Latest / Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast / BPS 422: The Unscripted Journey of Steven Bernstein From Cinematographer to Storyteller

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BPS 422: The Unscripted Journey of Steven Bernstein From Cinematographer to Storyteller · Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast

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Speaker 2: Welcome to the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, Episode number four twenty
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Speaker 2: Enjoy today's episode with guest host Dave Bullis.
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Speaker 6: That I have my next guest. He has been the
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Speaker 6: director of cinematography for such films as Monster, directed by
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Speaker 6: Patty Jenkins, who just directed Wonder Woman, Kicking and Screaming
1:45
Speaker 6: directed by Noah Bomback, and like Witter for Chocolate. He's
1:48
Speaker 6: also been the director of cinematography for comedies like The Waterboy,
1:51
Speaker 6: Half Bake, Scary Movie Two White Chicks, and he's on
1:55
Speaker 6: action films like Swatt And he also wrote a film
1:58
Speaker 6: a textbook called Filmuction, and his latest films to Coding,
2:02
Speaker 6: Andy Parker and Dominion have included actors like Aaron Paul,
2:05
Speaker 6: John Malkovich, Helen Hunt, just to name a few.
2:08
Speaker 3: And currently he's actually teaching some.
2:10
Speaker 6: Really cool online and offline seminars, which again I'll link
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Speaker 6: to in the show notes. We're going to talk about
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Speaker 6: a lot of really cool stuff on this podcast episode.
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Speaker 3: With guests Steven Bernstein.
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Speaker 6: So, Stephen, just to get started, you know, you've done
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Speaker 6: a lot of really amazing work. You've done a lot
2:28
Speaker 6: of work as a cinematographer, you know, starting in you know,
2:31
Speaker 6: the the late eighties, and you've done all these wonderful projects,
2:35
Speaker 6: and I wanted to ask how you got to that point.
2:38
Speaker 6: I mean, that's sort of the the impetus to a
2:40
Speaker 6: lot of interviews and a lot of you know, people
2:42
Speaker 6: who've who've been able to really ascend up that that
2:45
Speaker 6: proverbial ladder is, you know, how did you get to
2:48
Speaker 6: that point?
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Speaker 3: So what I want to ask you, Steve.
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Speaker 6: Is did you to just to sort of start this off,
2:52
Speaker 6: did you go to film school, you know, to be
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Speaker 6: a cinematographer or did you do have a or did
2:57
Speaker 6: you have a completely different sort of entryway into this industry.
3:01
Speaker 7: A completely different entryway. I had wanted to be a
3:06
Speaker 7: writer and read or majored in philosophy at university. When
3:13
Speaker 7: I came out, there were various job opportunities of different types,
3:18
Speaker 7: one of which was at the BBC on a training
3:21
Speaker 7: program which I enrolled in and studied there as a writer, director,
3:29
Speaker 7: researcher and worked in long form documentary. Great because it
3:36
Speaker 7: allowed me to travel a great deal, which was an
3:38
Speaker 7: interest of mine then, and I got to go to China,
3:42
Speaker 7: Hong Kong, Philippines, Vietnam, South America, South Africa during apartheid
3:48
Speaker 7: what was then Rhodesia later became Zimbabwe. So a lot
3:52
Speaker 7: of adventures, a lot of really interesting shoots and some
3:55
Speaker 7: great experiences, but not really that satisfying and not, as
4:00
Speaker 7: it turned out, my calling. I came back to London
4:04
Speaker 7: and continued working at the BBC about the time that
4:10
Speaker 7: music videos became of interest. The first few music videos
4:16
Speaker 7: be produced and I got to shoot a few of those,
4:21
Speaker 7: and soon I was in demand, not as a director
4:26
Speaker 7: or as a writer, but as what was called then
4:29
Speaker 7: a lighting cameraman, a cinematographer, and shot a lot of
4:33
Speaker 7: really interesting music videos for some really then very big
4:38
Speaker 7: bands in the eighties Eurythmics and so on, and that
4:43
Speaker 7: led to interest from others, and got into commercials. Worked
4:47
Speaker 7: with the great Tony Kay, did some really important commercials
4:51
Speaker 7: with him, some of which won the con Goolden Lion
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Speaker 7: d d Award, and then I was kind of on
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Speaker 7: the map. Still, my intention always had been to be
5:02
Speaker 7: a writer. So it's funny the way life works in
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Speaker 7: that you tend to go with those things that are
5:09
Speaker 7: providing you income. Inevitably, you can have good intentions, but
5:13
Speaker 7: overheads life expenses being what they are, you do what
5:18
Speaker 7: you have to do. So I was shooting, enjoying it,
5:21
Speaker 7: particularly the music videos and the commercials, but I was
5:24
Speaker 7: still writing plays, films, short films, some of which appeared
5:28
Speaker 7: on Channel four in the UK, some got on the
5:31
Speaker 7: stage in London, but really nothing that provided me any
5:35
Speaker 7: sort of success. And then along came like Water for Chocolate.
5:40
Speaker 7: My friend Gabrielle Bearstein had been offered the work completing
5:45
Speaker 7: that movie, which had run into a little bit of trouble,
5:48
Speaker 7: and he couldn't do it, so they asked me to
5:51
Speaker 7: go to Mexico and finish the film, which I did.
5:54
Speaker 7: It's a big hit in America, the highest foreign fihest
5:57
Speaker 7: grossing foreign language film of all time to date. And
6:02
Speaker 7: I then came to America to see if there was
6:04
Speaker 7: work to be had here, and that led to all
6:07
Speaker 7: those studio films, those comedies with Adam Sandler with the
6:11
Speaker 7: weigh Ins and so on, and that led to my
6:16
Speaker 7: meeting now the great Noah Bomback and starting an independent
6:19
Speaker 7: of films in America, and that in turn led to Monsters.
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Speaker 7: So I've tried to compress what is now seeming a
6:27
Speaker 7: very long career into a very short period of time,
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Speaker 7: but a happy series of accidents, doing what I never
6:35
Speaker 7: intended to do, ending up in a place I never
6:39
Speaker 7: intended to come to, and somehow working my way back
6:43
Speaker 7: towards my first intention.
6:46
Speaker 6: Yeah, you know, And it's funny how it all sort
6:48
Speaker 6: of comes full circle, right, You start off with one
6:51
Speaker 6: intention if you find yourself in all these new situations,
6:55
Speaker 6: but you took advantage of those situations, and you know,
6:58
Speaker 6: you turn them all into opportunities, and now you're you know,
7:01
Speaker 6: and now we're going you're going back to writing. And
7:03
Speaker 6: I think there's something poetic in that, because I think
7:06
Speaker 6: it's when when we as filmmakers and and whether we're
7:09
Speaker 6: writers or directors, when we start our careers, you know,
7:13
Speaker 6: we have an idea of what it's gonna be, and
7:16
Speaker 6: usually everyone has an idea that it's gonna be. You know,
7:19
Speaker 6: you're gonna make a movie at twenty two, You're gonna
7:21
Speaker 6: win Sun Dance, you're gonna make a million dollars and
7:24
Speaker 6: then you're gonna move to Hollywood and and and and
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Speaker 6: and you know, Steve, it doesn't really work out that way.
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Speaker 6: It's a lot of zigzags towards that sort of path,
7:34
Speaker 6: and uh, you know, and it's just a That's why
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Speaker 6: I do this podcast because there's so many interesting stories
7:39
Speaker 6: like yours where it's not just one way. In fact,
7:43
Speaker 6: with all these episodes, there's so many different ways of
7:45
Speaker 6: doing things. But what the point I'm trying to make is,
7:47
Speaker 6: you know, that's that's the thing about the intention that
7:49
Speaker 6: we have and how life sort of throws out all
7:53
Speaker 6: these obstacles and how we respond to them and how
7:56
Speaker 6: we how we respond to them really dictates, you know,
7:59
Speaker 6: what course are life is going to go on.
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Speaker 7: I think you're absolutely right, and it goes to great
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Speaker 7: complexity that life offers us, which is do we earn
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Speaker 7: a dollar, do we do what makes us the maxim
8:13
Speaker 7: amount of profit all the time, or do we hold
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Speaker 7: on to an individual dream and simply wait it out.
8:19
Speaker 5: It's very interesting because I've done both.
8:22
Speaker 7: When I started, I make no apology to say that
8:25
Speaker 7: was kind of an opportunist. I was taking what was
8:28
Speaker 7: offered to me, and look, it was a fun ride.
8:30
Speaker 7: I got to again travel a lot, both first with
8:32
Speaker 7: the BBC and then doing music videos. I got to
8:35
Speaker 7: meet really interesting people, particularly in the eighties, and the
8:39
Speaker 7: bands we were dealing with, and the concerts we were
8:41
Speaker 7: doing and the videos we were doing all very very exciting.
