BBL

I'm on the verge of making my first feature film. Opinions on Filmmaking will resume in 2010. Thanks for reading!

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I'm believing more and more in the necessity of improvisation...

I've often noticed that that which I've not been able to resolve on paper, if I resolve it on location, whilst filming, it's that which I do the best.

Robert Bresson
from the pressbook for Lancelot du Lac (read full)

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In his (Dieter Dengler's) real story...there was real torture, very nasty torture. I never felt comfortable with number one filming it and keeping it in the film (Rescue Dawn) because I always when I make a film see it like a spectator. As a spectator, I do not want and do not like to see physical violence against the defenseless. I do not want to see the rape of a woman. I do not want to see torture of a man in handcuffs. A couple of these scenes were filmed because they happened to be in the screenplay. When you read it on paper, it looks different than when you really do it in physical life and you do it for the camera. Most of these scenes are deleted. I always had a feeling they should be deleted and I had a big confrontation with a producer one of these days and I predicted they would be out and they are out now. I’m very confident with the way it is.

Werner Herzog
from an interview with MoviesOnline

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It didn't matter to me whether or not Shadows would be any good; it just became a way of life where you got close to people and where you could hear ideas that weren't full of shit. We had no intention of offering it for commercial distribution. It was an experiment all the way, and our main objective was just to learn. Not one actor was paid for his services, nor were the technicians given anything. What kept us going was enthusiasm. We were working for the fun of doing something we wanted to do. It is more important to work creatively than to make money. We would never have been able to finish if all the people who participated in the film hadn't discovered one absolutely fundamental thing: that being an artist is nothing other than the desire, the insane wish to express yourself completely, absolutely.

John Cassavetes
from Cassavetes on Cassavetes

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I couldn't show violence, the blood, and those terrible things, because it would have been faked for the movie. People would say, "How did they do that?"

I understand your objection.

Sometimes you see things well done of this sort, but it is not moving - because you know it is false, because it is forced. But what you can do is have the sensation of death. You can be moved by death if you don't show it, if you suggest it. But if you show it, it's finished. The same thing about love. You don't feel love if you see two people making love.

Robert Bresson
from an interview with Paul Schrader (1976)
published in Film Comment in 1977 (read full)

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Quite possibly the greatest filmmaker interview I've ever read.

Robert Bresson

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I am the opposite of a writer. To make a film you must do everything yourself. To make an adaptation you must find in the book what could be inside yourself, what corresponds with your own observations. For the subject I've now been working on for many months I took notes on pieces of paper and put them together and waited, as I always do, till I thought the time had come to write the script. But I'm less and less in a hurry. I let things come instead of going to them. When I start writing the script I try much harder than I used to to see and hear the things together. Sometimes I write three or four lines—perhaps ten—of dialogue, which comes into my head, just like that. Then with that I try to make a filmscript. The dialogue is made inside my head and this dialogue, when I have finished it, I take apart and try to rewrite it fifty times. I'm not a writer but I want it to be mine.

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How did you arrive at the idea for the film (Au hasard Balthazar)?

Some years ago I had the idea for the film and I wanted to write it as soon as I'd finished shooting the film I was working on. The first morning, nothing came, and I had to stop. I tried many times to write it and I couldn't. I made a lot of notes and that's all. But one day I said, "I'll have to write it or the film will never be made." Then I wrote it down in two days. In the meantime I had the two big ideas for the construction: for the donkey, as for a man, if you see the time when he studies and then the time when he works, then death approaching, then the mystical time before dying, then the death, as for a human being. The other idea was to make him pass through all the vices of humanity. Then it was easier for me to write it down on paper.

Robert Bresson

from an interview in Transatlantic Review, Summer 1973 (read full)

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I know something that young filmmakers need to learn very early on: a perfect film does not exist. Filmmakers will always, no matter how much time they tinker away at this scene or that frame, have a sense that there are defects in their films that are amplified a thousand times in front of audiences. As a filmmaker, you simply have to learn to live with this, the same way a parent has to live with his children. One might have a stammer, the other has a squint, the third one limps. But you love them even more because they are not perfect. To you there is a certain perfection there anyway, no matter what anyone else thinks.

Werner Herzog
from Herzog on Herzog

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It's well known that when you let actors improvise, you have to start with a fixed idea and direct the improvisation in a certain direction, otherwise it doesn't work. Nothing happens - apart from using up loads of film. You have to sow the seeds. You create characters out of dust and blow life into them. You have to have some sort of plan, a plan that you impose on the actors, whether they're conscious of it or not. Then they can carry on working on the characters that you've given them.

