Film Strategy

How many times have you asked someone about a movie and they just said, "It was great!" or "It sucked!"? More times than you can count, I'm sure, in fact we all do it, even the person who writes a dissertation on the brutality in millenial horror films and French art cinema . There is nothing wrong with that per se since we don't always have the time or the interest to analyze a film.  BUT as budding filmmakers and lovers of cinema, it is worth the time to dig deep into a film that moves you to love it or hate it. We have all heard the stories of film directors who never went to film school but just watched tons of movies and learned everything they needed to know about directing and storytelling from that. Legendary screenwriting teacher, Syd Field, always recommends watching movies as part of his way to teach screenwriting. Advising filmmakers to watch movies to become better directors is nothing groundbreaking but it bears repeating. Howev...

World War Z | Marc Forster | 2013 | USA, Malta | Format: 35mm | 116 min     Within the overall filmmaking strategy that takes a project from development to distribution, producers need mini-strategies (like Matryoshka dolls ) to complete certain complex parts of the film.  One of those mini-strategies involves how best to create effective and convincing special visual effects (VFX).  Digital Arts Staff and Wired had behind-the-scenes access to the making of World War Z which gives us an idea of how the producers and director planned and prioritized their effects (granted their budget was ridiculous but still, resourceful and inventive filmmakers can still take notes and learn how to make amazing VFX even if they don't have the money... like this guy ). For the honors, MPC was tapped to provide the VFX using their in-house crowd simulation software, ALICE.    Led by MPC's VFX supervisor Jessica Norman, the house completed more than 450...

"You see, it is very, very essential that you know ahead of time something of the orchestration: in other words, image size. What I mean by orchestration is, take the close-up, well, that's like in music: the brass sounding brassy, loud sound before you need it. Sometimes you see films cut such that the close-up comes in early, and by the time you really need it, it has lost its effect because you've used it already. Now, I'll give you an example where a juxtaposition of the image size is also very important. For example, one of the biggest effects in PSYCHO was where the detective went up the stairs. THE PICTURE WAS DESIGNED TO CREATE FEAR IN AN AUDIENCE AND THEN GRADUALLY TRANSFER FROM THE SCREEN INTO THEIR MINDS. HENCE, THE VERY VIOLENT MURDER TO START WITH, ANOTHER ONE LESS VIOLENT -- AND MORE FRIGHTENING -- AND THEY'VE GOT THE THING IN THEIR MIND. Then, as the film goes on there is no more violence. But in the mind of the audience...