This is my report of participation in the LDS film festival. I say participation instead of attendance because my ludicrous guffaws and moans of hysterical weeping were heard at several screenings. Just kidding on the hysterical weeping. I also say participation because I
wrote cryptic scrawls in forums from which I derive these notes, lest I forget.

My reviews flow from two points: opinions are relative and arbitrary, but we also need to say and artists need to know what we think. Also, if what we think is negative, it isn’t helpful to just say alone that we didn’t like something - but to try and frame it in terms of spurning the artist on to create something we *would* like - that is useful.

I can be blunt and unapologetic where I desperately need to be, so I’ll just apologize in advance if that is ever the case here.

SHORT FILM PROGRAMS
I didn’t see all the films in the short film programs I attended, so this doesn’t represent a guarantee of what I *would* think is best if I’d seen everything. I missed programs II and III and never saw my friend David Skousen’s entry.

SHORT FILM PROGRAM I
BOOKS by Jared Cardon - This was the only film I really enjoyed in this program: “An angelic photographer records the tests of mortals in the books of heaven.” This featured an angel in all-white (strangely surreal business casual clothing if I remember?) descending an elevator from heaven, stopping by an agitated person on the wrong floor whom he couldn’t allow into the elevator as he continued down, and recording with an all-white medium format camera the events of various earthlings, often pathetic, whom he was assigned to record. It was both funny and effectively dramatic, and really drew my sympathies for two afflicted earthlings - one who was helped and another who was helped by the angel even though he wasn’t supposed to interfere.. the non-interference doctrine being a strange homage to Star Trek? Anyway, I thought it was great work all-around.

MY HUMANITY, a documentary by Daniel Skaff, moved me. It’s about a family who adopted many children (many or most of them with Down Syndrome, I think), in which the parents opine that many experts were dead wrong about the developmental and intellectual capabilities of
these children. I don’t at all doubt the parents are right. That point aside, the humanity of those whom society would dispossess really showed through this.

RECONCILING RUBY, a documentary by Chris Cutri, also moved me. It’s about an adopted child (since grown into middle-age) who met her mother again after the mother had thought her dead and the daughter had never known her mother was alive. I gotta say one fact that came out in that documentary made me mad - after the mother had given her up to an orphanage she later came to the orphanage begging for her baby back, but the orphanage had given the baby to a family and lied that the baby died in an epidemic that had come over the orphanage. Grrr! I wonder if the mother had some serious forgiveness to work through there. [spoiler]: Very interestingly, both mother and daughter independently converted to the LDS church before the daughter found her mother by doing genealogy work.

SOLACE PARK, a short drama, moved me (”A brief encounter in a park affects the lives of a youth and a Cambodian immigrant”) - a very strong theme there in the immigrant looking for years for his family. It was effective, but the emotion was too raw and unambiguous - I suppose it felt rehearsed or melodramatic - it needed variety, spontaneity, variation in pacing. I may be confusing that with the writing. I don’t know.

SHORT FILM PROGRAM II
YONKE by Brian Peterson and Casey Willard was hilarious. I would bet that if you read the screenplay for this (if they had one) it wouldn’t come across as funny - it was *all* in the way it was done, the dramatic execution. It was about two Mexicans who make it rich by selling American junk (Yonke) in Mexico. [spoiler] It was all normalish and somewhat amusing until the particularly long, single closing shot, which carried on its preposterousness amazingly long considering, and I thought a bit too long beyond when the gag ran out for me. But still, hilarious. This long shot was reminiscent - perhaps inspired by? - a shot in Raising Arizona (my favorite film of all time - very very funny and cathartic all at the same time) when the ex-cons scream with loss in a seemingly endless driving shot, pounding the steering wheel, shaking their heads like dogs, and so forth.

SUDIKOV by Tom Laughlin was very good I thought. It featured a young girl escaping brutalities in 1941 during Nazi invasion.

UNTITLED by Ryan Cannon (and that isn’t the title) was disturbed and hilarious. This thing was dark comedy. Very odd. I had no idea what was going through the main character’s head - and I don’t know whether a stop to psychoanalyze him would have lost my interest - but he was insane, whether a completely fictional problem or based on anything remotely real I don’t know.

BLOOD-O-WEEN by Nathan Fackrell, Matt Mangus, and Josh Eucrett was also hilarious. It’s a mockumentary of three boys and their lifelong obsession and aspiring avocation to make scary halloween tapes. Featured some brilliantly deranged acting in sequences of the trio making scary mouth sound effects and screams for the tape, much of it I imagine improvised, sometimes with mindless, ballistic, utter abandon. Again, hilarious - this one made me laugh harder than the
other comedies in this program but the film didn’t hold together as well - I thought that many times the gags ran long beyond the saturation point of funny. I thought perhaps the goths in the crowd
and at that hour of the festival came to see this.

FEATURES AND PRESENTATIONS

MOVING MCALLISTER (clips and presentation by writer and producers)

This film delves among other things into redneck culture, and the four clips they showed from it were very funny. John Heder is in it.

New/interesting info I gleaned from the presentation was that DVDs, cable, and airlines are all strong markets to consider for a film, and that actors know what they’ll be paid when they learn the budget of a film. The producers for this film (in the sense of pulling the money together - which meant calling a lot of rich friends and saying “Hey. Wanna invest in a film?”) said they were trained by Jason Faller, a (the?) producer on Pride and Prejudice (Excel). I asked if they could
recommend any good books on producing, and they didn’t know any, but said Faller teaches a producing class at BYU.

They commented that Fuji film gives more pop in the red and green colors and has an overall softer look, and that Kodak is warmer and more of an everything you see everywhere look.

