WHAT MAKES FOR GOOD FILM

I come from a family of story tellers. We love having long talks, sharing thoughts on our perspective and hilarious anecdotes. And the best presentation of a story is the one that put you in the moment.

Art like books, films, and music make for great mediums in the capture and presentation of a story. Of those three, film is by far the most difficult. It incorporates all of the skills of the other two and requires you to hide and reveal the story in clever ways that bring you into the story in a compelling manner. So what separates a mediocre film from a great film?

Visual tone

The balance of colors, light and darkness, pacing and movement all contribute to the quality of an unfolding story. They are like a painting. And the best films do this in a manner that move you into the groove of the moment, bringing you into the story as an experience.

Actors standing around delivering lines in accidental environments might be delivering great dialogue but more than likely the viewer will be distracted by the muddled scene, making it all fall flat. Likewise, you might have a perfectly intentional set design, with well balanced colors and wardrobe that overpowers the acting and the dialogue render the same lost effect over the story telling. The key seems to be balance. A reasonable amount of set dressing, costuming, lighting, camera angles, acting, and scripted dialogue can go a long way to create a moment that not only moves the story forward but moves the viewer into the story in a more compelling manner.

The long ignored element: sound

Sound editing in poorly made films is an often overlooked element. Listen to the sound design in the trailer for the film The Vanishing.

There is a nice balance between music and dialogue, the words are easily understood in terms of the equalization of sound. There is a subtle mix of reverb in different environments to imply the space they are in, but only symbolically. First, you would never hear dialogue so clearly. The lower base tones would be lost in most environments. In an exterior environment, you would be battling with the sounds of nature. Again, you hear this in the soundtrack to the trailer, but only symbolically: birds, the wind, the sea. It is there, but not in a natural unbalanced manner. it is only atmosphere.

Making a story… nice

These days, I feel like filmmakers often make a considerable effort to get a few things done correctly:

• shallow depth of field, focusing on the active elements of a scene and allowing the background or foreground to fall out of focus, helping the viewer know where to direct their attention
• scene framing, applying various aesthetic rules for how and where they aim their camera to make the capture compelling
• written dialogue, whether done well or not, a lot of time seems to be spent on trying to get the right message across to the viewer

And while that can be good stuff in hoping to achieve a filmic look to the story, it doesn’t move a film into the greatness catagory for me.

Making a story… good

Take a look at the trailer for the movie Donovan Reid:

Here are a few things I am noticing that keep this in the nice category:

• background soundtrack is too overpowering for the type of story. It is a good match, but the music mix favors the music a bit too much. Forgivable, but distracting.
• overacting by most of the actors in the scenes except for maybe the subtle acting of the main character. From the emotions to the way dialogue is delivered, it feels like the moments do not match the dialogue. Lines are delivered, but in a none-compelling manner. Highly distracting.
• sound design for dialogue is way off. Everything sounds like it was recorded in a room with hard narrow tall walls. This is so easily fixed but, again, often overlooked.

It is a shame because the color mix, the general cinematography and tone seems spot on. It’s just too bad that the acting feels out of place and poorly delivered, the poor outcome amplified by a weak general sound design.

If you compare these two trailers, another item worthy of note is the presentation of pacing. The Vanishing speeds up over time to build tension. The trailer itself tells a story and brings you into the tension. Donovan Reid has very random pacing and has a very anticlimactic arch to the trailer. You get a basic idea for the story, but not in a manner that is very compelling.

Both stories have a small cast, minimal locations, and similar pacing. The difference is, in my opinion, balance.