As I’ve aged, I find it harder to make movies. I don’t have
the energy that I had when I was younger. I won’t let that stop me.
In this post, I want to take a look at one of my first movies, “Who Shot the President,” and consider how I worked with my limitations back then..
This post includes spoilers, so you may want to watch it
before you read the rest of the post, you can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lSTEhH0d4E
. The film runs about 3 minutes.
I made two versions of this movie. The first in 1994 on
Super 8, and a second in 2004 on 16mm.
Inspiration
While I completed the first version of “Who Shot the
President” back in 1994, the idea came to me a few years earlier. In the late
1980s and early 1990s I watched several documentaries about the assassination
of John Kennedy. Then in 1991 I saw the movie JFK. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JFK_(film)
To begin with, I was open to the possibility that there was
a conspiracy. But I am also something of a skeptic in general, so I was apt to question
what people said. The more I learned about the assassination, the less likely I
felt that there was a conspiracy.
This was before I really got serious about making movies.
But I began to think about making a parody movie of the conspiracy
documentaries that I had watched.
Generating Ideas
Over the next few years, I came up a quite a few ideas for
my parody movie. At the time I thought of this as a feature length live action
movie.
One idea was to have a character do a blow up of a
reflection in a piece of chrome on one of the cars to reveal the shooter. Who
would be someone who obviously couldn’t be the shooter.
Another idea I had was an “interview” with one of the
co-conspirators to expose the plan. I had several different ideas as to what
the interview would expose.
Realization
It was during this period that I began to get serious about
making movies. I made one movie on Super 8 (“Weekend in Calgary” https://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/filmlist/weekend-in-calgary)
which was screened at the first $100 Film Festival.
I started to look for an idea for another movie, and I went
back to my assassination conspiracy theory parody movie idea. At this point I
had managed to make a 3-minute film on Super 8. The ideas I had for my parody
movie were far beyond what my skills and finances could accomplish.
The realization made me discouraged and, so, I gave up on
the idea.
Reconsideration
Later, though, I went back to the idea. I knew I had the
skills and money to do a 3-minute movie on Super 8. Could I develop one of the
ideas I had come up with into a movie of that scale?
My first question was to ask myself, what do I want to say
with this movie? I didn’t want to just have a joke. It had to have a bigger
meaning.
The answer was that I felt that so many of the conspiracy
theories used circular reasoning. For example: If there was no proof of a
conspiracy, that was proof that there was a cover up. Since there was a cover
up, that proved that there was a conspiracy.
Recognizing Opportunity
My observation that conspiracy theories follow circular
reasoning fit with one of the ideas I had for the interview with the
co-conspirator. The interview would follow the pattern of the old Abbot and
Costello “Who’s on First” routine, where the conversation plays off
misunderstandings and goes around in circles.
I didn’t feel up to the technical challenge of doing an
interview, so I came up with a different approach to the visuals for the movie.
I would use a series of stills related to the assassination. As the interview
progressed the individual shots would get shorter. I would select these images
so that at the end of the film they would create the impression that the screen
was spinning in a circle.
The spinning effect worked well on the Super 8 version of
the movie, but when I redid the movie on 16mm, the effect wasn’t as effective.
Later, when I watched Chris Marker’s movie “La Jetée” I was
struck that he used a similar approach. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fU99W-ZrIHQ
Making the Movie
Some years ago, I wrote another blog post about making “Who
Shot the President.” So, if you want more details on how I made the movie, you
can read about them here: https://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/how-to-make-a-film-for-the-hundred-dollar-film-festival-part-3/
Of particular note, when I did the first version, I used a
tripod and placed the stills on the floor. This resulted in my doing about
2,000 deep knee bends while shooting the movie. I don’t think I could do that
now.
Lessons Learned
The movie was a success from my point of view, and I got a
lot of positive feed back from people. I also got physical threats from people
who found it upsetting.
However, what I learned from making the movie the way I did
was that it was possible to rethink an idea to fit both the goals you want to
achieve with a movie and the limitations of your own abilities. In the end, I believe
the film I made was better than what I would have made if I had the wherewithal
to make the feature I originally conceived.
Another lesson is the importance of having a clear idea what
you want to say with your movie. In this case, knowing what I wanted to say
helped me focus on those aspects of the movie that carried that message and in
a way that I could actually achieve.
I’ve thought of this approach as similar to poetry. The
structure of a poem constrains how a poet can express themselves. It is those
constraints that encourage creativity.
This post is a mirror from my main blog
http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog
