by studioxadmin | Apr 7, 2010 | HD: Film Commentary, Miscellaneous
At the same time that we have found the technology to bring all humankind’s stories into the public commons, we arrive at the stage of technological advancement that allows those stories to begin to close around us in 3D. If this trend continues the story will eventually swallow us completely to the point that we will not be able to distinguish a motion-picture illusion from our ordinary reality. A strange future to contemplate perhaps, but it develops out of our very natural and most primitive propensity to tell stories. In truth, the old stories have already swallowed us. They come from the repository of our collective consciousness. If there is such a thing as “common sense” it can be learned from the old stories. The old stories shape all our thoughts and actions especially about geography, economics and law. The old stories are the explanation of how we got where we are now.
Filmmakers are not making up new stories. They are embellishing old ones. A camera is a filmmaker’s story embellisher. A photographer’s lens allows the artist to emphasize certain specific, meaningful, aspects of a moment in time. A camera records this. Once a moment in time is captured, the images are a lens document. When screened, the lens document is a kind of artificial reality. Lens documents can simultaneously be perceived as history which, like all recorded history, portrays a limited view of the details of a certain moment in the past. It’s still an artificial reality as all stories are. Recorded images can be screened without cuts in real-time, or be manipulated to represent some other moment in the past. Either way, the audience will allow it to take the place of their own present as they become absorbed in it.
We get lost in stories. Filmmakers get lost in telling them. The right story told to the right audience at the right time delivers a capsule of culture which becomes digested and assimilated into the modern mindset, then ripples out until it joins the old stories reinvigorating each in the process.
by studioxadmin | Mar 15, 2010 | HD: Film Commentary, Miscellaneous
Along with the securing of food and shelter, storytelling is at the center of the cyclical rituals of human survival. Here in New Mexico ancient civilizations left behind superb examples of cyclical rituals in which storytelling was central.
The origins of movies begin this far back. Theater was born when the first hunter put on the skin of the animal on which he and his companions had just feasted. He danced around the fire with his imagination aroused by the animal’s sacrifice, his belly filled with its meat.
Documents of these same events were drawn on rock faces and cave walls emphasizing the primacy and immediacy of the visual in transmitting tales. Written language came later, developed from these early markings.
Spoken word falls somewhere in between the first performance and the first written language. Spoken word is overused in commercial film making. It’s original place in storytelling was an adjunct to the performance of the dancer, issuing forth from the dancer himself or those watching him. Early chants intoned to the beat of a log drum, or the clapping of hands, became songs which eventually galvanized into words, imposed upon by the natural rhythms of the human body, breath and heartbeat.
Handicrafts and tool-making advanced storytelling further towards film making when the same tales of animal and human fates were spun out on rugs and pottery surfaces, articulating cinematic mysteries long before the first movie cameras or hard disks ever whirled.
This brief history of storytelling can be used as a road map into the human brain regarding which stimuli the mind is most apt to be open to and what priority the mind gives to a given stimulus.
The primeval stimulus is theater, which explains why acting is given such emphasis in cinematic storytelling. Song is second in order of importance. No one would argue against the potential power of music in motion pictures. Even movies that utilize no music at all often rely on rhymes and rhythms derived from music and adapted to film editing.Next comes drawing and handicrafts, which have evolved into the illustrious aesthetics of the visual image that we have today in motion pictures.
Spoken word is last in order of importance in a movie script, but must be invested with the highest degree of craft. Spoken word must not convey what performance, or image, or editing, or music has already conveyed. In order to realize its full potential, spoken word must come out of the collective unconscious. It should reveal to the viewers what is on their mind before they realize it themselves.
by studioxadmin | Feb 22, 2010 | HD: Film Commentary, Miscellaneous
Do we apply to the lens for mere reflection? No. For that we have mirrors. We subscribe to the motion picture for precisely what the mirror cannot do, illuminate the mystery of our existence.
