"The images that surround us today are worn out, they are abused and useless and exhausted. They are limping and dragging themselves behind the rest of our cultural evolution."
-- Werner Herzog
Dogme 09.8 has the expressed goal of countering "certain tendencies" in the cinema today. In the spirit of Lars Von Trier's "The Five Obstructions," it acknowledges a fundamental truth -- that new constructive discipline is needed in filmmaking.
Dogme 09.8 is a rescue action!
In 1995 enough was enough. The movie was dead and called for resurrection. The goal was correct but the means were not! Dogme 95 proved to be a secondary ripple that washed ashore and turned to muck. Purity turned to laziness. Obstacles became crutches. Babies were thrown out with bathwater. It was fun but very silly, and the results, filtering into every aspect of filmmaking worldwide, have been counterproductive and deadening.
To Dogme 09.8, cinema is individual!
But individuality requires skill, judgement, discipline and taste (good or bad, just not hacky) in order to be effective on the screen. Hackwork is hackwork, whether it's accomplished with handheld video cameras or computerized motion-control. As never before, the superficial action and the superficial movie are receiving all the praise.
To Dogme 09.8 the movie is illusion!
Because movies are pure illusion! That is the stuff they are made of. There is no "documentary reality" -- unless, by that phrase, one means the illusory reality created by a film, including a so-called "nonfiction" or "verité" one. Stylistically, a Maysles documentary or a Cassavettes feature is every bit as much the product of aesthetic and technological artifice as a Michael Bay movie. Whether by employing obtrusive lo-fi technology, or the latest high technology, anyone at any time can make technology itself the subject of the film and wash away the last grains of cinematic illusion in the deadly embrace of sensation.
Dogme 09.8 celebrates the preservation of illusion, the visual integrity of Buster Keaton and the inventive wit of Ernst Lubitsch, by the presentation of a set of rules known as The Vow of Integrity:
1. Get a tripod. Learn how to use it. Human beings do not feel their heads bobbling around all the time. If they did, they'd throw up a lot more. The hand-held camera, once a legitimate tool, has been overused to death. It is beyond a cliché, beyond a "certain tendency" -- it has become the most obtrusive, commonplace annoyance in modern films, a hallmark of visual illiteracy. Audiences should throw things at the screen every time they notice handheld camerawork.
2. Location-recorded sound isn't the finished product. Don't stop there. Create a soundtrack that enhances the world of your movie. Most people think Ramin Bahrani's "Chop Shop" was recorded with "live" sound. It wasn't. It's nearly all created in the studio, densely layered and impeccably crafted to sound natural and spontaneous.
3. Shoot the movie so that it can be assembled in as few well-planned shots as possible. Every unnecessary cut is a colossal statement of failure. Each shot, and each cut, must have a reason to exist within the world of the film -- like words in a sentence, or sentences in a paragraph. Profligate cutting is wasteful and monotonous. It saps images of their energy and it too often disrupts the crucial rhythms of the interactions between the actors/characters. Remember Hitchcock's rules: Don't use your most powerful tools (cuts, camera movements, close-ups) until/unless they are necessary. In other words: Don't be a spendthrift with money shots.
4. No more than three consecutive shots should last less than one second apiece. Nothing undermines confidence and interest in a movie more transparently than a film that is too timid and skittish to allow itself to be seen. Hyperactivity is self-defeating. Allow the audience to meet the movie at least halfway.
5. If you can tell it's CGI, don't use it. If nobody will notice, go right ahead. If your monster or your spaceship or your location or your decapitation can't be created in camera or with analog effects (like matte paintings), don't assume you can fix it with CGI. If it violates the reality of the film -- no matter what it is -- don't show it.
6. Don't fall back on overused scenes, subjects, images and superficial action. These are the usual signs that a movie has gone slack, coasting on auto-pilot: car chases, gun fights, fist fights, makeout montages, segues using snippets of pop tunes that fade out just as they're getting started, 360-degree (+) spinning shots, drug deals, sad women eating ice cream, explosions, zzzzz zzzzzzzzzzz. Snort. Aren't there other, more interesting stories to tell, and more interesting ways to tell them?
7. Don't scramble chronology just to make dull material less linear. It doesn't help.
8. Know your genre and filmmaking conventions. You can't subvert them if you're not familiar with them. It's like jazz: You can't re-work the tune if you don't know the melody to begin with. You have to know which notes not to play, and which to play around.
9. Fit the format to the film. Your reasons for shooting on video, or 35 mm, flat or scope, should be apparent in the film itself. Take advantage of your chosen format.
10. Remember that every single thing in your movie reflects a decision. Even if it's an accident or an oversight, it's in there (or not) because you chose to put it there or leave it there. Or because you didn't notice it was there, which is essentially the same thing because somebody else will.
Thus is made the Vow of Integrity. Go forth. Make movies.
Got more suggestions for ways of restoring cinematic integrity?
Good points all - the only one I would really recommend (which is less technical) is a sort of a golden rule: Respect the audience.
Thankfully I've been shooting like this already. I hope the final results will be embraced by the viewer.
JE: You give me hope!
Very fine. I would change number four's shot length to 5 seconds, though.
11. If you have a story about quirky outsiders who meet, act quirky, and forge unlikely, quirky friendships, burn the script and shoot hard core pornography instead.
Spot-on list. How funny (and sad) that a film with any kind of integrity and truth whatsoever is now revolutionary. I am reminded of Wim Wender's Tokyo-Ga reading this. Perhaps it is the Herzog quote at the start. Other than a few references to CGI and nauseating shaky-cam, this list basically describes an Ozu film. I share your passion Jim. I have been making short films for awhile with basically the the film-making ideals presented here. I have not made anything in awhile, this has inspired me to pick up my camera.
How about just one rule that encompasses all of those? Do NOT, under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, listen to a BAD PRODUCER. Whenever a bad producer opens their mouth, any sounds that come out of it should be answered with the following: "Shut up, give me some money, and get off my set."
If every character is a wise-cracker, then it isn't funny or subversive anymore.
If they shot Ghostbusters now, the movie would be four Bill Murrays.
I agree. But I also have to say that why? People should feel free to make the movies they want. And we should feel free to not watch them. There are so many great movies released every year, that if we just start rejecting the trash, we'll be happier movie goers. Why attack pop-movies, when there is an independent film that accomplishes all of those above. Use it more as a rule guide to your own movies.
Perhaps we can do a certification. Roger can now 'This movie is certified to be in compliance with Dogme 09.8"
JE: Well said. People are always free to make lousy movies because they don't know any better or because they think they're being au courant. And I completely agree that the bulk of "indie" movies are as rigidly conformist and unimaginative as the bulk of Hollywood movies. Oh, and personally I'm anti-dogma of any kind. But I do have principles!
A fine set of rules with a few that can be supplied to other mediums aswell. I'll be sure to encourage my peers to use these in their work.
The first point is one of my biggest complaints about a lot of recent movies. The user of a hand held camera often does not help the story, it doesn't make me feel more like I'm there, it makes me feel like a cat watching a laser pointer. The third Bourne movie was kind of fun, but I almost got whiplash watching it.
I would like to see more movies that end with something other than two people facing off in a foundry or power plant.
'Cause all great art started with a set of rules...
