How far do you believe film narrative can be approached as a formula?.
When I first started being interested in filmmaking, I thought the world of good narrative. Coming from a country (Indonesia) where the film industry is in a complete mess, I really believed that a clever and interesting narrative, with realistic and meaningful dialogues is the key to a successful film. This somewhat started me on a journey to find a good story to write for my own. Realistically, it is a difficult task to try and conjure up an interesting and distinct narrative to put on a film, especially when it's only based on something you made up in your head. Then I started to think differently in order to solve this dilemma, instead of attempting to write a good story, I opted to explore the development of characters in the story: three-dimensional human beings that you"re around with in most of your life. .
Learning about the history of film, critical approaches to cinema, and the craft to put something in writing into celluloid in this course made me think in a wider range in terms of a winning formula in a film. Take Hitchcock's Psycho for instance, what made that film a classic is how Hitchcock put the story on film and not particularly the narrative itself. The pacing of the film, starting from what seemed to be a getaway film, and suddenly turning into a suspenseful view of the human psyche, plays with the audiences expectations. This is only one of the things that made Psycho a great piece of filmmaking. One filmmaker that I"d like to discuss is Woody Allen. A lot of Allen's films" quality comes from its smart and quirky dialogues. As a craftsman, his filmmaking techniques are somewhat standard: his camera directions are often monotone, etc. One thing about Allen's films that made him such a successful auteur is the easy flowing character and plot development. In the ensemble piece, Hannah and her Sisters for example, Allen takes on subjects of infidelity, faith, lust, love, and death in a very amusing way.
