DEFECT WINS SPECIAL JURY PRIZE AT MONACO

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISM-I1nEpHQ

D E F E C T
an experiment in Feature Development

Screens at Okanagan International Film Festival

9:00 pm - July 23, 2010

STOP PRESS

Winner!!!

Special Jury Prize
Monaco Charity Film Festival, May 2010


Best Work-in-Progress Short

Soho International Short Film Festival, 2010

A NOTE FROM BILLY MARSHALL STONEKING

The short film, Defect, was produced as part of the script development phase of a character-based feature film to be shot in 2010 on location in the Czech Republic and Australia. Whilst Defect is essentially a "work-in-progress" it has nevertheless managed to get itself invited to Swansea, Monaco and NYC's Soho International Film Festival, owing to the fact that it presents a succinct, self-contained and thoroughly dramatic story that adheres to the fundamental grammar of short-form drama, with the re-contextualisation of the problem at the end.  (see STORY - the Long and the Short of It on this BLOG)

In the course of writing, casting, rehearsing, shooting and editing Defect, the director and I (the film's writer/co-producer) had an opportunity to enter into an extremely intimate relationship with the characters - characters embodied by actors that spoke not in written language but in actual speech with its nuances, tonalities and rhythms. As a result, we were able to more effectively engage with and explore the various emotional complexities and ambiguities inherent in the characters and their relationships, whilst gaining valuable insights into a number of thematic and stylistic issues that were not altogether apparent in the written screenplay.

The exploration of character and situation by means of ALL the tools of the cinematic storytelling enterprise has opened up the on-going script development process, and re-vivified the filmmakers' interactions with characters. What is most interesting is how the sequence that appears in Defect has been transformed in the feature script because of what was learned during the process of writing, casting, shooting and editing a section of the feature script. The transformation of this particular sequence - as evidenced by subsequent re-writes of the feature script - provides compelling evidence concerning the efficacy of this kind of dramatic examination of character and story prior to actual production.

Interacting with characters in this way - with bodies and voices, with mise en scene, and the rhythms inherent in character actions and interaction, and the tracking of these energies through coverage and editing preliminary to actually producing a major film - is the kind of thing I have been advocating for years in various film schools - alas, to no avail (so far). It has always seemed to me that one must employ ALL of the tools at hand in the process of finding the characters. This is the great unheeded message of the new technology.This clip - which features a brief introduction by the director, Zdenka Simandlova as well as a trailer of the short, Defect - forms part of the press kit that will accompany the short to the SIFF.

The trailer in a slightly modified form will also be part of the script package that we give to prospective production companies and executive producers - a "window" into the world of the feature, BREAKING BREAD. Viewers should note that, apart from anything else, the present clip demonstrates the power of a well-made trailer, and how even this form of storytelling employs the grammar of drama in order to make its point.

Anyone out there wanna start a radical, new film school? Let's talk.

                      

Official Selection : Monaco Charity Film Festival, 2010  -  Winner, Special Jury Prize

Official Selection: Soho International Film Festival, 2010 - Winner Best Work-in-Progress shortOfficial Selection: Swansea Bay Film Festival, 2010

DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT


My producer, Billy Marshall Stoneking, has said: “Dramatic stories explore the causes and consequences of anxiety."

The characters in Defect struggle to contain and alleviate their fears and anxieties in the face of an oppressive regime that threatens their very lives. It dramatises the meaning of their fear and anxiousness by showing us the consequences of the decisions that the main character makes in order to escape the injustice he and his lover suffer. In the world of the story, moment-to-moment decisions made by the characters have tremendous impact on both individuals as well as whole families.

The story focuses on a couple’s attempt to defect. Full of uncertainty regarding who they can trust, they wait for the promised lift that will take them over the border to safety, and as they wait the tension builds. An unexpected visitor is all it takes to tip the entire siuation over the edge.

