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Make a Movie
by Kieth Merrill
Francois
Truffaut, the famous French film maker. once said, "film lovers
are sick people". That means of course that I should be in therapy
all of the time. I love movies; I loved watching them. I love making
them. I naturally assume that everyone wants to make a movie of
their own. WARNING
— Unless you have no lid on your imagination and have—
at least once in your life — thought, "I could have made a
better movie than that!", you will find the musings that follow
outrageous at worst and tedious at best.
Proceed
at your own risk.
Writing the
great American novel may well have been the epitome of creative
expression in the first half of the 20th century. Making
movies could emerge as the ultimate personal expression in the opening
decades of the new Millennium. When I say "Go make a movie," I am
not really kidding.
Faulkner, Hemingway,
Steinbeck, Fitzgerald, Joyce, and a fraternity of inexplicable talent
that showed up on the American scene changed the literary landscape
forever. These works dominate the classic tales of the last 100
years. The Sound in the Fury, Old Man and the Sea, The Snows
of Kilimanjaro, The Grapes of Wrath, The Great Gatsby, Ulysses...
the list goes on.
Haven't we all,
at one time or another, believed that there is a great novel hiding
somewhere in our imagination? You have, right ? Is it not possible
therefore that you just might have a movie "in there" as well? You
have probably allowed yourself to fantasize about being John Grisham,
Stephen King or even Gerald Lund, but making a movie? I can't be
serious, right? Oh, but I am.
In one sense,
writing a novel and making a movie are very much the same. Each
is a tangible extension of the heart, mind and imagination of the
author or auteur.
In spite of
this whimsical kinship you know without being told that writing
a novel and making a movie are vastly different adventures. They
are a universe apart.
Writing is
Cheap
Pencil and paper are ubiquitous. Writing is an essential skill
we learned as kids. Film, cameras, and chemicals are not easily
available. Making movies is a mysterious art.
Writing is cheap.
Making movies is prohibitively expensive. Everyone can write. Only
the privileged few are allowed to speak make movies. Not any more!
CUT TO: CLOSE
UP - . MiniDV Camcorder. $795.00.
"DV" stands for Digital Video. Digital technology is the core
of all computers. It has been around since 1947. Wait a minute!
Didn't computers show up with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates? No. Those
guys were not yet a twinkle in their daddy's eye when ENIAC was
born. ENIAC [Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer] —
rooms full of wires and tubes — received patent No. 3,120,606
on June 26, 1947.
You've got more
power in your Palm Pilot than ENIAC had in the whole building. It
took half a century, but what happened was inevitable. Once computers
managed to crunch the biggest numbers into submission they took
on LIGHT and SOUND, converting them — in all their lengths
and waves — into digital information.
Applied to
mainstream movie making — think special effects — digital
imaging has brought us to an almost unimaginable place. If you
can imagine it, you can put it on the screen. No image, no depiction,
no illusion or effect of movie magic is beyond our technical capability.
Remember your delight and amazement watching The Lord of the
Ring? Call it exhibit A. It is in a digital word, AWESOME.
And now, the
promise of that power is in the palm of your hand. Mini DV camcorders
have made the potency of the digital imaging revolution accessible
to a kind of aspiring proletariat of suppressed creativity. The
tools to make movies — a new kind of personal movies —
are now in the hand of the majority who live and work outside the
gilded gates of Hollywood.
The Tools
Suddenly, from the standpoint of the tools, making personal
movies is as easy - and almost as cheap - as writing that great
American novel. This puissance and a little personal passion may
well give rise to a new genre of communication emerging as the ultimate
expression in the opening decades of the new millenium.
Let's give it
a name. PERSONAL CINEMA.
A good movie
is story, story and story. You must both write and see. Even the
earliest of the 256 K computers began to replace typewriters, By
now personal computers on desk top or lap have forever abolished
the pencil and pad as the writer's tool of choice. Oh, I know, a
few "purists" remain who scratch out their tomes with a Ticonderoga
2/HB insisting that a writer must be "in touch" with the medium.
It is likely that actress, Judi Dench's, stunning portrayal of acclaimed
writer, Iris Murdoch, in the notable film, Iris, will send
a throng of wannabes back to pencil and yellow pad. [Great performance.
Interesting film.]
