Last week, Google announced an upcoming product called Wave which the tech giant refers to as “what e-mail would look like if it were invented today”. By that they mean a communications system with all of the acquired knowledge of the 21st century without the hangups of the 20th. For detailed info you should really check out the official Google Wave site, but I’ll try to keep the pre-required knowledge to a minimum here.

This isn’t a tech site, it’s a film site. So what on earth does this have to do with cinema? Google is inventing this to revolutionize communication and productivity which has essentially been stagnant for decades if not longer. E-mail, as one example, is sent back and forth between one or more people just as the letter or the memorandum was before before it. Wave basically breaks that wide open, offering contextual live editing of a single communiqué. Now, while this can certainly help in producing a film just like it could help any general office task, the overall Wave concepts could be applied on a grander scale for filmmakers.

The Way Things Are

The movie-making process has remained largely unchanged in over a hundred years. Think about it. While technology may have advanced the way we do things, it hasn’t really affected what we are doing. Let’s take a look at the snappy chart below. This is the basic process of filmmaking as it is today the way it has been for decades. Please note that this sample applies to both film and digital workflows. I use the verb “process” below to mean any step that is required to get footage to an editable state. In the tapeless world, this means file copies, transcodes, logging, etc. For now, we’ll work with film for the purposes of discussion, but we’ll get to digital acquisition in a bit.

Whether you are making a low-budget documentary or a Hollywood blockbuster, these steps are all required. You go somewhere to shoot your subject. The film is processed at a lab, then color corrected and put onto video tapes, which are then dubbed to any number of formats depending on how many people need to access your footage. This is key, the more people who need to access the footage need a physical copy of it. The tapes are then captured into an editing system and cut together. The final step, listed above as “Finish”, encompasses all of the steps required to get the piece viewable for an audience. Touching up picture, tweaking color, negative cutting, digital intermediate, and film printing are just a few examples of this last leg of filmmaking.

In general, these steps all happen in different places and are performed by different people, which brings us to the fancy chart above. I have trimmed it down to deal with only a few of the behind-the-scenes players. There are so many people involved in making even the shortest of projects, this is barely a cross-section. If you’re shooting a film in Prague, processing footage in England, and cutting in New York while executives in Los Angeles are looking over your shoulder, you will start to see where this process starts to break down. Not only is it a great challenge to keep so many people (often in many languages) on the same page for the duration of a production, but you also introduce a number of points of failure. Any time the project moves from space to space, there are more opportunities for things to go wrong. Film gets lost, damaged, cut incorrectly, etc.

So how do we fix this? Well, the same way any other business does, with a whole bunch of paperwork and accountability. E-mails and forms and databases are used to keep track of everything along the way, but these kinds of systems are a safety net. They don’t enhance the process, they simply make it so that when things break down you can find where the weak spot is hidden. How can we change the way we make films in a manner that can boost not only productivity but creativity? I believe we can look to Google Wave for some of the answers.

The Way Things Could Be

Google is trying to get users to wrap their heads around this idea of a wave, which is basically the digital equivalent of a white board. In the wave, you can write correspondence, view documents or pictures, incorporate data from other web sources do all kinds of other things that would be available to a group of people sitting around a conference table. Let’s take that idea of a blank space in which a group can do productive work together and focus on it. I think it’s time for another chart.

Holy crap! That chart is brain-frying awesome! So many branches, you probably don’t even know where to start. It’s simple, every job and step passes through the wave. To try and explain this insanity away, I’ll use a more modern tapeless workflow, such as the Red camera. This particular camera shoots 4K raw digital files onto either a hard drive or a flash card. Currently, no system is able to play back the raw media at full resolution, so it must be transcoded to something else. There are many different ways to work with any uncompressed tapeless format, but at least one part of the process is going to be arduous, requiring some heavy lifting on the part of the computer. Let’s not waste time on the specifics of these workflows though, let’s look to the future.

Imagine a wi-fi enabled camera that can shoot the raw media to a local drive and then instantaneously upload a smaller version of the raw file to a server. This will of course require faster networks than we have now, but roll with this idea for a moment. Within moments of being shot, the media is visible and editable in a web browser. An editor can be on set or in an office half way around the world and begin trimming shots down, logging them, and marking them as good or bad. As more media comes in, the editor could begin cutting whole scenes together. At the same time, the cinematographer could have access to the editing server and view some of the cut scenes to ensure his eye-lines are correct. The director could see if any creative changes need to be made. Producers in LA could send notes instantaneously. All of this could happen within the same wave at the same time, theoretically.

