Week1: Montage: Development

Introductions:

+Introductions:

-Name / Grade

-Experience with filmmaking

-Favorite film this summer or in general and why

-Hopes and fears for this class

Syllabus:

See canvas.

Introduction to Project 1: The Montage Project

So you are going to be making three films in this semester.

Each film will be about one to two minutes (possibly longer with permission.). They will be primarily visual films that do NOT use dialogue but can use music other sounds.

The reason for this is that I find when you are starting out that it's much more helpful to focus on a small type of project before you integrate more complicated skills like dialogue and recording sound. This makes it possible for you to really make a great short film as a beginner. I find that a lot of films die because they take on too much and then the complexity and size of the project leads to the early demise of the film.

Also, the benefit of this approach is that you are really becoming a visual oriented filmmaker. Sometimes beginning filmmakers rely on dialogue to tell the story or text to tell the story and I want you to understand how powerful visual images can really effectively tell your story that is often superior to dialogue or text or voice over.

Film Production Introduction

So in film production there are five major stages. Each stage has a specific focus and it's good to know and use these stages to help organize your filmmaking process. The five stages are:

1. DEVELOPMENT: This means the development of the story of the film. It can also mean the development of the concept of the film and how that will manifest itself whether it's a story or not. Development includes: story concept, outlining the story and writing a script.

2. PRE-PRODUCTION: This means the planning and preparing for the film shoot. This includes: storyboarding, getting your equipment ready and getting your crew and cast ready.

3. PRODUCTION: This means the actual shooting of your film. This includes: preparing cast and crew for the shot and shooting the shots to make your film.

4. POST-PRODUCTION: This means the editing of your film. This includes: organizing your footage to get ready to edit, editing a rough cut and polishing the rough cut including dealing with sound, image and other issues.

5. DISTRIBUTION: This means getting your film seen by people. This includes: showing the film to a test audience, getting your film on YouTube or Vimeo, getting your film into film festivals and more.

Preparation for Filmmaking

Before we go into the Montage Project, there are two areas that I want to explore in order to prepare you for the filmmaking.

Those two areas are:

1. Your own personal experiences, beliefs and tastes.

In order to be an effective storyteller, I want you to understand yourself and what you bring to the table. Everyone has a diverse array of experiences, beliefs and aesthetics. The more you can express this individuality, the more unique your stories will be and more authentic.

2. Your assets and liabilities

Another major area that really makes a difference between a successful filmmaker and an unsuccessful filmmaker is an understanding of their assets and liabilities. In other words, if you want to make a film that you do not have the resources to make, it doesn't matter how good the story is, it will probably be impossible to make. But if you assess what you have and what you don't have FIRST and build your story around that, you have a MUCH better shot at making a great film.

We are going to do two exercises to help prepare you in these areas.

Activity: Le Menu

So before we dive into creating your own stories for your films. I feel it's necessary to lay the ground work to compelling stories. One of the most important foundations to great storytelling is understanding your own personal interests and issues that you bring to your storytelling. When we think of great storytellers, they almost always bring a personal point of view which includes concerns, values, ways at looking at the world and a lot more. I think the more we understand ourselves the better storytellers we can be.

For example, Pixar's writers and directors almost always have a personal issue at the heart of their films. Andrew Stanton was worried about raising his children and how he could be very overprotective of his children. And he loved fish. These personal issues became the genesis for Finding Nemo. Pete Docter was worried about what happened to his daughter when she became a teenager and her personality radically changed. This issue lead to Inside Out. Jesse Rosenberg discovered the power of meditation in high school and this interest fueled his portfolio film, What Lives On. This film was a major reason for getting into NYU film school.

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Now it's your turn. We're going to use an exercise created by film professor, Claudia Hunter Johnson. She taught many excellent filmmakers including Oscar winning writer/director Barry Jenkins (Moonlight). This is an exercise for writers to help them tap into what is important to them.

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1. Find a paper and break it into 8 different columns. Label each column as follows:

+What I love

+What I hate/fear

+What I believe/value

+What I want / what I dream about

+What I know about / what interests me

+People who made a difference in my life (positive or negative)

+Discoveries /Decisions that made a difference in my life

+Films, TV shows, videos or other stories that have inspired or connected to me.

2. For each category, write down at least four different things that apply.

3. You're going to turn this in so you can also flag anything that's too private or just keep that to yourself.

4. Once you're done, this is just a tool for you to use to figure out if there is a kernel of an idea for your film in here.

5. Submit your Le Menu before our next class. The template is in Canvas.

Activity: Analyze for Assets and Liabilities.

​So you have connected more deeply to your own personal concerns and point of view and you're ready to come up with your story. But wait! There's one more step that I think is very important.

It's not enough to just understand your own concerns and come up ideas from them. We need to understand what your assets and liabilities are. What do we mean by that?

When you are a young filmmaker stuck at home trying to make a film, you need to create story ideas that you can execute. Even if you weren't in a quarantine, you would still have a lot of different limitations but also many resources as well. I just want to add that I have seen many films go downhill because filmmakers tried to make films that they did not have enough assets for. Or too many liabilities.

For example, one of my students worked on a script that was about 7 to 10 pages long and it had a cast of about 10 people and it had a lot of special effects involved. The story was decent but it was definitely ambitious in scope. We tried to shoot the script and he really struggled to get all of the shots done and I could sense that he was overly ambitious with his project. But then, the quarantine came and he couldn't finish the film because everyone was stuck at home. He then decided to take the same story but transfer the whole idea into a stop motion animation idea. He used objects he had around the house and just had them play characters in the story. The story was essentially the same but the means by which he tried to accomplish it were much more realistic. In the end, he made a film that won an award in our film festival and was a good example of analyzing his assets and liabilities.

