Universal Film & Television is the film and television story world of Hollywood film and television author, director, film educator and writer Peter Markham
Peter Markham
Peter Markham was the director of the AFI Directing Department at the American Film Institute, and he is also a film and television script consultant, director, film educator and writer. The students he teaches are well known in the television and film industry and have won awards from several prestigious international film festivals. Before working as a mentor, he was also a director in the UK, where he worked with filmmakers anthony Minghella and Martin Scorsese.
- Hollywood film and television script consultant, director, film educator and writer Peter Markham and Xiang Rong Danyang Sunny Xiang
The host of "Universal Pictures" in Los Angeles, USA, gave an interesting interview with Sunny Xiang Rong Danyang and special guests, Peter Markham, a Hollywood film and television script consultant, director, film educator and writer. Peter Markham explains his journey to becoming a Hollywood celebrity. The following are the interview questions:
Sunny Xiang: Can you share your experience working with Anthony Minghella? And then what's interesting about your work on The English Patient, a film that has won 9 Oscars, to share?
Peter Markham：
I could have spent the whole interview time, or even longer, talking about working with Anthony. Because we studied theatre together at a university in the north of England, and we formed a band there. In a BBC directing class in London, Anthony wrote the script for my short film. I was the first assistant director in his first film, Unfinished Yin and Yang. He also had me direct a second group on The English Patient.
However, I'm not familiar with how to be a second group director, and I know there are many forms, but for me, it's very special that Anthony is a very worthwhile friend to make. He was supposed to be the best man at my wedding in New York. So, we work very closely together. During pre-production in London, and even before going to Italy for pre-production, we had many long discussions where he talked about his intentions to make the film and how he felt about it. He said, "I wanted it to look like a movie like David Lane. I said, "Well, it's easy for me!" "I was terrified! How can I shoot someone like David What about Lane's amazing work? He talked about how he conceived the film based on his belief that we are all human. Although of Italian descent, he grew up entirely in the British way. For him, the texture, color and silhouette of the desert is a metaphor or symbol of humanity. So, I kind of knew what he was after, he trusted me, and when he was shooting with the main crew, he asked me to spend 4 or 5 hours shooting in the Sahara Desert with a group of people, which was a wonderful experience for me.
I remember special things including, one day we were filming in Tuscany [a region of Italy] and Anthony suddenly threw his script into the air and I said, "What's wrong?" He said, "What are the screenwriters thinking?" "Of course, he's the screenwriter, but he realizes that now he's the director, and it's two different ways of working and thinking. For me, it was very interesting. Another moment was when we watched the demos with Walter Murch, one of the greatest editors in the history of cinema. Walter Murch said: "I don't understand what they're saying". Anthony and I looked at each other: "What does he mean?" Are you saying that the audience should understand what the actor is saying? "Then we realized, of course, that they should understand. I think that's the problem with a lot of movies today, the director should let the audience know what the conversation is, but the director doesn't listen to it like someone who has never heard that conversation before. I'm not saying that dialogue has to be perfect, or that the tone and pronunciation have to be irreplaceable, but it has to be comprehensible to the audience. And I find that I often fail to understand what people say in plain English. Because the actors don't handle the lines with enough care. I'm not saying that actors should be detached from the script itself, but the most basic thing is that the dialogue should definitely be comprehensible.
I remember one time when art director Stuart Craig explained to Anthony the arrangement of a location and a shot, and how Anthony should do it. Then Anthony turned to me and said, "Can he teach me how to do things?" "I don't know. It was a great lesson for us to learn how all parties work together during the filmmaking process, with heads of all the different departments coming to contribute to visual presentation and storytelling. It was a wonderful educational experience for me. My first assistant director in the second group was a guy named Gianni Arduini, who had been the first assistant director of Fellini Fellini and Antonioni Antonioni, so he had worked with these masters of cinematic history, and for me it was very stressful to work with such people. But we got along very well. When he doesn't like something, he criticizes it very sincerely, which is useful. When he likes it, he says it, and it encourages me. I can continue to talk about this topic, but working with film crews from many different parts of the world in the Sahara Desert in Italy and Tunisia was a very great experience. For me, the experience was significant.
Sunny Xiang: Can you share your experience working with Martin Scorsese? Is there anything interesting you could share about your involvement in the 10-time Oscar-nominated work of Gangster New York?
I had an interview with him in New York to be the director of the second group of directors for that film, and Scorsese asked, "Why did I want you to be the director?" These are all things I like. I want to do all the insertion shots, I want to do the work of the second group, why should you do it? I thought, "I really want this job." What should I say? "How could I possibly convince (Martin Scorsese) that I like and adore his films so much? What can I say? So I thought for a moment and said, "Mr. Si, I'll give you what you want." I will do my best to give you what you want and save your time so you can focus on other work. But for me, it's an honor to work with you, and it's an honor for me, and I'm willing to serve you in the best possible way. "That's all I can say, and then I got the job. But I still need to earn respect, and I work very hard to do it.
