My Eyes, My Eyes!!!!!

Even before I was asked to review films for cinemATL, I've sat through my fair share of independent films. Drama. Action. Comedy. If the story sounded vaguely promising--which isn't often--I'd usually give the movie a chance. Now if you think I'm going to pontificate about contrived plots and one dimensional characters, I'm not. Bad storytelling has been around for centuries. It's nothing new. So nobody should be suprised that thanks to DV, not only has the number of films and filmmakers risen, but the number of crapticular stories has also risen. So, it's not that I'm subjected to even more cliched and recycled crap than before that's distressing me. What's nawing at me is the flat and lifeless look that 95% of all these sub-par flicks have. I know that some of you guys out there can't afford new lens kits. I know for others it's all about location, location, location. You're already working on a $5 budget so you can't have custom built sets with movable walls. Special rigs? Unless you got McGyver crewing on your film, you do what you can. However, just cause you don't have the latest toys, doesn't mean you should give up the good fight. The number one rule of independent filmmaking is you work with what you got. And what you got are actors. And while walls and desks and beds can't be moved, actors can. Of what you're shooting, they're the most mobile and the most versatile set decoration. If you feed them and take good care of them, they'll mostly do what you say. Say move to the left and they'll move to the left. So please, play with staging. Use your actors as framing devices. Try giving your scenes depth by moving your people around. Move them in and out of frame, have them switch places. Just, please, do what you have to to focus the viewer's attention on what's most important in the scene. When it comes to controlling what will appear on screen, really think about what elements the audience must see and what's just extraneous noise. Yes, knowing your characters are in a club is important. Knowing that they're in a bedroom is important. But once you've established that, please cut away the fat. Nothing is more distracting than when some poor actor is doing their best mouthing pages and pages of trite, banal dialogue and they're being upstaged by the stuffed giant pink bunny sitting in the background. In that all important dinner scene, in which Jo Jo is going to leave Mary for Johnny. All those talking heads in background really undermine the scenes power. When actors are drowning in a vast sea of emptiness for no other reason than it never occured to the cameraman, DP or Director to push in for a close up, that's a dramatic buzzkiller. There your actors sit, filling up only 20% of the screen, while the other 80% is being wasted. You know what this means? This means that everything and everyone else in the scene has to work 5 times as hard to make the frame appear full. From the scenes beginning, to the scenes end, your actors have to work 5 times as hard to keep whatever dramatic drive there is to the scene from becoming limp. Otherwise, leaving an audience to their own devices, their eyes will begin to wander and drift. And since you gave them the option of focusing on the actor or a sea of vast nothingness, eventually, the vast nothingness will always win. So please, please, please. It's already difficult enough sitting through some of these films. If you can't make your film's story interesting, at least give me something cool to look at.