A Sneak Peek

This evening Michelle, my wife, and I got to attend a “preview night” for the upcoming San Francisco International Film Festival sponsored by the San Francisco Film Society. The screening was a members only invite and we got a taste of all the films that will be showing throughout the festival.

The screening was held at the beautiful Letterman Digital Arts Center which houses, amongst other things, Lucasfilms and all its branches. It is a beautiful campus and I have had the honor of touring the bowels of the buildings with my kids not too long ago (Michelle worked for ILM a few years ago and so she still has several friends within the company). But tonight was the first time I was able to see the theater, and boy what a theater those Lucas employees get to sit in to watch dailies!

Yoda greets you at the front lobby's main entrance.

The evening was a mix of short trailers/clips of a majority of the films, and there is going to be some very cool films that will be showing this year. The opening night film is Beginners which stars Ewen McGregor and Christopher Plummer was good and looks like one of those films that are entertaining as well as thought provoking. Some of the other highlights they mentioned that I was interested in was the honoring of Matthew Barney, an important artist that happens to work primarily in film. He is the creator behind the Cremaster Cycle series as well as his Drawing Restraint 9 which I had the chance to see at SFMoMA a few years back and starred him and his wife Bjork.

While some of the film trailers were fully realized samples of the film, others were… not so well put together. Whomever had the fun task of picking a bit of a film and representing it to an audience as a way of enticing people into seeing the film had a lot to be desired. Some were just forty five seconds of the film with no purpose and let most of the audience going, “HUH?”. One such film was Stake Land which is an apocalyptic horror film that centers on a plague of zombie vampires and the human survivors that they are hunting. Unfortunately the clips we were given were of a rural south, a burning cross, a couple people lynched in a tree, and then a white guy, fully armed to the teeth, come out of a thicket of trees and then cut to a quick cut of this same guy cutting the head off of someone. NOW, knowing this is a zombie horror film, this kinda stuff is typical, UNFORTUNATELY the clip failed to mention the film is about zombies instead it just looks like Eli Roth decided to remake Birth of a Nation. When the final shot happened several people squirmed in their seats and one lady behind me actually said, “Eww!” I doubt anyone in the theater (and most of the audience were older patrons) knew what that film was about. Other clips underrepresented the films leaving them uninteresting and forgettable. Luckily there was a happy medium, and so for every sad clip there was an excellent one that followed. Detroit Wild City was one such film, and is a documentary about the collapse of a major metropolitan society in today’s troubling times. The Mill and The Cross, starring Rutger Hauer was another one.

After the screening I had the opportunity to snap off a few shots of some posters that lined the walls outside the theater. What is cool is that most of the one sheets around the company are older films and distinctly “European” posters. I love the Polish posters for American films and there are a few scattered throughout the buildings but the ones on the first level are mostly in Italian. The Behemoth poster is actually off of the side of the front lobby and is next to the elevators that lead down to the parking levels.

After the preview we headed over to the reception, but unfortunately it was not all that interesting, and all that was left was sliced wheat bread, cheese cubes, bags of pop chips (Yes I took a bag and some cheese!) and a very long line for drinks, so we only stayed for a minute and then decided that this wasn’t our idea of good time (standing around a bowl of cheese listening to people say, “Well I want to see that film about those kids in France”…. no thanks), so we left.

We agreed that the 2011 film festival is going to be great and I do suggest you check out the list of films (even if you are not in the area just glance over the films anyway) and hopefully you will find something you will like.

Under The Disney Fold.

I have a secret. Not a deep-rooted scandalous, skeleton in the closet kind of secret, but more like a “Hey, I bet you didn’t know that about me…” kind of secret. It was the fall after I graduated from high school and I was starting my college life by attending the local junior college. I knew I was going to have to work while I attended school so I started looking around for a job. I had prospects at a local company that built industrial scales, but I wanted to keep my options open so I attended a job fair for a store that would be opening soon that I knew I was perfect for, The Disney Store.

