An arm and a leg for a short film

They rarely share the big screen with full lengths, except during film festivals. But the vast global repertoire of short films is something to speak of, and one would kind of wonder why they couldn’t win major awards.

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The advantage of short films is also the challenge about them: They’re short. Scenes are indispensably useful, and character developments are launched off the bat. They only run the risk of being boring for brief minutes. But they minimize the misleading elements, the kinds that might be inserted in features due to the confusing wealth of takes.

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The message tends to leap at the viewer whole. If a short film doesn’t have a solid, obvious message, then it’s usually there to set the mood for a big plotline outside of the movie. That much is left to the viewer’s imagination. A short story’s meaning is a good parallelism to this characteristic.

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Short films are a challenge in that they are usually an aspiring filmmaker’s amateur attempt to finish a piece. The resources that go into creating one, however, are no joke. These are usually independently funded, and for student filmmakers, they require knocking at the doors of interested donors.

 
The shoot is a massive haul of scouting for locations, convincing talents to work without a fee, and getting a lot of help from friends. The crew is often a tight band of many talents, working part-time for a passion. They’re not full-time filmmakers with a budget to waste, so setting shoot schedules is any line producer’s nightmare.

 
Learn more about the life of aspiring filmmaker Samantha Pouls on this blog.

What press junkets can do for a film

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An important part of film marketing strategy, a press junket is a campaign used to get as much exposure for a movie as possible. Before a movie is released, journalists and film critics from around the world are flown into a preselected location to interview cast members and others involved in the film. Usually, a publicist is present to make sure that the interviews maintain a positive tone and are relevant enough to boost ticket sales. The interviews will be published across many media outlets worldwide, helping to create buzz for the motion picture.

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Press junkets are an exhausting task, but the value they bring to the film brand overrides this negative factor. It’s said that a large portion of a film’s budget is partitioned for this global marketing strategy.

Casting aside their marketing value, press junkets also provide the opportunity for media personalities and the audience to see what their favorite actors are like when the camera’s not rolling. In other words, press junkets offer an exclusive look to the kind of drama that appears outside a film set. The awkward moment between former couple Danny Boyle and Rosario Dawson on the junket for the film Trance is an example and so is the difficult situation which a Fusion reporter found himself in while interviewing Jesse Eisenberg of Now You See Me. An Asian reporter’s interview with Anne Hathaway for Les Miserables turned a bit miserable as the scribe was presented with cold statements like “That’s a very personal question,” in response to his query on whether or not Anne has experienced a kind of poverty to play the role of Fantine. Unfortunately the question is one of the many cultural bombs which the reporter shouldn’t have stepped on.

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For Samantha Pouls, a film student, a press junket is better appreciated by its face value—or brand value, that is. Visit this Facebook page for more film and entertainment news.

Reinaldo Arenas in the eyes of Javier Bardem

To the followers of the Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas, seeing a Spanish actor do their idol’s antics on-screen is ecstasy—it’s as though somebody has pulled their celebrated writer out of the grave to see him in a two-hour spectacle of how he lived his parlous life. And in every dark avenue of Julian Schnabel’s 2000 adaptation of Arenas’s autobiography of the same name, Before Night Falls, Bardem’s thespian acumen lingers in every scream, homosexual kiss, heterosexual queasiness, melancholy, political oppression, and novel writing misery—indeed, it’s a 133-minutereel of authentic Cuban pain.

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Arenas and Bardem do not have any uncanny resemblance. They are handsome in their own right. But when Bardem embarks before the camera he appears as though he has had a pact with Arenas’s soul. They are unrecognizable from each other.

Bardem, without doubts, was born to be an actor. But his transformation into a homosexual poet and novelist has some painful origins. He learned to walk like Arenas did, tweaked his Spaniard tongue into native Cuban, kissed men as though he, too, was a homosexual and puked when his lips united with the women’s as if he hated it, and taught his pointy fingers to kiss the antiquated typewriters, as though he understood what it took to be a writer in a politically restrained nation.

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And it really came out of Bardem’s mouth: that when he was learning to type in the movie, he wanted to understand why Arenas was writing, or for whom he was writing. And when he started to write in the movie as the camera began to roll he realized: “When I’m writing in the movie, I’m writing to him.”

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Understanding the depth of an actor is one of the many things a film enthusiast like Samantha Pouls must know. More about understanding the complexities of filmmaking can be found on this blog.

