I’ve just been taken back to my childhood this afternoon. “The 300 Spartans” has been shown on ITV1. A friend and I saw this at one of the cinemas in Scunthorpe (my home town) when I was 11 during a wonderful and formative time in my life.

I guess this latest TV showing is tied into the upcoming release of “300″, a retelling of the classic graphical novel by Frank Miller as a dark comic book fantasy.

I saw “The 300 Spartans” as child as part of my induction into sword and sandal epics. Just another one of a large number of epics made about events in ancient Rome or Greece made as co-productions usually with Italians taking the lead. I remember “The Wooden Horse of Troy” (later retitled “The Trojan Wars”), “Romulus and Remus”, “The Colossus of Rhodes” and a few more.

“The 300 Spartans” was in that genre but had largely Hollywood values and the cream of British acting talent taking the supporting roles at the time. It is not the best film in the world but to an impressionable 11 year old in 1964 it was exciting and captivating. The scale, the action, the excitement, the heroism, the sacrifice.

As a more cynical 54 year old the scenes that invoked my attention this time round were the politics, the oratory, the history and the arguments between the city states of Greece before unification. Ralph Richardson was wonderful as Thermistocles. It’s not quite in the league of the darkly menacing and acidic sparring between Laurence Olivier and Charles Laughton in the Roman Senate in “Spartacus” but interesting nevertheless.

The action scenes were quite impressive as spectacle but a few close battlefield shots let them down ultimately. And the final rain of transparent arrows drawn on to the film that kill the remaining Spartans is a bit laughable. But it was 1963. No CGI then. At the end of the day it was a traditional Hollywood film about a worthy subject - self sacrifice to  protect freedom and democracy against tyranny. Some have seen it having Cold War overtones. Looking back there are many parallels with “El Cid” which came out two years earlier in 1961.

Now back to the here and now. I confess to not having seen the film yet but “300″ looks very promising. The trailers are sensational. Clearly this is no remake. And the stamp of “Sin City” on the look of this film is undeniable. I hope the acting and the narrative are as good as the graphics. This time style is paramount. It appears as if bronze statues have come to life. Realism and historical accuracy are put to one side as the tale becomes a fantasy. And maybe a homoerotic one at that.

What it does share in common with its predecessor is the epic qualities in the battle scenes. Nowadays, we cannot expect to see live action epics that just happen to use half of the Greek army to act as the hoardes of Persian invaders. It would be just too costly. So CGI steps in and we can manufacture virtual warriors. Scores of them at much less cost and much more manageable.

Violence as we all now know has to be shown graphically today. Audiences of most ages have come to expect it. Tons of gore and hacked off limbs. Stop motion fight sequences. Blood splashes in slow motion. But there has to be “wow” factor, something that hasn’t been seen before to single it out from the crowd. Even in the trailers you can see that “300″ has it, the “wow” factor.

I just hope there is sufficient back story, character development, and narrative nuance to satisfy us old timers. Otherwise, it may just be a Pyrrhic victory for style over content. I have cheated and looked at the IMDB feedback which at the moment is terrific. I’ll have to see for myself!

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It must be a great time to be a young energetic and imaginative film-maker at the moment. “The world is your lobster!” as Derek Trotter might have said. Why do I say that?  Because it seems to me that they have more options now than their predecessors ever had.

It was not so long ago that fresh-faced graduates of film schools would get on the ladder of major film-making through the auspices of the large production companies. Getting their face known, showing their skills and abilities and eventually climbing the corporate ladder

But there are some trends that are evident now that could cut through all of the traditional ways of making films, marketing, distributing and presenting them.

Digital video is one of the most significant developments that is starting to democratise film-making. In theory, any one can make a film as long as you have a DV recorder and a PC with the right software. True you still need to have talent and vision but it doesn’t cost the earth to get started. The cost of storing and manipulating moving images has plumetted as processing power becomes greater and the price of hard disks and storge media decreases. Special effects are available to all with low cost, chromakey technology. The quality of DV recorders is improving daily and excellent sound capture equipment is within the reach of most budding movie makers. Editing can be done on the PC.

