![]() From there, the job of a director or producer was to find the actors who could deliver on the promise of a script. When screenplays were written, the focus of the writing was on creating a performance opportunity that would startle or surprise audiences. From a very young age, the showpeople of those generations were all imprinted with a strong foundation in performance. Back in that era, most filmmakers - most executives, even - came from theater or some other discipline of showbusiness. When folks in Hollywood lament losing that one, indefinable thing that filmmakers from the 70’s and beforehand seemed to grasp so naturally, what they’re noticing is a focus on performance work as the core of cinema. If we can return our focus to performance as a source of production value, then we bring ourselves back to the only reliable, renewable source of spectacle in entertainment: the craft of our performers. When a screenplay offers the cast performance opportunities that stretch the boundaries of what an audience might expect from an actor, then the realization of that performance will always be spectacular. Human beings will always, always, underestimate other human beings. Night Shyamalan and Chris Nolan, we all need to stop expecting clever plot mechanics to “wow” an audience. While audiences may not expect the precise plot developments we plan for them, today’s audiences have definitely figured out our overall gameplan in this regard. Our problem, in a nutshell, is that the construction of a plot is every bit as mechanical as the construction of a special effect. Inserting the right plot twist into the screenplay of a film has proven to be an inexpensive, effective way to catch audiences off-guard, so independent filmmakers today are understandably focusing their attention on finding or developing those screenplays that challenge an audience’s expectations with regard to plot. For independent filmmakers this is good news, so long as we find some other source from which to harvest our spectacle. Spending more money on a film does not necessarily make the film more spectacular. Once we know people can do a thing, we expect it. Technical or mechanical accomplishments only “wow” us the first time we encounter them. When we encounter a visual effect we’ve already seen, it fails to impress us. When we see a visual effect we’ve never seen before, the “wow factor” comes from the fact that we know some human being must have been responsible for manufacturing that image and now that we’ve seen it, this new thing gets added to our internal list of things we know people are capable of. Spectacle is the effect of watching a person do something we didn’t actively realize people could do. According to the popular wisdom, spectacle is just one of those things where “You’ll know it when you see it.” What’s useful about this way of thinking is that if spectacle cannot be defined in specific terms, then there’s no way for a filmmaker to reliably cultivate it, and nobody can be blamed when a movie fails to offer spectacle to the audience. ![]() Most folks in Hollywood believe that spectacle is an impossible thing to define. Among the many diamonds of understanding I’ve compressed and subsequently mined in my years of professional disintegration and reconciliation is this: Just as the title of that first Stage 32 blog suggests, I’ve had the opportunity and the motivation to rigorously evaluate what it is I’m doing in Hollywood, how I’m doing it, and why. ![]() ![]() For the sake of brevity (hah!), let me say here that I was a Development Executive for nearly a decade, that I’m now working as a screenwriter on some high-profile projects, and that I’m building a film company with the support of many of independent Hollywood’s best and brightest. In my inaugural Stage 32 blog, entitled Reality Checks from an Inspirational Cripple, I discuss the extent and the price of my insight into film development. ![]()
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