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10
Annual international festival of multimedia art
26.04.2013 21:46
Mike de Seve: film production is like dating
The US director and screenwriter Mike de Seve, known for his work on the cartoon "Beavis and Butt-Head Do America" and several episodes of "Sesame Street", today told our guests a secret of creation a movie the audience will definitly love.
- When shooting a movie you are telling a story. You may think that it is incredibly interesting one but, alas, it does not mean that others will like it - Mike started his workshop. - Imagine that you go on a date. You are struggling to impress, and you think you look great, but after the meeting, she did not even want to discuss you with her roommate! Do not try to conquer her, just let her know you have some genuine feelings.
In other words, you need to make the viewers empathize the protagonist. Like in the "Ralph" movie where the protagonist wants to prove that he can be a superhero too. He does that so convincingly that the audience begin to follow his emotions.
Another example is when a friend of yours asks you: "what's new?". And here you answer: "Well, my wife was killed and my son is kidnapped!" Of course, that really touches your heart and you just want to help to find the child. You know that's just the "Finding Nemo" plot. And it's using these techniques. It is important for the story to touche the heart from the very of the film movie.
So, it is important to arouse interest from the start and create a stress including "ticking clock" into the story, some factor that will fasten the hero to reach the goal (for example, to find his son before he will be eaten).
Mike de Seve shared a few more tips. We need to create a world that the viewer has never seen before. For example Mike himself had an ideo of a movie in which there's a world in which cats and dogs are giant ships, and fleas on them are pirates. But it's still a secret, - said the director.Moreover a movie should be created for its target audience. For example, in a cartoon for little kids there would be inappropriate to show loud explosions and catastrophes.
- In California, we use the principle of four squares. To have success the film should appeal to boys, girls, dads and moms - Mike shared another secret. - Several years ago I worked on the film "Monsters vs. Aliens". There was an idea to take the famous monsters enprisoned deeply withing the earth, and then asked to help the planet, which was attacked aliens. But in that case, the two parts fell out of the "square": girl and their mothers won't want to watch such a movie. I stoped working with DreamWorks, and two years later they made that movie and it was a success. Why? They introduced a female character, and the audience has doubled in size!