I remember Herzog saying on the commentary for "Signs of Life," that around the birth of New German Cinema, some German directors got together to swear an oath about this or that, what they're gonna do, what they're not gonna do. He thought it was silly and had no part in it.
Not that I necessarily disagree with any of your rules. But, should I have thrown something at the screen during "NCFOM" when Tommy Lee Jones gets out of his car and approaches the hotel? I would've had to bring a lot of tomatoes to throw at "The Hurt Locker." Should I have shut off "El Dorado" because Hawks was just recycling the same old scenes, subjects, images and superficial action? PJ's King Kong/T-rex fight was clearly CGI, doesn't make it any less mindblowing than the original Kong/T-rex fight. For that matter, the CGI aliens in "District 9" are lookin' pre-tty sweet. And - what - less shots = better movie?
I imagine your answer would be some variation of, "Obviously, there are exceptions, but..."
The problem is that the people who break the rules with impunity all think they have a perfectly good reason to do so. Even if they don't, they've often convinced themselves they do; they think they've already "paid their dues" in some form (typically something we've not seen) and now have the unalloyed right to treat the audience like a punching bag.
The very worst part of all these things is that, more often than not, they're used in movies about situations and people we simply do not give a bloody damn about -- and that's what makes them truly noxious.
I'm working on two projects right now. I will take these rules to heart - one is a horror/fairy tale for adults, the other is a vulgar romantic comedy; it'll be interesting to see how I can adapt.
One idea that appeals to me is this: don't tell the audience everything. Leave them some gaps to fill with the products of their imagination.
I thought this worked really well for the Star Wars series, whether intentional or not: there were clear chronological gaps between each episode. It left me wondering what happened in between, and how they got from A to B. A more recent example is Duncan Jones' "Moon", in which the main character's confusion at the mystery was palpable and infectious: was there a rational explanation for what happened, was it all imagined, or was there something supernatural going on? The tension had me chewing the seat in front of me!
Brilliant. This is an absolute set of rules that I pray to the film Gods get followed more often.
Interestingly enough, The Hurt Locker is guilty of violating at least five of these, the first being the most offensive. They're just having a conversation. Frame the damn shot and hold it still.
Boy, this was surely a futile exercise. I believe that at least 85% of all movies, wherever they come from, follow these "rules".
Gee I don't know what to say, this is like the ten commandments; everybody tries not to lie, most people do not kill, most people respect their parents etc. It is a moral code that is innately accepted by the vast majority.
Same goes for these "rules", they are respected by most directors around the globe, it is as if they were created just to enable some to legitimately wag a finger at the few bad ones. Isn't that condescending?
If you don't like Bay's work well just don't go see it and stop whining about it and if the flock wants to see it, well it's they're loss. It just proves that we are still not as bright as we should be in this modern era.
Back to the "rules", most of them I do agree with, they are not as rigid as the original Dogma ones (even Von Trier couldn't apply them all).
Though I believe number 1 should have said "steadicam" instead of a tripod. Now THAT is an invention the fully replicates the movement of the eyes and the way we naturally move through space. Static shots forces the viewer to take a stand and doesn't integrate him/her into the movie experience. I personally prefer to have the audience follow my characters then to stand in place and watch them go about.
There is one thing that is missing from that list though and it is color correction. CC has been the bane of my eyes for the last ten years or so. Take Ferris Bueller and Predator and put them side by side. Yes they are from completely different genre but both show us the world as it is. The jungle is lush with green but not to green and downtown Chicago is gray but not too gray.
For the last decade (I think Fight Club started it all, I called it then the "Techno look") I have seen my share of movies, both blockbuster and indie's, that oversaturate , desaturate or use a color scheme to such an extent that my eyes simply give up halfway through the movie. It is always either too green or too blue or too yellow ot too sepia etc.
It serves no purpose at all and breaks the illusion of the film. Sometimes there are exceptions, for instance The Matrix. While in The Matrix everything has a dash of green or yellow but in the "real world" it tends to be more blue. It's great because the movie give us a clue between the "real" and the "virtual".
Now that serves as purpose.
Philippe
Generally speaking, these ten rules are pretty good ones to follow, although there is a time and place for hand held camerawork.
My only problem is with item #2. Please, please, please do everything in your power to record as much of the sound on location as you humanly can. This includes all dialog and sound FX.
IT MAKES A HUGE AND NOTICABLE DIFFERENCE!
This does not mean you can't finesse your sound tracks later (you should) but you can't make a silk purse from a sows ear. Without good clean tracks to start with, you are not going to have a suitable end product.
If you think I am wrong, look at any of Robert Altman's films with their dense, layered, literate, witty, startling and surprising soundtracks.
From his multi-character dramas like Short Cuts to musicals like Nashville to his fever dream films like McCabe And Mrs. Miller to single actor performances like Secret Honor, Altman was a master at location sound and then using it creatively in post-production.
Any numbskull can add a sound effect later on (Michael Bay?)but getting the sound right when you are on location requires patience, talent and a clear idea of what you want to create.
Excellent rules. Thanks for putting in the tripod rule. I cannot understand how professional cameramen with large format, heavy cameras have to force their hands to shake or move the camera to try to make it look "documentary," especially during dialog scenes. It's much easier to hold a camera steady than it used to be, and even so, if you're standing still shooting a scene, you have to consciously move the camera as if you're drunk to get the effect we see in many films. Even the average wedding video shot by amateurs are steadier, so what this effect tells me is that the cameraman is pretending to shoot in a style that doesn't even exist in the real world.
Uh oh - did I already rant on this point in one of your earlier posts?
One rule I would like to add: Revenge and firearms are not the only ways to resolve conflict in a story - if you can come up with a more creative solution, you'll be doing us all a favor. Especially that revenge part. Is it me, or does it seem like every action film revolves around someone wanting revenge?
but if the camera isn't shaking, how will we know when things are getting tense?
Would this stack up?
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/0f16a73ec7/garage
You should add a corollary regarding close-ups to rule 3. I think Bordwell's "intensified continuity" and "stand-and-deliver" concepts are at least partly to blame for our lack of refreshed images. "Well-planned shots" need to actually be planned, otherwise we're in violation of rule 6. That also means, please, no more unnecessary circular dolly shots rotating around characters standing still. (see: Hancock)
JE: Yes! No close-ups until/unless absolutely necessary (I think I WILL add that). The gratuitous 360-degree shots in the first half of "TDK" were early signals that the director didn't know what he was doing, or why.
Along with tired chase scenes, there are a few things I'd like to never hear again.
"I'm not a terrorist, I'm a patriot!"
"The government turned it into a weapon!"
And above all, please do away with the ubiquitous plot in which a romance develops under false pretenses, the deceiver tries to set the record straight but the other person is too busy to listen ("but-but-but I have to tell you,") the whole matter comes to light ("You lied to me!") and the they end up together.
The first two are overused. No one should even get a screenwriting credit for rehashing the third.
