I have developed and refined these rules over time. Some of these
were insipred by William Goldman (Adventures on the Screen
Trade and Which Lie Did I Tell?). They go a long way to
explain most movie trends of the past 75 years.
Commentary is in italics.
- The overriding consideration for all decisions relating to a
movie is to avoid a failure. Actually creating a good movie is
a nice bonus, but is really beside the point.
- Decisions are made without regard to history. It doesn't
matter if you've already spent a fortune. The question is, can you
spend a little more to guard against a failure?
- If someone new gets involved, that person has to change
something. The change can be for the better or not. It is the
fact of the change itself that is important.
- If someone currently involved goes away, something has to be
changed. Again, it is only the fact of the change that is
important.
- The people making the decisions really don't have a clue as to
whether their decisions are good ones. Of course, they
think they do...
- Once a movie has made a profit with an effect handled a given
way, all other movies will handle the effect in the same way, even if
it is awful from any other point of view. From Insultingly
Stupid Movie Physics by Tom Rogers.
- The accuracy of a gun is soley determined by the needs of the
story. The characters may be expert marksmen, but if the story
needs them to miss right now, they will, even if it's at point-blank
range. This is a generalization of the "bad guys can't hit
anything/good guys make the shot every time" observation.