Ten Thousand Films 一萬部電影

Our guiding technical film wisdom starts with the 42 filmmaking aphorisms the brilliant Alexander Mackendrick had stuck to his wall when he taught screenwriting at CalArts. Most apply equally well to documentary as well as narrative films. Read more aphorisms here

• Movies SHOW… and then TELL. A true movie is likely to be 60% to 80% comprehensible if the dialogue is in a foreign language. 

• ACTION speaks louder than words.

• A character in isolation is hard to make dramatic. Drama usually involves CONFLICT. If the conflict is internal, then the dramatist needs to personify it through the clash with other individuals. 

• If it can be cut out, then CUT IT OUT. Everything non-essential that you can eliminate strengthens what’s left. 

• "Process not Product"

• Screenplays are STRUCTURE, STRUCTURE, STRUCTURE.

• Never cast for physical attributes.

• Every character is important.

Myth

“Myth is much more important and true than history. History is just journalism and you know how reliable that is.” - Joseph Campbell

“A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man." ― Joseph Campbell

Read the the famous Hollywood 7-page "The Memo That Started It All" by Christopher Vogler here

"Frodo deserved all honour because he spent every drop of his power of will and body, and that was just sufficient to bring him to the destined point, and no further. Few others, possibly no others of his time, would have got so far. The Other Power then took over: the Writer of the Story (by which I do not mean myself), 'that one ever-present Person who is never absent and never named'." - J.R.R. Tolkien letter, 192

"To this false life is opposed a true death: the death of passion; this is spiritual death, the cold and crystalline purity of the soul conscious of its immortality. To false death is opposed a true life: the life of the heart turned toward God and open to the warmth of His love. To false activity is opposed a true rest, a true peace: the repose of the soul that is simple and generous and content with God, the soul that turns aside from agitations and curiosity and ambition in order to repose in divine beauty. To false rest is opposed a true activity: the battle of the spirit against the multiple weaknesses that squander the soul—and this precious life—as in a game or dream." - Frithjof Schuon

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"In film, there are two ways of including human beings. One is depicting human beings. Another is to create a film form which, in itself, has all the qualities of being human: tenderness, observation, fear, relaxation, the sense of stepping into the world and pulling back, expansion, contraction, changing, softening, tenderness of heart. The first is a form of theater and the latter is a form of poetry." - Nathaniel Dorsky

In his book Devotional Cinema (2003), Dorsky writes of the long-standing link between art and health as well as the transformative potential of watching film. He also writes of the limitations of film when its vision is subservient to a theme or representative of language description, which can describe a world but does not actually see it.

Drama

“Drama is expectation mingled with uncertainty” - Alexander Mackendrick (42 aphorisms)

“Chapter 6 of the Poetics, Aristotle indicates that a tragedy consists of six elements: mythos (plot), ethé (characters), dianoia (the characters’ thoughts), lexis (the language by means of which the previous elements are communicated), opsis (visual elements) and melopea (rhythm). He adds that the most important of them all is the myth, which can be likened to “the soul of tragedy". - Aristotle for Screenwriters

The Action-Idea— then Complication, Catharsis, and Denouement

“Harry Lime: ‘Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.’" - Orson Welles, The Third Man

Alchemy

“For alchemy to take place in a film, the form must include the expression of its own materiality, and this materiality must be in union with its subject matter. If this union is not present, if the film's literalness is so overwhelming, so illustrative, that it obliterates the medium it is composed of, then one is seduced into a dream state of belief or absorption that, though effective on that level, lacks the necessary ingredients for transmutation. Such a film denies its totality. It denies the fact of what it is actually made of. The instinct to express the union of material and subject occurs at the beginning of known human expression.…

…For film to have a devotional quality both absolute and relative time must be active and present -not only present but functioning simultaneously and invigorating one another. Transformative film rests in the present and respects the delicate details of its own unfolding."

- Nathaniel Dorsky, Devotional Cinema - On religion in film and the films of Yasujiro Ozu.

Alchemy: Solve et Coagula: "Solution and Coagulation." "Separate, and Join Together" "Dissolve and Coagulate"

Comedy

“Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.” - Peter Ustinov

“‘Comedy is hard’ (last words of Edmund Kean). Comedy plays best in the mastershot.

Comic structure is simply dramatic structure but MORE SO: neater, shorter, faster. Don’t attempt comedy until you are really expert in structuring dramatic material.”- Mackendrick

Recommended reading:

Filmmaking:

• On Film-making by Alexander Mackendrick and Paul Cronin (Essential)

• Directing the Documentary by Michael Rabiger (Essential)

• The Guerilla Film Makers Handbook by Chris Jones and Genevieve Jolliffe (Essential)

• David Mamet: On Directing (Essential)

• Aristotle’s Poetics for Screenwriters: Storytelling Secrets From the Greatest Mind in Western Civilization by Michael Tierno (Essential)

• Film Directing Fundamentals: See Your Film Before Shooting by Nicholas Proferes

‘Spiritual’ filmmaking:

• Devotional Cinema by Nathaniel Dorsky

• Ozu: His Life and Films by D. Richie

• On Fairy-Stories - J. R. R. Tolkien

• J.R.R. Tolkien's Sanctifying Myth: Understanding Middle-earth - B.J. Birzer

Writing:

• On Writing Well by William Zinsser

• Screenwriter’s Masterclass by Kevin Conroy Scott

• The Film Director’s Intuition: Script Analysis and Rehearsal Techniques by Judith Weston

• Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting by Syd Field

Editing:

• The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film by Michael Ondaatje

