"Independence Day" meet "Battle: L.A."

When I was about 13 or 14 years old a movie about aliens overtaking the Earth and the United States trying to get their country back premiered on the box office. The movie was called Independence Day. It was one of the impressive films I had ever seen in my life. The Bill Pullman speech to the fighter jet pilots was one of my favorite scenes in the entire movie. (Might I add, Bill Pullman is to this day a very underrated actor. But that’s another orange to peel in another moment.). So, Bill Pullman’s character did a great job as the President of the United States in “Independence Day” giving one of the best speeches I have ever heard (somewhat cheesy, but very good). And the aliens were defeated. Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum were heroes, they all got the girl, we all won.

In Battle: L.A. we get a veteran Marine soldier in Aaron Eckhart and a battalion of younger Marine soldiers, led by Ramón Rodríguez’s “Lieutenant Martínez” defending the city of Los Angeles from an unknown extraterrestrial force. In this day and age considering how much damage the human race has caused itself and the planet, I think that everyone is looking for a little bit of faith that things will get better, even after something so devastating as what happens in this great movie, or in the case of real life, the devastation in Japan or the aftermath of hurricane Katrina in New Orleans back in 2005. We are constantly looking for a ray of hope. This film has a feeling of finality that has you on edge from the moment the opening credits start to the moment the end credits come on screen.

But in keeping with the previous paragraph, there is a moment in the film where Staff Sergeant Nantz (Aaron Eckhart) decides to resolve a situation that has been building since the beginning of the film, and gives THE speech. It brought me back to when I saw that President Bill Pullman scene in Independence Day. And it was good. It’s in times that we are living now, times in which countries don’t even know who to trust, times where people don’t know if they should trust the ground they are walking on; were we look for these tidbits of faith whether it’s in in movies or your place of choice. But this veteran soldier was promising his boys that he will not leave them behind. And that was hard for some of them to believe considering the soldier’s history, but they went with him… And the rest you’ll have to see because I don’t want to spoil the film. It’s truly an amazing story. One that has you on the edge of your seat the entire run. On the editing part of the film, my favorite part of the film, I have to say that considering the way that the D.O.P. decided to do it, I have to say that it was genius, it gave the editor a broad range of footage to work with. And let me tell you, just because he had a lot of footage to work with doesn’t mean it was easy. It was handheld camera most of the film and that meant that the footage had to be pretty difficult to choose from. Well, when you see it, you’ll understand what I mean. I hope you enjoyed the blog, have yourself a fun weekend and let me know what you thought of the film.

Battle: L.A. is in theaters now, starring Aaron Eckhart, Ramon Rodriguez, Michelle Rodriguez, Ne-Yo, Bridget Moynahan and Will Rothhaar. 


For more information on Battle: Los Angeles box office progress go to: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1217613/business


Image courtesy of www.battlela.com

Let's Save the Movies!

So, I live in Puerto Rico, which means that I get my weekly entertainment magazines approximately one or two weeks later. I just got my March 4th Entertainment Weekly issue, in which there is an interesting article co-written by Anthony Breznican, Josh Rottenberg, and Benjamin Svetkey called "How to Fix The Movies". And it basically talks about the downward spiral the box office is in right now, how it’s been 20 years since the last time the box office was in such a precarious situation. They proceed to offer some good and best of all, FREE advice on "How to Fix The Movies". I personally loved this article because it is so true! The theme in this article was basically that big budget movies (i.e. "How Do You Know?" was budgeted in the $256 million and it bombed in the box office) don't do well in the box office, while small budget movies end up being the most successful (i.e. "Black Swan", "True Grit", "The King's Speech"). 

They recommend, among other things, to instead of remaking old but good movies, to remake the old bad ones. Its clear that studios are going to always remake old movies, they just remake the wrong movies. The article advises to “remake a movie that had a good idea at its core, but was poorly executed in the initial intent or has aged badly.” Examples of movies that followed this path and succeeded go from “True Grit”, “3:10 to Yuma”, “Ocean’s Eleven”, “The Fly”, “The Thomas Crown Affair” among others. Films that didn’t follow that path and failed go from “The Women”, “The Longest Yard”, “Planet of the Apes”, “Sabrina” and “The Pink Panther”.

Another good advice by the article was to stop killing their audiences with their popcorn. You’d think that popcorn is a pretty safe food, its not. According to a 2009 study “a single medium-size bag of popcorn from the Regal theater chain contained 1,610 calories and 60 grams of saturated fat.

“Treat 3-D like the good silverware: only bring it out for truly special occasions”. I couldn’t have said it any better. The fact that almost every movie that has come out in the past year has been made in 3-D is a joke. 3-D should be treated with utmost respect; I think that just because it made the highest grossing movie of all time doesn’t mean that everyone should use this technology. The only people that love using this technology are the studios because they can charge a premium of $3-$4, but misused 3-D in movies like “Clash of the Titans” has created a backlash against big-house “Avatar”. The time for no-nonsense in the movies has come.

