John August

Directors

Learning story as a director

Directors, Film Industry, QandA

questionmarkIf you would indulge a brief background, so the question has context. I grew up in and around the film business in Culver City. My godfather, whose name I carry around, was a Property Master for many years with Paramount. All that said, I wanted nothing to do with the film business — and stayed clear until my early 40’s. I have been a self employed business consultant for about eleven years now.

When I turned 43, three years ago, I took a crash course (three months) on film production. I think my motivation was really to explore my heritage some. Well, I got the bug then. I wrote, produced and directed my first short. It cost me like $2500. The story sucked like a hover, but the production value and the casting got good reviews. So I started going to lots of workshops on all aspects of the film business. I really would like to evolve to a producer/director type.

Recently I finished my second short film. My first short had eight cast and crew, this last project had over forty with some people from the industry helping out. I spent ten grand, and the short came out a ton better and I learned a ton more. I handled lots of set ups, producing, casting, and other things just fine. But AGAIN, the story was weak and thus although the film is a huge step forward –I’m not getting the story locked down. Doing films means more to me that anything I have ever done. I do ok as a business consultant, I make a decent living. But my little films, with all their flaws, mean so much more to me then anything I have ever done. I want to get good at the story part of this.

I will never be a great screenwriter, I suspect. I got some really good feedback from the industry people that felt very strongly I should stick with the directing and producing, though. I considered just optioning, and even started reading scripts. But that will not work for me. My brain needs to understand at an intimate level, the driving forces of cinematic storytelling — for me to establish my POV more solidly as a director, to be there for my talent as a fully prepared professional, and to know how to collaborate on scripts in development.

What would you recommend for a director/producer type that eventually, just wants to make really good films from really good scripts someone else writes. How do I learn to really master the driving forces of cinematic storytelling? I would GREATLY appreciate your counsel. I don’t want to give this up, as it means so much to me. But I have to get the story part to this equation on much more solid ground.

— Bob

Film is a hundred different skills and disciplines, and no one person is going to be great at all of them. ((Well, sure: James Cameron. But I’ve heard he can’t cut hair for shit.))

Fortunately, film is also a collaborative medium, which means you get to bring in people who are excellent at the things you don’t do as well. You have cinematographers, production designers, costumers and gaffers who make your vision possible in ways you simply couldn’t.

You’re not good at story. And while you may be able to get a little better with experience, the truth is you will probably never be great at it. So you need to find a collaborator who is. You need a writer.

I’d like to convince you to get over your reluctance to simply option someone else’s material. The vast majority of scripts written are never shot, and some not-insignificant percentage of those are pretty damn good. Find a script that won an award at a festival and convince the writer to let you shoot it.

If I can’t get you to simply sign on to someone else’s project, then let me encourage you to find a writer with whom you can collaborate. Many producers and directors have writers they go back to again and again. Most of the Merchant/Ivory films were written by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. I’m working on my fifth Tim Burton movie. That’s all good.

The best filmmakers recognize their strengths and weaknesses. But rather than flailing themselves over their deficiencies, they enlist talented people to help. You’re a business consultant, so on some level you must understand that putting together a strong team doesn’t make the boss any less central to the success.

What does “execution dependent” mean?

Big Fish, Directors, Film Industry, Genres, QandA

questionmarkI’ve been taking a pitch and treatment around to producers, and people are responding very well to it–but one note I keep getting is that the idea is very “execution dependent.”

What exactly does this mean? It’s a high-concept comedy idea, easy to sum up in a logline. So what makes one high-concept idea more execution-dependent than another? Or is this a euphemism for “not high-concept enough”?

I’m planning to spec it out anyway, but I’d love to get a handle on what makes an idea more or less execution-proof. I’ve read your (excellent) answer about the [family of robots](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2003/good-writing-vs-the-idea), but that seemed to be about high concept and low concept, while this is something about the idea itself.

— Andrew
Brooklyn

“Execution dependent” means that the best version of the movie is a hit, while a mediocre incarnation is worth vastly less. It’s not a diss. Most films that win Academy Awards are execution dependent, as are many blockbusters.

For example, Slumdog Millionaire is completely execution dependent. If it didn’t fire on all cylinders, you would never have heard of it. It would have been another ambitious indie failure.

Raiders of the Lost Ark is also extremely execution dependent. There have been countless movies with adventurers seeking treasure, but the combination of elements in Raiders just clicked. If Raiders were twenty percent less awesome, it wouldn’t have a place in film history.

Other examples I can think of: Juno, Pan’s Labyrinth, The Dark Knight, The Piano, Titanic, Silence of the Lambs, Babe, Fargo, The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Usual Suspects, Sling Blade, Se7en. Some of these are high concept, others aren’t. But in each case, the film’s relative success is largely a factor of how well-made it was.

