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Contemporary Short Films: Toyland by Jochen Alexander Freydank

“A film about ignorance, truth and the history of my country.”

-Jochen Alexander Freydank

The first thing I thought when I started to watch this year’s Oscar winning short film was; “not another World War II movie.” Having lived in Germany for three years now it can be downright boring to be constantly confronted with the second world war in art, literature and cinema. The topic seems inexhausible, but the people watching these movies aren’t. I find one of the greatest difficulties in modern German film is the discovery and creation of a new German identity. Right now the Germans win Oscars for Nazis and Communists, because that’s how the rest of the world sees them. Indeed, most German movies not addressing these topics are utterly forgettable.

I was skeptical, even cynical going into this film. I was weeping when it was over. All of my reservations were ovewhelmed by this simple, beautiful, human story. The film is available to watch in inferior quality without english subtitles here or as always in a high quality English-subtitled version on itunes for $1.99.

Toyland (Spielzeugland) tells the story of a young german boy in 1942. The jews are being rounded up for murder, including his best friend and fellow piano player’s family. His mother, in an attempt to shield him from the brutal truth, tells him that his friend is going to Toyland. The german boy of course wants to go too. Out of this simple premise grows a brilliant and heartwrenching short film.

As Freydank said in an interview with moving pictures magazine:

“Making short films is the most “unrewarding” thing one can possibly do – no commercial value, no budget; and financing is its own drama in itself.”

The film functions so well as a whole that it is difficult to break it into parts. I think the story is the strongest part of this film, coupled with a simple and haunting image. Of all the Oscar winning short films I have seen, this one is my favorite. I was glad that Freydank overcame the hurdles of short film financing to bring this hard and wonderful story into the world.

Contemporary Short Films: New Boy by Steph Green

I came across Steph Green in Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film. Her third short (according to Imdb) premiered at the 21st Galway Film Fleadh, and moved on to play at a number of renowned film festivals including the Berlin Film Festival (Crystal Bear – Special Mention), The Seattle Film Festival (Short Film Special Jury Award) and the Tribeca Film Festival (Best Narrative Short). This impressive (and deserved) festival run culminated in a 2009 Oscar nomination for best short film, which was lost to Jochen Alexander Freydanks Toyland.

New Boy is available to download on Itunes for the very reasonable price of $1.99. It’s refreshing to see how Itunes and the internet have given filmmakers the opportunity to monetize and distribute their work, although they don’t always take advantage of this enormous opportunity.

New Boy follows Joseph, a recent refugee from an unnamed African country on his first day of school in Ireland. He is confused and harangued by a local bully, who he later confronts and reconciles with. This plotline is interspersed with Joseph’s flashbacks to his former school in Africa, where the teacher was taken by unknown paramilitary fighters.

If this sounds simple it is. Short films do not have a lot of time to tell a story and most of them try to do too much. Not so in the case of New Boy. This is taut, economical storytelling.

Visually Green creates a stark visual contrast between the warm, highly saturated colors of Joseph’s memories of Africa and the cool sterile Irish classroom he enters. On my first viewing I found the flashback scenes too nostalgic. On a second viewing I remembered that they were the escape into memory of a young boy in a strange and seemingly hostile world.

Krzysztof Kieslowski’s most memorable quote on cinema was that:

“if there is anything worthwhile doing for the sake of culture, then it is touching on subject matters and situations which link people, and not those that divide people. There are too many things in the world which divide people, such as religion, politics, history, and nationalism. If culture is capable of anything, then it is finding that which unites us all.”

This film finds that unity in a simple and beautiful way. I was moved.

links for 2009-07-17

• Truly Free Film: List: Blogs That Will Review Undistributed Films v1.0
• A Hollywood Blogger Feared by Executives – NYTimes.com
  Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood Daily
• Should YouTube Charge a Fee to Upload Video? – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com
• Harry Potter and the Vengeful Malware – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com
  Harry Potter Pirates are getting the boot from vicious malware. Is this a radical way to stop online pirating?
  (tags: HarryPotter Pirating)

Recent News

Independent Film:

The 25 New Faces of Independent Film (via Filmmaker Magazine)

Festivals:

Cannes 2009: Stupid, Adjective (via cinemascope)

Radicalism at Cannes? It’s unlikely (a little older, but still pertinent. via the Guardian)

Locarno reveals strong arthouse lineup (via Screeninternational)

Interviews:

Sean O’Hagan talks to Lars von Trier About Antichrist (via the Guardian)

New Media:

A weak Box Office Performance for Brüno blamed on Twitter (via Indiewire)

Social Networking Making Friday the Only Day that Counts (the summer box office twitter effect via The Wrap)

Writing Transitions: The Narrative Jump Cut

In my continuing study of Raging Bull I came across the Wikipedia article on Jake Lamotta and a bit of narrative brilliance. This is the “Early Life” section of the article:

“LaMotta was born in New York City, specifically the Toodles McGee section of The Bronx, near the Pelham Parkway and Morris Park area. He was forced by his father into fighting other children to entertain neighborhood adults, who threw pocket change into the ring. Jake’s father collected the money and used it to help pay rent.

