colinr0380 wrote: I guess there are as many techniques for film criticism as there are film reviewers and it all depends on what style suits you, but I would be very interested in finding out more about the process (research, notes, drafting - do people write to a word count and does that affect the kind of review they would produce, or would a review be written without those considerations and then cut down after the fact?)
It does vary enormously, depending on all sorts of factors - the length of the commissioned piece, the target audience, the publication's house style, whether you're reviewing off a DVD or a one-off theatrical screening, how much background material is supplied by the distributors (which ranges from nothing to a one-page press release to a massive sheaf of documentation) and so on.
My own experience will be different from that of, say, a national newspaper critic, in that instead of having a fixed-length column to fill with details of every release that week, I tend to write about individual films - and I usually have two or three weeks between commission and deadline. I have turned pieces around in 24 hours in my time (sometimes even less - I once knocked out a space-filling 600-word intro to Luis Buñuel in about an hour), but they're still in the minority.
But, that said...
Research
Three key decisions here: how much research do I need to do, how easy is it is to get hold of the relevant materials, and when do I need to do it?
When considering how much research, the critical factor is whether I have enough time to get up to speed in advance of the screening. I had a week's notice of the screening of
Wilderness, so I rented half a dozen recent British horror films (including Michael J. Bassett's debut feature) and watched at least one every night in the run-up. On the other hand, if I only get a day's notice (or less - I've done reviews at a few minutes' notice!), I obviously have to be much more selective. But I do usually try to watch at least one other film by one of the major creative contributors in advance of the screening - usually, though not invariably, the director.
When reviewing an adaptation of a famous literary work, the question of whether to read it varies depending on the situation. If it's a really famous novel, the answer is usually "yes" - but if I haven't read it already, I generally prefer to leave it until after the screening, so I can more accurately assess what the film's like on its own merits. An ideal scenario is the one I had with
Fateless, when I had a DVD - so I could watch the film, read Imre Kertész's novel and then rewatch the film. (In this particular case, this helped enormously, as it confirmed that many of the film's more potentially contentious elements were in fact absolutely faithful to Kertész).
There's one exception where I made a point of reading the novel first, and that was a little-known British film of John Braine's novel
The Jealous God. In this case, I only had one chance to watch the film, and gut instinct told me that the main points of interest would be whether or not it was faithful both to Braine's work and to the spirit of the British New Wave (which its director seemed to want to revive single-handed) - so
before the screening I read both the novel and Braine's
Room at the Top, and finally found an excuse to catch up with Jack Clayton's seminal film version. Unfortunately, all three turned out to be vastly superior to the film under review, but there you go. (I tend to be very conscientious with
Sight & Sound reviews of relatively obscure films, as there's every possibility mine will be the longest piece of English-language criticism it gets - so I'm very concerned about fairness and accuracy, even if it's a negative review).
Notes
These vary enormously, depending on the commission. If it's a capsule film or DVD review (200 words or less), my notes tend to be quite sparse, if I make any at all - because I won't have room to go into much depth. This is especially true of a capsule DVD review - I have a maximum of 175 words to cover Milestone's
Dragon Painter, which I could easily fill with a factual description of the disc's contents (two features, a short, plus tons of background info).
On the other hand, if it's a full-length
Sight & Sound piece complete with synopsis, and if I only get one shot at actually seeing the film, my note-taking is obsessive. I've just checked the ones for
Midnight Talks, an extremely forgettable Polish romantic comedy, and they run to 24 pages - though because I'm writing in the dark (I don't have one of those glowing pens, largely because I suspect I'd find them very irritating if someone used one next to me), each page might only contain a widely-spaced cluster of maybe half a dozen sentences. I usually write the first draft from memory, but the notes are invaluable when adding colour to the final draft - and vital when writing the synopsis. (Sometimes distributors supply one, but they often don't, or sometimes it only gets partway in and trails off in an ellipsis - I got caught out by one of those once and took fewer notes than I should have done!).
Conversely, if I'm reviewing off a DVD (which I'd say is about 50% of the time, even when nominally covering new theatrical releases), I usually watch the film right the way through without taking notes, and then have the DVD playing on a reduced screen on my laptop when writing the final piece - that way I know in advance what's worth writing down.
Word Count/House Style
I'm almost always given a word count in advance when writing for print, and the piece I submit is always pretty much bang on target. There's no point doing anything else, as if you don't cut it yourself someone else will - and it probably won't be the bit that you'd cut if it was your decision!
Sometimes the word count changes - for instance, my editor liked
1208 East of Bucharest so much that he asked for 1,000 words instead of the commissioned 850, and my review of Svankmajer's
Lunacy (available
here) was promoted to the lead item in that issue at almost the last minute, and I had about 24 hours to more or less double its length - fortunately, I had the DVD for reference.
One crucial difference between writing for the web (in most cases) and writing for print is that in the former case (say,
DVD Times) you generally edit yourself, and in the latter case your piece will be run through a sub-editor and the section editor as a bare minimum, and sometimes the overall editor - and while you're generally consulted if they want significant changes, you generally don't get a chance to see the final piece before it goes to press.
On the whole, my experience has been positive - I generally don't look at the printed version too closely (that way lies madness), but it usually bears a very strong resemblance to what I submitted. But that's because I always read the style manual (if there is one) and try to familiarise myself with the publication in advance - I'd be mad not to, as regular freelance work from the same publications is a godsend, and you're only going to get that if you have a reputation for reliability.
Things are generally more flexible when writing for the web. If you're a trusted contributor to a site like
DVD Times, you pretty much make up your own rules once you're given the keys to the asset management system. On Screenonline, we have a maximum 400 words for pieces on individual films/TV programmes, but are more flexible with biographies or overviews - though as the writers are paid by the word, any excess gets ruthlessly pruned prior to publication.
As for general stylistic issues, I don't think I've ever written in the first person for
Sight & Sound, and I've rarely
not written that way for
DVD Times - there are lots of other differences, but that's one of the major ones. But it's not something I tend to think about too much - if you've notched up several years writing regularly for the same publications, you pretty much do it by instinct.
Drafting
I usually write a first draft very quickly and in a single sitting - ideally within 24 hours of seeing the film. Quite often, this will bear a very close resemblance to the final draft in terms of content, but there'll be lots of tweaking along the way (and sometimes more drastic changes - shifting a paragraph can make a surprisingly big difference). I don't generally worry about word counts at this stage, because I've been doing it for so long that I know pretty much by instinct how much to write - and the draft is usually within a couple of hundred words of the target regardless.
If I have time (I usually have a fortnight or so between screening and deadline), I then put it away for 24 hours, as I can usually spot numerous things that need changing after a short break. Two of my best friends are Italian and Polish, and I also have French, German and Spanish colleagues, so I often run drafts by them if the film shares their nationality, so they can highlight cultural missteps or misapprehensions or provide other background info. I may also be doing further background research at this stage.
And then the second draft is written, often on top of the first draft, and also in a single sitting. It's very rare that I'll go to a third draft - in fact, aside from the
Lunacy case (where I had to extend the piece significantly), I can't think of one.
And then you submit the piece and cross your fingers...
)