Deborah Patz started making movies when she was nine years old, pioneered a filmmaking course at high school (because they didn't have one) and even taught the teacher how to process film (so he included it in the course). A professional in the film industry since the mid-80s, she's worked on productions with such companies as Disney, Lucasfilm, Alliance/Atlantis, Nelvana, MCA/Universal, and the IMAX space team. Her books Film Production Management 101, Surviving Production, and now Write! Shoot! Edit!, have been published around the world by MWP Books. With a BFA in film production and completing an MFA in creative writing for children and YA, Deborah and I spoke recently about the three-headed creative process, the visual toolbox, and, essentially, seizing the day.
Deborah Patz started making movies when she was nine years old, pioneered a filmmaking course at high school (because they didn't have one) and even taught the teacher how to process film (so he included it in the course). A professional in the film industry since the mid-80s, she's worked on productions with such companies as Disney, Lucasfilm, Alliance/Atlantis, Nelvana, MCA/Universal, and the IMAX space team. Her books Film Production Management 101, Surviving Production, and now Write! Shoot! Edit!, have been published around the world by MWP Books. With a BFA in film production and completing an MFA in creative writing for children and YA, Deborah and I spoke recently about the three-headed creative process, the visual toolbox, and, essentially, seizing the day.
Come see Deborah! She and other MWP authors will be speaking in Minneapolis this July 31st at The Future of Story conference!
You can order Deborah Patz's book from Michael Wiese Productions here.
Dave Watson: Congratulations on the book. It has the writer, editor, and director working. Did you think of the process this way when starting?
Deborah Patz: Thank you! And actually, no. Filmmaking from very start to finish is a vast activity that involves quite the team to accomplish. My previous book, Film Production Management 101 focused only on the perspective of production manager and coordinator and it's a whopping 500 pages. Of course, that book is aimed at film professionals. It needs that many pages to be effective. When I approached Write! Shoot! Edit! I planned as a book for teens – middle grade to young adults. I wanted the book to be much shorter. It was a exciting challenge to distill the filmmaking process down to what's really essential. Enough detail and concrete examples so you can learn the essentials and really make good, complex movies, but, heavens, not go on and on for pages and pages. As I honed the filmmaking process down, I arrived at the three distinct perspectives of the book: the Writer leading the scriptwriting phase, the Director/DOP leading principal photography, and the Editor leading post production. Each perspective was different, yet each one was a visual storyteller in their own right. That's when I decided to honor their differences, and create a book with three distinct paths – so the reader can choose the perspective to follow.
DW: You also start with an idea I hadn’t heard, The Three-Headed Creative Process. What’s that?
DP: Yes, there are lot of threes in the book. The Three-Headed Creative Process is a term of my own invention. I came to it from living the creative life, and labelling the stages of the creative process allows me to focus on each stage separately. Take writing, for example. I found with writing that you never write a creative work once. Okay, with scripts, you end up with many, many drafts, but basically, I believe there are three phases. The first one I call Wild Inventor Brain. It's a stage of discovery, no rules, and crazy ideas. It's also a tender part of the creative process, because criticism is harshly felt, and if listened to, can stop the creative process before it's begun. In the book, I encourage a stage of wild invention so you can dream up wild 'n crazy ideas without self-editing. Let yourself get to the end of the first draft, or the first shot list, or the first edit trying something new, then back up to the start and take another pass – the next stage – with your Dr Structure Editor hat on. When the structural editor has center stage, it's interesting to see how much less critical that voice is. Dr Structure tackles big picture issues in the creative work. Sure, it's analytical and understands structure and industry conventions, but by using those tools, it comes up with creative solutions to story problems. Dr Structure is creative in its own right. Just different from Wild Invention. Finally, there's a third stage: the Nit-Picky Copy Editor. This is a polish stage with an eye for detail. Voiced too soon, you'll interrupt the structural edit and spend too much time fixing the “trees” instead of the “forest.” It's Nit-Picky that cares about continuity and consistency. Just as essential as the other stages, but it needs to be at the end of the process.
DW: After writing, is editing crucial to structuring a film? How?
DP: Well, there's editing your own writing work with the structure edit and nit-picky edit, and then there's editing the film during postproduction, so I'm not sure which one you're asking about.
DW: All of the above, pretty open.
DP: The filmmaking editing phase of filmmaking is exciting. It's the last word in filmmaker storytelling. Sure, it's limited by what was written and then what was actually captured during the shoot, but those stages provided the elements. No one says you have to follow the script and shot list to the letter. In editing there's an opportunity to tap into Wild Inventor Brain and dream up a different order to the shots, and so tweak how the story is told. There's no wonder that many excellent Directors in the industry used to be Editors.
