Neil Hicks – Writing The Thriller Film, The Terror Within – A book review October 4, 2007
Posted by James D Hartland in Blake Snyder, Books, Thriller.1 comment so far
While I procrastinate some more from writing that blog entry about suspense I thought I would write a quick review of “Writing the Thriller Film; The Terror Within” which I blogged about a few weeks ago.
So was the book any good? Hmmm. No not really. I mean it kinda said a few things that got me thinking but really I don’t think there’s enough in here to justify anyone running out to get a copy. That said, I was already familiar with many of the elements of the genre so perhaps to someone who is less familiar with the way the genre works this book will have more to offer.
Like I wrote about in my blog before it’s a very short book so you’re not really getting much for your money, and what you do get doesn’t really go into every aspect of the genre in the same way that the book I read on romcoms did. Instead it very much stuck to the mental anguish of the main protagonist and why this is important and how you create it. Which I guess is why the book is subtitled “The Terror Within”.
I’d also have to point out that the authors writing style is really bad in places. It’s like he loves to use overly complicated and flowery lexicon at certain points for no reason. Blake Snyder this isnt! Some of the paragraphs I read made me chuckle and I wondered if this guy was for real or whether I had somehow missed out on some joke.
That said, since I am writing a movie that is inspired by the elements of a thriller film I’m still glad I read the book, because if one statement in this book helps me write better then for the money it was a bargain. Still, it wasn’t such a hot read.
Neither is the thing I’m reading at the moment; Laughing Out Loud Writing the Comedy Centered Screenplay by Andrew Horton, I’m over a 3rd of the way through this book and so far its been very disappointing. Hopefully it will pick up once I get past the history of comedy section but having looked ahead to what is in the up coming chapters I’m not so sure it will be!
Spectacle over suspense September 14, 2007
Posted by James D Hartland in Horror, Rants, Suspense, Theory, Thriller.2 comments
I have this theory about summer blockbusters that I wanted to share with you guys and see if you agree.
People often talk about the sorry state of Hollywood blockbusters as evidence that movies are getting worse and while I would agree that the blockbusters are pretty crap at the moment, I wouldn’t say that movies in general are getting worse.
But lets address this specific point… why are the big action movies getting worse?
I think it can be summed up in one line… “Spectacle over suspense”
I believe that basically we have gone through a shift in the past few years where suspense and thrills which were once the dominant story tool in action movies has been replaced with a more less powerful one… spectacle.
Take Die Hard for example. That movie might have had the spectacle of the Nakatomi plaza blowing up, but it also has comedy, it has drama, and most importantly it has edge of your seat suspense. It has actual proper engaging story telling in other words. I’d like to be able to say I’ve seen the new Die Hard out this summer so I can give you a definite before and after, but I’ve not seen the movie. Would I find more suspense than spectacle though? I doubt it.
Nowadays its all about spectacle. It’s how many things will blow up and fly across the screen in front of you. It’s how how many guys you can take out with one mid-air kung fu kick. It’s how close the CGI car can land next to the hero.And there in lies the problem I think. CGI.
Special effects have always been a driving force in marketing films and getting bums on seats, but with the advent of CGI film-makers now found themselves in a situation for the first time where apecial effects were so advanced they could do anything they wanted. The result of this was these effects sequences became even more pushed to the forefront of a films main selling points, while the aspects of traditional story telling that the film makers had previously relied on to engage an audience to the point that they would ignore the ropey model effects and guys in rubber suits was no longer needed.
And hence we find ourselves in a situation now where going to a big summer action movie like Transformers is basically akin to going to a firework display. It looks cool and it makes a bunch of noise and then you come home.
I’m not saying that every action movie that used to be made was great, a lot of them weren’t, and similarly I wouldn’t expect every action movie to come today to be great either. But there has definitely been a shift in the tone of action movies from thrills and suspense to pure spectacle, and there has also been a general lowering of the number of watchable action movies each year, and these factors are hardly unlinked.
