The Pandora Effect

I can still remember the day I went to see James Cameron's 'AVATAR'. I think I'd just turned 16. It was one of those defining movie outings. I'd seen J.J. Abrams' STAR TREK on my 13th birthday and now I was going to see Avatar.

Our family tended to stick to age restrictions growing up. My parents were good that way. And I didn't, and I still don't resent that about my childhood. It turned every few years into a coming-of-age experience. Like a Viking Warrior walking through the flames to enter manhood I got to watch certain movies when I was old enough to handle them. Call me old-fashioned, but I think that's the way it's supposed to be done. Too often, I've seen young kids in today's generation, behaving violently, flinging the F-word around like it's everyone's nickname, or using crude innuendos when they speak. And I'm sitting there thinking, 'Man, I didn't know half that kind of language when I was your age.' Am I wrong? Maybe kids today shouldn't have to deal with that kind of sick knowledge.

Anyway... Back to Avatar.

For more information check out the Wiki-link below:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar_(2009_film)

But basically the film revolves around an ex-marine named Jake Sully who also happens to be a paraplegic. Who better to send to the mythical planet 'Pandora' to inhabit the fully functioning body of a Na'vi alien, known as an Avatar, then this guy right?

What essentially happens is that Jake begins to enjoy his new body so much, not to mention the beautiful Na'vi princess, that he goes rogue and decides to help the Na'vi fight off the human invaders to protect Pandora. The humans, on the other hand, are after a special kind of mineral, worth billions back on earth, which is why they're willing to destroy the Na'vis' sacred home ground. Now Jake must learn, not only to become one of the Na'vi, but also to become their leader if he is to beat this formidable army led by Colonel Miles Quaritch. Basically the story of John Smith and Pocahontas in space. The graphics and CGI, however, are eye-popping, and the world that James Cameron has created is so intricate and astounding that the latest news promises us not one, not two, but three additional chapters to the Pandora saga, to give us and James enough time to explore this paradise. 

It makes for an epic. I realised the problem however when I first went to go see Avatar in the cinema.

Like I said, it's too much for too long. Not that I didn't enjoy it. Don't get me wrong, Avatar is freaking amazing! Let me explain:

There are two stories running throughout Avatar, and they are seen in Jake Sully's two conflicting lives. One, in the body of an Avatar, and another in his paraplegic human body. From his wheelchair, Jake witnesses the human's desperate quest for the minerals on Pandora. He offers them insight into the Na'vi tribe, gleaned from his time spent as an Avatar. His loyalties are to earth, and to the other members of his team. But as an Avatar, Jake leads a different life. He learns the ways of Pandora, and of the tribe. He discovers a power and a confidence within himself that he never understood as a human. Most importantly, he falls in love with Neytiri, the beautiful future priestess to the Na'vi tribe.

Neytiri is charged with teaching Jake the ways of her people, so it's not surprising when their relationship soon blossoms into romance. I remember, in the scene where Jake finally confesses his love for Neytiri, as he kissed her, someone in the audience yelled out, "Well it's about time!" 

Everyone laughed.

We'd been gawking at glowing tree branches, alien dragons, and tall blue people for the last hour and a half. All we wanted was for the plot to get a move on. We wanted to see the big moment. Because at the end of the day, no matter how many CGI specimens of alien life you throw at the audience, the only thing they really care about are the characters. The heart of the story. We want to see Jake kiss Neytiri, we want to see Jake overcome his fear, we want to see the Colonel being speared with a shaft from his own helicopter, (sorry, spoiler...) and out of that, victory being achieved for the Na'vi tribe.

Am I saying that the director of Avatar failed to create an exciting film? Hardly. I am saying that the characters weren't intriguing enough? Nope. Am I saying that the plot was weak? Not necessarily. What I am saying though is that sometimes a story can be lost in a swamp of CGI.

Here's what Harrison Ford, who will be starring in the new "STAR WARS The Force Awakens" had to say to Time Magazine about CGI:

"Well, we walk the line of a wholly digital green screen movie. We did not do that, there’s a great advantage to building physical sets. Both in spending and they help ensure you’re keeping it to a human scale. I think one of the problems with the CGI is that you can, if you need 100 villains and you’re only a few keystrokes from having 1000, and what the hell, it’s the same price. What happens is you overwhelm the human experience with kinetics and you lose what I refer to as scale. What needs to be preserved is the emotional experience a human being can identify with." - Harrison Ford

http://time.com/4132998/star-wars-the-force-awakens-harrison-ford-prequels/

What do you think? Is CGI truly the future of the movies? Or is there a heart, a core to filmmaking that perhaps we're missing? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Have an awesome Wednesday! 