I do believe in substace over style, very much so, indeed. The problem, though, is that at least two of these rules break THAT idea, by putting intense restrictions on a film. What if a film has to be done hand-held, not because it takes less skill (perhaps), but because that is the way it simply needs to be told? Or, when considering how fast a cut should be, why can one not use three cuts that last under a second consecutively? There are well-made films that use this technique (Moulin Rouge! comes to mind), in which we, the audience, are supposed to be thrown into this world, completely and utterly overpowered, like the main character, and so it does, in that sense, work. If a film is truly substance over style, then one should know enough about his own movie to choose every aspect of it, even if that choice is either commonplace, or completely unique. It just all depends on the movie.
Savvy
Clearly no list could be perfect, but this is a good one in terms of our current zeitgeist. I think it would be more effective to wage this campaign against the tastes of producers and studio executives than against directors. Any director who can't see through hack conventions is not going to make a decent movie from any set of guidelines. They will be able to replicate the more straightforward ones mechanically, but they will fail to deal with them critically. The rules will just become more substitutions for creativity. By focusing instead on converting the suits (how could you even possibly do that?), it might at least convince them to give talented directors a little more freedom to do what they want.
(Maybe that is a component of what is going on here and I am missing it, however. Or maybe I am naive and simplistic about the interaction between the creativity and the money sides.)
I couldn't agree more with these rules. Thanks for being so succinct with them. Rule number one is the most credible of the bunch. The use of hand held cameras has caused many, including myself, to skip some and drift off in other movies due to the sensation of actually thinking we might barf. There's no possible way that the director of a romantic comedy wants my reaction to ANY sequence of his/her film to be, "Gee, I think I'll barf now." Thanks, Jim.
All fine rules, except for two:
Regarding 3, sometimes a shot may be so beautiful or surprising, that even if unnecessary, it adds to the film.
Regarding 6, I'm sorry, but nobody can convince me that because a film has car chases/gun chases/fist fights, it is automatically a bad film. Independent films are not automatically better than Hollywood films, and family dramas (to use an example) are not automatically better than action films. Controversial or not, I regard Die Hard among the greatest films of all time and essential cinema for any potential cinephile. Perhaps a better rule would be to not have anything which doesn't fit in the context of the film that you are making. A car chase would be out of place in the new Diary of Ann Frank film, but would not be out of place in the new Indy film.
JE: Don't disagree at all. Notice the quote from Herzog at the top, and the wording: "Don't fall back on overused..." The important thing is to ask yourself whether a scene or a shot or a cut is worthwhile or necessary, or if it's just an "auto-pilot" decision. That's the spirit in which these "vows" (referencing the Nouvelle Vague and Dogme '95) are proposed. As for independent films -- I've always taken pains to point out they can be as cliched and cinematically bankrupt as anything else. Check out my review of the 2006 Sundance prize-winner "Quincenera," for a fairly recent example:
http://bit.ly/BcOrw
I suspect Werner Herzog’s observations might be incomplete. What we need is not images, but experiences. That is difference, I believe, between a Tarkovsky film that can make you emote in the strangest of ways and at the strangest of places, and a Silent Light which is nothing but an artificial and emotionally hollow assemblage of pretty pictures.
Jim, you’re very true, we audiences do not share a fatigue fetish, and do not appreciate a shaky camera sending our balances into a spin. But there’s a time and a place, where the said technique might be the only one. I think Public Enemies is an excellent example.
I mean, the illusion is not an image, the illusion is an experience.
Dogme 95 seems to me to have been Von Trier's reaction to his own opulent style of filmmaking. I think that he wore himself out with Element of Crime and Europa, and so he put restrictions on himself to keep himself from making movies that way. It was a challenge, it kept his filmmaking and his budget modest, and it prevented him from compulsively overworking himself. Though I haven't seen any Dogme 95 movies myself, the reviews don't seem to be favorable. And the strictures seem a bit much.
You came up with this yourself? Cool! Oh, 09.8. 2009 August. I get it now.
1 is a very good rule. But 4 I think could have been even better. Your point was visual coherence. "Nothing undermines confidence and interest in a movie more transparently than a film that is too timid and skittish to allow itself to be seen. Hyperactivity is self-defeating." That is correct, but there should be more. Maybe like this: "Let the audience see what you show them. Shaky shots do not amplify audience interest by making them work harder to make out the action. They advertise a director who didn't feel his action was interesting enough, so he used a gimmick. The same is true of a dozen other gimmicks: slow-motion, fast-motion, quick cutting, close-ups without establishing shots, on and on. If it is worth seeing, let the audience see it. If it isn't worth seeing, don't show it at all. Nothing undermines confidence and interest in a movie more transparently than a film that is too timid and skittish to allow itself to be seen. Hyperactivity is self-defeating." See what I'm saying? To paraphrase T. S. Venkataraman, "If I show you a donut, you must look at the donut. If you look at the hole, you are seeing stuff I do not want you to see."
Another thing. Going back to an earlier post of yours, I might have included something about nudity. "When the story calls for nudity, show it. Don't cheat the audience with carefully placed camera shots that stop just above the breasts. Don't have your actors make love with their clothes on. Tricks like these call attention to themselves and advertise a director who was too cowardly to use real nudity in his movie. If the actors are nude, show it for what it is. Also, sex scenes should be structured like stories. They should not be broken up into montages. Sex is a complete act, and sex scenes should follow the classic dramatic structure: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, dénoument."
Thank you, by the way, for bringing in Herzog's famous views on images. In my film viewing, I am constantly looking for new images. Now I asked Answer man Ebert this question, but he never answered, so maybe you'd give your views. Do you think that movies today — and I mean any and all movies, mainstream to indie to foreign (but maybe not the near-impossible-to-find small festival films that don't even make it to Netflix) — are providing the new images Herzog speaks of? You can call me crazy, but looking at reviews of films, I'm less drawn to "people feeling a bunch of emotions" than I am to "spaceships" because I'm hungry for images.
JE: I like those elaborations and additions -- though I would say to filmmakers: "Stop pointing so much and let the audience decide whether it's more interesting to look at the donut or the hole!" You made me remember that I did write something very similar to what you suggest about sex and nudity in a piece for MSN Movies a while back. It's so distracting when characters start strategically moving bedclothes around as if they were re-enacting a scene from "Austin Powers." I'm trying to remember the last movie that I came away from feeling I was seeing the world in a different way because of the ways of seeing the movie had shown me. Can't think of one right now. "Liverpool," maybe.
JE: Yes! No close-ups until/unless absolutely necessary (I think I WILL add that). The gratuitous 360-degree shots in the first half of "TDK" were early signals that the director didn't know what he was doing, or why.
Felt right to me... Overwhelming being face to face with the Joker, I'd be dazed, the room is spinning... Got the idea across to me and viscerally...
But I guess I'm on crack, right?
I think your 6th rule, while I understand your intention, is just plain stupid. "No Country for Old Men", "Watchmen", "The Hurt Locker", "Near Dark", "Let the Right One In"... You liked these movies and, yet, they have in them what you are campaigning against. I liked those movies too... Because they were well crafted, they were visceral and they were 'interesting'. What's interesting? I'll tell you when I see it. And these things are about all that matters.
Though, I'll give you credit for noting that it's the superficial use of these things that bothers you (as it does me). Like I said, understand your intentions and I generally agree with you that these types of things are snoozeworthy but I'm not sure you can make rules against them.
Unless, of course, you are doing so knowing that rules are meant to be (and will be) broken.
