backstory

It’s a curious thing, formal film practice and education. I think if I could do it again, I wouldn’t have burdened myself with surreal amounts of debt for a diploma and would have sought the pathways into the field that come with knowing where to begin and who to listen to and whom to watch and when to move. Of course, I didn’t know those ways were there until I did get an education! And at the same time, I do believe very much in studying craft, putting energy and time into your art/area and reaping the benefit; in mastering pursuits. And in Masters. Yet, Cinema (even with a capital C !) is something almost everyone takes part in, has feelings about, and discusses. It is not like surgery, where you dare not attempt it without being accredited and well-practiced. Even film production—if we include phone videos and mashup edits online—is now in a huge amount of peoples’ hands. It’s not like in the days when film was actually explosive  or cameras were so loud you had to keep them completely stationary in a big, glass booth. Visual media is a part of our everyday lives. All the more reason to define in what frame I refer to it here.

Obviously, I am using “Film” in its general, abstracted sense, not literally; not the material.  The use of film itself, the laminated silver nitrate particle medium, is in great decline. Just far too cumbersome and expensive. Though so pretty in use….

I use the term and see the concept of Cinema as more than “what are we going to rent tonight?” space filler, or a way to “zone out,” or get an eyeful of my favorite actor. Don’t get me wrong! It is those things, and often, for me. And I’m grateful! But philosophically, and at the core, Cinema is a social function and historical function and method of transcending our own limited experience and talking to each other en masse and understanding the world(s) we share. Cinema is a continuation of the proscenium, the Greek Chorus, the plays of old, bards, the story around the fire, and the town square.

 Of course, here I could easily segue into how US culture has abused this mechanism in large (as well as the role of the Artist, overall) just as many other behaviors or elements that contain spiritual or otherwise ethereal components seem to be subsumed to profit in this culture.(This may happen in all economic/social systems for all I know.) But even if you only compare with European and Asian filmmaking, in the US films seem to me overall less creative, more predictable, and just …less intelligent. They seem to have chosen a path of least resistance to earning larger ticket sales. The decisions on many levels are rooted not in heart or art, but in profit. Either way, it is important to me that Film continue to be used in a conscious manner. 

Film at its best is like a vision, or a trip to a secret and precious land where our learning and  understanding is accelerated, and our visions can take root; where we can see into our future or past with sudden clarity and purpose. Storytelling is sacred. I worry for our use of it and people’s understanding of Film overall. It is too easy to control and affect us, beginning from a very young age. And there is also beautiful potential in Cinema.

Film is a window we open to peek into the heart of the world.

One of my treasured scenes in a film is the outside viewing in Cinema Paradiso…or even the inside moviehouse scenes. So precious, those crowd-gatherings, these joint excursions into fantasy and story….and we could move on and talk about YouTube as a modern extension of this social ritual. Now we don’t just talk back and talk to the actors or the screen, now we actually reply in the form of video! (As you can on any video page here.) Although even that could be correlated to Cinema Paradiso, where Toto edits his own film to answer the censor’s vision.

Some types of Film Reviews are heavy on the movie industry angle. Or the pop angle. The players, the related films, the directors, hollywood. Some reviews take a lot of time talking about the story and elements you can pretty much tell just by watching the action go by but without much deeper discussion. It all depends on the venue, and the space that is appropriate for that venue. Those don’t satisfy me so much.

Some reviews are about the technical angles. Trade magazines might feature reviews that look at the film from a production angle, or very specific to one production crew. I myself very much enjoy cinematography mags. That was my “track” at NYU Film/TV. (You train/study in all areas, but focus in one.)

I may hue to a certain course or use certain standards when I move through my absorption of a film, but that is simply the discipline I have put together and chosen. My reviews and analysis are not more “right” than yours are on a film. (What would “right” mean here anyway?) But just as you go to a Tae Kwon Do tournament to practice kata and fighting techniques specific to that discipline and not just any martial art or form of fighting, it also makes sense to understand the parameters of any discussion so it does not become a cacophony of noise or warring opinion—unless that’s how you like to talk about film! (Would anyone here get upset if I compared this to those who don’t care for the discipline and joy of training in martial arts and would rather just pump weights and brawl?)

At the XOLAGRAFIK Theater, I’ll write and talk about film as a maker and as a theorist, too. Let me tell you what those words mean to me. 

• I think about a film from the production angle. I began with photography in junior college. Being an art major. (I moved into a Psychology-heavy curriculum.) I went on to shoot video, 16mm, 35mm. At times I do want to talk about the filmmakers’ intent. This is fantastically interesting to me…the mechanisms of purposeful communication as wielded by writer, director, cinematographer, and so on.