-Adino

"B.E.G." - Don't Let Doubt Kill Your Dreams

Nearly a year and a half ago, I wrote and directed a short film entitled "B.E.G."

The concept behind it was simple, and it was birthed out of a conversation I once had with a friend. For some reason, which I can't remember, we began discussing the rise of unemployment in South Africa. You see, we'd begun to notice that there were a lot more street-side beggars in recent times then there had been while we were growing up. As I tend to do, I began day dreaming...

I said what I was thinking out loud: "What if," I asked, "in a post-apocalyptic world, begging was a kind of job you had. As if you could be employed as a beggar, and some business or world super power controlled these beggars?" A good question, I thought. So I immediately sat down to write the screenplay. Because of my feverish desire to make a movie and to have people see it, I hurried production, and within six months I had written, shot, and edited the film. You can watch it below:

https://www.facebook.com/B.E.G.TheMovie/

What was so incredible about the experience was all the support that we got; not only from our audience of 100 people at the premier, but also from all our sponsors, and those who loaned us the equipment and editing software to finish the project. It was a stepping stone in ways I won't even begin to tell you in this blog post, opening up a host of new opportunities. I am proud to have worked with such an amazingly talented cast and crew. 

As amazing as the whole journey was, the film has not received a great deal of viewership on the web, although the number of likes on our Facebook page has been slowly climbing to this day. Forgive my weak attempt at bragging. On Monday morning I received this email:

Which led me to this comment:

I've attached the link to his article below:

https://friendsofyelshir.wordpress.com/2015/11/26/b-e-g-the-movie/

For me this was one of those moments like, "Phew, I suppose if I'm going to dish it out I'd better learn how to take it." Not that this comment was in anyway overcritical, in fact, I quite agree with the observations made on this blog about my film. But it was also a case of, "Wow, someone's actually taken the time to use my film as subject matter for their blog, in a similar capacity to how I use other people's films for my blog!"

And, like I said in a recent Facebook post to the cast and crew of my film, it shows we actually achieved something pretty big. Maybe I'm reading too much into this one comment, but I don't think so. Maybe I am just hyped that somebody actually commented on our film, but I think the heart of what I'm getting at is this:

I'm excited to see that what I originally set out to do, I did. We did. We posed a question. We told a story. Essentially that is the heart and soul of film. I'm reminded of something I read in "Creativity Inc." the story of Pixar animation studios by Ed Catmull. In the book, he talks about the way his team at Pixar views every new project as an 'ugly baby'.
In other words, a film when it starts out is not yet fully grown. It is still in its infancy, learning to walk, learning to talk. According to Ed Catmull, all stories, all movies should be treated this way, as if they are ugly babies. It is our responsibility as filmmakers and story tellers to nurture the story.

Now I suspect I may have released this film into the big, wide world without having properly let it grow. In many ways, "B.E.G." was still in its infancy. The soul of the film was there, but it had not yet matured into what I believe it could have eventually become. Who knows? Perhaps someday it will find its feet. And as I've said before, it was the springboard for many new adventures and creative pursuits. In some ways, I owe my current job to the making of that film. It opened up a vast network of connections for me personally.
We live and learn. Let me put something into perspective for you before I sign out. Each member of our cast was between the ages of 14 and 17. I, at the time I wrote the screenplay, was 18. The score for "B.E.G." was all original music composed by my 15 year old sister Phoebe. The footage was shot on a Panasonic 5000, if I remember correctly, by yours truly, having never worked with such a complex - not to mention heavy - camera in my life. I also, at the time, had never used Final Cut Pro before, which meant I was essentially learning the software on the job. In a nut shell, "B.E.G." was a major learning curb for everyone involved, and like I said earlier, I couldn't be prouder. The team that was assembled, gave a hundred and ten percent. Props to them! Obviously, we made some kind of impact, and that for me was a victory of note. You might call it an Everest moment.

In a metaphorical sense, our little indie-film crawled towards the right viewer(s). It was then picked up, looked over, and said of, "Interesting... Needs some work..." And of course, it did, but so do all creative endeavours. That's what separates those who tell their stories from the people who don't; the willingness to grow. My encouragement to you would be to nurture your dreams, let them grow, build them into the fully-fledged monuments you know they can be, and then unleash them on the world. Doubt is the greatest threat to your dreams. Don't let it drag you down.

