Making a New Feature... What Do You Want To See?

chapelgrovefilms said:
You know what would be interesting? Literally everything. Follow me here...

On many DVD's we see 'behind the scenes' and 'the making of' stuff, but it's usually select material from the actual shoot itself. What I'd like to see you do is have a documentary camera follow you from Day One. Go through the whole process -- script development, casting, getting your crew, literally everything from pre-pro through post. You'd have to market that as a separate DVD set, but I bet a lot of people would find it fascinating as hell.

What do you think, folks?
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I'd get that DVD in a heartbeat.



...and in response to the running joke in this thread...

Zak already stated that he's making this film partly in response to the way he has seen women mistreated, so it's probably not the best thread to make those jokes (not that I'm personally offended) if we want him to shoot all this BTS material for us.
 
I sure hope that no one misconstrues expressions of love and admiration for boobs, as being expressions of disdain for women. Quite the opposite, really.
 
Sad Max said:
I sure hope that no one misconstrues expressions of love and admiration for boobs, as being expressions of disdain for women. Quite the opposite, really.
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Many women would disagree with you on this. I know quite a few who love movies, but refuse to watch anything with any nudity in it at all -- even male nudity.
 
Alright guys - hopefully the boob jokes have run their course.
Zak is doing some cool stuff here by keeping the whole production transparent - let's keep it on topic and keep the posts clean.

Thanks.
 
chapelgrovefilms said:
Many women would disagree with you on this. I know quite a few who love movies, but refuse to watch anything with any nudity in it at all -- even male nudity.
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There are men who likewise will not watch anything involving nudity.

I suspect that has more to do with the individual's peculiar ideas regarding morality - or simply their personal taste - than the individual's gender.
 
Sad Max said:
There are men who likewise will not watch anything involving nudity.

I suspect that has more to do with the individual's peculiar ideas regarding morality - or simply their personal taste - than the individual's gender.
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Whether or not a person's ideas of morality are 'peculiar' is relative. The important factor for us is how it affects our potential audience. It's just something we should all consider in our decision-making process.
 
After watching Space Cowboys, I myself am nervous of movies that state they have nudity. I really didn't want to see James Garner, Clint Eastwood, Tommy Lee Jones, and Donald Sutherland's naked posteriors. And to keep within the topic, I would still like to see how you handle the audio from start to finish.
 
Listen, I like boobs. Everyone does. That's just the way it is. Boobs are very likeable. :)

But something I've become very attentive to lately is the way that something, like the playful banter here, is endured by the women in my life. from my girlfriend to the women I collaborate with on a creative level. I see it much more clearly now, having been rocked by some recent events. But there is an ugly feeling out there amongst women that stems from an accepted and unrelenting focus on their sexuality. and there is even an unease with men developing out of the increasingly mainstream acceptance of torture porn (take a look at the Last Hour on the Left thread). what would you think if a new audience of women were enthusiastically devouring a popular form of entertainment written and directed by women about sexually mutilating and torturing and killing men?

The disparity lies here... I have tried to get the female filmmakers I work with to post here, but they don't. and their reason is always the same. They checked out the site and came across something like the stuff in this thread. You'll notice the small minority of women who DO post here either ignore and endure that stuff. or they ride the wave of attention for a little while by feeding into it, and all the guys get excited because she feeds into the fantasy of a girl being hyperenthusiastic about her sexuality. then suddenly she stops posting one day. maybe nothing specific happened, but I imagine the buzz from the attention wore off and the accumulative effect and focus on her as an object of desire finally hit a threshold.

Anyway, this film we're making is an honest attempt to go deeper than the surface. to explore an authentic relationship between a man and a woman. and the hope is to share EVERYTHING about the production with you. all we ask is if you like what you're seeing, share it with someone. and please be mindful that two of five creative minds working on this picture are women who are already hesitant about appearing in videos posted here.

ps - for the record, i didn't ask Luis to step in and say anything. but the ladies on this production are glad he did. :)
 
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chapelgrovefilms said:
Whether or not a person's ideas of morality are 'peculiar' is relative. The important factor for us is how it affects our potential audience. It's just something we should all consider in our decision-making process.
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Peculiar in the sense of being individual and, well, peculiar to that individual. It's not a value judgment.