DW: This book is for teens. Do you see a lot of teen filmmakers’ work today? What direction is it headed?
DP: Oddly, I'm not planning on seeing a whole lot of it. Yes, I have. I've worked with teens on making elaborate, scripted movies. I used to make them myself when I was teen. But there is so much pressure nowadays to upload and share everything you create. In Write! Shoot! Edit! I hope to inspire creative exploration without the pressure of uploading to the Internet. Of course, I don't completely discourage it, but that's not the point. The point is you, the filmmaker, experimenting, learning, having fun. Be free of the pressure of publication and make movies for the fun of it. You'll still be sharing them with friends, but you can grow yourself as a visual storyteller on your own terms, publishing only when you're ready to do so... and then end up becoming what everyone thinks is an overnight success.
DW: Your third chapter is titled Screenwriting to the Power of Three. Is this writing with all three creative roles in mind?
DP: Alas, 'tis another three. Yes, I do detail out how the three creative roles – or heads – works in writing process, but in that chapter, I cover the industry standard three-act structure. There are whole books on story structure. Many excellent ones. In this chapter I give you just what you need to get started writing and to more fully appreciate the movies you watch.
DW: You later discuss the Visual Storytelling Toolbox. How are all three roles important with this?
DP: I love this chapter. I think it's the longest one in the book. It's filled with tools and conventions that you can pick and choose and experiment with. But what's really neat, is that each of the three roles – the Writer, Director/DOP and Editor – all intersect in this chapter. They all read it, but... depending which path you've chosen, you have a different background as you approach this chapter, so you can't help but see its contents slightly differently depending which path you're on. And that's the beauty of filmmaking teamwork. We're all making the same movie, but because of the sheer number of roles on a film set, there are many perspectives to making that movie. To visual storytelling. I remember on a production, a Focus Puller came into the office one day and said, “I just saw Avalon last night. Wow. That's was a Focus Puller's movie.” Can you imagine? How cool is that? Now I have to admit, I've never watched a movie and thought, "Hey, that's a Focus Puller's movie," or, "That's a Property Master's movie!" But then again, that's not my perspective. And that's where this chapter comes in. Hopefully you'll discover what perspective most aligns with you in this chapter. Learn about filmmaking, but learn about yourself too.
DW: Yours is the first book in a while to incorporate the editor directly as part of the process. Was there a film growing up or over the years where you noticed the editing was particularly good or noticeable? For me it was The Godfather and much later, JFK.
DP: Thank you for noticing. I believe that the Editor is so essential to the creation of story. As for editing itself, I find that awesome editing is invisible. It's woven into the emotion of the scene or sequence and it's amazing when you don't notice you've moved from one angle to another. Seamless. In the book, I demonstrate how you can take one shot, and depending what shot precedes it, you can generate humor, suspense or drama. The Editor has such power. As for favorite editing, I first think of “Harold and Maude.” The movie starts in a single take, moving camera following the action. Lyrical. Then Bam! A surprise, dramatic action and the first edit at the same time. We are jarred by both. What effective use of editing. Lovely. And more recently with Fantastic Beasts - just watch how the Editor leads you to incorrectly guessing who the Obsurca is just by the choosing what shot to cut to after a particular line. There is flow and meaning at the same time.
DW: Many teens appear to aim to break in with short films. Your book applies to those and feature-length films. What’s the biggest difference between these two types of films?
DP: Other than length? (Grin) Well, for anyone who's written short fiction, you know it's a challenge. Short stories have to be tight. Every word, every moment essential. In a novel there is more time to breathe. Explore and make use of subplots. Complex, no doubt, but really just a different kind of challenge. I find the same type of difference between short films and longer works. And of course, because filmmaking is a team sport, shorts are obviously cheaper in time and money to produce, so it's a natural path to start with shorts. There's also a perception in the industry that the “first feature” is unusually attractive. Everyone loves an “overnight success” story with a first feature, so when it comes to releasing your shorts to gain interest but holding back on the creation of your feature until you're truly good and ready to be that “overnight success” then that's a pretty good strategy. But that doesn't mean you can't experiment in long form. By all means do! When experimenting (but not releasing to the general public), try to remove as many limits as possible. You'll learn from every movie you make.
DW: What is your favorite cinematic moment? One that inspires you to this day?
