And at a time when special effects dominate the industry, when movies are routinely budgeted over $100 million dollars and when egomaniac directors routinely go over schedule and over budget (that’s you, hack Scorcese), it’s refreshing to see a filmmaker like Eastwood confident and competent enough to make modestly budgeted films ahead of schedule and under budget with an emphasis of story over effects.

So how does Clint Eastwood do it? Well, for starters, he’s been directing for a long time so he has both confidence and experience in his craft. It also helps that he worked in television where the quick production schedules and limited budgets necessitated that a director work quickly and efficiently. The other thing that Eastwood does is his homework. He knows exactly what he wants and needs when he arrives on the set. That way he doesn’t have to waste time figuring things out on the set.

For the next few posts, the Moose will write about some of the various directing techniques that Clint Eastwood uses and how you can use those techniques to better your filmmaking.

The first technique that the Moose would like to talk about is simple enough. Find and trust great material. Of course, this sounds more like common sense than a specific filmmaking technique, but you’d be surprised at how often people ignore this technique. When you’re looking for material to direct, make sure that they story is solid. Any problems that you find in the script when you read it will be there when you shoot it. Make sure the script is sound and all your problems have been worked out before you begin production.

Now here’s where people fall off of the good material bandwagon. When the script is good, leave it alone. When Paul Haggis turned in his first draft for Million Dollar Baby, he expected Eastwood to give him some notes and was prepared to do a rewrite. But Clint Eastwood liked what he read and knew that the story was solid so he started preparing to shoot Haggis’s first draft. In Hollywood, this is the exception, not the rule.

Typically, the standard operating procedure is to rewrite, usually by committee, until you drain all the life out of a story. Oftentimes actors and directors will sign onto a project after reading a great script. The producers and the director take the script through several rewrites (the development process) until the script no longer resembles the story that attracted the director or the actors in the first place. But Clint Eastwood knew that Paul Haggis’s script was solid and had all the story elements that he liked from the source material. Therefore, a rewrite was unnecessary.

Find good material, and then trust your material when you find it.  Simple, but easier said than done.

Now New York State will increase its 10% below-the-line tax credit for film and television production to a whopping 30%, upping the program to $575 million, speeding the rebate waiting period from two years to one and extending the deal to 2013, with an ultimate $110 million cap. Now that’s an incentive package. In actuality, the Republicans in the Senate wanted a bigger incentive package but the Democrats bargained the incentives down to this still sterling package. Is it as good as Michigan’s production incentives? No. But this is New York. You have Niagra Falls and New York City and all the places in between. New York doesn’t have to be the cheapest state to film in or have the best incentives, it just needs to be competitive and this package is a good one.

Already business is picking up for New York. There’s talk that the show Ugly Betty may move to New York to take advantage of the incentives. Even films that aren’t set in New York are relocating there to take advantage of all New York has to offer. And what does New York offer besides great locations? How about an experienced and diverse crew and talent pool to draw from. Now that’s exciting.

So how does one qualify for the New York refundable film production tax credit? Qualified production costs at a qualified film production facility must be greater than or equal to 75% of the costs within and outside New York. Productions are required to spend at least one day at a qualified facility on a set. If production costs at a qualified facility are less than $3,000,000, then shooting days in New York outside qualified production facility must be greater than or equal to 75% of shooting days within and outside New York.

There is an investment tax credit that is available for tangible property containing at least one sound stage greater than or equal to 7,000 square feet, which is principally used as a qualified film production facility and the taxpayer provides at least 3 qualified services, including but not limited to: studio lighting grid, lighting and grip equipment, multi-line phone service, broadband information technology access, industrial scale electrical capacity, food services, security services, and heating, ventilation and A/C.

In addition, sales tax is exempt for film productions for most film related expenditures. And New York City doesn’t charge for film permits or use of New York City police. Bravo!

New York State Governor’s Office for Motion Picture & TV Development
633 Third Avenue, 33rd Floor
New York, NY 10017
Phone: (212) 803-2330

Pat Swinney Kaufman
Deputy Commissioner & Executive Director

As you may already know, there is a difference between a movie star and an actor. A good actor is not necessarily a movie star. For example, character actor J. T. Walsh.