One more thing... Your comments about the shaky cam shot. My Dad, and you'll just have to trust me on this, is a moron when it comes to movies. And he can notice every shaky cam shot, even when they're integrated without distraction as in "Half Nelson". Any movie, I mean any movie, that has a shaky cam, he'll notice just because it's 'different' than what he is used to. That said, if it's an action movie, almost any action movie, he probably won't care and might even like it.
So I stand strongly against what you're saying about throwing popcorn at the screen when we notice a shaky cam shot. Even I would have been throwing it at early scenes in "The Hurt Locker", which would be terribly unfair considering how terrific a movie it ends up being.
And if I can defend the shaky cam... Still shots, for me, often give me the feeling that I'm not there. It's just a reminder that this is some organized tableau of a director I'm seeing. I wanna be there. I love the idea of walking alongside the characters. I think there's so much more you can get out of a scene viscerally through the shaky cam. The problem is people who don't know what they're doing with it or when it is overused or hacked by the editors.
Recent exceptions for successful non-shaky cam movies are Soderbergh's "Bubble" and "Girlfriend Experience".
Alright, now that I've complained, great work as always Jim. I basically agree with all your other points for the reasons you've listed. I'll be sure to post this for my film friends to see.
JE: You have to view this in the context of Truffaut's famous Cahiers du Cinema essay (the manifesto plays directly off the Dogme 95 manifesto). See Dennis's interview with Joe Dante about the shaky-cam in "Hurt Locker." I agree with him. As I always say: context is everything.
I'd edit the first rule to exclude Kathryn Bigelow, Michael Mann and Paul Greengrass, who are the masters of handheld cinematography.
Another rule I'd add is the one about saturation, which several people have mentioned: If there's no reason to color saturate your film, don't do it. I can't tell you how many films I've seen in the last few years with completely pointless color saturation (Bangkok Dangerous, if you're ever unfortunate enough to stumble on it, is a pretty egregious example.)
This seems like a direct attack on Michael Bay. His flicks will likely violate all 10 of these principles, and while we're at it, so would the Scott brothers.
I don't have a problem with any of the items listed in #6, as long as they're done in a stylistically interesting way.
Sometimes a flick is so dull or insipid that I'd rather watch some "segues using snippets of pop tunes" instead.
Thank you Phillipe. I completely agree with you about overly post processed cinematography. The recent wave of digitally enhanced film is an abomination to cinema, giving directors and cinematographers excuses to be lax in what they're shooting.
Now, I am not one for rules for all of cinema. But one I would ardently like to see followed is- Light your film in camera and be truthful to the format you are shooting on. If you're shooting on film, chemically process it. If you're shooting on digital, use a computer. But what we have today is some bastardized hybrid and as a result, there is no soft cinematography that tries to capture realistic lighting schemes.
I think if more films kept to their formats, and didn't abuse their lighting, the audience would be allowed to empathize more with the images. Say what you will about "The Dark Knight," but at least on DVD, we got the chemically processed version of the film and not the digitally overdone version in theaters. Because of this, I was able to immerse myself into the action better than say "Live Free or Die Hard" which has a harsher image.
This is one of the reasons I enjoyed "Public Enemies." Michael Mann shot on digital and finished on digital but didn't touch the image. Yes, its mostly handheld camera but the color of the image is natural to the format as it captured light on set. And for that, the movie allowed me to connect to the images better.
For me, when you up the color saturation on your film, on a format that was not made for such a thing, you're automatically creating a barrier with your audience that announces "this is only a movie, disregard the images."
The other thing I forgot to write about Von Trier: his religious upbringing may very well have made him compelled to put restrictions on himself. Another tangentially related matter: if his Dogme 95 manifesto was too limiting, his Puzzy Power Manifesto got it exactly right. There are your rules for filming sex right there!
Part of what I was on about is that movies often start with two characters kissing, jump to them in bed having sex in a series of closeups that keep you from really seeing the act, and then jump to the two people lying in bed afterward. Do they not have orgasms in movies? Von Trier and company wrote rules to balance the explicitness of pornography with the depth of feature films to create something far better than either of the two was usually willing to deliver.
But you didn't tell me, do you think any of today's movies are providing Herzog's new images?
JE: You have to view this in the context of Truffaut's famous Cahiers du Cinema essay
Now that you point that out, the parallels between what they were writing against and what you are now are frightening. I guess the one difference of progress from then is that they were arguing for directors to seize control and here we're discussing what restraint directors should show... I'm not sure I'm optimistic enough to look at that as the film world 'getting somewhere'...
JEL See Dennis's interview with Joe Dante about the shaky-cam in "Hurt Locker." I agree with him. As I always say: context is everything.
They're looking around for bombs. They're in a world that is almost alien to them and so it's disorienting. Their adrenaline is pumping so they could be dazed... I hear ya guys. It did stick out to me in theaters - I think she went a tiny bit overboard - but it didn't bother me that much because of the context.
I agree that context is everything which is why I defended the 360 shots in "TDK" (from my POV anyway) and why I'm not fond of your 6th rule... but seeing as the majority of movies made now are #6 movies and that the majority of those movies suck, I understand why you made that rule. If people remember how to make a movie about characters we care about, maybe we'll care when they're running from the explosion. If directors figure out how to film an explosion, a real explosion not CGI, that might help too. The idea is take away what they lean on and use as a crutch and then see what else holds up. The answer for guys like Bay will be: nothing.
And so your rule is to encourage a return to the practice of... filmmaking before firework construction. I can dig it.
I read the rest of that Dante interview too.
And if you'll permit this to be a long post Jim, as a 3rd year film studies student, the following excerpt from Dante's comments would indeed (and sadly) sum up my experiences in terms of how fellow film students today react to older movies versus how me and my true cinephile friends do (and we're a dying breed from what I can see):
The problem is that the studios have now educated the audience to expect more and more and more spectacle, and they’ve discovered at the same time that it’s costing them too much money to make this spectacle. So what are they gonna do? They’ve given the audience a taste for blood, but now they don’t have the money to keep producing it. It’s going to be very interesting to see how they counter that. If you’ve ever sat in an audience at a film school with a John Ford movie or something like that and there’s a shot of a guy walking up a hill, somebody will inevitably say, “Well, why does that shot go on? Why is it even there?” It’s a taste thing, and it’s one of the reason that older movies often don’t play well for new audiences—they’ve grown up in a world of movies and TV where no shot lasts more than three or four seconds, with constant pop-ups and things coming from all angles and shooting all over the place. Nobody’s going to sit still and watch Dreyer movies now—there’s no way you’re going to be able to go back to that. But at least you can teach people to appreciate that stuff, even though hardly anybody does it anymore. Bergman has fallen way off the charts for film students, and even some critics, because his movies are slow, they’re in black and white, they’re somber, they have no humor. “Well, jeez, what do I wanna watch that for?” I mean, when I was in college this was like the holy grail—Bergman was the greatest. So times change, of course, but we have to learn to preserve the past and its values while keeping up with the future.