As Walt Disney famously said:

Regards,

Adino Poggiali-Trapani

A Feast for the Eyes

The first film I ever saw on the Big Screen was 'ANTZ', released by Dreamworks in 1998. Now I'm feeling old...

Amongst it's many memorable scenes, one of my personal favourites is when Z (voiced by Woody Allen) and Princess Bala (Sharon Stone) get stuck to a piece of gum on the underside of a giant sneaker. When of course, the person attempts to remove the gum with a penny (we never see anything of this person besides their leg, which is ginormous!) what the ants see is the copper face of Abraham Lincoln hovering over them like a UFO. For all it's dark, cynical humour, 'ANTZ' offered up a unique perspective on the world, the viewpoint of the ant, one which is summed up in the words of Z when, upon witnessing the ominous Abe asks:

"Who the Hell is that?!"

What's great about this film, (and I have to admit looking back on it I was a little surprised by some of its mature subject matter) is that Dreamworks really created a world for these ants to inhabit. It's a film rich with imagination and visuals. Everything in the ants' world is super-sized - even their adversaries the termites. By the way, I think the battle between the ants and the termites in 'ANTZ' was the first real battle I ever witnessed on screen. It was gory and epic, and to a young boy, it was the most violence I'd ever experienced in a film. But what is interesting about this particular animated battle scene was that, unlike even some live action wars that I've seen in recent years, it really didn't try to promote or glamourise violence. Z is overwhelmed, during the course of the fighting he loses his only friend amongst the ant soldiers, and ultimately all this needless death is as the result of a purge set in motion by the evil General Mandible. What 'ANTZ' said back in 1998, that many films have ignored today, is that war is often the result of selfish ambition, and it's the individuals who suffer for it.

Now that I've got that off my chest...

I was talking about the way Dreamworks created a rich world for the audience on screen. That's really the reason anything is done in film, it's for the audience. That was Hitchcock's belief. Make the film as pleasing to watch as possible. Make it an experience. A feast for the eyes.

When I was little we would go to the cinema, me, my mom, my dad, and my sister. We still do today, but back then it was different. We don't go to see animated movies anymore, and we're very selective about the movies we do watch. If you're going to spend that kind of money, it had better be worth it.

We don't go for the sake of childhood, 'cause we're all grown ups now... okay, so I'm lying a little bit.
But let's be honest, if you grew up in the 90's and early 2000's like I did, you'll now there's a difference between going to the movies today and what it was like 20, even 10 years ago. When I was small, going to the cinema was all about the combo, the booster seats and the smell. Cinema has a smell. You'll only know it when it takes you're breath away, and I mean that in a positive sense.

It's like Lucy when she was entering the wardrobe for the first time in 'Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe', the first thing she notices is the smell. It smells like pine, even when everything around her is fur and coats and coat hangers. 'Why does it smell like pine?' she wonders. Then she pushes a little further and she feels the pine needles. That is what it was like going the movies growing up. You can tell the smell of the movie house even when you're two shops away from it in the mall. The popcorn, the salt, whatever kind of fabric cleaner they're using on the seats, even the smell of electricity used to power the bloody thing. The glowing movie posters. All this contributes to the smell. You're already halfway into this magical wardrobe.

Then you feel the combo in your hands. The popcorn, small, a slightly larger Coke, the straw, and no combo is complete without chocolate. Trust me. Grab your booster seat, make sure dad's got the tickets, and you go inside. Straight into darkness. Perhaps the trailers are already playing when you get in. That's okay, you haven't missed anything. The snow is falling in Narnia. Then the movie begins, now you know you're in another world.

That sense of wonder's died down a little bit in recent years. Whereas before, the films were like the giant picnic from 'ANTZ', now many of the films are rapped in plastic.

Today's films promise 'Insect-topia' to their audiences but instead all we find is 'some kind of forcefield' separating us from the meat of the story, the juice in the characters. With CGI, and motion-capture, films today put on a spectacle. In other words, yes, a feast for the eyes, but a feast we can't enjoy simply because that's all it is; a visual, a spectacle, not made to be enjoyed, just looked at. I can't tell you how many times I've been disappointed by today's films because that's all that they're giving me. It leaves me... starving. 

I'm starving for story. Movies with meaning. Films with fulfilment. I get there's a line to be drawn, we obviously can't draw all our sustenance from the movie industry. But for goodness sake, I want the experience back. If not for me, then for the next generation. That's really what creates the experience isn't it? We go into the movies to enter another world. And no world truly exists without story. 

