FIGURE 33.1 Actors get ready to shoot a scene from a drama by Armen Antranikian.
WHAT IS IT?
A movie about relationships, people and life.
The Drama is the mother of all genres, bringing into the world a whole family of film genres. The bad boys grew up and became the Gangster films, the wanderers left home to become the Westerns, the weirdos became the Comedies, and the sickos became the Horror films.
So with the other genres all grown up and moved away, the Drama genre simply grew to fill the space left behind, with serious movies about people, loss, love, life and death.
Today’s drama movies have probably the biggest and most fertile range of subjects to choose from: the things we experience and the things we remember in life:
Families, what happens when they go wrong
People who fall through the cracks of society, through alcoholism, drugs or abuse
Injustice and inequality
Poverty and wealth
Corruption by people in power
Oppression or violence toward women
Mental turmoil
Class inequality
Loss and death
It has a huge hit rate, and packs a powerful emotional punch, leaving the audience wiser, more aware and sometimes wrung out to dry. But every drama has the potential, if handled right, to give the viewer an experience that chimes with their own life. That’s what keeps them coming back for more.
MY KIND OF MOVIE?
You like people, you hate people. You don’t know why people can’t just get on with their lives, and why things get so tough sometimes. You’ve been on the inside of one or two stories of your own, and you see those times as a chance to learn more about life and people.
You can’t help but eavesdrop on conversations around you, to hear what other people go through, and you wonder how to put all that into a movie that affects people just like that conversation affected you. The drama movie can distil all that into one short film, creating an emotional rollercoaster.
WHAT’S IT FOR?
Drama is the staple of most places we watch movies: TV and cable depend on it, the web has a wealth of webisodes centering mostly on people and lives, and most Oscar-winning shorts tend to be serious dramas. It might lack the instant hit that extreme sports or music promos have but it’s a slow-burn type of movie, and as such builds up dedicated followers. If you can move an audience with your drama, then you have got friends for life.
HOW LONG WIll IT TAKE ME?
Expect to spend roughly three times as long on the script as on any other part of the production. It’s not a quick project and you will find it easier if you let the ideas gradually hatch over a longer period of time, so you can toy with the ideas, adding some and taking away others.
FIGURE 33.2 In Jon Gunn’s drama Like Dandelion Dust (2009), a couple’s idyllic life is shattered when the father of their adopted son is released from prison and lays claim to his son. Mira Sorvino with Maxwell Perry. Credit: Mike Kubeisy.
HOW HARD IS IT?
Difficulty level:
Drama tests you on all aspects of moviemaking, so expect this to be an upward learning curve. Just about every aspect of the technical side of the craft is used, from clear sound, to expressive lighting, to location shooting, to continuity editing.
Download the free PDF Ten START-UP Exercises from the website for this book to cover most bases before starting.
You need to:
Be able to keep a clear vision of your movie in your mind
Develop characters as real people
Work well with actors
Get good technical results from your crew
Enjoy writing and coming up with realistic dialogue
WHO ELSE DO I NEED?
Producer
Writer
Sound recordist
Camera operator
Editor
WHAT KIT DO I NEED?
Camera
Tripod
Boom mic
Set of lamps or low-budgets alternatives
Lavalier mic
IF YOU LIKE THAT WATCH THIS
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) is a powerful blend of the funny, cruel and the heart-breaking, with Jack Nicholson as the unwilling mental patient. For racial dramas, check out Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), or Spike Lee’s tense Do the Right Thing (1989).
Political dramas have become paranoid conspiracies since the 1970s such as All the President’s Men (1976), Michael Clayton (2007), or The Insider (1999).
Meanwhile, smaller-scale urban dramas include Mike Leigh’s Naked (1993), Sam Mendes American Beauty (1999) or Todd Haynes Far From Heaven (2002).
You could also burrow into the genre to get at the subgenre of melodrama, popular in the 1950s in films by the great Douglas Sirk. Related to melodrama, family dramas can have a big impact, such as Robert Redford’s Oscar-winning Ordinary People (1980), or Alan Parker’s Shoot the Moon (1982).
GET INSPIRED
Read supermarket people/gossip magazines to get real-life stories that seem beyond fiction such as National Enquirer (USA), Closer (UK), or That’s Life (Australia). Check out Chapter 9, Law and the Movies for tips on how copyright works for real-life stories.
Or talk to friends and family about what they have been through, creating stories from their experiences, changing names or places to preserve anonymity.
PREPRODUCTION ESSENTIALS
Storyboards; script; location photos; release forms; backstory; treatment; lighting designs; budget; permission forms for locations; health and safety sheets; contracts; copyright release for music; shot list; shooting schedule.
See Chapter 11, Brief Directory of All the Paperwork You Need.
WRITING
The script is everything for the drama. It lives or dies by the strength of its lines, how real they sound and most of all how believable and three-dimensional its characters are.
