Welcome to The Queue — your daily distraction of curated video content sourced from across the web. Today, we’re watching a video on the importance of embracing accidents during the filmmaking process.
There’s an old joke that goes: if you want to make God laugh, make a plan. This feels especially appropriate when it comes to movie-making. With so many deadlines, moving parts, and hands-on deck, it’s almost certain that, eventually, something will go wrong. The fact that movies are helmed by controlling creatives whose job-title is one muddled syllable away from “dictator” makes this inevitability for error especially delicious.
It also makes for some particularly compelling contradictions, such as known-control freak Stanley Kubrick — arguably cinema’s preeminent perfectionist — allowing for planned improvised takes. Which are exactly what they sound like: takes where actors go off-script on purpose.
Indeed, this hard-learned balance between good planning and unexpected opportunities is one of the essential lessons of filmmaking. Without a degree of flexibility (and rolling cameras), we wouldn’t have the evocative splattering squib burst in Children of Men, the authentic reaction to Alien‘s inaugural chest-burst, or Midnight Cowboy‘s infamous, oft-quoted “hey, I’m walking here!”
As in life, on a film set there is an innate desire to control things. Learning to loosen up, know what you need, and stay open to moments of discovery is not easy, but it can lead to magic.
Watch “Embracing Accidents“:
Who made this?
This video is by RocketJump Film School, an ongoing series of online filmmaking tutorials and educational essays. You can subscribe to their YouTube page here. And you can follow them on Twitter here.
More Videos Like This
- Here’s another sample of RocketJump Film School’s work: how filmmakers create the illusion of doubles, twins, and clones through various visual effects.
- Relatedly, here’s RocketJump Film School on the subject of “movie magic” and how directors find creative solutions to sell engaging illusions.
- Harmful accidents should not be the goal. But sometimes they sneak into the final print, too. The only good late-night talk show host, Graham Norton, interviewed Tom Cruise around the filming of Mission: Impossible – Fallout. Here’s a segment of their chat where Cruise (armed with accompanying video) explains how a roof jump stunt went sideways (just like his ankle). It’s the take they used in the film, so the mistake has now been canonized.
- Jonathan Lynn‘s Clue sticks to its script. But an improvised line made it into the film anyway. It also happens to be one of the funniest moments in the whole movie.
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