***
One cold Toronto night, my roommate and I watched "Winter Light" for the first time. You could hear a pin drop in our apartment. The editing and shot selection in that movie is some of the best I've ever seen, particularly the opening mass scene. Says so much with so little. Bergman's able to contrast the idea that unites those at the church against the harsh physical realities around them. And you can feel the tension. Bergman isn't taking any object in that room for granted. It's the same when you watch Keislowski. Both directors have a way of revealing how artificial everything around us is. A dog runs into a house of god and nobody can stop it from running about and disturbing a mass. That's my idea of spectacle.
But audiences have lost appreciation for these little, profound moments. When one of my profs screened "The Searchers" in first year, even I dozed off. That was before I'd seen many films or, dare I say, truly respected film... Now I can sit there gripped by a Ford film but I'll fall asleep during "Fast & Furious".
The one rule I object to this is the rule against CGI. The fact is that classic special effects aren't better, we're simply used to suspending our disbelief--that's not a matte painting, that's the Emerald City! It's fair to expect audiences to suspend their disbelief in Yoda whether he's a puppet or a computer generated character; both are equally (un)intrusive to the film.
What filmmakers need to realize is that CG, like any other tool, can in fact be used badly. When objects are too clean; when creatures are too fluid and weightless; when they haven't been placed properly within the context of the shot; when they aren't integrated properly with real actors, sets, and other filmmaking tools... that's when it becomes a problem.
--
Another rule I'd suggest, that kind of covers several of the others (3, 4, 7, etc), is simply this: if a shot, lit and filmed, is not interesting in and of itself, no amount of gimmicks or tools used on top of it will make it good enough. Meaning, you can't take a bad scene and cut it faster or shoot it fancier; you can't take a bad story and cut it out of order; you can't take badly designed sound and simply turn up the volume; you can't take poorly lit shots and color correct them to make them pretty. All of those things are valid ideas to try if you start with quality and build from there. If not, sorry, you're out of luck. So get THAT right before you work on the rest.
--
One more suggestion: "new" always beats "big" or "expensive". I'd rather watch a chair filmed in a new and interesting way, or a type of chair I've never seen before, than an explosion of the sort I've seen a million times.
Raymond,
Trier (he added the Von later) was raised in an atheist "hippie" household and his form of rebellion was to go more conservative though he has bounced all over the map both theologically and politically. It's also hard to tell if he's ever being serious. He claims that because his home had "no rule" he was attracted to more structured environments.
The Dogme 95 manifesto (written by Von Trier and Vinterberg, later joined by other Danish FIlm School products)was intended partly tongue-in-cheek though not as tongue-in-cheek as Herzog's "Minnesota Declaration" which is one funny piece of counter-criticism. The specific rules didn't matter so much as the idea of having a set of restrictions, the theory being that limiting your choices necessitates ingenuity. This is even more obvious in Von trier's "The Five Obstructions" as Jim mentioned before.
Von Trier only made one Dogme movie, so obviously his interest in the experiment quickly diminished. Of course it was a darn good movie - The Idiots. One of the funniest movies of the last decade or so.
JE: And Von Trier also cheated -- but that's the point! Experiments, by definition, have limits. Rules are made to be broken, if you have a good reason for breaking them. The aim of exercises like these (and they are quite funny) is to make you more aware of the decisions that are being, or need to be, made. It's about avoiding the "auto-pilot" decisions I've been mentioning.
I don't think any list of rules like this is going to help film. An untalented director is still going to make a bad film even if he tries to follow a set of rules. A gifted director makes his own rules that work for him, and doesn't limit himself to what someone else thinks is the right way or wrong to make a movie.
JE: I think we all know you are quite right, but that's not the focus of these kind of exercises. A good director will find creative ways to use obstacles of any sort and make them work for the film.
Great list.
I would add:
Turn up the lighting. You are not making your action scene more dynamic by making it dark.
Avoid the deus ex machina.
If you are going to let your characters fight, let them bleed. Stop sanitizing violence.
A additional rule should be:
11. Never rely on a graphic novel for the storyboards of a film. Frames in a graphic novel are used as a narrative device - they are more than a series of boxes that hold images. Storyboards, on the other hand, serve as a rough guide to how and where the camera will frame action/images.
Zack Snyder is the worst offender of this - 300 and Watchmen were technically sound films (I thought the CGI was too intrusive - see rule 5) but they are the equivalent of Gus Van Sant's shot-for-shot remake of Psycho. These movies are culturally and literally redundant. Possible exception to this rule: Sin City (but I may be wrong on that one).
An amendment to Hitchcock's rule should include the use of slow-motion. I'll mention Watchmen, again, because I watched it recently based on some very high praise from reliable critics. I went in feeling indifferent about what the experience might entail but, despite my reasonable expectations, I was surprisingly repulsed by the film. The overuse of extreme slow-motion during action sequences resulted in a progression of dislike: annoyance, resentment and then complete boredom. The reliance on obvious CGI shots led me straight to boredom.
1) It is okay for your characters to have gunfights; don't have them expend hundreds of rounds hitting nothing.
2) If the movie is science fiction, have us discover the world as it unfolds for us. Eliminate the opening text crawl.
JE: Good ones. Allowing the audience space to discover the film is vital.
I think Raymond has the right idea about Von Trier. But I don't think it was his upbringing, rather his conversion to Catholicism in his 30's. After all what is Dogme 95 but a set of rules for ascetic filmmaking?
You, like a majority of people, have missed the point of Dogme 95. Its not about Lars Von Trier or its religious undertones. It was about getting film back to reality. It was a way to force a film to say something new. To have individuals, not "characters". And to make those individuals and the audience itself interact with each other and the film. I quote: "The goal of the Dogme collective is to purify filmmaking by refusing expensive and spectacular special effects, postproduction modifications and other gimmicks. The emphasis on purity forces the filmmakers to focus on the actual story and on the actors' performances. The audience may also be more engaged as they do not have overproduction to alienate them from the narrative, themes, and mood." All these "improvements" you've come up with basically block out the intention of the movement. "You can make a movie about anything ...just as long as you make it similiar to what I'm already used to". You don't want films to say something new, you just don't want them to be TRANSFORMERS. All these so-called "limitations" in the Dogme 95 doctrine are exactly the same type of limitations any beginning film-maker would encounter. So, Dogme 95 is a way to force reality back into cinema. Its not just some prentenous art director coming up with rules just so the film looks awful. No more genres. No more archetypes. No more themes and metaphors. Just interaction. Obviously, this isn't what you want. You want genres. You want archetypes. You want themes and metaphors. You don't want interaction, you want clever dialogue, close-ups, and mood music. Just like every other movie. You just want it shot and made in a certain way so you'll think its saying something new, without it actually doing it. You want full credit for partial effort. Because, if it really said something new you would have to think differently. You have to geninuely start questioning things. And that would interrupt your daily routines and make you step out of your comfort zones. Not to mention make it harder to eat popcorn and candy while watching.
JE: I appreciate what you're saying, but I think you may be missing the tongue-in-cheek (and cheeky) humor, and at least part of the point, of Dogme 95 (not to mention Dogme 09.8). In the 1930s the Hollywood Production Code forced filmmakers to find creative ways to work around or within its limitations. Von Trier himself imposed "rules" on his mentor in "The Five Obstructions." There is no "reality" in cinema. Cinema is cinema. One way of making films is no more "real" than any other. In the end it's all illusion (think of "Dogville" as an extremely self-conscious example) -- moment by moment choices about what to include in the frame or leave out of the frame, how to compose the shots, when to begin and end them, how to put them together.... A Dogme 95 movie or cinema verité are every bit as much an artificial construction as a Vincente Minnelli musical or It's just different.
