Why am I still a Solo shooter ten years in?

I started out taking photographs in High School I didn’t suck at it. I made films all throughout my life, even when I didn’t know what I was doing. I have always written stories. The first one I can remember was in sixth grade. It was awful and the actors were forced to be in it. But it was fun and I always have a story to tell. You can find my book listed on Amazon and Abe Books. You cannot buy one and there will probably never be another print run, but there it is.

I will probably write another book in the future. I actually have one that I want to finish called “Overwhelming Evil”. It is a story about a teenager who is being hunted by an evil entity only to discover that the real demon is something much worse. However, I have been writing that for about twelve years and I am only at thirty thousand words. Let’s just say, it will be a while.

The Beginning

I started down this trek of filmmaking as a hobby. I started making VLogs (Video Blog) in 2008 with just a webcam. I found the process to be more than just fun, I found it to be fulfilling. I bought a better camera and then got a DSLR. Thank God for the DSLR revolution! When I got my first DSLR or semi-professional camera, it changed how I looked at everything that I filmed. I realized that I could do more than just sit in front of it and talk. I could make my own programming. And make stuff I did. I made a bunch of little comedy shorts and a couple of dramatic things. I won my first film festival, then another. It made sense that I would keep it up. I really thought that I was on my way to something, and I still do.

I wasn’t schooled in the way of shooting or writing things those days. I just did it by the seat of my pants. My actors would sometimes ask me “what am I doing this for?” I would answer with “just trust me, it will work”. It did work for the most part. I only have one film I shot that no one has seen.

Summer Feature

I got to be one of the lead actors in a movie. too! You can find it on IMDB and it used to be on Amazon Prime but as of today, I don’t know where you can watch it. I had fun that summer. I got to run around and bother my co-star with crabby dialogue and somewhat witty banter. In post-production I had to save the movie from digital oblivion and probably should have received an Editor credit for that but, that’s ok. I got paid for that too. Always a plus. Made being out of work that year worth it. The really interesting part about the whole thing is that the entire thing was filmed on DSLRs. They didn’t have any studio type lights just panel lights as I use now, other than they weren’t as good. It was truly an independent film in every aspect of the phrase. I wish I could do that twice a year or even three times a year. It is, so far, as close to my goal of making a film as I have come and I didn’t even make the thing, just acted in it.

Live Television

Paul G Newton Live Broadcast TV Aircheck For Editing and Music.

About that same time, I went to work for 40/29 as the Chief Editor. It was a lesson in humility. I learned that no matter how good you are at your job, if you aren't on the TV, you are expendable. I suppose that is a little harsh, but it felt that way. I tried to be involved with the production and be a helping hand to make the show better every time it aired, I did. Anyone reading this that may have worked there when I did, I think you know that I just wanted it to be better. Or at least I hope they know this. But, in the end, I always felt expendable and more of a nuisance than anything else. In the end, I had to leave the station to retain my sanity. TV news can be the most stressful job ever invented to torture humankind.

Now, for the past few years, I have been doing product videos and testimonial interviews. It is fun, and generally, no one is breathing down my neck. But all these things I have created, the stories I have told, the commercials I have created, have all been done by me with no one helping. I did my own writing, filming, lighting, editing, and effects. Occasionally I would have someone helping with this or that (other than actors) but on a consistent basis, I did them all on my own and still make them by myself.

Product Videos and Commercials

Now What Do I Do?

That leads me to the question I put forth in the title of this blog. Why am I still a solo shooter? Why haven’t I been able to break through and start working on a production that tells a story not linked to a product? It flummoxes me to no end. I know how to do everything only because I have had to do everything. What can I do to move forward?

I am not one to settle and without some significant progress, I feel I am doing just that.

Since you are here and reading this, do me a huge favor and think about what you think it may take to break out. I know I need to relocate to where the stories that I love to tell and watch are being made and I am trying. It costs a ton of cash to just up and move.

What I think I need to do is make more films that tell stories. I need to create. But I know that is not enough. Very few people see my work these days. It is kind of scary to see the low numbers on my stats page. I do not aspire to become the next YouTube or Twitter star. I do not have dreams of becoming a millionaire from making films. I would be happy pulling down fifty to sixty thousand a year if it meant I was able to make stories people want to see. I don’t want to do anything other than telling great stories with great people.