8:43
Speaker 7: But really it was the work that was offered, and
8:46
Speaker 7: I took advantage of that. Later when I went to
8:49
Speaker 7: make my first film, Adcody any Parker, I had seen
8:53
Speaker 7: other people try to make that same transition to director,
8:57
Speaker 7: and they try to keep their day job, as it were,
9:00
Speaker 7: and none of them succeeded. So I resolved that I
9:04
Speaker 7: would give up everything to do with cinematography. I would
9:08
Speaker 7: give up anything to do that didn't directly point me
9:12
Speaker 7: towards directing, and that's what I did, and sadly, decoding
9:18
Speaker 7: did not happen quickly. We were promised money, that money
9:21
Speaker 7: went away, we were promised other money.
9:23
Speaker 5: That money went.
9:23
Speaker 7: Away, and I spent nearly five years unemployed and went
9:29
Speaker 7: through all my savings and most of my possessions and
9:33
Speaker 7: was an abject poverty. On the day we finally got
9:37
Speaker 7: funded and then went to shooting.
9:41
Speaker 4: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
9:47
Speaker 4: and now back to the show.
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Speaker 7: So both courses interesting. I think ultimately the latter one
9:57
Speaker 7: more painful. You sacrifice a great deal, but if you
10:01
Speaker 7: hold out for the dream, maybe you achieve it.
10:04
Speaker 6: Yeah, And you know, holding out for the dream. It's
10:06
Speaker 6: kind of like Sid Haig, you know. He people once
10:09
Speaker 6: asked him about his acting career and he had actually
10:12
Speaker 6: given up. He actually, you know, sort of went away
10:15
Speaker 6: for a long while because he said every role that
10:18
Speaker 6: he was offered was basically he came in as a
10:21
Speaker 6: man with a gun. He came in through the door
10:23
Speaker 6: holding a gun, or he came in you know, he
10:25
Speaker 6: was already in the room with the gun. And what
10:27
Speaker 6: happened was he he came back because you know, he
10:29
Speaker 6: actually liked it. And finally he said, you know, I
10:32
Speaker 6: realized now he's in movies with Tarantino and Robert and
10:35
Speaker 6: Rob Zombie. And he said, you know, it's like Winston
10:39
Speaker 6: Churchill said, never quit, never quit, never quit.
10:43
Speaker 7: I think that's absolutely right. And there's a great example
10:45
Speaker 7: of this that we know. I mean, Patty Jenkins, a
10:49
Speaker 7: dear friend of mine. Patty was the director of Monster,
10:53
Speaker 7: which I shot. The story is interesting, both how our
10:57
Speaker 7: relationship began and how Patty built her career. I was
11:03
Speaker 7: shooting the big second unit on SWAT twenty one cameras,
11:09
Speaker 7: tons of effects, were spending millions of dollars, blowing up
11:12
Speaker 7: the front of the library in Los Angeles, crashing planes,
11:16
Speaker 7: shooting rockets into cars. It was everything I thought I
11:21
Speaker 7: dreamt of when I was a young cinematographer. And then
11:25
Speaker 7: after four months of that, I got a call from
11:28
Speaker 7: Clark Peterson, the producer of Monster and known for years.
11:32
Speaker 7: The film was in some trouble in Florida, and he
11:36
Speaker 7: asked if I would read the script, speak to the
11:39
Speaker 7: first time director, and consider leaving SWAT and coming to
11:43
Speaker 7: Florida to shoot Monster. And I read the script. I
11:45
Speaker 7: thought it was great. I spoke to Patty on the
11:47
Speaker 7: phone and was struck by her intelligence, her sensitivity, her
11:52
Speaker 7: command of the subject matter, and of herself. I just
11:56
Speaker 7: sensed that she would be a great leader and agreed.
12:00
Speaker 7: Came down at one twentieth of what I was getting
12:03
Speaker 7: paid on SWAT, arrived in Florida to this tiny little
12:07
Speaker 7: film that was underfunded, under equipped, and in real trouble,
12:14
Speaker 7: and we began working together, and for me it was
12:18
Speaker 7: a epiphany because I saw people of absolute and genuine integrity,
12:25
Speaker 7: completely believing in the art they were undertaking to create.
12:30
Speaker 7: And Charlice was self sacrificing and the role was agonizing
12:35
Speaker 7: and difficult for her, but she pushed through, as did
12:39
Speaker 7: Patty and then of course monster when we finished it,
12:43
Speaker 7: no one would buy it.
12:43
Speaker 5: There's a lot of people don't know. Blockbuster would be.
12:46
Speaker 7: The only people that would put forward a not very
12:49
Speaker 7: good offer, which was taken with the proviso the film
12:53
Speaker 7: would get a very limited theatrical release and amazing to them,
12:58
Speaker 7: and I guess to kind of everybody. Film got spectacular
13:01
Speaker 7: reviews in the papers. Patty ended up, along with Charlease
13:06
Speaker 7: on Charlie Rose, and then we went to Berlin, where
13:10
Speaker 7: she at least won the Silver Lion, then a silver
13:13
Speaker 7: Bear rather than the Golden Globe, than the Oscar, of course,
13:16
Speaker 7: and the rest is kind of legend. Right after that,
13:20
Speaker 7: Patty was offered pretty much everything from studios and you,
13:25
Speaker 7: or I don't mean to speak for you, Let's say
13:28
Speaker 7: someone like me would have taken that opportunity to work
13:32
Speaker 7: on a studio be paid a million or two million.
13:35
Speaker 7: I don't know what she's offered but a lot. But
13:37
Speaker 7: Patty had a vision of what she wanted to do,
13:41
Speaker 7: and remarkably, and this goes to her character, she said, no,
13:46
Speaker 7: these aren't the films that I want to do. She
13:49
Speaker 7: wanted to do a film about Chuck Yeager. She had
13:51
Speaker 7: some other projects that were interesting to her, and she
13:55
Speaker 7: was going to hold out, as I did on my film,
13:58
Speaker 7: for what she was waiting for and what she believed
14:02
Speaker 7: she'd be adept at doing and achieving.
14:06
Speaker 5: And waited and waited.
14:07
Speaker 7: Did some television pilots, very successful ones, the Killing, which
14:10
Speaker 7: she did a great job on them. And then along
14:12
Speaker 7: came a wonder woman and Patty said, yeah, here's a
14:15
Speaker 7: strong woman with a voice that I find interesting, a
14:19
Speaker 7: subject matter that I've always liked. I'm going to make
14:21
Speaker 7: this film. And what did it do this weekend? I
14:24
Speaker 7: mean it was spectacular. And it's not just the box
14:27
Speaker 7: office revenue we generated. Look at the reviews it's getting.
14:30
Speaker 7: So that's Patty's remarkable and I think in structural and
14:35
Speaker 7: structural journey.
14:37
Speaker 4: You know.
14:38
Speaker 6: I once met Kane Hotter and Kane actually said the
14:41
Speaker 6: best actor actress that he ever worked with was Shirleys.
14:44
Speaker 6: There on, and he said she was not only was
14:49
Speaker 6: she very nice to everybody with no airs whatsoever, but
14:53
Speaker 6: he said when time came, she was absolutely amazing. Every
14:57
Speaker 6: single take, every single day. He's like, she never did
15:01
Speaker 6: a bad take, not one time. And when you see
15:04
Speaker 6: something like Monster, it's you know, because because Charlie's is
15:07
Speaker 6: a beautiful woman. And then you know, she transformed herself
15:10
Speaker 6: with all they make up and she really became that role.
15:14
Speaker 6: You know, I had on a couple different acting coaches
15:17
Speaker 6: and they said that was the secret of acting, is
15:19
Speaker 6: that you don't act like you're a person, you are
15:22
Speaker 6: that person.
15:24
Speaker 5: I think that's spot on.
15:25
Speaker 7: And you know, look, I have the remarkable distinction of
15:30
Speaker 7: being the one cinematographer that managed to make Charlie their
15:33
Speaker 7: own look bad. So it's very very special and I'm
15:36
Speaker 7: very proud of myself, and Charlie's was very proud of me.
15:39
Speaker 7: But she and I worked very hard on making her
15:41
Speaker 7: look bad. That goes to her great courage, because look,
15:46
Speaker 7: an actress's beauty is in part her commodity in Hollywood,
15:50
Speaker 7: and the fact that Charlie, like Patty before her, had
15:54
Speaker 7: such an integrity of vision that she was willing to
15:57
Speaker 7: sacrifice her commodity value, the pursuit of art goes to
16:02
Speaker 7: the person that she is. And secondly, you're absolutely right
16:06
Speaker 7: about the quality of Charlice's performance, and she does this
16:11
Speaker 7: strange hybrid of method acting and more classical approaches. She
16:17
Speaker 7: knows the material, she's always off page, she gets it completely.
