baleanoptera (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
baleanoptera) wrote2009-05-05 02:10 pm
baleanoptera) wrote2009-05-05 02:10 pm
Entry tags:
Memos to Hollywood
I'm a bit in love with this article called Memos to Hollywood
Several memos in the style of "urgent, eyes-only communiqués to Hollywood, fully confident that they will be carefully and thoughtfully ignored."
A few of my favorites are:
To: Filmmakers, especially under 40
From: Manohla Dargis
The tripod is your friend. Few filmmakers can pull off florid handheld camerawork because most aren’t saying all that much through their visuals, handheld or not. (Also: Shaking the camera does not create realism.) Though it’s a cliché of contemporary cinema, fiction and nonfiction both, handheld camerawork that calls aggressive attention to itself tends to make empty images seem even emptier. If you want us to notice your cinematography, make sure you have something to say, like the French filmmaker Olivier Assayas ("Demonlover"), whose restlessly moving images convey a searching intelligence. He isn’t just waving the camera around; he’s saying something about the world and the people in it.
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To: John Lasseter
From: M.D.
I’m psyched that you and the guys at Pixar Animation Studios are finally making a movie with a girl as the lead character and with a woman as director, no less — another first for you! Congrats! Of course we have to wait until 2011 to see "The Bear and the Bow," but on behalf of 51 percent of the population, I salute you.
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To: Members of the Writers Guild of America
Cc: M. Night Shyamalan
From: A.O.S.
You may think that slipping a doozy of a third-act surprise into your screenplay — a shocking twist that no one could possibly see coming — might make you look smart and the audience feel dumb, but please consider that the reverse might actually be the case.
Several memos in the style of "urgent, eyes-only communiqués to Hollywood, fully confident that they will be carefully and thoughtfully ignored."
A few of my favorites are:
To: Filmmakers, especially under 40
From: Manohla Dargis
The tripod is your friend. Few filmmakers can pull off florid handheld camerawork because most aren’t saying all that much through their visuals, handheld or not. (Also: Shaking the camera does not create realism.) Though it’s a cliché of contemporary cinema, fiction and nonfiction both, handheld camerawork that calls aggressive attention to itself tends to make empty images seem even emptier. If you want us to notice your cinematography, make sure you have something to say, like the French filmmaker Olivier Assayas ("Demonlover"), whose restlessly moving images convey a searching intelligence. He isn’t just waving the camera around; he’s saying something about the world and the people in it.
----
To: John Lasseter
From: M.D.
I’m psyched that you and the guys at Pixar Animation Studios are finally making a movie with a girl as the lead character and with a woman as director, no less — another first for you! Congrats! Of course we have to wait until 2011 to see "The Bear and the Bow," but on behalf of 51 percent of the population, I salute you.
----
To: Members of the Writers Guild of America
Cc: M. Night Shyamalan
From: A.O.S.
You may think that slipping a doozy of a third-act surprise into your screenplay — a shocking twist that no one could possibly see coming — might make you look smart and the audience feel dumb, but please consider that the reverse might actually be the case.
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"might make you look smart and the audience feel dumb, but please consider that the reverse might actually be the case." is certainly a highlight. :)
I agree with a lot of them but if I had to pick another one then it would be the one about the inability of Hollywood to make decent romantic comedies. It can't be so hard to give an author some leeway to write a good, funny script that doesn't get watered down to reach the lowest common denominator to (theoretically) reach a large "target audience".
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