I tried to make one this summer, here is a snippet. I hope I get to tell more this coming year.

I guess I will keep plugging along.

Isolation makes us do strange things.

I have had many jobs over the years. Most of them have been entrepreneurial. I sold Insurance for the majority of the time. Yeah, that was fun, NOT. I was, for a long time, a freelance filmmaker and photographer. That made for many long days and sometimes weeks working from home by myself. Rarely did I have any co-workers, and I was mostly alone in my house trying to edit or drum up a sale. Usually, I spent my time learning something new or honing my After-Effects or Photoshop skills. It was a solitary existence. I do not have children, and my wife works strange hours, so it is always eerily quiet. Some people might find that relaxing, but for a guy like me, it is exhausting.

I need action and conversation to stimulate my brain. My attitude gets questionable when I have no one around to stoke the fires of creativity. I like to tell people that I am the type of person that likes to hear the roar of the cannonballs. That means there always has to be something exciting happening around me. Solitude is boring.

These past few weeks have been nerve-racking to me. But I am working it out. I get to go into the office a little here and there. Even there, I am by myself. I have made a few product videos and some promotional stuff for an online event, but they are kind of lame. They aren’t lame because the product I created isn’t any good; they are lame because it’s not hard work, and it is just an inanimate object spinning around on a turntable. There is no meat on the bone, so to speak.

I did create something exciting this weekend, though. I broke out my fog machine and filmed an eerie scene of smoke coming through the slats on a chair in my yard. Donald showed up for a few minutes. We stayed six feet apart, just like you’re supposed to (we do that anyway, no biggie).

Here is what I shot. It doesn’t have a story, but it is kind of cool.

Movie Review: Bad Boys For Life

If you haven’t heard yet, Will Smith is attempting to rekindle his career in action movies. The box office success of the 1995 film “Bad Boys” has sparked two sequels. In 95’ the movie was welcomed with open arms with its signature song and the massive popularity of the main stars, Will Smith and Martin Lawrence. This movie helped to propel the career of Micheal Bay as a box office master of action and, what my dad calls “shoot em up” movies. By today's standards, the film didn’t make that much money, but by 1995 standards it was a smash hit making an estimated 140 million on a 90 million dollar budget. Bad Boys II came out in 2003 and cost almost 130 million to make and took in 273 million. Again, delivering on the promise of the first movie and, well, winning.

When Bad Boys premiered, the Miami lifestyle still had some “Miami Vice” reverberations and people were ready to see that vibe portrayed again. With audiences flocking to the other hits of the year like “12 Monkeys”, “Nixon” and the still-relevant “Seven”, we were all in the mood for a light-hearted action flick reminiscent of “Lethal Weapon.” Transferring the theme song from the hit TV reality show “COPS” didn’t hurt either. This movie didn’t let the theater-going audiences down as it delivered a healthy dose of camp, action, jokes, and star-power. I enjoyed the movie so much at the time that I bought it (there was no streaming then) and the soundtrack too. Although I found it “meth-lab” trailer park to play the theme song so I stuck to the other tracks when there was a possibility of someone eavesdropping on my musical choices. Bad Boys II might be considered a better film, and it made just as many people happy as the first, myself included

And now, in 2020, “Bad Boys For Life” has made itself known. For what, I am not entirely sure, but it might not be something good. It is playing on the same tropes as the past two movies with all the throw-back lines and situations. Nothing in the film was new and there is no twist ending.

CAUTION, SPOILERS AHEAD

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The movie is almost a repeat of Bad Boys II when it comes to the interpersonal relationship between Smith and Lawrence. Sure they forwarded the story a touch with Lawerence’s family but nothing has changed between them and Smith is still unresolved as a character. In fact, I would suggest that neither character has any real movement and leave the movie as they came in, stagnant from the previous two films

The biggest issue I have with the film is that it resembles an 80’s or 90’s action flick a little too much. Most of the scenes were made fun of in one of my favorite movies “Last Action Hero.” In the film, they bring all the stupid things screenwriters do to make an action movie move forward without getting too much into the details when they have run out of things to blow up or minions to kill. In fact, much of the movie has those nameless, faceless villains wearing motorcycle helmets riding motorcycles and driving chase cars with heavily tinted windows. Our heroes can kill as many of them as they want and no one worries about the body count because they are bad guys after all. This movie even goes so far as to have them chewed out by their police captain who yells and screams like a little baby about how much these two guys wreak havoc on the city. Even after the blistering attack from the boss, the hero gets a new team with abilities unknown to Smith. But, we find out that the team is good, but they don’t have what it takes to be a real old school cop like Smith and Lawrence so they flounder.