In 1941, at the age of 19, LaMotta turned pro.”

Here, in four sentences, we have a fully established character and narrative line. These two images, with nothing unnecessary in between, create a powerful effect. We feel intense sympathy for Lamotta, brutalized by his father, followed by the immediate and understandable result of these actions.

People say rewriting is removing everything inessential to the story. Lamotta’s story is the story of a boxer. His adolescence, his first girlfriend, what comic books he read are irrelevant to our understanding of his story. A discussion of them would only cheapen it.

Looking at these lines I was reminded of another great omission in the history of narrative. The bible omits eighteen years of the life of Jesus Christ, including his entire adolescence and young adulthood. We see him as a young child, then as a fully grown adult. In the lost years of Jesus section in Wikipedia this period is described as follows:

“There is an account of the visit of the Magi who came to worship the holy child (Matthew 2:1-12), and the subsequent flight into Egypt to escape the wrath of Herod (Matthew 2:13-23). There is a general reference to the settlement of Joseph and Mary, along with the young Jesus, at Nazareth (Matthew 2:23; Lk. 2:39-40). There also is that isolated account of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus’ visit to the city of Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover, when Jesus was twelve years old (Luke 2:41-50).

Following that episode, however, there is a blank space in the record that covers eighteen years in the life of Christ. Other than the generic allusion that Jesus advanced in wisdom, stature, and in favor with God and man (Luke 2:52), nothing is known of this time span.”

One would argue, in light of the profound effect that this story has had on humanity, that part of its power comes from the omission of those eighteen years. Through the absence of adolescence, a time of weakness, upheaval and confusion, Christ becomes godlike. Jesus with pimples cheapens Jesus on the cross. It is unneccessary and damaging to the narrative to discuss Christ’s adolescence, just like telling us Jake Lamotta’s favorite toy as a child would be. What is in essence a narrative jump cut has a profound effect on our understanding of the meaning of Christ’s  life and character, just as it does with Jake Lamotta.

NPR

I was just listening to NPR Berlin while running errands for work. It makes me so happy to hear people discussing health care, and to hear the larger companies sweating the idea of government healthcare. After 8 years of Bush, its refreshing not to hear maddening, terrifying news from America every day. I’m excited to see what it’s like after three years!

Directing Masterclass: Scorcese Establishes a Scene

I was just terribly impressed by an establishing shot from an early scene in Raging Bull (1980), directed by Martin Scorcese and written by Paul Schrader and Mardik Martin.

The scene:

EXT. SHOREHAVEN POOL – DAY (1942-43)

The Shorehaven Pool, spic-and-span in the summer sun is the closest thing to a country club in the Bronx. An eight foot fence stands between the pool and the street.

JAKE, wearing slacks and a sportshirt, hangs out with the “BOYS” near the bar area. Older, “MADE” MEN play cards. A young FAN walks by and says:

FAN
Hey, Jake.

At the opposite end of the pool where the GIRLS gossip, and sunbathe, JOEY swaps small talk with VICKIE, a school girl, about 15. VICKIE is a knockout.

SALVY, FRANKIE and JUNIOR are with VICKIE and her FRIENDS. They joke with JOEY. JAKE watches SALVY and VICKIE.

JAKE’S P.O.V.: JOEY is talking (PAN) to VICKIE. VICKIE giggles. JOEY stands and walks over to JAKE.

JAKE
(referring to Vickie)
Who’s that?

JOEY
Whadda you care?

JAKE
Whadda ya mean, whadda I care? Who
is she? What’s a matter? You afraid
I’m gonna take her on you?

JOEY
No, I’m not afraid. Why? You wanna
meet her?

JAKE
Yeah –

JOEY
Cause I’ll go right over there and
bring her here.

JAKE
Go ‘head.

JOEY
You sure you wanna meet her? Don’t
make me go over there, you change
your mind and you make me look bad,
cause she’s really a knockout.
She’s 15, this kid — a great piece
of ass.

JAKE
How do you know? You know her that
good?

JOEY
No, I see her around the pool. I
know her. I know her like that –
not like that.

JAKE
(gesturing to his bandage)
Nah, not now… I wanna wait. I
don’t feel right…

JAKE watches VICKIE.

Very economical writing. You could make thousands of different visual entries into this scene, which could be summarized as “Jake sees Vicky for the first time.” Let’s see what Scorcese chooses.

The establishing shot:

The camera slowly pans and tilts downward to reveal:

Eisenstein would be proud. Here we have two images; one of oppression, one of liberation. The weight of Jake’s disintegrating marriage is about to be lifted when he lays his eyes on Vicky a few seconds later. In one continuous shot we have a clear visual metaphor to guide us into the scene. Scorcese not only establishes physical location, but uses it to establish tone, character, theme, and a new dramatic arc. Simply brilliant filmmaking.

