I want to make this post a summation of all of my thoughts about GOS. A final critique if you will. With no excuses. There are plenty of reasons why things are the way they were, but that doesn't mean they should be ignored.
I'll start with what didn't work:
-The execution of the story structure. I specify the "execution" because I think I have a pretty strong and well thought out character arc for all three leads. It's a weird story woven together nicely. But the way it plays out is stiff. I move through scenes like a checklist almost, which in editing was a difficult problem to deal with. I tried to use music to make the transitions smoother in some places, but that made it feel tacked on. I should have made the series of events more seamless and natural. Well thought out individual scenes in sequence don't make a story.
-Montage overload. This gets me everytime. I basically sum up all of the ship building in montage form, which doesn't contain as much character or plot as I would have liked. The new year's party is easily the most effective montage in the film because the story takes us there and it has a specific atmosphere that conveys the feelings of that night. Christmas lights montage comes in second. Most other montages are more of a form of showing time pass so the ship can be built, and they lack substance. Instead of using the ship more as a device for action and story elements to come out, I use it as this central structure that everything happens around. It makes for a nice metaphor in how it's progress reflects Neil's progress (the ship is finished the morning after the hot tub and proposal scenes which are where Neil resolves his relationships with Travis and Tara.) But not enough action happens with it. The particle accelerator bit is pretty much the only building conflict they have. I never solved this in the script so when shooting I just improvised "building montages" but I don't think they work that well considering how often I repeat them.
-Sound and Wide shots. This is a tricky one, they're lumped together because I have the similar thoughts. At home I notice all kinds of imperfections in the sound mix. The movie also feels too "wide" to me. Most of it is wide static shots will minimal action. This keeps you from seeing expressions on faces and sets you up to expect more action....however, neither of these were issues at the premiere when watching in a theater on the big screen. The wide shots worked wonderfully on the big screen. You could see everything. It read well. And somehow the sound mix was fine on that system. Almost nothing stood out. So I don't know.
-Don't do everything. This is tricky because it's something that's reinforced to me often, but is simultaneously a source of most of my stress. My experience has proved to me that if you want something done right you have to do it yourself. However this is impractical on a movie. And I've also never really worked in a professional environment. I like to prove projects like GOS can happen though and it only could have happened the way it happened. I like to believe that film can work that way even though nobody else does that. But by giving myself so many jobs, I definitely took away from the important ones. I can only imagine what GOS would have been if I was only directing.
-More time. We shot very efficiently. In fact, it's one of the things I'm most proud of about the project. We shot fast, and we shot everything, and pretty well too. But when I think what another 5 days would have done for it, I really wish I had scheduled them.
-Good conversation isn't a Q&A session. My writing tends to be very back and forth questions and answers. Things are revealed by people asking questions about them. Yes that happens in life, but it's too straightforward. It's more interesting when things are revealed or left to figure out later. The majority of the 20 minutes I cut out was scenes with too much exposition and too many questions. The movie works just fine without those 20 minutes and that proves how much fat I had in the script. I need to be more inventive with my dispersal of information.
-Trust my instincts. This was one of the more profound realizations I had. The stuff I put the most thought into was generally the stuff that worked the worst. Or if it wasn't a large quantity of thought, it was a very technically thought process where I had to work through how I should shoot a scene versus what I just already knew and felt about it. Whenever I just went for it and felt it out organically, it worked the best. The moon scene required almost no thought as far as camera positions and compositions go. Same with the party montage and launch sequence. And these are some of the most effective scenes. Granted they also have a lot of action. Going back to the previous problem, talking heads makes for boring stuff to shoot...that being said, part of the point of the feel of the film was that it would be still and cold and distant for much of the first 2/3's in order to give the ending more gravity (pun intended). But yeah, ultimately is was good to realize that I have pretty good instincts for how to shoot something when I'm thrown into it. I shouldn't over-think it.
-Don't be afraid of old people. I think the biggest giveaway that this was a small production was that all of the characters were roughly the same age, which proves they're all friends or friends of friends. We didn't do any real casting to get older actors to play the cop and the lawyer and the priest, when in reality those would make better juxtapositions for the naivety and immaturity of the main characters (i.e. you have young people in an old people world, the perfect image of growing up).
-Details. I put a huge amount of prep work into preventing inconsistencies. But still, they seep in because I was the prop master and script supervisor in addition to everything else. Most people don't give a shit about details when shooting, but it's a dead give away to an audience who is taken out of a moment because for a second we show we didn't catch a mistake. Suddenly, the production becomes apparent. Some of the biggest inconsistencies to me were Kemer's gum being green in one shot and white everywhere else, his wine bottle clearly being half empty when he gets to the house (this implies he drank some while driving over, which says a ton about his character), and the bow on the bottle was supposed to be the red store-bought one, but it got lost and we had to settle for a silver one spray-painted orange (the closest paint we had to red). And then all of the reflections. Not taking to the time to see that the tripod or me or Danny is in the reflection on a window implies we weren't careful and we imply we didn't care about something, then the audience isn't going to feel like they should.
-Don't take so freaking long. It is what it is. I wrote for too long, and I edited for too long. Production was too short, but was the best part of the whole thing. So much was accomplished in such a short period of time. I'm about to begin writing something I want to shoot in 3 months and have finished by the end of the year. This is going to be quite an interesting project.
So what works? The easy answer is "everything else." Seriously, the amount of stuff "not wrong" with the movie is a huge reason why this project stands out and is taken fairly seriously by people who see it. You can get lost in the movie and watch it as a movie and not just as a favor to your friend. I believe that though I wouldn't exactly have any unbiased input from the public on that. But to me that's the greatest accomplishment. You don't really feel that this project was as small and cheap as it was. There's a spirit to it and an undeniable effort in it that proves we aren't just trying to show off. We're not just putting ourselves on camera or showing that we can do special effects or something. We aren't trying to prove that we can, from a technical perspective, make a movie. That's what most low-budget filmmakers are trying to prove. But we were just trying to prove that we could tell a unique story and I feel like that's what people get out of it. They don't have to feel obliged to support our efforts and people who can make movies, but they can support us because they like the movies we make. That's an extremely important distinction for me - even in Hollywood, it's obvious when a filmmaker like James Cameron is trying to prove a technical feat with Avatar, versus when a filmmaker is just trying to make a good movie like in most good movies, say a David Fincher film. People ultimately respect good stories before good technical skills, and that's where I hope this film falls and where my future projects will fall. I just want enough technical proficiency to where flaws and our act of making the film aren't apparent and don't distract people. Everything else is story.
So with that, I end the journey of GOS. It's kind of weird. I've never spent so much time with a project. But it's done and I can't fucking wait to make something else now. Thanks to everyone who helped make this project what it is. Everyone played an extremely important role and I just hope you all got out of it as much as I did and can take ownership in this project. I would hate for it to have all been to serve me and my goals.