But you don’t need to be a seasoned writer to create an Oscar-winning script – Diablo Cody wrote the hit teen drama Juno in her 20s, part of a group of young all-women writers nicknamed The Fempire who took Hollywood by storm with their up-to-date, savvy and cringingly true-to-life scripts.
TRY WRITING WITHOUT WRITING
If you get stuck trying to get ideas flowing, try another approach, rejecting actual writing in favor of improvisation with actors. Start by discussing the characters of each person, and let the actors develop the backstory, the likes, dislikes and hopes of their character.
Create a dramatic situation as a starting point (like a divorce, or the loss of a job) and then play around with the ideas that come from your actors. You’ll need a few more problems to throw their way, things from their backstory that lurk in their past and then cause problems, and you need to keep up the pressure constantly. Give actors a situation and ask “how would you react to that? What would you say?” UK director Mike Leigh has perfected this process in his movies, like the Oscar nominated Secrets and Lies (1996).
You can then slowly create a few believable characters who react like real people, talk like real people and make a great drama.
USING THE CAMERA
The focus of this movie is the people, so you need to let the camera linger, tracing every expression of the face and following every word. Take your time, keeping the camera steady, like it’s an all-seeing eye, looking right into the soul of the people. Use wide shots and place the characters center frame when you want to isolate them, or push them further to the sides when you need to show heightened emotion. Extreme depth – putting some parts of the scene close to the camera and others much further away – can increase a sense of drama, more so if you place the camera at a slight angle.
Also try a constantly roving camera to make us uneasy, using the camera hand-held but with a steadying device like a Hague support.
EDITING
There are a lot of tried and tested tips which can increase the drama and crank up the
tension where needed.
Try using juxtaposition – where you cut between two scenes or places to reveal more about them both, like showing the very different reactions of two people to an event.
Wherever you can, use this idea of opposites to quickly cut between funny and sad, up and down, giving more impact to these emotional scenes.
Delay a big moment by using suspense – pausing on the action to keep us waiting, and creating anticipation while we imagine what will happen.
In other places, too, let the audience imagine a scene before you actually show it. Pause, linger, then go for the dramatic moment. The quiet before the storm makes the storm seem louder.
Music can be over-used, especially in high-drama moments, so go easy and use it sparingly. Check out bittersweet dramas like Little Miss Sunshine for how to use music without dominating the show.
LEGALESE
Make sure you have done the following:
If you use music tracks in your movie, check with the copyright owner.
Get release forms from every actor stating that they agree to your use of them in the movie.
Agree how everyone wants to be credited in the end titles.
Upload it
Best site to upload to:
Vimeo
Best communities to join:
Short Narrative Films group at Vimeo:
“This group is for short films that are narrative driven, character filled and anything else that makes cinema compelling. humor is hard, drama is risky, suspense can be a bust. But they’re all basically people doing things on screen.”
Cinebarre Short Films at Vimeo:
“You’ve spent countless hours, all of your savings and poured your heart and soul into your film. But now what? Isn’t our goal as filmmakers to get our work seen by a mass audience that will appreciate our efforts?”
Best channels to watch:
The Storytellers at Vimeo, or Independent Films at Vimeo
* * *
DRAMA FILM SCHEDULE
This movie works on any length of schedule, but benefits from a longer period in the writing stage. Allow extra time to spend with your actors, rehearsing and improvising lines.
Go to Section 6, Make It Happen: Schedules for more help.
Chapter | Thirty-Four
Genre: Horror
WHAT IS IT?
A movie designed to cause fear or a sense of revulsion or dread, with serious and graphic storylines.
There’s no escape. Horror movies know what spooks you and they abuse this knowledge mercilessly. Like sci-fi, they tap into the zeitgeist and figure out what really keeps you awake at night – the next plague, total war, zombies, scientific breakthroughs backfiring on us – and get inside your head. And that’s why we love them so much. Call it therapy, but we love getting together and sharing what scares us, hoping that a nightmare shared is a nightmare halved. If sci-fi takes the zeitgeist and messes with your head, horror does the same but gets you in your gut.
Horror films are unique in the way they affect you physically, manipulating your body through the terror of imagining yourself on screen. You get short of breath, your heart rate goes up, your head hurts – no small wonder then that with this sort of suspense we need a big release, whether it’s gore or laughs. The audience is on a small piece of string and the horror movie can tug them at will to feel this or that. The movie gets under your skin and then crawls about.
With so many horror festivals, making a horror movie can be a rewarding project. And most festivals like to have a horror on show somewhere, so high is its audience rating. It’s a crowd-pleaser, combining laughs, shock, the yuck factor and has strong word of mouth, making distribution easier.
MY KIND OF MOVIE?
