My wife and I just saw Big Fish and loved it. We spent hours talking about the metaphors you used, especially what Spectre represented. How do you decide whether to hit people over the head with it or leave it up for interpretation? And are you okay with people coming up with different interpretations?

--Pete

In terms of Big Fish, metaphor doesn't feel like quite the right word to describe Spectre. While there are lots of things Spectre is "like" -- Heaven, Hell, the Afterlife, a ghost town, Utopia, Oz, Shangri-La -- any comparisons the viewer draws are based on how he interprets the imagery and events of the scene. For instance, everyone is dressed in shimmering whites and yellows (which seems Heavenly), but the river is full of leeches and alluring sirens (not Heavenly). The town's mayor welcomes Edward with a clipboard and finds Edward's name (which feels like the Afterlife), but people grow old (which doesn't).

So if you try to force just one interpretation onto Spectre, you're going to be disappointed. And in fact, Spectre is supposed to be a lot of different things at once. It's the mythical town that Edward was hoping to find, but he found it too quickly. It's a poor Southern town subject to liens and bankruptcy, which only Edward can save. It's the location of Edward's sexual awakening (the girl in the river) and his near-affair (with Jenny Hill). If anything, it's a beautiful trap that Edward stumbles into twice.

Interestingly, the original inspiration for Spectre was quite a lot darker. In Daniel Wallace's novel, this section is the road out of Ashland, and features a dog that bites your fingers off. For the movie, Spectre became its own place, and the dog got moved to the circus scene.

Am I okay with people coming up with their own interpretations? Well, I have to be. Unless I want a character to explicitly state what a story element represents, there will always be different interpretations. And the point of the film is that finding the actual, hard truth behind things is often a fool's errand. The issue of whether Edward Bloom ever visited Spectre in his youth is ultimately less important than what he said, and why.

I'm an independent film writer-director working on my second digital feature. My question actually regards my first movie (also digital). I had shopped the flick around looking for distribution and out of the 7 or 8 companies that expressed interest, only one sent a contract to me.

What I'm curious about is this: The contract is for the company to act as a Sales Rep. or Sales Agent, and not a direct distributor. From a talk on the phone with them regarding contract points, it came to my understanding that my film company wouldn't be seeing any profits for at least a year, maybe two, due to the marketing, promotions, and dupping costs.

What I'd like to know is should I just go with this company, who seem legit, and just get the film out there, OR should I keep soliciting and look for a better deal?

--Art

A very crucial point is unclear in your question: Is the Sales Rep going to try to sell your movie to a theatrical distributor or to a home video/DVD distributor?

A theatrical distribution campaign can often cost more than the film itself these days. A low budget picture (let’s say up to 5 million) can require prints, marketing and advertising costs that far exceed the original production budget of the film (they could approach 8-10 million). For a small picture to re-coup the production costs and the theatrical distribution costs is quite unusual, though not impossible. Films like Super Size Me, Napoleon Dynamite, etc. are good examples of those which have done well.

If the Sales Rep is looking toward DVD as the first market, then the distribution costs can be far less and the possibility of profits more realistic if the film takes off in DVD. As you must know, the Sales Rep will take a percentage of whatever deal he makes, usually 10-15%, then the distributor will take a distribution fee which can be 30-40%, and there are still replication costs, advertising costs, etc. At the end of the day, profits from even DVD sales will not happen unless the sales are very strong. The DVD market is crowded and the sale prices of the DVD’s are diminishing every day, thanks to Wal-Mart and other major discounters.

If you are going to enter into a contract with a Sales Rep, be sure to put a time limit on the agreement. If you do not get satisfactory results within 6 months or a year, you should have the right to take the film out of that Rep’s hands. Also, be sure to include in your contract that you as filmmaker have the right to approve the distributor and once approved you will retain complete and thorough consultation rights over all advertising and marketing, etc. I learned this when the VHS cover from my film Suburbia came out. Who the hell thought THAT art had anything to do with the story of my movie?

Anyway, if these scenarios seem like it may not be worth the effort and expense, I will say that in most cases, if we are speaking financially, it probably is not. For most young filmmakers, the most important thing is to gain visibility as a director and if a break-even or slight financial loss can accomplish that, then it IS worth it. But if you are hocking your house, O.D.ing your own credits cards and those of friends and family, you might have a better chance of getting rich if you go to Las Vegas for the weekend.

I have often heard cinematographers use one f-stop throughout an entire film.

How is this accomplished? I am dying to know.

-Rupert

The reason for this is to achieve a uniform look in terms of the sharpness of the lenses and the depth of field. It used to be the case that a lens at T4 (same as F-stop more or less), was much sharper than the same lens at T2. This is still the case, but much less so. so a Cinematographer might choose to shoot a film at T2.8 because he or she likes the “look” at that T-stop.

This is achieved by adjusting the exposure with the use of Neutral Density filters (ND’s). These are one-stop decreases in light so you have a range ND3,ND6,ND9 etc. So if you are outside and the exposure should be T5.6, you would use an ND6 to get it back to T2.8 which is where you want to shoot.

Of course longer focal lengths have less depth, so you might decide on an F-Stop for each lens, so that the longer lenses have a lower T-stop to compensate for their inherent lack of depth. With a wide angle outside showing a view, the depth becomes irrelevant since everything is in focus, so you might choose a stop which has the best resolving power for that lens, which is likely to be in the T4-T8 range.

John August's screenwriting credits include Go, Big Fish, Titan A.E. and both Charlie's Angels movies. His current projects include Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Tarzan, and Corpse Bride. He also maintains a screenwriting-oriented website at johnaugust.com.

Born and raised in Boulder, Colorado, John earned a degree in journalism from Drake University in Iowa, and an MFA in film production from the Peter Stark program at the University of Southern California. He lives in Los Angeles.

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