And there are plenty of movie stars who can’t act. Case in point:

And once in a blue moon, you will come across that rarest breed, a movie star that can act.

Now if you’re looking to do a small, intimate character study, a larger than life movie star in the lead role might be distracting from a creative or artistic point of view. For those roles, you’re better off casting a good character actor. And for big action extravaganzas you’re probably best off casting a movie star known for action. So what do you do with the movies in between? How do you best use movie stars to your advantage from a creative stand point?

I think Alfred Hitchcock had the right train of thought with regard to this aspect. Hitchcock knew how to use a movie star’s persona to expedite the storytelling process. What exactly do I mean? I’ll explain. Hitchcock made suspense thrillers and in these types of movies pacing is critical. If you were to cast an unknown character actor as the hero, the audience would need a reason to care about this character. You would have to spend time developing the character into one that the audience can sympathize with and root for. But this takes time. And in a movie where time and pacing is of the essence, too many scenes devoted to character development can slow down your thriller and bore your audience. But audiences already have a predisposition to like certain movie stars. By casting a movie star like Cary Grant or Jimmy Stewart as the hero, Hitchcock could draw audiences into the story using the star power of his actor and therefore dispense with needless character development scenes. The actor’s persona provided a shorthand that Hitchcock used to his storytelling advantage.

A more contemporary example of this would be the casting of Harrison Ford as The Fugitive. Since audiences already know and like Harrison Ford, there was no need to develop the character of Richard Kimble. The director Andrew Davis could instead focus on the Kimble’s search for the one armed man who killed his wife and create a tense, suspense thriller. While the examples I’ve given for this have both been

The other way Hitchcock used movie stars to his advantage was by using the movie star’s persona to subvert an audience’s expectations and take the story in directions they might not expect. Take for instance the story of a man who might be plotting to kill his wife for the money. Ordinarily a movie like this might be too pedestrian to keep an audience’s attention even as a made-for-television movie. But cast Cary Grant as the potentially murderous husband and you’ll have audiences glued to their seats wondering whether or not he’s going to kill his wife. Suspicion was even nominated for Best Picture and earned a Best Actress Oscar for its female star Joan Fontaine.

Or take the story of a peeping tom who spends most of his time spying on his neighbor from his window. Not exactly a movie most people would see on a Saturday night. But cast Jimmy Stewart as the peeping tom and you have the classic Rear Window. By casting against type, Hitchcock was able to get audiences to watch a much darker movie than they might normally watch.

While the examples I have given have all been thrillers, this creative use of casting could apply to any genre. The casting of Drew Barrymore as the first victim in Scream is one example as is the casting of a fat Sylvester Stallone in Cop Land. As a filmmaker, you need to understand what each movie star brings to the table with their persona and the public’s perception of them. Follow Hitchcock’s example and use your movie star’s image to your best creative advantage.

You see, the blue suited penguins believe that movie stars are essential to a film’s success. That’s why they’re willing to show the money and pay the big bucks for stars. The blue suited penguins believe that these stars can generate an enormous amount of free publicity and help to open a motion picture regardless of its quality.

The problem with this line of thinking is that movie stars do not guarantee a movie doing well on its opening weekend. They can be a factor if cast in the right role in the right story, but they can just as easily make flops as any other actors. Case in point, take Charlie Wilson’s War. Here’s a movie starring Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts, arguably two of the biggest stars in the past fifteen years.

Yet the movie opened to a less than stellar $9.6 million dollars and came in 4th place behind National Treasure 2 – Book of Secrets, I Am Legend and Alvin and the Chipmunks. That’s right. The surefire pairing of two of Hollywood’s biggest stars loses to a movie starring Jason Lee and a trio of animated chipmunks.

Want another example? Take Lions For Lambs. Here’s a movie starring Tom Cruise, Robert Redford and Meryl Streep. There’s no denying the star power involved on this film. First you have Tom Cruise who is one of the highest grossing actors ever. Then you add ’70s matinee idol Robert Redford and The Devil Wears Prada star Meryl Streep, who also happens to be one of the most celebrated actresses of her generation, and you should have a pure box office bonanza, right?

