The Collective Shelf: November 2008

Editing on film is no fun. No fun at all.

Posted on 11/26/2008 No Comments

I’m talking about real Film editing, i.e. as opposed to wizzy digital final cut/avid editing. I’ve had to do it recently and boy is it horrible. Hours and hours of painstaking precise work, and that’s just finding the footage you’re looking for. Then there’s the immense fear, one mistake, you don’t cut perfectly on the line or you smudge the film with your hand and that shot is unusable. There is no Command-Z key on a Steinbeck.

It does make you think about how film is a real physical thing, light blasted onto celluloid, which is nicer as as a concept that a whole load of 1’s and 0’s, but in practice far more tricky to deal with.

So this post is really a thank you.

THANK YOU to the previous generation of editors for suffering through it for your art.

THANK YOU to whoever invented those loathsome machines as without you there would be no Final Cut Pro (it’s interesting to see just how closely FCP mirrors physical editing, just minus the horror parts)

and most of all THANK YOU to the people who came up with digital editing, because you made me who i am today and without you i would not only not have a future, I probably would be in film and thus wouldn’t have this blog, and then where would we be? Here is where!

I found the answer.

Posted on 11/25/2008 No Comments
Labels: Film as Art, Film Theory, Mischievous

So there weren't many posts about Film as Art. Mainly because I quickly got bored of it and looking at the stats, so did you. Not to worry, big questions are for losers with hair nets anyway.

Anyway a quick conclusion just the same: Most people don't think about film as art because they go to watch stupid movies and eat popcorn. Some people properly like film and they see the films they like as art but the film's they don't like (that the first group does) as not-art because they're snobs. But actually everyone is a snob at heart so don't blame them unless they shout really loudly about it or something. Then there are the people who say film isn't art because it's ''impure'' and ooo there's too much collaboration and it's tainted by money etc. etc. Agree with these people until they go away in glory, we don't want them crowding up our cinemas with their loud mouth-breathing ways. Nerds.

Some people like Citizen Kane and think it's amazing - they're probably lying or just really boring.

Other people like Transformers and thing it's amazing - they're rubbish as well.

So basically, when we start talking about film as art, everyone's a loser.

Why we don't see mainstream film as art.

Posted on 11/12/2008 comments (2)
Labels: Analysis, Film as Art, Film Industry, Film Theory

The unabashedly commercial and corporate nature of the film industry creates three central issues when we try to define films that come from this system as art.

1. These films tend to be reluctant to challenge and surprise the audience. A studio release is ready to reuse and recycle any kind of idea or technique that they think is ''in vogue'' or will add to their bottom line. Look at all the Reservoir Dogs rip off that were doing the rounds in the 19990 or the likes of The Deep Blue Sea, The Last Shark and Piranha, all of which clearly stole more than a little from Spielberg's Jaws. This kind of predictability makes the films seem dull and uninspired, certainly not encourage us to think about what we're looking at, a staple of how we tend to view art.

2. The system creates serious problems around the question of intention and sincerity. Studio movies often seem less about working towards the artist's vision that about creating a sellable product, often so much so as that the director's name isn't even seen as important. What's the big film that everyone's taking about right now? Quantum of Solace right? Well ask yourself who directed it. I have no idea either.

3. Our traditional perception of art is based around the idea that the work is 'the end in itself', not the means to something else. This is obviously very rarely the case in cinema, any film that gets distributed will inevitably have someone up to the chain who is looking to make a profit, or create a franchise, or sell hamburgers or wtv.

Tomorrow I'll tell you why is completely untrue. Or i'll make a joke about poop, I have a good one lined up.

Why do I always have to ruin the serious posts with the jokes about feces?

Film as Art: An Introduction

Posted on 11/03/2008 No Comments
Labels: Analysis, Cinema, Film as Art, Film Theory

Just to let you know (/warn you), this month the blog will be full to the rafters with posts about film and its place within the 'art' concept. Film as an art form, as high art, mass art, low art, good art, not-art etc.

Do we see film as art in general? It's difficult to say for obvious what-is-art-anyway reasons.

We definitely see film as an art-form. It becomes one when we accept it has the capacity to create a work of art, and no-one argues about Citizen Kane (to chose the least controversial example) being one such thing. Indeed it's often seen in the canon of the top 5 greatest human works ever created.

So if it's an art form, shouldn't everything within the form be art, as they are part of the category?

One of the (many, many, many) difficulties is that we seem to instinctively value the term ''art'' as a quality rather than a noun. We say ''There Will Be Blood is a piece of art'' meaning it's good, implying that ''Sex In The City'' for example is not only bad, but not art at all. Doesn't this imply that ''bad art'' can't exist?

Has art come to mean something other than ''made for aesthetic purposes and artistic intent''? Is that to satisfy our film buff needs for superiority ''I like cinema as an art form mwahmwah' What makes the films that we consider to be art just that, and what is it about others that stops us from doing so? Why do scholars so often dismiss film as an ''inferior art form?''.

As you see I've asked a lot of questions and given very few answers. That's because art is a tricky subject and I don't really know. But i'll be discussing all these problems and assertions over the coming weeks. Why? because I can, and i want us to take this exploratory journey together. Or something like that.

Cake?