Gnomic Utterances - Everything Must Go
22
May
May
7
Well, it’s the end of Gnomic Utterance Week, but I’ve got too many left. So, three for the price of one today. Agree? Disagree? Giraffes? Comment below.
The difference between a Hollywood production and a Strange Company production is that on the latter, there’s no-one the director can’t ignore. Oh, and the budget.
Do you know best? Do you have better ideas for your film than anyone else? Really?
A friend of mine describes the creative life as “throwing a lot of lemmings at a cliff, and waiting to see which one you find looking smug on a sunlounger at the bottom.”
This is fun, you should do it next year. We could all wear hats (gnome hats)
1) working with volunteers, completely different people skills set. Ignoring people..bad idea. Budget totally different, possible to try things, take risks, not go for the obvious.
2)I think you must at some level believe you have something worth saying, otherwise why do it?
3) Lots of things don’t work, it’s not possible to predict until you try.
I think what Hugh means when he says he ignores people is that he listens carefully to all available counsel, weighs up the options, and then decides to do what he intended to do in the first place ;-)
1) That’s a big part of what I like about this craft, the lack of oversight by suits (assuming that’s part of what you’re referring to here)
2) Within the context of my film? a. Yes. b. Oh Yes. c. Did I stutter? ;)
3) Hmm… it’s a humorous metaphor, but comes from a worldview where, in my opinion, chance (luck) is given way too big a role. There’s more science to this thing than we sometimes like to admit to ourselves, and less dice rolls.
Gnome hats, check.
1) Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. But there’s no-one who can shut your production down if you don’t listen to them (assuming you’ve set everything up correctly). Phil - yes. 2) I may have a brilliant idea for a film that I’ll stick to like glue - doesn’t mean I know what every shot should be. 3) Actually, an awful lot of things are predictable before you try. Phil - I agree. At the end of the day, though, it’s a bad idea to say “Ok, this is my one and only idea, and if it doesn’t work I’m totally screwed” if you can avoid it.
“there’s no-one who can shut your production down if you don’t listen to them”, ok that one makes more sense now.
“an awful lot of things are predictable before you try”. I guess not knowing if something is possible makes a project more interesting to me.
Damn right I know best when it comes to my films. I even know when to say “OK, let’s do it your way.” ;)
The difference between a Hollywood production and a Strange Company production is that if you screw up completely and churn out a box office dud, you’re unlikely to bring your career to a sad and premature end.
Matt - I’m not sure that box office duds reliably kill careers in Hollywood. Remember what William Goldman said about the important thing not being whether your film was successful, but whether it got made.