FREE Film School: Week Three

FREE Film School: Week Three

If you made it through the first two weeks of FREE Film School, you spent the first week watching one film 7 times and analysing it. In the second week you read at least one professionally written screenplay.

If you did those two things, congrats! you made it through your first two weeks of Free Film School. How does it feel? If this is the first time you’ve watched a film in that way and/or read a pro screenplay, then the way you see films should have begun to change.

Try to keep up the week two challenge of reading one of those 50 screenplays every week for the next year. Working producers and directors are constantly being given screenplays to read. It’s part of their job, because they need to stay aware of the best screenplays out there.

Working filmmakers (even screenwriters… what am I saying, especially screenwriters) have to read screenplays. Producers and directors are looking for a screenplay that’s marketable. Or in truth they’re looking for that HOT screenplay, hoping to attach themselves to it before the competition.

In the industry, they talk a lot about talent. But what they really mean and what they really want to know is “Are you HOT?”

If there is one thing I could go back and tell my younger self, it would probably be this truth. That one piece of knowledge would have saved me an awful lot of time.

What’s the difference between being HOT and merely talented?

Of course the two things may coincide. The problem with talent (and art or creative work in general) is that it is very hard to quantify. Art is entirely subjective. One person’s masterpiece is another person’s pile of crap.

You may have heard people in the industry say “if something is good it will be get noticed”. Well, getting noticed – that’s true. But we want more than just being noticed, don’t we?

How do we go from being noticed (1000s of people are getting “noticed” in the industry every day) to getting the deal/funding? One thing I know, one filmmaker got a deal to shoot a feature partly down to the numbers of views he got on YouTube for a short version of the film.

They didn’t just say, “Love the script, here’s the money.” They calculated what those YouTube views meant in terms of potential audience. They decided this filmmaker was “hot” and probably got the feeling if they didn’t give him a deal, someone else would.

And industry folk hate losing out like that. So if you’re hot, you’ll get offers. If you’re merely talented but aren’t lighting up the world in any discernible way you will start to hear, “We love what you’re doing but…”.

So the difference between talented and “hot”: one is an indefinable quality, the other is a popularity contest.

They don’t teach you this at film school

But surely they should. Surely this should be lesson number one. And anyway, stop calling me Shirley.

WEEK THREE

So now, not only are you thinking about films differently, you’re thinking about the industry differently.

You’ve watched a film 7 times and seen things you didn’t see at first. You have a more expert knowledge of that film. Especially the structure.

And one of the most important elements of storytelling – even more so in drama and film – is structure.

You’ve read a screenplay then watched the film to see how it turned out – was it how you expected?

Again, this will help you to understand dramatic structure. The more you do these things, the better you will understand structure and the better filmmaker you will be.

Remember that Orson Welles directed one of the greatest movies of all time, without any experience making films before. But he sure understood dramatic structure. His mum used to read him Shakespeare’s plays as bedtime stories and he spent the rest of his life dedicated to putting the Bard’s work onto film.

That basic grounding in dramatic structure informed everything that came later in his career, from theatre, to radio, to film.

Shoot & Edit

Apart from the theoretical understanding of how narrative works and how words are turned into films, you need to get some hands-on experience shooting film (well, video).

This week’s task is to shoot a short film. You have one day to shoot it. The final film will be made up of still images and will be in black and white.

Why those restrictions? Because if you are just starting, it’s best to focus on the core of what you need to learn.

By shooting still images, you will focus more on how each image carries the viewer along the narrative journey. It’s a bit like creating a photographic storyboard. For that reason, it’s really great practice.

By shooting in black and white, you can focus on the light and shade and not have to worry about the colour of the light.

Before I shot my debut feature, I shot this short using a $200 Coolpix stills camera.

As it was stills and I used my own voice for the voice over, it only took me a few hours to shoot. A friend from the cinema I worked in volunteered to be the only character in the film. I set up the “science lab” using bits of old kit from my music studio and £4.99 battery strip lights stuck onto an upright piano.

Quantum Suicide

I kept the atmosphere deliberately dark and gloomy. Partly for creative reasons, but also to hide my lack of lighting and a proper science lab location.

The whole film took me one day to complete, including shooting, editing the photos in Photoshop, editing and adding voice over and moody audio. One week later, I showed the film at an “open mic” short film night in the London to 200 people. The reaction I got encouraged me to get on and shoot my feature.

Later, when the subject of Quantum Suicide as included in a video game and became popular (remember success = talent + popularity), my short started getting loads of views on YouTube. I only ever submitted it to one festival and it won the audience award.

All that from a bit of warm up practice, shooting a black and white film with a $200 stills camera.

Week Three: Exercise

But before I fill you with expectations that are too high, remember this is only week three of free film school. The most important reason for this task is to practice creating a narrative. And to do it in a way which takes up little time and focuses your mind onto the key ingredients of constructing a film.

Don’t worry about pro lights, lenses, cameras and all the rest. This is purely about the story, the framing, going from one image to the next.

When you edit, try to make each frame last no more than 3 or 4 seconds. This is another good reason to shoot in stills – it encourages you to maintain the pace of your film in the edit.

For this exercise you’ll need a camera that can shoot stills (quality doesn’t matter) and something to edit with. You can edit on your laptop, computer, iPad, smartphone – it’s up to you.

La Jeté

If you haven’t seen it already, I recommend watching La Jeté. It’s a film by legendary French writer, photographer, documentary film director, multimedia artist and film essayist, Chris Marker. Almost the entire film is made up of still photographs.

The film is often studied in film courses and even went on to be adapted into a feature film directed by Terry Gilliam, 12 Monkeys.

Why not watch La Jeté then watch Gilliam’s version to see how the narrative structure has been changed and adapted from a 26 minute movie to a 130 minute movie. There will be a load of structural differences and studying them will develop your film-brain a step further…

Eager to learn more?
Join our weekly newsletter featuring inspiring stories, no-budget filmmaking tips and comprehensive equipment reviews to help you turn your film projects into reality!