Chapter 1 Motion Picture Language 41appropriate style to communicate that cinematically. And if you move
between varied projects, the style can change quite a bit too. And so,
my fi rst fi lm, On the Ropes, was about boxers in Bed-Stuy, a very poor
neighborhood, and it was very important that the fi lm not be heavily
stylized or glossy, that it be real and gritty and that the soundtrack
came from those streets.
Any kind of “making of ” story has endless confl ict because to
arrive at a fi nal product there’s just so much fi ghting and heartache that
happens along the way. So Film School is about showing the confl ict
that’s happening in trying to collaborate which invariably appears.
And then we also chose to come up with animation to show the fruit
of their idea, the idea at the beginning that described what their movie
is. We wanted to use animation to show a storyboard of the fi lm in
their head.Q
What are some comparisons and contrasts between fi ction and non-
fi ction moviemaking?A
Ultimately, you’re trying to arrive at the same goal, to tell a really honest,
compelling story and use the same sort of dramatic structure for either
medium. Th e route to get there is rather diff erent though. For a fi ction
fi lm it’s so important for your script to be as good as can be, because
you’re going to shoot your script. You’re going to be limited with your
choices in the edit room. Whereas in a non-fi ction fi lm, you have a very
high shooting ratio but you also have little control, comparatively.
In a fi ction fi lm that I made, I directed performances to make them
feel as honest as possible, and as real as possible, like in a documentary
where you try to get your subjects to feel as honest and real on camera,
because they have a camera in their face and you are sort of altering reality.
In a way, you are trying to fi gure out “how can they be themselves? How
can they be most natural?” Th e diff erence is they are that person rather
than embodying a character through lines they’re supposed to say.
In documentary fi lmmaking, you are asking people to open up
their lives to you, and you have to gain their trust, and with actors
in fi ction fi lms—even though they’re a trained professional playing a
part—you are guiding them into how they should appear on screen and
they equally need to trust you in a diff erent way. Th ey need to trust that
they’re in good hands and that when you ask them to do something in
a certain way they won’t end up looking like fools but they will actually
be complimented by that process.
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Nanette Burstein.Copyright 2010 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).