Working with him every day was an unimaginable learning opportunity for me. First of all, his knowledge and literacy in film is incredible. He's seen so many movies, he remembers them so clearly, and he has very interesting insights and perspectives on movies, about filmmakers, and about film history. What he put forward is not pure theory, but a very practical point of view, about the language of the screen, about different ways of dealing with things. Although he had such astonishing knowledge and wisdom, and although he was a master, to my surprise, he never stopped asking questions, as did Anthony Anthony. He wouldn't say, "I know how to do it, I don't have time to tell you." He would say, "We can shoot this way, we can shoot like that." What that might mean, it could be another matter. Will the two shots be cut together? I thought, "Wow, I thought he knew everything. "But he asked questions, challenged, explored ways to figure out how to do something, and that was very interesting to me." And surprisingly, this did not undermine his authority at all. A lot of people will say, "I don't know how to do this." What the hell should I do? "That way, everybody loses respect for them. But for Martin Scorsese, that was not the case. He said, "What are we going to do?" We can do that, we can do that, and there are other ways, can't we? What are the other methods? "Of course, he's asking himself questions.
Another thing about him is that he pays so much attention to the screen, the shots, the framing, the angles, the shots, and all the elements of the language of the screen. I'm not necessarily talking about pure technology or technical elements, I'm talking about the visual language of moving images. However, he's one of the best directors I've ever seen working with an actor. He gave the actors the freedom to work with them in the way they had proposed. It's amazing to see him working with Daniel Day-Lewis because he'll shoot 2 or 3 times to achieve the desired effect, and then he'll look at what Daniel has to offer, and Daniel daniel will come up with some different explanations. I found that when working with Daniel, I would shoot small shots of coins or playing cards in his hand because Daniel Day-Lewis insisted on doing the second set of work himself, and he didn't have a stand-in. Every shot of Daniel is like watching a dancer improvise. He was conceived and executed with great precision, and you could say martin scorsese. So, it was a really good time for me. I learned a lot. About 15 years later, I met him at AFI and he remembers me, and that felt really good. We had a pleasant conversation, so I always feel privileged to think about it.
Sunny Xiang: What is your goal as a mentor?
I want to help filmmakers become the person they have to be. I don't want them to be another me, I don't want them to be like me. I don't want them to be like other filmmakers they particularly admire – of course, they can take inspiration from the work that inspires them and enriches their thinking. I want them to be who they are, and they need to find their own inspiration and be true to that inspiration. I don't want them to be cookie-cutter directors, they can be anybody, any director. Even if not like everyone else, they may succeed on TELEVISION without having to engage in flashy or outlandish things. I don't want to get in their way. As long as they want it to be, I just want to accompany them and provide them with support and assistance.
Sunny Xiang: Can you share some interesting things about your time at AFI with your students?
It's a great opportunity to network with very good filmmakers at one of the best filmmaking schools in the world. A lot of people want to go there. During my years there, there were more and more people in different countries in the directing class, and in fact the same was true for other disciplines. Not only people from different parts of the United States, but also people from different parts of the world. These people belong to different races, have different feelings and opinions, different cultural backgrounds, and different genders. So the cultures there are very diverse because I'm going to see them challenge each other, learn from each other, and I've been learning from them. This is really good for me because I'm a pureLy British man who started out as working class, but because of my looks, I have a lot of strengths in life. It's great for me to feel like I'm part of the human race, and I feel like my colleagues at AFI are representatives of humanity and I really want to be a part of it.
I would say that as I get older, it's crucial to work with the younger generation, and I feel sorry for my peers who don't work with young people. Because young people will always ask new questions, new perspectives, new feelings, and constantly surprise you. I was actually lucky enough to have worked there for 17 years and since then I have been teaching independently on my own. It's great to see the changes from generation to generation, the changes in feelings, to see all kinds of trends, patterns, and then obsolete, and then disappear, and then new patterns appear. This is important not only from a pedagogical point of view, but also for enriching one's life, one's life experience.
Sunny Xiang: Why did you write What is the Story? When directors come across their screenplays for this book? What was the purpose of writing this book?
Alfred P. Alfred Hitchcock has said that a lot of people think of directors starting on the set and working with actors. When I left AFI, a guy called me and wanted me to work at their school. He said, "When you get to the set, the teaching starts... ...", and I said, "No, no, director is not like that." "Directors don't simply work with actors on set, let the cameraman shoot, let the editor edit. That's not the case at all. When I was the head of department, when people came to apply for teaching jobs, they would always say, "I want to teach a course about working with actors." "It's also interesting to me. No one ever said they wanted to teach a class on the language of moving images. And no one ever said they wanted to teach a class about composition, camera placement or movement or the relationship of cameras to actors. No one has ever said they want to teach dramatic narratives, the nature, form and structure of dramatic narratives, the meaning of "characters," and how to present all these things on screen. Or how a film speaks to the audience, and how it orchestrates that speech to guide the audience and prompt them to react emotionally to the film. So I thought, now that I've left AFI and am no longer limited to 3 hours of class time, I can write in detail about what I'm really interested in, the whole process from the story to the script writing, how the director is involved in the process, and then put it on the screen.