16:20
Speaker 7: She intellectually understands and engaged is with the topic and
16:25
Speaker 7: knows her character in the character's art. But in the
16:27
Speaker 7: moment she is a method actor. She is completely engaged.
16:32
Speaker 7: And as your acting coach, a person that you interviewed
16:36
Speaker 7: said she became that character.
16:40
Speaker 5: We believe she was that person completely.
16:42
Speaker 7: You know, there's a remarkable thing that happened on Monster
16:45
Speaker 7: one day where it was a key moment when Christina
16:48
Speaker 7: Ricci and Charlie Sterra and the two characters were saying
16:50
Speaker 7: goodbye to each other at a train station, and they
16:53
Speaker 7: both had worked their way into this emotional high. There's
16:59
Speaker 7: a sense of intense and if you know film sets,
17:02
Speaker 7: I'm sure you do. The crews, you know, just carry
17:04
Speaker 7: on eating their sandwiches and lying down their track and
17:08
Speaker 7: doing what crews do. But something remarkable happened this day
17:12
Speaker 7: and the crew just sensed that they wanted to support
17:15
Speaker 7: Christina and Charlie's and what they were pursuing. So the
17:19
Speaker 7: crew decided, you know, latterly not to speak that day,
17:23
Speaker 7: and the crew was communicating with each other with hand
17:27
Speaker 7: signals and with pointing and occasionally a whispered word, but
17:31
Speaker 7: it was dead quiet on that set for the entire sequence,
17:36
Speaker 7: and it was one of the most magical moments I
17:39
Speaker 7: remember in any film I've ever worked on, This sense
17:42
Speaker 7: of synergy of all of us working together to support
17:46
Speaker 7: what we felt was the achievement of great art, and
17:50
Speaker 7: I think it facilitated those two performances in that remarkable film.
17:55
Speaker 6: I mean, and see stories like that are just so
17:58
Speaker 6: interesting to hear. You know, she's working with different actors
18:01
Speaker 6: over the years and seeing all the different methods and
18:04
Speaker 6: different approaches, and it's very interesting to see that the crew,
18:07
Speaker 6: you know, responding in that method of a crew responding
18:10
Speaker 6: and being very very receptive and helping Charley's and Christina
18:14
Speaker 6: Ricci and doing something like that.
18:16
Speaker 3: It's just very interesting to me.
18:17
Speaker 6: When when because because you mean, you've been you've seen
18:19
Speaker 6: a lot of said Steve, where the crew ends up
18:23
Speaker 6: and the crew and the cast they ends up becoming
18:25
Speaker 6: like a family because you're spending you know, days into
18:28
Speaker 6: weeks and a months making this film, and it almost
18:32
Speaker 6: becomes like a child for everybody you know, and and
18:35
Speaker 6: and everyone's a team player, and they all want to see,
18:38
Speaker 6: you know, what's best for this project that they've worked
18:41
Speaker 6: for so long on.
18:43
Speaker 5: I think you're exactly right.
18:44
Speaker 7: And this is the thing I think that's most attractive
18:48
Speaker 7: about film is you do acquire a family for a
18:52
Speaker 7: few months or a few weeks, or one of the
18:56
Speaker 7: films I did in India for a year where you're
18:59
Speaker 7: all on under great pressure, but you're all mutually dependent
19:03
Speaker 7: on each other, and you're isolated from the rest of
19:07
Speaker 7: the world, and you feel somehow special, not special as entitled,
19:13
Speaker 7: but that somehow the way you are mediating the world
19:17
Speaker 7: is different from the way you mediate the world in
19:20
Speaker 7: the civilian or non film world. So the camaraderie and
19:24
Speaker 7: friendships that are built on film sets to me are
19:28
Speaker 7: still singular. And my closest friends all come from film
19:32
Speaker 7: and the most intense experiences in my life generally have
19:36
Speaker 7: occurred on film sets. And I must tell you there's
19:39
Speaker 7: never been a film that I've worked on, however, bad
19:42
Speaker 7: the film they have been where it wasn't followed, at
19:46
Speaker 7: least for me, by a profound depression that would last
19:48
Speaker 7: days or weeks. And I think I speak for virtually
19:52
Speaker 7: all film crews and actors. When you walk away from
19:55
Speaker 7: your family and just say, Okay, this film's done, I'm
19:57
Speaker 7: going back home.
19:58
Speaker 4: Now, we'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
20:06
Speaker 4: and now back to the show.
20:09
Speaker 7: Home doesn't seem like home. The set was home, and
20:12
Speaker 7: there's a peculiar transition stage which some people never get
20:16
Speaker 7: it over.
20:17
Speaker 6: You know, you're absolutely right, Steve. I've been on a
20:20
Speaker 6: lot of sets like that where it's almost you know,
20:23
Speaker 6: it's I don't want to use this expression, but I will.
20:25
Speaker 6: It's almost like a high. It's almost like this this feeling,
20:28
Speaker 6: this energy. Actually energy is a better word than I
20:31
Speaker 6: it's his energy that you feel, and you know, you
20:35
Speaker 6: just sort of whenever, especially when everybody is gelling together
20:39
Speaker 6: and everyone's there and they're professional and they're all working together,
20:42
Speaker 6: it's that, you know, you get that feeling and you
20:44
Speaker 6: want to you know, and when you leave and the
20:47
Speaker 6: project's over, you sort of go home and you're like,
20:49
Speaker 6: what am I going to do now? I guess I
20:52
Speaker 6: better watch Netflix and you know, order a pizza.
20:54
Speaker 3: Right, It's like, but you want that feeling again so much?
20:58
Speaker 7: No, absolutely, right the point where it's like a maybe
21:02
Speaker 7: high is better because you're like an attic. You'll be
21:04
Speaker 7: walking down the street and you'll you'll see another film
21:07
Speaker 7: shooting and sort of wander over thinking that you might
21:10
Speaker 7: be able to pick up on some of that energy.
21:13
Speaker 5: Maybe they'll invite you to lunch.
21:14
Speaker 7: But it's it's something that you that you absolutely miss
21:17
Speaker 7: when you're.
21:17
Speaker 5: Not doing it. And listen.
21:18
Speaker 7: That's one of the problems I have when I moved
21:20
Speaker 7: from cinematographer to writer, director and producers that when I
21:25
Speaker 7: was a cinematographer, I would be doing sometimes two features,
21:28
Speaker 7: sometimes even three a year. I'd be working all the time,
21:31
Speaker 7: and I'd be on those film sets with my with
21:33
Speaker 7: my friends, with my with my film friend family. When
21:37
Speaker 7: you're a director, when you're a writer, in particular, you're
21:40
Speaker 7: locked in a room, you know, with a computer or
21:44
Speaker 7: with a fountain pen and no friends at all, just
21:49
Speaker 7: writing and writing and writing, and it's not as much fun.
21:54
Speaker 7: I'm down with the Dorothy Parker who said I love
21:58
Speaker 7: having written, I hate writing well that's that's kind of
22:03
Speaker 7: my view.
22:03
Speaker 5: I'm very proud of my last.
22:05
Speaker 7: Script, in particular Dominion, the one with John Malcovich, and
22:08
Speaker 7: I'm very proud of to Cody Andy Parker and the
22:10
Speaker 7: next one coming up. But still the process of creating
22:14
Speaker 7: those stories, those scripts, very very hard and very lonely.
22:20
Speaker 3: It is a very lonely process.
22:22
Speaker 6: And you know, I wanted to ask Steve, you know,
22:25
Speaker 6: when you've, you know, worked all these years as an
22:26
Speaker 6: accomplished cinematographer and you and you go back to your
22:30
Speaker 6: first love, which was writing. As odd as this question sounds,
22:35
Speaker 6: was there any skills that translated? Because I think there was,
22:38
Speaker 6: and here's the one I one skill I think that
22:40
Speaker 6: really translated well was you you will obviously lensing all
22:45
Speaker 6: these wonderful films and like like Monster. You know how
22:50
Speaker 6: that you you know, have you have that image in
22:52
Speaker 6: your mind, You have that that sort of mind's I
22:54
Speaker 6: where you're saying, okay, I can imagine, you know, we're
22:56
Speaker 6: opening up on this mountain range or I imagine we're
22:59
Speaker 6: opening up on this sort of dark night and we
23:02
Speaker 6: can barely see. I imagine that helps a lot with
23:05
Speaker 6: your exposition when you're writing scripts because when you're writing,
23:08
Speaker 6: you know this. The action lines I imagine they're they're very
23:12
Speaker 6: very well told because obviously you know exactly what it's
23:17
Speaker 6: going to look like, because hey, you're a cinematographer, you know,
23:19
Speaker 6: and you can bring all those years of imagery and
23:22
Speaker 6: seeing all these different things to your script.
