By Brittany Wells |
Contributor
Academy nominated director and writer Whit Stillman talked to Augusta University students about his film “Love and Friendship” and filmmaking on Friday, Jan. 25.
Before the Cinema Series screening of Whit Stillman’s film “Love and Friendship” and question-and-answer session at Maxwell Theatre on the Saturday of Writers Weekend, a small Q&A session was held for AU students. The Q&A was held in a intimate group setting in the JSAC’s Hardy Room and led by Department of Communication Associate Professor Matthew Buzzell.
Students were also able to ask Stillman questions themselves and gain important advice and insight on Stillman’s movies, as well as his past and the process he uses for making films.
Stillman explained that he started off wanting to be a novelist (he had worked on the student newspaper at Harvard, where he majored in history), but decided screenwriting was a better fit for him.
He then got into film through the Spanish film industry and started selling Spanish films. Soon after, he began acting in some of the films and helping with the production, and that was when he started writing his first screen plays.
Much of the discussion was about how to go about starting in the film industry, how to fund a film and how to execute filming on a low budget.
“I was thinking how can I do a film low budget enough so that people I know can contribute enough so that we can make a film,” Stillman said.
He then heard about a film being made for $50,000, and decided to invest in real estate in New York to raise the money so that he could do the same.
When shooting his 1990 film “Metropolitan,” which earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, he described how he was able to save a large amount of money by getting a filming permit from New York City and filming outside of places such as the glamorous Plaza Hotel for free.
“Screenwriting is a part of problem solving in Cinema, because at a certain point you get in a situation where you have to fix problems of the realities of what you have to work with making film,” Stillman said.
He explained to students that this technique is perfect for a film with a lot of walk-talk scenes. He was able to film conversations between characters in interesting settings that enhanced the entertainment of the film for very little cost.
Finally, the topic of conversation moved toward what inspired his writing, to which he confessed most of his characters share similarities, because they are based off of the people he has come across in his life and the type of person he wants to be. He stated that the people in his life have been a great inspiration to him.
“Find people you know who are really entertaining,” Stillman said.
His tip for those starting out in screenwriting is to start writing about anything that is personally interesting, and that stories are not always written from the beginning.
“I think that if you are honest with yourself and think it through, you already know pretty much everything,” concluded Stillman.