Not all of this is possible yet. We simply don’t have fast enough networks or computers to get this all running. Once 64-bit processors and operating systems give way to 64-bit applications, the floodgates will open for some of these heavy lifting processes. Even so, the basic precepts of digital editing could actually be done over a network today. When you make a cut in any digital editing software, you are not actually cutting the high resolution video. Instead, you are actually just telling the application where to make a cut or add an effect. Think of this as a long, lightweight text document that is listing various points where edits need to be made.

Google Wave is currently built to facilitate all kinds of text editing, namely e-mail and chat. If you look at that text document with all of the edits as our core project, you should be able to edit those ins and outs over the internet. But what about the actual footage? In Google’s demo, once one user dragged photos into the wave, a preview of the photos appeared in another user’s wave before the full resolution files were uploaded to the server. This same idea could work for video. A lightweight video could be viewed across a network while the larger files would all be stored on a server somewhere else. Better yet, any and all changes could be saved and stored, listing who made the changes and when.

When it comes to finishing the film, or really doing any kind of heavy lifting that requires the original files, the edits can be taken off the network and re-linked to the master media. This is already a method in use with non-linear editing, but the key is to take the actual editing of the lower resolution media off of a single system and putting it into a wave. Reverting to yesterday’s cut would be a single click away.

Why go to all of this trouble?

Cinema is a collaborative art form. A single film requires hundreds of people to work in tandem before it will see the light of day. Why do you think the credits are so long in movies? I like to think that this collaborative nature of filmmaking enhances the final product rather than hindering it. Even when it things really ugly, (a writer butting heads with a director, a producer recutting a film unknowingly) some pretty amazing films can come together because of creative confrontations.

As I said earlier, so many people are working in so many different places with one common goal in mind. Why not move the tools needed to achieve that common goal into the same space? I realize that there is such a thing as too much collaboration. The biggest fear of such a system is that too many people will have access and you’ll cut eighty different version of the same film, all of which are horrible. Well, maybe, but I bet it would be pretty easy to control such a system.

For some productions, the wave will only be accessible to a select few, and maybe some of them don’t have full access privileges. Editorial will be able to edit in one office while a producer is only allowed to leave notes on the file, which can be accessed by everyone. Other productions, maybe a documentary shooting in Africa with an editor in Louisiana, would rely on a deep level of collaboration. Director and editor could be working together over the internet a little bit at a time. Even more to the extreme, director and editor could not even know each other while working together through the web.

There are innumerable ways to make this work for anyone. The technology is not there yet, but we know that it will be. Google is releasing Wave as an open source application that can be installed locally, meaning it’s free and can work on your own hardware. The Big G is specifically asking people to come up with innovative ways to take advantage of the technology they have on offer. In time, I believe that the film community will benefit directly from this concept. In the meantime, keep making beautiful movies the same way you have been for so long.

Disclaimer

This article was written to open up new ideas about this software. It is a concept based purely on a single demonstration of an early build of an application. If you like what you see, or do not like, I encourage you to start discussion in the comments. I am putting a Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License on this, which applies to everything written on the candler blog. I hope that this will stimulate more ideas for making movies in our Web 2.0 culture. To discuss specific ways of implementing a system like the one described above, please leave a comment saying as much and I will get in touch with you. Wave developers, let’s have a conversation about the probability of such a system. Thank you.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial- Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

[caption id=“attachment_777” align=“alignright” width=“241” caption=“Still from Saint Misbehavin’: The Wavy Gravy Movie”][/caption]

Alright candler readers, get ready to tune in next week for coverage from the 9th Annual deadCENTER Film Festival. I’m pretty excited to head out to Oklahoma City for the fest. I’ll be doing my darndest to keep the site up to date daily, so you’d better check back. I’m also working out the kinks in a liveblogging system so you may even be able to see what I’m thinking instantaneously. Sound exciting? You bet your ass it is. 6 days and counting. Here are some highlights from the official press release, but there will be much much more to come. For more info hit up http://www.deadcenterfilm.org

Notable works juried in this year include Official Rejection, a documentary that walks us through the painful submission - and rejection - process inherent in independent film. There will be a public panel on this very topic, led by visiting filmmakers and distinguished film critics. There will be a free screening of Saint Misbehavin’: The Wavy Gravy Movie, shown for a hippie-infused outdoor audience. Filmmaker-of-note Chopper Burnet brings The Twenty to deadCENTER. Chopper is the voice of NBC – literally. He’s the voice that you hear on NBC’s national promos. The stars will shine at Weather Girl, which is a hilarious and star-studded feature. And our Okie- made documentary Sweethearts of the Prison Rodeo is sure to draw an enthusiastic hometown crowd.

