50 Suggested Principles For the Filmmaker
2 min readAug 1, 2024
In no particular order…
- Learn not what to know, learn how to think.
- Don’t conform, dissent.
- Magic. Mystery. Mischief.
- Feel. Consider. Challenge.
- American dramatic narrative = adversarial individualism.
- Reject the club, seek loneliness.
- Ambition is is the death of thought. (Wittgenstein)
- Film is not theatre on camera.
- Watch films to make films.
- Make a movie to save your soul.
- Know it never will.
- No need to save your soul? No need to make the movie.
- Read! Read! Read! (Werner Herzog)
- Story. Screen. Audience.
- Image. Sound. Film.
- Dance to the pain.
- When I’m making a film, I’m the audience. (Martin Scorsese)
- Emotion.
- Tone.
- Language of film.
- Style comes from the soul.
- Your vulnerability forms your strength.
- Not preparation but formulation.
- Screenplay. Casting. Editing. (From Kieslowski)
- Connective tissue, the path to simplicity.
- Image. Shot. Camera.
- Think passage of time.
- Montage. (Eisenstein). Time. (Tarkovsky).
- The agency of emptiness.
- The potency of silence.
- Contrast.
- Dissonance.
- Interfunctionality of filmmaking crafts.
- Never “unpack” unless it’s a delivery.
- Suspect current idiom.
- Forget careers guidance.
- Filmmaking an artistic process. Production an industrial.
- Flow of images, not coverage.
- Flow of energy.
- Territory—the primal human currency.
- Dialogue as multifunctional resource.
- Looks as wordless dialogue.
- Image as subtext.
- Nothing is more exhilarating than philistine vulgarity. (Nabokov).
- Elegance as eloquence, not embellishment.
- Rhythm not pace.
- Let characters not rise above circumstance.
- Listen to yourself.
- Listen to the film.
- Conflict. Friction. Tension. Vibe.
Peter Markham
August 2024
Author:
The Art of the Filmmaker: The Practical Aesthetics of the Screen. (Oxford University Press) 10/23
What’s the Story? The Director Meets Their Screenplay. (Focal Press/Routledge) 9/20
