The Top Thirteen Tendencies of Young Filmmakers Today (as judged by an over the hill film professor)

The Top Fifteen Tendencies of Young Filmmakers Today

(As judged by an over the hill film professor)

I have decided in the interest, not in marking some educative or cultural revelation but merely for my amusement to highlight the top fifteen tendencies of filmmakers under 25 years old. I have been teaching film now for over ten years and it has provided me at least with the illusion of some perspective in order to comment. Forgive me if I seem mean and catty but I have found that a cliché is usually a cliché because it is true. Have I seen a few people that are exceptions to these rules? Of course I have. Have I seen youth that break these stereotypes and see movies that date before Zach Snyder? Of course I have. That still doesn’t prevent me from sounding off.

1. NO CLOSE UPS. Ever. I do not know when precisely it happened but over the last ten years, but film students born in the nineties seem paranoid to delve into the intimate and beautiful world of the close up. The tendency, when they pick up a camera is never to film the human face but rather to film the actors against things, providing them with context, no matter how ugly that location is. Youngsters would rather film someone against a flat white wall then change the camera or lens to fill in more of the frame with a human being. I do not know why. Intimacy problems of a generation? An inherent fear of actors? John Ford said that one of the most beautiful landscapes you can film is the landscape of the human face. Filmmakers of this generation obviously do not agree. They don’t want to see their peers in close up. And God forbid, they see themselves in close up. One theory may be due to the ubiquitousness of the smart phone, and the “selfie”, and thus to differentiate themselves as artists, one has to stay away from the portrait, but this is just guessing at one of life’s great mysteries. 

2. ADD A LOW FREQUENCY KEYBOARD NOTE OVER ENTIRE SCENES TO CREATE TENSION. This one really gets me as I really think that most filmmakers now equate the idea of tension with a low keyboard sound that tends to rattle the woofers. Why do they like these low drones so much?  Are young people now more tuned to low frequency sounds? 

3. A sub category of this impulse also tends to the instinct to ADD THE SOUND OF A HUMAN HEARTBEAT as a terrible sound effect which in my opinion does the opposite of getting me scared. I am just thinking “listen to that terrible sound effect that someone found on the internet of a heart beat.” Who can hear the sound of someone else’s hear beat anyway without a stethoscope? Are all the characters doctors?  

4. ADD YOUR TERRIBLE INAPPROPRIATE MUSICAL CHOICES over scenes that have nothing to do with either the lyrics being expressed or the music? Russian and Eastern European students tend to the worst at this, as their taste in popular music tends to be offputtingly bad even if they weren’t trying to choose musical selections for their film. Music deafens all of us into thinking our movies are good when they are not.  

5. THINGS DO NOT MEAN WHAT I THINK THEY MEAN. This is a rule that actually pre dates the present generation of filmmakers.  All film students love symbolism more than love and life itself. Symbolism in literature is simple enough. Write about an object and equate it with an idea often enough and your reader will eventually start to equate the two as well. But many filmmakers think that symbolism comes naturally to audience members without any prior explanation. As if I am automatically going to understand that the green apple their character is always eating means that she is jealous. Film students assume that everything that is clear in their head is clear on screen. And this is not the case.  Which brings me to my next point: 

6. THE NEED TO DO DIRECTOR’S COMMENTARY to explain the short that they have just made as the film is unspooling in front of their prospective audiences. They may not admit it. But really if they only had a chance to explain what they mean and the intentions behind the movie, the viewing experience would be infinitely better. I do not have to point out that the the idea of this is ridiculous. It would be the only time that one would be tempted to watch a movie on DVD with the director’s commentary option just so that one could understand what the hell is going on.   