So, I decided to write this book. The book is not limited by a 3-hour class, and can have many, many pages that people can spend time reading once, or two or three times. It's something I really want to do. Also, I don't often spend time in the classroom with 20 directors, I need to reach a wider audience. So, in my mind's eye, I'd imagine those directors reading the book. The book replaced their course, and although before COVID-19 I was teaching in los Angeles, I did online classes later.
Overall, I think the word "ready" is misused because it implies preparation before the shoot starts, which I think is a very bad word. But I can't think of a better word. I think filmmaking starts from the moment you have an idea for the story, or from the moment you write the script, or from the moment you read the script (if you didn't write the script), all the way through to the film being taken out of your hands. The footage is cut together, the post-production is done, the color grading is done, and then it's gone, and there's nothing you can do about it. It's a whole process that encompasses many different aspects and requires many different skills and collaborations. It's an honorable thing. So the new book I'm writing is about the language of the screen itself and expanding on that, and I'm immersed in the writing of this book.
In addition, I would like to use my first book to pay tribute to all the students I have taught at AFI because I have learned so much from them. I hope they will continue to learn from me what I can offer them.
Sunny Xiang: What is narrative?
You may spend years discussing this question and still can't find the answer. There may be many answers, and there are no answers. I don't know, I'm trying to think of a simple answer. I think the most important thing is that you have a story that really needs to be told. You may not know why you need to tell, but you just have the urge to tell, and you have the instinct to tell stories. You just like that kind of activity, you like to tease your audience, make them scared, make them want something, make them feel something, it's essential. You make them wonder what's going to happen next, you kind of want to wake them up, you want them to sit on the edge of their seats, you want them to care more about the story and the characters than anything else while watching. I also think that you may need to tell a story because you don't fully understand why you're telling the story, and by telling this story, you think you might figure it out. In addition, there may be some kind of connection. Maybe it's something in your personal life, or something you've experienced, or maybe it's connected to you on a very deep level. Maybe the story is in a different fictional world, maybe it's about different characters. But there are certain things in it that you think are real from the heart and resonate within you. It feels real to you. You'd feel like, if you make it, "I'm a real filmmaker." It's not like someone else has a better reason to shoot it and you take it from someone else. You can make it your own without stripping it of its own identity. I'm not saying you just change it simply, I mean, you can be true to it and still be true to yourself. But I think, ultimately, the key to storytelling is still mysterious and incomprehensible. If it becomes something that you can systematize, something that you can use specific terms to stipulate, something that people in the industry, business, marketing, and distribution fields can understand, it doesn't make any sense. It is a mystery, something difficult to understand, and it must remain mysterious.
Sunny Xiang: If you could change one aspect of yourself, which aspect would it be?
I wish I could have started teaching earlier. I didn't understand what an incredible experience and activity it was. I want to change a lot of things. I think anyone who is realistic about life and about themselves and learns anything will try to change. I wish I had tried and needed to make more changes, but the most important thing I'd say is this: I said I didn't want to do exactly what I should have started doing early.
Sunny Xiang: You are now a well-known film and television script consultant, director, film educator and writer in the film industry, what advice would you like to give to young filmmakers?
You need to free yourself from ordinary thinking and group thinking patterns. You need to challenge other people's ideas, challenge what everyone else has come up with. You should listen to your teachers with openness and respect, but you should also challenge what they teach you. Then, you should accept wisdom that can withstand the challenge. But when wisdom can't stand your challenge, you should look for something to replace it.
Be patient, but don't wait in a daze. Watch movies and think about how they work. Try to get into the filmmaker's mind, through reverse engineering, from the screen into the actual working mind of the filmmaker. Go out and shoot movies, even if you're shooting with your iPhone or smartphone. Dare to do the wrong thing; don't be afraid to do the wrong thing and learn from it, because you can never get things right. That's good because you always have to keep learning.
Another thing I always say to my students is: Aspire to be a student, don't aspire to be a master, because a master is the best student of all. That's what I started from · (What Anthony Minghella) and Martin Scorsese learned. Martin Scorsese must have been one of the best students of filmmaking ever, which is why he became a master. Because he's always been a student. Don't be tempted or distracted by industry, commerce, marketing and distribution, and all these things. There are a lot of kind and lovely people who will help people in these areas, but that's not your business. If you're a filmmaker, screenwriter, director, cinematographer, art director, costume designer or editor, you need to focus on your profession and tell a good story.
Finally, you have to always tell the truth at work, no matter how much it hurts you.