With the mountains of Tibet as a setting, a group as elusive as the Buddhist monks who occupy that land as a subject, and a conceivably endless search for a reincarnated master as a mission, director Nati Baratz is given every opportunity to exploit this Eastern culture in his breakout documentary, Unmistaken Child. Thankfully, his sensibility is much more refined than that. Instead, Mr. Baratz and his team have crafted a thought-provoking, emotional journey of the highest regard.

Following the death of Geshe Lama Konchong in 2001, the master’s disciple for twenty-one years, Tenzin Zopa,  is charged with searching for the Lama’s reincarnation. Having lived in the service of Lama Konchong for twenty-one years, he is selected because it is believed that someone so close to the Lama will be able to recognize him even in the body of a child. This is a story of emotional redemption and religious discovery, but it is also a detective story. Tenzin has very few clues to go on, but that does not weaken his resolve as he heads to the Tsum Valley of Tibet to seek out his master in a new form.

Forgoing many of the simpler convetions of documentary filmmaking, the story slowly reveals itself through the eyes of Tenzin. There is no narration, no staged reveals, very few graphics except when required contextually, and the only interview is with Tenzin. The audience sees only as much as he does on his journey. Emotionally, the film also follows the same sine curve as Tenzin. When he is skeptical, so are we; when he is excited, so are we; when he is frustrated, overjoyed, nervous, the film always follows suit.

The film is also beautiful. Shot on video, Unmistaken Child, has a certain washed out feeling to it. This is not a travel film by any means. Even though the sweeping vistas are enticing, there isn’t a moment in the film when you feel as though Mr. Baratz and his team are there for the sights. The emotional progression is of the utmost importance to the filmmakers. The land is a reflection of the story; the deeper into the mountains Tenzin goes, the more formidible his search seems to become.

I will not go into the particulars of what happens by the end of the film, but I promise it is satisfying. We witness the fascinating rituals of a distant people, but that is far from the point of Unmistaken Child. If nothing else, it is a case for the inherent innocence of humanity. Tenzin is articulate and learned, but he is also a big kid. His interaction with all of the children he seeks out is endearing. He allows himelf to be goofy, playing with the children, never letting on that this task is the most difficult he has ever approached.

Viewers of this film will see Buddhism in a new light, perhaps much closer to their own beliefs than they expect. The universality of human emotion is what is really on display here. Mr. Baratz put a half decade of his life into making this film and we are the benefactors. Perhaps it will be a long time until he makes another, but if he puts only a fraction of the care he put into Unmistaken Child, you can be certain that it will be another compelling piece.

Unmistaken Child premiered in the U.S. yesterday at Film Forum in New York City and will slowly make its way to the rest of the country. For more information visit the film’s official site.

The folks at Pixar are an eclectic group. Over the years they have moved on from their roles as technological pioneers to animation revolutionaries of sorts, trying to boldly bring the form back into maturity after it has long been relegated to the stuff of Saturday morning television. It is no surprise then that Up does everything in its power to subvert our preconceived notions of the animated film. The main character is neither young nor cuddly, the themes are complex and layered, and death is a very real possibility in the world of the film. Still, this is a Disney film so it hits most of the marketable requirements.

Up is the story of Carl Fredrickson, and elderly widower who decides to float his house to South America, fulfilling a wish he and his late wife have shared since childhood. After takeoff, a young boy scout named Russell is discovered as a stowaway and becomes Carl’s unwanted sidekick. The team makes it to their destination, running into some new friends: Kevin, a giant bird with a knack for trickery, and Doug, a cheerful dog equipped with a collar that allows him to speak. These new visitors set up a mad-cap adventure for the two city-dwellers, and we are invited along for the ride.

Parents should be warned that they will have to have some serious talks with their kids upon viewing, including but not limited to death, infertility, and non-amicable divorce. Just like Wall?E and The Incredibles before it, Up reaches for an audience past its target demo of toddlers, tykes and tweens. It is also grounded in reality much more than any other Pixar film. This is not the future or a bug world or a toy world, this is our world. By keeping the story in the here and now, the audience must actually suspend belief much further than they do for more fantastical fare. A viewer may spend a bit more time scratching his head during Up, but the emotional progression of the story is clear enough to allow one to set aside logic for a little while.