Perhaps not. Even with all the star power involved on this movie, Lions For Lambs could only open at number 4 at the weekend box office losing out to Bee Movie, American Gangster and Fred Claus. All the movie stars in the world couldn’t help that movie.

People will not go see a movie just for the stars anymore. I’m not sure they ever did. It was always dependent on both the story and the type of movie. Put Sylvester Stallone in Rocky and you have a hit. Put him in Rhinestone and you’ll have a flop on your hands. Cast Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones and you’ll be raking in the money. Cast him as a Russian submarine captain in K-19: The Widowmaker and you’ll have both an embarrassment and an expensive box office failure.

But what about the blue suited penguins’s notion that casting stars gets you tons of free publicity that you wouldn’t have otherwise gotten? Just keep in mind that nothing is free. You had to pay for the damn movie star, didn’t you? Sure you might get a lot of chances to promote your film with magazine covers and appearances on Leno or Letterman or Craig Ferguson, but you could have bought just as much exposure if not more with the money you used to pay for your movie star. Think about it. Did all the free publicity that came with casting Angelina Jolie in A Mighty Heart equal the amount of advertising or press you could have bought with her $10 million salary? I think the answer you’ll find is no.

Does that mean that movie stars are useless? After all, what good are movie stars if they can’t guarantee a movie’s opening and the free publicity you get is less than what their salaries would have bought? The answer is no. Movie stars have their place and use. From a financial standpoint, movie stars help to drive the DVD sales and rental markets. A person is more likely to rent or buy the DVD of a movie starring Jet Li even if they never saw the film in its original theatrical release than they are to rent or buy a straight to video film starring someone they’ve never heard of. That’s why faded and fat former action stars like Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme still have healthy careers making straight to video movies. People are more likely to see one of these clunkers starring someone they know over a movie they’ve never heard of starring someone unknown.

I’m being sarcastic with the title of this post as I’m sad to report that the only state production incentives offered by the state of California is a five percent sales tax exemption on the purchase or lease of post-production equipment for qualified persons. Five percent. Yes, that’s measly. And it only applies to the purchase or lease of post-production equipment.

And while there is no state hotel occupancy tax, productions can apply for a tax exemption of local city or county hotel occupancy taxes on stays over 30 days. Are you getting excited yet about filming in California?

In California’s defense, there is a bill in the Assembly to provide another meager tax incentive to qualifying new productions, but that bill has yet to be passed by the state legislature and signed by the Govenator.

The California state government obviously does not see any reason to keep film productions and their money in this state. No wonder there are so many runaway productions to Hollywood North (Canada), Louisiana and other states.

But what about the free permits, you ask? California does offer free permits and no location fees for California State properties. Good luck finding one that you want to use unless it’s in the desert. And these free permits and location fees are offset by the fact that every other location in California charges an arm and a leg for location fees.

You can get almost all of your locations for free much of the time in other states as people are happy to see a movie being filmed on their street or even in their homes. Not so in Hollywood. People here see so many productions going on that they’ll turn their stereos on real loud and claim that they always listen to their music that loud and that a nice cash gift from production is the only way to get them to turn it down.

So why do people still shoot in California? For one, California boasts the largest and most talented crew base in the world that is big enough to accommodate over 100 simultaneous productions. Secondly, California has the infrastructure necessary to support any type of filmmaking whether it’s a micro budgeted indie film or a mega blockbuster summer movie with a budget over $150 million. And finally, there’s the weather. California is almost always sunny. Productions rarely have to worry about rain and other inclement weather so that makes scheduling and producing a film or television show a little easier and more predictable.

Do these benefits outweigh the numerous production incentives offered by Canada and other states like Michigan or Louisiana? Just look at the number of runaway productions each year and you’ll find that the answer is no. Film and television production is a multi-billion dollar industry. California better get with the program and stop the hemorrhaging of production money to other states and countries.