7. I AM DOING A COMEDY YET I DO NOT WANT TO MAKE A COMEDY. People born after 1995 really hate the idea of doing a comedy as there is not only a lack of respect for comedy at film schools but they also (perhaps quite rightly ) assume that making a comedy is harder than pulling off a drama.  Doing a subtle comedy with believable characters that feels half as successful as a weep fest is always a challenge to say the least. That being said, half of the ideas that students propose are essentially comic in their nature. Yet they “see” them as dead serious concepts, even though the behavior or situation is inherently ridiculous. And so; they go and direct them as serious pieces of fiction. Thus you get the worst possible outcome: someone who thinks their film is a serious hard hitting drama and hearing the audience laugh at their movies rather than take them as seriously as they were in their head. Half the time, I have to explain to my students “ look, you have written a comedy. Just go with this fact and you may be a lot more successful.” They remain unconvinced, terrified and resistant.  

8. I AM UNAWARE OF ANYTHING MADE PRE 1999. Nor do I want to be aware of anything made pre 1999. There are exceptions of course but most students born in 1995 possess a knowledge of cinema that pretty much dates from just after TITANIC came out. Perhaps it is a result of the dark ages  we are living in but the rock star directors of film schools are no longer such luminaries as Bergman and Fellini but rather misanthropic assholes like LARS VON TRIER and MICHEL HANEKE. Which I find infinitely depressing.

9. TECH TOYS ARE ALWAYS BETTER THAN INTELLIGENCE AND CREATIVITY. Acting and storytelling are mysterious things that cannot be controlled, however, what can be controlled is obsessing over the latest gadgets and gear available on tech websites. Everyone is a cinematography focused individual, offering commentary on the newest black magic camera. Buying a steadicam is always the thing to do. They should be wondering how to make a standard image look better but instead if there is a bad word to say about the image, most students blame it on the tools, rather than the Art.

10. EVERYONE MOURNS THE LOSS OF FILM. Ah how the hallowed halls of film schools around the world mourn the fact that they can no longer learn how to load a 16 mm camera or wind up a Bolex. How the film school romantic still dreams of editing in the dark with tape and splicers. One mourns the thing that that one never has.  Meanwhile, the average public sits in the theatre and can’t tell the difference between digital and 35mm projection. 

11. EVERYONE WANTS INSTANTANEOUS CUTS. No student born after 1995 wants to spend a long time shaping the picture edit. They expect picture, sound and music to be done at the same time and a cut to be ready by the time it takes to grab another beer out of the fridge.  Spending time honing an edit is like re writing and there is nothing that a film student resents more than time spent refining. I am not going to say that the current generation of film students are lazy but that is exactly what I am saying. 

12. SAY YOU DO NOT LIKE READING YET YOU ARE KEEN TO WRITE SCREENPLAYS FOR A LIVING. This one is puzzling and frustrating for obvious reasons. It’s like saying you want to make pizza but you could really do without the dough. Obviously I am aware that the language of cinema is essentially a visual one. And that one can approach storytelling from this perspective. But sooner, or later, like it or not, the majority of what we can learn about storytelling can be learned from all the annals of human experience and not just the faceless landscapes of GRAND THEFT AUTO.

13. ACTORS ARE MYSTERIOUS CREATURES THAT ARE BEST LEFT TO THEIR OWN DEVICES .Trying to work at a language in order to communicate with them is useless. The idea of building a performance is alchemy. It is far better to hang out by the DP and look through the monitor, than to “get involved”.  They do what they do. We do what we do.

14. THE BEHIND THE SCENES  STORY OF MAKING THE SHORT IS ALMOST ALWAYS BETTER THAN THE SHORT ITSELF. If students would simply look at what is going in their daily lives and devote attention to the richness of their lives, they could perhaps get away from the sneaking sensation than the things they want to write the short about are not as interesting as the process going on behind the scenes. For instance:

15. IF STUDENTS COULD TAKE THE REASONS THEY WERE LATE FOR CLASS and turn this into their shorts, then they would have something there.

I am sure there are many more clichés that I could think of but 15 seemed fitting somehow. Now I am ready for the angry railing maintaining that all of this is false.