DP: Oh, tough question! In my FILM & INK blog on my website, debpatz.com, I have a two threads for inspirational and magical movie moments just so I can share some of the many cinematic moments that have affected me over the years. I'll have to pretend you're asking me for today's choice. Uh, okay... Lord of the Rings, when Gandalf advises Frodo something like, “It's what we choose to do with the time we have,” that's important in life. Yeah, I don't remember the exactness of the line, but it's the emotion, the intimacy and the truth in the delivery that makes my skin tingle. That's why it's the movie moment, not the book passage that I find so magical and memorable. I am reminded to choose my own days and activities carefully, even if I don't manage to do so now and then. I mean, who's perfect? It was a passage that helped me, too, focus my book down to its essentials. And now it's up to teens to take it from here and start making their own magical movie moments. Oh boy, I look forward to hearing the stories of those filmmaking adventures someday.
Clip: Lord of the Rings
You can order Deborah Patz's book from Michael Wiese Productions here.
Dave Watson: Congratulations on the book. It has the writer, editor, and director working. Did you think of the process this way when starting?
Deborah Patz: Thank you! And actually, no. Filmmaking from very start to finish is a vast activity that involves quite the team to accomplish. My previous book, Film Production Management 101 focused only on the perspective of production manager and coordinator and it's a whopping 500 pages. Of course, that book is aimed at film professionals. It needs that many pages to be effective. When I approached Write! Shoot! Edit! I planned as a book for teens – middle grade to young adults. I wanted the book to be much shorter. It was a exciting challenge to distill the filmmaking process down to what's really essential. Enough detail and concrete examples so you can learn the essentials and really make good, complex movies, but, heavens, not go on and on for pages and pages. As I honed the filmmaking process down, I arrived at the three distinct perspectives of the book: the Writer leading the scriptwriting phase, the Director/DOP leading principal photography, and the Editor leading post production. Each perspective was different, yet each one was a visual storyteller in their own right. That's when I decided to honor their differences, and create a book with three distinct paths – so the reader can choose the perspective to follow.
DW: You also start with an idea I hadn’t heard, The Three-Headed Creative Process. What’s that?
DP: Yes, there are lot of threes in the book. The Three-Headed Creative Process is a term of my own invention. I came to it from living the creative life, and labelling the stages of the creative process allows me to focus on each stage separately. Take writing, for example. I found with writing that you never write a creative work once. Okay, with scripts, you end up with many, many drafts, but basically, I believe there are three phases. The first one I call Wild Inventor Brain. It's a stage of discovery, no rules, and crazy ideas. It's also a tender part of the creative process, because criticism is harshly felt, and if listened to, can stop the creative process before it's begun. In the book, I encourage a stage of wild invention so you can dream up wild 'n crazy ideas without self-editing. Let yourself get to the end of the first draft, or the first shot list, or the first edit trying something new, then back up to the start and take another pass – the next stage – with your Dr Structure Editor hat on. When the structural editor has center stage, it's interesting to see how much less critical that voice is. Dr Structure tackles big picture issues in the creative work. Sure, it's analytical and understands structure and industry conventions, but by using those tools, it comes up with creative solutions to story problems. Dr Structure is creative in its own right. Just different from Wild Invention. Finally, there's a third stage: the Nit-Picky Copy Editor. This is a polish stage with an eye for detail. Voiced too soon, you'll interrupt the structural edit and spend too much time fixing the “trees” instead of the “forest.” It's Nit-Picky that cares about continuity and consistency. Just as essential as the other stages, but it needs to be at the end of the process.
DW: After writing, is editing crucial to structuring a film? How?
DP: Well, there's editing your own writing work with the structure edit and nit-picky edit, and then there's editing the film during postproduction, so I'm not sure which one you're asking about.
DW: All of the above, pretty open.
DP: The filmmaking editing phase of filmmaking is exciting. It's the last word in filmmaker storytelling. Sure, it's limited by what was written and then what was actually captured during the shoot, but those stages provided the elements. No one says you have to follow the script and shot list to the letter. In editing there's an opportunity to tap into Wild Inventor Brain and dream up a different order to the shots, and so tweak how the story is told. There's no wonder that many excellent Directors in the industry used to be Editors.
DW: This book is for teens. Do you see a lot of teen filmmakers’ work today? What direction is it headed?
DP: Oddly, I'm not planning on seeing a whole lot of it. Yes, I have. I've worked with teens on making elaborate, scripted movies. I used to make them myself when I was teen. But there is so much pressure nowadays to upload and share everything you create. In Write! Shoot! Edit! I hope to inspire creative exploration without the pressure of uploading to the Internet. Of course, I don't completely discourage it, but that's not the point. The point is you, the filmmaker, experimenting, learning, having fun. Be free of the pressure of publication and make movies for the fun of it. You'll still be sharing them with friends, but you can grow yourself as a visual storyteller on your own terms, publishing only when you're ready to do so... and then end up becoming what everyone thinks is an overnight success.