Here’s a good test for whether a project is execution dependent: How many different directors could you imagine making it?

If there are five or fewer directors on your list, that’s a highly execution dependent project. And that can be a stumbling block. For Big Fish, the studio was willing to make it with Steven Spielberg or Tim Burton. Get one of them, and the studio will make the movie. Otherwise, it’s turnaround.

Many films are much less execution dependent. Consider Paul Blart: Mall Cop, or Obsessed. I haven’t seen either movie, but instinct tells me that the list of possible directors for each was much longer. Neither film needed to be perfect in order to succeed. Rather, they needed to be marketable. Both were, much to their credit.

From a studio’s perspective, there is some safety in picking movies that “anyone could direct.” You’re less likely to hit a home run creatively, but you’re also more likely put runners on base.

When a studio or producer trots out the phrase “execution dependent,” that may be a euphemism for a couple of things they’re not saying:

1. “I like it, but it would have to be perfect, and we mess up movies right and left.”
2. “I can’t think of five directors who could do it.”
3. “I can imagine getting fired over this movie.”
4. “I might buy it as a spec.”
5. “I hate the idea and I’m just trying to be nice.”

I hope it’s not the last one. Good luck with the spec.

Referring to famous people

Directors, QandA, Rights and Copyright

questionmarkI’m writing a comedy where two main characters are discussing Michael Bay films. One hates the man and his work, the other is more neutral.

Is this okay and considered “fair”, to talk/discuss/rant about a person like Michael Bay (or Uwe Boll, or Nicholas Cage etc.)? Do you need permission from them?

— James

Feel free to have your characters discuss Michael Bay. Say good things; say bad things; say what you want. It’s pretty hard to cross into libel territory when you just have dialogue about somebody famous like Mr. Bay. Consider what South Park or Family Guy get away with every week.

Is it “fair?” I’d say that as long as it’s funny, you’re fine. When it stops being funny and is simply mean-spirited, you risk alienating your reader. Go and The Nines refer to some real people, not always in a flattering way, and I’ve gotten no objections.

Where you get into trouble is when you take potshots at someone who is not a public figure, like that weird girl in health class. Not only is it legally unwise to call out Millie Walker by name, it’s also unconscionably lame. So don’t do that.

Back to Mr. Bay for a sec: Keep in mind that there’s a difference between referring to a real person in a movie and making a movie about that person.

If you were writing a bio-pic of Michael Bay (Born in Slow Motion: The Michael Bay Story), you would need either his cooperation or significant legal reassurance that whatever protections you were counting on (public record, parody, whatever) could really hold up in court.

Show your work

Awards, Directors, Rant

For math and science exams, we were often required to “show our work” — not merely to prove we weren’t cheating, but to demonstrate we understood the underlying principles involved.

I’ve been thinking about this in relation to screenwriting. When it comes to making a film, the screenwriter’s craft is probably the most direct and transparent. What did you do? You wrote the script, the 120-or-so pages of Courier around which everything else revolves. Your work is front-and-center.

Cinematographers, production designers and editors can’t point to a product which is “theirs.” In the finished film, the light is lovely; the world is stunning; the pacing is tight. All wonderful accomplishments, but inextricably bound to the work of others. That wonderful light would go unnoticed if it didn’t highlight the sets, and the sets would be meaningless if the editor favored close-ups. And the contribution of directors, who marshall all these forces in addition to actors’ performances, is probably the most difficult to judge.

As a concise, pre-existing document, the screenplay is probably the only thing that can be judged independently of the finished film. Put another way, the screenwriter shows his work.

But the irony is, after the film is made, no one asks to see his work.

Indeed, we award “best screenplay” based on a viewing of the finished film. If the movie was good, we figure the screenplay was probably pretty good. We guess. Even though we don’t need to guess, because the screenplays for “award contender” movies are commonly available. But frankly, it would be a lot of work to read all those screenplays, so we don’t make that a requirement, even for the WGA Awards. The more honest award would be titled, “Best Film based on a Screenplay which was Probably Good, and Presumably Didn’t Get Messed Up by the Director or Others.”

Worse, we also presume that a bad movie came from a bad screenplay. At some point, I’ll fund a comprehensive study of film reviews from the past 10 years, tracking exactly how many times the film’s screenwriter’s name is mentioned. My gut tells me that the writer’s name is three-to-four times more likely to be mentioned in a negative review than a positive one. But I’d love to see data.

In the meantime, screenwriting will continue to be the most transparent and opaque part of moviemaking.