Not Simply a Movie

Well, I've gotten through more chapters of How to Read a Film, and I've learned some things I didn't know about film.  Chapter 2, about the technical aspects of film, was quite informative. I had no idea producing a film was so complex! So much goes into the finished product, so much to take into account: the film, the camera, the merging of sound and image, the recording of sound, the lighting, the frame, the lens, the shot, the editing and mixing, the projector.  It's mind boggling!

Of course, that's just the technical end of things.  It doesn't include the human factors: the writers, directors, cinematographers, actors, and the many other professionals who create the film.

Making a film comes down to three things, according to James Monaco: choosing what to shoot, how to shoot it, and how to present what you've shot.  But getting there involves much more technology, many more people and much more time than other art forms that are not nearly so technologically intense.

For instance, staging a play seems a fairly simple affair when compared to producing a film, even a play with elaborate sets and costumes, mainly because the technology of a film is so much more complex. 

If you need an example, witness the difficulties of staging Spider Man on the Broadway stage.  It was scheduled to open around Thanksgiving, but they still can't get the production finished and it's nearly Valentine's Day!  The estimated opening date is now March 15.  Though not yet open, Spider Man is already the most expensive Broadway show ever produced. And all because of the many technical problems associated with scenes that were routine for the film's producers. And then there's the danger of recreating Spider Man's antics live.  A number of people have been badly hurt trying to do the stunts.

I think Spider Man's producers and its preview audiences have come to the same conclusions I have: 1) a stageplay is not a movie and never can be; and 2) we don't appreciate all that goes into bringing a movie to an audience, especially these days when with just a few clicks we can see just about any movie we want.

In fact, I was wondering what James Monaco, the author of How to Read a Film thinks of YouTube and its impact on movie making today.

Speaking for myself, I worry what YouTube is doing to how we think about quality films.  It seems that everyone is making a movie and putting it on the world wide web for all to see, but most of those movies are, frankly speaking, crap.  Making a great movie takes more than turning on your video camera or worse, your cheap digital camera, or worst of all, your cell phone's camera and pointing it at some mundane or crudely contrived activity, imagining that you're creating great art.

On the other hand, YouTube also brings us the quality films: old silent films, art-house films, foreign films and obscure films that we might not get to see anywhere else because they're no longer screened or made into videos, as well as the mainstream films (in segments) that you can pick up at the video store or on TV.

And YouTube is not the only outlet for such films. There are other places that will allow us to view films, even in their entirety, such as the many websites that make public domain films available on line. So aspiring filmmakers have many examples of quality films to study and strive to emulate.

But even for those of us who just want to enjoy a good movie, knowing something about how it all comes together just for us helps, I think, to make us appreciate the movie even more.