Review: Free, The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson

I’ve been listening to the copy that I downloaded for free from Wired this week. Chris Anderson practices what he preaches, offering the book free to US users on Scribd, in the aforementioned free audio format, and in a paid book form on Amazon. Anderson, the editor in chief of Wired magazine released his last book, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More, in 2006. Eugene Hernandez from Indiewire described The Long Tail for culture as:

“how a number of businesses that make their money selling culture (music, movies, books) make an increasing amount of revenue not from the high-profile hits, but from increasingly popular niche content. Bigger libraries of say indie films, aimed at reaching narrow audiences, can be more valuable than blockbusters over time. “

Anderson begins his examination of free by discussing Monty Python’s battle against online pirates. To combat the low quality pirated versions of their videos found on youtube, the Monty Python troupe opened their own channel with high quality videos, accompanied by a sardonic reproach:

“For 3 years you YouTubers have been ripping us off, taking tens of thousands of our videos and putting them on YouTube. Now the tables are turned. It’s time for us to take matters into our own hands.

We know who you are, we know where you live and we could come after you in ways too horrible to tell. But being the extraordinarily nice chaps we are, we’ve figured a better way to get our own back: We’ve launched our own Monty Python channel on YouTube.

No more of those crap quality videos you’ve been posting. We’re giving you the real thing – HQ videos delivered straight from our vault.

What’s more, we’re taking our most viewed clips and uploading brand new HQ versions. And what’s even more, we’re letting you see absolutely everything for free. So there!

But we want something in return.

None of your driveling, mindless comments. Instead, we want you to click on the links, buy our movies & TV shows and soften our pain and disgust at being ripped off all these years.”

Their DVD sales soared. Anderson uses this as a starting point for his discussion of the use of free content to entice users to purchase paid content, like the Monty Python DVDs.

Anderson distinguishes between the “bits” economy and the “atoms” economy. The bits economy is based on three basic features: storage, processing and bandwidth. The cost of these items are continually declining, making the production of  digital content, like that on this blog, virtually free. He balances the negative opportunity costs involved in producing free online content with the positive exposure that producing content creates for its authors.

The book is well written (and read) and is filled with entertaining and enlightening anecdotes. It reminded me of the work of Malcolm Gladwell, who offers a serious reality check in his article on Free for the New Yorker:

“There are four strands of argument here: a technological claim (digital infrastructure is effectively Free), a psychological claim (consumers love Free), a procedural claim (Free means never having to make a judgment), and a commercial claim (the market created by the technological Free and the psychological Free can make you a lot of money). The only problem is that in the middle of laying out what he sees as the new business model of the digital age Anderson is forced to admit that one of his main case studies, YouTube, “has so far failed to make any money for Google.””

Oh Youtube. Gladwell continues to comment that they are likely to lose a half a billion dollars this year, not such an appealing argument for the free content. Mark Cuban goes so far as to claim that Youtube destroyed any possibility of monetizing online video by becoming the world’s largest subsidizer of bandwidth.

Attempts at monetizing youtube through advertising have proven difficult. Companies are not interested in associating their product with baby cat videos or happy slapping. Youtube’s democratization of video is often seen as a quantitative phenomenon rather than a qualitative one. Youtube addresses a different market (or non-market) than a company like HBO, which with a healthy paying subscriber base and superior content seems to be its business and content antithesis. Youtube allowed the world to broadcast itself, but in doing so we also discovered how bad most of us are at making films.

All criticism aside, I highly recommend Anderson’s book. It is exciting, well written and argued, and, perhaps best of all, free.

Review: On Film-making, by Alexander Mackendrick

The road of the novice filmmaker is paved with thorns. There is an extremely apt metaphor used in the last edition of film school confidential:

“Far more people are making low-budget independent films today than the market for such films can sustain. It is said that during the California gold rush of 1849 few of the gold miners struck it rich, but the businessmen who transported the miners, who clothed them, fed them, and sold them supplies, did very well. There’s virtually no money to be made in making independent films, but countless businesses turn a healthy profit by providing goods and services to filmmakers who, like the forty-niners, are pouring every penny they have ever earned – or will ever earn – into making their dreams come true.”

A sage warning to all those who want to make films; there’s no money and no more future Spielbergs. When looking through Amazon at books on filmmaking, I always cringe at the range of books and services catering to filmmakers. I often feel like a forty niner.

This book is worth its weight in gold to the novice filmmaker. The first book on filmmaking that I, in my infinite wisdom, bought was Chris Gore’s Ultimate Film Festival Guide. I figured that I was already brilliant enough to skip over all the technical details like how to tell a story or why you should NEVER make a short film about someone who commits suicide (for more of these clichés I highly recommend D.U.M.P.S. or Directing Unsuccessful Motion Picture Shorts). The film that resulted from my extensive study never did make it to Cannes like I thought, although someday it will  be available on this website.

If I could go back to those carefree days I would have picked up this book first. Before Aristotle, before Egri. Mackendrick, who was an accomplished filmmaker before becoming the dean of Calarts, not only offers amazingly useful advice on filmmaking. He also offers a compendium of novice filmmaker pathologies. If you have some experience, reading this book will remind you of the many “brilliant ideas” of your filmmaking youth. If you are starting out, this book mention charts out the rocky terrain of storytelling.

Read it and do your best to avoid the hucksters on your way to California, fame and poverty.