This film is also Pixar’s first foray into the world of 3D presentation. As a concept, 3D projection has its own own set of issues that any filmmaker must overcome. For one, audience members need to be enticed to don the plastic goggles required to see the film as such while not bogged down with stuff flying at their faces for too long. Directors Pete Doctor and Bob Peterson strike a nice balance in this regard, using the third dimension to enhance the story rather than as a cheap parlor trick. After a little while, 3D melts away and you are only reminded of it when something actually does jump out at you. Employing classical methods reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder, that director’s lone 3D dabbling, such as subtly placing objects in the foreground, inviting the viewer to “step into” the frame, visually. It is a nice touch.

I will say that I was less than pleased with the fact that the only way to see this movie in 3D is digitally projected. I have always had trouble viewing Pixar films on DVD since they are coming direct from their digital source instead of from a film print. The effect is much colder and less organic than what you are used to, and with digital projection you feel as though you are basically watching a movie in s giant home theater. Motion is a little choppy, ironically, because there is too much information coming from the screen. Our eyes have trouble keeping up; it looks hyper-real. Over time, the projectors and delivery systems will only get better, and I’m nitpicking right now. Back to the film at hand.

Up is the perfect film for Pixar to make right now because it is so unexpected. Every other animation company is picking up the crumbs they leave behind, yet they keep raising the bar far above what anyone else is capable of. This film would never work as a live-action piece, but that is exactly the point. Animation is not a tool for Pixar but a movement. Thankfully, they are moving it in the right direction, forward. (Or up, if you would like to end on a more pithy note.)

[caption id=“attachment_727” align=“alignright” width=“307” caption=“Still grabbed from Hulu.com”][/caption]

I just wanted to take a little ([more](http://www.candlerblog.com/2009/06/01 /conan-takeover-requires-viewing-of-the-late-shift/)) time to talk about the new “Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien”. As you know, the television landscape is rapidly changing. Fewer people are tuning into scheduled broadcasts and more are watching them online, on DVR or Tivo. So it seems that the best thing that anyone can do is to breath new life into one of television’s aging strongholds.

I remember when the whole late night debacle went down in the early 1990s. Initially, I was devastated that David Letterman was replaced by a nobody. Who was this Conan, and could he really fill the hilarious shoes of his predecessor on Late Night. Worse than that, oy, Johnny Carson was replaced by Jay…JAY! Even as a youngster I didn’t think he was funny. It was a shame because Johnny had built such an incredible home for America at 11:30.

Moving on…

The joke ended up being on me. Letterman moved to CBS with a hilarious new show while Conan slowly built one of the smartest shows on television. Much of “Late Night’s” appeal under his tutelage was not only his charisma, but a grab bag of memorable characters and sketches. From the long-running “In the Year 2000” to Triumph the Insult Comic Dog to the claymation episode, the Conan show has been a hotbed for creative release. This shouldn’t be a surprise from a guy who penned some of the greatest Simpsons episodes in the early years of the show.

Less of a performer than he is a writer, Conan is now entering this new space without changing much, it seems. Watching last night’s first episode, the only thing different from his old show was the color palette. The dark backgrounds are gone, making way for brighter colors. This almost feels like daytime television it’s so bright. But it’s still the same variety show it has been for decades.

The worriers who think that Conan won’t be able to work at 11:30 are nuts. He is going to do great, not only based on his first show but based on logic. He has grown and adapted over the years. He came from behind as the dark horse of late night television and has weathered many storms over the years. He’s not only going to do great, he’ll move the show in a more positive, more hilarious direction.

I think we are looking at the next king of late night here; a new Johnny Carson. I believe that Conan will probably do this show into his old age just as Mr. Carson did. Maybe I’m wrong, or maybe I’m just greedy, because Conan is damn funny. I’ll be inviting him into my home until there is no more broadcast television or he goes off the air, whichever comes first.

This evening, Conan O’Brien starts his new job as host of “The Tonight Show”. The late night host enters the 11:30 arena with much fanfare and only a tad bit of drama. His predecessor, Jay Leno, will now be his lead-in at 10:00 this fall; his critics don’t believe his brand of humor is accessible to the middle of the country, and on top of that he has the weight of one of the most revered jobs in television resting on his shoulders.

But whatever struggles he may be having, whatever growing pains may be occurring in the late night landscape, it cannot be compared to the mess that occured the last time there was a transition in this space almost tow decades ago. That affair is best illustrated in the 1996 HBO Original Movie The Late Shift.