You’re sick – no, really. You can spend time recording a watermelon being hacked as Foley for a head dismemberment, then chat through your latest recipe for blood, and you look for body counts like other people check the football scores. You have a gothic sense of drama where everything is high-octane emotions, live or die decisions, winner takes all. You are mischievous: your movie is like a voodoo doll, using it to create pain and terror in the viewer, and you don’t shrink from the task.
In your day job, you are also highly organized, able to work with a team and get everyone on your side so the movie is shot just the way you want.
WHAT’S IT FOR?
Viewers find horror films like zombies returning to the mall. Just put your film out there and they will come and find it. To help you, there are TV horror channels and numerous online channels. If you make a good one, you might get it sold – sales companies roam the festival circuit seeking new movies, and you could land a distribution deal, though it won’t make you rich. Or why not sell direct to the viewers? Make DVDS as you need them and let viewers buy or download direct from you.
Try to spot your ideal viewer as you walk around town. Think of who you are aiming at and keep that in mind. Horror film audiences are wholly committed to horror – they have an encyclopedic love of the genre and total recall of a movie’s every scene. That means they’ll notice every continuity glitch and blooper. But if you treat the fans with regard, horror audiences tend to be loyal and steadfast in their devotion to a movie, relentlessly spreading the word.
If features put you off, try horror Webisodes (see Chapter 30, Create Your Own Web Series) where this genre is very popular, or short horror virals, which get a good showing on phones.
HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE ME – WHAT SORT OF PROJECT IS THIS?
Take your time. You might be chewing over the idea and script for some months before you finally get to work on it. Or you could reasonably create, shoot and edit the movie in a weekend, following one of the many 48-hour film challenge competitions (see www.halloweenchallenge.com).
HOW HARD IS IT?
Difficulty level:
Like comedy, horror is easy to do badly. Spend a long time working on the script, running through the lines so they sound real, and honing the story so it runs at a sprint. Set a standard for yourself where you weed out any clich? turn any horror convention inside out and upturn expectations. Go further and borrow from other genres to create a fusion in a new sort of horror – horror audiences love weird mutations.
You need:
Good skill in lighting
A focused team
A clear vision of the movie – you’re almost able to close your eyes and watch it play
To work under pressure
To handle visual stunts, effects and post-production tricks
To avoid clich? and never underestimate the audience
WHO ELSE WILL I NEED?
Producer
Sound recordist
Camera operators × 2
Editor
Makeup
WHAT KIT DO I NEED?
Shoot on HD unless it’s just for the web. You’ll need a good lighting package with at least one heavy-duty key lamp (see Chapter 16, Lighting) and at least two smaller fill lamps.
For sound, use a boom, but you will also need directional mics for recording sound effects.
IF YOU LIKE THAT, WATCH THIS
For the weird look of the movie, try The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (Robert Weine, 1919), built with slanted sets, painted shadows and crooked houses.
And you can’t bypass Night of the Living Dead (George R. Romero, 1968). The movie is year zero for modern horror, taking the genre into political territory: dumb cops, quarreling human hostages, and a shock ending. By the end it’s the zombies who get our sympathy.
To see where the slasher subgenre started, watch Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978) – the killer on the loose, the pretty teenage targets, the questionable morals of sex leads to death. Also check out Spanish and Latin American horror such as The Orphanage (2007), and Let the Right One In (2009) and fantasy crossover Pan’s Labyrinth (2006). East Asian horror, meanwhile, is a cool and shocking law unto itself, serving up sushi nightmares that erupt into gore.
GET INSPIRED
Check out graphic novels and comics such as Alan Moore’s From Hell; Arkham Asylum, from the Batman series (1986); and The Walking Dead series by Robert Kirkman. For creepy short ideas, go direct to the master storyteller HP Lovecraft.
Or go way back to Greek myth tales such as The Labyrinth, used to maximum effect in The Descent (2005).
PREPRODUCTION ESSENTIALS
Storyboards; script; location photos; release forms; style sheets/designs; costume designs; backstory; treatment; lighting designs; budget; permission forms for locations; health and safety sheets; contracts; copyright release for music; shot list; shooting schedule.
See Chapter 11, Brief Directory of All the Paperwork You Need.
USING THE CAMERA
The problem with shooting horror is to catch out an increasingly switchedon movie audience. When we see a character on screen we now read the signs and expect someone to jump out, or an axe to fall. So far, so bored. Horror director John Carpenter’s trick was to keep us guessing, using the entire camera frame, so we never quite know where danger will come from. With “peripheral misdirection,” he deliberately shot crucial action at the edge or back of the frame. Without the standard film “signs” to read, we are as in the dark as Mike Myers’ victims, unsure about where is safe and where not. To do this kind of shot well, treat the camera as yet another actor, and who hasn’t seen the script. When something jumps out, it takes the camera by surprise.
Stand-Out Shorts Page 18
