Dinner with WGN Critic Dean Richards and Documentary Producer John Digles

Posted on February 13, 2012 by

Seldom do I find myself in a fancy enough restaurant where every course is paired with the proper wine to heighten the food’s flavor, let alone sharing great conversation with those in the industry. But last night was just that kind of a night and I must add that executive Chef Jean-Louis Clerc, who specializes in French and international foods made the most incredible duck I’ve tasted in years.

Dean Richards CriticDean Richards, known for his movie and entertainment reviews at WGN, joined me in giving the chef an A+ rating. The flavors were so perfect that it was easy for Dean to let his Oscar picks slip prior to his official announcement during his Sunday Morning show this past weekend.

Dean and I were mostly in agreement with the amount of politics that play a role in the Oscar voting process, but we did differ on a handful of choices. Unfortunately, that doesn’t bode well for me since he is running at an annual accuracy rate of 97% with his Oscar picks.

Dean is thinking that “The Artist” will win best picture, but I’m holding out for “The Help”, which made me feel for those discriminated against and put laughter in my soul in the process. When it comes to best actor, we agreed on George Clooney, even though we both would prefer to see the Oscar given to Jean Dujardin for his portrayal in “The Artist,” as his acting was phenomenal since he had no dialog to work with.

Best Supporting Actor was a no-brainer with Christopher Plummer’s performance in “Beginners.” We were in agreement with Best Actress going to Viola Davis, although Meryl Streep certainly deserves the win. We both felt like the Best Supporting Actress would go to Octavia Spencer. Beyond that, our tastes diversified and I found hearing about his life experiences with numerous stars far more fascinating than our varied tastes in film.

John Digles Producer ActorProducer and actor John Digles added greatly to the evening. We both were raised in cop families and found our passions for filmmaking to be similar enough to exchange contact info. John just released his PBS documentary “The 95th“ on Hulu and is hoping it gets strong viewership. When I asked him about selling it to the History channel, he pointed out that it was more artistic and personal than what they prefer, as he had spent three years getting to know the veterans he filmed.

During one scene he follows a WWII sniper to France were he walks the steps he took during the war and based on the angle of a particular steeple, finds the exact place he took a bullet and prayed to survive. In that very moment of filming the documentary with the vet’s first return to the site, the sniper was finally able to get past the shock and fear he had experienced in the war that haunted him. His countenance changed.

John’s latest film is “Design”, which he produced and starred in.  He just returned from the Sundance film festival where he networked and negotiated several deals. This daunting task came a bit easier for John as he is an expert on marketing to Millennials using transmedia storytelling, the latest in effective techniques.

The night ended with me determined to watch Dean Richards on the WGN Morning News and John Digles’ documentary on Hulu. Not to mention my determination to return to the Waterleaf restaurant for more international cuisine.

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Directors Stage Shots and Block Actors with Triangles

Posted on February 2, 2012 by

The human eye moves around a room or watches a scene based on leading lines and points of focus. The art of capturing the eye and encouraging its movement in a specific direction is done through composition. There are many types of composition like “L”, leading lines, rectangles, spirals, etc. The study of these forms is typically taught using the rule of thirds, or the golden rule section or ratio.

The cinematographer is well equipped to use these various techniques, but he first must learn what the director is trying to accomplish with the actors as they rehearse or block out their movements. The director will try to create emotional energy within the scene and shift the power between characters. It’s the cinematographer’s job to capture that engagement by racking focus, using a crane, or creating movement with a dolly. The goal of the set up is to help the audience feel and understand what the actors are emoting.

The more actors on set, the more difficult the staging of the shot becomes. The simplest way for the director to capture the essence of the scene and leverage the ability of his cinematographer is to block the actors in groupings of triangles. This can be done by height, distance from the camera, or with three various groupings.

Director sets shot with triangular grouping of actors.

The director blocks the actors in three groupings within a triangle.

In “The Proposal”, during the engagement announcement scene, the cinematographer uses three groupings of actors (orange boxes of people grouped in a triangle with red lines) with one close to the camera, the next mid way, and the last group farther away. In the last grouping, the actors were grouped in a mini-triangle (blue lines) by the director.

Three-shots can easily be turned into triangle blocking based on distance from camera, actor height, and relative position if one actor stands while others sit. Sometimes the director uses a momentary triangle, as someone walks past in the foreground or background, to break up the obviousness of the blocking.

