The Story Department - How, Not If: drama, video games and TV
Among my favorite regular website reads is The Story Department. Started as a blog of well known Australian script editor Karel Segers, TSD has evolved into a rich repository of essays, articles, reviews and discussions about story, cinema and screenwriting with contributors and readers from all over the world. This month I have the honour of having a small article fetaured on TSD entitled How, Not If: drama, video games and TV that sprang from a lengthy binge of near round the clock, weeks-long, game playing and TV drama series watching.
The intro is below and the link will take you straight to The Story Department to read the whole thing.
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I play games like I once used to read novels. There exists a pile and as I finish each game (taking a number of weeks and occasionally months each) I move immediately onto the next, working my way through the continually replenishing stack.
It seems significant that I would use the word Finish in regard to
games. As its the self-same word I would use for a book, it implies
certain things. Chief among these implications are notions of linear
Progression, Finality and Inevitability. For many game theorists these
three concept terms are somewhat of an anathema.
Games are supposed to be non-linear, open-systems rather than closed
ones, they are player-controlled and thus are distinct and apart from
cinema and literature. Similarly, by nature of being player-controlled
they are, in theory, without inevitability.
Having been a prolific and partly-professional blogger for some 5 years now I was recently asked to compile a guide to blogging for those still classified as Blog-Virgins. Like all good bloggers i scoured the internet to see what others had written about blogging largely unsure that my own perspectives would prove to have any consistency beyond myself. There was a lot that i uncovered from other bloggers that I largely disagreed with.
Many asserted that blog posts must be short. I do not concur. A blog post should be as long as the subject matter and the quality of the writing can sustain. I have no problem reading long essays online just as I dont have issue with reading them in print. If they are good, i'll read to the end.
Others asserted firmly that blogs should be personal and first-person. And again, I do not concur. Personal and first-person is a writing technique much like any other, thus it's suitability is governed by context. i see no inherent reason why blogs should be first-person and personal. And moreover may suggest that a great many blogs are easily dismissed because of such an emphasis.
So having rejected some of the commonly expressed tenets I set out a few perspectives on my own.
I would begin by asserting 3 facts:
1) To effectively engage with an audience you must be
able to write Clearly and Well.
2) The Only way to become a good writer is to write Often and
Regularly.
3) If you are not Online you Dont Exist.
We believe these truths to be self evident.
In the 21st century it is the last of the three facts
above that can be the most confronting. The internet has wrought
massive opportunity to speak and be heard. The gate-keeper has been
sacked and the publisher's door has been propped open with a
digital doorstop for all to file in with their manuscripts. There
is no obstacle between you and and an international readership.
The key ramification of this opportunity is a radical shift in
expectations... It is now expected that an idea will appear online
first, it is expected that a discussion will be instigated online
first, it is expected that insight and knowledge will be sought and
found online first. Thus we may conclude that if You are not online
then you cannot be found. And if you cannot be found, then You
don't exist.
WHY BLOG?
There are a whole host of answers to the primary question of Why
Blog? (Not the least of which being to assert that you do indeed
exist)
To self promote and
build profile: A Blog has an infinite global reach and if it
is consistent with its topics it has a very high chance of
connecting with others who share an interest in those topics. A
blog of good ideas well expressed is among the most proactive
things you can do to build your own profile and promote yourself as
professional.
To create a database
library: By default a blog is a database with every post you
write tagged with keyword metadata. Subsequently, over time a blog
becomes a fully searchable library which at any point you can
search to retrieve information you have recorded. In this way you
can use your blog to store ideas, thoughts, references and
materials - both your own and from others - for later use.
To be proactive not
passive: The digital age embodies a move from passive
Consumers of ideas and knowledge to more proactive Produsers
(Producer-Users) of knowledge. Produsers generate and contribute
knowledge as much as absorb it; they Use rather than Consume
information. By becoming a blogger you are asserting yourself as a
proactive contributor to the ?discussion?.
To get work:
Potential employers care as much about what you Think as what you
have Done. A Blog goes far beyond a CV or showcase website in being
able to do this.
To practice:
Writing, making, communicating, creating and analysing are all acts
of doing and for anyone involved in any area of the creative arts
it is crucial that you know how to write, make, create, communicate
and analyse. The only way to get good at these is to do them -
often and regularly. A Blog is a place to practice.
To become
web-savy: This is the new must-have skill-set for the 21st
century. In the same way everyone traditionally needs to know
Office software and how to use a web-browser, it is now
increasingly expected in a wide diversity of careers that you know
how to contribute to, rather just use, the internet.