>>JE: Yes! No close-ups until/unless absolutely necessary (I think I WILL add that). The gratuitous 360-degree shots in the first half of "TDK" were early signals that the director didn't know what he was doing, or why.
I counted maybe three, so I'd hardly call that gratuitous.
If there was one rule that I absotively think should be set and stone, it is this: if your film does happen to involve a car chase sequence, make sure we have at least a basic sense of geography. We don't expect you to be George Miller, but -
Paul W.S. Anderson's Death Race remake is probably the worst recent offender, here. I wrote about it just earlier, at the blog:
Paul W.S. Anderson has always invested in what’s currently being called MTV-editing, but here, he’s taken it to another level of incomprehensibility, and it’s not at all helped by his introduction of stilted zooms that he uses to underline everything. And, what’s interesting is, this isn’t confined to the racing scenes, either. There’s a scene very early on in the film, where Statham’s character is in the middle of a riot in the front of his workplace – a refinery-plant that looks suspiciously like the prison used later in the film – and, I don’t know what happened. There were shots of faces, riot batons, and Statham hitting someone. I leave them for you to assemble into a coherent picture.
It's just astounding.
Fantastic piece Jim, and the only one I can find any fault with is #4, if only because completely ruling out a stylistic choice seems to me as senseless as painting with a palette a few colours short. You may not need all the colours, and you should definitely be considerate before using them, but they should still be available. I can think of a few moments in films in which rapid editing was used to great effect ("JFK", the drug-use scenes in the otherwise overpraised "Requiem for a Dream", some memory-slowly-returning moments, some of Alex's dreams in "A Clockwork Orange"). Of course, there are also times where this is overused to an obnoxious point ("Natural Born Killers" anyone?).
Above all, what I love the most about your 10 rules is that they share in common a quest for the qualities I find myself looking for more and more in films: intelligence and purpose. If I can sense a beating heart and a thinking brain in one, several, or all of the collaborators who took part in making a film, I feel enriched, whether that film be an arthouse favourite ("Russian Ark"), a critical darling ("There Will Be Blood") a well-crafted blockbuster ("War of the Worlds") or a nasty little genre piece ("The Strangers"). When I sense the filmmakers falling back into a predictable, tired rhythm ("Slumdog Millionaire") or resorting to the most obvious of choices in hopes of courting audience favour ("The Hangover"), I begin to feel insulted.
Interestingly, this is one of the reasons that I did not respond too strongly to "The Hurt Locker", although I appreciated the brilliance of the three central performances. It's not simply the presence of the shaky-cam that left me underwhelmed...it was what I sensed as a monotonous, tonally-flat repetition of scenes (which revealed essentially the same thing). It could be argued, and rightfully so, that the repetition was essential to communicating the life of the soldier, but as a viewer it was like listening to a song with only the chorus playing.
But I digress...the point is that cinema needs to be restored to the inventiveness and wit that has been demonstrated in Keaton, Murnau, Spielberg, Hitchcock, Bergman, and many of the other greats. A few still carry the torch, but if thoughtless dreck like "Transformers" is the wave of the future, we need to make sure that these rules become part of worldwide law.
JE: Well, the point of these kinds of exercises is to impose limitations or obstructions and encourage filmmakers to find less commonplace solutions. Of course rapid cutting can be used effectively. And it can be used not-so-effectively, particularly when it's so overused. But it's become a cliche, a crutch. Perhaps there are other ways of approaching the problem that would work, too -- and be less hackneyed.
My problem with the "Death Race" remake, and any car chases in modern movies, is: why would you film a car chase with close-ups and constant quick cuts? How does that make any sense at all? I'd like to see the stunt drivers do what they're paid to do, personally. That involves setting the camera back a little bit, and letting me watch them drive. And even if you cut every two or three seconds instead of every 0.5 or 1 second, that would make a world of difference.
I have to agree completely with the "hand-held camera" rule. I watched several films recently and took note of this technique and its various uses:
Saving Private Ryan is mostly shot with hand-held, but it serves Spielberg's intent to recreate that look of old WWII newsreel footage and to capture, on-the-fly, the chaos and pointlessness of war.
When it comes to The Dark Knight, as much as I love the film, I have to admit there were several instances where I noticed the use of hand-held and thought to myself "what was wrong with placing the camera down and just shooting the damn scene?!" Then again, I've noticed a lot of this in Chris Nolan's work post-Memento.
Scorsese's films should be a template for up-and-coming filmmakers. His last film, The Departed, had virtually no hand-held and was made up of beautifully composed shots--much like most of his filmography. He's an old school director who has respect for the classic filmmaking notion of "mise en scene." And bless him for it. I wish he could make movies forever.
Story, story, story, story, story. Stop paying gazillion money on stupid meaningless boom2x special effects and pay peanut for a really good writer! Hollywood now has gone paris hilton, artificial, shallow, ultra-flashy, but got no imagination.
I am sure this has been said better elsewhere but shaky cam shots don't make me feel like "I am there", it makes me feel like some doofus running with handycam is there.
There may be times when that effect is called for but they are miniscule compared to the amount of times when it is actually used.
The reason to attack pop movies is that we can't escape them, even if we choose not to see them. One way or another, we get bombarded with ads saying how great these movies are, and in the end we're so fed up we have to rebel. Also, the Pop Movie Machine is bad for all movies. It swallows up original scripts and demands rewrites that make them bland and ordinary. It swallows up original movies and demands reshoots to make them more conventional and boring. It swallows up billions of dollars every year that could be spent on better films. It creates a culture of moviegoers who like what they're told to like and don't ever investigate better films. It's a monster, and it must be fought tooth and claw.
Jim,
I have to disagree with your contention that there is no "reality" in cinema. If I really thought that, I doubt I'd have any interest in watching movies.
Yes, all films involve creative choices. Just deciding where to point your camera is one of these decisions. Even the direct cinema of Frederick Wiseman is a construction.
But this doesn't mean there isn't reality in cinema. First, there's the power of the photograph which is rooted in the real world. In Casablanca, you are looking at a real image of Humphrey Bogart standing in front of the camera sometime at a certain place and certain time. Bazin, of course talked about this in The Ontology of Photography.
The image's root in reality carries an awful lot of power, and it doesn't really matter if the image is then placed in a fictional context. It does matter how the image is presented, however. The power of these "real" images is diminished to some degree through rapid-fire montage.
Take this example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aus1PA5-SyI
Gene Kelly tap dances on roller skates. It's shot in long takes (certainly long by today's standards) and the camera is set back far enough to show not only all of Gene Kelly's body but also the set around him. And that's what makes this scene so potent. It is a fictional construct, choreographed, filmed, possibly re-filmed and so on but its power is that it is still a documentary record of a real performance - in other words, Gene Kelly was actually busting out those sick moves and the camera recorded them which is what makes us go "wow."