Directed by the actress Betty Thomas, The Late Shift is many things all at once. It is a backstage opera, a comedy about comedy, a biopic and a winding espionage-tinged drama. The two leads, Daniel Roebuck as Jay Leno and John Michael Higgins as David Letterman, embrace their roles with only a hint of impersonation, fulfilling the recognizable look and feel of the nationally recognized artists while connecting to the emotional roots of each. It is burlesque, it is revealing, and it is damn funny stuff.

The story centers around Johnny Carson’s moving on to greener pastures without ever naming a replacement for his most sought after job in television. What took place in the aftermath was a whirlwind of negotiations and heartbreak between the network, Leno, Letterman and seemingly anyone close to either party. Mr. Leno had proven himself a worthy stand-in for the aging Carson on air, while Mr. Letterman had given over a decade of his life to NBC, not a small price to pay in hopes of one day sitting in the same chair as Steve Allen, Jack Paar and of course, Johnny. But the intrigue and backstabbing of the film is not what interests us here. No, it is the almighty power of television that makes the story so compelling.

In the film, television is something worth fighting for. Both a barometer and a compass for American social mores, television helps bring the nation together under one flag, under one host it seems. And so now we find ourselves in the waning days of the medium. With the growing juggernaut that is internet-based content, the idea that nearly any flat surface can instantly be updated with original programming, television is fighting for it’s life. This has happened before with the advent of VHS, the rental model, DVR and the like, but the one constant has always been the daily commentary provided by shows like “The Tonight Show”. It has weathered storms before now Conan will have to lead it through the muck to come.

If you haven’t seen The Late Shift you really should give it a spin. It will make you miss the 1990s and wonder what the world would be like with Letterman on NBC every night. For my money the world would be a whole lot funnier, but that’s just me. Maybe in a few years, we’ll see the battle that went on to get Conan to the top. For now, The Late Shift is a great watch at this major juncture in television history.

The opening sequence of Sam Raimi’s Drag Me to Hell literally smacks you in the face with the director’s penchant for the fantastically disgusting and spiritually perverse. For Raimi fans relegated to watching Spider-Man films for the better part of this decade, this ghastly bludgeoning is not only a treat, it’s the point. Above all else, Drag Me is a vehicle for the director to flex his horror muscle, and oh what a muscle it is.

The story here is pretty thin. After Christine Brown, a wholesome, farm-bred loan officer played by Alison Lohman, refuses an extension on an elderly gypsy woman’s mortgage, the delinquent client curses our young heroine. From there, Christine is tormented by an evil spirit which will supposedly, you guessed it, drag her to hell in three days. She meets a fortune teller, obviously, who helps her along until he has to call on the services of an even more powerful mystic. Plot is not this film’s strong suit; we’re talking boiler plate supernatural scary stuff here. Believe it or not, that’s okay, in fact, I prefer it.

In recent years, the American horror space has grown rather stale. If it’s not another glammed up Japanese import, a pulverizing ninety-odd minutes of torture porn, or a franchise reboot that no one asked for, it probably hasn’t made it’s way to the mainstream in the past few years. An important contributor to the horror revolution that took place here in the 1980s, Mr. Raimi appears to have taken note of the dearth of creativity in his beloved genre. The skeleton of a plot in _Drag Me to Hell _affords him the leg room to build gloriously bloody sequences.

Mr. Raimi is taking us to school, showing us how to make a frightening piece with the most basic of tools at his disposal. Sure, there are a plenty of digital effects in the film, but rarely are they they the centerpiece of any one scene. Instead, gory makeup, well-paced editing and ephemeral sound effects are used to keep the audience on its toes. On display are some of the oldest tricks in the book, just executed masterfully.

Drag Me to Hell is a great ride that must be experienced in the theater. Aurally, this film is beyond compare, so get the wax out of your ears and listen up. Sam Raimi has crafted a cinematic tour-de-force that keeps you laughing while turning your insides out. Don’t miss out on all of the slimy, mucusy fun.

If you have never seen another Terminator film, the franchise’s latest installment, Terminator Salvation, will be utterly baffling to you. The good news is that if you’re a fanboy well-versed in the series’ robotic lore, you’ll leave the theater just as confused and dissatisified as all the noobs. In other words, it is an equal opportunity snoozer replete with lumbering action sequences, misplaced character development and an unrealized love subplot. Ahhh, summer.

