I spent much of this week rereading and making copious notes from David Mamet’s ‘On Directing Film,’ a book which has had a huge impact on me.
It’s been massive wake up call, making sense of a lot of what I’d learnt whilst making SToA, along with introducing and refining a lot of really cool ideas on all aspects of filmmaking.
OK, so David Mamet’s not exactly ‘Mr Hollywood’ (in fact, much of the book flies very much in the face of conventional Hollywood wisdom), but with his aesthetic ideal being very close to that of Eisenstein, he’s made me realise just what I should be doing (or at least be trying to do) with my films.
The most important thing that has really sunk in is exactly what Film is – Telling stories visually. I knew that before, but I didn’t really understand it, mainly because I was missing the second half of the definition – through the juxtaposition of uninflected images. It took me ages to really get my head round the full significance of this.
And to answer my own question from last week, yes, there on page 72 he says it like it is, “Basically, the perfect movie doesn’t have any dialogue. So you should always be striving to make a silent movie.”
It struck me as I was sat at work the other day that books and films are, in their purest forms, the complete opposite ends of the storytelling spectrum.
Books give you a narrative and invite you (with appropriate clues) to visualise the action.
Films show you the action and invite you (with appropriate clues) to visualise the narrative.
Hmmm… I used to think writing a novel was harder than making a film, now I’m not so sure.
Anyway, all this has got me fervently rewriting the new short – gawd know how’s it’s going to turn out. I’m certainly not going to try to write a silent movie, but who knows where this might lead? It’s all very exciting.
I’m sure that all you people out in LaLa Land will be going, “No, NO! If you want to make films, that ain’t going to pay the way.’ I’m sure it’s not, but quite frankly, at this point in the game, I don’t care.
There’s a possibility that I may disappear completely up my own backside, but at least I’ll be doing it with more conviction than I’ve had in anything else I’ve done so far.
I’m off to read a bit of Freud and Jung now – see you on the other side…