The interview process was simple, we were grouped in fours and interviewed by a panel of Disney management and asked questions that ranged from “What strengths would you bring to the job?” all the way to “What’s your favorite Disney character?”. I was born in Southern California, and although at an early age my parents moved to Northern California, much of my family was in the Inland Empire area, so we visited there a lot and as a result I have had always a deep connection to that area as my home away from home. I played that up in the process that I was a big Disney fan, that we went all the time when I was a kid, and that I knew the park like the back of my hand etc… etc… In short I got the job. The pay was just pennies over minimum wage (five dollars an hour), so I took the evening shift job working for the industrial scale company as well (making seven dollars an hour) and by the fall of 1992 I was going to school full time with fifteen plus units, a full time evening job as well as working part time as an opening cast member for The Disney Store. For the record I also did a short spell (a couple semesters) as the Floor Manager for the junior college chamber music concerts that went on at the school (I was a music major at the time). I was quite busy back then and I ended up working for the retail store from 1992 until early 1995. I was a part of the set up crew and original cast members of the store, and I can tell you first hand that working for Disney is like no other company in the world.

At the time I was not ready to admit that I wanted to be a filmmaker but I knew that working for Disney would be a great place to start, and somehow, in my naive younger days, I thought I could somehow start off as a retail customer service representative and move up to who knows what. Disney does have a nice program set in place (or at least they did when I was there) that after a few years of service you can in fact move about the company and go anywhere your skills can be fully utilized. I wasn’t imagineering material and I knew I did not want to build a career in retail stores, but I also knew that I wasn’t going to prove myself as a staff writer for Disney by showing them I could push PVC figurines in a store a half a state away from its Burbank home. That being said, after some ups and downs at that particular store I retired my blue sweater and beige pants for a job at the local movie theater, which is another story for another time.

Although my tenure under Disney was short I learned some valuable lessons in salesmanship, good company policies, proper leadership qualities, and more importantly how to smile on the phone and the famous “DISNEY FOLD” which I still use to this day. I also learned how to say “Supercali… (etc..etc…) ” from Mary Poppins backwards and how to pitch my voice like Mickey Mouse… yes, all that is true.

So yeah, say what you will about their engulfing smaller businesses and their conglomerate mentality, I like the company. I grew up on Disney movies, I worked for the company, and yes, today I would definitely love to work for them as a writer or filmmaker (I’ll even write a Snow Buddies movie or two if they asked). Now to the point at hand.

This weekend my wife and I had the opportunity to go to a very cool museum that might fly under the radar of most people. It was the “WALT DISNEY FAMILY MUSEUM” which houses an amazing collection of personal and professional memorabilia that made up Walt Disney’s life. Part of the process of working for the company at any level is that you had to have a plethora of knowledge about the company and its history, and so I knew all about Oswald, the Alice series , the famous train ride from New York to Los Angeles where Mortimer became Mickey Mouse, Steamboat Willie and its use of syncronized sound, Flowers and Tree and its use of Technicolor, The Old Mill and how it was the first animated short to use the mutliplane camera, and on and on…. so when I entered the museum I expected a lot of that training would bubble back up to the top. And it did, but man this museum was so much more than I expected.

I won’t belabor you with a detailed account, it is something you would have to go see for yourself, and no it is not for children under seven or eight (some aspects they might find cool, but there is a lot of reading involved. I mean it is a museum for goodness sakes.) But the museum starts off in the late 1800’s and talks about Walt’s parents, his early days, how he faked his age to get into the army for WWI and then his early years of cartooning and how he made his way up the ladder to the icon we know him as today. The museum is not only an ode to the man, but a tribute to the creative process and an example of how optimism, forward thinking and a lot of spit and hard work can get anyone anywhere they want to go.

There is also plenty of stuff for filmmakers to geek out on, from old movie cameras like the multiplane (I had the opportunity to use an oxberry while in film school and just loved the way it was set up) to storyboard samples on how Steamboat Willie was made, to one of the coolest dioramas of how Disneyland looked when it first opened. Michelle, my wife, loved the old Western Union telegrams that he had sent, as well as how I loved to see a few of the pages from the screenplay for SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARVES.

What got me was after I left the museum I had been reenergized to start creating again. To start making films for myself that would be fun to make and to entertain and not worry so much about making something that can break me in into the industry. One quote that stuck with me (And it is nicely played through a hidden speaker while you walk by) was when Walt said, “I never worked for anyone in Hollywood”. What he meant was, when he moved there he started his own company and he stayed his own boss until the day he died.” That is pretty powerful stuff from a kid that was born in the midwest with no connections whatsoever. Sometimes you hear, “Its not what you know, but who you know.” Could it be that maybe who you know might also be what hinders you from finding out what you are truly capable of? I don’t know, that is a diatribe for another time. What I am saying is yeah, Walt was a one of a kind gem… but what if you are too?