• The Practical Guide to Documentary Editing by Sam Billinge

Others:

• The Hobbit & Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien

• The Silver Chair & Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Chronicles of Narnia) by C.S. Lewis

• Sacred Art in East and West by Titus Burckhardt

• The Deliverance from Error by Abu Hamid al-Ghazali

• The Writers Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers by Christopher Vogler and Michele Montez

• The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell

• The Film Director as Superstar by Joseph Gelmis

• Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman

• The Films of Akira Kurosawa by D. Richie

• A Hundred Years of Japanese Films: A Concise History by D. Richie

• Which Lie Did I Tell? by William Goldman

• Directing Actors: Creating Memorable Performances for Film and Television by Judith Weston

• Faith and Spirituality in Masters of World Cinema by Kenneth R. Morefield

• The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien edited by Humphrey Carpenter with assistance from Christopher Tolkien

• Money into light : the emerald forest : a diary John Boorman

Good Stories. Children’s books top 25 (collated with friends) ages 8-12+ read to or read by:

• 1. The Hobbit

  2. Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien (not written specifically for children but powerful if they can engage)

  3. My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George (“an accessible and completely unsentimental survival guide disguised as an adventure narrative wrapped in an ode to nature.”)

  4. Hatchet by Gary Paulsen

  5. The Birchbark House series by Louise Erdrich. ("These books follow the lives and adventures of an Ojibwe family (with strong female protagonist, Omakayas) as they're pushed west by white settlers. Beyond the compelling plot and perspectives that challenge the Little House books of my youth, a reader might come away with new and useful land-based knowledge/skills.")

  6. The Silver Chair; Voyage of the Dawn Treader; The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Chronicles of Narnia) by C.S. Lewis

  7. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

  8. The Wizard of Oz full series

  9. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

  10. Ghazali's Book of Knowledge for Children by Fons Vitae

  11. The Secret Garden 

  12. The Life of the Prophet by Gouverneur & Azzam

  13. Ottoline series by Chris Riddell

  14. Charlotte’s Web

  15. A Carpet of Flowers, by Elizabeth Borton de Treviño

  16. The Jungle Book

  17. The Borrowers

  18. Pippi Longstocking series

  19. Black Beauty

  20 Little Women & Pride and Prejudice (children's versions)

  21. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

  22. Wisdom Tales books e.g. Amir 'Abd al-Qadir & some of Demi's books

  23. Conference of the Birds by Alexis Lumbard

  24. The Iliad and The Odyssey- good graphic novel adaptations

  25. Where the Mountain meets the Moon by Grace Lin

"Ten thousand things return to the one; where does the one return to?"

"If everything is gone, nothing moves."

"After breaking through the solid gate, the clear wind blows from the beginning of time."

- T'aego Bou 太古普愚 (1301--1382)

Don’t wander, don’t wander, place mindfulness on guard;
Along the road of distraction, Mara lies in ambush.
Mara is the mind, clinging to like and dislike;
So look into the essence of this magic, free from dualistic fixation.
Once your originally pure, uncontrived mind is revealed,
There is no buddha elsewhere; look at your own face.
There is nothing else to search for; rest in your own place.
Non-meditation is spontaneous perfection so capture the royal seat.

-A Vajra Song by Drubwang Tsoknyi Rinpoche I

“Yes, that's so,' said Sam. 'And we shouldn't be here at all, if we'd known more about it before we started. But I suppose it's often that way. The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of a sport, as you might say. But that's not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually – their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn't. And if they had, we shouldn't know, because they'd have been forgotten. We hear about those as just went on – and not all to a good end, mind you; at least not to what folk inside a story and not outside it call a good end. You know, coming home, and finding things all right, though not quite the same – like old Mr Bilbo. But those aren't always the best tales to hear, though they may be the best tales to get landed in! I wonder what sort of a tale we've fallen into?'

'I wonder,' said Frodo. 'But I don't know. And that's the way of a real tale. Take any one that you're fond of. You may know, or guess, what kind of a tale it is, happy-ending or sad-ending, but the people in it don't know. And you don't want them to.'

'No, sir, of course not. Beren now, he never thought he was going to get that Silmaril from the Iron Crown in Thangorodrim, and yet he did, and that was a worse place and a blacker danger than ours. But that's a long tale, of course, and goes on past the happiness and into grief and beyond it – and the Silmaril went on and came to Eärendil. And why, sir, I never thought of that before! We've got – you've got some of the light of it in that star-glass that the Lady gave you! Why, to think of it, we're in the same tale still! It's going on. Don't the great tales never end?'

'No, they never end as tales,' said Frodo. 'But the people in them come, and go when their part's ended. Our part will end later – or sooner.”

― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

On ‘Moderns’, Epistemology and First Principles:

“The special mark of the modern world is not that it is skeptical, but that it is dogmatic without knowing it. It says, in mockery of old devotees, that they believed without knowing why they believed. But the moderns believe without knowing what they believe - and without even knowing that they do believe it. Their freedom consists in first freely assuming a creed, and then freely forgetting that they are assuming it. In short, they always have an unconscious dogma; and an unconscious dogma is the definition of a prejudice. They are the dullest and deadest of ritualists who merely recite their creed in their subconsciousness, as if they repeated their creed in their sleep. A man who is awake should know what he is saying, and why he is saying it – that is, he should have a fixed creed and relate it to a first principle. This is what most moderns will never consent to do. Their thoughts will work out to most interesting conclusions; but they can never tell you anything about their beginnings. They have always taken away the number they first thought of. They have always forgotten the very fact or fancy on which their whole theory depends.”

- G. K. Chesterton