I’m almost done writing Scream Writing: A Comprehensive Guide to Writing the Horror Screenplay and that means I’m beginning to gear up research on my second book, Mindfulness at the Movies: A Cinephile’s Guide to Mindfulness, as well as a third that’s currently hush-hush. They’re all about movies though (big surprise). But since they’re all about movies it means I have to juggle a ton of research and just way too many lists of movie titles that need to be flexible to allow for connections to emerge. With all this, I still want to find time to find new movies to check out and expand my filmic horizons.
For the longest time I keep my research to notebooks that I filled by hand. There is a strong connection between memory and handwriting (as opposed to typing on a keyboard) in that the motor functions of writing letters makes makes each one unique and this exchange of information (pulling from the brain what letter you need as well as the visual information of the finished product). This took a lot of time, though, and I always lost where I was keeping the notebooks. So, turns out I needed another way.
Having read The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do In Life and Business by Charles Duhigg, as well as having taken The Great Course’s Outsmart Yourself: Brain-Based Strategies to a Better You by Professor Peter M. Vishton, I knew that building new habits that you actually stick to is easiest by attaching them to already existing ones. Well, I had gotten into using the website Letterboxd to track and find new films. Turned out Letterboxd is far more useful than you might imagine.
Here’s three ways to get more out of Letterboxd than just a log of the movies you’ve watched.
1. Research and Note Taking
Anyone with an account can make a list. Pick a title, throw some description, maybe a tag, and some movies and you just made a list. It’s easy to do and can make keep track of your movies for different projects well. Where Letterboxd shines though is in their ability to add notes to individual titles once they are on a list.
I prefer to keep my works in progress private, so the first I do is make sure I toggle that when editing my list. Now I start adding notes. Depending on the theme of the book, I might be taking notes about what chapter a film will go in, the theme or element of representation that I am discussing, and anything else that strikes me as important about the film. What’s great about keeping notes on a Letterboxd list is the impermanence of it. Unless I am writing each film’s notes on a separate cue card, I can’t rearrange them with ease if a new connection or structural rearrangement is needed; on Letterboxd I can move a film (along with its respective notes) anywhere on the list, play around with it, and, if I like the new order, save it. If I don’t like the new order, I don’t need to save and I retain the original ordering. This allows a wider flow of contemplation on a visual level due to the new patterns and relationships that may arise.
2. Collaboration in Classrooms, Filmmaking, and Screenwriting
There wasn’t a real film studies program where I went to university but we had a few classes. I had just started using Letterboxd and was having fun scoping out weird films and trying to find everything I remember having watched. I was also getting into more classic cinema and checking out different artistic movements. I was that guy that went to class 45 minutes early to read about the subject in an empty classroom and just wanted to consume everything and Letterboxd was helping me identify those films. First day of class, I got a boost from the professor. He had set up a Letterboxd list for all the film we would be watching in the class and writing about. It was pretty damn sweet!
My professor used the site as a way to aid him in teaching. It can also be used to aid teams in the pre-production stage of filmmaking as well. People can share lists with notes about the areas of the films that influenced them and easily share them with the department heads or the whole crew. They’re a great way to get across information and even include links on the film pages to rental and buy locations to make locating them effortless.
But when it comes to screenwriting, solo or collaboration, it might be best to look at the user created lists rather than start a new one. Some users compile large lists of all the different horror films set in a particular location. Others collect films by theme (zombie, cannibal, romance, gothic, etc.) and it makes for a great way to gather information about what has been done before so that the crafty Scream Writer can figure out how to twist it into something horrific and new. While the first section has proven invaluable to my third book, Scream Writing was helped tremendously by the lists of Letterboxd users who have created one of the best film databases on the net.
3. Film Challenges, Socializing and Discovery
Everyone loves a challenge, right? Users of Letterboxd have been making challenges for people to take part in for years. Every October there’s Hooptober. It’s like … a scavenger hunt for movies. There is a criteria of films you have to watch in a set period of time. Given the categories, you pick and choose the films you will watch and try to watch them all! A ton of people take part and there’s some really groovy lists with some far out titles. I run a 52-week challenge called The History of Horror. You pick a film per week based on the categories given (with helpful links to examples to choose from) and watch a new film every week. Or, rather, most weeks they’ll be new; this year we’re going back to the films that scared us when we were younger. It’s never too late to join!
With a ton of people making lists like this (and many, many even weirder and more specific ones), there is never any shortage to the new films you will find and discover if you check them out. And if you’re on the fence about watching it, leave a comment and ask the person. There’s some really cool people on there. Some not so cool but nowhere’s perfect. But it never hurts to try. I’ve met some awesome people on there and found some great films. I hope you do too.