While still shots might reveal various compositions utilizing triangles, motion pictures will many times interrupt the posing aspect that the composition might encourage with movement. A cinematographer may also choose to rack focus between points of the triangle to create more eye movement.

Copyright © 2012 By CJ Powers
Photos © Touchstone Pictures
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The Grey – Review

Posted on January 28, 2012 by

Click here for my review of “The Grey”.

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Movies Told in 8 Sequences

Posted on January 27, 2012 by

When a painter wants to capture an image on canvas from a photograph, he typically will divide the picture into quadrants in order to focus on the detail and maintain proper proportions. Filmmakers do something similar by dividing their story into 8 sections.

The question most often asked is “why 8?” when the story is based on a three-act structure. The answer comes from history. In the early days of the cinema, 20-minute reels were delivered to theaters with about 15 minutes worth of film on each reel. When the reel was played, a little dot in the top right corner of the film would appear toward the end of the reel to notify the projectionist it was time to switch to the next reel on a second projector, giving the audience a seamless uninterrupted experience.

The camera manufacturers built their equipment with 20-minute reels knowing the cinematographer would get about 15 minutes of story out of each reel. When television came along, the 15-minute standard was adopted and videotape was designed for about 15 minutes of programming on a 20-minute reel or cassette.

Directors and editors found themselves constantly working in 15-minute increments in order to tell their story, so they quickly adapted to the standard and learned how to tell stories incrementally through a series of sequences. Even television directors got on the bandwagon and tried to heighten the last scene on every reel to keep the audience riveted in hopes that they would continue watching after the commercials.

The typical 2-hour movie is therefore made up of 8 sections of 15 minutes each. Since dramatic screenplays are written in a way that one page equates to one minute of screen time, the average 2-hour movie is 110 pages in length. There is also an average of one scene per minute of screen time, which gives the screenwriter 12-15 scenes per sequence in order to tell the action plotline. A mixture of shorter scenes and sequences gives enough room to salt in an additional subplot or two.

Act 1 is comprised of two sequences. Act 2 is divided at the midpoint creating two sequences in Act 2A and two sequences in Act 2B. And, Act 3 is also made up of two sequences. In between each Act is a turning point that sends the main character in a different direction than expected, which catapults the viewer into the next segment of the story.

I recently wrote a coming of age story titled, “The Tree Jumper.” It’s about Jeremy, who is a geeky X-game enthusiast who falls in love with the head football cheerleader, Brianna. He struggles to understand the unconditional love that his blind grandmother teaches him that Brianna deserves, compared to the conditional love she receives from her quarterback and football MVP boyfriend.

Here is how the story unfolds in 8 major sequences:

S1: Jeremy uses his X-gaming skills to “soar” anonymously through the trees to save the MVP’s life during the football team’s team building rafting disaster.

S2: Jeremy becomes infatuated with Brianna and encourages her to enjoy “flying” in her cheerleading maneuvers, rather than being confined to the bottom of the pyramid by her fears.

S3: Jeremy learns that Brianna is dating the MVP and awkwardly tries to learn what it takes to court a girl so he can say and do the right things to win Brianna’s love away from her uncaring boyfriend.

S4: Chloe adores Jeremy so much that she agrees to help him win Brianna based on who he is, not old customs from days gone by.

S5: Jeremy becomes confident enough that he shares his love for Brianna publicly and brings the wrath of the MVP down on himself.

S6: The MVP and key players from his football team go out of their way to stop Jeremy from winning Brianna.

S7: Jeremy realizes that true unconditional love would free Brianna to choose whomever she desires to love and would honor her choice. He walks away so the MVP can continue his relationship with her.

S8: The MVP takes Brianna on a joy ride to help her break her fear of heights in his family Cessna and crashes in the trees hanging precariously over the gorge just out of the fire department’s reach. Only Jeremy, the tree jumper, can get to the plane and saves both Brianna and the MVP. Brianna has a blast “soaring” through the trees to safety and realizes that Jeremy’s love for her isn’t conditional like the MVP’s.

Each sequence breaks the story into manageable bites and is structured to fit the new 8-segment format for a movie of the week. It also establishes the proper parameters and durations for the three-act structure that feature films use. All because someone delivered 15 minutes worth of film on a 20-minute reel just shy of a hundred years ago.

