Ross: The Man, The Myth, The Legend

It's a Tuesday evening, long after the rest of the creative team has left the building, but the lights are still burning in the editing lab.   An amiable looking man sits at a computer, his face fluctuating between consternation, thoughtful reflection, and flashes of brilliant inspiration.  It's been like this for the last five hours, during which time his hair has progressively gotten bigger and messier as his hands search through its curly strands to find the answers he is looking for.  Ross Swanson is man who knows there are answers; there is a 'best' way to put this film together.  It's not something you can just throw together in any halfway artful way; what would work just fine for most people is just not quite there for him.  He's like the sculptor who sees a pre-existing work in the stone, there before the first chip is chiseled away, waiting to be unveiled.  There is a right way to edit this film, and Ross will get it there, chip by chip, frame by frame until the final work is revealed.

Ross is a bit of an outsider in the community, not conforming to the norms of the cinematic elite.  He has the artistic vision, the appreciation for the deeper things in film, but his approach to movies and film also has a blue-collar air to it.  Unlike so many in his line of work, Ross doesn't sneer at the less erudite, less sophisticated, either in film or in life.  He is decidedly down-to-earth, and mocks the holier-than-thou film critics and connoisseurs for their "douchey" sensibilities.  But for all that, Ross has a complex and refined artistic vision, and the work ethic to tease it out of every work he creates.  Perhaps that is why he such a force in the community, acting, as only he can, as both a shotgun blast and a scalpel incision, a delightfully contradictory mixture of reckless inclusiveness and precise exclusivity that combine in his own work to find the 'right' form.

The Myth of Lucas

Rubin describes Lucas in his article a drifting, freedom oriented, tinkerer who just happened upon film nearly by chance.  Rubin's Lucas is a rebellious, rule-breaking, artistic man with a vision for the film itself and the forms it takes.  This contrasts with the public's general conception of George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars, the founder of Lucasfilm, etc.  What the public wants to see and hear about Lucas is that he is immersed in a highly technological, fantastical world, filled with Wookiees and droids; they see a man whose dream is Star Wars, with a little Indiana Jones thrown in as well.  Rubin's article begins to unravel that idea a little bit.  Lucas wasn't necessarily obsessed with the story of Star Wars or its worlds, rather he was obsessed by the process of filmmaking and the ways in which he could manipulate the physical parts of the process.  For him, it was about the story, yes, but it wasn't all about the story like some might suppose; the story was a medium through which he could edit and create, which was likely more important to him than ever was the details of every little alien floating around the galaxy of Star Wars.

Big Fish

I watched Tim Burton's Big Fish tonight for my master class assignment.  It was an excellent movie.  The story is one about, well, stories.  It is about the way we all tell our own stories, how our lives come to be narratives for someone else, and how there is always a little bit of adventure and magic behind some of the more mundane parts of life.  This movie is about that magic.  Burton highlights the distinction between the father, a story telling man who lives in his created world of intrigue and fairy tale adventure, and his son, a practical, no-nonsense man bitter with his father's compulsory elaboration.  It is interesting to note the difference in lighting between different segments of the movie, the flashbacks to the father's tales shown in a very surreal, soft, vividly colored light, while the scenes in the 'real world' are of a more muted, normal tone.  In a way, it gives the story scenes an almost heightened realism, giving them a depth and emotional character far greater than the normalcy of the other parts of the film.  This aids in blurring the line between story and real when approaching the question of importance or significance.  It attaches us closer to the stories, but grounds us in the reality, dividing our attention between the conflicting worlds until the reconciliation at the end, the son entering into the bright, fantasy-lighted world and understanding his father.  A somewhat in-between level rounds out the finish of the film, maintaining the brightness, but removing some of the softness, revealing a melding of story and reality, finally compatible, within the son's life.

Three Words Redux

As we enter the filmmaking phase, it again becomes time to revisit the three words chosen at the beginning of the semester to define my creative process:  Vivid, Detailed, Ideals.  The question now is how to apply these to the process of putting a story on film, especially for my specific duties of light and sound. I'm not quite sure how to transfer ideals through those mediums, however, I think both light and sound contribute much to creating the vividness and detailed appearance of any film.  Both light and sound, though far from the focus of the film, are absolutely vital to creating depth, intrigue, and believability.  The human mind is incredibly well tuned, subconsciously, to the variability in the way light plays off of objects and interacts with different things and to the subtleties of our audio surroundings.  The manipulation of these factors can covertly influence the emotional and mental state of the viewer.  Conversely, errors involving light and sound can predispose an audience against a film, giving it a simply 'wrong' feel.  Paying attention to detail will certainly aid in reducing these issues and aid in creating the proper feel.  Creating vividness will also aid in drawing the viewer in and connecting them with the story and the ideals it presents, if that is the film's aim.

