Fine Tuning

Spare a thought for us as we take the weekend to do the final tweaking in the edit suite for the rough cut. In fact, we prefer to call it the first creative assembly – in terms of the edit points, there’s nothing rough about it at all. Our editor Paul Maxwell has been continually honing the film to cut to the essentials of the storyline, bringing all his skill and experience to bear. Of course there’s some creative wrestling as to exactly what constitutes the storyline, but we’re all on the same wavelength. Having watched the entire assembly a couple of times in the last week, I can only say we’re getting increasingly excited by what we’ve got. From time to time all of us slip out of critical mode, and get moved by the performances on screen.

From here we need to get the cut finalised, and confirm the music we’re using for the temp track. Thereafter it’s off to sound engineer Craig Perry to do an initial dialogue mix. When that’s all sorted, and we’re happy with where we’re at for this stage of the process, we’ll get Craig to do a ‘bash mix’, to adjust levels of dialogue, music etc. Then we have a test screening coming up including various industry people (in fact two – one in NZ and one in the UK), and will begin circulating our screener to various potential distributors/investors. Only after the money is secured will we begin the process of post-production proper. There are layers and layers of work before the film ever gets its first public outing.

In the meantime, we struggle with the details – the microseconds involved in the right place to make a cut; the tightening of scenes and dialogue; the best use of music in particular places. In two days time, we hope to have most of that sorted.

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Under the Radar

Tom Burstyn and Barbara Sumner are on their way home from Berlin, bearing the Jury prize for their section in the Berlinale. As they departed, Barbara posted this on the This Way of Life blog:

At the Berlin festival one thing became obvious – we’re a little old to be embarking on what is a new career for us both. Young people should be making low-budget documentaries. Passion and obsession should be the preserve of those with energy to spare. We’re grandparents and we like to sleep, while we really don’t do well in the two-star accommodation kindly provided by the festival.

And yet we found ourselves repeatedly in conversations about our increasingly technical world – which is clearly the preserve of the young – and the loss of storytelling. At dinner one producer wondered if in fact we were in the grip of a cultural autism. As she saw it, the more technology (and thus budget) a film requires the more it appeals to and tunes the left-brain. And that’s perhaps what I hated most about Avatar – all that film wizardry in service of itself, instead of story.

The trick of course is to harness the fantastic benefits of the digital world to the needs of the heart to make intense, emotionally connected films. That’s certainly our goal. And one of the benefits of going to Berlin with This Way of Life was the solidifying of that purpose. Vive l’obsession!

Well said! Tom’s philosophy (and forthcoming book about) Frugal Filmmaking expresses exactly that wisdom. It’s the approach we shared on The Insatiable Moon – look out for the March issue of Onfilm magazine where you can find a blow by blow description of it. It’s a trifle premature to talk about a gathering revolution in filmmaking, but at least the signs of resistance are there. While recently the NZ Film Commission has been championing low-budget productions through its Elevator programme, one wonders if a bureaucracy can do anything but hinder a natural movement. In their latest newsletter, they laud the success of This Way of Life at Berlin, despite having given minimal support to the film. And in their list of films in post-production in New Zealand, The Insatiable Moon has strangely fallen off the list.

It’s a strange kind of honour and endorsement to be flying under the radar. If the definition of independent film is that which is made outside the auspices of the studios, then the only true independent films in NZ may be those which are made without the support of NZFC. While the good people at the Commission do a great job of trying to assist film with limited resources, the very system unwittingly hampers originality and passion. All arts funding bodies create distrust and dependency, in my experience. There’s a huge amount of freedom from riding bareback.

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Uncertain Waters

Over the weekend, at a symposium on digital cinema at Victoria University in Wellington, there was a difference of opinion among panelists regarding the impact of digital distribution:

Movie makers are at odds over the impact of digital technology on the industry, with one Kiwi film-maker saying independent movies are under threat and audiences will lose out.

