Tips from Raindance on writing shorts

Loving Stéphanie Joalland's article over at the Raindance website where she lays out the 7 rules for witing a good short film:

"A short film script can be a great calling card for a writer. Short films aren’t a lesser form of cinematic storytelling. In fact writing them requires the exact same skills as writing a feature length script – though on a smaller scale. Although TV broadcast opportunities may be limited, there are more and more outlets for these opportunities."

It's an ace read, check it out!

For Your Consideration

Cross posted from Yellow Bunting

Awards season is upon us and as every film geek knows it is a grand celebration of all the achievements made in Western (okay mostly American) film over the past twelve months. Saying that, it’s also a chance for every aforementioned film geek plus critics and casual observers to gripe and whine about the various “snubs” and omissions and for the nausea inducing, sycophantic interviews that forms half all of the multi channel coverage, the other half being those horrific “let’s rip into these otherwise successful and beautiful women by making offensive comments about their appearance” shows.

I have a love/hate relationship with awards shows. On the one hand gets everyone talking about films and I have to own up to enjoying my fair share of glitz and glamour. On the other hand it gets people whinging about films and the complaints over who has been omitted can overshadow the glory of those who win.

The best example of this is how the word “snub” becomes the buzzword on everybody’s lips as soon as the first batch of nominations are out.

There is always outrage that XYZ didn’t make it in or if Film A was nominated why wasn’t the guy who directed it? This year for example, Skyfall didn’t receive any Oscar nominations for its lead actor or director and wasn’t nominated for best picture.  Even at our own BAFTAs Skyfall is trailing behind Lincoln (which hasn’t even been released in the UK yet, much to the consternation of many British film goers) which got 10 nominations. Director Steven Spielberg has been “snubbed” by both BAFTA and the Academy who have both left him out of the lists for Best Director. Add into the mix the same arguments about animation and foreign film that come back year after year and you start to wonder why anyone bothers. Of course money plays a huge part as does ego and the fact that many awards and nominations are politically motivated but there is also the fact that these are good films.

It isn’t helpful to dwell on the negatives and flinging the word “snub” around just diminishes the achievements made by those who did make it in to the nominations. So I for one resolve this year to approach awards season with an open mind and view it as a way to be introduced to new films and discovered new, thoroughly deserving, talent.

Full list of Academy Award nominees here

Full list of BAFTA nominees here

Review: The Hobbit (Spoilers)

The Lord of the Rings trilogy were the defining films of my childhood. It was the first time that I was aware that movies were actually made rather than just being there. It also later introduced me (via the extensive DVD extras) to the nuances of film making and probably sent me down the path I'm on today.

So you can imagine my reaction to the news that they were going to film The Hobbit. On Sunday I finally got my chance to go and see it! Warning: There be spoilers ahead.

Poster from here

Why indie film is so damn good

I heard about The Underwater Realm on Twitter and FSR and was gobsmacked by the luscious trailer (found here with lots of behind the scenes goodies!). It looks like an ambitious Hollywood blockbuster (not unlike the upcoming Cloud Atlas) but in reality it was shot with a budget that wouldn't cover the tea and coffee on your average mainstream movie.

And you can't tell. Visually it is gorgeous and best of all it will be free to view on You Tube on Christmas Day! I can't wait.

Things to read and look at

• Now that the original script for Prometheus has been leaked, Film School rejects compiles a list of the worst parts of the film that actually make sense in original script here.

Picture from here

• Amethyst Marie of Thalia's Musings on my web series of the moment The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, specifically issues of representation in the series.

• Daisy has penned an article rating the Bond themes over at Yellow Bunting!

Are 'geek' and 'nerd' now positive terms? - BBC News

This is the question that Kathryn Westcott is pondering over at the BBC news website.

This question has come up a few times in various places and rather than give a concrete answer it mostly just leads to flame wars and posturing. Many a social group seeks to define itself but who they exclude rather than include and there is the eternal example of something being abandoned by one group when it becomes too 'mainstream'.

Picture from here

This is as relevant in the world of film as it is in other areas of the media, especially with the rise in comic book adaptations and the like. Everyone wants to retain 'ownership' of the works they love and there is a pervading idea that mass consumption somehow ruins it. This is of course nothing new but film and television are mass media with clear emphasis on the "mass". It reaches wider audiences than other mediums and now with the digital age we have access to far more content than we would previous and that in turn shapes that direction culture takes. It's a continuous loop.

For my part, as the girl who was voted second geekiest in the year in my sixth form year book, I not sure my knowledge of the things I'm passionate about is extensive enough to gain me geek status and in any case owning to the fluidity of the language in this case, its meaning is adaptable depending on the speaker.

Movie Making Madames Part Three

This is a few weeks late but since Part four is going up soon I wanted to link back to part three of my Movie Making Madames series over at YB.

Part Three focuses on Lotte Reniger, an animation pioneer from the silent era and her gorgeous shadow puppets. Check it out and leave a comment!

Enjoy

Personal Hero: Alice Guy

Cross posted to Yellow Bunting

In the early years, when filmmaking was still new and being developed as an art form, there were more women working in the industry than there has ever been since. In fact less than 10% of film directors working today are women and that drops to 6% for Hollywood directors.

There has only been one woman in the history of cinema to own and manage a film studio and this was between 1910 and 1914. That woman was the Grandmother of narrative film, Alice Guy.

Born in France, Guy worked as a secretary for Léon Gaumont, a renowned photographer. Gaumont had made his own movie camera after a visit from Louis Lumière, one half of the Lumière brothers. Up until this point film had just been used as a device to document but Guy saw potential for something greater. She was allowed to experiment with camera as long as she didn’t neglect her work. What resulted was one of the earliest (if not the earliest, though it is hard to date these early films) examples of narrative cinema, a 50 second film titled La Fée aux Choux (The Cabbage Fairy):

This was the first step in a career that saw Guy write, direct or produce over 700 films in 25 years, even when she was pregnant with her children she was still making 2-3 films a week. When titled La Fée aux Choux premiered Gaumont relieved Guy of her secretarial duties and put her in charge of his filmmaking division. She later established her own studio in New Jersey with her husband, Solax Studio, which at the time was one of the most powerful studios in the world.

However, history was not kind to Guy’s memory. The studio went bankrupt after her divorce and the rise of Hollywood as a more cost effective place to make films. The studio was auctioned off and Guy returned to France in 1922 but she never made another film despite the fact that she was beginning to venture into another fledgling medium – sound.  Gaumont made no mention of Guy’s role in developing his studio or even the medium itself when he wrote an account of his company in the 1930s despite Guy’s protestations. She was effectively edited out of the history of a movement she helped to kick-start. It even took until the 1950s for own country to honor her for her services to filmmaking with the Legion of Honor, France’s highest, non-military award.

Photo from here

Though she ceased making films, Guy continued to write about them and worked for International Film Service and we can only wonder at how she would have made use of the multitudes of technological advances that were introduced to the film industry after 1922.

Alice is Guy is an important figure in the early years of cinema not just because she is a woman but because the codes and conventions of cinema today have their beginnings in a whimsical experiment from a woman who realized before anyone else that a story could be told with a medium that many others thought would not see out a decade.