Right now I´m working on my first feature film´s script. I started it in 2011 and now I feel like I´m prepared to start trying to get it done while I work on other projects which I will be explaining to you in the future.
Sleepless nights, with a pencil and a notebook always near, reading, investigating, erasing, writing, erasing, moving, changing... Script writing is a very complicated task. Even more when you don´t consider yourself a scriptwriter. If I´m into it is because the plots are very personal with a very concrete point of view but I´d prefer to shoot scripts done by others. Nowadays it seems that a director can write, take pictures, act, be community manager, edit, etc. (in some cases that´s also me) but I´m aware of that and I dislike the idea of continuing this way. But there´s a big thing which I also dislike: the way many things are getting done today.
Picture taken by A. Amengual during the shooting of my music video "Quiero aprender de ti"
Tonight I´ve spent some of my time watching 90´s music videos and wow! There are incredible projects that deserve to be rewatched by present filmmakers! That was a time with no internet and people had to work harder to find information, references, etc. so in many cases the final results were much richer in content, art direction, editing, extreme visuals etc.
Smashing Pumpkin´s "Tonight" music video, based on George Méliès´"Voyage dans la lune".
One of Michel Gondry´s music videos, with no computer special effects. This guy´s brilliant.
Todd Mcfarlane´s vision of the evolution in Pearl Jam´s "Do the evolution". Incredible.
Nowadays that´s changed: it seems like there are 4 kind of ways to shoot a music video, 4 visual effects that work and same takes, coreographies, styles etc. My guess is that when something goes viral, it gets copied, and with the democratization of audiovisuals, what in the past was copied maybe 10 times, now it´s 100000. For many filmmakers, inspiration sources are Youtube´s last hit, Vimeo´s last recomendation, even Film Annex´s one, and we are so lazy stuck at our computers that we don´t go and try other sources: books, essays, own experimentation by working on little personal projects, finding an own visual style. If not, just think on how many films, music videos, fashion film, etc. have lens flares, discontinuous editing, blurry images, shaky cam, huge amount of drones over music, flashes, slow motion, TV distortions... Not to forget continous travelling and steady-cam movements because sliders and "steadycams" are getting cheaper day by day.
Lack of originality is everywhere
Of course all of them are very valid and cool stuff but, what´s behind all that amount of fireworks which hit the audience? I can bet there´s almost nothing. Original content is dying if not dead. We live in the world of copying, of creative lazyness. Another one of the reasons is that working on a project is decreasing its value. Before a client said: "I want the best video you can do, go for it". Now is more like: "I want it quick, fast and cheap". It´s a circle, so how can it get broken?
When the real filmmakers or people who really love what they do, they stop working so much for money, being self-indulgent and pay more attention to what money can´t pay: ideas, intention, true emotion. Things which are not on screen or sound but go into the audience´s brain, heart; soul.
At least, the guys from Asylum don´t hide their intentions! Eventhough Battleship is based on a boardgame.
Let´s stop doing Moulin Rouge style, a romantic movie which includes the word love so many times through the whole film that it seems the crew were afraid of the viewer forgetting what´s the story about (maybe because the plot has as many holes as a gruyère cheese).
Maybe I sound very pesimistic but I think that audiovisual industry is in a very weak position right now and we have to try our best to remind audiences why audiovisuals are the Seventh Art.
