Casey Film School by Michael Casey

Casey Film School ©

By Michael Casey

Now in our house we watch loads of films, 5 a week and more maybe, and with Sky+ box you can record many more. I watched loads as a child too, in black and white in them days. I think I was 25 before I bought a colour  tv for the family. Children nowadays won’t watch anything not in colour.

I saw a documentary on tv with Keanu Reeves, the programme was all about Film, as in the physical piece of material that goes through the camera. It was comparing film to digital. There always is a “look” to a film, I used to say you can tell if a film is rubbish just by the credits.

The old fashioned Technicolor as in Robin Hood, had colours so rich it was as if a child had used wax crayons. Then there are washed out colours for effect, to give a feel and a meaning to a film. Some films are so dark you can hardly see a thing. Alien the first one seemed so especially dark.

Most films I’ve seen on tv, we do have a good tv, I spoilt myself 20 years ago and got a good tv, I was earning good money then and I had interest free credit for a year. Toshiba is all I will say, just go to John Lewis, get free 5 year guarantee and get a Toshiba. Our current Toshiba replaced the old one a few years ago.

Now does the average person notice all the nuances of the cinematography? I’ll say no, though I’m still on a learning curve myself. I’ve watched a ton of films and as my girls grow up we  talk about Film in the advert breaks, 3 mins on satellite, but if we have recorded the film we zap through the ads.

Do  you like the way the actor does this or does that, could you see where the scary bit was going to happen. Could you see how something was telegraphed? Telegraphed things are probably the most we’ve talked about. I hope I don’t spoil the joy of the thing with all this “Casey film school” material.

When you have seen Maltila, or Willy Winka or The Mummy, all versions, then you too will become a little film buff. We really hate it when ITV4 cuts the bit from the Mummy where they haggle for O’Connor’s life, just before he joins them.

Getting back to the documentary, can modern digital technology be trusted to give a good look? Technology gets better and better and will be good enough for everybody in 10 to 15 years time. This is what I’m guessing after listening to the experts. You also have to save some of the machinery so that in the future you can actually read the film in whatever technological format it has been shot.

Modern cameras, digital cameras are so light that you can go anywhere with them, Danny Boyle was talking about one of his films and he had 10 cameras for one section of one of his films. I didn’t know that normally film cameras only have enough film in them for 10mins of acting normally. Then they have to cut.

So imagine the actor has to get himself all worked up and in the zone then the film camera has to be reloaded. How can the actor get back to where he was emotionally after being stopped in mid flow.  It’s like having a streaker in the middle of an event, it would certainly put the vicar off his matins. So how can an actor be expected to get back to where he was.

Now with digital the actor, male or female or both, can keep on performing without fear, it’s not as if mom is knocking at the bedroom door demanding entrance, while sonny is with Cher doing the same. So digital allows uninterrupted performance.

The look and feel of the film is almost the same as Film, because digital is improving so much. As an audience we may hate the look however filmed because the film may look too trashy, or too slick, and so on. The director and the cinematographer must have loads of discussions on how to get it right, but when it IS right it really IS right.

But this now brings me on to the most important thing of all, THE WRITING, speaking as a writer, awaiting news on my 1^st screenplay for a film, I think it’s the writing which is the most important thing. If the story is weak or badly told then no amount of pretty looks will save it.

It will look like a commercial, a bad commercial. Film scripts as such are very bare, mine isn’t it gives plenty of direction. I’m hoping its idiot proof and that the director and cinematographer can just tell the actors “say the words” and if they follow their nose WE will have a success.

Perhaps I’m a little naïve, a virgin on the bed of cinema. However a writer is taking a chance that the film of his book &/or script matches what was in his head and was put on paper. In a way the writer writes the score and the director then has it in his head. And just like a conductor the director is getting actors and cinematographers and everybody else to play their instruments, their bodies if you like, so that the result is Mozart.

When it works it really works, just as Amadeus really worked, the look, the style, the music, the words, the everything. A director has to be like a general, a prostitute or a pimp, just to squeeze out the right performance.

It all starts with words on a page, then with pictures and together you have FILM.