Gaylene Preston, the director of Perfect Strangers and War Stories Our Mothers Never Told Us, says a move to digital distribution – in which films can be easily delivered via fibre-optic cables to computer hard-drives rather than on film reels to cinemas – means there will be fewer distributors to pick up and promote smaller independent movies, which typically have budgets of $2 million to $5m.

“There will be fewer little films … because they’re getting harder and harder to market worldwide.”

There has already been drastic consolidation in the United States film distribution industry, she says. When releasing her film Mr Wrong in 1985 there were 250 distributors in the US she could negotiate with. Now there are about five.

Another old dog of NZ film was largely in agreement:

Goodbye Pork Pie and Sleeping Dogs director Geoff Murphy says the digital era has made filmmaking accessible to everybody but the means of distributing and exhibiting films is still the preserve of “conservative, powerful people who have certain requirements for what they think should be shown”.

“You can go out and make films because you have the power to, but you can’t get them shown,” Murphy says.

However, DOP Alex Funke has a different take on things:

Alex Funke, the Oscar-winning cinematographer from The Lord of the Rings and King Kong, disagrees.

The more digital distribution there is, the more chance film-makers have of releasing their films to the masses, he says.

“You don’t have to go through the distributors and promoters.”

The dominance of distributors is waning, Mr Funke says.

“The days of distributors getting 75 per cent of the box office takings are doomed.”

What do you think? My view is that we can learn from what happened to music following the digital delivery which is now standard in that industry. The studios are struggling, while independent musos are celebrating the access which they have now. Of course it’s not all bread and roses, but you have to say that removing gatekeepers provides a more direct path from artist to audience – a development most indie producers celebrate. There are different ways to get a film distributed, and it’s up to us indies to chart new pathways in unfamiliar waters.

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Next We Take Berlin…

Congratulations to Tom Burstyn (DOP on The Insatiable Moon) and Barbara Sumner on their stunning success in getting the Jury Prize for their film This Way of Life at the prestigious Berlin International Film Festival. Look out for this deeply moving film when it screens in cinemas in NZ from March 11. Press release as follows:

With perhaps the lowest budget film to be selected in the field of 40 films, New Zealand documentary This Way of Life won a Jury Prize at the Berlinale 2010.

Shot over four years against the isolated Ruahine mountains and Waimarama beach in Hawke’s Bay, the film follows Peter and Colleen Karena as they raise their six children and 50 horses on the thin edge between freedom and disaster.

The Berlinale judges described This Way of Life as “a window opening to a wonderful different kind of world: A happy family living freely in nature. Respect for life and joy of being are what count in this film.”

Director Tom Burstyn says it was amazing that a self-funded, home-made documentary would receive a major prize against a comprehensive field of feature films.

This Way of Life was also recently chosen for official selection at the Palm Springs International Festival, which sold out a week before showing, and has screened to sell out houses at both the New Zealand and Vancouver International Film Festivals.

This Way of Life opens in cinemas around New Zealand on March 11.

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The First Cut is the Deepest…

Killing your babies. It’s a crime in life and a difficult process in art. We’re immersed in the edit process, with our very fine point man Paul Maxwell leading the process. The good thing is that he hasn’t been on set during filming and so has no context for how shots were achieved or why we might like them. All he’s interested in is the story – what are its  major turning points, and how do we move it along. Paul, whose credits include Rain, Sione’s Wedding and The Tattooist, describes himself as ombudsman for the audience. Fortunately for us he’s not only talented, but has the right instincts for the film we’re making. He understands what we’re trying to do, and is our partner in achieving that for us. The art of the editor is vital, particularly as he or she shapes the final version of what the audience will see.

It doesn’t make the process any easier. Inevitably, there are sequences which the director has a particular attachment to which hit the floor. There are differences in opinion over what a particular scene may represent, or why it deserves a place on the screen. In these situations, the most important element is the discussion taking place between the editor and director. It’s vital to have an atmosphere of trust, but also one of blunt honesty in which there can be a battle for the best film to be made. As a writer, I understand the process well. When a novel goes to the publisher, there’s always to and fro with the assigned editor, who will come up with a list of suggested changes. I tend to divide my responses into three categories: changes which are clearly improvements and easily agreed to; changes which need negotiation and discussion; and changes which I feel detract from the story or characters and I will fight to the death for. It’s this creative battle which produces the best results.