Lars von Trier
from Trier on von Trier

An explanation

As I've posted much earlier, I take pride in keeping myself out of this blog, choosing to let comments be left to master filmmakers. However, I want to take an opportunity to explain something which may have caused some confusi0n.

You're sure to have noticed that Robert Bresson and Werner Herzog are quoted more frequently on here than any other filmmakers. There is a reason for this, aside from the fact they are two of my absolute favorite filmmakers. For the past few months, I have been studying the work of these directors in a self-conscious attempt to learn from them. By December, I will have finished studying both of them. There will continue to be quotations from both throughout the lifespan of this blog, but you will find more quotes coming in from other directors as I do a major focus on their works.

Directors I plan to study in 2010 include Andrei Tarkovsky, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Michael Haneke & Federico Fellini, so starting in January you will see more quotations from them. As I've done this year, I will also be posting snippets from other filmmakers I'm not exhaustively studying as I read interviews with them after watching thier individual films.

I hope you're enjoying this blog.

Jason LaRay Keener

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It's not a question of understanding, it's a question of feeling, which is not exactly the same thing.

Robert Bresson
from a press conference for L'Argent at Cannes
as seen in The Road to Bresson (1984)

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If with this film (Au hasard Balthazar) I succeed in touching the public, it is especially, as happens in literature, thanks to that autobiographical element....The beginning of the film bathes in my childhood - the countryside, the fields, the trees, and the animals - these are my vacations as a child and an adolescent.

Robert Bresson
from an interview with Yvonne Baby, Le Monde (1966)

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I don't care about that scum! Why should I receive a prize?! I know that I'm a genius!

Klaus Kinski
from My Best Fiend (1999)
paraphrased by Werner Herzog

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The difficulty is that all art is both abstract and suggestive at the same time. You can't show everything. If you do, it's no longer art. Art lies in suggestion. The great difficulty for filmmakers is precisely not to show things. Ideally, nothing should be shown, but that's impossible. So things must be shown from one sole angle that evokes all other angles without showing them. We must let the viewer gradually imagine, hope to imagine, and keep them in a constant state of anticipation. This goes back to what I said earlier about showing the cause after the effect.

We must let the mystery remain. Life is mysterious, and we should see that on-screen. The effects of things must always be shown before their cause, like in real life. We're unaware of the causes of most of the events we witness. We see the effects and only later discover the cause.

Robert Bresson
from Un metteur en ordre (1966)

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All art is a single person’s work. But a film is created by a collectivity, and a collectivity cannot create art unless an artistic personality stands behind it and acts as its driving force.

The first creating impulse for a film comes from the writer whose work is the actual foundation for the film. But from the moment the poetic foundation is laid, it is the director’s task to give the film its style. The many artistic details are born through his initiative. It ought to be his feelings and moods that color the film and that awaken corresponding feelings and moods in the spectator’s mind. Through the style he infuses the work with a soul–and that is what makes it art. It is for him to give the film a face–namely his own.

Because it is like this, we directors have a very large responsibility. We have it in our hands to lift the film from industry to art, and, therefore, we must go to our work with seriousness, we must want something, we must dare something, and we must not jump over where the fence is lowest. If film as an art is not to come to a standstill, we must work to create a mark of style, a mark of personality in the film. Only from this can we expect renewal.

Carl Th. Dreyer
from Thoughts on My Metier (read full)

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The society we live in is drenched in violence. I represent it on the screen because I am afraid of it, and I think it is important that we should reflect on it. All my films deal with issues that I find socially relevant, and all my films deal with my own fears. I am dealing with questions that I find oppressive or important, that interest me dramatically. I think that the things that are going well in society are difficult to present dramatically. In my 20 years of working in the theater, I only staged one comedy, and that was my single failure. My films are also a protest against the mainstream cinema, a response to the films screened in theaters today. If mainstream films were different, my films would be different as well.

Michael Haneke
from an interview with Bright Lights Film Journal (read full)

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It (Paranormal Activity) illustrates one of my favorite points, that silence and waiting can be more entertaining than frantic fast-cutting and berserk f/x. For extended periods here, nothing at all is happening, and believe me, you won't be bored.

Roger Ebert
from a review of Paranormal Activity (2007) [read full]