The film opens in a jail cell in 2003 as Marcus Wright, played by a dialect- confused Sam Worthington, signs his body over to Cyberdyne systems before his lethal injection. Flash forward a decade and a half and we find the world in ruins after the internet-induced nuclear holocaust we know of from the previous film, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. Whatever humans are left spend their time fighting robots, which are just angry, steely machines; not quite the androids we have come to know over the years. John Connor, whose performance is phoned in by a grizzled Christian Bale, now holds some form of prophetic role in the world as a radio preacher.

Anyway, Connor goes on a mission that ends in stuff getting blow’d up, awaking the now robotic Marcus in a goofy Golem/Frankenstein homage. After some more robot action and the appearance of the requisite babe (who is tough enough to fly a fighter jet yet still needs a man/machine to protect her from rape- hungry miscreants), we learn that Kyle Reese, who is actually John Connor’s father, has been taken to Skynet’s headquarters. As the resistance is planning an attack, Reese is sure to die at the hands of either robot or human, unless John Connor and his android buddy have anything to say about it. Campy schlock ensues.

The question shouldn’t be “where does this film go wrong?” as much as it should be “where does it go right?”. I’ll offer up the one highlight as Anton Yelchin’s performance as Kyle Reese. Just as Ewan McGregor channeled a young Alec Guiness to play Obi-Wan Kenobi, so too does Mr. Yelchin embody a young Michael Biehn who created the role 25 years ago. Adding some lovable humor to this year’s Star Trek and now giving us the only character worth watching in Salvation, this is turning out to be the summer of Yelchin, and let’s hope there are many more to come.

Other than that, the film is a mess. The action sequences are yawn-able, the motivations of neither the machines nor the humans make any no sense, and worst of all, we are offered no insight into John Connor’s destiny. As the lore goes, he is the key to ending the war with the machines, which he already did, preemptively, in the second film. We last saw him stuck in a bunker at the end of the third film, yet this film completely skips what happens after that. How does he get out and rise up through the ranks? Why do people think he is a prophet? Did he tell them? No answers are offered here, making this feel more like mid-season filler for a television show rather than the gratification we expect from a season finale.

McG, the film’s director, is someone I had hoped would have graduated from a successful run as an adolescent filmmaker. Unfortunately, his attempts at growing up falter on every front. This film tries to show us a gritty future, but the picture is so incredibly clean that this barely comes off. It feels like an effected car commercial instead of a bleak view of the future. On top of that, save for Mr. Yelchin, no one offers up a memorable performance, leading me to believe that McG has incredibly low expectations of his actors. He gets work because he knows how to blow stuff up, but even the action is tired. Spatially almost nothing makes sense and there are no intense moments. I kept thinking of how great it was in the original film when the T-800 busts into the police station to get Sarah Connor. That scene, pretty bare bones special effects wise, works because by that point the audience is braced and excited for the ensuing gun battle. No scene is ever to pulse pounding in this film. I’m not sure that McG will ever get better, so maybe the franchise should find someone else.

This is the first film not to feature Arnold Schwazzenegger, at least not in the flesh. A more important absence here, however, is James Cameron, whose name doesn’t appear in the credits at all, a Terminator first. This seems fitting as this is the least interesting and least innovative film of the bunch. Rise of the Machines at least offered up a wicked car chase. It is nice to see this beloved and respected story continue, but if this is direction things are going, then we have to say “Hasta La Vista, Baby”.

This time of year, I get a handful of e-mails from recent college graduates asking for jobs and advice about getting started in the film business. I always love responding to all of them. As a blogger, obviously I love it when people listen to my opinions. Naturally, I tend to repeat myself a lot, so I started thinking , why not just pile all of that advice into a single post that I can reference when people have questions. This advice isn’t limited just to college grads or even the younger set. If you’re in the mood for a career change there might be some tidbits you can use in here. So clean out those ears and listen up, here is the candler’s guide to starting out in the film industry.

1. Decide Where You Want to Live

The first question I ask every college graduate is “Where do you want to live?”. Some say “Wherever I can get a job” and I immediately let them know that this is the wrong answer. Economic meltdown notwithstanding, the only people who get jobs that will facilitate moving a new hire to a different city are executives, maybe lawyers or people with M.B.A.s. So you have to pick where you’ll be first and then it will get much easier to start looking for work.

For the film industry, the two main centers are New York and Los Angeles, though this is by no means your only option. Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, Shreveport, and Vancouver are just a few of the other cities in North America with established or burgeoning film communities. It is an industry that is doing extremely well given the economic climate, so we are actually seeing more work pop up in a variety of places, especially in cities and states that don’t have a strong fim business yet.

