Which Movie Made You Decide To Become A Filmmaker?

I just want to say to everyone who has posted on my thread here so far as well as all of you who have taken the time to read it, thank you and I look forward to reading more of your posts.

Have a wonderful day,

Ayisha
 
For all we know, "Town & Country" and "Adventures of Pluto Nash" could be the next "It's a Wonderful Life".

("It's a wonderful life" was considered a huge flop and now it's played 24/7 every Christmas and is touted as being the best Christmas movie ever made... but when it came out it was a "flop")
 
Cracker Funk said:
I don't know what ya'll are talking about. I see great movies being made every year. Art flourishes in all times, under all conditions. Sure, there's a lot of junk out there, but there's a lot of greatness, too. Do you think crappy movies didn't exist in the 70's, 50's, 40's, etc?
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My point exactly. Sheer perception.

Ayisha, I'm very glad to see your early dedication in contributing to the forum. It seems it will be a joy having you around. :)
 
Seeing Philip Kaufman's "The Right Stuff" in the theatre in 1983 as an 8 year old made me want to be both an astronaut and a filmmaker. I'd find myself spending equal amounts of time in trees pretending to be in outer space and with a cardboard box on my shoulder pretending to make the film of my imaginary exploits in outer space.

One of the first films we rented (when VCRs and renting tapes were still pretty novel things to do) was DePalma's "The Untouchables" in '87 or '88. I must have watched it five or six times in the 24 hours we had it at home. I watched Sean Connery blow the head off that dead guy in slow motion until I guessed how it was done (what I later learned were called squibs). Picked out my first continuity error (Connery's top shirt button going from buttoned to unbuttoned in one scene) which taught me about takes and that films were made with only one camera.

It was probably that weekend that astronaut fully yielded to filmmaker.
 
Each man to his own- some people are probably getting inspired by Avatar... :p


EDIT: Why doesn't this forum have the tongue sticking out smiley?
 
I see a lot of people claiming Star Wars. That being the case I'm surprised that no one is claiming

2001:A Space Odessy. I think Lucas and Speilberg were both inspired by Kubrick's awsome picture.

Not to mention 2001 was made almost 10 years before Star Wars. I will admit that Star Wars has

A LOT more action. But the patriarch of the family has to be 2001.
 
Murdock said:
I see a lot of people claiming Star Wars. That being the case I'm surprised that no one is claiming

2001:A Space Odessy. I think Lucas and Speilberg were both inspired by Kubrick's awsome picture.

Not to mention 2001 was made almost 10 years before Star Wars. I will admit that Star Wars has

A LOT more action. But the patriarch of the family has to be 2001.
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Apples and Oranges, in my opinion. Both in space. Both had groundbreaking SFX, for their time. Otherwise, not even slightly similar.
 
When I was in 7th grade I took a media class at my school. We published the school newspaper, did news broadcasts, learned about advertising techniques, and learned about film. The first film genre we learned about was film noir, and we watched "The Maltese Falcon". Then our project was to write our own film noir, and then we voted on whose script to produce. I wrote my very first script called "Kidnapped", and the class voted my script to be the best, and we produced it. At the time I had no idea that this was going to have any lasting effect on me, but it did. At the time I had still wanted to be an astronaut, but the teacher urged me that I should pursue a career in the media business. She said that I would be really good at it. When I finally got to freshman year, I was assigned a project in sociology. I thought it would be fun to make a video, so I made my second movie "Drew-Man". I wrote, produced, directed, and starred in it along with my dog. Just like Orson Welles. I turned the project in, and my sociology teacher liked it so much, he still uses the video to this day as an example project. I received a grade of 130%. After this, I began to re-evaluate my career options. My ACT math and science scores were perfectly average. But my English was 32. At this point, I decided that filmmaking was probably the way to go. It wasn't really a single film that made me want to get into the industry. If I had to name a film, it is definitely "The Maltese Falcon". But my talent just sort of revealed itself to me.
 
first i was interested in writing, thanks to donnie darko-HA. I remember seeing it when i was 16 or 17 and just being completely blown away by the whole story, and the CREEPY images. Cool images, cool story, cool music, that's what i thought a movie was and that's how i was initially interested.

Also KIDS was a huge influence. Harmony Korine wrote the screenplay when he was 19 because Larry Clark ran into him when he was skating and asked him to write a movie about his life. Now it seems that his personal setting influences all of his movies. He is a true artist in film. That's who I take my lessons from.
 
directorik said:
Back then our film fare was being watered down with junk.
And back then the crappy movies were marketed just as
well and just as widely as they are today - comparatively
speaking.

In 2040 the crappy films of the 2010's won't be remembered.
People writing in 2040 will be saying that in the 2000's/2010's
there were fewer crappy films then because they won't even
remember the crappy ones. Just like we don't really remember
the crappy films of the 1960's and 1970's. At least those born
in the 1980's and 1990's.

