Your Welcome, New Major Hollywood Film I Can't Name

I will be vague because I signed an agreement not to talk about what I had seen this summer, but as an filmmaker in training it's refreshing to know that the world’s greatest living filmmaker sometimes need help figuring out what works and what doesn’t. I saw a messy, slow rough cut of a film now in theatrical release, that film has arrived, is 20 minutes leaner and it packs an emotional impact.

This is what I learned working on a project for class last December: sometimes its what you strip out that leads to a better, more emotional and coherent experience. I’m not even talking about unnecessary sub-plots, but unnecessary shots, pauses, and words.

The film I saw last night was imperfect, not the director’s best, still, but it was a solid 3-star film, the cut I saw over the summer was half as good: you could see a good film was there but it was very flawed, sometimes it’s that 10 minutes that can change your film, and this one was better. The opening didn’t drag on, the middle section didn’t lose interest and as a result the ending had a larger emotional impact.

I should note the film had a mixed reception: I saw it at Flix, a theater that’s audience is mostly between 12-19 year olds, which laughed at some points. As you can imagine for a campy comedy or a terrible slasher film this could be kind of fun, but for a film like this, or the strange incident I had when I saw Extraordinary Measures there, this was odd. The right mix of good popcorn and a good audience can raise your enjoyment of a film. The test screening process which involves security screenings sets the wrong tone right from the start, it feels more like getting on an air plane with having to go through a metal detector, than a night at the movies. Granted Hollywood has every right to protect their product, but why treat the people you’re asking to help you out like criminals? Most good piracy comes from the studio level anyway - I know, I know, you don’t want any image, still or motion to get out before the studio has properly marketed the film.

The film in question had its release date moved back originally which some speculated was a sign that the studio releasing it had financial problems, they put all their eggs in the basket of another world class director whose film failed to connect to an older audience. They backtracked and marketed it to a teen girl audience where it has made money.

The real reason I think: more time. Making a good film requires time - I think this is why the director, who is a true professional and I don’t think would ever bad mouth a studio head, didn’t. So many films are given a release date, a tent pole and reverse engineered all the way down to the screenplay to make it happen by then. This is the type of guy who you don’t want to rush. I’m glad he didn’t. This is a much better film than what I saw over the summer - and proof that directors should test screen films.

Test screening is a valuable tool, when it’s used against a filmmaker - when it becomes a score and films are changed to raise a score that’s when I have a problem. One studio did that and in the process of trying to make a film that everyone likes they made films nobody liked, watered down to play amongst a homogeneous audience: we are not homogenous. We all like Avatar, sure because its an amazing technical feat, a well told story and doesn’t waste our time - Cameron keeps things moving. Test audiences are good at that, as for the actual content - I look at it this way: like medication, one thing isn’t right for everybody. There are films I’m not ready for, there are films your not ready for. Test screening is an ambush - they hand out fliers, play up a free screening with a snappy one paragraph description of the flick. Once our laughs were even recorded by Dolby sound professionals that had boom mics around the whole theater for what should have been a major comedy (it was a sequel that was unsuccessful).

With this said there’s a madness around test screening, but in this case I felt that my feedback (and I was selected for a panel) was actually used and helped the director make a better film. It’s what I would have done had I been in his shoes. Your welcome.