I just watched Hearts of Darkness, a terrific documentary about the making of Apocalypse Now. I greatly respect that movie, and the work of Director Francis Ford Coppola during that period of his life. They are terrific examples of some of the best that American cinema has to offer, and I could only hope that one day I would be able to deliver one film of any quality within sighting distance that same ballpark.
But the documentary ends with a statement from Coppola that I'd heard tossed about plenty of times before I saw the source: that a fat girl from Ohio could use her father's 8mm camcorder to make a film and thus destroy the "professionalism" of movie making forever.
Bullshit.
First, let's review some history. When Coppola made this statement, it had some ring of validity to it. After all, before you could even begin to think about rolling film, you'd be in the hole tens of thousands of dollars already. A typical film was made in either 16mm or 35mm, depending on budget, Only a handful of manufacturers built cameras of that type, and combining the niche market for a motion film camera along with the costs of purchasing film magazines to use with the camera and then having hundreds of feet developed and either projected or telecined to video tape, the barrier to entry was not insignificant. While cheap 8mm film cameras existed, it wasn't considered to be much of an option for use as an A camera on a film set. Evil Dead was originally going to be shot in 8mm as a cost saving option (and also due to the crew's familiarity with the format) but that idea was scrapped after a test screening in a theater demonstrated a lack of quality.
Coppola specifically mentions an 8mm camcorder (not the film variety), but let's just bypass the fact that the camera he's probably referring to shoots 240 lines of resolution at a rate at 59.97 interlaced fields per second vs the 35mm film he used to shoot Apocalypse Now which was digitized into a 4K 24 frames-per-second progressive digital file for the Blu-ray mastering. This is 2012 anyway, and anyone can far surpass 8mm camcorder quality with a GoPro Hero HD, let alone a Canon T4i or Panasonic GH2.
In fact, lets remove the camera from the equation entirely. That barrier to entry is no more, has been blasted into oblivion. And it shows. Almost everyone with a smart phone or cheap interchangeable lens camera thinks they are a filmmaker. The term has been abused to the point where I would never use it as anything other than a derogatory term applied to those who make pretentious, terribly crafted video that a mere handful of people will ever see, let alone watch all the way through 'til the end.
So our hypothetical Ohio fat girl has her Canon T2i and kit lens, a couple of batteries, and a 16GB SD card. She's all ready to make that film that's going to destroy the professionalism of filmmaking forever, right?
Well, hold your horses little Ohio fat girl. What kind of film are you going to make? Are you going to stick it on your tripod, hit record, and then run around to the opposite side and act out the scene? Well, probably not. Not to say that can't work, but I've never seen it in feature length, and I fail to see how that could hold anyone's interest for 80-ish minutes. On top of that, she's constantly having to run back to the camera and playback the scene just to see what it looked like. That will really slow things down. No, to keep it simple, our budding filmmaker probably needs more than just herself to be in the film.
Okay, so now we have a couple of additional actors for this film. How long will they be needed? It's a feature film, so six months over a span of long weekends? That's quite a long haul, so I hope everyone's dedicated. And what happens if one of the crucial actors decides he or she has had enough and never comes back? Yeah, you might call that "unprofessional", but since our little girl is destroying the "professionalism" of the film industry, does that term have a place for such an action? After all, our filmmaker is asking this person to give up weekends for an entire six months, and unless the work is rewarding and the actor can easily see that what they are working on will be worth their while in the end, is it not somewhat understandable? Obviously, we hear a lot about those movies that shot for a year on weekends, and know that it can work, but then we only hear about those movies that are finished. We never hear of those countless films that were abandoned and never finished.
But lets move on from that. I, as the God of Filmmaking in this scenario, has granted Cecilia (our Ohio filmmaker as I have now decreed her name to be) with a stable of "meh" actors (maybe one or two who are decent) who will stick with her through thick and thin. But is she going to film all 80-ish minutes of this feature in her room? Around her house? In her yard? Hopefully she's aspiring to something a little more open location-wise, so now she'll need to spend the time scouting for places, asking permission, giving out directions, driving to location, and setting up. I don't know about you, but in my experience, a lot of locations aren't exactly film-worthy right from the outset. So she'll also have to spend time set dressing, finding props (even purchasing some) and making it look like the idea she has in her head. And she'll probably only get a portion of the way there.
Wow, that's a lot of work for Cecilia!
