Wow okay, that title sounds clickbait as fuck lol, but honestly, this film blew my mind – I’ll detail why in a bit. Silence Has No Wings is one of my favourite films that I’ve seen this year.
These past few months I’ve basically been living at the BFI Southbank, because it’s the Japanese film season there, and I love watching old Asian films, so best know that I’ve been there eating GOOD. (This is my Letterboxd if you’re curious as to what obscure ass films I’ve been watching)
I find that by buying all my tickets in advance, I tend to watch a lot more films, because I have an obligation to watch the film, having spent money already. As a result, I’ve watched a lot more films than I would have otherwise if I just chilled at home.
I feel like when I have the option and flexibility of watching a film at home, it will almost always get postponed and pushed back a couple days, because I will either get super distracted, will get super inspired and want to create and not consume, or not be able to process anything, my brain being fried as fuck, and just wanting to sleep.
Today I was planning to just go back and sleep, been running on fumes sleep wise, and got an early start tomorrow to head to Shepperton studios (doing some extra stuff). However after training at the gym my energy picked up, and I decided to go watch the film. And boy, am I glad I did.
HOLY FUCK THIS FILM IS AMAZING
After the credits rolled I was literally gobsmacked. My jaw was hanging open, and I was trying to process what I just watched. I haven’t felt this way about a film in a long time.
This is a fucking beautiful film man, it feels like true cinematic art. I can’t even do justice to this film by just showing the screenshots, you need to see the images in motion to really appreciate them.
I’ve been studying a lot of story structure and doing a lot of work on building up my fundamental skills of storytelling in film. But this film did not adhere at all to most of the rules I’ve been trying to learn and drill into my head, yet somehow the film still works as a story.
I always write and log my personal thoughts on every film I watch, and my note on this film is literally filled with about 16 “what the fuck”s lol.
We follow a caterpillar on its journey and the characters surrounding the caterpillar – I’m still trying to wrap my head around how I was so engaged by the film.
The film is so playful, and I really got a sense of an almost childlike and innocent quality to the way they were just experimenting with genre, the camera, and sound. It really seemed like they were doing what they wanted.
The soundtrack felt very much like a collage, and in some ways reminded me of an experimental hip-hop album, using different samples repeatedly, warping and distorting them, messing around with them to see what you can create with them.
There was a hi-hat ride in a heist section of the film, and they suddenly used a reversed version of it, creating a really interesting sonic texture that really drew me into the film, and I just found it fascinating.
Watching this experimental film really inspired me to just try things out in my short films, and to take more risks. If something doesn’t work, it doesn’t work, that’s just another lesson learned. I feel like lately I’ve been playing it very safe, especially with the way I shot my last couple short improv films.
The film really inspired me to just explore that childlike and novice wonder and exploration of what’s possible, not anchoring myself to any preconceived notions of what could or couldn’t work, but just trying it out.
Will definitely have to run this film back, and would highly recommend checking it out where you can, if you do or have already seen it, comment down below and let us know your thoughts!
Daily writing update
Just got down to writing a lot of the dialogue out today with my food idea and started putting my ideas into Final Draft – finally!
I realised that because I hadn’t touched the document in a while, it took me a minute to settle in, and I feel like I could improve my efficiency by just making a clear todo list for the next steps to progress in the writing process. I spent a good 10 minutes just scrolling and reading through what I already had, and figuring out what it was I needed to do next.
Just start writing
I did procrastinate a bit, and resisted starting the write up of the script in Final Draft. I noticed that I was trying to procrastinate and find other things to do. After just forcing myself to just eke out a few words on the page, I quickly got into it and it was fine from there.
A lot of times for me the idea of starting something is a lot harder than actually doing it, so I just need to force myself more to just do shit. In my head the idea of just writing seems so difficult, but just getting stuff on the page makes the process like 10 times easier.
Don’t get it perfect, get it on the page
Also I just realised how slow I am at writing. I need to get faster at churning out these pages man. When I’m not voice typing, and I’m typing on a computer, I tend to get really like a perfectionist about how it looks on the page.
I just need to focus on getting content down instead of trying to make it look perfect, because a lot of times stuff will change and I’ll edit, change, or cut entire scenes out. That’s a LOT of wasted time if I’ve spent half the time formatting the page to look nice.