Tearing Apart a Film
Beginning
For the better part of the last two months I have been producing this film. The Snitching Heart is a modern adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart written by director and leading actor Alejandro M. Patiño. Though not credited with a director role, I was influential in creating the project with my creative collaborator and friend John Merizalde (three directors were just too many). The process was intense with John and I filling the role of every crew member from pre through post production. This meant storyboarding, lighting, shooting, recording audio, editing, grading, everything. It was an immense amount of work and resulted in the short film you see below. Just one problem, I hate it.
http://www.vimeo.com/6239043Building
I am a firm believer that every project you produce should build upon your experiences and knowledge gained in previous work and improve upon them. The project solely produced by John and me preceding this work was The Shepherd which was created the previous summer. Since that time, we’ve gone through a year of university, worked on several productions in all roles, and greatly improved our knowledge. Furthermore, we gained access to much improved equipment for this latest production. Where we had previously worked with a $600 Canon HV30, we were now equipped with a $7000 Sony PMW-EX1, a fantastic camera with three glorious 1/2″ CCD chips. So with this new knowledge and technology, we set out to create a film that would devastate The Shepherd in it’s quality, production values, and content. I’m not sure if we succeeded.
The Shepherd was and remains one of the golden standards of video shot with the Canon HV series without 35mm adapters. We pushed that camera well beyond it’s limits into regions that only a few had explored and exploited before us creating a visually astonishing film that looked much more expensive than the $80 budget. While the story was terrible, it was at least nice to look at.
Boring
With The Snitching Heart, we applied what we learned from The Shepherd and improved upon it with our new knowledge. In the end, it looks average. A bit crushed, a bit bright, and in general very boring (note that the version on exposure room has been slightly washed out in the upload process and will be corrected as soon as possible). It’s simply adequate in every way. The acting is a bit a forced, the script unpolished (though light-years better than The Shepherd), shots are uninspired and while adequate do nothing to add to the story. The entire film is simply an exercise in mediocrity.
Let’s look at a dialog sequence to highlight this. When Alexander arrives home from work as does Phillip, the two engage in a small discussion in their driveway. The scene, while one of the more visually attractive scenes in the film, is completely uninspired. It was filmed in a simple three shot setup: closeup on A, closeup on B, wider two shot. Adequate and simple but far from adding to the story.
While I was able to position the camera to tilt the background scenery behind Alexander illustrating his warped view of the world, that was it in terms of forwarding the story through visuals. There are no shots emphasizing Phillip’s increasing angst or Alexander’s concern or guilt. The entire scene, and the film itself, is a McDonald’s hamburger spit out with little thought or care. It is simply a story with video, not a film and assuredly not art. This lack of concern carries through every part of the production of the screenplay itself to final color grading. Still, this may make The Snitching Heart the most important film I’ve ever made.
Bombshell
This realization that I was simply gliding through the artistic and technical processes of production, while too late to salvage the project, has been a profound revelation. In post production, I struggled for weeks with a feeling that the film was just missing something – not a scene or shot, but an overall “feeling”. Recently, I was watching Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt and I was struck by how meaningful the majority of his shots were. You could visually see the tears in the family and the widening gap between niece and uncle. Every shot was deliberate and held additional meaning beyond “We need a two shot here!” This is a level of dedication and foresight that takes a film from images with a story to a profound piece of art and something I will forthright work towards. Lighting, grading, cinematography, and every part of the process can carry so much more than a pretty image or a good take. Visuals can subconsciously emphasize the effectiveness of the story beyond mere aesthetics.
Right now, I can hardly watch The Snitching Heart without cringing – a reflex that will increase the effectiveness of the film as I watch it before future project I undertake. To become an expert, one must learn from and take heart from their mistakes and I plan to do just that.
I’m a 19 year-old Telecommunications Arts major at the University of Georgia. I write about film, photography, and technology in addition to sharing ideas, reviews, and materials.
"Losing is when your actual character is revealed". It takes something to recognize when one has been in error, it takes altogether something else to admit it (especially online)! It took months of hard work to get this project produced so its refreshing to note that you are not motivated by personal ego, but rather by excellence. The desire to improve oneself continually. To push oneself to grow and learn, and to never settle for lesser work. There is nothing I can add that you have not touched on, but I will try anyway. Admittedly, the film wasn't the best you can do, but I just want to encourage you to continue to strive onward. You asked me once "would I write 9 bad screenplays if the 10th one was great"? I have decided to answer "yes" to that question, and I trust you will do the same. To excellence!
I can't say I disagree with you. I began to watch the film and thought…"This isn't up to the David standard." You are right. We make mistakes. We miss the big picture. But in the end, every thing we set out to accomplish, whether a great success or an absolute failure, is for a reason. We live, we try, we learn. Props for accepting that fact of life. I applaud you and your dedication to art.
It's brave of you to admit you don't like your film. That's an important quality. You have to be your own worst critic. Too many filmmakers view their own work through rose colored glasses.
That said, you have to understand that filmmaking in an inexact art. There is no predicting how any film will turn out. Basically, you have the film you write, the film you shoot, and the film you edit. At each of those three steps you have to view the film as a new project. At each step, you do what you have to do to make it work given the situation at hand and you have to ignore all previous intentions. This is hard for many filmmakers to do, attached as they usually are to the initial idea.
I havent actually looked at your clips, but will do. Again, it sounds like you are learning the process, and that's an admirable thing.