The technical and cost barriers to making your own film have been eroded away. Just get together with a few talented mates, use your imagination and ingenuity, get organised with a script and actors and go and make your film! Just take some inspiration from the original “Evil Dead”, “The Blair Witch Project” and “Napolean Dynamite”. Even major film makers are converting to DV. Mike Figgis has experimented with DV on ”Time Code” (2000) and just recently David Lynch has released “Inland Empire” (2007) to critical acclaim.

So what happens then. Who is going to see your masterpiece? How can you get paid for your efforts? When are you going to be invited to Hollywood?

Apart from your parents and interested friends is any one else likely to see your creation? Well, if you get out there and market it, quite probably. There is a huge audience out there to tap into. Just look at the rise of YouTube. People making small films of themselves or things and events around them and making them available to any one who has a PC across the globe. This site gets millions of hits every day. No surpirise that Google has taken them over. Why not use it as a marketing opportunity to show a trailer of your film? David Lynch did this with “Inland Empire”. Viral marketing and word of mouth could hook you up with thousands of potential viewers and get that precious PR and buzz. All for free!

As video streaming technology improves you could distribute your film yourself over the net. Bypassing the traditional means of film distribution. There are already loads of internet operations that sell films by download. The infrastructure is already there for you to make money.

Going straight to video is usually filmspeak for poor quality films that are likely to do poorly at the box office. Actually you could turn that round and make quality films that will only be seen in the home and not at the cinemas. People will be able to still have a great film experience with all the new Home Cinema technology (50+ inch screens, Dolby Digital sound through a multitude of speakers etc) being sold at the moment.

So in effect you don’t need the big procduction companies, the big distribution companies and the big cinema multiplex chains. Granted if you want to make an enormous epic like Star Wars or Lord of the Rings then it might be a little difficult to do it a home DV recorder but who knows with a little imagination…….. 

There are many books on screenwriting that give you a formula or set of rules to build (and sell) your script. Having read a number of them over the years, the one I go back to for a little inspiration from time to time is a “How to Write a Movie in 21 Days” by Viki King. It was originally written in 1988 by Ms King who is a writer, script consultant and lecturer who lives in Los Angeles. A small book in comparison to others but easy to read and packed with good information.

The Inner Movie Method that it explains is based upon the premise “Write from your heart. Re-write from your head”. Let your creative side have space to write what comes to your heart. Then let the analytic side of your head decide whether it is good or bad and which parts need tweaking. Along side this there is a lot of solid advice on planning, organisation and writing techniques that show you how to produce a script in 21 days.

The thing that stands out for me is the fact that it talks about all those little obstacles that are put in our way (or we put in our own way) and how to overcome them. The psychological traps.

I always come away thinking “Yeah. I can do that!” I find re-reading it quite motivational and good for demolishing writer’s block.

How do you write a 120 page script? Easy, break it down into chunks. Where should the characters  be (psychologically, philosophically and geographically) at various points in the script? Write in short quick bursts. Picture it in your head. Actions speak louder than words. Think cinematically. Re-write with your more critical head on. Produce a final script you are proud of.

This book is a great but inexpensive resource to dip into to provide you with a slightly different perspective on how to write scripts. A must for every budding screenwriter.

I was watching the television when The Straight Story was showing last night. It reminded me of the first time that I’d seen that film and the emotions that I’d experienced.

Maybe it’s because I’m getting on a bit in years that I found it very moving. And it was all the more moving because it was based on a true story.

The plot is very simple. Two brothers, who haven’t seen each other for ten years, suffer a stroke and a fall respectively at about the same time. One of the brothers, Alvin, decides to visit the other, Lyle, to see how he is and put right the past. Problem - he has no money to pay for the trip. Solution - he ties up a trailer to his lawnmower and sets off on a 350 mile trip down to Wisconsin where his brother now lives.

The film is about the journey but explores lots of themes. The film is gentle and rhythmic (almost lyrical) and is governed by the pace of the lawnmower (which becomes a small John Deere Tractor by the end). There is no whiz bang here, it is a quiet character piece that hints at bigger themes - struggling with old age, the importance of family ties, getting lost on all sorts of different levels , the words left unsaid. It is a beautifully hypnotic film.