If you’re still interested in filming in California, you can contact:

California Film Commission
7080 Hollywood Blvd., Suite 900
Hollywood, CA 90028

Amy Lemisch
Director
Phone: (323) 860-2960 xt.102
Fax: (323) 860-2972

Enter the Dragon

Now the film industry may not have such a negative view of The Wolverine State. Michigan has just passed legislation aimed at aggressively bringing film and television production with some of the most lucrative production incentives in the country to make Michigan one of the most financially attractive states in the nation to make movies.

The key bill in the legislative package gives film studios a refundable credit of up to 42 percent on production expenses in the state with a minimum local spend of only $50,000. Here is a list of some of the recently passed state production incentives for Michigan.

• 40% cash rebate, across the board on Michigan expenditures, with a spending threshold of $50,000. Michigan will add an extra 2% if the company films in one of the 103 Core Communities in Michigan. Click here for a map of the 103 Core Communites.

• Labor and Crew: 40%-42% Resident, 30% Non-resident.

• Tax credit for investment in film production infrastructure.

• Extends MEGA tax credits to production companies.

• Free use of state property.

• Gives production companies a workforce development tax credit for hiring and training current Michigan crewmembers to a higher level.

• The only cap will be a maximum of $2 million salary per employee

• *There is no other cap and no sunset.

• Allows for low interest MSF loans for qualified film industry productions.

• Hotel occupancy tax exemptions available.

Michigan has a mostly union crewbase with several hundred crew members the majority of which are in metropolitan Detroit and the remaining in areas such as Grand Rapids, Traverse City and Lansing.

For those interested in learning about filming in Michigan, contact the Michigan Film Commission.

Michigan Film Office
702 West Kalamazoo Street
P.O. Box 30739
Lansing, MI 48909

Director:

Janet Lockwood

Director
Phone: (517) 373-0638 or (800) 477-3456
Fax: (517) 241-2930

The Michigan package also covers commercials, TV shows, documentaries, video games and other film work. Good luck and see you in Detroit.

Close ups are effective because they focus your attention on something in the scene to let the audience know that this is important. They can work like exclaimation points in writing. But if everything is a close up, then nothing is really emphasized because each shot is of the same importance. All you’re left with is talking heads which is not visually interesting and doesn’t tell the story visually.

Watch any well crafted movie and you’ll see that the director tells a lot of the story in wide and medium shots. The close ups are used for emphasis, whether it’s on a character’s face to show their reaction or thoughts on it’s an insert of some important clue. The more sparingly close ups are used, the more power they have when they’re used.

So why do so many contemporary filmmakers over use close ups? I believe there are two answers that will apply to most cases. The first is that they just don’t know any better. When directing, many new, or bad, filmmakers just want to move the camera. Case in point:

They don’t think about how to tell the story visually with pictures and they don’t know how to break a scene down into what is important and what isn’t important. As a result when there is a lot of dialogue or they don’t know how to move the camera, they use close ups to bridge the moments and fill in the gaps until they can move the camera again. They, in essence, use close ups because they don’t know what else to shoot in order to tell the story.

The second reason why I think many directors today use close ups so heavily is that many feature directors started off in television. Although television is, like film, a visual medium, most television is directed like radio.

Time is of the essence. The blue suited studio penguins insist on more information being crammed in before the next commercial. They don’t let the directors tell the story with the camera. And with television’s quick production schedules, the directors often don’t have the time or budget to properly shoot a scene. Close ups are a quick and cheap way of shooting a scene and getting across information.

But you know better. You know that your job is to shoot the inherent drama of a scene. Not the bare information of the scene. And if you’re not sure whether or not to use a close up, just remember that good directing, that is good visual storytelling, involves telling the story in pictures. So if you were to turn off the sound in your scene, does that close up help you to tell your story? Does the close up help you to make a certain point? If it does, then by all means use it. Otherwise, find a different shot that helps you to tell you story.

Sure, you get a little exposure and a few scripts have been sold as a result but no careers have been launched off any contests except the Nicholl and the Chesterfield. So for the rest of the contests, you’re basically just competing for cash. That being said, the contests with a large cash prize give you poor odds of winning because of the sheer number of entries. And since screenwriting contests are judged based off of subjective criteria, you’re probably better off going to Vegas to try to win money.