What Ryan Gosling fatigue? He couldn’t have done fewer films

Hollywood heartthrob Ryan Gosling announced a break from acting, implying the film audience has had enough of him, in the same measure he needs “a break from himself.”

Gosling is also quoted as saying he has too much freedom and is given “enough rope to hang himself with.”

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The actor’s recent comments feed suspicion that overexposure may be the stuff of this gripe. This is unfortunate given an unimpeachable filmography, except for endorphin abuse Crazy Stupid Love, where even his shirt-off objectification could find purchase as an intellectual exception.

There’s also a full-grown Ryan Gosling following that admits gentlemen. His fashion is no less overlooked in Drive, where even his bomber jackets acquired the dramatic quality of his subdued acting. GQ is as guilty as the man himself for giving him more rope, lapdogging his red carpet and paparazzi appearances with editorial approval for his outfits. Pajama tops for film premieres, sailor tanks, ukuleles, top hats, and all that animal loving — the ubiquity of Ryan Gosling is indeed for a leading man, but he doesn’t want to be one.

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He did mention taking up a directorial debut. It’s too early to announce this as good tidings unless he’s also doubling for costume design. But no one can discount Gosling’s depth in Blue Valentine, a hairline-raising performance for an actor whose good looks, by being eschewed, could have only helped him boost his cinematic credibility. Apparently, if there’s anyone who’s not in love with him, it’s himself.

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Actors like Ryan Gosling are saleable, but how would they fare behind the camera? They probably have similar struggles as aspiring filmmakers, like Samantha Poulswho is also an avid observer of cinema’s goings-on. See this blog to understand the pitfalls of birthing a film.

Yasujirō Ozu: The rebel filmmaker

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It always takes a long time before the Japanese art form to assault the grandiloquent consciousness of the West. The ethereal and macabre novels of Yukio Mishima—especially the The Sea of Fertility tetralogy or Hōjō no Umi—and eccentric electro-jazz music of The Yellow Magic Orchestra had to wait years before they became known to the upper west side of the globe.

 

So did Yasujirō Ozu’s timeless films.

 

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Despite having an early fondness for American films, eschewing the trend of his time was Ozu’s favorite ball game. He—though not boldly—showed in his films how he loathed the conventions that Hollywood dictated. He preferred shooting continuous conversations to eyeline match wherein the audience sees what the on-screen character is seeing, a filmic storytelling he highlighted through breaking the 180-degree rule. A melodrama renouncer, he reconciled the conventionally unbearable continuous scenes present in his films with effectual narrative techniques by using ellipses—which he extensively developed in his 1949 drama Late Spring and his 1953 masterpiece Tokyo Story—or by cutting out enthralling scenes and transforming them into short dialogues instead.

 

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The camera positioning style—or the tatami shot, the shot and angle that represent the point of view of a Japanese kid, for according to him the world of corrupt moral and social orders can only be seen purely by an innocent kid—became a significant mark of Ozu’s career and filmmaking elegance. Over the years after Ozu succumbed to cancer, many young filmmakers attempted to employ the tatami shot in their films—some succeeded and countless failed—and some just became contented with paying homage to him.

 

Samantha Pouls, a big fan of the global film industry, is a junior high school student who is interested in the intricate process of filmmaking. This Facebook page can provide more updates of the other activities she loves being involved with.

Common mistakes made by neophyte documentary filmmakers

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Not all films make good returns in the box office, nor are they always given positive ratings by professional critics. For budding filmmakers, especially those who specialize in documentaries, they should bear a number of things in mind before, during, and after they create their work. The following are common mistakes that amateur filmmakers commit:

Vagueness of vision. A documentary film can be shown in a number of outlets: cinemas, television, the Web, schools, in the household, or direct to DVD. If the filmmakers are not certain who their target audiences are or where they would want to screen their project—say, constrained with factors such as lack of distribution deal or budgetary concerns—they could never have a successful release because they will have trouble adjusting the tone, language, and overall quality of their output.

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Underestimating the value of a trailer. As with any other film, a trailer is vital to increase a documentary’s marketability. Many amateur filmmakers do not release trailers because they think that “curiosity and mystery” will be enough to drive audiences to screening venues. Idealism can never do good to any form of business, but creativity and honesty will.

Featuring too much interview footage. A typical documentary may only feature less than 10 people, complete with their introductory profiles and dialogue highlights. More than this number can spoil the quality of the film and might even cause confusion amongst audiences.

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Samantha Pouls is a junior high school student who is interested in the intricate process of filmmaking. This Facebook page can provide more updates of the other activities she loves being involved with.