I look at film through the psychology of cinematography. What things are being said to the viewer about a character or scene or arc by what colors are used, by what lighting, by what camera angle, what movement, and even what specularity of light. I watched many films and studied all these elements from practiced and working professionals. I later did my best (and still do) to implement this lexicon of visual vocabulary.

 

• I think and talk about film as a sound designer and scorer. “Scoring” is also very specific. It has to do with cues, and using sound and notes and types of music very intentionally and in concert (heheh I said “concert”) with the picture. It’s a beautiful symbiosis. Not only did I work on the sound floor and take classes on creative sound designing, but I’ve been into making sound and sound projects for many years. Since I was very young. But specifically related to film/cinema/storytelling, my lessons on scoring films were very helpful.

Sound is far more a player on viewer psychology than (use of) light. In fact, sound is the most effective and sly agent you can find in a scene, often. Except in films like Armageddon, of course, where you are battered and bruised and bullied about by obvious and overwhelming sound cues. Ugh. (I walked out of that film.) At its best, sound design is used to slip past defenses and attach a cinematic fiction to your emotional system. Paying attention to even the subtle scoring of a film can inform your understanding of it better.

• I think and talk about film as a writer. Part of my studies were understanding storytelling. How to express visually what is happening internally. I’ve been a writer as long as I could dream, as long as I could lie. But this was the core of my Film education, I’d venture to say. It wasn’t easy, in some ways it was painful. Taking it all to a new level meant knowing very little again. Making mistakes. Getting schooled. And in front of a room of know-it-all hotshots from the top of their class like you. But once your ego was destroyed, it was bliss. Because you soaked up new information and knowledge and technique like you had been starving for it. In this sense, I feel very grateful for my time at NYU. I had some good teachers. They insisted I come to truly understand what Film was. What it was best for. How it was used. 

We began with silent films. Making them and watching them until we began to feel around the smooth shoulder blades of the skeleton. “The Film Beast,” I called it. Where you went to caress and inspect one tiny part of it one day, one semester, one year. And then you’d go back, to another room, another film, another set, another crew, another script until you began to get a sense of the entire animal. How it moved, what it was capable of. 

Eventually we learned storytelling well enough that it was second nature. In the beginning was a lot of unintentional humor. Or pretentious semi-incoherent arty pieces (Hi!) Speaking for myself, I did eventually feel out the entire shape of th at beast. And the seminal mantra was Show Me. They’d say over and over, and I thank them. Tell them about a character’s internal battle or climb and get back Yes, but what does it look like? And learning how to express inner worlds and abstract concepts by using symbols and visuals means you are better able to reverse-compile films and know what the writer and director is communicating.

• I think about and understand film from an editor’s standpoint. To observe pacing and placing and juxtaposition of both mood, topic, motion, and visuals speaks volumes about a narrative or the many smaller elements of a narrative, such as character. Being an editor is in my blood, and again, part of what I’ve been into years before Film School. But it didn’t hurt to study directly under people who are masters of their craft!

So, I critique and discuss film using a framework partially as a maker, as I’ve laid out here. But as in some other areas of my life, I occupied what I’ll call a “borderlands” position in my training for film.

First you have to understand the hierarchies and divisions at Tisch School of the Arts, which is NYU’s art school. It’s actually funny—even when you are there and going through it.

There’s the actors and the photographers and the cinematographers and the theorists and the sound guys and the dancers and it goes on and on and ne’er the twain shall meet! Well, that’s not true at all. And ware all generalizations, anyway. But it really was like one big begrudgingly co-habitating and passionate family. The filmmakers of course felt superior to the still photographers, and the still photographers had to be twice as snobby to combat that; the actors were so high on themselves they barely noticed anyone else, and the filmmakers thought they were a giant pretentious pain in the ass, but of course we couldn’t live with them (and then again, we often were them, too, so again these lines are not as inflexible as I draw them here). On set, the camera crew thinks itself the King of Production, but then, the gaffers and grips are the marines of the outfit. They have the rep and aura of doing the heavy and dangerous lifting, the “tough” ones. Oh wait, now I’m just getting nostalgic and carried away.

Here’s the crux: overall, in school, the filmmakers (Production majors) thought they were the real deal, while the Cinema Studies majors thought they were the ones who truly were devoted to an uncluttered understanding of film. I think of the Cinema Studies majors as the clergy of film. The Film Archives where I worked for a while really sort of felt like a temple, and the brittle, decaying celluloid films stinking of vinegar, holy artifacts. The Cinema Studies majors didn’t get their backs stressed by carrying heavy, heavy gear all over the city. They didn’t get their hands dirty. They weren’t loud and boisterous or gregarious. They were generally quiet, intellectual types. I wonder if they saw us—the Production majors, and so you see how I ultimately identify—as basically a bunch of passionate mechanics…. 