One of the most amazing things about the film is that it is directed by David Lynch, he of the surreal Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart and the bewildering Twin Peaks (TV). One commentator said of Lynch that “he has the power to disturb and bewitch” at the same time. However, this is a quiet meditation.

This film, set in the mid west small towns, is played straight (no pun intended)  yet Lynch is able to bewitch (if not disturb us) through the surrealness of the ordinary.The odd characters, the unusual nature of the journey, the stunning visuals. The acting, particularly by Richard Farnsworth as Alvin, is excellent as we are drawn into his world and struggle with him. We are aching for him to reach his brother’s place and willing them to reconcile. The final bitter-sweet scene on Lyle’s ramshackle porch (with hardly any dialogue) conveys the obvious rift there has been between them and a brotherly indifference masking the hint of a reconciliation.

I suppose many younger film goers brought up on a fare of action movies and special effects might find the film boring. Older film goers will probably relate to many aspects of the film feeling apprehension at the thought of growing old and joy at the eventual triumph of the will (or equally apt, stubbornness). It’s one of the films that will stick in my memory until the day I die.

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One of my favourite film directors is Akira Kurosawa. Sadly, he is no longer with us but he has left a fantastic legacy of fine films which have had so much influence in the film world.

Most people will know of him as the maker of “The Seven Samurai” - a film that told the story of seven itinerant swords-for-hire who come together to defend a village from a large gang robbers. It was remade in Hollywood as “The Magnificent Seven”.  This is extremely interesting as Kurosawa has always acknowledged the influence on him of John Ford westerns!

He was perhaps the only Japanese film maker of his era to gain wider acceptance in the west although in Japan his staus was not as pronounced. His long career spanned over from the 1930s as a young assistant director to the 2000s just before his death. He made over 30 films as director and many more as writer, editor or producer, sometimes combining the roles on one film.

His golden era started in the 1950s with a series of critically acclaimed but mostly historical films. In addition to “The Seven Samurai”, he directed the savage and cynical revenge piece “Yojimbo” translated as The Bodyguard. This film was remade in the West as “A Fistful of Dollars”  - the classic spaghetti western that spawned a whole new genre of films.

More interestingly, he made the superb “Rashomon” - a tale of the (supposed) rape of a woman in the forest told from several different character viewpoints. As well as winning several awards in its day, you can see its influence on more recent Hollywood films such as “The Usual Suspects” and many court room dramas.

Speilberg and Lucas have acknowledged their debt to Kurosawa. Indeed, the arguing robots in Star Wars are based on a couple of soldiers in Kurosawa’s “The Hidden Fortress”.

He also had the power to take Shakespearian material and remould it into a medieval Japanese setting. His “Throne of Blood” was a bloody version of Macbeth in the tradition of a No play. One of his greatest works was the masterful “Ran” (literally translated as Chaos) - an epic tragedy based on  ”King Lear”.

In his later works, there were a number of common strands and themes:

• Strong stories - he was a master story teller and he made sure that these shone through his writings.
• Beautiful cinematography - he was also a painter and used to storyboard his pictures as paintings and works of art in their own right. The landscape photography in “Dersu Uzala” is breath-taking. The burning castle in “Ran” is beautiful but terrible. The final scene in “Kagemusha” as the camera pans out to see the extent of death on the battle field is wondrous with the rivers literally running red.
• The weather - he used the weather as a metaphor and also to induce moods in his films. The wind represented  chaos and upheaval in “Throne of Blood” and “Ran”. The rain in Seven Samurai accentuated the slaughter of the robbers at the climax with horses and robbers struggling to fight in the mud. Fog and mist were used to denote the mystical and supernatural and invoke fear in the characters
• Believably human characters - his characters were multi-faceted, mixing the good traits with the bad, making the stories come alive. They all have their own particular mannerisms, foibles, fears and beliefs.
• Action sequences - he was extremely skillful in staging large scale battle sequences as evidenced in “Throne of Blood”, “Kagemusha” and “Ran”. They are stirring, exciting, epic and tragic
• Humour - Kurosawa could use humour to let the audience catch their breath before the next action or show a different side to a particular character.