The good news is I think audiences are already beginning to cotton onto the same fact that the film makers cottoned onto a few years back, which is that you can do anything with CGI, to the point that they becoming desensitised to all this stuff. “Big woop if something flies across the screen, its not even real”. So hopefully in a couple of years from now we find big action movies that rely on slow pacing and suspense rather than lots of thing going crash bang.
The reason I chose to write about this now though is not because I’ve just gotten back from a bunch of terrible action movies however, but rather because I am writing a horror feature film at the moment.
I have deliberately decided to think of my horror film almost as a thriller/edge of your seat suspense movie since I believe the days of ‘the masked killer’s POV shot looking through a window at the unbeknownst girl’ are behind us, and really what an audience would get a big kick out is a horror film which spends 90 minutes showing someone struggling to stay alive. And in that respect I have actually been studying movies like Die Hard just as much as I have been looking at 80s Slasher movies. Doing so really made me appreciate just what a powerful tool suspense can be. When John Maclaine is sneaking around desperate not to be discovered by the terrorists that film is infinitely more engaging than when he has to confront them with a gun or make something blow up.
Like I say, I think approaching a horror film with none stop suspense in mind is where its at; seeing someone desperate not to be discovered and to survive is way more engaging that seeing a monster stalk someone or someone having to fight the monster off.
You don’t get much for your money! July 4, 2007
Posted by James D Hartland in Books, Thriller.2 comments
My newest acquisition arrived today -
Writing the Thriller Film: The Terror Within by Neil D. Hicks
I didn’t really know anything about the book when I bought it, in truth I don’t even remember reading any reviews on Amazon, but I thought what the hell. Worst comes to worst I can stick it back up on Amazon market place and all it has cost me is a couple of squids and the time it took to read it.
Which incidentally won’t be very long. Since the print in this book is huge! That’s why I’m writing about the book when I haven’t even read it yet.
I flicked through the pages and I was like “bloody hell!!” It seriously looks like a kids’ book the letters are that huge. And that’s just the regular text, the script samples in this book in the courier font are even more huge. Did I accidentally buy the version for vision impaired screenwriters or something?
The other thing you notice is just how many pages are basically bullet points and diagrams that take up hardly any of the page at all. And despite all the padding the book is only 146 pages long, so god knows how long it would be if it was printed in a regular style.
So yeah, not a very long book at all!
Obviously I’ve not read it yet and it might yet prove to be a brilliant learning aid. The one thing you can say is that it wont be long before I can tell you one way or the other! I think you could get through this book in one sitting.
That said, I’m probably not going to get around to reading it any time soon. I’ve got a deadline to work towards at the moment. Which again explains the lack of any meaty blog posts lately. Sorry!
The Problem with the UK Film Industry November 17, 2006
Posted by James D Hartland in B-Movies, Genre Movies, Horror, Rants, Romcom, Thriller, UK Film/TV industry.add a comment
I think the problem that stops the British film industry taking off and getting a string of money making hits together is actually the very thing that the British Film industry does to try to compete with other territories; This thing they do to compete actually stops them from competing.
What am I talking about here?
This idea we have that we can’t compete with Hollywood in terms of making mainstream popcorn entertainment, so let’s instead make film that are uniquely British and aim to offer something audiences can’t get from Hollywood.
I think this is a BIG problem because we are basically aiming to avoid making movies which might have mainstream appeal. We are avoiding making movies that might appeal to the young kids who go to the cinema and who buy DVDs.
Let me put this another way… I think the problem in the UK is we don’t make good B-movies.
Take for example Sex Lives of the Potato Men. That movie was despised by critics. However on Richard and Judy, Johnny Vegas was asked about the hatred of the critics for that movie and he replied (quite rightly) with something like; “the critics can moan all they want but the film was one of the few British movies that year to make any profit”. He went on to add that the critics should make up their mind whether they want classy intellectual drama or whether they want a profitable industry that can become self sustaining. I couldn’t agree more.