When we watch a motion picture, we allow what the camera has recorded at a previous time and place to interpose itself into our perception of the present time and place. For an entirely alternative reality to be allowed to supersede our ordinary reality like this has been, in the past, reserved for pagan enchantments, shamanistic ceremonies and high-church rituals.
Motion pictures, dreams and rituals share several artifices in that respect, such as plasticity of time and space, the occurrence of vivid, uncanny detail and situations where unconscious fears and desires are expressed.
Dreams work by relying on the suspension of waking consciousness. Motion pictures work by relying on what is often called “the suspension of disbelief,” which also accounts for why we forget we are looking at a flat screen and become absorbed in the story. More importantly, motion pictures of the highest order convert our most sovereign beliefs, if only momentarily, to the extraordinary order or belief system imposed by characters and situations within the story we are watching.
Motion pictures record and compose artificial realities using sound and image. Seeking meaning to our lives, we reach out with the light of cinematic language into the unknown; similar to the way a flashlight extends into the darkness. The cone-shaped beam of the movie projector casts an enchanted luminescence over ordinary things, turning a dim room full of nothing but chairs into a portal to the next dimension, a temple for the collective consciousness to merge with the unconscious.
As a hollow, dark and mostly empty space, the motion picture theater represents the mind and motion pictures bring to light the chaos and conundrums that take up space in our minds.
If movie characters stand in for us, the camera often stands in for God. It is one of our oldest habits to imbue that notion of a great eye that watches us with the authority of God. Could it be that, after a long time of searching for God outside ourselves, through religion and war, motion pictures enable the eye of God to open up inside us? The camera watches and we see through its eye, while it peers out in every direction from inside the mystery of our existence.
by studioxadmin | Jan 22, 2010 | HD: Film Commentary, Miscellaneous
As a writer and storyteller it was necessary for me to adapt to the film making discipline because motion pictures reach more people than any cultural medium other than music. Besides, I too have always loved the movies.
For centuries music was humanity’s universal language, but in the past hundred years movies have expanded the vocabulary. Movies possess even more potential to communicate, because they can utilize images as well as music.
Now, thanks to the digital age, a motion picture that I post on my website this morning can span the globe almost instantaneously. For an individual to have so much range to communicate is unprecedented. A film of mine can play in every corner of the world and be watched by individuals whose daily preoccupations are utterly different from my own.
I think of someone who may be illiterate, they may be deaf, mute, or all of the above. For that matter they could have only one eye and still watch my movie. I think of that person when making my films.
If this individual has just wandered into the most far-flung Internet cafe on the planet and discovered my movie playing, what should they come away with? What should I tell them? I will remind them how much we rely on each other for our survival and confirm to them that their passionate participation in community is essential if we are to thrive as a species. It is a profound responsibility to be alive and making movies at this critical juncture in our history.
by studioxadmin | Jan 2, 2010 | HD: Film Commentary, Miscellaneous, Uncategorized
On the digital frontier, as the lens of new media insinuates itself more and more into our lives, every person, place and thing becomes a potential media channel. In subsequent posts I will comment on this ubiquitous eye, always watching, but for now let us concentrate on how the digital revolution is about you and me proving our vital, irrefutable interconnection. In submitting my films online, I am coming out on my digital front porch to say hello, take in the view and tell my story. Now, if you are going to listen to my story, it is only right that I offer you the same courtesy. Imagine this web site as a pair of virtual rocking chairs placed here for us to relax, take some time and listen to what is on each others’ minds. We begin with concerns which are evident in my writing and my films, but let this simply be a jumping off point for anything relevant.
These days we hear much discussion about the perils of our modern media. Without a doubt, some people are using the digital frontier to spread lies, but we have access to the same screens. If you are concerned with the topics of environment, sustainability, social justice, art, enlightened politics, or science, you ought to engage the new media, in whatever way you are most attracted, then let us help you make your own channel. Become a satellite in the digital revolution, Transmit and receive your insights with the global village.