Copyright © 2012 By CJ Powers
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Best Foreign Film Oscar Nominations TBD

Posted on January 20, 2012 by

a separation and in darknessThe Motion Picture Association of America reduced the 63 qualifying movies for Best Foreign Film down to a short list of 9 pictures. This weekend they will further reduce it to the official 5 nominations. Special committees in New York and Los Angeles this weekend will cover the daunting task. The results will be announced on Tuesday.

The short list includes: (Clicking on the film title below will bring up an article by The Hollywood Reporter on the film)

Belgium: Bullhead
Canada: Monsieur Lazhar
Denmark: Superclasico
Germany: Pina
Iran: A Separation
Israel: Footnote
Morocco: Omar Killed Me
Poland: In Darkness
Taiwan: Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale

The 84th Academy Awards will be held Feb. 26 at Hollywood’s Kodak Theatre.

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Outstanding Performance by Gary Oldman – Review

Posted on January 14, 2012 by

Predictions for the Best Actor Oscar seem to have overlooked Gary Oldman. His abilities to create incredible characters is surpassed by few, yet when he crafts the perfect secret agent who needs to be non-memorable, or disappear from a room like wallpaper, few recognize his ability because he does disappear.

In “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” Oldman plays just such a person with grace, dignity and accuracy. When he’s present in the room, few remember his presence. When he has to move with stealth, he does so without incident.

What amazed me by his performance was his perfect monologue. He didn’t drop a beat or reveal that he was an actor verbalizing his lines. He was so much caught up in his character that I only saw his character. There wasn’t even a momentary glitch in accent or movement. He was George Smiley.

I met Oldman on the set of The Dark Knight. My time with him only lasted about 30 seconds, but it was long enough to meet the real man and not the character of Lt. Jim Gordon that he constructed. The difference between him and his character was amazing. He knew exactly how to become the character that Christopher Nolan required and he performed it with excellence.

There are few master craftsmen left in Hollywood, as most actors seem to have come from the latest reality television program like Katherine McPhee’s “Shark Night in 3D.” It’s as if the likes of Dustin Hoffman and the Gary Oldman are becoming few and far between.

Let me just say outright, that Oldman deserves the Oscar for Best Acting this year, but first he has to be nominated – Not a small task. Regardless of his future notoriety, if you’re interested in seeing an incredible performance, check out Oldman’s George Smiley.

Copyright © 2012 By CJ Powers
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Writing a Striking First Image

Posted on January 13, 2012 by

No matter what camp of writers you follow or attempt to emulate, all know that the opening scene in a feature film must be attention getting and set the tone for the audience. If it can also introduce the main character, you’re one step ahead, but the second scene is sufficient for an introduction.

Big box office screenwriters prefer to leave the main character’s introduction for a subsequent scene and focus on what some call the First Strike. Some great examples include J. J. Abram’s Star Trek reboot, which opens with an attack from a future century Nero who changes the course of history for Kirk and Spock. Typically in the James Bond franchise, the films open with a special 007 mission with cool effects and explosions that aren’t necessarily related to the story.

In the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the opening is of a man who receives a dried flower that causes him such great turmoil, he must do something different to bring an end to his pain. This scene doesn’t qualify as a First Strike, but rather an emotionally charged atmosphere, although some might argue that his misunderstanding of who is sending the dried flowers could be construed as a First Strike. The challenge for the screenwriter was in making the first scene a clear setup for an investigative thriller.

The screenwriter’s goal is to make sure he raises a question in the first scene that gives the audience a desire to find the answer as they watch the movie. This technique would be dressed in accordance with the story’s theme or genre. The audience expects to be taken to a place they’ve never been before, or experience something they haven’t seen.

If the main character is introduced in the scene, the audience expects to learn something special about the hero or what his typical day looks like. They desire to experience something with him that is either humorous, touching or formulated as a crisis – A shared emotion.

These techniques are designed to hook the audience into watching the entire movie and without it, the audience won’t suspend disbelief and enter the screenwriter’s world. It’s therefore important that the screenwriter touches on all the senses by addressing the following elements:

1. Location
2. Time
3. Mood
4. Tone
5. Style
6. Intent
7. Atmosphere

These important elements, coupled with raising the key universal question that drives the audience to seek the answer, will entertain and hook the audience long enough for the screenwriter to get through the needed backstory. It will also give the audience the confidence that they are watching a film worth their time.

Copyright © 2012 By CJ Powers
Photo © GIS – Fotolia.com
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