When you first enter, there are two long walls of the front lobby that are adorned with numerous awards that Walt Disney had earned in his lifetime. In one case was a vast collection of Oscars that he had won over the years. The ticket specifically stated that “no photography” was allowed in the museum but I thought I would ask if it was okay to take a picture of the awards, just in case. No one else was doing so but when I asked the front desk the lady behind the counter said that the Academy had given permission for that specific collection which is awesome since usually the Academy does not like people to take pictures of Oscar awards.

You will notice at the bottom (there are six of them five visible in the picture) are what the Oscars looked like prior to 1941 (the latest date I could find on the award) followed by the statue we all know today, my favorite was the Oscar for SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARVES which you can see at the center bottom which has an Oscar Statue followed by seven smaller statues representing the seven dwarves. Very creative.

All in all it is a great visit, and very inspiring; so if you are in San Francisco (The Presidio to be exact) and have four or so hours to kill check it out. If you are remotely interested in being a filmmaker or a part of the film industry, this is required homework in my opinion.

A Sense of Style

I wrote this article sometime back, when I was considering how important is style when it comes to structuring a film.

A Sense of Style
By Benjamin Thornton

It’s a little after midnight in San Francisco. I am sitting in my seat at the Metreon theater to a sold out show of the film Paranormal Activity which at the time was in a very limited run. My wife, not a fan of horror films, desperately wanted to see it because the trailer freaked her out. About fifteen minutes into the film, I get this nagging feeling; I have seen this movie before.

Of course, by now, we all know the phenomena that it has become. Started as a limited run in a select few cities Paramount Pictures has “cooly” operated the “word of mouth” marketing strategy to create a groundswell of, not so much interest, but excitement amongst film goers that the film finally received its much heralded “wide” release. At this writing the film has grossed over 107 million worldwide. Not bad for a film that was initially shot and made for fifteen thousand dollars.

The film itself is very basic. A young couple living in San Diego have been recently experiencing “hauntings” at night in their home. As a result, they decide to buy a camera to record the events and to see if what they are hearing is truly a ghost or just some neighbor kids playing a dirty trick. The beginning of the film introduces the couple, set up the scenario, but more importantly reveal that the man in the relationship is skeptical, while the woman is wholly convinced that it is, actually paranormal activity. The film has all the elements of “amateur filmmaking” handheld low quality miniDV, decent, but not great sound, unknown actors, and the all to wonderful ‘faux documentary’ structure. Suffice it to say, that most films faking the documentary genre, have moved beyond the Christopher Guest “mocumentary” style. When Blair Witch came along, and blew the top off the industry with its mind numbing shaky camera work, unknown actors, and low budget freak outs, the idea of a film pretending to be a documentary suddenly moved beyond satire and into the realm of its own genre.

Paranormal Activity does in fact share a lot of traits that can be found in its predecessor, The Blair Witch Project, and it owes a lot to the box office sensation, not the least film goers are now more wise to the fact that the film is not a real account of events, but a fictional film that actually makes you jump in your seat. But as I sat in the theater, something nagged at the back of my mind. I have seen this film before, and no I was not thinking of The Blair Witch, but in fact, a film I had seen quite recently in the theater. The film that I kept thinking of was Sam Raimi’s latest Drag me To Hell.

At face value, the films have very little in common. One is a a hollywood produced film, co-written and directed by a man who is basically, at the top of his game. Raimi revolutionized the horror genre with his own indie film back in 1981 with The Evil Dead and has been the guy behind the smash hit franchise Spider-Man. The other is a low budget film, directed by a video game engineer with no prior film experience. What they do have in common is the very basic seed of an idea: A woman being haunted by a demon. Now, I am not saying that Oren Peli, the director of Paranormal Activity is following in Raimi’s footsteps and I would be hard pressed if his film revolutionizes the way Hollywood makes horror films, (this argument was presented when The Blair Witch Project was first released and we all watched repeatedly when clones of that film came out and flopped on the box office floor like a dead fish, including its own official sequel). But what is interesting to me about these two films is how they take that seed idea and let the film grow into two very different directions, and the fundamental difference between the two boils down to style.