Our Movie

Ok, I'm thinking we really need to have Elton find the people he's looking for.  It just doesn't sit well to have him have this anti-climactic sort-of connection with a fellow lonely person at the end.  All the current ending does is affirm Elton's lonely state.  He doesn't grow as a person and he doesn't develop any relation with anyone.  All the old man represents is a downward spiral of mutual enabling of the lonely lifestyle.  What we need is for Elton to find this Freddy, who he fears because throughout the film he has come to expect a tough-guy drug dealer or some such thing; but Freddy needs to turn out to be someone who can broaden Elton's horizons.  Additionally, we need to set up the rest of Elton's journey so that it's obvious that he is coming out of his shell and becoming more confident as he approaches people to enlist their aid in finding the originator of the text.  Furthermore, on the subject of the text, I really think the shoes thing has got to go.  We need something that more immediately creates intrigue and adventure, something that might actually entice Elton to want to find out what's really going on.  "Yo Julio, I got the goods... the show is on"  I don't know, something more interesting.  Is it a drug deal, is it a robbery, is it a murder... some crime of some sort.  As the story climaxes and Elton believes he's going to have to do something heroic and selfless, he discovers his quarry is actaully quite benign and has much to offer in friendship.  On a slight tangent, why is Elton lonely to begin with?  Is it because he is awkward socially, or perhaps he's a snob, or a an anti-social, or some other something where the root cause is his own deep desire not to be liked for some reason.  Maybe he goes out of his way to make sure no one likes him or remembers him and he discovers some self-worth and can allow himself to let people know him.  Sorry for rambling.  Specific Ideas aren't coming together too well at the moment.

Collaboration and the Process

In writing the screenplay, I was most struck with the relative ease of creating ideas quickly when working in a collaborative environment.  Until this point, almost all of my writing experiences have been rather solitary affairs.  Those few times I did work with a group rather tainted my view of group work, since I ended up having to pull most of the weight of the project.  This time, however, was different.  It is incredible to see how much more enjoyable group work is when you have a group of creative, smart people who are equally devoted to producing a top-notch product.  In the proper environment, with the proper selection of team members, the collaborative approach to writing has some very clear advantages:  it offers a blend of viewpoints and styles, avoiding the monotony of using only one set of ideas; it allows a system of checks and balances so that any person's contribution can be verified and approved, letting only the best material remain; it increases the total creative potential for whatever the project is involved.  It is important to note, however, that while this exercise was a creative endeavour, my primary writing experience, including prior groupwork, has been of an expository or argumentative character, so much of the difference I sense between prior work and this may be due to the highly different natures of the project at hand.

The Screenplay

Senior year is winding to a close for James Ladd, the no-nonsense MCB pre-Med and protagonist of our story.  The opening sequence of the film is a time-lapsed collage of different items and actions of his last four years here, giving us insight into his no-time-for-fun attitude and his ongoing friendship with Norah Johanson.  We are introduced to the characters through pictures and post-it notes before we get our first live-action shot of James, muddy, ragged, and sitting in a police interrogation room, not at all where we would expect to find him.  Quickly, however, the clock rewinds and we enter the scene a week before to find James studying hard at his desk, the last day of class near at hand.

As he studies, he is interrupted by Norah, who has taken the time to check up on him and make sure he gets a little break.  In the course of their conversation, with the irresistable wonder of Pokey Stix, it becomes apparent that James has completely missed the finer points of a college experience, neglecting the non-academic as a distraction.  Norah insists that he must learn to appreciate at least some of the necessary college joys before they reach graduation, about a week away.  She drags him off to a party, kicking off their adventures for the next week.

Most of their adventures over the next week will be explored in a montage of still photographs that highlight James's gradual enlightenment that school and life are to be enjoyed, not merely exploited for some nebulous idea of later "success."  This montage will take us up to the night before graduation; James and Norah go mudsliding on the quad, after which James recognizes his feelings for Norah moments before the pair are caught by the police. 

The next day, the scene is the same one we started with, in the police interrogation room, where James is pleading to be allowed to attend graduation.  The interviewing police officer is replaced by a higher ranking sergeant who takes the conversation on a different bent, asking James about his relationship with Norah.  James answers truthfully about his feelings, and the sergeant, who turns out to be Norah's father, decides to have leniency on James and lets him go.  As the credits roll, we see scenes of James rushing through campus to get to his place so he can clean up before the ceremony.