I warn you, some of it's not pretty, but I promise you it's all true. And the truth is it comes down to creativity and opportunity. Too much of one, and not enough of the other.
I know you've probably heard it many times before, but it's a fact that screenwriters get very little respect in the motion picture industry, unlike television where the writer is king.
"And that always stuck in my craw!"
If I had a nickel for every time someone in the industry said, "Don't rock the boat, just do what they tell you…" I'd have enough money to finance my own major motion picture.
But if you're a screenwriter who wants to be a filmmaker, you're really fighting an uphill battle, because no matter how well you spin a word on the page, no one wants to hear anything about you directing - it's just too damn hard for your reps to sell that package.
Which is really odd since there's so much great television out there now, you would think who better to helm a project than the guys who created it. Furthermore, even in the feature world, there's been a lot of great writer/directors out there… namely, Tarantino, Nolan, Rodriguez, Coppola, Lucas, Carpenter, Zemekis, Spielberg, The Wachowskis, and the list goes on and on…
But the reality is no one is willing to put their ass on the line for you nowadays. Not when there's a $100 million at stake. (Now I know there's always an exception to the rule, and we'll talk about that later, but I'm talking about the norm here.)
So you accept your lot in life and you figure if you play their game and do your time, your opportunity will come eventually… But it never does.
Then one day you wake up and you're faced with the cold-hard facts that very few studio films, even with big-name talent attached, ever get made. So after a while, you get tired of handing your best material over to the studios only to wind up in that awful purgatory called, "Development Hell." Then years go by and you realize you're no closer to your goal than when you first started out.
Well, that's when we said, "F**k this! We have to do something… Something drastic! Because this shit ain't working!"
We even took time off and spent our own money making documentaries… At least we were shooting something!
But even that turned into a whole new set of challenges… But that's another story for another time.
So after icing our heads from beating them against the brick walls of the studios, our good friend and producing partner, Gerald Nott, came to us and said, "Why not do, 'NOIR?'"
And it was like, "BING!"
You see, "NOIR," was a project that had been swimming around in our heads for years. A project that we loved, but we never bothered developing further, because we knew the studios would never make it in its purist form.
But now… Now with the advances in inexpensive cinema-grade cameras (some with 4K recording) and editing software (God, how I wish we had this stuff back when we were in film school…) and our experience in shooting documentaries, we finally saw a way of pulling it off on a micro budget. And it dawned on us, "This - just - might - work!!!" And we figured if we could pull enough favors and do most of the shooting and editing ourselves… then we could do something really unique and it would give us the chance to show people the vision we always wanted to express.
The bottom line is we want to entertain you the way we want to be entertained… and just so you know… we're a tough crowd! But the key is to create a great story. And man have we got one for you. We can't wait to show what we're cooking up. Now, it's not going to be easy. It's bold, it's ambitious, and yes, it's a bit crazy, but we're committed to making it happen one way or another.
And since we're going to be working on "NOIR" for the next few months, we thought we'd share our creative process with you… Not sure what to expect yet, but we'll be as open and honest with you as we can - good or bad. Remember, a lot of this is going to be new to us as well. And hopefully, we'll be able to pass on a bit of insight and maybe offer a little inspiration as production moves along. But one thing you can count on… it won't be boring.
So stay with us and see how it all turns out.
(To be continued… Next, collaboration and frustration…)
Please show your love
and help support our movie, NOIR, at:
https://igg.me/at/creatingnoir
Follow us on twitter @NoirTheFilm
Like us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/noirthefilm
No comments:
Post a Comment