Studying Movies

These last couple of weeks, my life has been filled with movies. I've been renting over 25 DVDs in the last 2 weeks for the purpose of my research and study. And I'll definitely get more of them in the following week.

See, the thing is, I'm writing a script for my new movie. It's a comedy film, and will be my first full feature length film. The disadvantage here is that, I've no experience in making a full feature film. I mean I did direct three short-films before, but I'm guessing this time, it will be a different challenge.

With that, there are some studying and research to be done; and my research was simple, basically I watched movies. But I'm not watching the movies for my entertainment; I watched them so that I can understand what does it take to make a fantastic film, and also, to understand why some films fail.

So to that end, I began renting the award-winning films, the great comedy films, and the bad and "no good" films. I watched each films twice: the first time was for my entertainment, and the second time was for studying. I studied them pretty thoroughly; trying to understand why the film won an award, and why some films are extremely funny, and why some films fail.

All in all, it was a tiresome exercise. I couldn't even imagine that I can watch five films in a row, within a day. But in any case, after watching the 25th film, "The House Bunny", I began to understand why some films fail, and why some films are splendidly well-made. It's like, I've finally obtained that secret ingredient in making a fantastic film.

I can't tell the secret yet as I haven't tested it. If my film turns out to be fanstastic, then I'll disclose the secret here. Haha.

Anyway, I'm about to watch movie number 26 now, "There's Something About Mary". It looks like it's going to be a good one, judging by the reviews from Rotten Tomatoes.

Alright then, back to business.

William Lim