It’s easy when you’re making a film to get lost in the plot. You feel the need to convey every piece of information that was in the script so that the story is clear. Forget it. No one will care.

Day 2 of making a fine cut on Mother’s Little Helper in Berlin and things are becoming clearer...

What is becoming abundantly clear to me over the course of this edit is that film is first and foremost an emotional experience. The facts, while perhaps interesting, do not sink beneath the flesh of your audience the way emotion does. So, when you cut, you cut for emotion.

As a director what you’re obliged to do, above all else, is provide a satisfying emotional journey for the viewer. That’s it. That’s all. But, in truth, that’s a lot.

I found that with the first rough cut of the film I had been so concerned with getting the film shortened down from its original 17 minutes (all Berlinale sponsored films must be 10 minutes precisely in duration) that some important moments had been sacrificed.

I was trying to convey the story through the eyes of the daughter as she is the more sympathetic character but most of the emotional rollercoaster in the beginning of the film is experienced by the mother. The child is just a curious bystander.

The audience watching the film were therefore getting the plot loud and clear but they were being isolated somewhat from the mother’s emotional life. I felt I were telling the story but it’s important to remember that the story is not the events. It is how your particular characters feel and how they respond to those events. How those events impact on the emotional lives of the characters and what they do as a result - the actions they take, the choices they make - that’s your story.

Today we sat down to recut the film focusing instead on the mother’s emotions and it was stunning how much the film changed.

The best advice is never given as advice. I find it’s usually posed as a question by a person who realised it themselves some time ago. Why? Because it’s so strange that, even though now they know it and understand it, it still baffles them - perhaps because of its seeming obviousness, perhaps because of its ridiculous simplicity. A well-known film maker recently said to me “When you’re making a film it’s really about one thing - have you earned the close up?”

You shoot a scene, something terrible happens your protagonist and – BANG! – you cut to the close up. Hopefully, if you’ve done your homework right, the audience is dying to see his reaction. Why? It’s simple. It’s so simple it hurts my brain to think about it. Because of the emotional information you’ve already given them. Because they understand the inner life of this character and they have connected with them on some deeper-level – not intellectually but emotionally. They are no longer merely viewers, they are part-participants in the drama. They have done you the greatest service any audience member can, they have invested emotionally in the character and the character’s life. They have made themselves participants to her choices, they have strapped themselves to the characters life and will sink or swim with them come what may.

They pray that the character will find a way out of the predicament before it’s too late, but they also understand that they may not and they are prepared for the consequences whatever they may be. They have been given a window into the life of the character, they have seen and they have understood what the characters issue is. They have seen the problem from the inside, they understand the character’s choices even though they may not condone all of them. They see what the character is like based on all the factors at play and, once again if you have done your homework right, they think to themselves - that could be me. If I were in their shoes, I would most likely do the same. In other words...

              “There but for the grace of God go I.”

Your job as a filmmaker is provide an emotional roller coaster for the character. Every event, every twist and turn and emotional loop-the-loop on your 2 hour visual ride, is custom built to push them outside their familiar sector. To test them to force them to chose whether or not they want to grow.

Each of us in some way is incomplete. Films show a mirror up to real life and so in films our protagonist are somehow, like us, hounded by their imperfections.

When you’re plotting a script really you’re trying to create an emotional roller coaster, not a plot roller coaster. How many times have you seen a film where each event is followed by an even bigger event, each explosion followed by a bigger explosion - and yet you leave the cinema feeling underwhelmed? In fact the longer the film goes on the more underwhelmed you generally feel. Why is that?

Physical events cannot replace emotional impacts. In a script, the things you need to happen are the things that will most deeply and profoundly fuck with your protagonist’s head. Explosions only have meaning if a person whom the protagonist cares for is endangered. But even that’s not enough. The bus is going to blow up with you’re a/ co-worker on board, or b/ your wife, or c/ the president, or d/ your child - each will have a different impact. They artistry is in endangering the person who at this point means the most to the protagonist based on their deepest flaw. The character who exposes them with the chance to address their greatest weakness. 

Close relations are a good bet. The wife in Die Hard is a great choice because their relationship is on the rocks so somehow his saving her becomes a sort of metaphor for his struggle to save their relationship, his chance to show her how much he really cares.

There’s an old Hollywood maxim – “If it’s about what it’s about then you’re in deep shit”. The act of the protagonist must be a metaphor for resolving a greater issue. They might catch the killer or free the slaves but ultimately they must redeem themselves for the mistakes that being human has led them to make.

A bad husband redeems his marriage in the eyes of his wife and himself.  Somehow the act is not about the act itself, it’s about what we see that it comes to stand for in the mind of the protagonist.

It must be greater than the sum of it’s parts.

To surmise: you set up a person with an emotional problem they refuse to acknowledged and you allow them over the course of the film to realise the fall out that has come from their behaviour. Then you present them, not necessarily with a chance to make good (for time cannot be turned back), but with a chance to do something that reveals that they have seen the error of their ways. Think Paris, Texas.

Ultimately, they must sacrifice something to reveal their giving up of old ways, they must make vulnerable that which they previously defended at a terrible cost - both to themselves and to those around them. What they must sacrifice is often the very shield they hid behind.  They must shed the old defensive pattern of behavior behind which they concealed their vulnerability for so long. In short, they must grow.