4. Your Bell is Universal
If you think that Wonder Woman isn’t for you because it’s about a superhero and you don’t care about superheroes or because the character is a female superhero and you’re not a female, then you’re dismissing what Jenkins believes strongly in regarding filmmaking, and storytelling in general: the best ones are for all of us. During a recent “Master Class” Q&A held at YouTube Space LA, she had this to say:
What has lasted since the beginning of time? Story. And the reason that story has lasted, I believe, is because all human beings are sharing a universal experience to a certain extent. We are all struggling for love, wondering what we would do if we could make the world a better place, wondering if we wouldn’t, wondering what we would do if we did something terrible…
The job of all of you as storytellers [is] to influence the world, because that’s what the world looks to us [for], no matter whether you’re doing a five-minute video or you’re doing a two-hour blockbuster. We can speak to the world about their experience by speaking about your own experience. It’s magical, it really is. It really doesn’t matter. Everything else doesn’t matter. That’s the thing I encourage the most is your bell is universal, to a lot of people, more than you will ever know.
Watch the video below and hear the full quote, along with her personal story of why Wonder Woman is important to her, in this video recorded from the audience:
5. Pop and Seriousness
In the above Q&A, Jenkins also talks about tone and how nobody can really know how to achieve the perfect tone. It’s just something you’re always studying and continually trying to get right. When it comes to making superhero movies, though, she recognizes that the proper tone can be summed up rather simply — not that it can be done easily but can at least be defined. From a recent DGA Quarterly article on Jenkins’ appreciation of 1978’s Superman:
It’s about getting serious actors to play it in a serious way and take it seriously. And incorporating the right amount of pop to it. It’s something I think about a lot as it relates to Wonder Woman. You have to have the right amount of pop and seriousness mixed together.
It’s a very classical tone, one she admits doesn’t have to be sought for all superhero movies. She continues later in the article:
I think that grand, simple storytelling has gone out of vogue. But there are thousands of years of telling stories in a similar way, and knowing how to tell them is an art form that takes time and patience. It’s about withholding, rather than bombarding people or going too fast. You have to tell a great story and then have confidence in that story to tell it well.
Here’s the important part of her discussion of tone in the YouTube Space LA Q&A:
It’s not something you should ever give yourself a hard time about not knowing. Because nobody does. It is a skillset that you have to look at tone and how other people are pulling it off and then study how they’re pulling it off and then test pulling it off. That was something that when I was a younger filmmaker it was like oh I should have known that. No, you should not know that, that’s something that is a part of the process.
6. Do Anything You Want, For a Reason
Like many filmmakers, Jenkins will tell you not to let anyone tell you what you can or can not do. And that’s another thing she discusses in the YouTube Space LA Q&A, specifically about filmmaking tools and how they’re all still on the table depending on what you’re going to use them for.
Slow motion is one of those things that people talk about like they talk about voiceover. Like, “Eh, I’m over voiceover.” You’re, I mean, okay. It’s like saying, “I’m over wide lenses.” Alright. They’re all our tools. They’re all wonderful for the right thing. Just don’t do it for no reason. Do anything you want, for a reason. I totally defend, I don’t care if I do oldest-school, most played-out thing in the world, if it makes you feel what I want to do, I’m down. I’ll zoom, I don’t care. People are like, “Well, obviously you don’t want to zoom.” I might.
You can find that quote early on in this second video of the Jenkins “Master Class”:
Related, here’s Jenkins discussing why she’s not against digital cinematography but why there’s still room for shooting on film:
What We’ve Learned
It’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it, because storytelling and cinema is important for human beings. If this is the career for you then make stuff, and keep making stuff until you break through. Don’t worry about what tools are trendy right now, don’t worry about not being like the majority of filmmakers out there (in style, technique, interests, gender, race, etc.), and don’t worry about not being an expert on tone. Just show us your story, whether it’s Your story or just the story You need to tell, because if you’re good it’ll be the story that we need to see.
Related Topics: Filmmaking Tips, Wonder Woman