23:25
Speaker 3: Am I right? Or am I?
23:27
Speaker 6: Or?
23:27
Speaker 3: Am I completely off? Based the email?
23:29
Speaker 5: You're spot on?
23:30
Speaker 7: And and go to the very essence of my philosophy
23:34
Speaker 7: and understanding of film. What I discovered, both from first
23:39
Speaker 7: my reading when I was a student of philosophy and
23:41
Speaker 7: then later as a writer and then as a cinematographer,
23:44
Speaker 7: is that everything to do with film is a language,
23:48
Speaker 7: and we have to understand what a language is. A
23:51
Speaker 7: language is inevitably made up of two parts, uh that
23:54
Speaker 7: which we intend to mean and that which we present
23:59
Speaker 7: to create that meaning, or what I think the philosopher's
24:02
Speaker 7: called the signifier that which the audience sees, and the
24:06
Speaker 7: signified that which we mean the idea.
24:08
Speaker 5: That we're trying to present.
24:10
Speaker 7: As a cinematographer, you realize that when you compose a
24:12
Speaker 7: shot in a particular way, you can create a certain
24:16
Speaker 7: feeling in an audience. You can even suggest an idea.
24:19
Speaker 7: When you push a camera forward on a dolly, for example,
24:22
Speaker 7: into a face, you're saying to an audience, Hey, what
24:26
Speaker 7: this character is about to say or do is important.
24:29
Speaker 7: That's not in a script. But the camera movement is
24:33
Speaker 7: the signifier. The idea of importance is the signified. And
24:38
Speaker 7: then I began analyzing everything I did as a cinematographer
24:42
Speaker 7: as a language. If I light with a backlight, that's
24:46
Speaker 7: the signifier. It's backlight signified. Mystery or uncertainty, an asymmetrical
24:51
Speaker 7: composition that is the signifier. The signified. Possibly a character
24:55
Speaker 7: who's alienated, or a film like Wait until Dark, a
24:58
Speaker 7: character who's a at risk.
25:01
Speaker 5: To edit a shot.
25:02
Speaker 7: Where you do an extreme close up and go to
25:04
Speaker 7: a very wide shot David Lean might have done, you're saying, oh,
25:09
Speaker 7: here's a person in a small and a landscape. That's
25:12
Speaker 7: the signifier. The signify is the insignificance of the human
25:17
Speaker 7: condition perhaps or the weakness of that individual at that moment.
25:21
Speaker 7: So when I realize all those things, I realize that
25:23
Speaker 7: everything I put in a written script is again a
25:26
Speaker 7: matter of what I signify and what it means, how
25:32
Speaker 7: it is indicated, and ultimately what I'm trying to convey
25:35
Speaker 7: to an audience, but I also realize that not everything
25:38
Speaker 7: can be done with the spoken word. That sometimes the
25:41
Speaker 7: most powerful, although the most ignematic, elements are not written,
25:45
Speaker 7: but implied with the photographic image. So as I write,
25:50
Speaker 7: I'm always thinking, is it better for the character to
25:53
Speaker 7: say this, or is it better to have the character
25:56
Speaker 7: say very little and imply something simply with a compisition
26:00
Speaker 7: or a camera movement, or perhaps with the music or
26:04
Speaker 7: with the rhythm of the editing. If I begin to
26:06
Speaker 7: look at film as I suggest everybody does, as a
26:09
Speaker 7: series of integrated languages, each with their own set of
26:14
Speaker 7: signifiers and each signifying different things, then I don't feel
26:18
Speaker 7: an obligation to put everything into a dialogue, And the
26:22
Speaker 7: dialogue become more economical and more real, and the medium
26:26
Speaker 7: as a whole, integrating all these different processes, becomes more effective.
26:31
Speaker 6: Does that make sense, Oh, it makes perfect sense. You know,
26:34
Speaker 6: as you were describing, you know, your process, I was
26:37
Speaker 6: reminded of there will be blood, and there will be
26:40
Speaker 6: blood the first twenty minutes. You know, there's no there's
26:44
Speaker 6: no dialogue whatsoever. It's a lot of imagery, it's a
26:48
Speaker 6: lot of you know, we see Daniel plain View as
26:50
Speaker 6: he's coming down into that.
26:52
Speaker 3: Pit looking for gold.
26:54
Speaker 6: He doesn't find gold, however, he finds oil and that
26:57
Speaker 6: becomes as it becomes that oil barren oil tycoon, sociopathic businessman.
27:02
Speaker 6: But that first twenty minutes there's absolutely no dialogue. And
27:06
Speaker 6: when I first saw that movie, I was like, Wow,
27:09
Speaker 6: this is a really bold choice because I mean, I imagine the.
27:14
Speaker 3: Pitch meeting for that.
27:16
Speaker 6: If you say, if you're a pitch meeting on the
27:17
Speaker 6: first twenty minutes says no dialogue whatsoever. You know, it's
27:21
Speaker 6: just kind of you know, but you know, once she's
27:24
Speaker 6: start getting into the movie, it's I mean, I thought
27:26
Speaker 6: it was absolutely phenomenal, and I mean the only reason
27:28
Speaker 6: it lost Best Picture was because it was up against
27:31
Speaker 6: the No Country for Old Men and you know I,
27:34
Speaker 6: which is another movie very heavy in imagery.
27:37
Speaker 3: Have you have you seen either of those movies, Stephen.
27:39
Speaker 7: I've seen them both and loved them both, and I
27:41
Speaker 7: would throw into that mix. Terry Mallix Films Days of Heaven,
27:45
Speaker 7: which was the film I think that inspired me more
27:48
Speaker 7: than any other to be a cinematographer. You know melex
27:52
Speaker 7: character's relationship to nature and nature being indifferent, and again
27:55
Speaker 7: the visceral effect that nature's power, sublime matter may and
28:00
Speaker 7: in difference to us as living breathing souls is important.
28:06
Speaker 7: So in a Terry Maylick film all the time, he's
28:08
Speaker 7: cutting away to shots of nature. Again, as you say,
28:12
Speaker 7: if a pitch meeting or a description to some investor,
28:16
Speaker 7: you're saying, well, a lot of these shots won't have
28:18
Speaker 7: any obvious meaning or won't advance the story to the
28:21
Speaker 7: next plot point, but it'll be laden with meaning. It
28:26
Speaker 7: will make us understand how indifferent nature and a god
28:32
Speaker 7: or an absent god is to us, and how that
28:36
Speaker 7: should make us potentially feel. And he does that almost
28:40
Speaker 7: exclusively in Days of Heaven with images, not with a dialogue.
28:44
Speaker 7: He is combining languages. My feeling is that as a writer,
28:48
Speaker 7: as a director, you don't write your film in spoken
28:51
Speaker 7: language exclusively. You write your film in five different languages
28:56
Speaker 7: like a very skilled linguist, and you combine those together
29:00
Speaker 7: to create meanings and choosing which language to use based
29:05
Speaker 7: on which is most effective and which goes to your
29:08
Speaker 7: audience's sensibilities.
29:11
Speaker 6: Yeah, you know that's very true, because you know as
29:14
Speaker 6: I've been, because I I my first love is writing
29:16
Speaker 6: as well. And when when I'm writing a screenplay, there's
29:20
Speaker 6: so many different pairs of eyes to sort of look
29:22
Speaker 6: at it through. Uh, you know, there's an editor's eyes,
29:25
Speaker 6: there's there's you know, the director's eyes. Sometimes you're thinking
29:28
Speaker 6: even in terms of being a producer, you know what
29:30
Speaker 6: I mean, and you're you're thinking of all these different
29:33
Speaker 6: of different ways. And then but when you're adding all
29:35
Speaker 6: these layers into your actual writing, you know.
29:37
Speaker 3: You're you're really you know, because you're.
29:40
Speaker 6: You're trying to sort of hook the reader, as they say,
29:42
Speaker 6: you know, hook the reader in the first couple of pages,
29:45
Speaker 6: but you have to hook them throughout the whole story.
29:47
Speaker 6: You're trying to always, you know, keep that tension in there.
29:50
Speaker 6: You're trying to figure you know, you're sort of, you know,
29:52
Speaker 6: wearing a lot of different hats. You're doing a lot
29:53
Speaker 6: of different things at the at the micro and the
29:55
Speaker 6: macro levels.
29:58
Speaker 4: We'll be right back after a word for sponsor and
30:04
Speaker 4: now back to the show.