I'm not sure I buy into the "how will it affect the audience" angle with specific regard to nudity. Assuming that the nudity isn't over-the-top gratuitous - that is, in some way serving the story being told - if certain people are averse to nudity for their own reasons, well, there's plenty of G-rated stuff for them to rent. It's not interchangeable with depictions of violence, simulated sexual contact, or even harsh language.

Zak said:
But something I've become very attentive to lately is the way that something, like the playful banter here, is endured by the women in my life. from my girlfriend to the women I collaborate with on a creative level.
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My wife would wade right into the banter. I think that's a matter of individual personality.

Zak said:
I see it much more clearly now, having been rocked by some recent events. But there is an ugly feeling out there amongst women that stems from an accepted and unrelenting focus on their sexuality.
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That's biology. Sorry, ladies, men can (and should) make every reasonable effort to be polite, but at the end of the day we're mammalian hindbrains over reptilian backbrains, marinated in testosterone. I can be sitting across the table from a multiple-PhD-holding, patent-owning, cultured, accomplished, refined lady, and while knowing all that...if I am attracted to her, my mind (such as it is) will be worrying away at that, whether she or I like it, or not. I may not say anything (I probably won't say anything) but there it is, all the same.

Look at what happens to people who try to quash even superficial expressions of sexuality. You wind up with people like Origen. Or Wahhabists.

Zak said:
and there is even an unease with men developing out of the increasingly mainstream acceptance of torture porn (take a look at the Last Hour on the Left thread). what would you think if a new audience of women were enthusiastically devouring a popular form of entertainment written and directed by women about sexually mutilating and torturing and killing men?
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I almost walked out of Strange Days because of the rape scene near the start (and had it continued another 15-30 seconds, I would have) along with two male friends. I suspect that we're more representative, than whatever low types get off on watching people being tortured. Although I can't prove it.

Zak said:
The disparity lies here... I have tried to get the female filmmakers I work with to post here, but they don't. and their reason is always the same. They checked out the site and came across something like the stuff in this thread. You'll notice the small minority of women who DO post here either ignore and endure that stuff. or they ride the wave of attention for a little while by feeding into it, and all the guys get excited because she feeds into the fantasy of a girl being hyperenthusiastic about her sexuality.
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Male and female sexuality, and behavior deriving from it, are fundamentally disparate. Sorry. Maybe a rule banning any mention of body-part descriptive words, or any of the things one can do with them, is in order.

Zak said:
then suddenly she stops posting one day. maybe nothing specific happened, but I imagine the buzz from the attention wore off and the accumulative effect and focus on her as an object of desire finally hit a threshold.
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Has anyone around here really ever advertised their desire for a (maybe) female poster, based upon her identifying herself as a woman? While it's true that men can respond sexually to almost anything, a post saying "hey I'm a girl" seems like a real stretch, as an object of titillation.

Zak said:
Anyway, this film we're making is an honest attempt to go deeper than the surface. to explore an authentic relationship between a man and a woman. and the hope is to share EVERYTHING about the production with you. all we ask is if you like what you're seeing, share it with someone. and please be mindful that two of five creative minds working on this picture are women who are already hesitant about appearing in videos posted here.
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Thanks for making the effort to put this together. I'm very much looking forward to following the project as it advances.
 
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Sad Max said:
Peculiar in the sense of being individual and, well, peculiar to that individual. It's not a value judgment.

I'm not sure I buy into the "how will it affect the audience" angle with specific regard to nudity. Assuming that the nudity isn't over-the-top gratuitous - that is, in some way serving the story being told - if certain people are averse to nudity for their own reasons, well, there's plenty of G-rated stuff for them to rent. It's not interchangeable with depictions of violence, or even harsh language.
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You make the very point -- they will rent/buy stuff without nudity. That is their preference, and by definition that affects our potential audience.