But for the
vast majority of writers, the tools of the trade have become powerful
personal computers loaded with sophisticated software that process
their words, outline their thoughts, format their scripts, check
their grammar and spelling and link them to a million research sites
on the internet. On balance, a serious writer has more invested
than $3.95 for pencil and pad.
It is fair to
say that the digital revolution has increased the cost of high-end
tools of choice for writers. At the same time it has collapsed the
cost of low-end tools for filmmakers.
In making this
curious comparison it is important to note my careful use of the
word "movies" rather than "films."
A Little
Background
"Movies" is a silly word really, a kind of abbreviation derived
from "pictures in motion" or "moving pictures". The only way to
capture images in the very first moving picture camera — an
optical lantern projector called Kinetograph — was film based
emulsions. Edison filed the patent, but it was young Billy Dickson,
Edison's lab assistant, who designed the prototype back in 1893
and gave birth to the motion picture industry.
The Lumieres
of France exhibited the first commercial motion picture to a paying
public . They called their revolutionary technology "Cinematographe"
and "cinema" has been with us every since. So, "PERSONAL CINEMA"
has a kind of prestigious connection to the very beginning of movies
Film has been
the medium of capture for moving pictures for over a hundred years.
With the advent of TV and the development of electronic imaging,
that began to change. Visionaries like Francis Ford Coppola and
George Lucas could see the proverbial "digital writing on the wall'
and the ultimate implication to the motion picture industry decades
before Hollywood caught a glimpse of what lay ahead.
I met Francis
Coppola several years ago. He was in the middle of making a movie
called Tucker. He had invited me to come to the location,
a classic old Victorian house in the rolling hills of Napa Valley.
Renowned Cinematographer, Vittorio Storaro, was shooting the picture.
I arrived on the set with producer, and long time Coppola collaborator,
Fred Roose. We watched the take. I couldn't see Francis. Then I
heard the director's command echo across the set.
"Cut". The voice
came from a series of speakers placed strategically out of sight.
Coppola was not on the set.
"Let's do one
more," the disembodied voice was saying, "only this time I would
like you to...:" The instructions went on. Fred nodded his head
and I followed.
Coppola was
in a customized air stream trailer 75 yards from the camera. The
interior looked like a movie set from an early Star Trek movie or
broadcast central at NBC. Coppola stared at an array of TV monitors
and spoke quietly into a microphone. His voice was amplified and
broadcast to the set. The boom mike brought every sound of the scene
to his head set.
An editor assembled
the scenes, recorded on video tape through the video tap plugged
directly into the ground glass of the camera. I didn't realize it
then — having failed to be among the visionaries — but
looking back I was at the edge of history seeing the first movement
of a shifting paradigm that would forever alter the industry.
Not long afterward
I spent several weeks at George Lucas' Skywalker Ranch. I was working
with 4-time Academy Award winner, Ben Burtt. We were editing my
film, Alamo, the Price of Freedom. We were among the first
to use a revolutionary editing system created by George given the
Star War's name of Editdroid .
Impatiently
teetering on the threshold of the digital revolution. Lucas couldn't
wait. He instructed his innovative team of energetic engineers to
create an editing system that utilized the revolutionary new technology
of laser discs.
With DVDs a
part of our lives it is hard now to imagine that we were so impressed
by that early technology. Editdroid used the computer to search
and select our footage which had been burned onto an array of laser
disc machines. It was primitive compared to what you can do on your
lap top today. But even back then, the buzz about Skywalker Ranch
was the digital revolution ahead.
Digital Cameras
and Creativity
The new Star Wars film is being shot with digital cameras.
No film is involved. Tests made during Phantom Menace persuaded
George the time had come to abandon film and capture his imaginative
world on high definition digital tape. He used a system called,
24P (24 frame per second progressive scan) .
The digital
data will be manipulated and enhanced by computer then output via
a film recorder to 35 & 70 mm film for theaters. It will play
in digital format in theaters converted to state of the art digital
projection systems. Billionaire Philip Anschutz is converting 20
% of the screens in the US to digital projection systems.
State of the
art digital projection is remarkably good. The Testaments,
the film we created for the Legacy theater in Salt Lake city, was
converted to digital format for the marvelous Legacy-like theater
at Washington DC temple visitor center. The fidelity is remarkable.
Digital image
capture and editing have been used professionally in various ways
for several years. Only recently, driven largely by Apple Computer's
development of fire wire, has the domain of digital movie making
been brought to the desk top. Almost over night you have the power
of a $100,000 professional editing system on your personal computer
for a few hundred dollars.