We’re a little over half way through assembling the rough cut. A few days ago Rosemary and I watched the first hour of the film which Paul had put together. Astonishingly, given that we’ve seen each and every clip over and over again, it retained the power to move us. This is a tribute to Paul’s skill, and we’re over the moon (so to speak) that he’s the guy we’ve entrusted our film to. Of course Rosemary (our director) is pushing back on behalf of her babies, holding out on some of them. It’s a struggle for the truth on both sides: a friendly and committed tussle to make the story rise to the surface and lead the audience on a journey without unnecessary stumbling blocks. Film is always the most synergetic of all the arts.

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To Hell and Back

The first of a series of articles about the making of The Insatiable Moon is now out in the industry journal Onfilm magazine. Buy it at your local bookshop to support the good guys at the mag; better still – subscribe! You can read the article here.

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Celebrate!

Wellie with Barbara, Colleen with Tom

Here’s something worthy of celebration – Tom (our DOP) and Barbara showcase their wonderful film This Way of Life to the world at the Berlin Festival! See here for writeup in Variety. And here for news report.

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Distributors

I guess now that it’s public knowledge, I can talk about it. One of the difficulties we’ve faced is that our NZ/Australia distributor has got into financial difficulties and had to stop trading. Arkles was set up by cinephile John Davies, who also runs the Academy theatre in Auckland. John is one of the good guys in the business, with a passion for film which goes beyond simply the commercial aspects of it. He backed The Insatiable Moon at script stage, and went out of his way to help us. Arkles established a good distribution network which targeted mostly smaller cinemas with quality films. John had a good eye for what would work and how to attract an audience. It’s a great shame that Arkles has been forced to leave the arena. John Barnett, head of South Pacific, notes with regret the demise of Arkles and says (here) “So that’s another hurdle for low budget films. Because without skilled, experienced and well resourced distributors, they may not even get cinema dates.”

Maybe it’s inevitable. There was a time when small country stores could operate and serve their customers pretty well. But urbanisation and the rise of supermarkets has put paid to that. The multiplexes and the blockbusters of our age are part of a narrowing of the world of film into certain pre-defined paths. Each Avatar eats maybe a hundred smaller and idiosyncratic ventures. Everyone needs to make a buck, but when the monster studios hoover up all the bucks, there’s not much room for the little guys. John Barnett has said in the same piece:

Reaching NZ audiences is going to be even more difficult with films that:
a) are based on elements or material that is unfamiliar to audiences;
b) have compromised production values through inadequate budgets; and
c) feature unknown actors with no audience recognition or appeal.

In other words, what we need is films that tell the same stories we already know, have huge budgets and feature stars. He’s reacting against a slew of films that have had little audience appeal. But if those are the only categories for attracting audience then we’re in a very grim era indeed as far as the art of cinema is concerned. With this prevailing philosophy, it’s not surprising that distributors are wary of taking on anything that stretches boundaries and therefore represents a financial risk for them. Audience numbers are essential to the reality of the film world. But when it comes to knowing what audiences want, in the immortal words of William Goldman, “No one knows anything”.

There is however a technological revolution under way which will eventually transform the face of film in the same way that itunes has destabilised the music industry. Digital filmmaking is one half of it; the remaining part is digital distribution. When all theatres are fitted out with quality digital projectors, distribution is simply a download away. Not only for cinemas, but for personal media centres, computers, ipods and so on. This will have an irreversible transformative effect on the industry. Just as with music in the digital age, the audiences will define themselves. It’s the true democracy of art. It won’t necessarily be any easier, but it will no longer be controlled by the current behemoths of the studios.