Okay, she's on location, she spent the last day dressing it, the actors arrive and are ready to act and she has the camera on the tripod and presses record.
It went fine, but it looks really flat and lifeless. It's exposed properly, but the actors and the background are all merging into each other. The actors should stand out more, separated from their background. It looks more like a home movie than it does like a film Cecilia sees in her local theater or on cable. What's going on?
Oh, she needs some lights. That will do the trick. But now she has to figure out which lights, and some of them cost a lot of money, thus increasing that barrier to entry. And once she has lights, now she has to cart them around to her locations and then set them up. And heaven forbid a bulb is broken or finally dies. And what if a power source isn't easily available? Now it's more expense in extension cords, possibly even a generator, but that's not the sort of thing you can just purchase when you find out you need it. Your actors can't be sitting around on set while someone runs to Home Depot. You need to have purchased that beforehand, even if you end up not needing any of it, involving more time and upfront cost.
I think I've run that point sufficiently into the ground now (and I haven’t even gotten into the sound aspect!), so I'll just be blunt. Not everyone can do it all and do it all well. Sometimes you can be a great director, but a terrible writer, meaning someone else has to toil on a script for you to shoot. Sometimes you can be great with camera/lighting, but know shit-all about talking with actors, meaning you need someone else there who can coax good performances. Maybe you're not a good actor, meaning you rely solely on the goodwill of others (in our “work for free” scenario) to bring the script to life, and you may not be friends with these actors beforehand where you can easily call in favors.
The barrier to entry may be cheaper for some of the technicals, but it's still high for everything else, at least to do it well. One can always try to be that Wunderkind who can do it all, but very, very few can actually pull it off.
And that's why the professionalism of filmmaking will never be destroyed. Do we all just want mumblecore drama that takes place in someone's apartment? That would be really boring, wouldn't it? And yet you need proper permits, crew, equipment, ect. to continue to bring variety to the film content that we consume. There's nothing wrong with mumblecore drama, but it doesn't need to be everything.
Making a film requires a lot of people that have different specialties all coming together for the good of telling a story in a way that is satisfying visually, audibly, and emotionally. It relies on strangers who are hopefully good at what they do, but even in the best of circumstances, there can be key components that aren't up to snuff. And that's why, in my opinion:
"Art is the happenstance byproduct of a film."
When I think of art, I think of a creative process that is dictated by one overriding talent. Writing, for instance. While there are definitely writing teams, editors, ect. it isn't unheard of for it to be one writer controlling everything in the work like a puppet-master. Cecilia can sit down in front of her old Lenovo Ideapad and write the Great American Novel without ever having to bother anyone. She can do it all by her lonesome. She can also stand in front of an easel and create a painting that causes grown men to weep and old ladies to swoon.
All by herself.
The same can be said of sculpture and music too (band and symphony pieces being exceptions obviously). Cecilia can pull out her $99 Best Buy guitar and craft herself a piece of music without needing anyone or anything else (well, maybe some staff paper and a pen for posterity).
Film is nothing like that, it's more akin to a trade, like fixing an automobile, installing pipes, or welding. You can't just up and do it, it takes a certain know-how, a certain skill set, and a set of proper tools. It also often makes sense to have others you can rely on for the larger jobs. Occasionally, a perfect storm of talent, skill, and the right people can come together and allow a film to transcend mere product and become art, but that happens almost outside of anyone's control. Of course, a lot of people set out to "make" art with their filmmaking, but how often is it generally recognized as having succeeded?
I do agree with the first half of Copola's statement. I think it's great when someone who never thought about making a film has an idea and does so, but I question if that's something that's actually a problem. If you look at a lot of modern filmmakers, seems like there's definitely a share that never expected to get into that industry. There are a number of those who didn't pursue any path related to filmmaking in their educational pursuits, yet ended up in the industry anyway. And I don't think at that moment in time, that he could comprehend the utter noise that would result from more people jumping into the fray to try to make their million dollars just like he did. The barrier to entry may be lower for the tech now, but the barrier to getting noticed has escalated dramatically. You're just now one lone voice in a sea of utter shit. Even if you're doing good work, how do you differentiate it from wave after wave of terrible work out there?
If Cecilia wants to be a filmmaker one day, more power to her. There are plenty of opportunities to try, to fail, and to make herself better and better with each attempt, hopefully to one day make something that succeeds, perhaps even finds a sizable audience. But Cecilia destroying the “professionalism” of the film industry?
Won’t happen.
