Take a trip through some lessons in loose and lively filmmaking.
One of the most prolific and versatile filmmakers working today is Michael Winterbottom, and he’s one of the few constantly busy directors who is also an auteur. He dabbles in different genres and tones, true stories and fantastical fictions, adaptations and original ideas, but his movies are always distinctly his. Even when they seem to be totally driven by on-screen talent as commanding of attention as Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, who’ve now starred in three hilarious installments of the Winterbottom-helmed The Trip franchise (the latest is The Trip to Spain, out this Friday).
Below are some tips gleaned from interviews with Winterbottom over the years, and they’re great lessons for any filmmaker who admires his ability to stay so independent and productive and creative in spite of being very inconsistently popular from project to project.
Work for Free
Nobody likes the idea of working for nothing, but if you do it right, working for free doesn’t mean you don’t get something in return. The payment comes in the form of experience or the doors it opens or opportunities it leads to. At least that’s what I think Winterbottom is getting at in his advice for young filmmakers, as shared with Ideas Tap in 2012:
“The first film I made was ‘Butterfly Kiss.’ I worked on it for six months and didn’t get paid. That was the same for the writer and producer, but we did it to get our name out there, and a year later we were working on ‘Jude.’
“We did 9 Songs with a crew of four or five people over a period of three or four months for a very low budget. We did ‘In This World’ with a crew of eight or nine people and we travelled from Pakistan through to Britain over a period of two or three months. Once you’re there, it somehow works. There are always people enthusiastic enough to work on your film, and with the technology available these days, there’s little excuse.”
Michael Winterbottom directs Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon on the set of ‘Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story’
Truth vs. Fiction
“You can’t tell the truth unless you make it a fiction” — Simon Ford (Kate Beckinsale) in Winterbottom’s The Face of an Angel.
Winterbottom primarily works in dramatic cinema, but he does often blur lines of truth and fiction by dealing with real events and real people. For instance, The Road to Guantanamo can be labeled a documentary, but it also entails so much reenactment of such high production value that it’s a literal hybrid. He also likes to have celebrities play fictionalized versions of themselves (Coogan mainly) for whole movies where that’s typically just done for cameos.
In a Master Class Q&A at the 2012 Göteborg International Film Festival, he was asked about his regular interest in current events and real modern global issues, some of which are directly based on true stories (A Mighty Heart) and others entailing dramatic license (The Face of an Angel, which is inspired by the Amanda Knox story). Winterbottom discusses that interest and why filmmaking is the same whether you’re working with truth or fiction:
Serious vs. Funny
It’s no shocker that Winterbottom’s most popular efforts are his films in the Trip trilogy (put out as miniseries in the UK). They’re hilarious and don’t make you think too much about the problems going on in the world that the director often deals in, like war and terrorism and tragic love stories. But Winterbottom doesn’t see The Trip and its sequels as just a lighter alternative to his more serious stuff or a stark contrast to them. Last fall, he told El País:
“At times you have to focus on fun and happy stuff and at other times you have to look at the darker side of things. Then there are the gray areas in between. For instance, I like working with Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon because they tackle the serious side of life but in a funny way.”
Michael Winterbottom directs a scene for ‘The Road to Guantanamo’
What We’ve Learned
Winterbottom makes a lot of movies, so maybe he doesn’t have a lot of time for idle chatter, or even seemingly substantial chatter. That is to say, many of the tips above follow a theme of things speaking for themselves. Don’t worry about what classifications your films fall under, with regards to genre or ratings or whatever. Don’t worry about writing your idea out ahead of time before shooting. Don’t worry about having to explain what you want from the actors.
I leave you with one last bonus tip that goes along with that general idea of not having to expound on what you’re saying, particularly with the movies you make. From a 2010 Time Out London interview:
“I don’t like films that are made to teach you lessons. It’s a difficult area because you can start talking a lot of pretentious nonsense if you are not careful. I think you should make films and you shouldn’t talk about films afterwards.”
The article 6 Filmmaking Tips from Michael Winterbottom appeared first on Film School Rejects.
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