Then there are the unnecessary and unreal explosions and weaponry. Cars do not blow up when they are shot with a rifle round, motorcycles cannot roam around the city with a military machine gun attached to the front of a motorcycle sidecar and grenades do not have enough force to push a motorcycle onto its front wheel. But this is the movies, so I may just let most of this stuff go. Ok, I won’t. It is just too ridiculous.

But there’s more.

In my humble opinion, when a screenwriter gets stuck or can’t see beyond their own creations eyes they do dumb things. Just like in the film “Batman VS Superman,” the duo is miraculously saved at the end of the movie when the team they left behind in Miami suddenly appears to give the crucial assist. This is amateurish and Smith and Lawerence should have been able to figure this out by themselves. It would have been a way better ending.

Instead, the screenwriters wrote themselves into a corner by having fifteen or so bad guys attack the guys in Miami. The rule of thumb for writing a screenplay is to make the next set of bad guys tougher than the last. Well, the only way they could do that is to double up on the number of bad guys since there was no set up for a supervillain henchman as that role was taken by the sub-plot of the super henchman being Will Smiths son. Yes, you heard me right, he had a child with the main bad girl. Explained to us in a reflective scene, we find that Will’s first assignment out of the academy was to be an undercover operative in a Mexican cartel. Just Another overused trope that this movie intends to cram down our throats in an unsuccessful attempt to make the audience care for the Characters that fails miserably.

Top all of that off with the Super Henchman (AKA Will’s son) is captured after turning on his mother and given a second chance to prove his worthiness even after killing the police captain, everyone’s dear friend, in cold blood just thirty minutes before. I mean Come On!

While I could go on and on about this film, I wonder if it will find an audience that revels in its creation. The world has changed and sensibilities have deepened. Can a 1908’s style buddy cop flick hold it’s own? If so, I can write that. And it would probably be better than this 1.5-star silly movie. Mostly because I always try to avoid cliché’s when writing a story. This movie leaves me wondering if our society has digressed to the point that a good story isn’t as crucial as making stuff blow up. The box office take for this movie will tell us and I hope it’s not bad news.

1917, Every tool a Plot driven Screenwriter can muster.

I watch a lot of movies. Most of them aren’t very good. Most of them are trying to be modern in their cinematic qualities and the stories have all the little things in them that the screenwriting books tell us must be included. They always add in the save the cat moments to make our hero seem likable. They have the sex at sixty or the love scene comes about the sixty-minute/page mark. When the hero finds himself in a position that feels impassable and all is lost, that is a screenwriting trope. The list goes on and on and sometimes it isn’t actually a good thing to see that every one of them is in the movie. Usually, that means it was written by someone that has lost their way when it comes to telling a good story.

I am going into massive spoilers with this blog about the movie “1917”, you have been warned.

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The movie is doing well with nominations this year. It is a good movie. However, it isn’t a great movie. The story is all about the plot and not about the characters. In fact, it must be noted that the main character isn’t who we think is it. The character we begin following is killed in the first half of the film. The other character, George MacKay as Lance Corporal Schofield, is quiet and argumentative. Schofield (MacKay) is not empathetic and really is overshadowed by Dean-Charles Chapman (Lance Corporal Blake) until his death at the hands of a German Bi-Plane Pilot.

Dean-Charles Chapman (Lance Corporal Blake)

Blake (Chapman) begins the film by volunteering his friend for a special project. Schofield has seen up-close combat, supposedly, and his friend has not. Given the task of getting orders from the General to the front lines to fall back and call off a misguided attack by Col. Mackenzie (Benedict Cumberbatch) as the Germans fall back to a more substantial position to ambush the entire section of the British Army. To do so, they must pass through “no man's land,” the abandoned fortifications of the Germans, and weed their way through dastardly non-descript German soldiers who have no other reason to exist than to kill whoever is dressed as a soldier playing for the opposite team. And that’s about it for the story, plot and anything else that you can think of.

