Film Selection - Part I of ???

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Film selection for the film festival I work on has begun again – sigh…

I LOVE working on a film festival.  I love that somewhere in the piles of DVDs with haphazardly-scrawled WAB tracking numbers on them lie secret gems lovingly made with countless hours of writing, rewriting, fundraising, preproduction, 12-plus hour shooting days fueled on pizza and Red Bull, and sleepless nights of editing and post production magic. 

However, nothing breaks my heart more than to see a film that actors, directors and videographers have slaved over that just doesn’t effectively tell a story.

Some of the films could be redeemable with a ‘3^rd party edit.’  Some of them just are so painfully underdeveloped that they never should have started shooting in the first place.  Here are a couple things to keep in mind before you submit your ‘baby.’

1) Pacing!  I had the privilege of going to the CannesFilm Festival last month where I watched a number of beautifully made Independents starring some mega A-listers.  However, even in the big leagues, the audience can only tolerate looking at your romantic leads staring longingly at each other for so long.

I don’t care how cute your lead actress looks with her bedroom tussled hair in that perfect lighting you created with an Ikea China Ball.  If a snapshot can tell a thousand words, then your 60-second take of her pushing an unruly tendril behind her ear is a freakin’ Dickensonian run-on sentence.  Evoke the emotion – then move on to the next moment.

2) Too Many Montages!  If you find yourself cutting to a montage every 8 – 10 minutes, you may want to reconsider how you’re telling your story.  The reasons for too many montages vary.  Sometimes the filmmaker is telling too much back-story so the movie is filling in too many blanks.  Sometimes the filmmaker isn’t getting specific enough, so the montages are sweeping visual generalizations.  Sometimes the filmmaker is in love with some artistic B-roll, so the audience is accosted with avant-garde shots of a sprinkler watering flowers from multiple angles at varying speeds.  None of these are good reasons for montage abuse – and they lead me to number 3…

Unless you've got a product placement deal with Revlon, please don't show me this shot in your movie - even if you think you can do it better than Getty Images!

 

3) Every Shot Should Tell the Story!  Is your story about lipstick? No?  Why are you taking 60 seconds of my life to show a tube of lipstick, an ECU of lipstick being applied, and then the girl blotting the lipstick before she leaves for the day?  If it’s not a story about cosmetics and you haven’t brokered a product placement deal from Revlon, don’t show me a friggin’ woman putting on lipstick.  I’m a woman.  I put on lipstick every day.  Sometimes, I don’t even use a mirror.  Watching another woman put on lipstick is not interesting unless it’s part of the story.  Watching a man put on a tie is not interesting unless it’s part of the story.  Watching people walk down a busy street is not interesting unless… Get it?  And don’t fool yourself into thinking that just because you wrote it into the script/shot list it’s actually part of the story.  If imagery doesn’t raise the stakes, evoke a strong emotion or give us unique insight into the character, please leave it on the cutting room floor where it belongs.

I’m sure I’ll have some more obvious pointers in the coming weeks as I continue to review submissions.  All this said, I’m not some mega-bitch who hates filmmakers.  I am a filmmaker.  I’ve made these mistakes.  And now I cringe to think about them.  But keep working on your art.  Mistakes are the best way to learn, as long as you remember not to make them again.