Creative Code
When it comes to the work of other filmmakers I tend to praise publicly and criticize privately.
I can’t speak for other creatives but I personally have a really tough time dragging a film, at least publicly. Now, this isn’t a code that I hold other creatives to, but it is one that I strongly encourage at least considering. The reason is because the fact of the matter is that the fact that any movie is made is a miracle.
Very few films are conceived, produced, and released as truly independent films. Movies, even super small ones, cost money. You got to buy or rent gear. You got a feed a crew, or if you don’t have a crew you got to feed your actors. If you don’t have actors or a crew…I’m kind of interested in what your film is about…but, I digress.
The point is that even before you say “action” on day one of production the journey to get to that moment is an incredible uphill battle. You gotta get the script. Then you have to get funding, which is a whole deal. Then you gotta cast the film and hire crew. Then you have to try to make schedules line up and work. Then you gotta go out a secure locations. Then you gotta dress the sets, costumes, and everything else.
It’s a lot of work and at any point one false move can end up with the entire movie being cancelled.
I’m not even going to go into all the issues that can come up during production and post-production. Suffice to say that there are countless of challenges that come up while making a film. The bottom line is that by the time your eyes get to see a film it has survived a barrage of difficulties.
This isn’t to say that every film is good, or even worth the time it takes to watch it. As a creative myself I just know that even if the director of any film was “phoning it in” there are people on that set that gave their all to do their job.
Again, this is just me and not a code I think all creatives should follow. That being said when I hear criticism of any given film I can tell whether or not somebody actually knows what goes into filmmaking.
One dead give away is when somebody criticizes a script. Unless you have actually seen and read the shooting script for yourself you have no idea how much that script changed during production. Did the director understand how a joke was meant to be delivered or a line was meant to be read? Did the actor pushback on notes? Did external factors cause a scene to be scrapped? Did studio interference cause the film to be changed in editing? All these things and more can happen.
Social media has incentives snark and cynicism. As a result it seems like movie reviews have become more snarky and cynical. This is one of the many reasons why I miss Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. A lot of people out their paying the bills watching and then commentating on movies don’t have their understanding of film.
Look any given Siskel and Ebert review up on YouTube and you’ll see what I mean.
Even when they disliked a movie they were able to do it with intelligence and articulate their opinion with skill. I selected this clip because they had two different takes on Wes Craven’s New Nightmare and it gives you a sense of how they approached film criticism.
I could easily go down a path in which I just gripe about film critics today and how sites like Rotten Tomatoes reward their worst characteristic. Instead, I will just say that the one critic that I highly enjoy reading and/or listening to it is Sonny Bunch. His recent review of Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Themes reminds me a lot of how Roger Ebert used to review films. (Sonny is much more in line with Roger Ebert than any of the people writing for Roger Ebert dot com, but I digress…again)
The bottom line is that filmmaking is hard. I’m skeptical of creatives that react to films like critics and critics that don’t seem to know much about the creative process. Above all else, when there is so much TV and movies to watch, why waste a minute talking about what you didn’t like when you can move on to the next thing?