I am not saying that the story isn’t right. It is a good story and you are on the edge of your seat at the beginning. Every scene has the pre-requisite amount of tension and all the boxes are checked. That is unless you have a yearning for characters who do things that have nothing to do with the plot but everything to do with the story, like me.

I will concede, after watching an interview with the Director/Writer Sam Mendes, this was completely intentional. He stated that he kept the characters obtuse and unfleshed out to keep the tension up. I agree that it worked but in the end, I was left with nothing. Maybe that’s the point? Perhaps it is his way of commenting on what war can be and what it takes from individuals to be executed correctly. I can see the point and it does make a statement. But, sometimes, the statement you want to make, or the theme you want to get across, shouldn’t be the only reason for the story. Not saying that was his “theme” and it is more of an observation on directing in general, I would suppose.

The movie is shot exceptionally well. I enjoyed ninety-five percent of the shots and set up. I especially love the one-shot, one-take way they did most of the film. It is very compelling and demands respect as it’s the most technically challenging thing to film. I thought they had to be using a boom or crane on a vehicle to get the shots of the two men going down into craters that must have been twelve to fifteen feet deep without having any camera shake, and they did exactly that. Pretty cool if you ask me.

I found most of the sets believable except for the number of dead bodies lying and floating around. In those days they would call front line cease-fires for Collecting the dead and wounded. Chivalry was something that all the armies followed, for the most part. The dead loitering everywhere is really an embellishment of the director to horrify the viewer. Other intricacies of the film can be called into question, I suppose, but they really aren’t anything that takes away from the film itself.

What does take away from the film is the number of writing tropes they threw into it. Since it doesn’t actually tell a real story and just shows you the plot with no character growth from anyone on screen, I suppose the more mechanisms it can put into place, the better.

The first, and most apparent, mechanism this movie uses (well, not that obvious since it happens in the second act instead of the first) is the reluctant hero. Our main man Schofield (MacKay) tries to get Blake (Chapman) to wait until dark before heading out on their mission. He beleaguers the point, over and over again, until they top the trench and begin their trek. Then he tries to stall his friend and hapless leader when they find some rations left behind by the Germans. Of course, this is a trap meant to bottleneck the invading soldiers so they will get caught in a tunnel collapse when they gather to eat. Our hero, who we have yet to discover is the hero, barely escapes while his cohort is none the less for wear.

Not to let the point go, the screenplay then has Schofield ask why Blake choose him and not someone else. In retrospect, as I sit here typing, this is the most exposition of the entire film. Then, it goes away and never comes back.

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At one point in the film, I almost fell asleep. No, really. I was so bored with what I was watching; it took everything I had to keep from snoring in the theater. Schofield, now on his own to complete the mission, has come to the town just outside the forest where the Colonel is preparing for the imperiled attack our hero has been charged with stopping. He is chased by a random darkly shrouded German Soldier into a small room with a fire burning. Schofield has managed to evade the German but finds himself presented with a pretty young French woman who has hidden there with a child. Schofield questions the woman and, in broken English accompanied by subtitles tells him that the child isn’t hers and that she randomly just found the fat baby (that isn’t an exaggeration, this baby is HUGE). He has a moment with her and then leaves to complete his mission.

This entire scene is something that I would have thrown out of my own movie as it has nothing to do with anything. Just an attempt at character building in a way that is utterly useless to the narrative we are watching. If you cut this entire scene from the movie, you have lost nothing. It is there because of the trope and mechanical tool that is called “sex at sixty.” It does nothing for our character and nothing for our movie. It also what clued me in to what the screenwriter was doing to make this story work. Then all the bells went off and I knew what, why and where everything happened as well as what to expect next. Essentially the movie ended for me during that scene and explained why I was trying not to saw an entire forest of knotted pine from my seat or at least sound like I was.

Overall, 1917 is a good film. Where it lacks in character everything, it makes up for in its artistry. The dialogue doesn’t miscarry and the characters seem mostly true; Schofield even has a mentor during one scene. The setting is bleak, as it should be and the war is represented in a mostly accurate way. The performances are strong. Albeit why wouldn’t they be when there is little dialogue once Lance Corporal Blake is killed.

Does it deserve Oscars for acting? I would bet there are better performances this year. Should it be given an award for the best screenplay? An absolute no. Cinematography, Most definitely.