PRODUCTION JOURNAL: Midweek Morning Mixer - 11.20.13 (CLOUZOT and ALTMAN EDITION)

Today in November 20...
1907 – Henri-Georges Clouzot, the legendary French film director of films like Les Diaboliques, Wages of Fear, La Vérité and The Mystery of Picasso was born today. A stylish filmmaker known for making movies about betrayal deception and violent deaths whose negative persona and outlook on life was refelected in his work.  Nonetheless his skill made the master of suspense, Hitchcock nervous, as Senses of Cinema reveals and "although not as prolific, Clouzot’s is undoubtedly a comparable talent, and Wages Of Fear (1953) and Les Diaboliques (1955) regularly make it into lists of the greatest thrillers ever made." To get a glimpse of how Clouzot made films watch the documentary, Inferno.



2006 Robert Altman, the legendary American film director of films like MASH, Nashville, McCabe and Mrs. Miller and Gosford Park  passed away today. A maverick filmmaker who thrived during the 1970s and preferred large casts in his movies had a resurgence in the early 90s with The Player and Short Cut.  According to Senses of Cinema, his "career has consistently been marked by high critical acclaim and hostile popular reception. His refusal to tell straightforward stories, his apparent improvisation of script, his casting unusual actors and stars against type, his restless and obliquely motivated zoom shots, his multiply layered soundtracks – such qualities have regularly been seen as significant innovations in Hollywood story and style or as quirky irritations."
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And now on to the questions for the day...  

WRITING: So watching Henri-Georges Clouzot movies makes you want to write a suspense thriller now, well here's 9 bits of advice you can use for your script.

PRODUCING: What are some lessons you can learn from a badly produced movie?  Basically, what not to do. Read 'em and weep at the disaster that was Super Mario Brothers.

FINANCING:Why should you avoid non-compliant financial projections before you submit a PPM to an investor?

DIRECTING: What are 6 tips on directing to learn from Robert Altman (at a minimum)?
 

SHOOTING: Why shouldn't you shoot video with a DSLR? And 6 reasons to avoid DSLR video workshops.  And a little pushback: the real difference between normal DSLR video and 5D Mark III raw video.

LIGHTING:What can we learn about the power of key light from Henri-Georges Clouzot?

SOUND: Who knew film music could be a religious experience?  A probing review of Scoring Transcendence: Contemporary Film Music as Religious Experience that connects film criticism and theology by dissecting film music's tremendous emotional power.

STUNTS & FX: So you want to be a stuntman / stuntwoman (maybe as a way to make money and connections and then become a director like Hal Needham who just died recently)?  Here and here are somethings you should know.

EDITING: What is constructive editing and what can you learn from its use in Robert Bresson's Pickpocket?
MARKETING: Why you should use the concepts of disruption (instead of influentials) to hype up your project? 

DISTRIBUTION: What festivals are on Moviemaker's coolest 25 film festivals in 2013 as voted by readers? Including the top 5 fests in the following 10 categories: Documentary and Horror/Sci-Fi Festivals, Short Film and Comedy Festivals, Environmental/Social Cause and Women’s Film Festivals, LGBT and Ethnic/National Film Festivals, and Experimental/Underground and Out of the Box.

LEGAL: Why do you need an entertainment lawyer to negotiate your tv acting deals?


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