That being said, there are a few contests that are worth entering. One of them is the filmmaking festival in Albuquerque, New Mexico known as the Duke City Shootout. Although Albuquerque may be best known as the place where Bugs Bunny should have made a left turn…

…aspiring filmmakers should get acquainted with the city as the Duke City Shootout could become a fertile training ground and launch pad for writer-directors.

Launched in 2000 as the Flicks on 66 Wild West Digital Shootout, the idea of this film production festival was to take an entrants script in one week from the page to the screen. The first festival produced ten 10 minute shorts. The festival changed its name to the DigiFest SouthWest in 2003 and finally to its current name the Duke City Shootout in 2005.

What makes this contest stand out is from other screenwriting contests is that the finalists actually get produced. The way the contest works is filmmakers submit a script for a short film 12 minutes or less. Using the industry standard estimate of 1 page equals 1 minute of screen time, your script should be no more than 12 pages. If your script is over 12 pages, you will get penalized per page over the limit. The deadline to submit your script is May 15th.

Once all the entries have been received, the judges will then pare down the entries to ten finalists who will be given script notes and suggestions for revisions to help rewrite and strengthen their stories. Then the finalists will be given five days to re-write their script. The judges and producers will then select 7 of the 10 final scripts to be produced.

The Duke City Shootout will then fly each of the seven finalists out to Albuquerque where they will each be assigned a producer and creative team to help them film their short. The contest will pay for all costs of equipment rentals and labor and supply each filmmaker with $1500 for location expenses, expendables and other expenses. Filmmakers will then have from the crack of dawn on July 26 to midnight of August 1st to shoot and edit their films. The Gala Premiere for all the films will be on August 2nd.

From watching the finalist films of the past two years, I can tell you that the production value of the Duke City Shootout films can be quite impressive. Some of the films have a little CGI and others have used aerial photography from a small plane or helicopter

While the production value of the films made through the Duke City Shootout are high, the quality of the writing and filmmaking leave a lot to be desired. After watching the films and reading the scripts, I have to say that the bar has been set pretty low. Many of the scripts are one note or just one joke.

I think this is largely because the Duke City Shootout contest is still relatively young and not as well known as other contests that have been around longer like Scriptapalooza. That’s good news for you as it means that you’ll have a better chance of becoming a finalist. None of the finalists that I have read or seen so far actually has a story with any resonance. If you can write a story with a beginning, a middle and an end with even a little bit of resonance, I think you would easily make the finalist stage.

I’m so sure that the Moose is going to write and submit a short script for this contest this year. I will keep you updated on the progress and results from my entry, but I urge all you aspiring writer-directors and filmmakers to write and enter your own script. This year is the first year where all the films will be shot in hi-def. With this contest, you can shoot a short film or calling card on someone else’s dime using toys and other fancy equipment and techniques that might not be available to you on your own. That’s a pretty sweet deal if you think about it.

Keaton’s quote illustrates an important concept in film directing. Substitute drama for tragedy and you have a good rule of thumb to follow when directing your own movie.

Close-ups focus your attention on something. Whether it’s an insert of a knife in the hands of woman contemplating killing her cheating husband or reaction of the priest when he hears someone confess to a murder in confession, a close up used properly can bring out the inherent drama and tension of a scene. By drawing attention to something with a close up, the director places importance on the subject.

Filmmakers can also use close ups to shorten the aesthetic distance between the audience and character. What this means in plain English is that close ups can help the audience connect more intimately with the subject. By focusing on an actor’s face, the director can bring out a character’s thoughts and feelings. This is a valuable tool for use in drama where a character’s thoughts and reaction are central to the story.

Comedy, on the other hand, needs to keep the audience at a distance in order to bring out the humor of the situation. Most comedy lies in the reaction of the characters in the scene to what is happening at the moment. That’s why so many movies pair up a funny character with a straight man. The reaction of the straight man, or the character that stands in for the audience, is often times the source of the humor. Other times, the straight man is used to set up the comic character. That’s why wide shots are better for comedy. It’s funnier to see both the comic and the straight man at the same time. For proof, just watch any TV sitcom whether it’s I Love Lucy, Friends or Perfect Strangers. The actors are almost always filmed in long shots.

