DiD Review

Mental illness is a very real problem in society today. Diagnosis of the problems people have is on the rise, although many question the validity of some of the more recent claims psychologists make about the human condition. One of the biggest controversies is over DiD (Dissociative Identity Disorder) or Multiple Personality Disorder. While there are some documented cases, the vast majority have been found to be false claims. Something that criminals sometimes use to try and get out of responsibility for the crimes they commit. If they were not in control, they can not be held responsible.

Which is why it is so controversial. It is extremely hard to prove as existing and only happens in rare cases. And that makes it an interesting case for filmmakers to use. Interesting but like the disorder itself, hard to truly pull off. More often then not filmmakers use a green screen to make it work. The ability to use green screen and use a single person for multiple personalities is an effective technique when the story calls for a split in a character's moral code. You just have to give the audience something to distinguish between the two sides of the character's conflict.

More recently there have been a number of shows which try to use that technique to talk about DiD and it can be very effective when used properly. Unfortunately, I don't think that DiD really uses it properly. The motivations of the differing personalities is somewhat unclear. One is angry at their mother, one does not speak and the other is trying to honor their mother's memory. But the question is why?

That is never full explored in this film. Something happened to them, that much is obvious and they are conflicted about how to deal with it. But why? The fact that they are able to use green screen towards the end of this film suggests that they had the ability to do something more difficult and knew enough to make it work but they did not.

More dialogue between the differing personalities would have make it work much better in my opinion. The description explains more about what is happening in the film then the film itself. If you came to it completely blind without the description you would be very much confused as to what is going on.

Even still, it is a very ambitious film, both from a film and script perspective. I just think with a little more work it would have been even better.

Agree? Disagree? Find out below:

You can also find more like this at Film Annex.

Grosse Pläne Review

Animation is a hard thing to get right. It requires a lot of work and effort on the part of anyone who undertakes it. Stop motion animation is particularly difficult but one of the newest ways to get people talking about you if you manage to pull it off. But you can not simply make it about anything you want. Stop motion has a particular style that lends itself to a particular type of content.

Which is not to say that you can not use it for anything, only that it is a bad idea. People see stop motion animation they tend to think of Wallace and Gromit. A family show aimed at a young audience. They think Chicken Run, again aimed at a young audience but made for families. These are the kind of things that are in people's minds. Going against that takes a great risk.

So when you do a stop motion animated short like Grosse Pläne, you have to know what you are doing. Thankfully, Irmgard Walthert appears to know this. The film is based on a childhood memory of theirs and a very cute one at that. It is a simple idea with simple intentions and that's the way it should be. Reaching an audience of younger viewers needs simplicity.

But simplicity does not mean that it is not smart, animated films like Monsters Inc and Shrek prove that. And I think this is where Grosse Pläne fails. It has many good elements and has insight into something smarter and more complicated but does not fully develop them.

Of course, 4 minutes is not a lot of time to develop an idea but that is where script becomes so important. Knowing the point you are trying to make from the get go informs the way the script develops. Even in a film with no dialogue, script is key. I am not certain that enough script development is what they have done.

It comes off more like a scene from a memory. Which it is, but that is not really a film. At least in my opinion.

Agree? Disagree? Find out below:

You can also find more at Film Annex.

Kyle Review

Relationships are never easy to figure out. There is almost no one you can talk to who can give you perfect advice on the subject. They are confusing. Partly because you have trouble really understanding the other person. Mainly because they are not you. Nowhere is this more difficult to figure out than in school.

Not only do you have the task of learning all sorts of information and figuring out what you want to do with the rest of your life, but you have the added stress of trying to figure out people. School is a proving ground for more than just test scores and knowledge. It is a proving ground for life.

Which is why it is so difficult. It is why there are so many films about the school, and particularly the high school experience. Juggling the two can be hell. Doing it on film can be even harder to figure out. You have to find a way to compress a story of what is most often a romance into an incredibly short period of time. Anyone who has attempted it knows it is a lot harder than it seems.

So I applaud Amy Hill for making the attempt. Although I am not entirely sure that she pulled it off. She appears to have fallen into a trap that many have in their attempts. I have fallen pray to it myself. The idea of having a particular scene in mind and writing to that. In this case it is a scene of two young school chums walking home together.

What the film lacks is a progression of character and dialogue. From the get go it is unclear as to what each character is doing and why they are there. The implication at one point is that they had made plans to walk home together or that the young girl has agreed to be walked home. This has not really been set up properly and thus we run into problems.

There are certain elements to the characters which are interesting. Their family lives and what they plan on doing when they grow up, but it feels like this has not entirely been thought out and the characters are designed to find reasons to talk rather than to actually attract the audience and keep them engaged for the full 12 minutes.

Still, the concept is pretty cute and worth looking at. I look forward to seeing what else the filmmaking has out there. To see what I am talking about, check it out below:


You can also check out more content at Film Annex.

What exactly do actors want?

This is a question I have been thinking about a lot lately. I’ve been trying to figure it out for years but recently the question has become a lot more important to understand. Like most creative people, actors are a varied group with different ideas and preferences of what they do and don’t want to do as an actor or actress. But they’ve all chosen essentially the same field, acting. They may come at it from different ways, some are film and television, some are interested in the web and others are theatre focused. And there are even different techniques for getting into those fields, all of which I have looked into in order to understand the way an actor approaches each and why, with varying results.

To focus the main question though, I want to try and put forward some of the conclusions I have come to and sort of put it to other people to tell me if I am right or wrong, and perhaps where I can modify my ideas to gain a better focus.