To establish yourself
as an expert: Great careers are built on expertise, but
having expert knowledge, skills and artistry is only half the
struggle; you must present yourself as an expert in order to be
recognised as one. A blog is the perfect means to stake out a claim
on an area of knowledge and establish yourself as an expert in that
sphere.
BLOGGING TIPS 1. Use Topical and Controversial post titles.
There is a lot of noise on the net. The best way to make your blog
cut through the noise and be read is to write clear and punchy
titles to your posts. Its the post titles that appear in RSS feeds
and the first thing to show in a Google search. Nothing generates
traffic like a controversial title that takes a specific point of
view. Nothing gets ignored faster on the internet than wishy-washy
post titles that don't engage a polemic.
2. Use images, diagrams, maps, videos and photos
Variety is the space of life and a blog is inherently multi-media.
Embedding diagrams, images, photos, video clips is easy and adds
dimension and depth to your blog.
3. Be Scannable.
Blog readers often scan a post before reading in detail. By using
short punchy paragraphs, sub-headings and even text highlights you
can improve the likelihood of a scan-reader becoming an in-depth
reader.
4. Be clear about your Blog topics and be consistent with
them
A blog that covers all things to everyone will fail to build up a
regular and proactive core audience. Define clearly the topics and
ideas your blog is concerned with and be consistent in your writing
about those topics.
5. Reply to comments
If you want to build a Produser audience that engages with the
ideas in your blog then it is important that you respond to any
comments readers may leave. It is important that your blog be seen
to be a living, breathing thing if you want it to serve as a
catalyst for conversations and networking.
6. Be tough and thick-skinned about comments
By publicly blogging you are transmitting your ideas out to the
mass public for all to see. As such you need to be a little bit
thick skinned to un-constructive comments. Respond constructively
to negative feedback and delete comments that arent contributing
productively to the conversation.
7. Know your audience and what they want
It can be hard to maintain motivation if the audience is just
yourself. Clarify who your audience is, the kind of information
they might be after, and write to inform and engage with that
audience directly and consistently.
8. Link
The ability for your blog to rank high in a Google search is driven
not by how many page hits you get but by how many other websites
refer and link to yours. Aside from simply writing good blog posts,
the simplest way to generate incoming referral links is to link to
others and to comment on other blogs. Such links generate
reciprocal links, commenting on another bloggers site encourages
them to comment on and link to yours. By building relationships you
create a web of connections and it is the number of connections
that will push your site higher in Google searches; subsequently
allowing more readers to find you.
9. Put your name on it
Your blog is there to serve you and be a
living, breathing extension of you so put your name on it. Use a
banner image that's evocative and embed your name into it.
10. Include an About section
Readers always want to know who they are reading. An About page
adds credibility to your blog by removing anonymity. Its a chance
to promote yourself as an expert and be personally recognized as an
authority on the topics your blog deals with.
Mass Effect - Puppeteering the pointless 3rd person
Mass Effect and the Thrill of Seeing Genres of computer gaming have long found their conventions identified by modes and mechanics of viewership and control than more traditional narrative and thematic traits. Thus games are foremost referred to by terms such as First Person Shooter (FPS) Role Playing Game (RPG) and Real Time Strategy (RTS) rather than SciFi, Horror or Noir (though they very often possess these traits as well)
What this implies is a primary concern of games being focused on How a Story is engaged over the What of the storys depiction. The mechanics of engagement on the part of the viewer are governed by the vantage point of control they are presented. This range spans from the intimacy and immediacy of First Person (Bioshock, Half Life, et al) through to the omnipotent remove of a God-View 3rd Person (Command and Conquer, Company of Heroes etc).
Between these two extremes - and their various implementations and variations - sits the venerable 3rd Person Shooter. The addendum of the term Shooter constructs an intimacy to the scene whilst retaining a remove from the immediacy of 1st Person. Into this vein of games that exploit this viewership of Intimate Remove we add recent titles such as Arkham Asylum, Dead Space and Mass Effect.
Here we find a question begging - Why 3rd Person? What does removing the player from the personal avatar embodiment of 1st Person add to the experience?
Going beyond the usual marketing trailer and cast and crew list is the online network of sites connected to District 9.