You do not need
me to tell you that VHS and Hi-8 have been eclipsed by DV and are
now in the inevitable shadows of "old technology". Apple Computer's
iMovie for everyone, and Final Cut Pro 3 for professionals. I have
made movie making machines out of G-4 Macintosh computers.
Believe it or
not, MAYA, the high end 3-D graphics and animation software used
by Hollywood professionals to create effects for Star Wars, Mummy
Returns, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter , etc. is now available
for G-4 Macintoshs. Once the exclusive domain of professionals using
high end and very expensive Silicon Graphic work stations, Maya,
like all of the tools of the digital movie making revolution, are
now available to everyone. [Don't rush out and order Maya until
you've made 3 films, know for sure you'd rather make personal movies
than ever go bowling again, and have confidence in your infinite
patience. ]
Because my former
bishop and dear friend works for Intel, I must add a note. While
most professionals in film and graphics environments prefer Macintosh
computers, there are Windows applications for video editing. That
said of course one must be willing to endure that unbearable interface—saved
only by its efforts to emulate Mac—and suffer the significantly
slower rates of the mother board. [In a future article I will discuss
the LDS church discrimination against Macintosh owners so hold your
thoughts.]
What Does
It Mean?
What does it all mean? That you can run out and make a full
blown Hollywood Blockbuster with your mini DV and Macintosh ? No,
not quite. In fact, no, not possible. But if you love movies and
think "personal cinema" you may be surprised what can happen.
There was an
unfathomable chasm between W. Somerset Maugham scribbling Of
Human Bondage on a pad of old paper with a $2.00 pen and Cecil
B. DeMille spending $20,000 an hour to film the Hebrew's exodus
from Egypt. The distance in cost and complexity between Clive Cussler
hammering out Atlantis Found and Kevin Reynolds recreating
the Count of Monte Cristo remains enormous.
The context
of my preposterous suggestion — that making movies in the early
decades of the new millennium can somehow be equated to writing
the great American novel in the first half of the 20th
century — is a vision of a vast collection of personal movies.
Many of them will be important. Some will be great. A few will burst
across the final barriers that separate "personal cinema" from main-stream
Hollywood.
Manage your
expectations by differentiating Titanic from the personal
movies you can make with your DV Camcorder, fire wire and G-4 Mac
with iMovie and Leonardo Di Caprio from the kid in your ward who
will "star" in your epic.
Manage your
expectations but do not limit your dreams. Consider a little movie
called, Blair Witch. Whatever you may have thought of it
— if you bothered to think of it at all — and for whatever
purpose it was made, it was born in the revolution of personal cinema.
It blitzed beneath the radar of conventional movie making, breached
the barriers of Hollywood and became an enormous success. By some
estimates it cost less than $50,000 to make and earned over $200,000,000.
It began as an experiment. A brilliant idea. A personal movie that
in the beginning could not have dared such expectations.
It was a movie
that would not have been made ten years ago. It was a movie of the
new millennium. It was only possible because for the first time
in a hundred years the access to the tools and the cost of the process
have dropped into the hands of the masses. The challenges remain
great, but to a large extent, the barriers are gone.
Increasingly
the numbers of films submitted in the documentary categories for
Academy Awards consideration are shot on digital video. Young directors
are making feature length narrative films on digital video. Film
festivals have categories for digital "films".
Next Monday
night I have the great privilege of hosting the winning directors
of the first annual LDS Film Festival for a showing of their short
— and mostly digital — movies. If you are anywhere near
Northern California Monday, March 4th please join us
for this event. I would love to have you come and share the contributions
of young LDS film makers to the inevitable digital revolution in
film making. [Mesa Verde High School Performing Arts Center, 7501
Carriage Drive, Citrus Heights, California. 7:00 PM.]
[ For more
information about Monday night contact Dana Sanders, danasongs@earthlink.net
. For information about the Young LDS Film Festival contact Christian
Vuissa, feedback@ldsbox.com.]
Making personal
movies in the Millennium head is about a whole new kind of individual
expression. It is about awareness and access. It is about the average
person being able to seriously consider — for the first time
in over a hundred years — that they could make a movie, and
so perhaps they should.
When I use the
term "movie" or "personal movie making" I am not talking about shooting
video of your high school graduation, your kid's birthday party
or 16 hours of "shoot everything and never stop the camera"
video reeled off in Disneyland. [I always wonder when those people
will EVER have time to watch all that footage?]
