Movie Blog: I Don't Get it. Why is Everyone Still Making Movies? #lgm

Although it's only February, this last week it's been possible to feel the first promises of Spring. There is a hint of warmth from the sun in the crisp, chill Milan air. It is sunglasses, Parka and scarf weather, my favorite. As the decision we're waiting on, still hasn't been made, I'm not sure whether this is the start of another wonderful Spring in Milan, or perhaps our last one. I still can't talk about what is going on behind the scenes. It's still very hush, hush. All I can say, is that if we get the go ahead, it will mean moving from Italy, to a new job and new challenges.

Most of this week, I have been pounding out pages of script for the new TV pilot. I'm at the mid-point now, and I'm happy with how it is coming together. I'm discovering, that plotting thirty-six hours of hour-long-drama is exponentially more complicated than plotting a ninety-minute feature film. At this stage, a lot of the process is about creating the potential for future storylines, by linking plot directions to specific characters. A trick I picked up by reverse engineering American television. 

I'm a big fan of the way the best US television people do drama. They start with the ambition to have a show run for one-hundred hours. They start with a big, emotionally rich and complex cast. They plan ahead, by setting up potential storylines for season three in the opening episodes. They aren't afraid to create epic stories. And yet, when you pull it all apart, it is very simply about creating a character development arc for each of your main characters and pinning them back to your central character. In a very real sense, the challenge for a TV show's protagonist, is to weather the storm created by other people's stories. This kind of plotting scheme has given us The Sopranos, Battlestar Galactica, Carnivale and The Shield. It works really well, when it's given a chance. Of course, as Joss Weedon has taught us with both Firefly and Dollshouse, it can also lead to very miserable fans, if the plug gets pulled before the story has time to unfold naturally; a real bummer if you don't want to tell the story you are passionate about until season four! (Come on Joss, how many times can you make the same mistake? Jump straight into the space cannibals story, fellla, you know you want to!)

Of course, this isn't par for the course, even in the US. The most common show format for drama is still: a hero, a comedy sidekick, a sexy smart female sidekick, a geek, an elderly eccentric... and, of course, the protagonist's troubled relationship with his daughter and ex-wife (now create a stock plot around one key location and a few interesting buildings in insert city of choice)... repeat plot endlessly.

For me, all the great drama of the past ten years has been created by inter-woven, character driven story-lines. However, what's more of a revelation for me, is the fact that all my favorite drama of the past ten years has originated on television, as opposed to in our cinemas.

Which got me wondering... why are today's independent film-makers and screenwriters making movies?

It's a legitimate question. What is it about ninety-minutes of drama, shown in a cinema, that is so appealing?

It certainly can't be about the business environment. More people lose money making movies, than actually make any money. For an unknown screenwriter, the movie industry is a nightmare. The top end of the business is a closed door, the bottom end is full of idiots, thieves and charlatans... and the middle, where there is most work, pays less than you'd make delivering pizzas for a living.

For a movie maker, every new movie is a new product launch. There is no guarantee that your personal brand as a writer/director will carry your audience forwards onto the next movie. Established distribution isn't interested in micro-budget, and the new distribution strategies have all been written by documentary movie-makers. No one, and I repeat, no one has created a viable business model to launch low-budget feature films, that actually works in any kind of sustained way.

So, why are screenwriters still writing movies and film-makers still making films?

I honestly don't know. I think some of us have a sentimental attachment to the "movie" as an idea... that getting a movie into a cinema is the ultimate expression of production. I can understand that. I've seen one of my own movies in a cinema, it is quite an experience. Everyone should do it, once.

It seems to me, however, that the US TV drama model, is actually a much better strategy for unknown screenwriters and for independent director/producers, as well. If you create an online TV series, with the depth to carry for one hundred hours, at any point in that project's development, it can be sold up to existing broadcasters. You can pitch and sell at the script-stage, or you can sell it on the back of an incredible first episode... or, you can play the long game and run it for twelve episodes online, build up an audience on iTunes and sell it up as a going concern: programme, production team and audience, all transferred into a part of the industry, where people still pay real wages to writers, directors and producers... and where you'll not to have to sue anyone to get paid. Something that you really can't say about any aspect of the movie business.

So, seriously, why are writers and directors trying to build careers by making movies? Surely the whole point of the digital revolution is that we've been given the means of content production. What people still don't seemed to have grasped, is just how much freedom access to those tools have given us... and, at the same time, where the real opportunities are. Too many of us are still trying to recreate an industry that never worked that well in the first place. The movie industry is a donkey. It really is. In all the years that I've been chipping away at it, I've not met anyone who has made any significant progress. I think this is fundamentally because in all the years the industry went unchallenged, movie distributors never really figured out how to connect new movies to audiences. That legacy has passed over into the independent arena. Basically, most of us have picked up the industry's poison chalice and are drinking deeply from it.

Now, I love movies. I still want to see my project Smoke in a cinema. However, at the same time, when I ask myself where my future as a creative is? At this moment in time, I have to say that the world of movie making is looking less attractive and less viable with every passing day. I'll still make movies, but I'll make quirky, experimental DIY movies, in my spare time, for shits and giggles. For shits and giggles has always been the best way to make movies.

viva la revolution

 

Posted via email from Filmutopia's Sunday Morning Movie Blog