Hope and the magic lottery.

As much as I want you to read my blog, there's someone else's you might consider reading.


Occasionally. 

It's Seth Godin, who is not only a lot more famous than I am, but a lot more prolific with his blogs.

He generally writes about marketing and technology, not filmmaking, but once in a while he posts something that is absolutely, perfectly relevant to you, Aspiring Filmmaker. Like this gem.

Read it, enjoy it, then come back.

The things we make, make us. What do you make of that?

Back before you were born, this was a different country. For a lot of reasons, but most relevant to this particular blog because people were defined by what they created. A butcher was a butcher. A mechanic was a mechanic.


Thanks to advertising, over the past 50 or 60 years that began to change. And today, people are no longer defined by what they make, but rather by what they consume. A butcher can be an Apple person. A mechanic can be a Nike person.


The marketing of four-wheel-drive vehicles is really emblematic of this phenomenon. Most advertise their ruggedness and durability, yet in spite of the skid plates, brush guards, and other accoutrements, by some estimates fewer than 5% ever actually leave the pavement at all. Except for the occasional shower they might have to endure as they cruise along the freeway, most spend their entire lives either coddled in the garage or shuttling along well-maintained roads from the covered parking at the grocery store to the parking structure at the office.


And yet, Range Rover drivers sneer at Ford Explorer drivers as somehow unworthy, who in turn sneer at people driving sedans.


So it's interesting that Jeep's new campaign is based on the line, "The things we make, make us."


You could argue that the "we" is ambiguous enough to refer to Jeep and not consumers, but the first spot in the campaign refutes that. The spot talks about Americans as craftsmen. All of us.


The spot is meant to be an anthem. To instill a renewed pride in American craftsmanship, with Jeep leading the charge. I can't tell you whether the advertising is going to work, but if it does it will mark an interesting development in the deepening of American consumerism. Because implicit in the advertising is a question: What do you actually make?


Middle managers, soccer moms, and salespeople are being told that they should buy a Jeep because, like them, the people who make it make things well. Upon even the most cursory self-reflection, those very consumers should realize that even if they believe that the people who make Jeeps can identify themselves as such (a specious claim if there ever was one), the vast majority of people who buy Jeeps cannot.


"Nice conference report, Bob. I can see you crafted it with pride," says one Jeep owner to another?


So for most people, buying a Jeep now means aligning yourself with what you are not. It's crossing the line from aspiration to appreciation, affiliation to fandom.


It's an interesting flag for Jeep to plant. My own hope is that it will fail. My fear is that it will succeed.

I don't get it.

My three-year-old daughter has been extraordinarily good lately, so my wife and I told her she could choose a treat. She dedided she wanted to see a movie in a theater. She wanted to see 'The Green Man' ('Shrek 3').


I was hesitant. After all, isn't Shrek a little mature for a three-year-old?


The movie's rated PG, which didn't assuage my reluctance, but on the way to the theater, we passed by a McDonald's, where all the Happy Meals feature the lovable green ogre.


Well, there it is. Happy Meals are made for kids. I know that because I used to shoot tons of Happy Meals commercials. So what if they're increasingly marketing tie-ins with movies? My feeling was that having their imprimatur conferred legitimacy on the film as something genuinely for kids.


The film itself was pretty benign. My daughter got a little scared toward the end, but she didn't cry or scream or even avert her gaze, so I guess we did okay. But one thing about the film struck me as odd. 


The soundtrack.


The music –– almost all of it –– was from the 1970s. One of the songs was 'Top of the World'. The original version. The one sung by Karen Carpenter.


'Top of the World' was a Billboard #1 hit in 1973, which means if you remember that song at all, you're not just way too old to be eating Happy Meals, but your children are probably too old to be eating Happy Meals. 1973 was 37 years ago. The fact that I remember the song is anomalous. I was young when it came out, and super old when I started having kids. 

If you were 17 in 1973, you're 54 now. If Happy Meals are meant for kids 12 and under, you gave birth when you were between 42 and 54. So what gives?

The way I see it, there are four possible explanations.

1) 'Shrek 3' is meant to have a dual appeal, to kids and their parents, specifically older parents.

2) 'Shrek 3' is meant to have a dual appeal, to kids and their parents, and nobody bothered to figure out that most kids don't have parents that are more than 42 years older than they are.

3)  'Shrek 3' is designed to occupy a really narrow niche –– appealing to grandparents who take their grandkids to the movies.

4) Everybody making the critical creative decisions on 'Shrek 3' is an old guy –– between 54 and 70. And is completely oblivious to the fact that their musical tastes are antiquated.

I'm going to go with #4. But only because I know that it's possible. I've seen Hollywood egos up close and for every executive who tries to manufacture a product to appeal to a demographic, there's another executive who doesn't give a crap about demographics and does what he knows is best. 

When Mr. Demographic has the power, you end up with a rap song being played over the end credits of a film in which it would be otherwise utterly inappropriate in order to broaden the appeal of the soundtrack and presumably, the film. When Mr. Ego has the power, you end up with 37-year-old songs being used in films that are targeted at people who have little frame of reference to appreciate them.

But I could be wrong. There could be another explanation. 


Anybody got one?

Directing... cooking... the same rules apply.

I've spent a disproportionate amount of the past eight months shooting out of town, and living in hotels, I've had a disproportionate number of meals in restaurants. Some of them quite frou frou.

And you know what? I've learned something.

The fancier restaurants used lovely ingredients and prepared them well, but most of them did something that pretty much spoiled every dish. They tried too hard.

