By now, it is clear that not every piece of art is alike in the same medium. While you may be painting with the same materials, or building with the same wood, each piece will turn out differently. The same goes for film. Of course, there is a general guideline on how to make a movie: start off with a script, get a cast, film scene by scene over the course of a set period of time, then cut it all together and, voilà, you have a film! There is a ton more to it, naturally, but that is the basic structure.
That said, what if you strayed from that structure? What if you filmed over the course of many years? Or you didn’t have a script? Or you never stopped filming from scene to scene? There are quite a few films that practiced these unconventional ways of creating a moving picture, and for the most part, it paid off in the end and aided in creating a hit movie. Here is a list of six films that were created unconventionally.
6 Blonde
The adaptation of the book by the same title, revolving around Hollywood sweetheart Marilyn Monroe, recently released on Netflix. Receiving a massive 14-minute standing ovation at Venice Film Festival, Blonde was initially on almost every person's watch list to see Ana de Armas star as the Hollywood icon. During the press tour for this movie, de Armas stated in an interview with Variety that this film was shot in a unique way. She states that she is not one to stay in character between takes, but director Andrew Dominik (The Assassination of Jesse James, Killing Them Softly) did not cut between takes of a scene and kept the camera rolling. He had the crew dressed in period-accurate clothing so that if de Armas reset a take, or the crew walked up to her, they would blend in and that footage could still be useable in the film. Luckily, in the digital age, Dominik was able to do this, and keep everyone in the headspace of each scene.
5 The Blair Witch Project
Possibly one of the most recognizable modern horror films is the found footage film called The Blair Witch Project. By directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, this terrifying horror flick started a whole trend of found footage, first person point of view movies. Now, the unconventional way this movie was made was the way it was filmed. After casting completely unknown talent as the leads, the three actors where then put into the forest, given camera equipment, and were filmed. Throughout production, the actors received letters periodically that told them what they were to do that day, how they were supposed to react, and their characters' motivation. All the rest was improvisation from the actors. Filming took place over the course of only eight days, was a 24/7 shoot, and gained attention due to the marketing strategy of the team in which they wanted to make everything seem as real as possible. They created mockumentries and listed the actors as missing in the weeks prior to the movie. This film was one of the most unique in filming, marketing, creating and still holds up to this day.
4 Blue Valentine
The tragic love story of a young married couple follows Dean (Ryan Gosling) and Cindy (Michelle Williams) through the years of their relationship. The unconventional way they filmed Blue Valentine is mainly based on improvisation. While using a mix of film footage and digital to show the passing of time, director Derek Cianfrance ditched the script he had written and had the actors improvise most of their scenes. He encouraged Gosling and Williams to go off script and behave like they would normally, trying to get the most realistic reactions from his cast.
3 My Son
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The 2021 drama My Son about a missing son and the search to find him stars James McAvoy (Split, Atonement) and Claire Foy (First Man, The Crown), and has the tagline, "A groundbreaking achievement in filmmaking where both actor and audience uncover a mystery at the same time." The main cast and crew were given the script, except for McAvoy. He was told to react as the story unfolded around him, and as his co-workers interacted with him. This was in order to get the most authentic acting out of McAvoy, and he truly found out the truth about things as the story unfolded and as they went on with filming.
2 Borat
A very interesting and quite controversial mockumenty style movie, that at its root, was an unconventional style of filmmaking: Borat. With Sasha Baron Cohen (Les Misérables) as the character of Borat, he travels around with a camera crew and behaves as this character, getting reactions out of real people. It is on the line of continual method acting and the street style filmmaking that has become more popular in modern times.
1 Boyhood
Richard Linklater's epic coming of age drama Boyhood stars Ethan Hawke, Ellar Coltrane, and Patricia Arquette. The thing that put this film on the map was that it was continually filmed over the course of 12 consecutive years. In order to keep the cast and show the change over the course of main character Mason's life, the film was shot and edited of the course of a decade and then some. Every year, the cast and crew would get together and film the necessary scenes for a few weeks, then go their separate ways until the next year or so when they were needed again. This created a bond between characters and was a very cool, unconventional way of creating a movie that traced the effects of time on a person as he grows from child to young man.