As Perry notes in his comments they said it’s not a sundance film, and the writer said he’s starting off the many films he wants to make with a comedy because there’s more of a market for comedies. They said the film screens well with the younger generation and 25-35 year-olds.

SUITS ON THE LOOSE (clips and presentation by Rodney Hensen, writer/producer)

This is what I pull from my notes on what Hensen said:

- Know your destination for a film before you begin making it. I don’t know if he means to include even writing a script in that idea. If that were the case I would be frankly contrary: I say knowing your audience is good but if you are writing for an audience and you don’t like what you’re writing, chances are the audience actually won’t, either. You may not be true to your writer’s instinct urging you to write wherever the story takes you. I say that utterly without authority: he’s got a master’s in writing from UCLA, I don’t.

- Story is the No. 1 thing, with an eye on a director’s view of the audience: how a director will see it, what he will do with it. I agree that story is no. 1 but not necessarily that one should be
concerned with how a director will be concerned with carrying it to an audience. I believe that whatever is in every director’s gut will very likely appeal to an unknown audience without having to be conscious of the science of it. I think marketing is finding that audience, and writing and directing is creating what you most love yourself, in a leap of faith that others will find it. I also say
this without authority. It’s my instinct on it.

- Do only what you do - if you don’t direct, and you’ve written a script, collaborate with a director and let them do their thing. Don’t go beyond your own abilities.

- To create a film (from your screenplay), get a distributor first. He says contacting studios directly is almost always a complete waste of time. The Hollywood Creative Directory is a great list of production companies - find out what companies have contracts and deals with whom. I guess by studios he means distributors and by production companies he means.. what? People who get money for films and organize actual film production teams, I suppose. There are three major distributors in Utah. Bring a marketable script and investors (my note: bringing investors means learning to market your film to people - to sell, or to get people to sell for you). Maybe also bring
a cast; hire a casting director: good ones charge $25,000-$35,000. A casting director will hire a breakdown service, which lists and describes all the characters in your film and sends out notices to agencies. Jeff Gerard cast his film.

- Lower budget films make it very difficult or impossible for actors to gather with the director ahead of time and rehearse.

- Briefly mentioned various contractual arrangements which are more recent developments from the Screen Actors Guild and more amenable to lower budget productions. There was an SAG table outside with pamphlets detailing these contracts. I took one after the presentation :) If a production team is signatory to SAG these arrangements become possible for actors. There is no charge to become signatory to SAG.

- SAG has and causes creative and production limits - know them.

- I gathered that great actors memorize all their lines, not just the three or six pages per day typically shot.

- There are a wide variety of film location options available nationwide.

- Non-union crews can work in a “right to work” state (like Utah) on an SAG film.

- Mentioned a mysterious term: “The Zone” in LA - where apparently you have to be part of a union if you are going to shoot any film. That is bizarre to me, and I probed whether that’s actually the case and didn’t feel clear on it with his reply.

- Mentioned a Director’s Test apparently used frequently by Disney to screen directors. ? What is on that test?

- Drama is harder to sell.

- Writers are as much a casting decision as actors.

My general notes: when talking about writing I thought he seemed contradictory, and I was confused. On one hand he seemed to emphasise the word “structure” a lot - the school of thought that every film generally (if not absolutely) does our should follow a set sequence or
type of events. He also mentioned the things an audience expects in a film. He also said writing requires a lot of training (or I’m guessing from his perspective education about it since he has a
master’s in it).

These ideas set me on edge. This is why: I have heard them seemingly contradicted by other authorities on writing whom, I’m sorry to say, I much more prefer as writers. The first: Brenda Ueland, author of a marvelous little book on writing, which I highly recommend: If You Want to Write. I got this at the Orem Public Library, and it’s available in reprint. Here it is at Amazon.

It was written early in this century. The author is a firebrand who not only says no one needs special training to write, but that common educational approaches to writing actually hinder and cause writing to fester. I would summarize her as saying only boldness, honesty, the courage to listen to your inner voice, and to be detailed and explore wherever your writing takes you unflinchingly, that is what makes good writing. If you don’t like something, you can always pull it out later - but bring it all out and don’t overly censor yourself. The advice in this book sunk into me on an intuitive level and it immediately improved my writing (by witness of comments spontaneously volunteered to me). The second: El Dutcher. I’ve asked him if he recommends any books or resources on screenwriting, and he said the Zen in the Art of Screenwriting books are the only ones he’s gotten any use out of: Here are the first (link) and second (link) at Amazon.

In this recommendation he added that he hasn’t found much use for “the structuralists”. I cautiously note the connection between this term and Hensen’s repeated use of the word “structure”.

Hensen worked at Disney for about a decade and I’m aware that much of the movement to connect ancient mythologies and “mythological structure” originated at Disney. Some of the proponents of that idea are Christopher Vogler and Stuart Voytilla, who have written books
about it. My hunch is that the ideas can be very useful for brainstorming and generating ideas also - but I probably wouldn’t personally frame an entire screenplay with these theories.

I would have gone to Moyer and Whitaker’s presentations, but I’ve taken a screenwriting course from Moyer before, and I’ve procrastinated writing my scripts, and, sorry bud, I’m now leery of
the structured approach you emphasised. From Moyer’s workshops I’ve learned that structuralism apparently has enormous sway in Hollywood - that some script readers have tossed screenplays only after turning to page no. x if it does not apparently contain plot twist b. Oy! So,
at the least, a structuralist I ain’t.

NEXT

I’ll go into the only two features I saw at the festival, my peek at some others, Kirby Heybourne’s presentation, the academic forum on LDS film, and Richard Dutcher’s presentation.