Ted, my film production teacher, makes really solid selections of shorts to screen for us to discuss. Chris Marker's La jetée, for instance; one could hardly do better. He played Maya Deren's immortal Meshes of the Afternoon not long ago, and if you don't happen to be in the same film production class as me, you can watch it in the embedded player below instead. Now that it's on the net, I'm pretty sure it will go viral:
Some questionable responses led the post-screening discussion. "I hate the soundtrack!" Waaah. Give the baby his bottle. The most memorable came from some guy in the absolute back of the classroom — I'm an inveterate frontrow sitta, myself — who offered, "They probably just made that up as they went along, right?"
Ted helpfully explained that (a) improvising the entire thing would've been an utter impossibility, especially at the time and (b) the apparent investment strongly hints that there's more to it than dickings-around. "Film's expensive and hard to work with, and it was even more expensive and hard to work with in 1943," he said. "It's not like she just slapped it onto VHS. Given that, how likely is it that she would've committed to so much time and effort spent in the name of making things up as she went along?" I can't remember how things went afterward, but chances are the conversation devolved into a discussion of whether Kevin Smith can make movies.
This line of thought struck me as useful. Want to know how seriously you should take a work of art? Look at the investment. But taken too literally, this rule quickly becomes absurd: Michael Bay's Armageddon required a $140 million investment with countless cast, crew members and executives involved, so naturally you should watch it instead of, say, Shane Carruth's $7,000 Primer, right? But think about it like this: was it more of a sacrifice for Bay (and Jerry Bruckheimer) to drum up that 140 grand, or for Carruth to scrape together his seven? It's all about relative investment, not absolute investment.
I came across the same idea expressed differently in a 2006 New York Times profile of young "mumblecore" filmmaker Andrew Bujalski. Critic Dennis Lim writes:
Some questionable responses led the post-screening discussion. "I hate the soundtrack!" Waaah. Give the baby his bottle. The most memorable came from some guy in the absolute back of the classroom — I'm an inveterate frontrow sitta, myself — who offered, "They probably just made that up as they went along, right?"
Ted helpfully explained that (a) improvising the entire thing would've been an utter impossibility, especially at the time and (b) the apparent investment strongly hints that there's more to it than dickings-around. "Film's expensive and hard to work with, and it was even more expensive and hard to work with in 1943," he said. "It's not like she just slapped it onto VHS. Given that, how likely is it that she would've committed to so much time and effort spent in the name of making things up as she went along?" I can't remember how things went afterward, but chances are the conversation devolved into a discussion of whether Kevin Smith can make movies.
This line of thought struck me as useful. Want to know how seriously you should take a work of art? Look at the investment. But taken too literally, this rule quickly becomes absurd: Michael Bay's Armageddon required a $140 million investment with countless cast, crew members and executives involved, so naturally you should watch it instead of, say, Shane Carruth's $7,000 Primer, right? But think about it like this: was it more of a sacrifice for Bay (and Jerry Bruckheimer) to drum up that 140 grand, or for Carruth to scrape together his seven? It's all about relative investment, not absolute investment.
I came across the same idea expressed differently in a 2006 New York Times profile of young "mumblecore" filmmaker Andrew Bujalski. Critic Dennis Lim writes:
In today's independent film landscape, Mr. Bujalski is at once an anomaly and a stubborn idealist. While digital video is the default medium for low-cost moviemaking, he insists on grainy 16 millimeter. "There's a deliberateness to film," he said. "If these films were on video they would feel a lot more frivolous. Film allows you to make the statement that this is on purpose."As an audience member, look for the components that say, "This is on purpose." Thus, a creator, you'd better make damn sure to include those components yourself.
We've run it by the authorities and yes, the rrrrrrr is a Northern thing.
Posted by: Uggs Clearance | June 14, 2011 at 07:01 PM