hehe- a certain tendance in brendon cinema…

i know what you mean with getting caught up in thinking abotu the film before you actually start writing it. the best advice i can say is just to GO… creativity and more ideas will come as you progress as long as you have a good idea of where you want to start. you don’t have to have it all figured out before you go. otherwise films could never be saved in the editing room.

also, you don’t have to make a masterwork now. i think you will make your vision one day - as of now, just start and see where you go.

This sounds cliche, but recognize who you are first. Who are you? Well, judging from the blog, I can safely presume that you are an intelligent, privileged white, heterosexual, middle class (or upper middle class) male in his twenties.

And don’t be afraid to admit that you belong to this socio-economic classification. This is the trap that many smug, liberal guilt filmmakers fall into. You know, Paul Haggis, probably had good intentions. He probably thought, well, I’ll be socially conscious, blah, blah, and put my lens on everyone, including people of color. But the reality was that he was this middle class white man who didn’t know a thing about the oppressed. And he ended up reaffirming stereotypes and implying that everyone is a racist.

If you’re gonna tell a story, then tell something that is really personal to you - that really resonates. Don’t be wary of that whole “self-indulgent” criticism crap. If you wanna get all technical, then, yes, film is a self-indulgent medium - it’s all mirrors. A story can be autobiographical without being obnoxious. Just be cognizant of the fact that you’re creating this celluloid world that is purely you, and don’t be afraid of being critical or challenging of your screen surrogate self or milieu. As Benjamin puts it: film is messianic time - it’s not the ‘here and now’ time. A film such as, say, Garden State may be genuine in emotions, but it fails at looking at the whole picture. Zach Braff gave his character too much credit. And so the whole thesis of the film amounts to this equation: young, unaffected twenty-somethingers = gooooood, adults = baaaaaaad!!!

On the other hand, nothing is to stop you from sending a finished self-made film through the exegetic mill. Polemicize about its theoretical underpinning as much as you like - *after it’s done.*

None of this is to say that I’ve recently been flooded with brilliant inspiration. I still find myself relying on genre as a point of entry (conceiving of a story in isolation from the visual tropes that accompany the war or science fiction film is impossible) and substituting long takes for actual character interaction. Mise-en-scene is more than a component for me, it’s the core and foundation - something to drape narrative over, rather than the inverse.

I acknowledge this reliance on visuals to structure my narratives, and I don’t think I will be able to change it any time soon. For now I’m in between projects, waiting for inspiration to strike. Maybe I will work through a previously visited genre again and try to turn it to a different goal.

Your discussion about whether to insert thematic content later or at the beginning brings up good questions. Either approach can lead to awful results, or not.