Working
on developing a course in Science Fiction film/tv/games I was formulating a plan to have students imagine how a traditional film (its narrative,
themes, icons, premise and guts) may be manifested online. Searching
for good examples I found myself exploring the District 9 site which
constructs a very holistic fictitious 'world' that extends, contextualizes and examines the world of the film.
The
network of sites builds on shared premise with the film and presents
fictions presented as realities. The MNU corporation has their own site
and training videos. The character of Christopher, the alien who discovers the truth of the human experiments conducted on his people,
has a blog, there's a District 9 game and even a fictitious educational
website for an education company touting their 'Maths from outer Space'
program.
Each one of these discreet sites both exploits the tenets and paradigms of the fiction as well as parody the visual stylings and language of different forms of online media.
What
is also consistent is the moral questioning and viewer positioning of
the sites which regularly demand you choose a POV with which to engage
- do you login as a Human or Non Human? The choice of which will alter
the experience and shape the biases, intrigues, fears and lies that are fundamental to the film and the genre.
The District 9 is both a fantastic example of how a film's concepts and ideas may be presented
online rather than a simple replication of the film experience online.
It also demonstrates how genre can be consistent across platforms yet
uniquely exploit the virtues of each platform unto itself.
Gaming
is hip. It's hip in popular terms with some figures reporting some 60%
of US households in 2009 owning a console and with the massive
penetration of home PC's we can safely assume many of those also have
games installed and being used right along with pron surfing. The
computer gaming industry's turnover annually is now measured in
billions and rivals Hollywood. Gaming is also hip in the media either
as bone of complaint and controversy or as a medium to leverage for
marketing benefit and demographic relevance. Gaming demonstrates even
more hipness in academic spheres as a field of study where it?s become
the new black for garnering research grants and premising conference
papers.
But I think the word "Game" is a problem?
There are a number of ways we might see this problem. Observe that the following are all considered Computer/Video games: - Tetris - Bioshock - Nintendogs - World of Warcraft
In
both popular and academic regard there would be little objection to a
group moniker of 'game' being applied to all these. And yet these 4
popular examples are as radically different as hiku is from an article
in the New England Journal of Medicine. Whilst we would call both 'writing' such a term is useless as a grouping or a definition.
So this prompts us to consider a definition of the word 'game' itself. Here's a few :
"a contest with rules to determine a winner"
"a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome"
"competition conducted according to rules with the participants in direct opposition to each other"
There
are two concise implications of such definitions; the first is that a
Game must have a clear objective and competitive challenge/obstacle
that must be overcome. And further that a game must embody a clear
Win/Loose paradigm.
Collections of screenplays online is hardly a new addition to the good ol' Interweb. Sometimes they are early drafts of known films, sometimes officially released versions, occasionally shooting scripts and, all too often, simple transcriptions of what appeared on screen - A practice which seems to largely defeat the point of reading a screenplay which is presumably to either a) to consider making an unproduced one or b) to analyze one that has been produced to see what changed or altered between page and screen.
In any case there are plenty of them around but just this week I stumbled across what must be one of the best resources for Screenplays yet sprung up on the web. Called simply 'MyPDFScripts' the site hosts an enormous array of screenplays in efficient and functional PDF format along with comprehensive searching and sorting. More than that, the site also presents as a central repository of news, information, interviews, reviews and articles about the art of the screenplay.
Their Mission Statement lays out the righteous intention of the site:
How do most veteran screenwriters respond when asked how someone can
become a better writer? Usually by stating the obvious: write often and
read a lot.
That said, we exist so that burgeoning screenwriters and filmmakers
everywhere have a free resource that provides them with the highest
quality screenplays available on the internet. Thats a bold statement,
you say? Well, thats because this site is about quality and not quantity.
We want screenplays that look like screenplays. Why? Because we write
screenplays. Because we study screenplays. Because we know what a
properly formatted screenplay should look like, and John Boys 352 page digitally converted script in 32 pt. Arial Bold isnt it. Thats why we only
provide PDF formatted scripts, because they represent the most accurate
representation of a tangible script, which we feel is crucial when
studying the craft of screenwriting where so much emphasis is placed on
structure and page count.
Every script available on this site has been double-checked to
ensure quality, stripped of extraneous non-essential information, and
file sizes have been reduced when possible.
MyPFD Scripts really is a fantastic resource and well worth setting as a daily visit destination and a regular read.