30:07
Speaker 7: You're right, and it's very very hard, particularly we start
30:10
Speaker 7: talking about producing, because you know, the person or persons
30:14
Speaker 7: who may determine whether your film gets made may have
30:18
Speaker 7: never made a film and may have no understanding of
30:21
Speaker 7: cinematic language, of what composition does camera movement? May not
30:25
Speaker 7: have seen a Terry Maylick film, may not have seen
30:28
Speaker 7: Paul Thomas Anderson film, may not have seen a Coen
30:32
Speaker 7: Brothers film. They may have read McKee's book on story
30:37
Speaker 7: and take that template and apply it to your script,
30:41
Speaker 7: and if your script does not use that template, they
30:44
Speaker 7: may feel that your script is a failed one. And
30:48
Speaker 7: this is difficult for all writers and all artists to determine.
30:54
Speaker 7: Do you do what the orthodoxy in our film community
30:59
Speaker 7: suggest or giving you a better chance of getting your
31:04
Speaker 7: film made, or do you protect your singular vision be
31:10
Speaker 7: it part of that orthodoxy or not, in the belief
31:14
Speaker 7: that you know better how best to express the ideas
31:17
Speaker 7: you hope to express. It's interesting because, unlike other art forms,
31:21
Speaker 7: ours is so very expensive that there is a inhibiting element,
31:28
Speaker 7: and that's the one of finance. People backing a film
31:33
Speaker 7: want to know their investment is safe, and therefore are
31:36
Speaker 7: looking for absolute metrics to determine what will make your
31:40
Speaker 7: film a good investment for them. They're not interested in
31:44
Speaker 7: your ideas about how to engage an audience viscerally with
31:48
Speaker 7: a composition. They want to know that if the rules
31:51
Speaker 7: of which they may be aware are applied, does that
31:55
Speaker 7: mean your film will succeed? And if it will, will
31:58
Speaker 7: they make more money? Very difficult way to approach filmmaking.
32:03
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely.
32:04
Speaker 6: I have a friend of mine, you know, he and
32:06
Speaker 6: I were just discussing this as well, because you know,
32:09
Speaker 6: he was a part of a film. The film was already,
32:12
Speaker 6: everything was casted, they were about to shoot, and then
32:15
Speaker 6: suddenly it just all went away. And he said, Dave,
32:18
Speaker 6: it's happened too many times in my career at account
32:21
Speaker 6: and he says, it just you know, it happens sometimes
32:24
Speaker 6: where you know, the money goes away. And then there's
32:27
Speaker 6: been other times where he's been pitching a project for
32:30
Speaker 6: for years and years and years and it's finally you
32:33
Speaker 6: get a financier and you're able to finally find that money.
32:37
Speaker 6: I casin ovis on this podcast and he was discussing
32:40
Speaker 6: how he found the money for Dallas Buyers Club, and
32:43
Speaker 6: you know, it was just one of those things where
32:44
Speaker 6: he had a connection from years ago who was willing
32:47
Speaker 6: to help him out out of a bind, and it was,
32:50
Speaker 6: you know, one of those cases where your network really
32:52
Speaker 6: is your net worth.
32:54
Speaker 5: No question.
32:55
Speaker 7: I mean, you've got to build relationships and contacts, and
32:59
Speaker 7: then you've got to convince people to give you their
33:02
Speaker 7: money to make your film. And again there's a natural
33:06
Speaker 7: conservative factor and all that, and that they don't want
33:09
Speaker 7: you to take a lot of risks because they don't
33:12
Speaker 7: know that that will generate money for them necessarily. I mean,
33:15
Speaker 7: we all want the investor who says, just go ahead
33:17
Speaker 7: and make what you believe, but those are rare. Most
33:19
Speaker 7: investors want to get involved and say, Okay, we're giving
33:22
Speaker 7: you this money. What's our best way of guaranteeing this.
33:26
Speaker 7: Are you definitely going to have three acts? And are
33:28
Speaker 7: your plot points going to come on the right pages
33:31
Speaker 7: and all the rest of it. And again that may
33:33
Speaker 7: or may not be the best way to write a script,
33:34
Speaker 7: but that's what they want because that's what they've been
33:36
Speaker 7: told is the way to success. And that, as I say,
33:39
Speaker 7: it could be very inhibiting for a writer. For creative artists.
33:43
Speaker 7: I'm sure that Terry Maylick doesn't work to that template,
33:48
Speaker 7: you know, I'm sure Charlie Coffin doesn't work at that template.
33:51
Speaker 7: I'm pretty sure that the con Brothers don't. And there's
33:55
Speaker 7: some of the most successful and important filmmakers we have working.
33:58
Speaker 7: So these are some of this time decisions that filmmakers
34:01
Speaker 7: have to make, particularly when you go to financial film
34:04
Speaker 7: because you want that money, but you also want to
34:07
Speaker 7: make a great movie.
34:08
Speaker 6: Yeah, you know, absolutely, and I you know when we're
34:12
Speaker 6: when because writing is my first love as well, and
34:14
Speaker 6: when we're writing these scripts sometimes there's a tendency to
34:17
Speaker 6: write with that producer's hat because you're wondering, oh, would
34:19
Speaker 6: this be able to be you know, will this be
34:21
Speaker 6: too much money?
34:22
Speaker 3: Will I be able to even obtain this? You know stuff?
34:25
Speaker 6: You know, And that's sort of as I find writing
34:28
Speaker 6: the first draft, we have to kind of sort of
34:29
Speaker 6: brush that aside and just sort of focus on just
34:32
Speaker 6: telling the best single story.
34:33
Speaker 3: Possible that we can tell.
34:35
Speaker 6: And then later on when you're maybe doing rewrites or
34:37
Speaker 6: you're in different meetings and you can sort of take
34:40
Speaker 6: things out and maybe add things in, and then sort of,
34:43
Speaker 6: you know, the story sort of evolves and it kind
34:45
Speaker 6: of ties in with what we were talking about before,
34:47
Speaker 6: where you know, we set off in the beginning with
34:49
Speaker 6: these expectations that's going to go into a straight line,
34:52
Speaker 6: and then suddenly it's zigzagging all over the map, and we're,
34:56
Speaker 6: you know, we're we're you know, finding these obstacles, and
34:59
Speaker 6: we're we're trying to turn these obstacles into either they
35:02
Speaker 6: can either set us back or we can move forward
35:04
Speaker 6: with them.
35:05
Speaker 5: You make a great point.
35:06
Speaker 7: And I always try to write my first draft in
35:11
Speaker 7: seven days or less. And there's a reason for that.
35:15
Speaker 7: I call it a slock draft, not a first draft,
35:19
Speaker 7: because what I want to do is write so quickly
35:22
Speaker 7: that I don't have time to think. So first, there's
35:25
Speaker 7: the idea of just an intuitive understanding of character. But
35:30
Speaker 7: also I find that I write to know what I think.
35:35
Speaker 7: That if I try to outline before I begin writing,
35:38
Speaker 7: the ideas only are only notional. I really don't know
35:41
Speaker 7: my characters. I don't know my story that well. I
35:44
Speaker 7: think I do, and I can try to plot it out,
35:46
Speaker 7: and I can draw all sorts of diagrams and put
35:49
Speaker 7: all sorts of index cards up, but it's not really
35:52
Speaker 7: fully realized. Then if I take a different approach and
35:56
Speaker 7: simply start writing and say I'm gonna write hundred and
35:58
Speaker 7: twenty pages in seven days, what I discover is that
36:01
Speaker 7: by the time I get to that last page, I
36:05
Speaker 7: have developed an understanding of character, I have developed an
36:09
Speaker 7: understanding of what the narrative should be, and I might
36:12
Speaker 7: even understand some of the subtexts. Then I go back
36:16
Speaker 7: and I begin the real process of writing, which is rewriting.
36:20
Speaker 7: But I couldn't have done that if I tried to
36:22
Speaker 7: make that first draft perfect. And you talked about where
36:25
Speaker 7: in your producers hat. I think it's essential, and I
36:28
Speaker 7: think you've made a very good point that when you're writing,
36:31
Speaker 7: you're thinking of nothing except those characters. I don't care
36:35
Speaker 7: how long a dialogue scene goes on for, or how
36:37
Speaker 7: outrageous what the characters say are, or or if they
36:40
Speaker 7: begin in a pristian fashion and talking about things that
36:43
Speaker 7: have nothing to do with the story at all, because
36:46
Speaker 7: in fact, that's what people do in real life, is
36:48
Speaker 7: talk about things that don't necessarily have to do with
36:51
Speaker 7: the advancement of their individual plot. And then when you
36:54
Speaker 7: write that version, that slop version, and look at it,
36:57
Speaker 7: to me, it is the door to all things. You
37:01
Speaker 7: come to an understanding of everything that's important about your film,
37:05
Speaker 7: and then you can put those things, those things in
37:07
Speaker 7: when you go back.
37:07
Speaker 5: To to rewrite. It's a crazy way of writing, but
37:10
Speaker 5: it works very well for me.
