Diary of an Aspiring Filmmaker

Sneak peek of Art Car: The Movie — The first taste of success changes the game

Photo via Art Car/Facebook
The sneak peak of "Art Car: The Movie" at Discovery Green drew a good response.Now the hard work begins.
Filmmakers Ford Gunter, left, and Carlton Ahrens

Editor's note: Ford Gunter quit his full-time journalism job in Houston to make a movie with his childhood buddy/co-director/business partner Carlton Ahrens. This is the latest installment of his account of chasing the dream with Art Car: The Movie.

The sneak peek of Art Car: The Movie at Discovery Green during Art Car weekend was the first taste of footage for almost everyone in our little movie. This experience taught us two things:

1. Expectations were low.

2. They aren't anymore.

A lot of these people have been immersed in the art car world for the better part of 30 years. They've had lots of camera crews come and go, and they've seen themselves in movies and television shows before, good and bad. In hindsight, it makes perfect sense that we would appear no different. We know this because every artist that we talked to after the screening said something along the lines of "Wow, that was really good. We didn't expect that at all."

A few were even more blunt: "I kind of thought it was going to be crappy, but now that I've seen it ..."

During the 12 minutes of footage, we heard some laughs and we were even told there were some tears. Afterward it was our time to laugh and cry (only Carlton; I don't cry).

I can't really put my finger on a good comparison, but my best guess is that any artist or musician (or certainly filmmaker, writer, playwright, et al) that finally reveals his or her work to his or her support group has felt something similar. In that situation you're almost always surrounded and supported by loved ones who have never done something similar and can't understand what that's like.

Just like I can't imagine the sense of fulfillment my friend has gotten from doling out aid in Iraq and Afghanistan for the past five years when all he hears from home is "Are you nuts?" and "When are you coming home?"

It's actually quite a lot like building an art car. Over the course of filming, many artists told us that their friends and families told them they were crazy, that there's no money in this, that you're not meant to do that to cars, that it's a waste of their time, that they need to focus on real things in life. (Full disclaimer: Our friends and family were overwhelmingly cool, but some raised eyebrows from the peanut gallery tended to convey the same message.)

So getting the big thumbs up from the stars of our film was a huge lift. (This whole self-indulgent meandering reminds me of Sally Field's infamous Oscar acceptance speech: "You like me! You really like me!"). But it kind of holds true. These are people we spent the last two years studying, researching, filming, getting to know, getting to like.

We consider many to be our good friends now. And the disappointment of disappointing them would have been pretty deflating.

More hindsight: It's probably a blessing that we didn't really know how low the expectations were. We were flying pretty far under the radar without having our egos get in the way. Now? Not so much. Expectations went from the basement to the penthouse.

Come Nov.13 at Miller Outdoor Theatre, when the film will premiere as part of the Cinema Arts Festival Houston with what is mounting up to be a pretty big production that could include on-site art cars and live music, people will be expecting big things.

And now that we've finished patting ourselves on the back, it's time to get back to work. We need a rough cut in five weeks, and we want it to be under two hours, and arranged in a way that will be pretty damn close to the finished project. That means there's 248 hours we have to toss, and that will be the easy part.

unspecified

Movie Review

Avatar: Fire and Ash returns to Pandora with big action and bold visuals

Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios

Oona Chaplin in Avatar: Fire and Ash.

For a series whose first two films made over $5 billion combined worldwide, Avatar has a curious lack of widespread cultural impact. The films seem to exist in a sort of vacuum, popping up for their run in theaters and then almost as quickly disappearing from the larger movie landscape. The third of five planned movies, Avatar: Fire and Ash, is finally being released three years after its predecessor, Avatar: The Way of Water.

The new film finds the main duo, human-turned-Na’vi Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and his native Na’vi wife, Neytiri (Zoë Saldaña), still living with the water-loving Metkayina clan led by Ronal (Kate Winslet) and Tonowari (Cliff Curtis). While Jake and Neytiri still play a big part, the focus shifts significantly to their two surviving children, Lo’ak (Britain Dalton) and Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss), as well as two they’ve essentially adopted, Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) and Spider (Jack Champion).

Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), who lives on in a fabricated Na’vi body, is still looking for revenge on Jake, and he finds help in the form of the Mangkwan Clan (aka the Ash People), led by Varang (Oona Chaplin). Quaritch’s access to human weapons and the Mangkwan’s desire for more power on the moon known as Pandora make them a nice match, and they team up to try to dominate the other tribes.

Aside from the story, the main point of making the films for writer/director James Cameron is showing off his considerable technical filmmaking prowess, and that is on full display right from the start. The characters zoom around both the air and sea on various creatures with which they’ve bonded, providing Cameron and his team with plenty of opportunities to put the audience right there with them. Cameron’s preferred viewing method of 3D makes the experience even more immersive, even if the high frame rate he uses makes some scenes look too realistic for their own good.

The story, as it has been in the first two films, is a mixed bag. Cameron and co-writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver start off well, having Jake, Neytiri, and their kids continue mourning the death of Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) in the previous film. The struggle for power provides an interesting setup, but Cameron and his team seem to drag out the conflict for much too long. This is the longest Avatar film yet, and you really start to feel it in the back half as the filmmakers add on a bunch of unnecessary elements.

Worse than the elongated story, though, is the hackneyed dialogue that Cameron, Jaffa, and Silver have come up with. Almost every main character is forced to spout lines that diminish the importance of the events around them. The writers seemingly couldn’t resist trying to throw in jokes despite them clashing with the tone of the scenes in which they’re said. Combined with the somewhat goofy nature of the Na’vi themselves (not to mention talking whales), the eye-rolling words detract from any excitement or emotion the story builds up.

A pre-movie behind-the-scenes short film shows how the actors act out every scene in performance capture suits, lending an authenticity to their performances. Still, some performers are better than others, with Saldaña, Worthington, and Lang standing out. It’s more than a little weird having Weaver play a 14-year-old girl, but it works relatively well. Those who actually get to show their real faces are collectively fine, but none of them elevate the film overall.

There are undoubtedly some Avatar superfans for which Fire and Ash will move the larger story forward in significant ways. For anyone else, though, the film is a demonstration of both the good and bad sides of Cameron. As he’s proven for 40 years, his visuals are (almost) beyond reproach, but the lack of a story that sticks with you long after you’ve left the theater keeps the film from being truly memorable.

---

Avatar: Fire and Ash opens in theaters on December 19.

movies film