The Process of Writing a Review - Scenes and Names

The process for how a critic writes a review varies from person to person.  I have spoken with other fellow critics and I am usually fascinated by their methods in writing.  Most of them take notepads to the movies so they can make notes about certain scenes, dialog, and other stuff that they don't want to forget when it comes time to writing their review later on.  I don't do this.  Several of these friends look at me with disbelief, as if this was am impossible feat.  I'm different from most critics in that I have Asperger's Syndrome, which presents a unique skill and a unique handicap.  The handicap is that I can't take notes and pay attention to something at the same time.  My brain will only allow me to focus on one thing at a time.  If I stopped to take a note I would have to hope that nothing too important happened during the next minute or else I would miss some vital information.  Not an ideal situation to be in when watching something like "Michael Clayton."

The unique skill this presents though is that since Asperger's is a mild form of Autism I have a much more detailed memory than most people.  That means if I make it a point to remember something I usually do.  If I forget something then as far as I'm concerned the detail probably wasn't worth remembering in the first place.  One thing that I do have trouble with though is names.  Boy oh boy do names throw me off.  It's not just movies either; I have a huge problem remembering names in real life and when someone usually says "hi Kevin" it's not uncommon for me to respond "oh...hi there" and true to avoid using the persons name until I can get a clue as to what it is.  For this I always have the IMDB movie page in the corner to reference when I need to look someones name up.

Does this mean I would have been lousy film critic before the Internet?  Not likely.  I think people use whatever tools they have at their disposal to do their job effectively regardless what time period they were born into.  If I was a film critic before the Internet I would be none-the-wiser of what I would be missing and just find other tools to use.  Besides, one thing that has been around since film criticism became a business are press releases, and those are still used today.  Chances are that's where I'd get my names.  Despite having a process that works I do wish I could take notes sometimes.  There have been a few times I have forgotten something important, wrote the review, and then have woken up later in the night realizing my mistake.  Well, no one ever claimed movie critics were movie God's when it came to information.

Dealing with Writer's Block

Copyright © Bill Watterson

Film critics get writers block.  In that regard we are the same as every other writer, blogger, and Stephen King wannabe out there.  It surprises people who read my site that sometimes the reason for there being no new reviews for a month is simply because I can't think of anything to say.  I suppose I understand where they are coming from.  After all, it's not like I'm creating original works of fiction or anything; I'm watching movies and giving people an opinion on whether or not I feel the movie works.  Since everyone has an opinion on everything these days the fact that you might not know how to express it is a confounding idea indeed.  Yet it does happen and it did happen.  I write almost ten reviews a week on average (most of which never appear on the site because they are being saved for future books).  Once in awhile it gets a little...boring, to be doing this.

Summer time is especially hard because most of the movies I review are so interchangeable that each day seems to be blend into another.

• Did I see "The Guardians of the Galaxies" two weeks ago or was it "X-Men: Days of Future Past?"  
• I've just spent hours writing four three star reviews for average movies and they all seem to be reading the same except with different names.
• Do I need to mention the 3D again or does it not matter this time?
• Man, what I wouldn't give to be watching "The LEGO Movie" again as opposed to this.

These are some of the many things that can contribute to writers block for a film critic.  Sometimes one particular movie can cause a critic to stumble.  For me recently that movie was "Maleficent" (whose review I still have to publish), which seemed to talk a fine line between good and bad for so much of the film I had to see it a second time to see if I could figure out where I stood on it.  Sometimes this is a good thing as critics can re-experience things in a different light than they did the first time around and get a better idea of where they stand.  When you do that though and the movie ends up just baring working or not working after the second viewing it takes more out of you than any movie that is just outright horrible.

Getting around writers block can also be tough.  Reading other reviews from film critics you respect will either have an effect where you are inspired by their writing or deterred by their writing because you know you will most likely never be as good as them.  Sometimes all it takes is seeing a movie that inspires words of passion to break the cycle, but that can also take a long time.  Relaxing by watching movies doesn't help because your mind is almost always working (although TV can be a good substitute since that's another business you don't write for altogether).  Sometimes reading regular books can help a great deal.  To take in a story from a format you don't normally analyze to death helps a great deal.

If you're religious prayer can help.  Or you could simply write a blog post where you mull over your recent writers block.  What will this accomplish?  Not much other than the fact that it will get you to write again.  Sometimes the best medicine for writer's block is just to write about anything other than movies for a bit.  I find when I'm getting writers block I can distract myself by working on my book about growing up with Asperger's Syndrome.  I should probably also work on the last several chapters of my novel but I've had writers block on that for a couple years now.  Some of you may be reading this and wondering what the big deal is.  Seeing that most film critics are their own boss it shouldn't be too stressful to get writers block because you work with your own schedule.