The movies I
am talking about are the ones that visualizes the novel that lies
within you — or perhaps indeed your tome of destiny is non-fiction
or documentary in nature. I am talking about picking up that miniDV
and creating a collision of images and ideas that say something
that you'd like to say, even need to say, in a way it's not been
said before. I am talking about you making a movie that captures
and extends that unique blend of experience and imagination that
gives birth to ideas and images, to characters and conflict, of
places and plot, purpose and passion.
Making a film
is a wondrous process of assembling ideas, images and sounds then
connecting them like intricate interlocking pieces of a giant jigsaw
puzzle. And when it's done the lines separating the pieces disappear
leaving your audience with a magnificent revelation of where it
is you have been taking us to experience a perspective that we've
never had before.
And for the
first time, you can really do it.
My excitement
over this sudden, unprecedented access to digital imaging tools
is actually very simple. It allows experimentation and creation
at a very personal level. It provides a means for self expression
and creativity unrivaled in the century past. It is also a lot of
fun.
Moreover, it
will allow hundreds and even thousands of youngsters — who
might otherwise never dare to dream or give expression to some inner
instinct — the opportunity to discover their aptitudes and
talents.
If you have
read anything I've written, you have heard me quote President Kimball.
I carry his words with me and have for twenty years. He foresaw
the day when the great stories of the Restoration and the culture
of the gospel would be told in the great movie centers around the
globe. He foresaw that,
"The full story
of Mormonism has never yet been written nor painted nor sculptured
nor spoken [nor filmed]. It remains for inspired hearts and talented
fingers yet to reveal them selves. They must be faithful, inspired,
active Church members to give life and feeling and true perspective
to a subject so worthy. Our writers, our moving picture specialists,
with the inspiration of heaven, should tomorrow be able to produce
a masterpiece which would live forever."
[From Ensign
Article quoting address given to BYU faculty and staff 1967-68)
Until recently
there were relatively few Mormons in the movie business. That is
changing rapidly. The field of candidates to fulfill Kimball's'
vision are increasing. The "inspired hearts and talented fingers"
are stretching themselves, experimenting, practicing, making little
films, discovering "personal cinema", learning the art and craft
and dreaming of the day they will reveal themselves and take part
in the inevitable destiny of projecting our values, our testimonies
and the joys of our lives on the giant silver screen.
I believe the
rise in what some call "Mormon Cinema" has been encouraged by early
access to inexpensive imaging tools. Film schools shoot 80% of their
"films" on digital. The ease of use, open access and low, low cost
provide significantly more and greater opportunities for aspiring
hearts and anxious hands to discover if they are among the "inspired
hearts and talented fingers."
I encourage
all of them and all of you and hope a whole new generation of will
climb the long stairway to a time when they can make films that
go beyond personal cinema, films that will reach the world —
rivaling, as President Kimball has said, the classics.
"Can we not
find equal talent to those who gave us A Man For All Seasons,
Dr. Zhivago, and Ben Hur? My Fair Lady and
the Sound of Music have pleased their millions, but I believe
we can improve on them. " [From Ensign Article quoting address given
to BYU faculty and staff 1967-68)
My son-in-law,
who happens to be a Vice President of Apple Computer —as the
result of being a brilliant programmer and selling them his company
for a Gajillion dollars — called me with a computer question.
I loved it that he needed me. He had decided to make a movie. He
bought the best that Apple had to offer — Mac G-4 with dual
1-Gig processors, 22" Cinema Screen, Final Cut Pro 3, Adobe After
Effects, a DV deck, and a stack of black box peripherals.
He had the tools
but discovered that creating personal cinema is about time, tenacity,
temperament and maybe even talent. If he applies his brilliance
he will create something marvelous in the digital domain of movie
making.
The best tools
in the world are of little consequent when used without purpose.
Unlimited access to technology is fruitless without talent. Talent
without passion yields little. And passion without purpose only
produces more of the drivel and dazzling refuse that pollutes our
popular culture.
"Pencil and
pad no more a novel make than Sony and Mac a movie create."
Our vision should be lofty. Our aim should be high. Our goal should
be stories told in great films without compromise. If any of this
stirs your heart then it is time to begin. Go ahead, make a movie.
Make it personal. Make it with passion. And when it's finished,
let us know. We'd love to share a glimpse of your vision.
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