37:13
Speaker 6: Well, you know, I actually think that's a very good
37:14
Speaker 6: way of writing, because even when I have, you know,
37:18
Speaker 6: started writing stuff in the past, and even now, sometimes
37:21
Speaker 6: when I sit down to start writing, one of two
37:23
Speaker 6: things happens. Number one is you get distracted very easily.
37:28
Speaker 6: I think as this happens to everybody where, you know,
37:30
Speaker 6: your phone chimes or somebody at your door, your friend
37:33
Speaker 6: calls you and says, hey, Steve, can you help me move?
37:35
Speaker 6: I have to you know, can you take me to
37:37
Speaker 6: the airport? And the second thing is you have paralysis
37:41
Speaker 6: through analysis where you're sitting at your desk, you know,
37:44
Speaker 6: or wherever you're writing, and suddenly you're just kind of like, oh,
37:48
Speaker 6: wouldn't it be cool if and you start brainstorming and
37:51
Speaker 6: you're just basically you're just spinning your wheels so to speak.
37:55
Speaker 7: No, exactly right, And I think this is to me
37:59
Speaker 7: it was a breakthrough. You know, I was so concerned
38:02
Speaker 7: with failing that I was preventing myself from succeeding. So
38:08
Speaker 7: when I was convinced ultimately that I should write badly,
38:14
Speaker 7: I sat down and wrote the worst script I possibly could,
38:18
Speaker 7: And when I was finished, it was truly terrible, but
38:22
Speaker 7: it pointed the way to a much better script, a
38:25
Speaker 7: script that was so good. This is what I did
38:27
Speaker 7: with Dominion that when I sent it to John Malcovich,
38:30
Speaker 7: he signed up immediately and it was a low budget film.
38:33
Speaker 5: But John loved the.
38:35
Speaker 7: Writing of that script because the dialogue seemed so natural
38:39
Speaker 7: and so imaginative to him. If I had written Dominion
38:43
Speaker 7: to an outline, my characters would have been speaking to
38:46
Speaker 7: deliver the next plot point, to get to the next subject,
38:51
Speaker 7: to keep the story moving along as it had been outlined.
38:54
Speaker 7: But the way I wrote Dominion was I simply had
38:56
Speaker 7: my characters talk about things that were important to them
38:59
Speaker 7: and then and back on the next draft, and then
39:01
Speaker 7: imposed a form on that, and it was much more natural.
39:05
Speaker 7: The writing was much better, And it's a system that
39:09
Speaker 7: simply works. I say to all writers, and I have
39:11
Speaker 7: a lot of assistants that work with me, don't try
39:16
Speaker 7: to be perfect on the first draft, or don't let
39:18
Speaker 7: the perfect be the enemy of the good. Simply write
39:22
Speaker 7: as quickly as you possibly can and then discover what
39:25
Speaker 7: you always meant to say and never realized it.
39:29
Speaker 6: You know, I like that approach, Steve, where you know
39:32
Speaker 6: you gave yourself permission to fail, and you basically said,
39:35
Speaker 6: I'm going to write the worst possible thing.
39:37
Speaker 1: You know.
39:37
Speaker 6: I was talking to another colleague of mine, Jason Brubaker,
39:41
Speaker 6: and he had a theory about you know, guys who
39:44
Speaker 6: always talk about making a film, They always you know,
39:46
Speaker 6: and you've met guys like this to Steve, where they're
39:48
Speaker 6: always saying things like, oh, I have this great idea
39:51
Speaker 6: for a film, you know, me and my buddies, blah
39:53
Speaker 6: blah blah, but they never actually make it.
39:57
Speaker 4: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
40:03
Speaker 4: and now back to the show.
40:06
Speaker 3: And his theory.
40:08
Speaker 6: Jason's theory was that the reason they don't make it
40:10
Speaker 6: is because if it does suck, if it is bad,
40:15
Speaker 6: it's a reflection of them as an artist, and it
40:17
Speaker 6: kind of encompasses their entire career in sort of one
40:20
Speaker 6: foul swoop. So if they do write a bad screenplay
40:23
Speaker 6: or make one bad movie, well you suck.
40:25
Speaker 3: You're never going to make anything, do you know what
40:27
Speaker 3: I mean? Steve?
40:28
Speaker 7: I know exactly what you mean. And I've just just
40:31
Speaker 7: a majority of people, not just in film, but in life,
40:33
Speaker 7: most people would rather talk about something than do it.
40:36
Speaker 7: Most people would rather criticize others than do it. Those
40:39
Speaker 7: who criticize and don't do are always safe because they
40:44
Speaker 7: can't possibly fail and can always make clear how superior
40:48
Speaker 7: they are because they can criticize that which you did.
40:52
Speaker 7: Look when I made Dominion, a lot of people said, oh, well, Steven,
40:57
Speaker 7: you had trouble finishing it. There was some money issues,
40:59
Speaker 7: et cetera, all of which were true, and those were resolved.
41:03
Speaker 7: But the thing is I did it. Had I simply
41:07
Speaker 7: not done it and watched others, I don't know if
41:10
Speaker 7: I would have the sense of self that I have.
41:14
Speaker 7: I'm proud of what I've done. I've done it because
41:15
Speaker 7: I've taken risks. But you go to a very important point.
41:19
Speaker 7: If you want to make films, you have to make films.
41:22
Speaker 7: And if you're going to do that, it means you're
41:24
Speaker 7: going to take risks. It means people are going to
41:26
Speaker 7: criticize and ridicule you, and you may even fail. But
41:32
Speaker 7: I'd much rather do and fail than observe and criticize others.
41:39
Speaker 6: Yeah, and that is beautiful, Steve, because honestly, that is
41:42
Speaker 6: so true. You know, and I think we all have
41:44
Speaker 6: somebody in our lives where We've known somebody like that
41:47
Speaker 6: in our lives, where they don't want to actually do anything.
41:50
Speaker 6: They may talk a big game or they constantly criticize
41:53
Speaker 6: what other people are doing and kind of like downplay
41:56
Speaker 6: it in that sort of condescending, sort of very almost
42:03
Speaker 6: like jaded type of attitude where they're like, oh, yeah,
42:07
Speaker 6: that you're gonna make.
42:07
Speaker 3: A movie this weekend, that's cool, you know what I mean?
42:10
Speaker 6: And they just like they and people like that, you know,
42:13
Speaker 6: if they never do anything, they're always just sort of
42:16
Speaker 6: criticizing others from the comfort of their couch, you know
42:18
Speaker 6: what I mean?
42:18
Speaker 3: You know what I mean.
42:19
Speaker 7: I completely know what Jamade and I look. I pay
42:22
Speaker 7: tribute to anyone who takes a risk in their life
42:26
Speaker 7: of any kind. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't sometimes
42:30
Speaker 7: be safe, but you only, I think, have one life.
42:33
Speaker 7: You only have a few opportunities, and when they're presented
42:37
Speaker 7: to you seize them.
42:39
Speaker 5: I know.
42:39
Speaker 7: When we started decoding any Parker, we had spent a
42:43
Speaker 7: long time raising the money and I got a little
42:46
Speaker 7: bit of money from India, some from Canada. I was
42:49
Speaker 7: very lucky and got the tax cred in California, and
42:52
Speaker 7: we were very very close within like one hundred thousand
42:55
Speaker 7: dollars what we needed, and the producers all got on
42:57
Speaker 7: the phone with each other and we had to decide
43:00
Speaker 7: to do And at that point Helen Hunt had read
43:02
Speaker 7: the script and loved it and had signed up for
43:04
Speaker 7: a very reasonable sum of money. We had Samantha Morton
43:08
Speaker 7: Helen of course one, a Oscar Samoth been nominated for two.
43:12
Speaker 5: I had met Aaron.
43:13
Speaker 7: Paul and we had become fast friends, and Aaron Paul,
43:16
Speaker 7: who was at the height of his fame with Breaking Bad,
43:18
Speaker 7: had agreed to do it. Corey Stall and I had
43:23
Speaker 7: gotten closed as he had read the script and we
43:25
Speaker 7: talked about the evolution of the characters, Rashida Jones, Bradley Whitford,
43:31
Speaker 7: just this incredible cast we've put together. And we were
43:34
Speaker 7: on the phone considering whether we should pull the plug
43:37
Speaker 7: because we didn't have quite enough money, and I ultimately
43:43
Speaker 7: decided that we would go ahead, and I realized it
43:49
Speaker 7: was a huge risk, and we nearly had to shut down.