This may be true but your readers will determine if you are keeping a schedule that is fitting to them.  I will still write and post my "Maleficent" review, but at this point it's not going to be much help to anyone who needed the review up during the opening weekend.  If you aren't keeping up to date with your reviews your visitors will read other peoples reviews, then they won't visit your site, and then you don't make any money because ad revenue you would normally get from those visitors isn't coming in.  While most people do this for fun to do it for a living means that you can't afford to have writers block for too long.  So if you want to be in this profession get ready to have some sort of plan in place where you can gain inspiration when you just can't find the words to share in your reviews.  Otherwise you'll never be financially stable when doing this.

The 9 to 5 of Film Critisism

One of the most common misconceptions about being a film critic is that you have an "easy job" that is far removed from the (what most people call) "9 to 5 jobs" that the majority of people work a day.  The whole concept of a 9 to 5 job is that it is a job that takes forty hours of your life every week, eight hours a day, during a time period that is considered reasonable by many peoples standards.  Many people spend the breaks during these jobs daydreaming of jobs that require less work out of them so that they have more time to do the things they want to do.  While it is true that being a film critic changes the dynamic of the 9 to 5 job a little bit, the reality of the situation is that we can actually spend more time doing our job than most 9 to 5 jobs would require.

How is this so?  Read and find out.

The good thing about answering this question is that I get to answer another one of my most frequently asked questions: How many movies do you watch a week.  Well, on average I watch two movies a day (three on a particularly busy day).  At an average of two hours a film that means an average of four hours a day can be spent watching movies.  If you factor in a five day work schedule that's about twenty hours a week.  About half of your typical 9 to 5 job, but for many this is still preferable to what they are currently doing because there's no actual work.  Granted, most people probably assume this is always the fun part of the job.  The reality is that unless the movies are good that four hours could easily feel like four hours (if not more).  For example: Last year there was a day when I had to see two movies in one day.  Those movies were "2 Guns" and "The Smurfs 2," neither of which were very good.

If I didn't have reviews to write I could have theoretically walked out midway through these movies and done something useful with my time.  I couldn't though, because watching these movies were part of my job.  So that's four hours of the day that was wasted (and I knew that I would be wasting an extra two the next day because I had no faith "Planes" was going to be any good).  After you watch the movies you need to write the reviews for them.  Now review times can vary a lot because there are some days when I'm feeling more inspired than other days, but my best guess is that when you add it all up it averages about an hour per review.  So if I'm watching two movies a day that's an additional two hours a day.  Multiply that by five and you can add another ten hours to your twenty hour week to make it a thirty hour week.  Still below the forty hours that a 9 to 5 job demands, but it's getting close to forty hours at this point.

After the reviews are written they normally need to be given a second and third draft.  Thankfully these (usually) aren't difficult as I'm just trimming and rewording certain sentences, so this only adds about a half hour for each review.  Then the reviews need to be formatted for the website.  This takes about another thirty minutes per review, which means roughly three hours each day is spent on writing, drafting, and formatting two reviews a day.  So now my daily work day is about seven hours while my typical work week is thirty five.  And please remember that these are the AVERAGE hours, so sometimes I can end up working for more than forty hours!  In fact, last Christmas there was a day when I had to view three movies in one day: "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug," "Tyler Perry's A Madea Christmas," and "American Hustle" (it should be noted that Christmas time is typically busier than the rest of the year...like most other jobs).

"The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug" was 2 hours and 41 minutes.  "Tyler Perry's A Madea Christmas" was the shortest of the bunch that day coming in at 1 hour and 45 minutes.  Thankfully "American Hustle" (which was easily the best of the three) ended the day on a high note, but that movie clocked in at 2 hours and 18 minutes.  That's more than six hours of movie I had to watch in one day.  The fact that one of those movies was "Tyler Perry's A Madea Christmas" seemed to be adding insult to injury, but the sad fact of the matter is sometimes you spend six hours watching movies a day and not have a single one of them worth sitting through.  Throw in the reviews and formatting and you're now looking at working overtime hours without overtime pay (I'll write an article about what kind of wages a critic these days can expect in another post in the future).

The point I'm trying to make here is not that being a film critic is a lousy job that over works you and pays very little.  I'm just trying to shatter the illusion some of you might have that this is a profession you join to loaf around, watch movies for fun, all while getting paid.  You have to watch a lot of stuff you might not want to, you can't leave terrible movies, and there's the whole writing the reviews aspect that can jumps around from being fun and easy to being difficult and time consuming.  Next time I'll talk about the process of writing reviews and what movies make for the most difficult reviews to write, but for now hopefully this gives all you aspiring film critics a glimpse at what your daily life is going to look like should you pursue this path.  Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go to a critics screening of a big budget movie, starring an Oscar winning actress, from a Mickey Mouse organization whose name I can't disclose for legal purposes.