So that was/is the general divide there.

However, while my (borderlands) position and education was forged half the day and most the night in the thick urban wilds of NYC film production/writing/editing/scoring/acting, half the day and into evenings you could find me in the (gasp!) Cinema Studies Department working as both a film inspector/repairer, and a projectionist for the Grad Film Theory classes. Night after night, I was there in the booth with my headphones listening to the lectures, the PhD dissertations, the class presentations, and sometimes just weeping behind dark glass under the flickering fevers of Visconte or de Sica or laughing in wonder to Fellini or singing Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song.

So both of these worlds inform my viewing and discussing Film. 

I’d say it’s all tempered a bit, as well. I have no urge to speak only to those who study Cinema or those who study those who study Cinema. I’m not here to speak only with people who have shot actual film or even video. While I’m fascinated to this day by intellectual and scholarly analysis of Film and can read grad papers and dissertations on them and be riveted, I plan to use this blog more as a bridge between that very esoteric discussion and the everyday media-savvy person’s understanding of film, while doing my best to retain the general model of focus and lens that such papers and lectures employ. I may use terms or concepts very specific to the film industry or to film theory, but only because they are invaluable in that instance. If so, I will either immediately define them, link to a definition, or use them in a context that makes meaning clear. I’m not here to show off, but to wade deeply into an area I love and hope that others care to, as well. Conversely, if I need a few paragraphs to talk about something you have a one-phrase name for (specific to Film/Film Theory) please feel free to augment the conversation and my knowledge base! There was so much to remember in school, and in books read since, and you can’t take all courses nor read all books, anyway.

I have learned just as much about myself as I have about the world, though studying, making, and intently watching film. And I’ve learned alot about the interplay of Film + Me. This is why I mention psychology when talking about Film. And so I will often discuss children when I talk about Film. Or I will talk about the messages in a film; how they instruct, what the unspoken values are, what roles are being reified. I am a parent, so I may sometimes review childrens’ films almost entirely through this lens.

I will discuss film through a Feminist lens as well as a Sociocultural/Racial dynamics lens. And that is simply because I want to weed out my cinematic language and library of clutter and poison, and to tell you the truth, some of the sloppiest and laziest (and most abundant) messages in Cinema today are the misogynist or racist messages—as manifested in casting choices, roles, and scripts. They are sloppy because they are often not intentional, but rather the byproduct of a person (writer/directors) raised in a culture that propates certain messages about certain groups of people, and who have simply absorbed the messages unconsciously as truth and repeat it as nothing more than a mindless reflex. Many (most) of those messages that come at us day after day are nothing more than a straightforward reflection of the world we live in. They are not useful, as in these cases to which I now refer, there is no engagement by the filmmaker; no attempt to contextualize the issues or deconstruct or rebut them.

Which brings us to this: My discussion of the messages in a film are not always attached to the maker’s intent. This is important, and definitely an offshoot of Film Theory and Cinema Studies paradigm. Sometimes a piece has messages the maker intends, and I will discuss that, as I said early in this article. But then too, sometimes a story contains shapes or implications or references to the collective image pool or that we reference as a culture or lived history collectively understood in certain ways—and then, it “is what it is” as is said. It is not always relevant whether or not the maker intended it that way. But should we shy away from exposing and exploring those messages? It depends on your purpose. And my purpose is generally better honing my ability to read stories and tell stories and live in that world of visual storytelling—be it by the further learning of technique, the absorption of originality, or simply the exercising of certain related skills or lessons. And in that pursuit, my only priority is exploring that mechanism and magic that is the cinematic story until the final fade.

Okay, let’s see. Mentioned Cinema Paradiso, Fellini, Visconte…got in some blaxploitation, film theory….Yeah. That’ll do. Wait! I forgot Hong Kong Cinema! Kurosawa! Altman! Truffaut! Damn. GODARD, for Heaven’s sake!!

Yeah. Anyway, there is so much to know and remember about all the films in the world and all the people who made them or how we felt or what we thought when we found them that there’s always something we can gain from each other in the discussion. So do join in. I’ll see you in the lobby.

Thanks for visiting the XOLAGRAFIK Theater!

To show your great adoration and appreciation for those who clean up your candy wrappers, tip the usher at will.