Solving Equation of a Hit Film Script, With Data (NYTimes article)

nycineaste said:
ultimately its amazing that otherwise intelligent people, whose business is, essentially, making art, have not figured out that subject matter, tone, and form/execution are separate artistic elements, with subject matter being the least important. You can make a good or bad work on any subject, its like day one of art school. Leaning on talented and time-tested directors and actors? That's smart. Manufacturing a creative endeavor based on subject matter? Its just flat out wrong and bone-headed, and shows no real understanding of the nature of creativity.
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I actually laughed loud when i looked at those pics!

An interesting statistic that i keep on repeating lately is that only 3% of world's population have seen "Titanic." The rest, the 97%, had better things to do OR were watching other films. There is a humongous market out there and if we forget that even the most popular film of all times has only appealed to just 3% of people then we'll keep on creating the by-the-numbers works hoping for those 3% to pay attention to us.
 
Batutta said:
There are people who are only interested in writing. Who have no interest or aptitude for anything else. Not everyone is a director, producer, editor, cinematographer.
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I agree, but if someone feels strongly about making 'that script into a film'... they are going to have to find the group of those with such talents to be able to see it on a screen... because finding one's way to Hollywood is almost doomed... except of course those rare occasions where someone comes from outspace and writes, sells, and gets a film made...
 
j1clark@ucsd.edu said:
Unfortunately I don't have the infrastructure to create a poignant, brooding, existentially profound, french/german/hungarian arthouse Cannes lighting in a bottle...

I'll have to settle for a mid-20's transvestite stripper who finds fame and fortune working in a Tijuana strip joint, and luring young sailors to their sexual identity doom.
(If I put in brooding putting on of make-up interspersed with long thoughtful puffings of cigarettes, will that be the ticket to the 'arthouse' scene? Or, how about a catchy title of "Sailor Moon" to cash in on the east Asia style arty houseness)
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Raving eclecticist as I am my approach would be: Try both ways. Or three-ways. Cigarette smoking is indeed very arty at any given moment in any given movie and if you can cater for the transvestite stripper leaning audience AND the "thoughtful puffing" afficionados, your luck may be made.

The other possibility is to take this approach

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplayl...ilm-in-23-years-the-dance-of-reality-20130518


and include the harzer/naked mole rat romantic comedy and make it about the impossibleness of the possible stripper/smelly cheese/ugly animal triangle. And make them sing. There is a market everywhere for anything - you only have to adjust your expectations...
 
j1clark@ucsd.edu said:
... because finding one's way to Hollywood is almost doomed... except of course those rare occasions where someone comes from outspace and writes, sells, and gets a film made...
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To jump onto the fast spinning roundabouts of production is hard everywhere, even in over-subsidised Europe film making .... as is staying on board. One possibility I see is to apply the "we don't have a chance so we take it"-approach.

The guy who made "Beasts of the Southern Wild" (you remember: that movie that was so shaky your eyes came off the fixtures, you claimed) had both the talent and the luck and some helpers so he is on the merry-go-round in Hollywood by now probably. If that's healthy for him remains to be seen.

But if it was strategy or only just good luck - he found a stage play strong enough, transposed the story into something that was both original and almost fairy-tale traditional at the same time, set in a perfect un-Hollywood'ish world ... and took a lot of people including "moi" by surprise.

And: We don't really need success-filtering software. We have those possibilities already. Analogue. Biological. All those producers only running for the next best terrible sequel or me-too product. The very people who would destroy cinema if they ever could really control it. The tinsel-town aurochses.
 
Rolf Silber said:
and include the harzer/naked mole rat romantic comedy and make it about the impossibleness of the possible stripper/smelly cheese/ugly animal triangle. And make them sing. There is a market everywhere for anything - you only have to adjust your expectations...
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These days not only its it almost impossible for me to get young women to take off their clothes at the drop of a hat, in front of a camera, it is even more impossible to find people who smoke... perhaps it's just the circles I travel in.

I've thought about these 'fake' cigarettes that use some sort of vaporized 'air/water', sans nicotine... but I don't know if they'd give the right 'smoke' for such brooding moments. For the TV show "Mad Men", I believe they used real burning 'cigarettes' made of non-tobacco materials... don't know how that worked... but as a youth I did try to smoke alfalfa... it was pretty bitter... so I can't imagine that 'working' for actors who don't 'naturally' smoke...
 
Rolf Silber said:
The guy who made "Beasts of the Southern Wild" (you remember: that movie that was so shaky your eyes came off the fixtures, you claimed) had both the talent and the luck and some helpers so he is on the merry-go-round in Hollywood by now probably. If that's healthy for him remains to be seen.
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Yes, I do hope that this portends a trend of filmmaking outside of 'mainstream' Hollywood, and despite my personal 'physical' reaction to BoSW's cinematic style... I hope the maker does continue to make.

There are a number of one-hit wonders, the "Blair Witch Project"(1999)... which I bought a VHS, never watched, when it first came out... but those people didn't seem to move on and continue...

I'm also a bit ambivalent about Korine's seeming break into more 'mainstream' with "Spring Breakers"(2013)... don't know if that means we will see more 'funky' but interesting fare, similar to John Waters... or he will move into more 'mainstream', or fall on his face...
 
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