Hollywood puts nudity into movies to draw an audience segment that would not otherwise spend their money to see that movie. For instance, 'Titanic' would have been every bit as good without the nudity. But there were people who bought tickets, or rented/bought the movie on video, specifically because of the nudity. These people would not have been interested in this 'chick flick' otherwise. Granted, that's not a large percentage of the audience, but every dollar counts. No doubt someone decided that the number of people who wouldn't watch the movie because of the nudity would be offset by the number who would plunk their money down because of the nudity.

It's a widespread thing. And it's not strictly nudity. Remember when the first 'Spiderman' movie came out? Every commercial we saw on TV for it had Kirsten Dunst standing in the rain with her thin cotton dress plastered to her obviously bra-less body. Why? Because the powers that be knew this would sell tickets to some people who didn't care one whit about Spiderman, but who wanted to see Dunst's body on a 40-foot tall screen. Nudity is 99% about marketing, rarely about anything else.

Also, as a writer, I think the word 'particular' would have served better than 'peculiar'. 'Peculiar' has a distinct negative connotation, even though it is technically correct. "Peculiar ideas" is quite different than "ideas peculiar to that individual". Peculiar as that may seem. :)
 
Aside from a pencil drawing of a nude (not actually the actress, even) I don't recall any nudity in Titanic. Aside from a very short -steaming-up-the-car-windows scene, during which I don't remember seeing either nipples, or buttocks. But it's been a while.

Sure, more of the nudity on-screen has been included to titillate or draw customers, than to serve a vital purpose in storytelling or character-development. A willingness to accept that a proportion of potential ticket-buyers may avoid the show for fear of glimpsing a nude human body, is counterbalanced by your observation that a larger proportion of ticket-buyers will come to see that nudity.

I have seen a fair amount of the horrendous, enervating pap produced for the no-nudity-no-harsh-language, predominantly religious audience. Much of it is actually worse that what you would get, simply by taking a crummy studio movie, and cutting out the nude scenes. There seems to be some kind of gutlessness when it comes to story telling and characterization that frequently goes hand-in-hand with a horror of seeing bare skin. I'm not suggesting causation; just an observation of correlation.
 
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I have made my request to see how you handle audio, and that was sincere. As pointed out, I am a male, and revel in my testosterosity... sometimes too much. So after this, I will have had my say, and let it drop.

On the topic of nudity, I'm for it in most cases- Space Cowboys is one of the exceptions. A film can work fine without any nudity at all, and I feel that if audience is a concern, there is always the possibility of a Uncensored Director's Cut. But to confuse showing a beautiful woman's graceful form and sexual content is off the mark, and neither of those should be compared to rape or torture. While some may get off on that, it is in no way the norm, nor is it to be glorified. It is a depraved act by deviants, not by any means a beautiful romantic act.
 
Well, it tells you something about the general American mindset, that we traditionally lump depictions of nudity or sexuality, in with bad language and violence.
 
Sad Max said:
Well, it tells you something about the general American mindset, that we traditionally lump depictions of nudity or sexuality, in with bad language and violence.
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Not really so much the general mindset, just becoming too prevalent in current films. I actually respect Zac for taking a stand, no matter which side he's on.
 
Not just the general mindset?

Then why does the American ratings system for films, lump nudity/sexuality/violence together, for the purpose of deciding what is recommended as "appropriate" for which segment of the mass audience?

Why are depictions of fairly extreme violence par for the course on network TV, while even a brief instant of nudity can lead to fines and threats of revoked broadcast licenses?

The US was founded in large part by Puritans, after all, and still bears an unfortunate imprint of their philosophy. Violence=entertaining, sexuality=bad...
 
this is a great, worthwhile discussion and I wish I had more time to be involved in it. don't think we are artificially restricting the reality of male/female relationships in this picture. what we're doing is being very mindful of the way my male point of view affects how the female character is portrayed, and not to infuse her with elements that are only there to serve "the male gaze" by appealing to male fantasies. and the reason for this is because some very dear friends and collaborators have shared their frustration and increasing fear with me. this will be a truthful film. gray areas included.

and quickly on the topic of nudity. I think it needs to be earned. in any serious film effort, it needs to be earned -- just like winning the audience's empathy for your characters. if you don't earn it, you are likely appealing to some level of commercialism. and I don't want to be the filmmaking equivalent of McDonald's.
 
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