Both stories follow a similar pattern in story structure. A female protagonist is being haunted by a demon and at first the haunting are noises, and off in the distance events but as time (and film) goes, the events get more and more dangerous until finally the demon is in the same room with the female protagonist. Both films have a male mate that is skeptical about the haunting. And yes, both films use psychics to help advance the story, and give us exposition about the demons themselves. Both end with tragedy with the demons winning. And coincidentally both films were released in 2009. It would be easy, at this point, for one to yell “copycat”, but for the weird fact that Paranormal Activity premiered in 2007 at Screamfest (and then again three months later at Slamdance). It could even be assumed that Raimi somehow had seen an early screening of the low budget flick and reinterpreted the idea in his own way, but even that argument falls apart real quickly when you take into account that Raimi admitted the idea to his film was based on a script that he and his brother had written about twenty years ago and then shelved it while he worked on other films. Its like they say no one in Hollywood copies the other, they just all have the same ideas.

But even with the similarities it is the execution of the film that polarizes the two types of styles in genre filmmaking. In Drag Me To Hell we meet Christine Brown (played by Alison Lohman), a simple bank teller up for promotion. She seems like a nice enough girl and the point is driven home when she is faced with the difficult decision of denying an elderly woman an extension on her mortgage payment. Christine does not want to deny the lady but knows that she has to look tough to her boss. In the end, she turns down the ladies request, hoping to show her boss that she can be ruthless too, (her main competition is a liar and a cheater who would do anything to get ahead). That night as she exits her building she is attacked by the old woman and after one extensively long, and at times gross, fight scene the old gypsy woman curses Christine. At first Christine does not think anything of it, but soon when weird things start happening around her she visits a tarot reader’s card that feels a dark presence.

In Paranormal Activity the film starts off with the young couple, Katie and Micah (played by actors Katie and Micah) walk into their house, turn on the camera and explain that the last few nights they have been experiencing “odd occurrences” and they want to catch it on film to see what is going on. Katie shows her hesitancy to the experiment but Micah, who doesn’t believe it’s a ghost, is all gung-ho. Katie admits she has remembered as long as she can being visited by a spirit, but does not know the reason. So they set up the camera at night, shut off the lights, fall asleep, and then we watch the “haunting” unfold.

Both present the same information: A girl and her ghost. But with Raimi, he presents us with a very familiar ‘Hollywood’ structure. Within a few minutes, we are presented with an opening conflict. A woman has to make the hard decision that ultimately leads her down this dark path. In Peli’s film, the reality is already there, it has been there a long time, and there is no reason to explain it. In fact, when Peli does try to explain the reason behind the demon haunting, it is rather confusing, undecipherable, and after presented to us, not really important to the story at all Micah finds some information on the internet about another girl who had the same experiences as Katie as a kid and the girl ended up dead. It doesn’t help explain why the demon chose Katie, but it does hint that the story is bigger than the film is presenting.

In a horror film it is important to keep the audience at the edge of their seat. If you can make someone jump, you have succeeded in doing your job. With a film like Drag me To Hell we are presented with a lot of scare moments (my personal favorite is when the fly crawled up her nose) but we have some sort of vested interest in the character, we want her to survive, to beat the demon back if you will. There is a lot of time in the film dedicated to showing us how good of a person she is, but at the same time it is evenly balanced with the element that she is also an opportunist and that she even flirts with the idea of sending her rival at work to Hell, just so she could avoid being dragged down. When she ultimately loses her fight to the demon, it isn’t cathartic but at the same time, we are left with a feeling that she did kind of deserve it.

With Katie, the freak out factor is the main goal. She seems like a sweet girl, doesn’t deserve any of it, in fact she tries to avoid taunting the demon, and it’s almost the fact that her nosy boyfriend Micah causes their downfall. Micah uses the Ouija board even after being told not to, he is the one cursing out the demon and as the film rolls to the end, the haunting switches to attacks and instead of just going after Katie it also is evident it wants to hurt Micah. The demon that is haunting Christine is not a wandering demon that is easily angered, its a force of nature that has been siphoned through a gypsy and released on Christine, and its goal is the same at the beginning as it is in the end; to take Christine down to Hell. Both films share a same “theme”, you mess with the supernatural and you will get it in the end but one film is a lesson in common sense, while the other plays off like a morality tale.