Seminal musician and video artist Tom Ellard of Severed Heads recently marked a 30th anniversary of the groups music with a special performance at the 2010 Sydney Festival. Accompanying the performance was a presentation given by Tom entitled Why Are We Here? Both a self effacing question from the ever humble Tom about why people would come to see Severed Heads after so many years and, at the same time, a deeply thoughtful question on the nature of exploration in music and art, the impact of nostalgia and the notion of 'looking forward'.
"Despite the revolutions to and fro we continue to look backwards for
authority and approval. Nothing has changed except we have a whole new
layer of language that marginalises creativity. Rather than record an
album we 'examine the idea of recording an album'. We review, revise,
we analyse, we do everything through safety glass and avoid
responsibility for the creative act as if it were pornographic. Art has
fallen into a passive language that once typified the physical sciences.
I am disturbed by the fear implied by this kind of language. I hear
people denying that they do anything. They are not making music, its
non notational, its random, its all about process. This fear also
means keeping to a comfort zone where need approval from the past while
hiding behind fake irony."
In particular i was struck by the powerful simplicty of Tom's manifesto regarding music but which can easlly be expanded for all arts. (in particular the 2nd point which seems wholly applicable to digital filmmakers who measure their creations by the tools they used and are more articulate in discussing their editing software than they are their ideas...)
Weve had 40 years of post everything. Stop with the
passive language. Stop analysing. Publish and be damned. Progress is
pornographic, but that's not a bad thing.
Music is
not research, its not measured in milligrams. I dont want to told how
many speakers you used, whether it was MaxMSP, whether you used a
Wiimote. Its not to be metricised. To hell with funding as the score
and festivals as the new concept album. We need people to make music
thats intangible, loud, tiny, ridiculous and in every way
metaphysical. Music thats brave and foolish.
Stop
seeking approval from the past, seek community, seek experience, seek
humour. But the whole 'golden age / end times' argument has got to go.
It belongs in the 1800's.
I am not afraid of pop
music, of pubs, of top 40. I make things. I make chairs, I make myself
useful. Milton Babbit asked Who Cares If You Listen? I do.
Reclaim
randomness. Randomness is an energy source, infinite opportunity. It is
not shuffle, its not a nihilistic everything is the same as everything
else. Difference is an energy that can lead us onward.
2010 and its been 15 years since I had my first professional work in "the arts" (for want of a better descriptor) For reasons unknown this inauspicious milestone has prompted me to reflect upon my own work history, the things I have done and, more importantly, the nature of what the 'working professional' is in the 2nd decade of the 21st century?
This navel-gazing exercise finds its fundamental in the definition of 'professional'. It's a powerful word, a word with weight and status and implications. And whilst few would argue this, the definition of exactly what 'professional' means remains contentious and inconsistent.
The most base of definition would simply be Professional as a descriptor of someone who gets Paid to work in a particular field. A person paid to make art is a professional artist; a person paid to make clothes is a professional tailor. And so on...
The issue this base definition raises however is that it encompasses everyone with a paying-job. Subsequently the distinction of being a 'professional' or indeed the use of the word at all becomes redundant, 'professional' fails to mark a distinction or status that common usage of the word would imply. Professional dog walker...? Professional checkout operator...?
So, to take a step more refined we could define a professional as a person paid to perform a task that requires specialist knowledge, certification and/or specific education or training. This definition with greater specificity would fit the traditional idea of the 'Professions' - law, medicine, accountancy - jobs that are encompassed or overseen by a Professional Body. You might make the argument that those working in filmmaking for example, are encompassed by the various guilds and associations. But this is a big stretch to suggest that such organisations have the same authority as the Medical Board or Bar Association; organisations from which someone may be disbarred and so unable to continue to practice their profession. Union agreements aside, you don't have to be a member of the Writers Guild to write a screenplay or a novel and be paid to do so. So whilst Lawyers, Doctors and Accountants might argue that no one else can truly be called a professional, such stubbornness wont sway the word out of common usage for other perceived professions.
If we then move specifically to the arts industries (broadly encompassing theatre, tv, film, music, art, and a myriad of hybrids) the idea of 'Professional' takes on another connotation; context. As the arts and arts-based industries are generally and traditionally considered to be difficult to break into and make a living from, the idea of being a Professional marks a distinction of Success.
This idea seems to be derived broadly from the idea that everyone starts in the arts woking for nothing, doing it for the love and a desire to create. Then, much like separations between amateur and professional in sport, when a person is good enough they move up to being paid to do what they previously did for nothing and make a living from it.
