Film Courage: Can you share 5 lessons that will help someone be a better filmmaker right
now?
Matt Eskandari, Writer/Director/Producer: Five lessons that will make you a better filmmaker
right now is first trust your actors.
Actors are always going to come in there to try to elevate the material, to try and create
better work for you.
So always trust your actors.
Number 2 - Don’t get so trapped on what your vision is that you’re so focused on
it you can’t listen to otters ideas or people because that will limit what you can get.
Third is don’t give up you know what I mean if things aren’t exactly going your way
that doesn’t mean that there isn’t something right around the corner or something you can
do to kind of get to that quicker.
I think another tip is to read a lot of scripts.
I think reading scripts and then watching the film actually made off of the scripts
you will learn so much about how the story was actually executed.
It’s one thing to see a movie and be like “Oh this is how I would have done it.”
Or “This is how they should have done it.”
But when you read the actual material that it was based on (the blueprint itself) and
then see “Oh?
That was interesting the way the director executed that scene or the blocking in that
scene was different than the way I would have blocked it but that was interesting.
Another bit of advice that I would give is edit projects as much as you can because the
more as a director you’re on set thinking as an editor, the faster you will be, the
more concise you will be and the more able you will get what you need on set because
you’ve spent that time in the edit bay seeing what works, seeing how cuts and takes work
and cut get together and elements you kind of don’t need and things that you do need
really helps with that.
So I think cutting projects, cutting stuff on your own is really essential.
I remember one of the things that I did in film school was I would take a scene from
from whatever your favorite movies are whether it’s LAWRENCE OF ARABIA or THE GODFATHER
or whatever, you take those films and you take a scene and drop it on the [editing software]
timeline and you just find all of the cuts for that scene and you look at it in whatever
editing program you are using and you’re like “Oh?
So they cut to that…to that…to that.”
And it really is an invaluable way to see how a scene plays out.
How cuts can get either shorter or faster.
How the director and the editor creates suspense or tension by the way that the cuts are laid
out in the scene.
That was a really invaluable lesson is by looking at other projects and seeing how they
were cut.
Film Courage: That’s excellent.
Do you remember the films you used to watch again [in film school]?
Some of the ones that really stuck out to you?
Matt: It’s hard for me to choose five films or just a list of films that kind of left
an impression on me as a filmmaker.
I think more than anything it’s the directors themselves and the body of work that I look
back on it and get inspiration from.
Like look at [Stanley] Kubrick and how he was able to tap into different genres like
horror, the war films and all of those different genres that he touched on.
How he would uniquely shoot a scene was interesting.
This would always give me inspiration.
I was like “That was a different way to shoot that scene?”
So I’m now trying to think of other directors or other filmmakers and see how at their work
they might have approached a similar scene and try to be like “Oh that’s different?
I never would have thought of that?”
But that all kind of inspired me as a filmmaker I mean Kubrick, Spielberg, Kurosawa, Christopher
Nolan those are the type of filmmakers where their work is so unique and such a strong
voice that anytime I need inspiration and want to just kind of draw back into that creative
well I can just look at any of their films and find something unique or different that
will help motivate and inspire me.
Film Courage: Speaking of chess (we talked about it earlier in the interview) Kubrick
used to play chess for money?
Matt: Kubrick approached the filmmaking process like a chess game, every problem that came
at him was another move on the board.
He would always try to anticipate two steps ahead, other things that could happen.
Chess is not just an analogy for filmmaking, it’s really an analogy for life where if
you can become a good chess player (if you put yourself in that mindset) you can become
a better filmmaker and hopefully a better person because you can kind of look at life
from that perspective.
Film Courage: He [Kubrick] had a very unique way of looking at the world…a contrarian
view in a lot of ways (from interview with him).
Very interesting guy.
Matt: Totally.
Fascinating figure.