top-list The Top 10 movies that made you decide to get into filmmaking

Easy softball question today,

This is an indie filmmaking site, so I assume many of us are indie filmmakers. Typically people become filmmakers because they want to make some particular type of film. What was it about film that got you interested, and what movies did you look at and say "I want to create something like that"?

Let's try top 10 movies that made you decide to get into creating film -

For me -

Blade Runner
Aliens
The Matrix
L.A Confidential
Tron
Time Bandits
The Shawshank Redemption
Goodfellas
Back to the Future
Raiders of the Lost Ark
 
My Winnipeg, I didn't think I'd ever meet another person who had seen that, lol. A staple of experimental cinema that most people find unwatchable.

The Holy Mountain - it's an influence for me also, though I take it with a grain of salt, it's brilliant in some ways that I really admire, but there are also a lot of areas where it's quite inept. I guess I consider him a visual design genius, and deeply creative.

A bit surprised that Salad Fingers made this list.
I think this sums it up.

SubUrbia
Salad fingers
The perfect human
Errezerhead
The Trail
Songs of the second floor
The holy mountain
Wrong
Réalité
My Winnipeg
There's a few of these I haven't seen, so I'll have to check them out
 
My focus is on story telling, so I want to tell stories like these (in no particular order):

Lost in Translation
Unfaithful
Love, Actually
Annie Hall
Match Point
Casablanca
The Best Years of Our Lives
Ordinary People
Sideways
Notorious
Good list!

I think pure drama is the very heart of film, and regardless of genre, it's always the quality of the human interactions that provide the most memorable moments.

I know this will seem like a very uninspired source, but actually, the first few seasons of Law and Order contained a lot of thoughtful and compelling drama. I enjoyed the nuanced depictions of intelligent people struggling with complex ethical issues.
 
i'm a 90s kid so for me i'd be watching films like dragonheart with somber disappointment and wonder why someone better wasn't directing the movie
 
My Winnipeg, I didn't think I'd ever meet another person who had seen that, lol. A staple of experimental cinema that most people find unwatchable.

The Holy Mountain - it's an influence for me also, though I take it with a grain of salt, it's brilliant in some ways that I really admire, but there are also a lot of areas where it's quite inept. I guess I consider him a visual design genius, and deeply creative.

A bit surprised that Salad Fingers made this list.

There's a few of these I haven't seen, so I'll have to check them out
I'm now happy I'm not most people. Guy Maddin makes movies that have parts that draw on for to long... but (in my opinion) compensate with the scenes that have powerful poetry and that stand on themselves. The scene with the race horses is by far the best one in this movie.

If you watch The Trail you should watch the Orson Wells version. The scale of some of its shots and the composition's are magnificent. For Suburbia watch the Richard Linklater version from 1996.
 
I'm now happy I'm not most people. Guy Maddin makes movies that have parts that draw on for to long... but (in my opinion) compensate with the scenes that have powerful poetry and that stand on themselves. The scene with the race horses is by far the best one in this movie.

If you watch The Trail you should watch the Orson Wells version. The scale of some of its shots and the composition's are magnificent. For Suburbia watch the Richard Linklater version from 1996.
Actually both of those guys have been major inspirations. Wells, Kubrick, Lean, Spielberg, are all amazing when it comes to shot composition.

And Linklater, you know he's kind of a special case. Like Jodorowsky, he's an uneven genius, breaking entirely new ground in some areas, and lagging behind mainstreamers in other areas. I'd have to give him credit for one of the major ideas behind my project, which is "the mcjarkanizer process" in which film is completely converted to a different format post shooting. I got the idea from "Scanner Darkly". I watched it and said "look at this terrible movie done in this phenomenally innovative art style, someone should do this exact thing again, but with coherent plotlines"
 
i'm a 90s kid so for me i'd be watching films like dragonheart with somber disappointment and wonder why someone better wasn't directing the movie
Lol, same. That's funny, because at the time, it was one of the few movies that I was actually capable of saying "hey, I think this one was made wrong"

I didn't know anything about directing at the time, but it was clear that a lot of talent was being presented in a way that simply defied interest.
 
the first few seasons of Law and Order contained a lot of thoughtful and compelling drama. I enjoyed the nuanced depictions of intelligent people struggling with complex ethical issues.
Aftershock (1996) is the best L&O episode. Everything comes to a head. Everyone's personal issues; drinking, cheating, the ethics of capital punishment, it's actually like four short intertwined films of four of the characters and one dies, you must watch it if you are unfamiliar.
 
I'm having trouble remembering aftershocks, but I'm sure I saw it, I watched every episode in the early 2000's. I'll have to go back and watch it again, It's been decades at this point. A 4 hour Law and Order movie actually sounds good right now.
 
Oh it's not 4 hours but it is a season finale. The whole episode follows 4 of the characters after they witness an execution and how it affects their lives. It's awesome. Trust.
 
Seasons 1 & (partially) 2 actually have a gritty Taxi Driver feel.

Yeah, it started out a bit rough around the edges, but there was a great show there from the beginning. Moriarty was a really strong actor that was never fully replaced, though Waterson has no doubt had some amazing moments.
 
Oh it's not 4 hours but it is a season finale. The whole episode follows 4 of the characters after they witness an execution and how it affects their lives. It's awesome. Trust.
Oh, ok, I misinterpreted that as meaning there was a 4 episode arc that focused on one character per episode. No wonder I didn't remember seeing that, lol.
 
If you watch it you will understand. The editing is much different, they follow the characters instead of the crime in this one.
 
I don't know if I have ten, but here's the list that made me want to make movies - in no order:
The Star Wars trilogy
Star Wars Episode I
Jurassic Park
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
Top Gun
Rambo: First Blood Part 2

By the time I was in high school, I knew I wanted a career in film, so that's why there's nothing from this century on there.
 
I don't know if I have ten, but here's the list that made me want to make movies - in no order:
The Star Wars trilogy
Star Wars Episode I
Jurassic Park
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
Top Gun
Rambo: First Blood Part 2

By the time I was in high school, I knew I wanted a career in film, so that's why there's nothing from this century on there.
I think a lot of people have a similar list, because those films were so groundbreaking during a global step forward in film quality. In a sense, the original Star Wars was the beginning of a whole new era in cinematic fidelity. I think these days it's hard to make an impact that big at any budget. Indiana Jones for example was probably the first "adventure" movie where the colors in the jungle looked right, go back a decade, and you'll see what I mean. Predator, Platoon, Romancing the Stone, these were all first gen adventure movies after the quality upgrade.

There's a real magic to being the first one to do something on a new level, everybody knows the Stratocaster and the Les Paul, but no one knows the SHRG1Z. By all accounts it's a superior guitar, but you'd find it listed as "a subgroup of the Ibanez line of Stratocaster style guitars". Objectively i's a stronger design, but will live forever in the shadow of it's groundbreaking ancestor.

Anyway, great list, I wore out a vhs tape of almost every film on it at some time in the distant past
 
I can't think of 10 films but there were definitely 3.
The Exorcist
Planet of the Apes
LaserBlast


The Exorcist showed me the power of film making. It scared the shit out of me when I was 8, plus I started a long correspondence with Make-up artist Dick Smith after seeing his work on the film. His interest in me did so much for my confidence.

Planet of the Apes showed me that film making could be boundless.

LaserBlast isn't really a good film at all, but it was when I was 15. It was the film that made me realize that I too could do this! To this day it is one of my favorite films to watch (and laugh at). A couple of modern day comparisons would be The Room and Samurai Cop.

I never went pro in the film industry but I've had my 15 minutes in the entertainment industry plus freelance make-up, and cgi work.
 
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