50 Suggested Principles For the Filmmaker
In no particular order…
Photo by Joe Roberts, Unsplash
Learn not what to know, learn how to think.
Don’t conform, dissent.
Magic. Mystery. Mischief.
Feel. Consider. Challenge.
American dramatic narrative = adversarial individualism.
Reject the club, seek loneliness.
Ambition is is the death of thought. (Wittgenstein)
Film is not theatre on camera.
Watch films to make films.
Make a movie to save your soul.
Know it never will.
No need to save your soul? No need to make the movie.
Read! Read! Read! (Werner Herzog)
Story. Screen. Audience.
Image. Sound. Film.
Dance to the pain.
When I’m making a film, I’m the audience. (Martin Scorsese)
Emotion.
Tone.
Language of film.
Style comes from the soul.
Your vulnerability forms your strength.
Not preparation but formulation.
Screenplay. Casting. Editing. (From Kieslowski)
Connective tissue, the path to simplicity.
Image. Shot. Camera.
Think passage of time.
Montage. (Eisenstein). Time. (Tarkovsky).
The agency of emptiness.
The potency of silence.
Contrast.
Dissonance.
Interfunctionality of filmmaking crafts.
Never “unpack” unless it’s a delivery.
Suspect current idiom.
Forget careers guidance.
Filmmaking an artistic process. Production an industrial.
Flow of images, not coverage.
Flow of energy.
Territory—the primal human currency.
Dialogue as multifunctional resource.
Looks as wordless dialogue.
Image as subtext.
Nothing is more exhilarating than philistine vulgarity. (Nabokov).
Elegance as eloquence, not embellishment.
Rhythm not pace.
Let characters not rise above circumstance.
Listen to yourself.
Listen to the film.
Conflict. Friction. Tension. Vibe.
Peter Markham