Michael Bruce Adams has written or co-written 23 feature length screenplays. His body of work also includes short film scripts, television series templates, and technical articles on screenwriting and filmmaking. He is a sought after Script Consultant and Story Editor with clients in the US, Canada, Africa and Europe. Michael is currently writing and directing the feature length documentary, “Kulka: The Final Round”.His produced writing credits include the feature film “Reach For Me”, (Best Feature and Best of Festival, Lake Arrowhead Film Festival), produced in 2008, and as Story Editor for the feature film “A Shine of Rainbows”, produced in 2008, and Script Consultant for the television movie “Taken in Broad Daylight”, also produced in 2008.
After studying Biomechanics and Psychology at the University of British Columbia, Michael sacrificed a career in Advertising to follow his passion; screenwriting. To build a practical foundation for his craft, Michael immersed himself in the study of story theory and structure, and their application to screenwriting, an education he considers an ongoing commitment.
To gain practical filmmaking experience, Michael joined the production side of the industry in 1994, first as a Production Assistant and Assistant Director, then as an Assistant Cameraman, where he had the honor of working with acclaimed cinematographers such as, Dean Semler, Mikael Salomon, Maryse Alberti, Peter Menzies Jr. and Bill Roe, and directors John Mctiernan, John Curran, Phillip Noyce and Martin Campbell.
The invaluable ‘on-set’ filmmaking experience he gained on over 120 film and television productions including; “Dark Angel”, “The ‘L’ Word”, “Elektra”, “I Spy”, “Beyond Borders”, “Walking Tall”, “The Thirteenth Warrior”, and “Miracle”, allows Michael to contribute to projects not only as a writer offering imaginative solutions to creative challenges, but as a practical collaborator with years of production experience.
Michael remains active in the technical side of the industry by publishing technical articles on screenwriting and filmmaking (actioncutprint.com; Your First Draft: Breaking Free of Structure Paradigms, Getting Started as a Screenwriter, and Notes on a Year as a Working Screenwriter, Canadian Society of Cinematographer News, Feb. 2008; Painting in the Dark: The Rebellious Adolescence of Digital Cinematography).
Michael Bruce Adams’ blog on the making of the feature length documentary “Kulka: The Final Round” is called Glenn Kulka Documentary Journal.
SL: Can you talk about the ways in which the blog has affected your process in the making of your current film?
MA: I can tell you unquestionably that the blog affects the creative process for “Kulka: The Final Round” in wonderful ways; it allows me to explore ideas ‘on paper’ before shaping them on film, it allows me to experience the emotional affect of certain subjects prior to shooting, it allows me to tie in experiences and ideas that I may not, on the outset, have naturally included in the film, and most importantly, the blog allows me to express ideas and opinions that I know do not have a place in the film itself.
As creative people, we often battle an urge to over-do. We over-write scenes and dialog, we make huge statements in the execution of our craft that can sometimes overshadow our themes… we self indulge. The blog allows me to exercise those urges in a format that is cathartic, and that means I won’t be tempted to try and force those ideas into the film. This is especially important for a documentary film where the goal is to let the subject and the story reveal themselves organically.
SL: When you mentioned that using the blog has suggested ideas that you might not otherwise have pursued, it reminded me to browse through a book that I think you’ve also read – The Conversations: Walter Murch and the art of Editing Film where Murch is interviewed by Michael Ondaatje. He talks about developing a ‘photo-board system’ and finding ‘provocative’ visual juxtapositions and he also says that “there’s an incredible richness that comes from the unanticipated collisions of things.” Can you describe any particular collisions that have come out of your process of using the blog so far? Would you compare the blog to Murch’s system?
MA: Murch’s ‘photo-board system’ has had a huge influence on all my writing. Even when doing dramatic screenwriting I will storyboard or photograph images that inspire a scene or a theme or a character, almost to the point where I will create an image outline for a film. You can still use this process with documentary filmmaking though in a much more reactionary way. The blog is a natural extension of this process.
Let’s say you go into a documentary having done extensive research on your subject and your subject’s world, you’re going to have a certain set of images, sounds and words that inform you as the filmmaker in regards to the story you are trying to tell and the way you are thinking of telling it. Yes, it’s a documentary and yes, you are creating a set of preconceived notions about the film and yes, those things aren’t supposed to work together… but we wouldn’t be human if we didn’t have some idea of what we are after as storytellers.
The real gold in documentary work is when your subject takes your preconceived notions, flips them upside down and slams them back in your face. The blog becomes your emotional and reactionary outlet when this happens, and as a result, it becomes the template for organizing concepts and ideas when the shooting is done. So in a sense, the blog becomes the emotional imagery building blocks of Murch’s ‘photo-board system’.
SL: In the same book, Murch talks about how when he writes he lies down and when he edits he stands up. One of the things I’m very interested in is the relationship between word and picture, image and text and those tensions that occur between them. How do you navigate the various roles that you’ve taken on to make this documentary? What strategies have you developed to explore that tension between word and picture? Is the blog part of that preliminary exploration?
MA: This is a great question because I had always hoped that I would have enough money to hire a great Director of Photography for the shoot, but I ended up having to shoot almost all of it myself. Without realizing it, this dilemma has created a ton of creative tension in me, most of it positive and useful. It forced me to be always conscious of tension in the frame as opposed to finding the ‘most beautiful’ image, which I do not have the skills to find anyway!