Days where you have to watch movies like this can make you reevaluate your life.

The Boring Life of a Film Critic

This is the first post in my revised Movie Wizard.com blog.  This is formally where updates and random rants would be posted for my website The Movie Wizard.com, but I've decided to switch gears a bit because that approach wasn't working as well as I'd like.  I'm not much of an update person in the strictest sense.  With new reviews, articles, and YouTube videos displayed proudly on the front page of the main website I almost never made updates on this blog because it would be redundant to make blog posts to mention updates that people would likely notice before they got to the blog.  Most rants ended up being retooled for editorials.  That means for the longest time this blog has pretty much been here for me to occasionally say sorry when updates were slow or the website was down (which reminds me...).

I do get a lot of questions from people who want to know what it's like to have "the greatest job in the world."  While I am always happy to answer questions about my profession, I hear from enough people who are curious about what I do that really have no idea what the daily life of being a film critic entails.  They think it's all fun.  They think there's no real work involved.  Some of them look at you strange when you comment how you almost always want to do anything but watch a movie for fun at the end of the day.  Yes, being a film critic has many perks, ups, downs, and loop de loops.  It's just like any other job though.  There are times when the job isn't much fun.  Sometimes it feels like just that: A job.  There are some serious social side effects to having a job that only requires you to leave the house on occasion.

It's all very mundane stuff and most people really wouldn't find much interest in it.  Yet society is in a position where people want to be self employers, to do things they like to do for fun and get paid for it.  While film criticism as a job is becoming an endangered species this is (ironically) because the internet has given a new voice to a younger generation of people who love to write about films.  With Blogger, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter the phrase "everyone's a critic" is more true today than it ever has been.  The thrill of reading people's comments when they agree with your review is exhilarating (and the people who hate your review can be brutal).  Whether the reviews come in over 700 words or in less than 140 characters, there are more critics in the world than there ever has been before.

That doesn't mean a vast majority of the writing is good, but that there is enough of it out there to read for free that it's becoming more of a hobby than a job.  Though I don't claim to be making the Leonard Maltin money here, I do have a website that does bring in some revenue.  I have written some movie books that have become best sellers in their respective categories.  There almost isn't a day that goes by where I don't write about movies and any expenses I have when it comes to running my website is considered a business expense.  In other words I've (how kids say it these days) successfully "monetized" my site.  This is where the goal should be for many writers, but most either have no clue what goes into making their hobby a business or most don't care.  To make matters even more confusing, the internet is constantly evolving, so many people have trouble keeping up with the changing times.

I've been writing about movies since I was six years old and I've been doing so as a job for close to ten years now.  The purpose of this blog is to share my stories, my secrets, and my daily routines.  For those who want to do this for a living this blog might provide some insight into how you can aim for this to happen.  For others this may be more validation to keep your movie blogging a hobby and look towards other ventures for financial gain.  Whether you find value in what I have to say or not I do thank you for visiting and reading!

Mad Holidays

While Christmas is normally a very good time for movies it's not always a good time for movie reviewers.  I know I've been neglecting my website, but I'm frustrated because it's not like I had much of a choice in the matter.  Running an online store during Christmas is possibly one of the most stressful things you will ever do.  While there is money to be made with it I wouldn't really wish this type of life on anyone.  You sell a bunch of stuff only to get e-mails that they don't want it anymore, they thought they were getting something else, they liked the item but you took too long to send it, and on and on it goes.  You sell something and hope that you don't have to refund that money after the holidays.  You cross your finger that people won't leave negative feedback and get you kicked off the site where you sell your things.

All the while I have a website with dwindling visitors because...well, because I'm not updating it.  I still managed to see most of the movies though, and I did write the reviews for them, but I scrapped a few of them because they were poorly constructed (obviously an effect because of the stress).  So I basically decided to take a deep breath, calm down, and rework the reviews one at a time.  With at least five reviews to post I can actually have an update every day while I touch up the reviews and slowly post them.  Then I can upload the Top Ten lists that are a favorite every year.  It won't be long after that and then Oscar season will be upon us, so that should give me something to write about.

Finally I'm going to be applying to join a critics guild and - if I'm accepted - means I will then be Rotten Tomatoes certified!  But right now the trick is making it fun to work on the site again.  So be patient viewers, as I essentially start over and get back into the groove of things.  I have a feeling this could be one of the best years for the site however, and I hope you'll all take the ride with me!