There is much to admire in Kurosawa’s films if you can get over the inevitable sub titles. He has given Hollywood and the West, in general, many insights in to great film-making. Let’s hope that the newer breeds of director, during their filmic upbringing, have learnt from  an acknowledged master of his craft.

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Hooray for Hollywood. The Academy got it right in the end. Best Director went belatedly to Martin Scorcese.

I don’t know about you but it felt like The Academy were clearing up a mess in the best way they knew how. Scorcese had been overlooked so many times with infinitely superior films that they had to do something special.

So, one of the worst kept secrets of the awards ceremony was let out of the bag when the triumvirate of Copolla, Spielberg and Lucas came out of the wings to present the award. It must have been really disheartening for the other directors in the running for Best Director. “I’ll get my coat” time!

How better to receive your Oscar than from your mates, your contemporaries? It was like the Academy was saying “sorry” for all the past rejections. Even Scorcese displayed a little cynicism when he asked for them to check the name on the card. But like any true Hollywood professional he quickly gave in to the schmaltz and saccharine. Why oh why couldn’t it have been for Raging Bull or Good Fellas or, even, Taxi Driver.

Still, the monkey is off his back now. Let’s hope he continues making superior Hollywood films for many years to come.

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Ever since cinema began Hollywood executives and screenwriters have been looking for the holy grail - a story structure that will work over and over again in different environments, across different genres and with different characters to lay the foundations for a successful screenplay. If you had this formula it would be like pure gold or cash in the bank.

As film-making is a business no one wants to lose money. No studio wants a flop. Every screen writer wants to increase their chance of their script acceptance. Imagine having a story model that would hook the audience every time and draw them into the film and tap into universal human emotions.

Over the years there have been a couple of main contenders which have been used by screenwriters. Surprisingly, the first was of Russian origin.

Vladimir Propp (1928) made an analysis of Russian folk tales and discovered that they shared certain common structural features regardless of the individual differences in terms of plot, setting or characters. He proposed that there were certain roles that were present in the characters - the hero, the villain, the false hero, the donor, the helper etc. - that were always present in the characters despite the different setting and plot. He also defined 31 narrative units that described action in the story. These units were enough to describe all the stories but not all the units are present although the units that are there follow a prescribed order.

The Proppian analysis or structure does have its limitations. It is difficult to apply such an analysis to non linear story structures where there are several storylines intermingling. Examples include Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction and several of Robert Altman’s movies eg. Nashville, Short Cuts.

The second major contender is based on the work of Joseph Campbell whose book “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” is about storytelling and mythology. This was interpreted by Christopher Vogler, a story evaluator for many motion picture studios, and morphed into “The Writer’s Journey” (1992).

“The Writer’s Journey” shows how a mythic story structure can be used to invest films with a powerful story. There are analyses of many different popular and successful films using the Writer’s Journey structure. And this book has had such an influence on the way Hollywood films are written. George Lucas admitted to using mythic story structures in writing the Star Wars films.

Again, there are more character roles (the hero, the mentor, threshold guardian, trickster etc.) and action narrative units ( ordinary world, call to adventure, refusal of the call, meeting with the mentor etc.) It is probably more sophisticated than the Propp model and can be more flexible in analyzing non linear stories. As the book points out, the model is not a recipe or cook book.

In the epilogue to the book, Vogler says:

the ultimate measure of a story’s success or excellence is not its compliance with any established patterns, but its lasting popularity and effect on the audience.To force a story to conform to a structural model is putting the the cart before the horse.It’s possible to write good stories that don’t exhibit every feature of the Hero’s (Writer’s) journey; in fact, it’s better if they don’t. people love to see familiar conventions and expectations defied creatively. A story can break all the “rules” and still touch universal human emotions.

Whilst there is no perfect story, these models provide genuine insights into what works well and what doesn’t.

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