Avant Garde Ways Of Making Films In The Indie Industry

Hollywood may produce blockbusters, but watch enough of them and you start to see a pattern emerge: there’s always a romance, there’s a happy ending (if it’s a sad one, there’s always hope for a better tomorrow), there is a big problem in the middle that has to be dealt with and then everything is resolved. The indie movies thankfully stand out of the norm by changing this formula and experimenting with new form, content and style. Now and then an indie movie will make it big, like the movie Her in 2013. Here are some of the most interesting and avant garde ways in which directors have decided to make movies.
Walk into a Greyscale Landscape
Coloured movies started becoming famous in the 1930’s, most famously with The Wizard of Oz in 1939 starring Judy Garland. However, directors have recently started shooting their movies (or later editing them) to turn out in greyscale – black and white. The logic here is that colour distracts us from the actual narrative, while plain black and white exposes the bare bones of a movie. Films like Nebraska in 2013 and Much Ado About Nothing in 2012 became famous for their colourless aesthetic which allowed the audience to concentrate on what really mattered – the story.
Using Everything but a Movie Camera
Yet another popular method of breaking form and style has been the mashing together of smaller video clips taken from anything but the professional movie camera. This means footage taken from mobile phones, cctv cameras, reverse cams, web cams and any other form of video recording. Take a look at this a perfect device that can install a solution that best matches your needs.
The movie “End of Watch” did this to commercial success in 2012. Following the story of two cops in a rough neighbourhood, the movie incorporated all of the above, including footage taken from actual proper cctv in Melbourne on location. Some of the actors later said that they had no idea when they were not filming because a camera was always running somewhere.
Removing the Linear and Logical Narrative
Mainstream movies love to have a straightforward story with a neat ending; indie movies abhor this which is why many indie movies have no definable beginning, middle or end. Some movies go so far as to defy logic in their stories such as the movie The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Although its $30 million budget discounts it as an indie production, its non linear progression and inventive storyline actually inspired many other indie movies in the future, leading to movies like Kill Bill Vol 1 and 2 and 500 Days of Summer.