DW: Your third chapter is titled Screenwriting to the Power of Three. Is this writing with all three creative roles in mind?
DP: Alas, 'tis another three. Yes, I do detail out how the three creative roles – or heads – works in writing process, but in that chapter, I cover the industry standard three-act structure. There are whole books on story structure. Many excellent ones. In this chapter I give you just what you need to get started writing and to more fully appreciate the movies you watch.
DW: You later discuss the Visual Storytelling Toolbox. How are all three roles important with this?
DP: I love this chapter. I think it's the longest one in the book. It's filled with tools and conventions that you can pick and choose and experiment with. But what's really neat, is that each of the three roles – the Writer, Director/DOP and Editor – all intersect in this chapter. They all read it, but... depending which path you've chosen, you have a different background as you approach this chapter, so you can't help but see its contents slightly differently depending which path you're on. And that's the beauty of filmmaking teamwork. We're all making the same movie, but because of the sheer number of roles on a film set, there are many perspectives to making that movie. To visual storytelling. I remember on a production, a Focus Puller came into the office one day and said, “I just saw Avalon last night. Wow. That's was a Focus Puller's movie.” Can you imagine? How cool is that? Now I have to admit, I've never watched a movie and thought, "Hey, that's a Focus Puller's movie," or, "That's a Property Master's movie!" But then again, that's not my perspective. And that's where this chapter comes in. Hopefully you'll discover what perspective most aligns with you in this chapter. Learn about filmmaking, but learn about yourself too.
DW: Yours is the first book in a while to incorporate the editor directly as part of the process. Was there a film growing up or over the years where you noticed the editing was particularly good or noticeable? For me it was The Godfather and much later, JFK.
DP: Thank you for noticing. I believe that the Editor is so essential to the creation of story. As for editing itself, I find that awesome editing is invisible. It's woven into the emotion of the scene or sequence and it's amazing when you don't notice you've moved from one angle to another. Seamless. In the book, I demonstrate how you can take one shot, and depending what shot precedes it, you can generate humor, suspense or drama. The Editor has such power. As for favorite editing, I first think of “Harold and Maude.” The movie starts in a single take, moving camera following the action. Lyrical. Then Bam! A surprise, dramatic action and the first edit at the same time. We are jarred by both. What effective use of editing. Lovely. And more recently with Fantastic Beasts - just watch how the Editor leads you to incorrectly guessing who the Obsurca is just by the choosing what shot to cut to after a particular line. There is flow and meaning at the same time.
DW: Many teens appear to aim to break in with short films. Your book applies to those and feature-length films. What’s the biggest difference between these two types of films?
DP: Other than length? (Grin) Well, for anyone who's written short fiction, you know it's a challenge. Short stories have to be tight. Every word, every moment essential. In a novel there is more time to breathe. Explore and make use of subplots. Complex, no doubt, but really just a different kind of challenge. I find the same type of difference between short films and longer works. And of course, because filmmaking is a team sport, shorts are obviously cheaper in time and money to produce, so it's a natural path to start with shorts. There's also a perception in the industry that the “first feature” is unusually attractive. Everyone loves an “overnight success” story with a first feature, so when it comes to releasing your shorts to gain interest but holding back on the creation of your feature until you're truly good and ready to be that “overnight success” then that's a pretty good strategy. But that doesn't mean you can't experiment in long form. By all means do! When experimenting (but not releasing to the general public), try to remove as many limits as possible. You'll learn from every movie you make.
DW: What is your favorite cinematic moment? One that inspires you to this day?
DP: Oh, tough question! In my FILM & INK blog on my website, debpatz.com, I have a two threads for inspirational and magical movie moments just so I can share some of the many cinematic moments that have affected me over the years. I'll have to pretend you're asking me for today's choice. Uh, okay... Lord of the Rings, when Gandalf advises Frodo something like, “It's what we choose to do with the time we have,” that's important in life. Yeah, I don't remember the exactness of the line, but it's the emotion, the intimacy and the truth in the delivery that makes my skin tingle. That's why it's the movie moment, not the book passage that I find so magical and memorable. I am reminded to choose my own days and activities carefully, even if I don't manage to do so now and then. I mean, who's perfect? It was a passage that helped me, too, focus my book down to its essentials. And now it's up to teens to take it from here and start making their own magical movie moments. Oh boy, I look forward to hearing the stories of those filmmaking adventures someday.
Clip: Lord of the Rings