Go back even farther to the 1940's and it sure looks like most
films made were pretty amazing. But that's because the films of
that decade that were crappy haven't survived in the current
recollection of those films.
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Thank you for this insight Directorik, I hadn't realized that. I do wish there would be a tighter focus, a greater discipline to produce quality films so there wouldn't be so much junk films in the first place though.
 
ROC said:
For all we know, "Town & Country" and "Adventures of Pluto Nash" could be the next "It's a Wonderful Life".

("It's a wonderful life" was considered a huge flop and now it's played 24/7 every Christmas and is touted as being the best Christmas movie ever made... but when it came out it was a "flop")
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That reminds me of how Bladerunner was actually a flop when it was first released too. Apparently it was too dark and depressing an outlook for the future so it didn't do well at the box office at all. Back in the 80s the futuristic implications of the film were just too gloomy, happy 80s folks weren't into it. Now it's considered a great film by Ridley Scott.
 
Papertwinproductions said:
My point exactly. Sheer perception.

Ayisha, I'm very glad to see your early dedication in contributing to the forum. It seems it will be a joy having you around. :)
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Thanks Paperwinproductions, I'm enjoying being here too, a lot of folks have some wonderful insights and stories to share and I love reading them. However, I'm in a not so busy situation at the moment so my presence here doesn't necessarily reflect how frequently I can contribute or hang around most of the time. But I'll be sure to come back as often as I can.

Have a wonderful day,

Ayisha
 
I started writing music for movies in high school, because no one told me I couldn't. Later I would find inspiration in scores such as Apocalypse Now and Alien, among others.
 
Uranium City said:
Seeing Philip Kaufman's "The Right Stuff" in the theatre in 1983 as an 8 year old made me want to be both an astronaut and a filmmaker. I'd find myself spending equal amounts of time in trees pretending to be in outer space and with a cardboard box on my shoulder pretending to make the film of my imaginary exploits in outer space.

One of the first films we rented (when VCRs and renting tapes were still pretty novel things to do) was DePalma's "The Untouchables" in '87 or '88. I must have watched it five or six times in the 24 hours we had it at home. I watched Sean Connery blow the head off that dead guy in slow motion until I guessed how it was done (what I later learned were called squibs). Picked out my first continuity error (Connery's top shirt button going from buttoned to unbuttoned in one scene) which taught me about takes and that films were made with only one camera.

It was probably that weekend that astronaut fully yielded to filmmaker.
Click to expand...

A desire to be a filmmaker so strong that you get up in the tree with your "camera" to shot your "journey", that's awesome (and illustrates passion and dedication to your dreams). It gives me an idea actually.

I wish schools or community centers could have regular programs for kids, where they could submit simple proposals and maybe go through some kind of camera handling and usage training session so they could have the opportunity to get experience making short movies. Digital cameras make this even more possible now. They could organize project topics to help intellectualize our youth, set up competitions like "who can make the best movie on how to improve your neighborhood", "what do you feel is the meaning of life", "what do you think we should do to create global peace", "who do you appreciate the most in your life" I think this could be a very enlightening film project for communities everywhere.
 
droowl said:
When I was in 7th grade I took a media class at my school. We published the school newspaper, did news broadcasts, learned about advertising techniques, and learned about film. The first film genre we learned about was film noir, and we watched "The Maltese Falcon". Then our project was to write our own film noir, and then we voted on whose script to produce. I wrote my very first script called "Kidnapped", and the class voted my script to be the best, and we produced it. At the time I had no idea that this was going to have any lasting effect on me, but it did. At the time I had still wanted to be an astronaut, but the teacher urged me that I should pursue a career in the media business. She said that I would be really good at it. When I finally got to freshman year, I was assigned a project in sociology. I thought it would be fun to make a video, so I made my second movie "Drew-Man". I wrote, produced, directed, and starred in it along with my dog. Just like Orson Welles. I turned the project in, and my sociology teacher liked it so much, he still uses the video to this day as an example project. I received a grade of 130%. After this, I began to re-evaluate my career options. My ACT math and science scores were perfectly average. But my English was 32. At this point, I decided that filmmaking was probably the way to go. It wasn't really a single film that made me want to get into the industry. If I had to name a film, it is definitely "The Maltese Falcon". But my talent just sort of revealed itself to me.
Click to expand...

I can understand that it was your talent that got you hooked, rather than a movie, that was an incredible experience, congratulations. This just proves to me than, that there should be a variety of in depth, hands on film creation programs in schools, this kind of thing helps kids to truly meet their potentials and be more productive members of society.
 
Black Rabbit Studios said:
I started writing music for movies in high school, because no one told me I couldn't. Later I would find inspiration in scores such as Apocalypse Now and Alien, among others.
Click to expand...

That's interesting, it's definitely important for parents never to tell their children that they can't do something, you never know they'll be able to turn around and do. So did you always have a fascination for music and later found yourself inspired at how well a music score would reflect or enhance the message/feel in a given film or where you inspired to compose music when you watched films (and heard their music scores) ?

Thanks for sharing Black Rabbit Studios :)
 
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