On You, the Film Crew

Quiet on Set!

Around the start of the year, I discovered that almost every film I wanted to watch could only be found in the same place — the BFI Player.

I took out a sub.

But a strange and I’m sure very usual thing happens when I open it up.

I spend fifteen minutes of intensely adding to my watchlist, then flip out of the site and watch a YouTube video.

The commitment of an hour and a half, or more, suddenly seems too much.

I always feel, wrongly, that watching a film is an indulgence rather than as good a way of spending time as writing or reading.

YouTube, I know, is my major time-sink. Chess videos. Guitar videos.

But there’s learning there, too.

In the last week, I was glad to discover the return of Every Frame a Painting — my favourite YT series on film techniques.

Just as with Keith Richards and James Baldwin’s insights into music, especially blues, there is an infinite amount a writer can learn from other artforms.

This video is one of Every Frame’s best —

So much to think about.

Hoping to transform a shallow dive into something more seabed, I have been using my BFI membership to watch A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies.

(Can’t you hear that kind of Time/Life luxurious authority in the title?)

I’d put A Personal Journey alongside the 1992 documentary Visions of Light as one of the great primers of film.

Other recommendations?

Both make you watch movies more alive to the fact that every shot, like every sentence in a story, is a decision to make a certain kind of gamble.

Will this work? How will this work?

But it’s the whole film crew I’d like to think about today.

Not the film crew you’ll have on a contemporary Hollywood film, where the digital wrangling alone can take two minutes to scroll by in the credits.

No, it’s the crew who made a film like Cat People (1943).

Here’s the full list from the titles —

Music By

Musical Director

Director of Photography [Cinematographer]

Art Directors

Set Directors

Gowns By

Recorded By

Edited By

Assistant Director

Produced By

Written By

Director

What’s worth thinking about is this, each of these rôles — and several more could be added (Special Effects by) — is something that you, as a writer, have the chance to do in your fiction.

You are your own entire Film Crew.

And maybe if you don’t give some thought to all these different craftspeople you have to embody, and all the different contributions they make to a story, then you’re missing out — if nothing else — on an immense amount of fun.

For example, being your own Costume Department.

Not that you have to describe every character’s every garment. But you can dress them exactly as best suits the scene. You can justifiably spend time putting a specific hat on them and then taking it off.

Most of all, thinking of what you’re writing in terms of Direction, Editing and Cinematography might open up new possibilities of movement, rhythm, framing.

Watch the Kurosawa video, and give a few moments to wondering how placing, say, fast movement alongside static elements within a story could really give your reader something to see and feel.

Even though all the images are ones you’re projecting into their head.