Film Courage: Let’s take CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND and [first] STAR WARS.
Let’s say they both came out around the same time.
Houston Howard: They did [1977].
Film Courage: Why did one have a longer shelf life and the other one is just this amazing,
nostalgic film that those of us of that time remember fondly?
Houston Howard: It’s fascinating to look at that case study because yeah, you have
two films that had similar budgets, both had similar type of filmmakers.
They were targeting a very similar audience, they’re released at the same time, like
everything is the same.
One becomes a really good movie that people love and actually did pretty well (CLOSE ENCOUNTERS
OF THE THIRD KIND).
Another becomes a 50 billion dollar brand.
So there’s a variable there somewhere that created that separation in the marketplace.
And we can look at that and probably guess pretty closely why that happened.
There’s a book that I read recently called How Star Wars Conquered The Universe where
they asked Steven Spielberg this exact same question.
Because him and [George] Lucas would actually give each other producer points on all of
their movies.
And so Lucas had producer points on Close Encounters, Spielberg had producer points
on Star Wars.
Obviously Spielberg got a better part of that deal.
And they said “Why did it work out so well for Lucas?
And pretty well for you but not even in the same ball park?”
He said there’s two reasons.
He said from the beginning Lucas approached this project not as just a single film, he
always had a broader vision.
He understood that there was story before this.
There is going to be story after this.
Maybe he didn’t have all the things planned out exactly and have it all worked out.
But his vision was very big from the beginning.
And secondly he had a world that people wanted to explore, he had a story world.
He said “I never even gave any thought of my story world.
The setting of Close Encounters is just our world that is being invaded by aliens.”
But what he did, he created a world that people wanted to continue to explore.
And if you can continue to create a world in an IP (intellectual property) that people
want to continue to explore, then all of the sudden that makes the room for the other things
that you want to do.
And so what’s really interested about Lucas in the same book is that, he didn’t grow
up wanting to be a filmmaker, he grew up wanting to be an architect and he worked at his dad’s
toy store every summer as a kid.
So he approached filmmaking not from the filmmaking standpoint, he approached it from the architectural
and toy standpoint.
He still went into make a good movie (of course).
But he then approached it, the industry and the creative and the writing of it, in a completely
different way that then fueled all of these opportunities.
If you look at from the original Star Wars movies, the cantina scene where Luke [Skywalker]
and Obi-Wan [Kenobi], they go into the cantina and there’s all these crazy aliens around
and this is where they find Hans Solo for the first time.
There was a very specific choice of I want the crazy aliens all around.
To cut back on budget, they could have had everybody look human like Luke if they wanted
to, but instead he really made sure that every single character in that bar and in that cantina
had a very distinctive look, that they seem mysterious, that it was obvious that all of
them had some sort of backstory involved and just that created 1) The writing decision
and 2) The directorial decision (if you watch the scene) the way they made sure they got
shots of all of them, there were interesting ones in the foreground, in the background,
they took time in the edit of the film to cut…cut…cut…and show a handful of them.
Then those creative opportunities, both on the writing and directing and the editing
then fueled short stories and video games and cartoons that dealt with all of them.
They created web content for all of them, they created game content for all of them
and they created toys for all of them.
So now (all of the sudden) where most filmmakers and directors would say “My scene is about
my protagonist and my antagonist and our central characters, everything else is background.”
Lucas never considered anybody background.
He looked at all of these other characters as potential stories, potential stories, potential
stories that just so happened to be in the background of this scene.
But I’m going to develop all of them as if they could be the heroes of their own story
and then put them in the background.
So now the creative mindset is different when he approaches the story.
How do we do that as independent filmmakers from my $100,000 feature?
Well all of the sudden, the roommate of your protagonist, now that’s just in the background
on a few different scenes.
Now you should take the time to think How do I make that guy interesting or that girl
interesting?
How do I give them an interesting look or an interesting backstory?
How could I make them the protagonists of their own story?
I’m going to develop them as if they could be and then I’ll go back and put them in
the background.
Now when I approach my short film, this really interesting, weird, eclectic character now
in there that can spur a whole companion novel, maybe it’s an EP of music, maybe it’s
a sole social media account for this crazy character, it Tweeting back and forth leading
up or after the film.
There’s lots of different things using the principles that you see from Lucas and now
applying that into your specific smaller project.