Once you pick the place you want to be, then you can come up with your plan of how to get there. This will require pounding the pavement and getting yourself a bit uncomfortable for a bit. All of us, and I really mean all of us, had to stay on a friends couch until we found a job or apartment. Wherever you end up, it will be a process to get yourself set up. Don’t worry, it gets better in time.

2. Choose a Skill and Perfect It

This may seem obvious, but a lot of film schools in the U.S. teach you the basics of many different fields instead of forcing you to master one. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s great to have a wide swath of knowledge as you start out in the world. Unfortunately, no one is hiring a writer/director/shooter/editor just out of school. If you want to make your own movies, then you simply have to go ahead and make your own movies. If you want to find a job within the film industry you will have to hone your knowledge in on one specific aspect of the biz.

There are so many jobs to fill on any one movie that it can be daunting to try to pick one area of expertise. Consider your long-term and short-term goals. Most likely, the short term goal is to make enough money to live, preferably even more so you can support your personal films. The thing is, any job in the world can fulfill that goal. Your long term goals are what will help guide you into your early niche.

For example, someone who wants to be a cinematographer might try to find jobs on film sets in the camera department in hopes of beefing up their resumé, meeting established contacts, and getting some face time with high end camera gear. What steps do you need to take to get a job in the camera department? Maybe you read camera manuals, subscribe to trade magazines, begin putting a reel together, and so one. Now you have three short-term goals that you can accomplish to start perfecting your skill.

3. Spend Both Your Time and Money Wisely

Another very common thing that recent grads will do is buy that camera or computer that they think will get them on their way. It’s true, you need these tools to get work, but you have to consider the feasibility of investing that much of your own money into gear. This is just like any other business, you’ll need to make enough money back from that purchase for it to be worth it. The same goes for training programs or seminars. If it’s worth it, go for it, just do enough research to be informed.

Here’s an example concerning your time. Apple offers certification in Final Cut Pro. The courses offer a great deal of information covering the entire breadth of the application. The tradeoff is that the program will take up a great deal of your time and costs a hefty chunk of money. I know plenty of people who have not taken these courses and get tons of Final Cut work. The certification is absolutely worth it for some people, but it is not necessarily required for everyone. No degree, course, computer or camera is going to guaruntee you work. It will always come down to your skill and tenacity.

4. Continuously Update Your Resume

This really only applies to freelancers, but in the film world you may find yourself freelancing a great deal at the beginning. There are many resources for writing a successful resumé in general, however there is some nuance for someone seeking film work. We can use mine as an example. (Click that graphic to the right. It hasn’t been updated in awhile…I’m not following my own rules!)

Most of it is familiar to any resumé: work, education, references. The one tweak is that I’ve divided my experience into “Film and Video Production Experience” and “Work Experience”. The difference is that one header is reserved for freelance work while the other holds my full-time work. It’s important to have both represented as they complement each other nicely. People hiring freelancers like to know that this is a person who can hold it together in a sustained environment while full-time employers are impressed that you can bounce from gig to gig easily.

Also, roll your freelancing work. When I first started out, everything under the first experience header was student work I did in college. As I got more pro experience, I would fill the new work to the top and roll the old stuff to the bottom. You may need to do this quite often depending on how much work you get. Hopefully you’ll have to change it often!

The other rule of thumb is to never underestimate your worth on any given job. The topmost freelance gig on my resumé is Assistant Editor for NASCAR in Primetime Opening Sequence, ABC Sports. Sounds semi-impressive, at the very least legit, right? In real life, it entailed about 3 days of work loading tapes for a 30 second sequence, yet it still takes up a full line, roughly 1/12 of the page. The point is that you need to focus in on the real work experience that you have, even if it doesn’t seem all that exciting when you’re doing it.

5. Keep Your Feet on the Ground and Have Some Fun

There is no question, the movie business is a very fun business to be in. You may find yourself working in exotic locations with celebrities and sometimes personal heroes. It is important to remember that it is very easy to get caught up in all the fun of it sometimes. People will tell you all kinds of stories. “I made my first film by maxing out all of my credit cards” is a classic legend that goes around. Yeah, that’s one way to get your work done, but there are always cheaper and better paths for you to choose.

Moreso than that, since there is that mystique surrounding moviemaking, many people are drawn into it and taken advantage of at the beginning. Do not fall into that trap. You have worked hard to attain the knowledge you have and you are skilled enough that it’s worth paying for. Many people get attached to films for very little or no money just for the fun of it, but you still have to pay rent and stuff.