Stylistically, each film presented their case effectively. I could not easily choose which film is the better film. Drag me to Hell is a fun, spooky film that did not necessarily make me jump out of my seat, but did tell a great story. On the other hand, Paranormal Activity, with its bad camera work (I do not like getting sea sick when I am watching a movie) but very effective moments still sits eerily in my mind. With money behind Raimi I can easily dismiss the small freaky moments of shadows crossing the room, or flies climbing up Christine’s nose as computer visual effects. But when I know that Peli only spent eleven thousand to make his film I wonder how he pulled off some of those shots. (Ironically the shot of Alison Lohman being dragged down to hell was a cool shot but not nearly as effective as Katie being dragged out of bed and down the hall). And when it comes down to content, Raimi loads up his film with backstory, exposition, conflict and everything that should make for a “good film”; while Peli throws most of this out for the simple fact that he wants to scare you and he does it through style instead of content.

I am not saying content is not important, but quite the opposite, it is important only in how it compliments the style that a filmmaker is going for. For Peli, he went with the more subtle approach of presenting two characters that we come to know through empathetic filming, while the more traditional style of a studio film, Drag Me To Hell relies on sympathetic reasoning for us to want to see Christine make it pass the third day. And while some say, “Content is King”, I say then, Style is the jester, prodding us at our most sensitive emotions to elicit fear, laughter, anxiety… whatever it wishes us to do.

Love Letters from the Lawyers

For my first offical post (introductions aside) I thought I would post a letter I wrote recently to Lionsgate. I had read in an article that they were actively seeking a director for their upcoming film PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES and I thought that, although I had not a chance in hell in getting the job, I would “apply” anyway. It was about 2:30 in the morning, so yeah, I had that  insomniac “F’ it” attitude going for me when I scribed the letter, so I know I broke every rule there is to writing a successful query letter.

The funny thing is that I got a response back from Lionsgate the very next day. Even funnier was that I provided a link to a film I made on youtube and although that film had not had a single viewing in nearly four months, an hour after I sent the email that short film had one view. So hopefully I entertained one intern for at least six minutes.

Here is the letter:

To whom it may concern,

My name is Benjamin Thornton. I am a writer of some very kick ass scripts that you have not had a chance to read yet as well as a filmmaker. I am contacting you today because I heard of your search for a new director for PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES and although I am sure there are some great names on your short list, I wanted to take the opportunity to request that I be placed amongst them as well.

I am pretty sure that this email is not being sent to the person in charge of making that difficult decision on who gets the gig, and I am sure my chances are deathly slim, but I am going for broke here because I think that this project is going to be a fantastic film and the idea of helming it under your company is just to good of a chance to let slip on by. So, friendly person on the other end of this email, I hope you are having a good day and if you could pass this along to the right person, I owe you one.

Since I am an unknown, you can check out a short film I made that I get a lot of compliments on. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyTQoYuNZgc

There are more short films under my name that showcase my talents (being able to work on low budgets, editing, avant-garde sensibilities while understanding commercial intentions), including one short doc that actually makes a money counter look interesting… no seriously, it’s harder than you think.

Anyway I appreciate the chance, and at worst I hoped you enjoyed my short film.

Respectfully,
Benjamin Thornton

Their letter was quite standard and full of legalese (love that word!), but for proprietary purposes I’ll post it for you to enjoy:

Lions Gate (or applicable entity) acknowledges your e-mail with accompanying works/documents/ideas and respectfully rejects it, without opinion or review as to merits. Our policy prohibits us from receiving unsolicited works/ideas in any fashion. Your unsolicited e-mail communication shall not be deemed to constitute voluntary acceptance on our part in any fashion. Our reply herein and any conversations you may have had with any of our personnel shall not constitute either an express or implied promise to compensate you for these works/ideas.

 

Please note that the Federal Courts have encouraged the blocking of unsolicited e-mails and we reserve the right to do so at anytime.

 

The purpose of this reply is not to generate or express any opinion regarding the substance of your work, rather articulate our corporate policy. We wish you the very best of luck in all of your endeavors.

 

 

Thank you

I was actually surprised that they even responded at all. Oh well, another rejection letter for the pile, or as I like to call it the “love letter’s from the lawyers” pile!

This is how words collide.

The name’s Benjamin, and yes I write. I make films. I can’t draw, but I do make art. I don’t know, I try to stay busy and keep creating. This blog will be a recording of my attempts at creating a career in the … well, let’s not spoil that quite yet.

I’ll try to post the funny things that happens to me on the way to an artistic career, the triumphs and the failures, tips and tricks, secret levels…. you know stuff.

Anyway, thanks for reading. Now let’s have some fun.