Is this a new form of film?
I have a friend who’s a genius. He’s one of the most brilliant men I know, and an expert animator and cartoonist. He is the original ‘naked rabbit’ at http://www.nakedrabbit.com. He also teaches film, and is an all-around underground genius. So, when I have a question about a new form of filmmaking, animation, or cartooning, I always ask him first.
Long ago, it occurred to me that filmmaking students could very cheaply make rough drafts of their films by building the soundtrack on a cassette tape, and then shooting still photographs of whatever scenes they wanted to do. They would then make slides out of the photographs and project those slides in synchronization with the soundtrack playing on the cassette. The sync wouldn’t be exact – it would be pretty rough as a matter of fact – but it would be serviceable and it would give the filmmaker and his colleagues a pretty good idea of how well the film would work if they made it into a full live-action film.
Tim has the urge to make a feature film on his own, something he’s been talking about for a long time, and he has tons of ideas for scripts. What he lacks is the money, the huge amounts necessary to make a feature length film.
Now, I’m thinking to myself, ‘What about marrying my old idea with Tim’s desire to make a feature?’ The idea is simple: first, write the script. Second, cast the roles. Third, perform the scenes. Fourth, choose edit your takes, and build up a rough draft of the film as a radio play. Smooth out the timing, edit and re-edit the takes, and add in and sound effects and music. What you have then is a radio play version of your movie.
This radio play version should stand on its own, so that all the necessary information is included within it, and the audience listening to it, will have the full range of emotional involvement and reaction.
The radio play version will also serve as a podcast or audio book.
The next step is to build up a visual soundtrack that will complement and enhance the audio track. You can make this out of several different kinds of parts. You can use still photographs, for example, as in my old idea of the rough draft of the student film. But you can go farther with those still photographs in this case, because using video editing software on your computer, you can animate those still photographs, the way Ken Burns does on his documentaries. You can create transitions between those stills, for example, fades dissolves or wipes. You can also use animation to complement the soundtrack. You can use graphics – charts, diagrams, and suchlike. You can shoot live footage on video and cut that in.
You end up with a kind of hybrid monstrosity, part radio, part film, part animation, part montage, part PowerPoint presentation. And you can create this with very limited equipment for very little money. Hopefully, if you do it right, you’ll end up with something that’s almost as gripping as a live-action film – a lot more gripping than many live-action films that are produced for many millions of dollars nowadays – and something that can hold the audience’s interest for an hour and a half or even longer.
Okay, Tim, here’s my question: is this a new form, and could it work?
(If Tim reads this blog post, I will, in a later post, put down what his answers are.)
(Composed by dictation on Sunday 7 September 2008)
