I received a great response to my last article - The secret of making great movies - with many of you recommending movies and sharing experiences. Thanks to all of you who wrote in.
This response is from my friend Stephan Langguth who is also a German film director, as well as a practitioner of Reverse Therapy. If offers a professional viewpoint as well as making some great observations about emotions and film-making.
Film making can appeal to Headmind as it imagines that there is a place it can control others. "I project my ideas onto the big screen and everyone in the audience will cry. And I sit in the little projection booth laughing." That's the Ego fantasy.
Then one begins to realize that nothing involves viewers unless there is some truly alive thing in everything that happens on set while the camera is recording.
Although the storyboard needs to make some sort of sense in order to maintain the viewer's interest, Headmind does not really enjoy powerful, gripping, intense experiences because then its own importance gets diminished. People forget who they are if they are engrossed in a movie and that means they forget their own cherished obsessions and bananas. So Headmind really wants to put an end to cinematic experiences as soon as possible.
Headmind will often try to reassert its dominance after the movie is over. It does this with unfair comparisons ("not as good as this or that"), nit-picking details ("the director could have done that better") or dismissing emotion ("that 'sentimental' scene spoilt it for me").
So what makes a movie move us?
All the aspects you mention in your first article move the audience only if they are felt in Bodymind by the film-makers while they are making the film. That includes writers, directors and actors as well as the camera operators, film editors and sound producers.
For example, a red interior sometimes feels right yet at other times feels wrong. A close-up sometimes works and sometimes does not work. Gifted film-makers use Bodymind to lead them through the very subtle decisions necessary. These decisions are far too complex for Headmind to make.
One of the most important factors in a great movie is to have actors who stop 'acting' and instead express the character from within. That is because one major part of the cinematic experience is the empathy the audience feels as the mirror neurons in the brain pick up the emotional state of the character.
If the actor is in a false state, just acting out what they assume the character should look like, then the movie will become lifeless, cliched, 'hammy'.
Headmind focused directors like to think they can control the audience with false performances. They end up doing daytime TV ads! I've been on such shoots. If the director talks to the actors at all it mostly consists of a repetitive command like "Look happy, happy happy..." or "act confused now...".
In contrast if the actor forgets herself in favor of being (the character), a great and deeply involving performance becomes possible. This "being" is nothing else than fully connecting to Bodymind. And once the actor is in Bodymind viewers connect to their own Bodymind (an additional benefit for this is that they can spend the next couple of hours without being pestered by their internal control freak).
Makes me feel like getting my camera out again...
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