Another advice that I thought was very well thought of was the fact that TV writers have a really hard time transitioning to the filmmaking business. The article questions if we’ve seen a romantic comedy that is as funny as “Modern Family”, the answer is a resounding “No”. “And yet, a snobby caste system still exists in Hollywood that makes it tough for TV writers to cross over into features (unless your name begins with “Aaron” and ends with “Sorkin”). What’s odd is that TV guys nowadays are running studios, and yet the writers are having the same problems that back in the day TV actors used to have. Let’s love, not hate!

As a production assistant myself, I have been through the experience where myself and fellow PA’s haven’t really believed in the project that we’re working on. “Chairman and CEO of Legendary Pictures, Thomas Tull, says that commercial considerations have overtaken the creative ones far too much of the time. Which may be a reason why we’ve seen so many movies based on everything from old TV shows to board games to fairy tales. If you have to think hard about why the movie is special, then you should also think hard about why you’re doing it.

I personally like the commercials before the feature, but even I can’t deny that the amount of commercials before a feature is downright ridiculous. Obviously theaters need every nickel they can get their hands on - and cinema advertising accounted for $584 million in 2009. But that’s precisely what turns off moviegoers from actually going to the movies. So, instead of pushing these ridiculous amounts of commercials down our throats, why not a cartoon? They say. Pixar has done a lot of great-animated shorts. In fact they’re going to premiere their next short “Hawaiian Vacation” before the June 24 premiere of “Cars 2”.

Now, for something that I believe a lot of people can agree on. No more than 2 writers per film. The best films in history have had no more than two or three writers. 1994’s “The Flintstones” had more than 35 writers working on the script. Says a producer: “If you look through history, most great movies were a singular vision.”

Well, there it is, my point of view regarding this extremely informative and entertaining article. I believe that the movie going experience is the last step in the movie-making process, as well as being a teamwork experience. It starts with great single or double vision writing, followed by great pre-production, production (in which you have reliable people working on it, that truly believe in the product that they’re making), post-production (great editing!) and last but never least, enjoying the movie. Hopefully a time will come where moviegoers will actually be taken care of. What are your thoughts?

Editing My Life

Hello strangers reading my not-so-good writing! I'm Ileana and, by now its pretty obvious that what I want to do is become an Editor for Film or TV. First, let me tell you how I came upon that crazy, lunatic idea.

I was around 23 or 24 years old (I'm 26 now) and studying Small Business Administration here in Puerto Rico. I'd already been taking my Human Resources and Management classes, I already was like 12 credits into that concentration. I was miserable. So miserable that I was leaning towards the deep end of frustration and misery with the help of The Cure. Don't get me wrong, I love The Cure, but I was listening to "Love Song" way too much considering I was depressed and miserable about something that had nothing to do with the theme of the song. Anyways, one day I'm in a Corporate Behavior class and my professor at the time (she's fantastic) looks at me and she says to me: "Ileana , you hate this class". I was, of course, apologizing to her if I disrespected her with my "boo-hoo" attitude, and she tells me the best thing I have ever heard anyone say. She said to me, "You hate this class, you hate this area of study, why are you here?". I was, of course, dumbfounded, I had no idea why I was there. So, I proceeded to think up an answer. I had nothing. She told me to walk by her office and there she told me that I should evaluate my life and really think out of the box for something that I never thought in a million years that I could do. Well, I never in a million years thought that I could work in Television, let alone in Film. And those are things that are truly interesting to me. So, I looked up information on what to do for that type of study. Long story short (too late!), I ended up changing from horrible Small Business Administration to Communications - Radio & Television Production. When I was taking her class, I was already 3 or 4 years into my college career. 4 years later I graduated (June 2010). When I was finally taking my Television Production classes I discovered that I have an unpolished and barely there talent for editing. Never in a million years, had I thought that I could do something as creative as editing. So, I have taken that newfound interest and talent to practice and I would love to eventually have my own business as an editor to whoever needs the service.

I believe that you can already see that I'm not as good a writer as many 'bloggers' out there. But had I not written out that entire snore-fest, I wouldn't have been able to tell my story of self-discovery (*rolls eyes*). Anyways, I hope you enjoyed my commentary about my fascinating life. Make sure to check for updates on my journey to becoming an Editor. If you have any comments please feel free to write me up. And if you have any suggestions as to what I can do to improve my skills or the skills of any readers out there, be my guest. Thanks for your attention! Come again!

Ileana M. a.k.a. LillyCB

PS: There's an awesome article in Vanity Fair where "The Social Network's" editors talk about the arrival of digital filming and editing on Final Cut Pro, it is very interesting, if, you know, you're into that sort of thing... The link is down below... Enjoy!

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/oscars/2011/02/the-social-networks-editors-on-editing-and-underwear-drawers.html