Cinema...Once Upon A Time
When I think about cinema and the impact it’s had on my life I always think about how it breathed a sense of hope into me despite the many challenges life sends, an opportunity to prevail against all odds always seemed at bay. Well, that’s at least how movies used to make me feel. Over the years.. this feeling of awe, magic and wonder has faded.
For a while I thought it’s because I’ve gotten older so the experiences aren’t as awe inspiring as they were when I was a child, I’d somehow managed to lose my sense of naivety. My freshness... But then every once in a while I come across a movie that brings back that incredible rush of possibility. The Dark Knight was one… The Great Gatsby another, and to an extent Fury. Only a handful of great stories have truly stopped me from looking at my phone during a movie and remain completely immersed in the experience. Most of them are from my childhood.
It’s not because the medium is dying, it’s because good stories are harder to come by. The movie business is blamed for restricting the creative process that create duplicate films in a factory format. There logic is simple. If you have a best selling blue shoe, why make a red one?
I don’t really believe that’s a good excuse. Take a look at Iran, one of the most restrictive countries in the world when it comes to filmmaking, this hasn’t stopped them from snatching an academy award. That’s not to say exceptions don’t exist.
For me cinema isn’t about slow motion explosions or sequels it’s about telling a human story that moves you and makes you care about it’s characters. It's so simple yet so challenging to master that even the most successful directors tend to hit or miss quite often. Steven Spielberg’s latest Indiana Jones or James Cameron’s Avatar can step in and out of mastering this skill quite often. It’s not something you can just define to one specific ability as it’s a collective experience in visual storytelling that goes beyond writing good scripts but understanding and applying the element of storytelling to your wardrobe, set and overall art direction as well. If these elements aren’t part of a cohesive story … boy are you in trouble. Again a lot of it isn’t rocket science but knowing and practicing this skillfully are two very different things.
As of late, creativity seems to have taken center stage in a different medium that is less restrictive and expansive in nature. TV.
I think I watch more television today than I ever did at any other point in my life. Those productions don’t resemble what TV traditionally used to be but resemble what Cinema used to be with one bigger advantage… I can spend more time with these characters, understand them, build a deeper bond with them than I would in cinema. I spend years watching them and grow up with them. More and more A-list celebrities are heading into the format to really shine and stand out and it’s not going away. It’s about quality, not quantity. Gone are the days of the 24 episodes per season. Let’s make 10-12 great pieces of storytelling that push boundaries and exceed expectations and people will watch it… This makes me both excited and sad. Excited because it’s an incredibly rich medium that allows for a much larger story but sad because cinema isn’t able to remain center stage.
One thing I absolutely love about cinema and it’s why I got into filmmaking is to share experiences.
Share the experience of watching a movie with strangers who despite not knowing each other find themselves unable to prevent tears from their eyes as they become emotionally invested in a story.
However, TV shows are primarily designed as an experience to entertain you individually and that solitary nature to it saddens me.
The cinema is a place of magic for me, and I fear for it, I fear for it to one day be forgotten or at the very least become like theater, something you go see every once in a while or even scarier… not at all.
I believe in Cinema with all my heart and in sharing great stories that have the potential to make someone forget for a moment what hurts and step into the darkness. The darkness of the auditorium that will always shine a light, a light on a silver screen that shows you, you can dream big…because in the movies… magic is real.
Comics from: Stanley Kubrick Answers a Question by Zen Pencils