But let me stress something here… I’m not saying that we should make bad movies. I’m not saying we should make more bad movies like Sex Lives of the Potato Men. What I am saying is that we should be aiming to make what I would describe as “B-movies” but make really great “B-movies”. The better the movie the better chance it stands of making money and it doesn’t matter if you are making a porno or Citizen Kane 2, you should be aiming to make it as good as possible.
What I am simply saying is that the British film industry should realise that Hollywood makes money, not because it has more money to spend, but instead because they are more than willing to make 20 “B-movies” for every “A-movie”. They don’t make money from intellectual dramas aimed at middle aged people, no, they make their money from B-movies
What do I mean by B-movies?
Here I’m talking about horror films, teen/sex comedies, pulpy/sleazy thrillers and other films like that; basically the sorta stuff that doesn’t aim to be the next Billy Elliot or Mrs Henderson Presents. Stuff you might wanna go see with your teenage pals, rather than watch on BBC1 on a Sunday evening.
Two British film makers I greatly admire are Keith Bell and Neil Marshall, the producer and director respectively behind Dog Soldiers and The Descent. I believe they have hit the nail on the head in terms of what the industry needs.
I’m sure they didn’t make these movies with the idea of showing the British film industry what they are doing wrong. I’m sure they just grew up watching horror movies and loving them, and deciding naturally that this is the direction they should go in. But in doing so they have shown that there is some light at the end of the tunnel. If you make a really great B-movie you can make money. And not only that, you can compete with Hollywood. As demonstrated by the fact the Descent did much better than the Cave, a Hollywood movie along the same lines.
Because you know what? You don’t need Tom Cruise or millions of SFX shots to do a sleazy erotic thriller, or to do a gross out comedy or a gore infested horror movie. B-movies don’t need mega resources, they just need talented film makers behind them.
This is exactly the sort of stuff that fits the British film industry perfectly in terms of the budgets it deals with. But for some reason I don’t see the British movies in the cinema being these sorts of movies.
So why not?
I’m not sure if I believe that I am the only person the country who believes that this is what we need to be doing, and that everyone else is looking for the next Billy Elliot. But maybe that really is the case?
I think it’s far more likely that we just aren’t producing films of this sort to a high enough calibre. The reason the Descent was the only British horror movie of note the other year was because all the other ones being made must have been stinkers.
I think maybe there is an argument that respectable film makers, i.e. those with any talent, basically don’t want to be associated with these sorts of movies, hence the only people who make them are the talentless hacks. Everyone reading this blog probably knows some guy who has a camcorder and is currently making another low budget horror feature film, but how many established and talented up and coming film makers want to work with these movies?
Even I am guilty of this. I have an idea for a really kick ass horror movie, but I feel like if that is the one and only spec script of mine that someone reads they will think I am a sleazy guy with no breadth or depth in what I can write.
Maybe that’s stupid? Maybe if I write a really kick ass horror script it wont matter if the person reading it is really grossed out by the death scene involving the hot poker, they will still be able to see that I have a future ahead of me, writing tender and moving works. Somehow I don’t see that being the case though.
So even I, the guy who is ranting about us needing to make B movies, would prefer that he is seen to write stuff other than B- movies. So just what chance does the British film industry ever have of getting over itself and making any money? Because that’s basically the problem. We need to get over our selves and get off our intellectual high horse and go make some kick ass sleazy movies.
We need to ignore our heritage of Shakespeare and other illustrious artists and we need to realise that getting down and dirty and making rank and file movies that appeal to teenagers who never read movies reviews IS the way forward, and that there is nothing shallow, or inartistic about doing that.
Alien is one of the greatest movies ever made, and it is no different from Saw. It is just a horror movie aimed at scaring movie goers shitless and creeping them out long enough that they tell their mates about it…. This is why I reaspect Neil Marshall and Keith Bell so much. They want to make the next Alien. And like I say… we should be aiming to make the greatest B-movies we possibly can.