Defect is a very personal story to me - a "tribal story" as Billy Marshall Stoneking - the writer/co-producer of Breaking Bread - might say. I wanted to tell the story of not one, but many people from my home country, Czechoslovakia, that attempted to do something about their living conditions in a society that, although it called itself 'the rule of people without the social structure', was in fact ruled by a few who by theft became rich, calling themselves Communists, and whose rule was kept alive by the fear spread by their State Police (secret police, StB) apparatus, who exercised violence and a net of informers to catch and punish the ones who disobeyed or attempted to escape.

My collaboration with Billy has helped me appreciate the importance of drama, and to see that dramatic screen stories are tribal stories, told by "mediums" who are either part of - or have been initiated into - the tribes whose stories are being told. It has also given me an opportunity to explore film in a much more intuitive way than I had been taught at film school. More than casting, more than coverage, beyond shot lists and working with actors, I have come to see that a good director initiates the non-initiated - cast, crew and audience - into the tribal world of the story. To do this, a director must be involved emotionally involved with the characters. I would even go so far to say that everyone on the set should be emotionally involved with characters, so long as they are the same characters.

Defect, my second short, marks the beginning of an exploratory journey in the development of the feature film project, Breaking Bread. A third short, Trust, extends this exploration and was also invited to screen at Monaco.


Zdenka Simandlova

STORY - THE LONG & THE SHORT OF IT

EXPLICIT AND IMPLICIT DRAMA

In many ways, the short film is to the feature what the short story is to the novel. Sentence by sentence, the language of a short story may look the same as the language found in a novel; both might have recognisable characters and plots, but, despite the obvious similarities, a short story presents a very different sort of code than that provided by the novel, and its language behaves very differently, both by virtue of its scope and the way in which it apprehends its content.

A short film is not a miniature feature. It operates, rather, by an odd sort of logic that when successful rarely propels its audience towards the kind of expected and satisfying narrative resolution that so often characterises longer-form drama. Often, the resolution of a well-told short-form drama occurs in the mind of the viewer rather than on the screen. When a short film tries to behave like a feature, the result is often contrived, incredible or, even worse, utterly meaningless.

Characters who live happy lives, who are content with their lot, and fully satisfied they have achieved all their goals, are NOT the stuff dramatic stories are made of. At its most basic, a dramatic story is about a character under threat, struggling to resolve some sort of problem, anxiety or difficulty.

In long-form drama, the central problem or difficulty is invariably introduced early in the story, and the character’s struggle to resolve the problem leads to ever more-pressing problems (complications and obstacles) that are accompanied by ever-increasing risk and tension. CHARACTER is understood as an expression of ACTION.

In the short-form drama, the problem and the character form a relationship that leads the audience towards a set of assumptions and expectations (based primarily upon the audience’s prejudices) about what that relationship actually means. CHARACTER is understood as an expression of THEME.

In long-form drama, the dramatic action of the story is played out until the audience is satisfied there is nothing more the main character can do. Hence, the plot becomes EXPLICIT.

In short-form drama, the character/problem relationship is re-contextualised or amplified in such a way that it subverts the audience’s beliefs about what the character/problem relationship really means, thus propelling the audience into playing out the drama of the new meaning well beyond the end of the actual film. Hence, the plot becomes IMPLICIT.


IDENTIFICATION – THE NEED TO CARE

Since plot is not just events but the causal relationships between the character and his/her perceived problem or dilemma and what he/she does about it, plot cannot be divested of character. In both forms of dramatic storytelling, meaning is conveyed through the actions, including visual and aural images and the contexts these images create for other images within each scene, and between one scene and another (in the cut).

Every character in a successful dramatic story desires something; every character is preoccupied with satisfying some need that is motivating the character to act.

Those characters whose anxieties, needs and desires are identifiable to us are always more compelling than those characters whose needs don’t move us. To identify with a character means to recognise that the character has the same anxieties, needs and desires that we have.

In both long and short-form drama that works, characters will be acting on the basis of identifiable anxieties, needs and desires, and not from the external demands of plot or the personal insecurities of the writer/s.