So let's talk about assets first. What are examples of assets:

+Time. How much time do you have to pull off your film? (This could be a liability too.)

+Location. What locations can you shoot in? What kind of stories would happen there?

+People. Who can help you with your film? Can they act? Can they shoot film? Can they do other things?

+Props. What objects around your home can be used in the story?

+Costumes. What clothing do you have to help you tell your story?

+Equipment. What kind of camera do you have? What kind of tripod? Other gear?

+Knowledge. What kinds of film have you done in the past? Do you know how to do other types of film like special effects or animation? Can you learn?

Now let's talk about liabilities. Essentially, all of the elements above can be liabilities. I think if you don't think about them and build your story around them in the first place, then, you risk making them liabilities.

For example, if you don't build your story around the time you have. Then, you may be trying to accomplish way too much in your story then you have time for.

Or if you try to do a three person story with only you playing all of the characters. This might be too hard to pull off.

So bottom line is start with what you have and build your story around it. Then, you will avoid many of your liabilities. But you should also be aware that in film shoots, there are many liabilities that you might not be prepared for and it's just part of the process.​

+Random accidents.

+People not showing up.

+Weather.

+Other projects taking up more time.

+Forgetting to turn on your camera.

+Equipment problems. (This is a big one.)

+Etc.

So in these cases, I think you just keep going and realize that accidents happen and you accept reality and move on. We'll be making a lot of films over the semester and you will pick one of them as your primary submission to the film festival and for the class. We do this because we know that accidents do happen and that a lot of films fail. So you just have to accept that fact and keep making films until you hit the right one.

Introduction to Montage

What is a montage? Watch this film...

Then we'll discuss it.

Some key points...

Montage is a collection of images and/or video clips often with sound/music...

that tells a story and/or give a cinematic experience...

that makes the audience feel something and/or think something.

Thematic Montages

We'll talk about how some montages main purpose is to give the audience an emotional experience and an intellectual experience.

In essence, you should feel something when watching these montages. And you should be thinking about something.

Watch this montage and ask yourself:

What emotion am I feeling? Why?

What ideas am I thinking? Why?

Discuss the video and the students' responses.

+Activity: Create your own Thematic Montage:

1. Think of a strong emotion you've felt recently. Anger? Happiness? Love? Hate? Inspiration? Loneliness? Sadness? Hope? Worry?

Write down that emotion down.

2. Think of as many different images that remind you of that emotion.

Write down those images. Use details as much as you can. Think of the five senses. Sight, sound, touch, taste, smell.

3. Test to see if those images evoke that emotion for another person.

A volunteer will read the images from their list to the class and see if they can guess the emotion.

Discuss in essence that this is a thematic montage. A collection of images that create emotion.

They can also convey ideas. If you add some kind of text.

1. With the emotion in mind, think of texts that remind you of that emotion.

Write down a list of different texts that create that emotion like:

-poems

-song lyrics

-journal entries

-famous quotes

-short stories

You could build a film around this text and make a film.

Here are some examples:

In between is a short montage film by Katie Specter, one of my students. She wrote a song and then made a music video based on it. I think it does a good job of capturing the bittersweet nature of friendship and time and savoring the moments of friendship.

Covid 19 is a short montage film by Kyla Cook who made this film in the first month of the quarantine. I think she does some interesting things with the way she uses a pipe-like attachment to the camera and surveys the empty streets of the city and combines that with the music and the audio clips of news reporters. You get that sense of desperation and chaos that we all felt at this time.

1 minute stretch break

Activity Montage

Another type of montage is the Activity montage. It's a montage that shows a type of action that a character engages in but it only shows the highlights. One of the most famous example is from the movie, Rocky. It's so famous that it's become a cliche or to put it another way, you see it in every sports movie that's out there, the training montage. Here's the famous Rocky montage.

Here are some things to look for in an Activity montage:

+What are the emotions that you are feeling? Why?

+What are some of the thoughts that you're thinking? Why?

If we have time, we'll look at two more Activity montages. This one is from last summer's filmmaking class. They did their own training montage. Again, what are you feeling when watching it? Why?

What are you thinking? Why?

This called "runninng montage" by delaney.

If we have time, we'll check out this montage from the movie, School of Rock. It's a good example of the training montage but it follows a group of middle schoolers learning how to become a rock band.

Make Your Own Activity Montage

Now it's your turn. Think of activities that you could film around your home and area. It could be athletic, it could be artistic, it could be intellectual, it could be familial. The main elements you want to think about:

+Can you show it? Think visual.

+Is it compelling to watch for an audience?

+Does it include some kind of change?

Now pick one of your ideas. And then...

Write down all of the different parts of that activity. What happens at the beginning? How does it develop? How does it end? Are there conflicts involved?

This could be the blue print of your first film.

"Homework"

+Decide which kind of montage you'll do: Activity or Thematic?

+Maybe you want to do something else. That's fine, please just let me know.

+Once you pick your type of montage, then decide upon an activity or theme.

+Think about what emotions you want to convey to the audience.

+Think about if you want your audience to think about the story or about the themes through a poem or song.

+Think about all of the images that you will be putting into this montage. Note. Not all but many montages use a lot of images. For example, in "running montage" had about 30 shots in that 1 minute film. That's about 1 shot per 2 seconds. That's not unusual so try to think as many images as you can.

+Be prepared to share your ideas in class tomorrow.

+Don't worry. I want you to just get used to sharing your ideas and hearing constructive feedback. This means, that I'll take the lead in giving feedback and I always start what's working and what is good about your idea. Then, we'll give a few ideas on how to make it clearer and more compelling. But it's up to you what you want to follow.

Bonus Content

Here are some more montages I really enjoy. Check them out: