30 Minutes With Pixar.

In the eventuality when I open my studio (What? Didn’t I tell you about that?) my model for production will always be Pixar. I’ve studied the studio for almost ten years since my graduate MBA studies, and most recently The Economist held a wonderful video interview with visionary Pixar Co-Founder Ed Catmull. I’ve posted the interview below, and if you are serious about being a filmmaker, you owe yourself the 30 minutes to listen to the way he thinks and the way Pixar operates.

Pixar is a company that is dedicated to the creation of strikingly original content. Even in its sequels, they manage to present something entirely different and new. At a time when the major studios are at the height of conservatism - just look at the box office, where sequels, adaptations and remakes are ruling - Pixar continues to churn out mind-bendingly original content. And it is the reason why they are successful, because when people go to see a Pixar film, they know they’ll take part in something they’ve never experienced before. That’s a guarantee.

Doing that entails embracing a hell of a lot of risk and uncertainty. I love that in the interview, Catmull declares that the most successful companies operate in a state of uncertainty. This couldn’t be more true, and it applies to filmmaking the most aptly. We have to take calculated risks, if not then we will get lost in the sea of output. Sure, I could make a hack-and-slash teen vampire movie and make some money, but if I really want to stand out, I need to take a risk with the genre. Which is what I’m trying with Lilith. It’s unknown if the film will succeed or fail, but I will always know that we pushed the envelope of what the genre provides, and it’s guaranteed that a film like it has never existed before. It’s got a genuine stamp of originality, and that’s a badge we all can wear with extreme pride.

But here’s the thing: Pixar doesn’t fail. And that’s a tribute to the culture of the organization and the commitment they show to their directors. And as you’ll see in the interview, they take that commitment extremely seriously, because in the end, filmmaking is as much as business as it is an art. I can’t think of a better way to run an organization - any organization - better than what Pixar does. They are a model company, and the scary thing is that they will never rest on their laurels, they are always changing, always trying to improve by taking calculated risks.

Enjoy and learn, as I have.

http://www.scottberkun.com/blog/2010/inside-pixars-leadership/

Dramatic Beats and Breaking Down the Script.

Totally came down with something yesterday, and now I’ve been bedridden for the past 24hrs. Generally happens to me at the change of the seasons, I don’t know why, but it couldn’t have happened at a worse time. There’s a lot of work to be done.

Continuing with story boarding and breaking down the script into actionable beats. For those of you who are unfamiliar with actionable beats, I mentioned them briefly in my older post, but I guess now is as good a time as any to go into further detail.

First things first, a word of advice to anyone who has a desire to direct, and that is to take acting classes. It’s absolutely essential, because it is damn near impossible to communicate with actors when you yourself have never acted. In my many years of being a PA and observing directors, I would occasionally see a director shouting at his actors “more anger, I need more anger!” And this would typically result in the actor raising their voice (because with such vague direction what other choice does an actor have?) and the scene hitting an insincere note. Everyone would leave frustrated.

I made the same mistake on my first feature, and after seeing the performances on screen, I decided that I’m very comfortable with my visual style, but I needed to make a commitment to performance. In film you can have the most beautiful images, but it is the performance that tells the story. Everything else - cinematography, sound design, art direction - all serve to accentuate the performance on the screen.

It is a performing art, but we musn’t forget that we are working in a visual medium, so emphasis must be made on actions, not words. My first feature film 19 Revolutions was so steeped in dialogue that I did a disservice to my actors - I made them act through their mouths and not with their bodies. I read later an article where a filmmaker, I think it was Ken Loach, said that we should approach every movie as if it were a silent film, that if we were to turn off the volume, we should still be able to ascertain what is happening on the screen. Sage advice.

So many years after making my first feature, I bit the bullet and enrolled myself in an acting and improv class at The Second City here in Chicago. It opened my eyes to the art of performance, the beauty of preparation and also letting go, and also the language and tools of the craft.

One thing I learned was to break the script down into actionable beats, using an adverb and a verb at every emotional / dramatic shift within the script. Actionable verbs are essential because they are rooted in action with an objective. For instance, if a man and a woman are in an argument, we first must deduce what each of them wants to accomplish in the scene. And, as David Mamet said, we must also determine how each person will behave if they don’t achieve their objective. The twists and turns inbetween are the dramatic beats of the scene, and each of them has an action (verb) and a corresponding flavor / style (adverb). If the man’s objective is to get off the hook for not paying the heating bill, he might want to make up an excuse to cover up his oversight.

At the initial point of the conversation, he may be very confident in his excuse, telling it with fortitude and confidence. In an actionable beat, we can describe it has “lie” (verb) / “confidently” (adverb). This is an action that can be easily relayed to an actor, and will form the core of the direction of that scene. Everything that I tell the actor from there on out will be towards achieving that one goal, which is to “lie confidently.”

It’s a shitty example and I wish I had the wherewithal to come up with a better scene and a better verb / adverb beat, but it does illustrate that this is the single most difficult job of the director, which is to break down the script into directions. Some directors have the otherworldly talent to come up with dramatic beats on the fly, but truth be told I’m not one of them. At least not yet. The core of my preparation is in this breakdown, and like an actor rehearses her lines, so too will I rehearse my direction, taking notes of different choices I can make, and always, always leaving room for input, collaboration, and what the moment may provide.

Once I’ve broken the script down, and once I’ve finished my casting, I will sit down with my actors and work through these beats. We will most certainly end up changing beats because of what the actor brings to the table, which is personal experience, creative ideas, and elements of backstory that they would have created for the character. Then I will compare these notes with my storyboards, and make sure that the visuals are accomplishing, accentuating and amplifying the same objectives. The same applies for music and sound, for art direction and production design, for costume and makeup, and for every single department of the production (well, maybe not catering).

I’ve largely oversimplified the process, but I hope it gets the idea across. Doing the best I can on a foggy brain.