Alongside pre-production on our latest feature film ‘MOTHER SKY’, I’ve also started compiling a large document – The Director’s Toolkit – a reminder for when it comes time to shoot of the countless elements that make up the greatest films of all time, from unique staging to clarity of themes, memorable imagery, as well as a breakdown of countless techniques (or tools) like match-cuts and whip-pans.
With this in mind, I started to look at what modern movies keep getting wrong. At first this was to challenge my assumption that maybe I had just become too picky and had a lower tolerance for mediocre and poor films/filmmaking choices, but as I dug deeper online I came to find that the majority of average film-goers (I mostly looked to social media and reddit in particular to gauge responses) are also hating the same things.
Below are a selection of things which a large number of people seem to think are the worst things about modern movies. If you’re making a film right now, or plan to soon, I recommend avoiding the following:
1) Lack of Original Ideas
I don’t think I need to over-egg this one, as we all know that cinemas are swamped with remakes, franchises, cross-overs and genre-repeats. There seem to be a lot of people who agree with this.
However, I do feel the need to point out here that even people I know who regularly pine for artist-driven filmmaking, also seem to have been sucked into this vortex, spending as much if not more time watching films and TV shows that are remakes, world-expanding standalones, superhero-focussed content, etc. The key issue here is that people are willing to spend up to £10 to see a film like this which they lament disappointing them, but very, very rarely, spend £5 or less to rent an independent film that they may end up loving for a lifetime.
This issue is also systemic of course. Larger scale, a lot of critically-panned (and audience disappointing) movies get green-lit for sequels (and sometimes more) because they sell well in foreign markets that care less about plot and dialogue than they do about big explosions and other things that “look cool”. A movie that bombs in the U.S, but rakes it in when it hits China, is way more likely to get a sequel than a movie that turns a moderate profit stateside, but grows to develop a huge fanbase that would love to see the story continue.
2) Scenes Not Getting Any Room to Breathe
There needs to be a cut every other second, right? We’ll get bored otherwise. That seems to be the prevailing attitude of studios and filmmakers these days. For (criminally) poor examples of this see: Taken, Bohemian Rhapsody, 95% of superhero films.
It’s okay to have a fast-paced film, Martin Scorsese often does (see: The Wolf of Wall Street). The difference is that he is well-versed enough to know that when it comes to the key moments in his films he needs to slow down the pace so you really feel the weight of a gesture or turning point within a character. That’s how it’s done. The best films of the last ten-to-twenty years have given audiences time to linger. You cannot empathise with a character on screen if your attention is pulled away from them every two seconds.
3) Poor Framing
I was surprised to see this crop up so many times, but it gives me hope that people aren’t as visually illiterate as is often assumed. ‘Too many close ups of faces with out-of-focus backgrounds’, ‘shot reverse shot’, ‘no sense of a scenes geography’ – these kept coming up. And I’ve done this myself in the past.
It’s easy to use a lens which blurs the background to “give it a cinematic look”, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve used a shot effectively though. As for shot reverse shot, I continue to try and rectify this, finding interesting ways to stage a scene, but every now and then it’s an easy default to slip back into. Speaking from experience, it really effects the pace of your film if every scene is wide, mid, reverse, repeat. It’s not visually interesting and it’s lazy filmmaking.
4) Overuse of Exposition
When characters are talking about pivotal events and information rather than showing the audience through on-screen action, that’s bad exposition. This applies to trailers also. We know pretty much every detail of a film before going in. STOP TALKING TO YOUR AUDIENCE LIKE THEY HAVE THE IQ OF A FOUR YEAR OLD!
What happened to suggestion? Why not tease an audience to get them to watch your film? The only successful (mainstream) example of the opposite of this seems to be Christopher Nolan. I couldn’t tell you what’s going to happen in his next film except maybe some key set pieces and the basic premise. Am I excited to see whatever he produces next? Yes, yes I am. And the same applies to when I’m watching his films: I feel rewarded for figuring out what is happening as it unfurls.
5) Drastic Colour Grading
This has become extremely prevalent. I’m not suggesting films shouldn’t be graded; it’s an exceptional tool that can give your film a memorable look. That said, I keep seeing films and TV shows with shadowy corners that have clearly been added in post, sections of the screen that are too vibrantly one colour, or simply look like someone has added an instagram filter to give it a look, without little thought as to what that look actually contributes.
6) Shaky-Cam
This one really bugs me, especially if it’s added in post-production. Directors choosing to shoot lots of coverage and picking handheld to “make it feel real”. It screams amateur and simply says you cannot do what we referenced back at #3 – you cannot frame, or do not understand staging. If shaky-cam must be used then use it with intent. Look at what David Fincher does, when in a moment of extreme instability; the endings of ‘Seven’ and ‘Mindhunter’ are the perfect execution of this.
7) Mature Content
When was the last time you felt like a film treated you like an adult? Violence is a big part of this. There are less R-rated films now than ever before. Everything is getting watered down year on year to reach a young teen market and is arguably worse for it. If something needs to be violent, then make it violent. An audience should flinch. A great of example of this is ‘Parasite’ – one or two shots at the end of the film made me wince. It’s been a while since violence on screen felt immediate and real. It’s not over-the-top like Tarantino, it’s uncomfortable and nasty, as it should be.
8) Too Clean and Smooth
This one is largely down to our culture as a whole, obsessing over new things and believing that any minor defect is unacceptable rather than natural. Everything has to look good nowadays it seems. The actors have no blemishes, the cameras don’t allow grain, the sets are polished and shiny, everything is clean and “perfect”. There can be instances where this works, especially if your film is set in a clinical environment, but it’s annoying when it’s all movies.
9) Overuse of Montage
Cutting together several moments into a sequence and adding music to suggest time has passed and progress has been made is just plain lazy. A couple of montages can be useful (Steven Soderbergh does this with purpose), but there seems to be a prevalence of doing this every 15-30minutes in most mainstream movies, just to move things along.
To counter this, why not suggest that all those things have taken place and we’ve ended up somewhere new with two shots and one cut? That’s great filmmaking. A perfect example of this is ‘We Need to Talk about Kevin’ (or any Lynne Ramsay film for that matter). You see the before and after, and understand without being pandered to exactly what has taken place during that time – you’ve done the work yourself using imagination. Rewarding, right?
10) Take Risks!
If you appeal to every common denominator and make your movie super flat and generic you might pull in more money, but you’re making your film forgettable. It’s not worth taking an artistic risk or trying to ‘shake up’ stuff in a franchise since it could be polarising seems to be the message sent these days. It’s all about the money. If you have any integrity, want to push the craft of filmmaking forward, or simply want to make something that has lasting value, that people continue to talk about in decades to come, take some risks.