As C.S. Lewis put it, "We read to know we are not alone."

If I may offer up my own spin on this idea:

"We watch to know we are not alone."

You see, we can have all the right ingredients. We can check everything off on our list. We can have the popcorn, the soda, the chocolate, the straw, the booster seat and the ticket. We can throw CGI and 3D at the audience, but in the end we've accomplished nothing. We've experienced nothing. We've felt nothing. We've gone nowhere, and we've met no-one. If there's no story, no world to visit, no characters whose journey we're invited to walk, then what's the point of the movies? What's the point of film? What's the point of television even?

I hope you're reading this with a story to tell...

Because the audience has seen the plastic, and they're asking us as storytellers, "How do we get in?"

I hope you and I can tell a story that can answer that question:

"This way..."

The Trail That We Blaze

In the film "EL DORADO" released by Dreamworks in 2000, there is a brilliant line spoken by the character of Miguel (voiced by Kenneth Branagh).

Tulio and Miguel, two runaway con-artists from Spain wash up on the shores of South America with nothing but a boat, a horse and a map they won in a game of dice. Sounds like the opening line to a joke, now that I think about it. Miguel, ever the adventurer, has his heart set upon finding the mythical city of gold - El Dorado.... Hence the movie's title...

When Tulio asks exactly how they are going to get to the city of gold:

"We'll follow that trail!" answers Miguel.

"What trail?" says Tulio.

With gusto and a machete he stole from a corpse, Miguel proceeds to clear a path through the jungle.

"The trail that we blaze!" he says.

He hits a rock...

Ultimately, this sets it up for an epic montage with music by Elton John. As an aside note, I'd just like to mention that the scene in which Miguel is riding through the jungle on the horse was ground breaking for its time. These days, however, with 3D movies becoming as common as socks in the laundry, we tend to forget the pioneers and the adventurers of film who cleared a path ahead of us, making an abundance of resources available to us today. That's really what you've got admire about a character like Miguel in my opinion; he epitomises those kinds of people, literally, the Trail Blazers.

And whether your in film, or television like I am, or any other kind of career, profession or hobby; those are the kinds of people that reach their 'El Dorado' as it were. The world needs people who can tackle it head on. Those kinds of people with a blind enthusiasm to reach their destination. I'm reminded of the saying, cliche as it may be:

"It's a jungle out there!"

But that's not necessarily a bad thing. Any one of us can be a Miguel. We can take the proverbial machete (or better yet, the Machete of Destiny! Sorry, I like giving things cool titles) and hack our way to the future. Note, however, that Miguel didn't do it alone... in fact he probably never would have reached his destination were it not for his rational, slightly more cautious counterpart Tulio.

You see, there's two sides to every coin. Yes, we need the adventurer who often acts before weighing up all the variables, but it also pays to be a Tulio. Tulio is driven, and wants the prize just as badly as Miguel, if not more so, since Miguel lives for the thrill of the journey rather than the destination. But it takes Tulio a lot of pre-thought and sometimes hitting his head up against the wall to get things done:

Writer's block in a nutshell ladies and gentlemen! Haha!

Now, you are not only either a Tulio or a Miguel; we can each have a little bit of both in us. I know I do. There are times when I am, like Miguel, ready to jump in "Guns-a-Blazing" and solve the problem or write the paragraph; and there are times when I'm more like Tulio, when all I can do is slam my head against a post and pray to God that an idea for a story or project will hit me. But in the end, both arrive at "El Dorado", because they balance each other out. Both are Trail Blazers.

If I can take a moment to encourage you, in whatever you're pursuing. This blog is intended as a film-based site, and my goal is to instil in my readers a love for the classic films and stories that have inspired me over the years. I want to share that inspiration with you. As Dustin Hoffman said in a recent interview:

"I think film is the worst it has ever been, and television is the best it has ever been."

So, perhaps it would do us all a world of good to look back at the old films and see what they were getting right, that may be missing from today's industry. As storytellers, filmmakers, and writers moving into the future, we can all learn something from the Old Masters. But I believe that these principles, that characterised filmmaking in previous decades can be applied to any kind of endeavour or dream. I hope that whatever you're doing, whatever you hope to achieve, you'll take this journey with me. I don't have a map. I don't even have a horse or a boat. But I do have the burning desire to reach my El Dorado. I do in a sense have 'The Machete of Destiny'. Do you?

Your life is your story, and your story is a journey. So be the Adventurer, be the Fore-thinker, blaze your trail. "El Dorado" may be just around the corner.