43:52
Speaker 7: I think we did shut down for day at the
43:53
Speaker 7: end of a week, and then we went and raised
43:55
Speaker 7: more money and we managed to finish. The film went
43:57
Speaker 7: on to win the Sloan Award. The Hampton's One Best
44:01
Speaker 7: Actress for Samantha Morton at Seattle when the Milan Film
44:05
Speaker 7: Festival two or three awards there raised a couple of
44:08
Speaker 7: million dollars for charities, et cetera. We pulled it off,
44:11
Speaker 7: but there was a moment in that process where we
44:15
Speaker 7: had to decide whether to play it safe or to
44:17
Speaker 7: take a considerable risk. And I think those moments come
44:20
Speaker 7: often in film. Because I think it was Hitchcock the
44:24
Speaker 7: one said that drama is a life with the boring
44:27
Speaker 7: bits taken out. I would suggest that filmmaking is life
44:31
Speaker 7: with the combits taken out. So it's a constant state
44:36
Speaker 7: of risk and near hysteria and certain failure and from
44:41
Speaker 7: that you extract, hopefully a film and a bit of
44:44
Speaker 7: a life.
44:46
Speaker 6: And you know, as you talk about your projects, you know,
44:49
Speaker 6: I wanted to ask, you know, when you started to
44:52
Speaker 6: actually go from that cinematographer's sort of chair so to
44:55
Speaker 6: speak to being a director, you know, what were some
44:58
Speaker 6: of the things that you've picked up? I mean, because
45:00
Speaker 6: you've you've had a lot of really cool directors, like
45:02
Speaker 6: Patty being the first example I can think of. You know,
45:06
Speaker 6: what were some of the things that you saw that
45:08
Speaker 6: these directors were doing when they were talking to actors
45:11
Speaker 6: or maybe even talking to you as a cinematographer, you know,
45:14
Speaker 6: and talking about, you know, a shot list here, and hey, Steven.
45:17
Speaker 3: Here's my storyboard.
45:18
Speaker 6: You know, what are some of the great things that
45:21
Speaker 6: they have done over the years that you sort of
45:23
Speaker 6: took into your projects.
45:24
Speaker 7: Well, it wasn't just Patty, it was John Favreau. I
45:27
Speaker 7: worked with a couple of times. John and I are friends.
45:31
Speaker 7: Noah Bombback, of course, I did three films with Noah Bombback,
45:35
Speaker 7: which was fantastic. So I had an opportunity to work
45:39
Speaker 7: with lots of Taylor Hackford, of course, I mean lots
45:43
Speaker 7: of other great directors, and I took something of value
45:46
Speaker 7: from each of them. Certainly always grateful to my training
45:50
Speaker 7: at the BBC, and always grateful to all my stage actors.
45:53
Speaker 5: And what I learned there.
45:55
Speaker 7: But I learned as I observed about different management systems,
45:59
Speaker 7: different lea leadership methodologies, and different ways of working with
46:04
Speaker 7: actors and with cruise.
46:07
Speaker 5: Noah and I.
46:08
Speaker 7: Before we did both Kicking and Screaming and Mister Jealousy
46:11
Speaker 7: and Highball, spent a lot of time prepping. We were
46:15
Speaker 7: in Noah's place in Greenwich Village, and we would go
46:20
Speaker 7: through the entire script seen by seeing shot by shot,
46:24
Speaker 7: determining not only what we planned to shoot, but why
46:29
Speaker 7: we're shooting, what the camera would mean. Going back to
46:32
Speaker 7: what I was saying before about Signify and signified he
46:35
Speaker 7: was a walide shot or close shot. Noah would show
46:38
Speaker 7: me clips from movies that he liked and said, this
46:41
Speaker 7: is very important to me. Could we infuse this sequence
46:46
Speaker 7: with the same feeling from this film. I remember on
46:49
Speaker 7: Mister Jealousy he'd been much influenced by the French nuvolvag,
46:53
Speaker 7: so we were using those kind of circular fade outs,
46:57
Speaker 7: and even the music that he chose was very much
46:59
Speaker 7: in that style. But also compositionally, the way the camera
47:02
Speaker 7: moved and the way I lit it all had to
47:04
Speaker 7: be in the style of the New Bulldog, so that
47:09
Speaker 7: was exciting. That's what's so great about a collaborator like
47:14
Speaker 7: Noah is that he had a very clearly determined vision
47:18
Speaker 7: of not only what his characters were, but stylistically what
47:21
Speaker 7: he wanted to do, and that would be a great
47:22
Speaker 7: starting place for me to then run with some of
47:26
Speaker 7: my own ideas, and I bring him books from painters
47:29
Speaker 7: or from designers, or from other filmmakers photographers with that period.
47:34
Speaker 7: So what about this, What if we did this like
47:36
Speaker 7: this and so on, and we would integrate some of
47:38
Speaker 7: my ideas into his vision. Patty, I think I told
47:42
Speaker 7: you about her focus very much on actors. How Patty,
47:47
Speaker 7: at the end of every performance read than speaking to
47:49
Speaker 7: any of the crew, would drop the headphones and make
47:52
Speaker 7: a beeline directly for the actor. It doesn't matter what
47:55
Speaker 7: anyone else had to say to her. Her first point
47:58
Speaker 7: of contact after a take was those actors to tell
48:02
Speaker 7: them that they had been observed, that they're being protected,
48:05
Speaker 7: that someone is listening, because that's what actors want most
48:08
Speaker 7: of all, is to know the actor. Be an experienced
48:12
Speaker 7: director or an experienced director, those actors want to know
48:15
Speaker 7: that there's someone watching, protecting them, creating a rarefied, safe
48:19
Speaker 7: environment where someone's making sure that their performance is okay
48:25
Speaker 7: and will tell them honestly if it isn't. And Patty
48:27
Speaker 7: really did that to a great degree. John Favreau, it
48:32
Speaker 7: was the atmosphere on set. It's kind of like he
48:36
Speaker 7: felt strongly that what happens on set somehow appears on screen.
48:41
Speaker 7: So his sets were fun and light, full of energy,
48:46
Speaker 7: full of comedy, and a very very gentle hand that
48:51
Speaker 7: everyone felt protected and facilitated. And again that lent itself
48:56
Speaker 7: to what appeared on screen. Taylor Hackford very very well
49:01
Speaker 7: prepared and would cover things from every possible angle, knowing
49:04
Speaker 7: that whatever he planned, he knew that he might alter
49:08
Speaker 7: it in the cutting room and wanted to make sure
49:10
Speaker 7: that he had plenty of material to cut that with.
49:13
Speaker 7: So for me, thirty years of observing some of the
49:17
Speaker 7: best directors in the world was a wonderful education for
49:22
Speaker 7: me and it informs everything I do now.
49:26
Speaker 5: But was even.
49:26
Speaker 7: Better educationally was watching some truly terrible directors get it wrong.
49:33
Speaker 7: And I got to watch that as well, and I'm
49:36
Speaker 7: not going to mention their names, but it helped me to.
49:40
Speaker 5: Know what not to do.
49:42
Speaker 7: So to accumulate all that knowledge and to be able
49:45
Speaker 7: to walk onto the first feature that I directed, knowing
49:49
Speaker 7: what these great directors had done and what the bad
49:52
Speaker 7: directors had done and what I should or shouldn't do
49:56
Speaker 7: was a huge help to me.
49:59
Speaker 4: Still, we'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
50:08
Speaker 4: and now back to the show.
50:11
Speaker 6: And you you mentioned this to Steve, and you have
50:13
Speaker 6: thirty years of experience, you know, you you have you know,
50:17
Speaker 6: started as a writer, you became this accomplished cinematographer. You've
50:21
Speaker 6: won this just plethora of awards. You got to see
50:24
Speaker 6: all these great sort of you know, all these great
50:26
Speaker 6: directors and all the things that they they did right,
50:29
Speaker 6: and and sort of put this all together for your
50:31
Speaker 6: own projects. But I know now you're you're also doing
50:33
Speaker 6: some seminars which you know, you're you know, gonna going
50:37
Speaker 6: to impart all this knowledge, which I think is phenomenal.
50:40
Speaker 6: So could you just you know, talk a little bit
50:42
Speaker 6: about some of the seminars you have coming up.
50:44
Speaker 7: Absolutely for years, really starting back to write about the
50:49
Speaker 7: time about the BBC, I began teaching if somebody was
50:54
Speaker 7: a writer and wanted to know something about cinematography. Because
50:57
Speaker 7: I had done both those things, I was uniquely able
51:01
Speaker 7: to explain in a plane language for a writer or
51:05
Speaker 7: a director what a cinematographer does. And then later when
51:09
Speaker 7: I began directing, I could go into great detail to
51:13
Speaker 7: people about what each below the line crew member did,
51:16
Speaker 7: and when I was producing, I could explain to the
51:21
Speaker 7: investors why we needed money for different things, what the
51:25
Speaker 7: post production crew would be doing, what the on set
51:29
Speaker 7: crew would be doing why we needed as many makeup
51:31
Speaker 7: people as we needed, and so on. So I was
51:35
Speaker 7: always teaching, and sometimes formally I taught at the International
51:39
Speaker 7: Film School in London. I had a film school of
51:41
Speaker 7: my own in the UK in London, I set a
51:44
Speaker 7: film school up the New Brunswick. In Canada, I've taught
51:48
Speaker 7: at universities including USC here and others all around the country.
