In my first year of teaching film to middle school students in San Diego, an eighth grader told me he wished he could just skip high school and go straight to film school. I asked him why. He said, “because film is my life, I already know it’s what I want to do, and I just want to get started.”
The good news in that you don’t have to wait til film school. Having been to film school myself, I knew there were some things he could learn about and do now, just like people do in film school, and things that would prepare him to be the filmmaker he wanted to be. One of those things is watching well-made classic movies with purpose, and learning from them. Another is experimenting with the techniques you learn in your own work.
Inevitably, my students would ask for a list of the “really good” classic movies they could watch. They were willing to put up with black and white movies, “but not the boring ones.” Luckily there are lots of fantastic old movie classics that aren’t boring, and they’re readily available on DVDs for purchase or rental online, and for borrowing from libraries, too. A great many of them can also be streamed on various media channels. Young filmmakers can watch classic films the way film school students and filmmakers watch them: with an eye to improving their own film-making techniques, finding inspiration, and learning what they like and don’t like.
My goal with this book is to help young filmmakers, the people who support them, and anyone of any age who wants to watch classic films with purpose. What are we Watching? is the book I wish I could have handed my students when they asked me for a list of classic films to watch. A book that shows them how to watch films like we did at film school, and the way great filmmakers watch films. More than just a list of terrific movies, it has ideas about what makes a film worthwhile, what techniques you can notice, and then apply to your own work. That’s a lot of what film school is about. You watch movies, learn from them, and go out and make your own.
Organization:
What are we Watching? lists 20 classic movies. Each movie entry contains five sections:
- What’s it all about?
- Trivia Tidbits
- Fabulous Filmmaking
- Super Storytelling
- Credits
- Want More?
•What’s it all About?
When choosing a film to watch, it helps to know a little about the plot, its length, and the year it was made. This short section that you decide whether you’re in the mood for this kind of story.
•Trivia Tidbits
This section contains interesting facts about the movie, giving some context and whetting your appetite for things to come. If you’re the kind of person who finds it interesting that the arrow sound in The Adventures of Robin Hood is the same sound effect used in the Star Wars films, this section is for you.
•Fabulous Film-making
This is specifically written for young filmmakers. I list techniques the great filmmakers have used in the movie we’re watching and these are techniques you can use in your own films, too. Painters used to go to museums and copy the great masters before going back to the studio to create their own work. They practiced and experimented with various techniques until they found their own style, their own voice, what they wanted to share with the world in their own way. This section helps you do that with movies. You see what you can learn from the greats, apply some of those things to your own work, play around with the ideas, try stuff until you figure out what you like and don’t, what helps you express yourself and what doesn’t. At first, as you are learning, you might just copy, but with practice, and by actually doing, you will eventually make your work your own.
•Super Storytelling
Some people watching these movies may be more interested in the stories they tell than in the techniques used to film them. In Super Storytelling, I focus on great storytelling techniques. This is useful for directors trying to understand the structure of their movies, and for writers writing screenplays, but it goes beyond that, too. Any time you write, whether a story or an essay, an article or a presentation, you are trying to communicate your ideas to other people. The writers of these classic films understood how communicate in a gripping and powerful way. Observing their techniques helps us learn how to better understand our audience, think of structure, and express your point of view in a way that engages our audience. Storytelling is a skill that more people in all areas of business, academia, and even in the sciences are realizing is crucial not just to entertainment, literature, and advertising, but to all sorts of arenas. Watching how great filmmakers tell stories and analyzing the techniques they use can help us with our own work, in many different media and in many different fields.
•Credits
Sometimes you’ll love a film so much that you’ll definitely want to watch other films made by the same people. Credits can be found at the beginning and end of films, but this way you can easily find the names of actors and filmmakers whose work you’d like to explore further. It takes more than a director and actor to make a big movie and you’ll find that each department lends its own vision and style to their project. Maybe you’re interested in costume, or eye-catching set design. Look up other films made by these same people and see what else you can learn.
•Want More?
Although I know how important each and every crew member is to the the final result of a film, the director is in charge of unifying the various artists and craftsman to make what becomes the final film. He or she takes responsibility in the end for most of the decisions, regardless of whether the ideas were originally his or hers. I encourage you to look beyond directors to other crew members and actors when you really enjoy a film (see above) and explore more of their work. This section focuses on directors as a stepping stone. If you want a few more great titles made by the same director, here’s where you can find them.