A Study in Filmmaking

Hey friends!

For the past few months, I’ve been in talks with a production company about optioning some of my work. I’ll talk more about that in a later post when things start moving. But despite being a movie buff my entire life, I’ve felt that I didn’t really know enough about the movie-making process. So I decided to go into the nuts and bolts of what goes into making a film.

MasterClass has been where I’ve been spending most of my nights lately. I LOVE to learn so this plays right into my learning addiction. If you’ve never heard of MasterClass, I strongly urge you to check them out. Classes for pretty much anything – from cooking and interior design to ukelele, can be found there. The classes are very well thought-out. Some of the classes I took included directing from Ron Howard and filmmaking from Werner Herzog, Mira Nair (an independent filmmaker) and James Cameron.

Learning From Multiple Vantage Points

Because I wanted to learn all aspects behind and in front of the camera, I also took acting classes from Samuel L. Jackson, Helen Mirren and Natalie Portman. Mr. Jackson’s was insanely intense. The man knows his craft.

Each class included a downloadable workbook for both assignments and information keeping. I have an entire binder of notes from these classes that is 100+ pages long. I learned so much and I’m grateful to these folks for taking the time to put together classes that were intensive. Ron Howard said that every filmmaker should take an acting class and although I don’t consider myself a filmmaker yet (perhaps, some day?), I did look into acting classes close by. One book that director, writer and acting coach, Tina Gallo recommended was Respect for Acting by Uta Hagen which I’ve just started reading and can provide a review on later. So far, I’m loving it.

All that said, I feel that these courses have made me a better writer. They’ve helped me to see things from the point of view of a filmmaker and/or actor. In prose, you can flesh out a character quite extensively. But it’s not until that character is portrayed by an actor that the character goes into its fullness and even then only by the interpretation rendered by that particular actor. On the filmmakers side of characterization, a director can only give so much direction about how a character should be fleshed out (if there’s no book written). It’s up to the actor to fill in the rest.

Better than I Imagined

As far as the writing aspect of filmmaking is concerned, screenplays get edited right up to the point where the director says, “Action!” Some writers would be uneasy with this. I, however, relish the idea of an ever-evolving story that culminates in a finished scene and is 10x better than how I imagined it.

Before my daughter was born, I had a dream of what she would look like. But no matter how beautiful she appeared in the dream, she turned out to be a thousand times more beautiful on the outside as much as in the inside.

Putting yourself into someone else’s shoes is always a good thing. You gain respect and can identify with where other people are when you cross paths with them. Who knows, perhaps some day I’ll delve into acting and/or filmmaking myself. You never know!

I pray that you and those you love are well in these tough times. I know that sometimes it can be hard to hold on to hope. But even a mustard seed of faith can move mountains. Things won’t always be this way.

Mucho love. God bless.

~Leonardo