51:54
Speaker 7: And I wrote a book about film production that covers
51:58
Speaker 7: all these things. And then finally I just thought, you know,
52:02
Speaker 7: I should formalize this and make it available to a
52:06
Speaker 7: lot more people than I've made it available to in
52:09
Speaker 7: the past. So we're taking right now. Six of my
52:13
Speaker 7: most popular lectures went on making the independent film, how
52:17
Speaker 7: you actually put together independent film, how you find the money,
52:21
Speaker 7: how you use that money to shoot the film, how
52:23
Speaker 7: you take it through posts and get into sales and distribution.
52:26
Speaker 7: Another one about for stills photographers, because so many stills
52:30
Speaker 7: photographers have come to me and saying, hey, I want
52:32
Speaker 7: to be a cinematographer. I've bought this camera, I've done
52:35
Speaker 7: stills work, but how is cinematography different from photography, and
52:38
Speaker 7: particularly with lighting? So I've done that, so many directors
52:43
Speaker 7: and producers want to know about cinematography, how it works.
52:47
Speaker 7: So I've running a course on cinematography for non cinematographers.
52:54
Speaker 7: And so many actors I've worked with, both on stage
52:57
Speaker 7: and on screen, feel uncomfortable when they first step onto
53:01
Speaker 7: a film set, and I wanted to run a seminar
53:05
Speaker 7: so that actors would know what it's like to come
53:08
Speaker 7: onto a film set, and what the assistant directors do,
53:11
Speaker 7: what the first assistant directors do, what the director wants,
53:16
Speaker 7: what the cinematographer wants, so all those things very useful
53:20
Speaker 7: for them. And then going back to something you and
53:23
Speaker 7: I've talked about a lot in this discussion is I
53:27
Speaker 7: wanted very much to run a course for writers so
53:31
Speaker 7: they would understand the technical aspects of filmmaking and they
53:35
Speaker 7: could employ that in their writing to make them better screenwriters.
53:39
Speaker 7: So yeah, we set that up. We've got a website
53:43
Speaker 7: called somebody studios dot com. You can see all the
53:49
Speaker 7: seminars there. People can sign up. I think that they
53:54
Speaker 7: from the time they sign up, they've got a month
53:56
Speaker 7: to watch the individual seminar they selected, or they can
53:59
Speaker 7: sign up for multiple ones. And the course has been
54:03
Speaker 7: very successful in the past. Not only do I teach
54:08
Speaker 7: the course, but then afterwards I have a Q and
54:10
Speaker 7: A and we keep the lines open and we make
54:13
Speaker 7: sure people have access to me in the future for advice.
54:16
Speaker 7: I want to help others as I've been helped over
54:19
Speaker 7: all these many years, and I really very much looking.
54:24
Speaker 5: Forward to it.
54:25
Speaker 7: July the fifteenth we go live with everything, so we're
54:28
Speaker 7: getting very close to that date. So I hope people
54:30
Speaker 7: go to the website, picks on the out for themselves
54:32
Speaker 7: and see what they might be able to learn.
54:35
Speaker 6: And I will also link to your seminars in the
54:39
Speaker 6: show notes, you know, as well as any other site
54:42
Speaker 6: you have, Steven. And it's just great too because it's
54:46
Speaker 6: something that I've learned over the years.
54:48
Speaker 3: Whenever I want to take a.
54:49
Speaker 6: Seminar or a webinar, or read a book or a
54:54
Speaker 6: filmmaking book, one thing I always my one sort of
54:58
Speaker 6: barrier to entry to reading or buying it is the
55:01
Speaker 6: person has had to have some kind of experience. I
55:04
Speaker 6: think you've also seen it, Stephen, where you sort of
55:07
Speaker 6: see a book.
55:07
Speaker 3: In the in maybe in a Barnes and Nobles or on.
55:10
Speaker 6: Amazon, and you see that they're, you know, the person
55:13
Speaker 6: that wrote it has never written a screenplay or never
55:15
Speaker 6: actually made made a film, and you say to yourself, well,
55:18
Speaker 6: what would they possibly know about something that they've never done.
55:22
Speaker 6: It's it's a lot like me teaching you how to
55:23
Speaker 6: build a car, and I'm saying, well, I'm not a mechanic,
55:26
Speaker 6: nor have I ever designed one. I see you you've
55:29
Speaker 6: actually you've been there.
55:30
Speaker 3: You know you've done that.
55:31
Speaker 6: You've done it many many times over thirty years, and
55:34
Speaker 6: you know, and again that's why I was blown away
55:36
Speaker 6: by having on this podcast, because you know you've you've
55:39
Speaker 6: done I mean, I'm gonna be honest with you.
55:41
Speaker 3: Stephen half Baked. I remember watching that.
55:44
Speaker 6: Movie on repeat over and over again, you know, growing up,
55:48
Speaker 6: because it was just absolutely hilarious. I mean, you've been
55:51
Speaker 6: able to sort of go in and out of you know,
55:53
Speaker 6: comedy with Half Baked and scary movie.
55:55
Speaker 3: Two in the Monster, which is more of a of
55:57
Speaker 3: a of a of a of.
55:59
Speaker 6: A not only is a drama, but it's also a
56:02
Speaker 6: personal introspective of the of these two women. Who are
56:05
Speaker 6: you know, who are you know literal and figurative monsters?
56:09
Speaker 6: And then you know you now you're doing your own projects,
56:11
Speaker 6: so it's always good to learn from somebody who's actually
56:14
Speaker 6: has gone out there and done it.
56:15
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, thank you.
56:16
Speaker 7: And I have done a lot of different things a
56:19
Speaker 7: producer now, a director, a writer, a cinematographer. It's not
56:25
Speaker 7: always been easy, but it's interesting when you get to
56:28
Speaker 7: farther down the road you realize how each of these
56:31
Speaker 7: things informs the other. I'm a better producer because I
56:34
Speaker 7: was a cinematographer. I'm a better director because I'm a
56:38
Speaker 7: writer and a cinematographer. And it's not just the films
56:41
Speaker 7: that will be made, I guess. In the last eighteen months,
56:44
Speaker 7: I've been commissioned to write five other Majure feature film.
56:48
Speaker 7: Has been a very, very busy period for us. We
56:49
Speaker 7: have a TV series that's an advanced stage development. And
56:53
Speaker 7: the reason I am now writing so quickly and so
56:57
Speaker 7: efficiently is that I'm borrowing from my other experiences as
57:01
Speaker 7: a producer, as a cinematographer, as a director, and I
57:05
Speaker 7: realize what I need to write and what I don't.
57:07
Speaker 7: I understand what will work best and what works most efficiently,
57:12
Speaker 7: and it's a help. So look, if I can help
57:16
Speaker 7: others understand all these things based on my experience, I'm
57:19
Speaker 7: more than happy to impart it to them.
57:23
Speaker 6: And you know, Steve, I know we're just about out
57:25
Speaker 6: of time, and I want to again say thank you
57:27
Speaker 6: so much for coming on and imparting your wisdom here
57:29
Speaker 6: for the past hour. And just in closing, where can
57:33
Speaker 6: people find you out online? Give any other social media
57:36
Speaker 6: links and also you may just to give that seminar
57:39
Speaker 6: link again.
57:40
Speaker 5: Well, it's the key one to go to.
57:42
Speaker 7: And this links to pretty much everything to do with
57:44
Speaker 7: me is Somebody Studios dot com. You can also find
57:50
Speaker 7: me Steven Bergstein, writer director online and there's usually links
57:55
Speaker 7: to our courses or what's going on on my life
57:58
Speaker 7: there Steve Bernstein, director writer on Instagram as well. And
58:03
Speaker 7: of course I say Somebody Studios dot Com is pretty
58:05
Speaker 7: much available on all social media platforms, so we really
58:09
Speaker 7: hope that people might join us.
58:10
Speaker 6: Thanks Stephen Bernstein, I want to say thank you so
58:14
Speaker 6: much for coming on, sir, my.
58:16
Speaker 5: Very great pleasure. Was a great talk. Thank you so much.
58:19
Speaker 2: I want to thank Dave so much for doing such
58:21
Speaker 2: a great job on this episode. If you want to
58:23
Speaker 2: get links to anything we spoke about in this episode,
58:25
Speaker 2: head over to the show notes at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv.
58:28
Speaker 2: Forward Slash for twenty two. Thank you so much for listening. Guys,
58:31
Speaker 2: as always, keep on writing no matter what. I'll talk
58:35
Speaker 2: to you soon.
58:35
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the Bulletproof Screenwriting podcast at Bulletproofscreenwriting
58:40
Speaker 1: dot tv.