First and foremost, actors want to work in their field. It seems rather obvious to put forward that idea but I know so many actors who are passionate about the craft and expend an incredible amount of energy, creative or otherwise, trying to get to a point where they can afford to act 24/7 and live off that. A lot of people in a creative field can say that about themselves, but as it was put to me recently, actors are in front of the camera and in some cases that can cause problems because more than anything, the optics of being too visible can make them less in demand. I imagine that’s part of the reason that Hollywood actors don’t take every role they are offered, as I am sure once you get to a certain point you’re offered more than you can handle.

Secondly, they look for work in something they can emotionally connect to when they take it on. This is where I think actors tend to differ from others in some ways. When a grip or a P.A. or even to some extent, directors, writers and DOPs takes on a role, they don’t necessarily have to emotionally connect to the material. It’s better when writers and directors do because it shows in the work eventually, but with actors the ability to feel the character’s feelings or draw upon something that will express a similar feeling is such a central part to what they do that in many cases they have to go about creating their own content just to find something that has what they want.

And this is where I have the most trouble figuring actors out. I know how to emotionally connect to my own material and create characters that are, I hope, emotionally nuanced and interesting to an audience. But between me and the audience are the actors who bring the characters to life for that audience. Since I can’t go about sending my scripts to every actor I meet and/or connect with, I’ve been trying to figure out how to express the characters in a few sentences or a short paragraph. This is what’s keeping me up at night recently and I figured blogging about it might help me figure it out.

So far I am not really sure I have figured it out. Are there some elements to a character description that just pop out at actors? Are there certain types of characters that are just naturally popular among actors or is it all an individual preference? Should I just take a shot in the dark and hope for the best?

What exactly do actors want?

Is the film industry being purposely ironic?

Recently I have read my fair share of articles and blogs talking about story telling in the film industry. Many of the discussions focus on the fact that there are too many sequels, prequels and remakes coming out lately. They talk about how Hollywood is creatively bankrupt and only cares about money. One of the newest articles I read started by asking if the film industry and Hollywood was out of original ideas? The irony of the article being that writing an article about a lack of originality in Hollywood is becoming less and less original the more it happens.

People talk, at length, about how terrible the new dynamic of Hollywood is and how it destroys creativity in the industry. Now I’m not above recognizing some of the films out there have problems. There are some pretty terrible films out there. I have even been known to get critical of really popular films, and recognizing that films that I’ve previously loved don’t end up aging very well. It’s not the prettiest thing in the world, even if many of the actors and actresses do. But I think it’s a mistake to think that this is a systemic thing that can’t be or doesn’t want to be fixed.

Film is not a uniform art. Heck, art is not a uniform art. There are many ways to go about it, many ways in which to tell a story. Independent or Hollywood, we in the arts all understand that, but if “new and original” ideas are the bench mark of good storytelling, then we pretty much bottomed out on original ideas three hundred years ago. And even then we were living on borrowed time. To use my previous review of The Amazing Spiderman as an example, just because a Spiderman has been done before doesn’t mean that the new film doesn’t have value, that there isn’t a story worth telling in the Spiderman character. Superheroes are the mythology of the modern age and there are so many different versions of them over the years, the films should be viewed the same.

Does that make them creatively bankrupt, or does it make the characters emotionally and creatively complex? There’s a prevailing belief within many storytellers that film peaked in the 1970s and things have been going downhill since then. But take a look at some of the films from that era and somewhat before. “West Side Story” is a musical version of “Romeo and Juliet”. ”It’s a Wonderful Life” is basically a retelling of “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens. “Scarface” from 1983 is a more violent remake of a 1932 film of the same name. “The Wizard of Oz” is basically the same story as “Alice in Wonderland”. The films many people in the film industry view as original ideas aren’t original at all. Yet for some reason, this time it’s different.

Many people say that the reason it’s different is because the studio system has changed. That the big time corporations that now own film studios have turned them into money making monsters who only care about profit. But is that actually the case? From what I understand the popularity of “Casablanca” prompted the studios to talk about making a sequel for it. The availability of the actors involved made it hard to do but the thought still crossed the studios minds. It would seem the only major difference between 1942 and today is that studios actually plan ahead of time for sequels and find actors who are willing to consider doing them. That isn’t really much of a change in my opinion. If anything it just means that studios are becoming better planners.

And on the subject of sequels and prequels, one needs only to look at what is often referred to as film’s redheaded step child, television, to see examples of why there are so many these days. Some stories simply can’t be contained within a 90 minute time frame. Or even a 2-3 hour time frame. Television has been known to tell a story over up to 25 hours split into individual episodes. Yet people complain that stories are being told over several films? And if it’s such a problem, why are so many major Hollywood filmmakers and actors moving into television these days?

Now I will admit there are some films that don’t need sequels. There are some films that lose something because a sequel or prequel is made of the original film. I am not big on sequels like “The Matrix Reloaded”, “The Crow: City of Angels”, and the rather extensive amount of direct-to-DVD sequels to films like “Bring It On” or “American Pie”. Not to mention all the different horror films with less than decent films. But you also have films like “The Dark Knight”, “Back to the Future: Part 2” and “Superman II”, all of which have improved on the original and did great things.

For every bad sequel or prequel out there in the film industry, there are all sorts of examples of really great ones. So when I read a blog or hear someone talk about the endless parade of sequels, prequels and remakes I can’t help but wonder where all the hate is coming from. Originality is a state of mind, not a formula. It’s not the amount of money you can put into a production. It’s about emotional honesty. Any film can be great if the filmmakers care about the material and are on the same page creatively. But I continually hear about how independent film is better than Hollywood. About how creatively bankrupt and out of originality it can be. The influx of opinions that all sound the same is so much that I just have to ask...

Is the film industry being purposely ironic?

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