Usually that meant they added just one ingredient too many. The smoked salmon appetizer had both goat cheese and chutney. The sushi-grade hamachi was seared, then slathered in teriyaki sauce.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Brian, what does a restaurant meal have to do with film making?" Well, I'll tell you.

Strangely, a lot.

Directing, like cooking, is about honesty. And when you get too tricky with either, what you gain in style you lose in directness.

Obviously, I'm not advocating bringing out a slab of meat (actor) on an unadorned plate (set), and leaving it up to the restaurant patron (viewer) to appreciate it in all its raw glory. What I am advocating is finding the best ingredients possible and combining them in ways that they work with each other –– ways that they emphasize each other's strengths without masking what makes each of them unique.

Take that a step further. You need a good recipe (script) and the equipment to prepare the meal (crew, equipment). And when all is said and done, the presentation should look appetizing (mise en scene, lighting) without creating expectations counter to what the meal can deliver. And each course (act) needs to work with the others, so that there's a satisfying flow from the appetizers (opening credits) to the dessert (denoument).


Or, to put it another way, if you have Meryl Streep performing Shakespeare, you probably don't need to shoot it underwater.

I did a bad thing. And I'm not sorry.

Last week, I shot a commercial in New Brunswick. The cast included a 7-year-old and if you know anything about New Brunswick, you know it's 4,000 miles from Hollywood. Which means you're not likely to find a lot of professional 7-year-old actors there.

That's okay, actually, because at seven what you want from an actor is enthusiasm more than experience. The kid we cast was actually great. Totally adorable, totally enthusiastic. But even the most enthusiastic, adorable kid can only perform so much. And thanks to common sense and child labor laws, we were limited in the amount of time we could spend with him.

So when we had two more critical shots with the kid and I could tell he wasn't quite getting the meaning of the line he had to say, I did something I normally never do. I gave him a line reading.

In case you're not familiar with the term, a line reading is when you say a line the way you want your actor to say it. And it's usually a bad thing to do because a) unless you're an actor yourself, you don't really know what you sound like when you say something, b) even if you're an actor yourself, how somebody else says something is going to be different from the way you say it, and c) even if you're an actor yourself and you can get somebody else to say something the way you would, it demeans their talent. It's like you're saying they don't know how to communicate when that's fundamentally what actors do.

But like I say, I had limited time and an inexperienced actor. And very little hope that taking him aside –– one more time –– and explaining what the line meant was going to improve his understanding of it.

I like to think I handled it fairly well. For one thing, I didn't go to the line reading until I was sure we weren't going to get what we needed any other way. And for another, I enlisted the help of another actor to deliver the line reading.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Brian, if you can't know how you sound to an actor, why would you make things worse by playing telephone with the information?" Well, I'll tell you.

Because I wanted there to be a bit of a cognitive gap. If the kid were to parrot me, I'd be evaluating his readings based on my delivery. But if I ask someone else to deliver the lines, I have no preconception about how the line sounds before it comes out. So I can disregard the older actor's delivery and concentrate on the kid's as if it's fresh.

As it turns out, I happened to have a really talented, generous, helpful actor on set, who was not only willing to give the kid line readings, but did so with enthusiasm and variety.

We got the line we needed, delivered a bunch of different ways. And we had time to set up, light, and shoot the other shot we needed of the kid. Best of all, nobody's feelings got hurt.

Okay, best of all, we got a really lovely performance.

Why most advertising sucks. (Part 3)

If I could tell one thing to clients I've worked with over the past 23 years, it's this: Say one thing.

One.

It's hard to stick to one message. Especially since articulating one message generally takes far less than 30 seconds. So clients think that if it takes five seconds to say that your snack food is make with no artificial ingredients, you still have 55 seconds left to add that it comes in seven fun flavors and four convenient sizes, is available in the snack aisle, has an exciting new label, is fun to eat, and is enjoyed by some celebrity who is utterly irrelevant to the message they want to communicate, but who they pay ridiculous amounts of money to in order to be photographed eating it.

The thing is, expressing what you want to communicate isn't the same thing as communicating it. Or to put it in a way that even some of my most bone-headed clients could actually understand, it takes less than four seconds to say, "Brian Belefant is incredibly good-looking." But I guarantee it'll take longer than 30 seconds to convince you that the statement is true.

Say one thing. And say it well. If once you've crafted your message you realize that you actually need less than 30 seconds to communicate it in the most compelling manner possible, don't screw it up by throwing more information at the viewers. Run shorter ads.

How to keep from becoming an asshole.

So there I am, prepping this job in New Brunswick, and it turns out the client isn’t crazy about the location we’re presenting. The weekend is coming and we can’t really do anything until Tuesday, so I decided to go out and see if I could dig up some alternate locations.

You know what? It was a great use of two days.

Not just because I found a couple of really good locations, and not just because I got a chance to see a lot of the New Brunswick coastline, but because I got a reminder of how hard location scouting is.

I’m going to do a whole blog post on what makes for a good location scout at some point, but suffice it to say here that it’s pretty hard work. And when your assignment is as specific as mine was (an open-concept waterfront home with an uninterrupted horizon behind it, not too close to the houses next door, well-maintained, but not too upscale and by the way, not blue), it gets really hard.

I knew that. But now –– again –– I really appreciate it.

Every once in a while, do one of the jobs on the crew that you haven’t done in a while. Or that you haven’t done at all. It’s a really good way to keep from becoming an asshole.