Madame Blossom's Book of Poems

Saturday, January 14, 2012

soft and loud

End of 1st day of a two-days film school lecture. Basically talking about how to go ahead and do your first feature film and how to market them. No, you shouldn't do short films because... SHORT FILMS ARE FOR KIDS!! YOU'RE ADULTS!! DO YOUR FIRST FEATURE FILM!!

This is the most erratic lecturer I have ever met. One minute, he is mumbling something, saying something softly - next minute, he is shouting. He claims to have much experience in movie making, and being 71, in life I guess. He doesn't have patience in wanting to say what we want to hear him say. He just says what he wants to say, of which some a blunt truth to me - such as, we don't need film school to make a film. Over 90% of directors who have 'made it', didn't go to film school.

Back to how erratic he was. He was talking about production budgeting, going through the list, "ok, so camera 15-20k, lighting, 6-8k, stunts and effects, that will be '0'. You know why it's 0? It's going to be 0 because YOU ARE NOT BLOODY GOING TO DO IT ON YOUR FIRST FEATURE FILM! KEEP IT SIMPLE! 90 PAGES, 1 LOCATION!! NO STUNTS NO EFFECTS, NONE OF THAT BULLSHIT!
Ok, then we go on to the arts department..."

About lightings.. "Ok so you need lightings, I want to explain to you the 3 point lighting system.. but I don't want you to spend too much time on it because THIS IS NOT A BIG BUDGET MOVIE! THIS IS A NO BUDGET MOVIE AND YOU HAVE A TIGHT SCHEDULE! YOU ARE NOT GOING TO SPEND 4 HOURS ON SETTING UP LIGHTS! LIGHTS ARE NOT IMPORTANT.. NOBODY! NOBODY GOES TO A MOVIE AND DISCUSS ABOUT THE LIGHTS! So.. don't go crazy about the lights.. just 5-10 mins tops to set up the lights."

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