Likewise, context matters. A documentary is a fictional construct, no doubt, but the fact that it makes a truth claim set in the real world gives its images and sounds a different power provided that the viewer grants that truth claim. In simpler terms, "This really happened" means a lot. Think of the images that stunned us all on 9/11. They were spectacular images, yes, but the horror they evoked was due to the fact that we recognized them as real. Use similar images of destruction but make them part of a Roland Emmerich apocalyptic movie and they might look cool, but they aren't going to create the same sense of horror in the viewer because we know they're not real.
So the power in a movie like "Trouble the Water" stems from the fact that we know, however constructed and arranged these images may be, they were "real." About real people who really experienced these events. And our understanding of that is what makes that movie a kick in the gut that a fictional film on the same subject would struggle to match.
JE: What I mean is that every movie creates its own "reality." I'm using the term in a larger sense. The camera "lies" 24 times per second -- if only because it it pointed in one direction instead of another, or follows one thing instead of another. A film is always a subjective in that sense. On the other hand, as Orson Welles (or somebody) said, "Art is a lie that tells the truth."
Rather than a strict dogma for every filmmaker, I propose filmmakers make a conscientious effort to examine what they deem the aesthetic virtues of their predecessors, from this analysis construct a sound aesthetic framework to build their own films in, and, most crucially, apply this framework with a rigid discipline. Look no further than the beloved Kubrick as an example. I believe the largest detriment to modern film is a lack of discipline within the art form, rather than the techniques they employ. Filmmakers should consider the intent behind their method.
Prime example: verité. A technique employed out of laziness, which produces an effect antithetical to its intended "realism". I fear such outcries for artistry in what is an art form will be swallowed in Michael Bay's crusade to destroy our culture integrity.
Spielberg, Lucas, what has thou wrought?
Amidst many things I'd like to add to an excellent conversation, I'll point out these exceptional rule-breaking movies, as regards #4: Dark City, Speed Racer, Death Race (sorry TheFilmist, but I'm with Nathan Lee on this one - it's a classic, possibly better than Death Race 2000, and, viewed as the follow-up to Alien vs. Predator, represents one of the most significant leaps in artistic capability, ever). Certain subjects and events can properly utilize more rapidly unfolding images, unlike many in which it's simply a distraction (every Saw film ever made, for example).
I'm reminded of the early reviews for Man With a Movie Camera, in which the lack of time to establish images just drove the critics nuts.
JE: Thanks, Rob. As I said above, exceptions prove the rules of these kinds of exercises. Various techniques have often been deployed effectively and imaginatively -- but once they become knee-jerk choices, tired and overused, filmmakers might want to consider finding other ways of accomplishing what they want to accomplish.
I'm sorry, but "here are ten current trends we shouldn't do anymore" doesn't seem like a constructive way to actually move film forward. This reads more like a request to make films today look more like films of yesterday. I'm not saying those points are *wrong*--not at all--but this reads very much like a backward-looking critique of modern cinema style, not a forward-looking collection of ideas on how to make cinema more engaging.
Stephen, how do you propose to "move film forward" other than not doing the things that are already being over-done today? The critique is "backward-looking" only, if at all, chronologically.
I disagree with #8 to a point. It seems to me that intentionally subverting the conventions of a genre isn't much less involved with cliches of a genre than abiding by them. I feel like a well written, character-driven story is good, regardless as to whether or not the natural progression of events has any relation to what critics have defined as a "genre" of recurring ideas.
What I'd honestly like to see, and it'll probably never happen, is an honest back-and-forth between the people who hate current filmmaking trends and the filmmakers who perpetuate them. An exchange of ideas and explanations would be more satisfying. Seriously, I would honestly like to *ask* some filmmakers "Yeah, you had a specific reason for using the jumpy handheld style, but doesn't everyone? And don't you all just end up doing the same thing regardless?" And maybe we could get a back and forth.
I also don't see "abuse of digital grading" on the list. Using CGI when it isn't necessary is one thing, but I dislike the trend towards extreme monochromatic compositions where only one color is dominant, or everything's desaturated, etc. It's a useful tool, obviously- O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU wouldn't work as well without it- but we should be on to more subtle uses of it by now. It's like directors don't want to have to deal with lots of different shades anymore.
Regarding shakycam vs. steadicam vs. tripods- they each have their uses, and though the steadicam does offer more mobility than the tripod, I think there's something to be said for a good static master shot. Romero's DAWN OF THE DEAD is actually mostly static shots, just cut together quickly in a comic-book style, and it's a great action film. And the master shot really is what's missing- I have to give credit to STAR TREK for at least using one in the fight on top of the drill, there were a couple of good long takes that let us see "Okay, Kirk is here, and here's a Romulan coming up behind him, and Sulu's over there" before diving back into close-ups.
THE HURT LOCKER's a good example of shakycam being used well, and again, there are reasons for resorting to it. The problem isn't that it's an inferior style, it's that it's a cliché now. Everybody's doing it.
6 seems way to vague and broad for me. I can see it as a contextual argument- don't put in a car chase just to have a car chase- but I dunno.
JE: In the early 1990s I was in a development meeting at a Major Studio, working on a comedy, when an exec actually said: "I know it's a cliche, but, really, I think we could use a car chase here." I have nothing more to say about that.
I don't know if that has already been said. I would advise filmmakers to use hand-held shaky cam extremely sparingly. This is actually incredibly effective. If a film has up to a point been all locked-off tripod shots, then suddenly using shakey-cam for one particular dramatic scene or moment can be incredibly effective and visceral.
Jim, when you're done with this dogme list I'd like to keep it myself. I have a hunch it might turn out to be something pretty important. A document like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and my first report card at school.
JE: ... or a Declaration of Principles.
I'm in post right now on a short 45mm film that has adherded to most of these rules except...
RULE #4: I believe that if you film has well timed shots throughout, it is okay sometimes to use fast cuting to accentuate a certain action. Even Kubrick, Scorsese and Hitchcock do this. Think of the shower scene...
RULE #9: I didn't choose to shoot it digitally. Film just wasn't an option. What I did do is exploit the digital medium for what it could provide over film.
Hopefully, festivals will stop giving in to the shallow focus, shaky cam, twenty-something crybaby indies and allow movies with style back into the mix.
Here is a rough clip. It is silent because we are adding in a soundtrack later : )
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MR2XUoLzDJQ
I like the list. The list is mostly as you say, a bunch of now cliche things which if done appropriately and tastefully may be fine, esp in small doses.
But then there are other things. For instance, (500) Days of Summer obviously violates #7. The greatest problem with this is that filmmakers use it as a crutch when the story is weak rather than for a story which needs to be told out of order to actually be more effective, ie Memento. Yes, 500 days is also another cliche hipster romance and sadly doesn't realize that is just a more myopic High Fidelity. Though probably the biggest sin is that it doesn't even know what the focus of the movie is. Is the the guy, the girl, the relationship, being forlorn and 25? It would be hard to say this movie wasn't about the guy, yet the movie consistently focuses on the vacuous girl in all important scenes of nuance. This is the opposite for NCFOM, which focuses on Tommy Lee.
Do you know what? I should have seen 500 days coming. Right before I saw it I ran into a girl who said, "Oh, do you like the Smiths? Then you'll like it." Sorry things are so reductionary.
Great rules Jim. When are you gonna make your first film?
