After taking a few days off from swimming in papers related to "Roderick Kills" I got back to it today with a bit of research.
Girl-Morgan touched on this a bit when commenting about the fading importance of film schools, but DVD commentaries offer some of the best research available. How else do you get direct advice from actors, directors, and production crew? It's not diluted into the lowest common denominator that text books often give, and the topics generally pertain to a real movie that was successful enough for someone to make a commentary on.
I'm making a no-budget horror film, so I'm watching every horror film that crosses my path. Currently I'm just about done with Bruce Campbell's commentary on Evil Dead (with a short break at the moment for Heroes). He explains how the shots were done, what they had the camera bolted to for various shots, and he doesn't sound like an ass. It's pretty damn informative.
Mind you, not all commentaries are created equally. I can't remember how many commentaries there are for the Lord of the Rings trilogy extended DVD sets, but I'm not sure they were all necessary. Orlando Bloom may be as pretty as a Carrie Hall painting in spring, but I don't think that I learned anything from his contribution. (Ok, lets be fair, I never made it all the way through his contribution.)
I'm also soaking up featurettes. Half the time they're promotional pieces created to be shown as teasers or interest generating pieces about the film. Even so they can provide fantastic insight into how various things were filmed.
CGI featurettes tend to be less interesting to me right now, due to the lack of CGI budget (no-budget remember) but if you stick to films similar to what you're planning on doing it's time well spent.
Even without commentaries, I'm finding style, tone, editing, and cinematography lessons in other films. Weekends on the Sci-Fi channel in October can be great for that.
Last night I caught something called "Wind Chill" in an insomnia induced viewing. It wasn't the best horror film I've ever seen, but I liked how non-derivative it felt. Let's face it, it's damn hard to come up with an original concept for a horror film any more. I also was wrong for once when I predicted a predictable upcoming plot point. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing if a film proves me wrong.
And it was educational. For example, I learned that if you have a character coughing up blood and it's really dark out, no one is going to be able to tell that they're coughing up blood. I also liked how they filmed with the fogged up windows, not that we have fogged up windows in "Roderick Kills" anywhere.
It's not a bad way to do research. I get entertained by the films I like to watch anyway and I learn. All at once. Look at me ma! I'm multitasking!
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2 comments:
I've found that you can often learn more from a bad movie than a good one. The mistakes in many bad movies are obvious, unlike in many good movies. I have a copy of Plan 9 from Outer Space, if you would like to borrow it... (JB)
I think that's a good point. Sadly I can't always make it all the way through a bad movie. They make me feel kinda ADD and next thing I know I'm asleep or doing something on the computer with my back to the TV.
I've seen Plan 9... just... wow.
I was at a friend's house the other night and Escape from New York came on their nice new, flat screen TV. It was a couple and apparently she had never seen it. We left part way through and I'm pretty sure she's still never seen it. While I've sat through it multiple times, I could relate.
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