Missing the Mark

We've locked picture on our feature film (i.e. we are finished editing the images) and when I'm asked, "What do you think of your new film?", I'm never sure what to say.

Part of the journey of creating this film is to find out what it is we have made. We went through a test screening process to become more objective and to better understand this, after the fact.



One thing I now see more clearly is that the film is a reflection of the process by which it was developed. It will not look like a film developed using the linear 'waterfall' method of moviemaking: script development, pre-production, production, post-production, and distribution. Our film story process began with a desire to express a common type of experience both Andre and I shared: a breakdown of a worldview resulting in a new understanding of Self. So we wrote a story outline. Expanded the outline. Wrote some scene dialogue. Rehearsed a sequence of scenes with actors. Revised the dialogue. Shot some scenes where the dialogue was enhanced again by the actors. Wrote more dialogue. etc. The process was iterative. The result is a film with naturalistic dialogue and an eclectic tone. We mixed together a little of Alexander Payne's About Schmidt and some of Mike Leigh's Secrets and Lies with a dab of David Lynch's Twin Peaks.

If the film is about making a name for myself as a director, will I succeed? If the film is about making money, will I connect with people's entertainment expectations? Too much evaluation creates a fear of missing the mark. What I was taught was that I needed to throw the mark away and move freely on the set.

Ray Carney Part 1

Ray Carney's ideas are viewed as controversial because he is critical of filmmakers who rely on classic film studio techniques (e.g. camera angles, music, lighting) to emotionally guide an audience. "Is there any other way?" Then there is his list of filmmakers whose methods he despises. They include Alfred Hitchock, Stanley Kurbrick, Quentin Tarintino and the Coen Brothers. "Aren't these great, artistic filmmakers?"

"Cinematic clichés are everywhere. Any hack can create loneliness with a long shot and a little music. Danger with a hand-held, point-of-view shot. Fear with key-lighting. Surprise with an editorial jump. Leave the tricks to magicians. They are not life."

He continues later,"Actors are cattle in this expressive universe. You wheel them in, position them, light them in certain ways, photograph them from several different angles, lay in some music on the soundtrack, and the job is done: generic mental states replace unique personal expressions."



He gives an example from the movie Psycho: "In the initial romantic rendezvous between Marion and Sam in Psycho, nothing is particularized or unique. The hotel room might be any hotel room; the uneaten lunch might be any uneaten lunch; the beep of a car horn outside the window might be the beep of any car horn. Even the lover's quarrel is generic. The words and tones are generic. The lunch-time rendezvous is generic."

He champions filmmakers who capture the complexity of human behavior with actors who fully inhabit their characters. He praises the specific and local over the superficial and generic. The filmmakers he admires are those that create films using a collaborative process, filmmakers like John Cassavetes and Mike Leigh. These films demand viewers withhold judgment of the characters and story, and require the audience to process the film experience on a moment by moment basis. It is the subtle external traits of an individual that reveal what is inside. He explains, "Our visions are more or less alike; it's the nonvisionary aspects of our lives (our personalities, bodies, gestures, facial expressions, tones of voice) that make us different. In this respect, a person's ideas, theories, goals, motives, and philosophies are the least personal (and least unique) things about him."



My tendency is to watch a movie, give it time, like 10-20 minutes, and then turn it off if it isn't working for me. If it isn't fitting the expectations and constructions that have moved me in the past, I give up. I have a friend Mike who introduced me to the Dardenne Brothers. You can't slip their film characters on and know them quickly. The Dardenne's are from Belgium and this is where their films are set. There is something difficult, ordinary, and local about their characters, but as I sit with them, I begin to see myself and others in them. What I need to do is cease my intellectual arguments and connect with my intuition. So when I watch and wait without analysis, the components of the film accumulate into something whole and profound. This is a non-dual way to experience film and life.

Normally, movie goers "enter into the same visionary relation to experience that the characters in these films enter into. These films not only depict meditative states; they use music, silences, [known locales like L.A. or New York] and close-ups of faces and objects to evoke corresponding meditative states in the viewer. When characters see the world in a visionary way, the viewer enters into a visionary relationship with what is on screen. When a character thinks or feels, the viewer thinks or feels along with him or her in the cinematic equivalent of mental telepathy."

He is calling viewers to wake up and enter into a rich new place.

The ironic thing is that Ray Carney speaks of processing film in a non-dual way but he appears to be a judgmental, inflexible person in his criticism and his actions toward others. Is he trying to provoke in order to make a point? Is he trying to guide film viewers into a new paradigm of film awareness? Is he an elitist?

More in Part 2. Check out Ray Carney and the quotes in this blog here.