For the first time ever, it is becoming reasonable for producers and filmmakers to retain the rights in their own work, and take ownership of how their work is distributed. Tom Burstyn and Barbara Sumner are doing this with their superb film This Way of Life (currently at the Berlin Film Festival). At a recent screening in the Hawkes Bay, they attracted an audience of 1000 people. Not bad for an indie doco. This may be the way of the future.

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The Local and the Universal

I was interested in a scene from Reitman’s Up in the Air where the new uber-efficient Natalie (Anna Kendrick) introduces the word ‘Glocal’ to the bemusement of those she’s presenting to. I would have thought it was a term which was pretty much old-hat by now: the merging of global and local. Just how many years ago did we first hear the slogan “Think Globally, Act Locally”. It’s a mantra, and like all mantras, tends to diminish the insight which it offers through familiarity.

For storytellers, however, and especially filmmakers, there’s something very significant in understanding the interplay between local and global. Many writers and artists strive to express something universal so that what they draw attention to will resonate with the whole human race. For some this is altruistic; for others it’s the attempt to maximise return by coming up with a blockbuster. Ironically, the attempt to tell a story which everyone can access, often by ‘deculturing’ it, is the very process which bleaches the narrative of any resonance at all. The fact remains that while that which is universal (if we can still talk in these terms in postmodern times) is present everywhere, it is mediated through the specific. People find meaning when they bump their toe on it in their own world. Any writer worth their salt knows that it’s in the concrete small details that a story is built.

Over the long years of development with The Insatiable Moon, I often received critiques about how ‘small’ the story was. It doesn’t get much more local than a tale about a Maori psychiatric patient walking the streets of Ponsonby in the small city of Auckland in the tiny country of New Zealand. And yet we have always positioned the film as a drama for international audiences. This is not despite the local nature of the story, but because of it. A good film, like a good book, draws its audience into a small world which might be entirely strange to them, but which is both unique and finite. That tiny slice of human experience, insofar as it intrigues, is capable of resonating with the harmonies of existence. Our film is small by intention, not by oversight. And because it’s small, it’s huge.

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The Making of a Film

Walter Murch

There’s an interesting discussion to be had around the seemingly innocuous question of when (and how) a film is made. In relation to The Insatiable Moon, many answers are possible. As the screenwriter, I’d like to think it was made in the seven years of development, and even before that when I was writing the novel and watching images play out in my mind. No doubt the majority of the crew would answer quite truthfully that the film was made between 16 November and 18 December 2009, when the intense work of the shoot was under way. And yet, here we are some months later, and to a certain extent the film is still not made. It exists in its raw materials, in its digital realisation of images. But it is yet to become a film. Now the director and editor must pursue the delicate dance of not only cutting but discovering the film.

The wonderful book by Michael Ondaatje, The Conversations, which is a dialogue with maestro editor Walter Murch, posits two different approaches to the making of a film. The first, exemplified by Hitchcock and George Lucas, approaches the filming process as a means of realising a pre-existing vision – given by the screenplay and the director’s interpretation of that. The second, as practiced by Francis Coppola or Mike Leigh, regards the film as something to be found in the process of making it, through the collaborative endeavour. Reflecting on these divergent methods, Murch says:

It has to be said – both systems have their risks. The risk of the Hitchcockian system is that you may stifle the creative force of the people who are collaborating with you. The film that results – even if it’s a perfect vision of what somebody had in his head – can be lifeless: it seems to exist on its own, without the necessary collaboration either of the people who made the film or even, ultimately, the audience. It says: I am what I am whether you like it or not.

On the other hand, the risk with the process-driven film is that it can collapse into chaos. Somehow the central organizing vision can be so eaten away and compromised by all the various contributors that it collapses under its own weight.

Personally I feel the middle way is the golden way in this regard. The creative contribution of a whole team of artists is needed to make the film, and, as Murch notes, even what the audience has to bring to it. But there is also the need for a strong central vision to be guarded by someone, and not nibbled to death in the process. This will be the one most important job of the director, much as a conductor must help a horde of musicians to create beautiful music from the lines and squiggles on a page. Our film has not yet been made, but it is there in the making.

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