So it may be said that the term Professional has greater specificity, is more meaningful and is more applicable when used in reference to the arts industries (and sport) than anywhere else. It denotes an accomplishment and a progression from the mass to the elite; from part-time amateur to full-time professional.
This distinction may be even more apparent and applicable in the digital age of consumer co-creation, the Prod-User and User Generated Content. Fuelled by the pressure cooker of powerful and accessible tools of creation (software) and an unlimited and openly accessible broadcast system (the internet) we are palpably in the age that declares proudly that "anyone can be an arts-worker". This massive spike in the number of people engaging with creative arts industries practice as Amateurs gives extra impetus to entrenching a dividing line - a moniker to stamp a person as having risen above the mass of unpaid creators becoming successful enough to make a living from that creation as a Professional. The term becomes a medal of achievement.
Now, this is not necessarily to suggest a hierarchy of importance or worthiness. Great artistic civilisations have only risen when art and culture are embedded in this populous not confined to the elite. If every kid was making music imagine how many Mozart's, Tom Yorke's, YoYo Marrs we'd discover? The digital age has this potential to unlock and provide opportunity for what might otherwise be lost or undiscovered.
Yet, somewhat ironically, through widespread engagement with Folk Art - in its literal sense of Folk being 'of the people' - we make the need, the desire, for a moniker of status, success, achievement, all the more entrenched. If everyone is making videos then what does it take to call yourself a 'professional filmmaker'? Is it just being paid? Or is it something else..?
This leads us to yet another incarnation of 'Professional', one that has broad appeal and popular usage. Many might argue that above ideas of 'specialist knowledge' and 'being paid', Professional is a state of mind. It is an attitude and a way of conducting ones self in regard to their creative practice. A mindset that is irrespective of whether one is being paid and making a living for their efforts - a state of 'Professionalism' rather than just the pragmatic moniker of being a 'Professional'.
Certainly I, as most, have worked on 'amateur', un-paid films that were highly 'professional' in the way they were conducted. And similarly have worked on professionally paid projects that were far from professional in conduct. At an individual level, paid arts workers can often demonstrate a distinct lack of professionalism whilst amateurs exhibit all the traits u would hope to find in the pros. The point is that budget (or lack thereof) is not a garantee of Professionalism.
The downside of this reading of Professional is that it leaves aside Professional experience and knowledge - something that no attitude of good intent can make up for.
If I was more cynical I might suggest that those who argue professional has nothing to do with being paid but is wholly a way of conducting yourself do so as little more than means for amateurs to adopt the term Professional without having to earn it, a kind of self delusion to raise their status above their amateur colleagues and exert a notion of experience they do no actually possess.
But I don't think Im that cynical... And something about a quote from James Cameron rings true "Pick up a camera. Shoot something... you are a director. Everything after that youre just negotiating your budget"
So to come to back where we began - after 15 years can I call myself a professional...? I find myself making a list of all the Professional (ie Paid) roles I have performed in those years on projects large and (mostly) small... Actor, sound designer, lighting designer, sound mixer, technical director, video camera operator, production assistant, live staging technician, voice-over artist, video editor, motion graphics artist, magazine editor, journalist, book author, website content editor, director, producer, script editor, screenwriter, radio host, photographer, sound mixer and sound recordist. And those roles may be in turn viewed in a more succinct list of arts industry spheres I have worked in: theatre, film, tv, advertising, radio, publishing, museums, music and online.
Am I a professional? Certainly this is how I have made a living. I've never worked a job outside of these related 'arts and media' industries, never needed a 'day job' to support my creative work, never worked in a bar or cafe between gigs.
And yet for the most part (or at least for arguments sake) I have not been any one of these roles consistently enough to make living unto itself. It's taken an engagement with all of these and my own flexibility and adaptability to make a good living collectively by performing them all at various and overlapping times.
If 'Professional' means being paid for what so many do as un-paid amateurs then I assume i get a tick. But despite my 15 years experience and having undergraduate and masters degrees - along with a soon to be completed PhD - it might still be hard to justify 'specialist expertise' when I'm such a jack of all trades. And certainly there is no Professional Body governing my work. I may dare to hope that I have always conducted myself professionally. I am quite certain that a great majority of the work I've had was simply because I was a touch anally retentive about showing up on time. I often tell my students that producers will take reliability over talent any day of the week.
So, having formulated this summary of my career to date I conclude that I'm probably not alone or unique in my checkered professional history and my confused state about what Professional really means. 'Professional' is a many varied badge and we all wear it in different ways - as a mark of success, a signifier of status, a certification of experience or a descriptor of attitude and conduct.