Is 3D Dead?

It sometimes feels as if I'm the only person on the planet that still believes 3D is a viable storytelling device rather than a phase Hollywood is going through.  Almost every week people say that it's dead, that there hasn't been a great 3D experience since "Avatar," and that nobody cares about it anymore.  It's very disappointing to think that we have already forgotten about "Life of Pi," and how much the 3D helped that movie be what it was.  Even the late film critic Roger Ebert (who was an outspoken critic of 3D) admitted that the 3D in that movie was good.  And this was last November.  Yet less than a year later people are signaling the death bell for 3D once again.  They point to the fact that 3D tickets have amounted to less than 30% per movie this year (on average).  Surely that's proof that the format is dead right?  I've responded to criticism's with this one point: Do you know what the best 3D experience I've had this year is?

Answer: "The Smurfs 2."

Now this is not the best 3D movie I've seen all year as "The Smurfs 2" is easily the worst film I've seen all year.  But in terms of using 3D properly in a way that makes it essential to the story, this is the best I've seen the format used all year.  Now, think about that.  If THAT'S the movie that has the best use of 3D this year then that might explain why people are turning their backs on the format!  Who wants to see movies like "The Smurfs 2" at all?  When movies like "Monsters University" can't make good use of the format why spend the extra $3?  Even special effects films like "Man of Steel" and "R.I.P.D." are up-converted from 2D to be given 3D effects that only kind of work.  I mean, at this point "Avatar" is almost four years old.  "Life of Pi" is only months old.

Don't the studios realize at this point that up-conversion isn't the same thing as natural 3D, and that people feel slighted when they see it because they know they've been duped?  I said it early on and it's a shame that I have to keep pointing it out, but unless Hollywood makes more movies in natural 3D that makes the movie immersive then 3D movies are going to continue to tank.  People don't want to spend an extra $3 on a movie and have it look like a cheap pop-up book.  "The Amazing Spider-Man," "Life of Pi," and "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" showed that if done properly, people will embrace it.  As for the people who said 3D at home is a dead thing I want to make the following comments.  Yes, 3D TV's haven't taken off as makers had hoped, but 3D technology is so cheap almost every TV comes with it now.  And in a few years all the TV's will have it and it will just be another feature.  Then it will be embraced.

Another Blah Movie Weekend

September is just the worst time to be a film critic.  It feels like a slow day at Wal-Mart all month long, where every time you hope something interesting is going to happen, and yet nothing does.  So far "Salinger" has not appeared in any of my local theaters and I didn't get an invite to "Riddick," so I've pretty much been at home working on Oscar related books and reviews.  I did manage to rant about Disney's "The Little Mermaid: Second Screen Experience" that they are releasing next week over at Examiner, but so far nothing new to see.  I mentioned this enough times on Twitter that a couple of teenage girls tweeted me that "One Direction: This Is Us" is actually being re-released this weekend with twenty additional minutes of footage which will include four songs that weren't in the first cut of the film.

I assume these girls (who I'm pretty sure I know personally) brought this up because they want another review of the movie.  One that hopefully is more positive this time around.  Well, sorry to disappoint you two young girls, but unless the ticket is paid for I'm not seeing that movie again.  In fact, I want to take this moment to point out that such a release actually makes me like the movie even less.  It just makes it so obvious what "One Direction: This Is Us" REALLY is: A product to sell!  Alright, yeah, in a sense all movies are products that are sold, but this one has a specific audience that the studios knew wanted to see this and they planned the whole release around them.  Since this is essentially a promotional film they released it on opening day to those fans screaming fans, waited a couple of weeks so that kids could save their money once more, and now they are going to sell the movie to those same exact people.

If this were a real movie it could remain in the box office top ten without having to resort to cheap marketing tricks like this, but since it isn't a good movie this is the only way to make more money off it.  Heck, the studio for the Justin Bieber movie did the exact same thing in the exact same time frame.  The only time a new cut of a film is worth while is when several years have gone by and the director has had time to reflect on the film and make some new tweaks which he/she hopes will make the movie better.  In the case of George Lucas we know that sometimes its best to leave well enough alone, but in the case of Peter Jackson we also know there are some clear benefits to going back to the original work and tweaking it a little.  But "One Direction: This Is Us" is not going to benefit from that extra twenty minutes nor does the two week span give Morgan Spurlock any reason to revisit it.  This is a studio marketing ploy, plain and simple.

In fact, because it's a slow weekend I'll upload a review of a REAL music documentary you can watch this weekend as opposed to seeing "One Direction: This Is Us" again!