s Riggan’s intelligence? What are his contradictory ideas? Ego and self doubt. That’s it. He thinks he’s great and that he deserves love and adoration but he also has self doubt and questions himself. Over the course of the movie people argue with him but just ignores them and the times he does listen to them it’s only in service of getting more adoration. And how does he reconcile his two ideas? He decides to completely ignore the self doubt and accept that he *is* better than everyone else and literally starts to fly over all the plebs that are below him. And everyone loves him for it. And he is now much happier and gets everything he wanted. Not by accepting his flaws but by accepting that he’s better than everyone else. Oh gee, great. 

And what movie had the same problem with the main character? The Amazing Spiderman 2. That’s  right, what is one of the worst superhero movies I’ve ever seen has the same type of gross characterisation as the movie that thinks its so much better than superheroes. In ASM2 we have a main character who is presented as being this awesome indulgent wish fulfilment avatar where all of his obstacles come from the fact that other people wont just fuck off and let him be awesome. And he keeps being proven right and everyone else keeps being proven wrong. Even when his girlfriend dies and his best friend turns into a monster it’s all their fault for not listening to him.

Riggan is the same. An indulgent wish fulfilment avatar that this time caters to artist types who want to feel like they’re special and perfect and everyone else needs to just get out of their way and let them be awesome. And I honestly feel like this is a big part of why people like the movie so much. (and I’m 100% certain it’s why the Academy loved it so much). It’s also why some people say Andrew Garfield was the better Spiderman, he’s not, he’s just the one people most want to be.

And indulgence on its own isn’t necessarily bad but it all comes down to what’s being indulged and how it’s presented and what relationship the audience has with it. Like, porn is fine as long as people know it’s porn. If you start trying to say it’s real life then you have problems. Similarly, a movie can get away with being indulgent if it wears it on it’s sleeve instead of being gross and then acting like it’s IMPORTANT.

Why people like it

This is where I get into the tricky part, where I start to fly over everyone else and explain to them why they’ve been fooled into liking this movie.

The style

I already gave this its own section but one thing to add here is that that kind of style can bring a type of ‘realness’ to a movie. What I mean is that one long take can approximate real life in a way that sometimes makes it feel ‘more real’ than something shot conventionally. Kinda similar to how a found footage movie works. Of course a long take can also sometimes make something seem more fake too but in this case I think for a lot of people it brings an air of ‘truth’ to it.

The style is also a big flashy thing that impresses a lot of people and makes the movie seem like more of a big deal than it actually is. Hell, the movie ‘Chef’ deals with a lot of the same stuff as Birdman does but it’s not as flashy so people see it as a much less ‘important’ film.

Mystical Magical stuff

There’s *just* enough that’s it’s really intriguing and seems really smart. I’m not entirely sure why this happens but the right amount of fantasy can make something feel more ‘special’. It adds an ‘intrigue’ I guess. True Detective would have been just as great if they took out the visions and the paranormal flavour but with it included it just seemed better didn’t it? People really responded to it. Same here, the movie opens with a guy floating and has telekinesis? Seems important.

The casting

Michael Keaton plays a washed up actor who once played a superhero and Edward Norton plays an intense actor who is a massive prick. Sound familiar? Well, it lines up with what a lot of people think these people are like. It makes the movie feel like it has more ‘truth’ and also more self aware than it actually is.

It’s “satire”

It’s supposed to be at least and there are parts that are funny but ultimately I don’t think it works as satire. It’s not clever enough, doesn’t say anything worthwhile or original about anything. Plus I don’t think Alejandro is able to do ‘silly’. If this was a silly lark of a movie it would work a lot better as satire but he can’t help but fill his movies with a sense of importance. Which brings us to:

It’s confident.

God god is it confident. And here’s where it gets interesting because even though I think the sense of importance gets in the way of the satire, it doesn’t get in the way of the ‘ideas’. This is a movie that is so sure of what it’s saying and saying it with such weight that you just can’t help feeling like it’s saying something of value. Just look at it! It’s IMPORTANT. It’s ABOUT STUFF, MAAAN!

Everything is in service of taking Alejandro’s toxic views and nothing ideas and either trying to hold them at arms length or leaning into them and making them seem like wisdom.

Of course I can’t really talk about the idea of using ‘tricks’ to fool someone into liking a movie without getting into the whole idea of movies being nothing but manipulations and ‘tricks’. It’s a huge conversation (and this piece is long enough) but you have to look at what ‘tricks’ are being used and what it’s in service of saying. In this case it’s saying nothing good.

Wrap up

Alejandro has been very open about how this movie was inspired by his own crises at turning 50 and struggling with his own self doubt. He’s also able to acknowledge how self important that was, he claims that’s why he made it a satire, to create distance. He also said he didn’t want to make it into a tragedy so he purposefully went in another direction with it. But the satire didn’t work and the ‘other direction’ just ended up being to ignore the self doubt and embrace his own greatness.

And so we’re left with this movie. A director who feels he is important and looks down on other movies and the people that make them made a movie all about how great it is to be better than everyone else as long as you just ignore that pesky self doubt that gets in the way. If he had just stood up and said all that stuff people would have probably hated him, but instead he put it into a movie and instead of dealing with he just indulges and gets praised for it. People are liking a movie made by a guy that looks down on them about how they deserve to be looked down on.

And here I am making fun of shit on Facebook and worrying that I might be putting down people in ways that I don't want to. Instead I could be making a movie where my stand-in is better than everyone else and I’ll get called a genius. Go figure.