Choosing a style.

[jghenderson]

My favorite films tend to come from Directors who have a very distinct "style" to their work. The kind of films that when you see it, you immediately know it comes from a certain Director.

I also have a friend in L.A. that is on the cusp of being a big-time music video director (he's already done one video for a well known band). He told me that one of the most important things for a young director getting into the industry is that you have a style and you stick with it. Reason being that if a client is thinking of hiring you and your work is varied in style, they don't really "know" what they're getting. If you have a cohesive style, however, they can trust that what they end up getting will look like this certain thing that they like.


Now here's my issue. I have a short film i'm shooting in a few months. It's going to be my first "big" short film in the sense of having a full crew of mostly professionals. It's really important to me to get this right, as the finished product is going to be shown to some people in L.A. that can have a big effect on my career. This fact coupled with the advice from my friend has me really feeling like I need to decide on a distinct "style" with this film that I can keep for the future.

Problem is, I just really can't make up my mind. I've gone so far as to analyze a list of my favorite films, trying to see if there was a correlation between a certain style and films I like. In the end it just made me even more confused. Styles seemed to have nothing to do with how great I thought a film was. I'm like this in all areas of my life. For instance in music, I love almost all styles of music. While this is great as a listener, if I was to ever try to make music, I wouldn't have the first clue of what type of music to make.


Basically: When no style seems to stand out to you as the one you like the most, how do you pick one? Just arbitrarily? Am I worrying too much about it? Even trying to decide whether to shoot this film handheld or on rails is driving me insane. I love both styles, and I don't see how I can pick.

[PopcornFlix]

Style is really important for music video directors. Less so for narrative. The most important thing for a narrative director is to keep the audience hooked. A good story, well told.

Worry less, concentrate on telling the story visually as well as you can, and your style will emerge on its own over the course of several films. Think in terms of a body of work, and don't make any one film too important.

Before he shot his first feature, Sir Ridley Scott had shot 2,500 commercials. Do you think he fretted over each one about his style? No, he did his best and moved on to the next one.

[Amr Rahmy]

what's your top 10 movie list?

[jghenderson]

what's your top 10 movie list?

Difficult to say, but if I had to:

Stalker
Chungking Express
Children of Men
Ordet
Brazil
A Man Escaped
Rear Window
Memories of Murder
Andrei Rublev
The Son

[Amr Rahmy]

cult classics, but from different cults. interesting. at least we got the pacing down, they all have the same tempo.

why did you pick chungking express over in the mood for love?

why did you put rear window in the top ten, it does not fit with the rest. don't you think?

[kennedymax]

What POPCORNFLIX said, +:

A while ago I attended a "Creative" advertising seminar where a question was asked: "How do you come up with your creative ideas?" One of the major participants replied: "We get most of our ideas off of YouTube". We later called the seminar - PLAGIARISM 101 -
Mark Twain didn't copy anyone else's style . . . Shakespeare didn't copy anyone else's style . . . nor did Copola or Lucas. Style comes from an individual's imaginative interpretation and presentation of material using the tools of one's trade. "Knock-offs" are rarely successful or respected. Think about how YOU want to present your material to another person . . . and do it.
Good luck,
Ken

[Amr Rahmy]

actually Shakespeare and lucas are wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy off. Shakespeare was sometimes a translator and mostly adapted stories to plays, some of witch were copies of other ancient stories.

star wars and indiana jones on the other hand were almost copy/past from from old serials and movies, sometimes scene to scene, shot to shot. and any additional work but into them that made them unique were never by lucas.

[Amr Rahmy]

that's like viewers referring to bay as a director. it's a scam.

[kennedymax]

actually we are adaptors of stories (scripts) for visual presentation . . . and adapting them through our personal perception (style).

While Star Wars and the Indiana Jones films are adventure stories they were presented with fresh style and new techniques in adventure story telling. They certainly are not literary works. Just popular and successful exploitation films.

actually one should not pirate someone else's style, but should develop one's own presentation style through honest, thoughtful application of vision.

Ken

[TheDingo]

Who needs to be original, when you can create instant masterpieces by copying someone else's style...

Check Out These 11 Harry Potter Masterpieces