Movie Inspirations for Comics

So I’m worrying I might be boring the hell out of all of you with Jung and archetypes and odd archaic symbols and mystical imagery cryptography of late…

So here’s something a bit more fun that’s been rolling around in my head as I was gathering up the stuff I want to talk about in the next segment of Jungian archetypes (yeah, I’m not yet done with that, it’s still happening…) and which I haven’t really seen discussed as much as the more classic “comic inspirations” lists for comic makers:

What movies have inspired you, or you feel have trickled through to influence your comic narrative, style or mood?

Movies are themselves sequential art, just as comics are and in truth they share a lot of the artistic principles of making an engaging piece for your audience: from directing to montage to story boarding to ‘camera’ angles (panels & angles within them), a lot of the artistic choices we make as webcomic artists run parallel to the ones made for making movies.

I for one, when writing the script for Brave Resistance, basically wrote it up as a movie script, with some basic direction, but left the actual artistic choice of angles, lines-per-panel and lines-per-page to the one with far more talent and skill than me in those areas, Pit-Face.

For Without Moonlight I haven’t had such luxury and I draw on my own resources to make these choices. Some of them are very conscious, some not so much.

I’m mentioning my two comics/joint comic project not as a plug (ok well that is a happy accident too) but because though they have extremely similar genre, subject matter and setting, they are vastly different when it comes to dialogue, tone, mood and pace (well, you’d be able to tell with pace if you could read them all at one sitting… eventually you will! I’m optimistic!), and it all comes down to stylistic choices more than anything else.

Where BR’s dialogue is smarmy and crackling with snappy turns of phrase and back-and-forth, WM’s is grim and moody and foreshadowing.
Some of my movie inspirations for dialogue (without wanting to sound presumptuous) include most of Tarantino’s scripts (with Kill Bill 1 & 2, Inglorious Basterds and Reservoir Dogs really high up on my list), The Coen brothers’ “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?” and the last two seasons of Blackadder (The Third and Goes Forth).

The common denominator in all of these brilliant movies/series as far as dialogue is concerned is that it always serves to characterize and further provide insights to the characters speaking it, not only to further the plot or relay exposition. And that’s what I’ve always been striving to do with my dialogue. I haven’t ever tried to simulate my inspirations, but I did try to have my dialogue do what theirs did.

As far as how WM looks, aside the (I think obvious) film noir influences, some of my main movie inspirations include Inglorious Basterds again (that movie is gorgeous!), Schindler’s List, Come and See, The Pianist, Downfall, Valkyrie, Life is Beautiful, Amen and Miracle at St. Anna’s to name the few that come to mind immediately- some for their colors/cinematography, others for their angles in outside shots and landmarks, and others for the pacing of the story.

I could go on and on for every single one of them, but I’ll stop here. Please share, what have been your movie inspirations for your comics?