A CASE IN POINT

Short-form drama that is successful invariably focuses on the exploration of an idea or issue – usually ONE idea. When well conceived, the idea carries both intellectual and emotional content. In serious drama, the idea tends to weigh more heavily on the emotions; whereas in comedy it engages the intellect.

In the short film, like the feature, the initial action revolves around establishing the character/s and his/her/their world. Within this world there is the manifestation of a human value or ideal, something hoped for, or a desire, perhaps, or an attitude or sense of connectedness with which the audience engages.

In long-form drama, this value or belief or desire is presented at the beginning of the story and is soon sub-rated or interfered with by the imposition of an opposing force (the catalyst or disturbance), usually personified by another character (an antagonist) or by nature. This results in the main character hatching and carrying out a plan of action – which necessarily involves ever-increasing risk to the character - to overthrow the opposition in the hope of re-storing some degree of balance and order. How the main character deals with the obstacles and complications that stand between him/her and his/her goal ultimately leads to a resolution that is either positive (the goal is achieved) or negative (the goal is not achieved).

In traditional short-form drama, the catalyst and the quest to re-establish equilibrium is de-tuned or replaced altogether by the dramatization of a thematic idea or issue that MEANS something to the character and the audience. The audience’s association and/or identification of this idea or issue with that character’s persona – his/her anxieties, desires and needs – conditions and informs the audience’s emotional understanding of the character and his/her world. The character is THAT character by virtue of his/her relationship to THAT idea/issue; and that idea/issue is precisely what it is (and means what it means) because of its association with THAT character/world.




Take Sejong Park's film, Birthday Boy, as an example – an excellent and altogether satisfying manifestation of the formal dramatic behaviour one finds in traditional short-form drama that works. In Birthday Boy, we are presented with a young Korean boy, growing up among the detritus of war. He constructs his toys out of the remnants of wrecked fighter planes, and shapes them to his needs using the trains and tracks upon which tanks are being sent to reinforce a faceless army. The idea at the heart of the action concerns transformation – how a child in his playfulness and imagination can transform the horrors of war into something that creates happiness and a degree of absorbed contentment. The dramatic issue is the transforming energy of playfulness and the imagination that inspires it.

The change – the dramatic change – occurs when a package arrives on the boy’s front porch. It is the boy’s birthday – we know this from the title – and the package he presumes is a birthday present. Tearing off the paper and opening the box, he discovers items from his father – an army cap, some boots, some old photos of himself with his father in happier times. And suddenly, it dawns on us. This is not a birthday present at all, but rather the worldly possessions of the dead father, killed in action, being returned to his family. We also realise that the boy, himself, because of his age and innocence, is unaware of this. As he plops the cap on his head and marches gleefully around in the over-sized boots, we realise he is continuing to play out the meaning of the old idea – the transformation of war into something more playful, more childlike. Then his mother, arriving home from work or shopping, calls out, and we realise what must happen.

Dramatically, the arrival of the mother is the coming catalyst for change that will change everything: the knowledge of his father’s death, the other meaning of the package; and we are left with the unasked, but profoundly felt question, what will the boy do with this part of the war? How is it possible for these objects of his father’s, and what they signify, to be changed – like the spare parts of wrecked fighter planes – into something that transcends pain and destruction? Suddenly, in this unasked question, we come face-to-face with the emotional confrontation that waits so unexpectedly for the boy in the familiar and seemingly benign yet loving form of his mother. And we know – with a sense of growing tension, that the knowledge he is about to receive will change the boy forever.

The wonderful thing about this film, and about all short-form dramatic films that work, is how the story goes on playing itself out in the mind of the audience even after the film has ended. Propelled by the contrast between the original meaning of the film’s thematic idea, and what that idea has come to mean as a result of the change that has taken place, the audience moves past the conclusion of the plot into an untold future, that is the continuing story, enacted in the invisible realm of pure imagination.

Sweet Night Good Heart provides an unusual and pertinent example of the re-contextualisation of the problem.