That being said, a little bit of pro bono work in exchange for contacts and experience can go a long way. You simply have to figure out how it fits into your life. If you can swing a few weeks of no pay to learn something that will really help you out with your long term goals, then it is absolutely worth it. You just don’t want to find yourself hurting because you wanted to be on the same set as a D-list horror actor, you geek.

Alright, that was a whole lot of information thrown at you at once. The truth, obviously, is that there is no one right anwer. The film and video industry is incredibly fun and diverse. Have fun with it. It can take you to exoctic places and there is a great deal of room for growth. You can live the dream: start on the bottom and make your way to the top. You can also start on the bottom and work your way up to a nice living. Maybe start at the top and then even out somewhere in the middle.

These are just some tips to help you along the way. I’ve learned this all just from experience over the years and I am still learning more every day. Please add any helpful tips, or criticisms of my writing if you prefer, in the comments. The candler is a place for filmmakers and film lovers to come together and undertand our business, our medium, and our passions better. Best of luck to all of you. Now quit reading this and go out and make some movie magic.

The candler blog is based in New York City and is still in it’s first year, so when I went to the airport to buy my ticket to the French Riviera but could only hand them the lint in my pockets, I was rebuffed and sent back to my Manhattan abode. So yeah, I’m not at Cannes reporting on the biggest film news in the world, but we certainly can get some work done at a safe distance, no? Let’s gather some of the noise and make a little story about it. With me? Here goes…

Last week, the latest film from the ineffable Lars Von Trier, Antichrist, screened at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival, apparently causing the international film community to synchronously blush and squirm on the edge their seats. The internets are aflutter with talk about how great/sexy/violent/evil/awful/awesome the movie is. Is anyone surprised that Mr. Von Trier is once again a polarizing figure in cinema? What were you expecting?

An original member of the Scandinavian Dogme 95 collective, Lars Von Trier is one of the group’s most illustrious ex-pats. He made a real impact in the U.S. with his video musical Dancer in the Dark, starring Björk and Catherine Deneuve. After recieving  flack for making a film critiquing North American lifestyles (Dancer takes place in Canada) without ever having visited the continent, the director responded defiantly with Dogville, a grandiose experiment set in 1930s America. For some reason, every time you come close to pinpointing exactly what kind of filmmaker Mr. Von Trier is, he eludes you, sidestepping any label and making something completely unexpected.

I don’t want to talk about his newest film or the headier work mentioned above. I want to talk about Lars Von Trier, the unabashed trickster.

For 2006’s The Boss of it All, the acclaimed director utilized a system dubbed “Automavision”. Basically, he shot the film only from wider angles, or all establishing shots, and allowed a computer randomly tilt, pan, or zoom. Watching the film, you would never know this. It feels wholly organic, intentional. In fact, for Mr. Von Trier, it seems almost tame. Of course, behind the curtain the Danish cinéaste had a pile of tricks he was working with.

The plot is endearing and appropriate for such a ludicrous filmmaking method. Kristoffer is a struggling actor who is hired for a job at an IT company that he doesn’t quite understand. He quickly learns that Ravn is the company’s CEO, but has been pretending that he is just a manager answering to a higher power, the elusive boss of  it all who no one has ever met. By acting like an underling to the non-existent boss, Ravn is absolved of any real responsibility, particularly when it comes to firing people. He can just blame it on the the boss of it all, whom Kristoffer has been hired to play for the purposes of merger negotiations with an Icelandic company.

The scope of the story is small but the laughs are big and the form is unique. The Automavision process seemingly enhances the story more than detracting from it but questions abound. How much control does the computer really have? Why would Lars Von Trier relinquish so much control? What’s the point of reinventing the wheel here anyway? After leaving the Dogme 95 movement behind, Mr. Von Trier has gone out of his way to break all of the rules of that group’s “Vow of Chastity”. Besides breaking the specific codes of conduct with The Boss of It All, he has left the ideals of Dogme completely in the dust. Giving control over to a machine, he is simultaneously removing himself as creative controller and, amazingly, further pressing his status as provocateur by drawing attention to his shrunken role.

This is Trier the trickster. By defying our best attmepts to define him, he is toying with our expectations not only of the director but of the cinema itself. So bring on Antichrist, Lars. We may not be ready to watch it, but it seems that every time you pick up a camera we are left reconsidering the purposes of filmmaking. For that, we thank you. It is this boldness, this artistry, this prickishness that keeps us moving forward.

For a look at where he’ll take us next, check out this preview of Antichrist.