Another reason why side shots or long shots are better for comedy is that in comedy, the audience doesn’t want to see what the characters are feeling or thinking. It’s the situation that’s funny. Take, for instance, the classic comic pratfall of slipping on a banana peel. Now filmed in a long shot, you would see the hero walk down the street, step on the banana peel and then fall hard the ground to the amusement of nearby spectators. That’s comedy.

Now, let’s take the same scenario only this time we’ll film it as a drama. The hero walks down the street. A close up on the hero’s face shows that he’s lost in his own thoughts. Cut to an insert of the banana peel to warn the audience of the impending danger. The hero steps on the banana peel and slips, and falls hard to the ground. Cut to a close up of the hero’s face contorted with pain. This scene is not funny. By showing us the hero’s pain, the scene focuses on the character and not the situation. This is the nature of tragedy, or drama.

One of the reasons why so many modern feature film comedies are not funny is because the directors, who often don’t know any better, shoot too much of the scene in close ups. They try to focus too much on what’s funny by shooting it in close up. What they should do instead is pull the camera back and trust in the actors, the script and the audience to laugh at the humor of the scene.

While there are always exceptions to the rule, directors would be wise to heed the words from one of the great directors of cinema. So the next time you’re breaking down a script and getting ready to film a scene, just remember “Tragedy is a close-up; Comedy, a long shot.”

Table of contents for Famous Writers and Books In The Public Domain

1. Famous Writers and Books In The Public Domain: A-G
2. Famous Writers and Books In The Public Domain: H-P
3. Famous Writers and Books In The Public Domain: Q-Z

Continuing the list of famous writers and books in the public domain. This is by no means a complete list, merely a starting point for entrepreneurial screenwriters and filmmakers. Please remember that this list is for the original stories by these authors. Many of these works have already been produced for film and television and contain famous story elements particular to that adaptation that are not in the original works. Those story elements are not in the public domain. Only the original story from the original work by these authors.

For example, the original story of Snow White by the Brothers Grimm differs greatly from the story in Walt Disney’s more famous animated version. If you were to adapt a version of Snow White and used elements from Disney’s version like the Prince waking Snow White up with a kiss, then you would be in violation of Disney’s copyright. Another example is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein which is in the public domain. If you’re adaptation includes a version of Frankenstein’s monster with bolts in his neck, then you would be in violation of Universal’s copyright of Frankenstein with Boris Karloff.

If you know of other famous books and writers in the public domain, please let me know and I will update this list.

Rudolf Erich Raspe

All of his works are in the public domain including his most famous story The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

William Shakespeare

The Bard’s been dead for a long time, hence, all of his work is in the public domain. Knock yourself out with your own version of Hamlet, Macbeth or Romeo and Juliet.

Mary Shelley

All of her writing is in the public domain including the ever popular Frankenstein. Her other famous books include The Last Man and Matilda.

Robert Louis Stevenson

All of this writer’s work is in the public domain including the popular stories Treasure Island, Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, Kidnapped, and New Arabian Nights.

Bram Stoker

All of this writer’s work is in the public domain including Dracula, The Jewel Of Seven Stars, The Lady Of The Shroud and The Lair Of The White Worm.

Mark Twain

All of this amazing American literary genius’s work is in the public domain. His most famous stories are The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Prince and the Pauper, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Jules Verne

All of this entertaining French writer’s work is in the public domain. His most famous works include Journey to the Centre of the Earth, From the Earth to the Moon, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, The Mysterious Island and Around the World in Eighty Days.

H.G. Wells

Only some of Wells’s stories are in the public domain but they include The Invisible Man, The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau and The War of the Worlds.

Oscar Wilde

All of this witty playwright’s work is in the public domain. His most famous stories are The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest.

Johann David Wyss

This writer’s most famous story The Swiss Family Robinson is in the public domain.