One of the concepts that I have always envisioned for the documentary is to constantly layer images and sound, and as much as possible, offer conflicting and confrontational pieces within any given moment, I feel the subject matter in this case demands it. This has provided a conscious motivation to create tension on screen between layers whether they are word, image or multiple layers of each… or sometimes the absence of one or the other.
The blog entry I have received the most feedback about is hands-down the one from March 29, 2009 entitled “Sunday Morning Comes the Dawn”. This is the only blog entry I posted without an image supporting it and this was a conscious choice because I wanted the reader to experience the post as they would a mystery novel, with the full powers of their imagination helping to create tension for me. So the absence of elements is always something I think about as well, black space, white space, silence and dissonance all play a massive role, in very subtle ways, to create tension for the audience.
The blog helps reinforce those concepts by challenging the blogger to maintain interest using only the tools and palette they choose to work with. My blog is quite simple; words and still images, but I’m trying to combine them in different ways to see what impact each has; images that juxtapose or complement, narrative in first or third person, bad writing with ridiculous, indulgent description, and hopefully some good writing with carefully crafted sentences.
SL: There’s always an excess that one is left with at the end of creating a work of art. The blog can be a way of documenting that excess too. One of my favourite writers, Helene Cixous, has said about notebooks (which share some things with blogs), that “it’s rare for someone to manage to keep within the narrative the spontaneous, frothy quality of the notebooks and diaries.” I think blogs can convey a rawness, a frothy quality, that can be useful to my creative process. But I also keep a notebook which is indispensable to my process. What other tools have you used besides the blog?
MA: Film is all about excess! Documentary in particular breeds excessive capture; hours and hours of footage, thousands of stills, hundreds of songs and sounds… the real work is to sculpt and edit these excesses down to an essential, visceral story. Obviously with all that material it’s easy to get sidetracked so most of the tools I am developing are about organizing and flagging all that stuff. The primary tool for me is the typed transcripts I am doing of all the interviews and descriptions of images for all the footage. All these go into a binder that I have organized into a rough outline. To this I add screen grabs of key images and storyboards of things I need to find or create. Then I highlight the key bits of dialog I really want to use, add music cues, etc. What I end up with is a visual script of the film, with all the resources at my fingertips. Mind you this is all definitely moving away from “frothy” and fully into a right brain world!
I guess when I am doing dramatic (fiction) stuff my favorite tool is the short story… and these are fully frothy! I’m not so much interested in journals or personally driven blogging when I’m doing dramatic stuff because I like to keep myself in the world of my characters. A journal drives me back into my own reality, my physical restrictions, right brain responsibilities.
Short stories allow me to work out challenges with characters or a story by using the other world and imaginative powers of my characters… it’s extremely liberating! I just give the challenge over to my characters to solve and write out how they deal with it in a story. Eventually the characters will find a solution, and in the process I gain new insights into the characters' psyches. Of course, you need to have developed your characters and done your research to be able to do this… but to me, you can’t get to the truth of your story and your characters until you’ve done your homework anyway.
SL: The blog enriches the creative process in many ways, but would you say that there are any dangers or risks to blogging? Have you ever felt that maybe you revealed too much, or worked with certain elements too early in the creative process?
MA: I’m not too worried about over extending in a blog. The danger for me is switching back and forth from right brain work to left brain work. If you are blogging as a marketing obligation, you will constantly be fighting the responsibility, the demand on your time, the draw into your own reality that posting represents. If you can find a way to use the blog as an enhancement of your creative process, or at least be aware of when the blog is interfering with your creativity, I think you can find a balance.
I think the other danger of blogging would be making public declarations that aren’t eventually backed up. Again, when we are marketing, we tend to stretch and bend and declare in order to create interest. It is my personal belief that if we choose to communicate publicly then we have a responsibility to maintain personal integrity… a blog is a piece of art and should be handled with that kind of care, that kind of truth. Take a look at what’s happening on things like Twitter right now… not much truth and integrity being tweeted right now, mostly just a bunch of self serving garbage… in my humble opinion.
SL: What will happen to the blog when all is said and done? Will you allow it to stand, to remain in cyberspace after you’ve finished the project? I’m thinking also of practical concerns – is the blog useful as a form of publicity? Will you refer to it at a later stage of your creative process?
MA: I think for “Kulka: The Final Round” the blog will remain as a document in some form. We will certainly use it as another product for marketing, but understanding that a blog on its own is not a fantastic marketing tool. The blog is excellent for marketing certain aspects of the film like the depth of the material, the care with which it is handled, so we will certainly direct people to it. But we have to be respectful and understand that not everybody has time to read pages and pages of material just because we ask them to… better perhaps if we can direct people to specific posts within the blog, and if they are interested in reading on… wonderful. It comes down to energy cost benefits; if you could spend all your time making a fantastic blog that everyone would want to subscribe to… number one, you wouldn’t have any time to work on the project you’re hyping… number two, you’d be better off making a full-on website.
I think the real value of a blog is very similar to a journal, except that with the electronic access today’s technology provides, the traffic we can drive to a blog mind blowing. But like a journal, a blog’s greatest value is in the fact that you are, with some regularity, communicating; taking time to record thoughts, fears and dreams for others to see.
It is the process of becoming vulnerable, and nothing could be more important, because vulnerability and trust… are the key elements of hope.
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