JE: I've been making films since I was 10. Started with 8mm and a wind-up Kodak Brownie. (Super 8 was too fancy -- and expensive.) Silent. Edited in-camera. I recommend the enlightening experience to anybody who writes about or studies movies.
Rules to counter rules. Always rules.
I think a requirement should be to watch all of Tarkovsky's films.
1) Any scene with two or more people talking is more interesting if you have as many of them as possible in the same shot; cutting back and forth between huge close-ups distances us from the world they inhabit and the relationship between them. Almost everybody would have rather had Pacino and DeNiro in the same shot, during their one scene together in HEAT.
2) The spinning-cam shot -- ie. the one that orbits the characters like a comet, to increase excitement while they're merely talking -- is dizzying and pointless.
3) We get it: the villain's hard to kill. But the cliched scene where he gets up after his first death, or his second or third, has rarely worked except in WAIT UNTIL DARK, HALLOWEEN, and THE TERMINATOR movies; every other time it's been a tiresome cheat. (Oh, and in DEAD OF WINTER it was made amusing as a fake-out.) Kill them off interestingly the first time and fuhgeddaboutit.
4) The following songs should now be banned from soundtracks forever, as they've been used so much that they now evoke a tired sense of overfamiliarity. "Bad to the Bone," "Born to Be Wild," "Wild Thing," and "I Feel Good."
5) The wealthy bad guy who sits in shadows at his desk, bellowing orders in an opulently appointed but dank office in the middle of the night, is a made-up construct. Nobody sits in the dark and does this. Rich people have lamps.
Two more:
If the characters lose friends and family to a disaster or murderous bad guy at the beginning of the film, and the action all takes place in less than twenty-four hours, then it's a colossal cheat to have everybody jump up and down happy and cheerful and even telling jokes when they reach the end alive. In real life they would then break down, finally freed to acknowledge the trauma. THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE is nobody's nomination for great film, but it got this right.
The over-elaborate, exotic means of public assassination, employed on occasions when it would be much easier to just walk up to your protagonist and shoot him with a gun, only works if your protagonist is James Bond or if your name is Alfred Hitchcock.
One last -- (this is addictive)
Any superhero film is really only about a superhero if the superhero must jump into action to save people other than himself; if his mere presence in the city causes a villain to attack him by means that lead to millions of dollars worth of property damage he is not a hero but a dangerous provocation. See also HANCOCK, where the titular hero regains his reputation only to destroy several city blocks in a tiff with his estranged ex-wife.
It isn't the critics role to say how a work of art SHOULD have been, only to interpret it for what it IS. Artists can have Declarations of Principles that guide the creation of their art, but critics can really only have aesthetics to interpret them. Critical proscription only results in saying you WOULD have done had you made the film. But since you didn't, the information has no bearing on the subject at hand (which is: what is the film telling us about the world?)
p.s. to some of the commentators: What's the point of even going to a critic's blog if your response is "if you don't like Michael Bay's movies you don't have to go see them"? Deciding to go see a movie or not is the role of the viewer, analysis that of the critic.
A couple of comments:
1) Cut the unnecessary "air" out of the shot. This was a Hitchcock directive to his cameramen. I can't tell you how many poorly composed shots with extra crap (and space) on either side of the actors I've seen. The recent "Mama Mia" musical was an example. Broad daylight, open air lip syncing just did not work for me. The illusion was broken. Much of the movie felt like karaoke filmed with a camcorder.
2) This is more of a comment and question. What is the real value of film school? What film school did Hawks, Hitchcock, Welles, Ford etc go to? I know FS provides opportunities and connections for aspiring film makers. I'm sure they "learn a lot about film" at NYU. But I have to think there is a lot of pretentious, untalented crap happening there. A lot of wankers go to film school (I've seen some student films from top programs -- zzzzzzzzzzzzz). The most motivated people may go there but are they really the most talanted? Wouldn't it be better for a veteran director to take a young person under their wing and learn on the job? I get the feeling that film school promotes othodoxy and not creativity. Come to think of it, there are no schools for creativity.
Jason--
I'd much rather see a list of ideas of interesting new ways to make films, or film-making techniques that could use more exposure, than a list of things film-makers should just stop doing.
JE: This is meant to be an encouragement. By ruling out the obvious, commonplace, clichéd choices too many filmmakers make on auto-pilot (without really thinking about them or other techniques they might try instead), they are freed to use their own imaginations and escape the rut of the over-familiar.
This says "Go forth. Make movies." Be economical, connect with the audience. Know about movies, number Ten is a lot of work.
You know what I mean.
http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0256219/
JE: I just want to say that I have never worked on any show called "Disneyland." Quentin Tarantino and the Farrelly brothers also did (unused) re-writes on "It's Pat" -- though the Farrellys deserve credit for the plaid bathmat.
What a fine series of suggestions! I assume Mr Emmerson has read Alexander Mackendrick's "On Filmmaking", as much of the original post seems in the spirit of his suggestions, which included:
"Ambiguity does not mean lack of clarity. Ambiguity can be intriguing when it consists of alternative meanings, each of them clear"
"If you finish a film and discover you haven't got an ending, go back to the start, because you haven't got a beginning"
And my personal favourite: "Student films come in three sizes, too long, much too long, and very much too long." (Although that was probably the complaint of a frustrated teacher!)
The book's a wonderful read because, although it's rather clacissist in its bent, it understands, and indeed applauds, the temptations of more modernist, fragmented cinema- it's just that it feels that filmmakers have to crawl before they walk, as a rule.
Anyway, I'm sorry for this brief ramble, but I was just reminded of the book when I read your post. Really enjoy your (and Mr Ebert's) work, btw.
JE: Thanks! I love Mackendrick ("Tight Little Island," "Man in the White Suit," "Ladykillers," "Sweet Smell of Success," "High Wind in Jamaica") and have heard of the book but never actually read it. Must seek it out!
All of these are sound suggestions. More to the point, they illustrate exactly what is wrong with most films today, particularly big-budget action films.
I happened to watch Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen right before reading this piece. Aside from the myriad holes in the plot and silly illogical events, the main problem is that it just doesn't look good. It is guilty of breaking many of these rules, especially the extraneous cuts, the use of multiple consecutive short shots, the obvious CGI, and the general tendency to not let itself be seen. One can see the picture, of course, but one cannot make any sense of it. Nothing seems to be done for a purpose, other than looking slick, perhaps. Yet even there, it undercuts itself.
Granted, Transformers 2 may be a bad example, but the film that was made just to look good and entertain. It does neither, and it is so full of plot holes that insult the audience it is sickening.
Also, I love the fact that handheld shots have been dealt with in rule #1. They are the #1 problem in most films today. A handheld shot can be done with great effect, but it seems that people do it today just because they like it. Don't these directors care about the "language of film"? I am no expert, but since I was a child, I just knew what certain things were supposed to mean. Others in the audience might not have the same ability, but these traditions exist for a reason: whether we understand all of the things that we are being shown, we "get" them, or at least the jist of them. Shouldn't directors respect us enough to follow those rules, or at least be cognizent of them? If one breaks the rules, it should be done for a reason that is worthwhile, or that means something to that particular picture, not becase the film maker likes the look of it.