What is consistent as I reflect back is that I am, above all else, an Educator. Of all the roles I have played it is teaching that has been the hub and, moreover, the most engaging, involving and satisfying field of endeavour. It's taken 15 years and a sojourn through a myriad of roles and fields to arrive at that conclusion and the following position - whilst I will continue to write, edit, shoot, produce, script, composit, review and record - and will likely always make part of my living from these endeavours - I am above all else a Professional Educator. And the mark of status as a professional educator I carry is that I would trade all my other pursuits for teaching on any given day of the week.
This may appear a touch self-indulgent for my blog-post - I fear it will prove to be one of my least popular scribblings - but it all seems rather fitting since this week I start a new job as lecturer in Screen Studies at the Australian Film, TV and Radio school (AFTRS). A new Year, a new job and the start of a whole host of new Professional challenges for the next 15 years.
Self-directed learning - a survey of Video Tutorials
I was asked recently to compile a report looking at what was available online in the way of Video Tutorials for university media production students. The idea was to see what was out there, how relevant and useful it was, and identify any potential areas where the university might produce it's own original tutorial content. Obviously there's no need to replicate something hat already exists and is freely available. That said, the student context and the university environment have specific demands that perhaps are unable to be addressed by existing materials.
What i thought might be a rather dreary bit of research turned out to be rather interesting. The findings are being compiled and likely to form the basis of a new online student resource but I thought it worth posting some of the things I found and decided upon for those interested in self-directed learning and a initial survey of Video Tutorial landscape. (if nothing else you might learn about a good resource you didn't know existed)
In broad terms the range of online video tutorials related to the media production (with a focus on hardware rather than software) can be divided between the three groups:
Corporate: Those tutorials developed by a company and intended as much for promotion and customer support of a product as for education and training. Such tutorials are most often highly specific to the functions and operations of a particular piece of equipment rather than more generally to processes and techniques engaged by that equipment.
Amateur: Tutorials made by hobbyists and enthusiasts rather than professional practitioners. These form the overwhelming bulk of online tutorials and the vary enormously; from those particular to a specific tool or model of equipment through to more broad concepts and processes. Production value of these tutorials is generally poor and there is a high propensity for incorrect or mis-information. Amateur tutorials tend to be discreet one-offs or loosely connected small groups rather than cohesive collections or series. They are also most likely to be distributed solely from open public systems such as YouTube.
Institution: This large category encompasses those tutorials, and collections of videos, that are professionally produced but which are not dedicated to a particular brand or the products of a specified company. This category includes universities, non-government agencies, non-profit organisations and commercial ventures focused on training as well as online magazines and publishers. Such tutorials are more likely to be produced as a collection or series and distributed from dedicated websites - though they may also be re-published on, or utilise, hosting services such as YouTube, Vimeo and BlipTV.
The tutorial websites detailed below are in no particular order but are presented with an analysis of their Pros and Cons and a rating (out of 5) based on their suitability to be recommended to current students to assist with their studies and productions......
It may seem a verbose question but if I may be indulged I think
theres something in this image that tells us something important -
that challenges a common acceptance - about cinema and the engagement
of dramatic action.
To steer away (momentarily) from the Dog and his Business we might pose a more palatable question Why do we watch Movies?
Entertainment, Information, Escapism.
If
the old Family Feud game show had surveyed a 100 people and gathered
their top three responses for contestants to guess it would be no
family of Einsteins required to take home the prize.
The
low-brow family might say Entertainment, the high-brow family would say
Information to hold up an appearance of holier-than-thou and likely a
cross demographic of busy modern workers would simply declare
Escapism.
But im not so sure any of these is the reason Why We
Watch? These are things we get from watching but none of these three -
Entertainment, Information or Escapism are inherent to drama or to
cinema. To bring relevance to the blog title; I can be entertained, be
informed and experience escapism by watching a dog take a dump on a
lawn. But I wouldn't call it cinema and unless it held a particularly
dynamic performance aspect, I wouldn't call it dramatic.
So why
do we watch? (Movies that is, not the dog...) We watch because we like
to Worry. We love to stew in our own worry about the fate of the world,
about whether the boy will get the girl, about the soldier, about the
mother, about the child, worry whether the bomb will go off, whether
the hero will escape, whether then treasure will be found or the secret
uncovered, whether the truth will be revealed or the criminal escape,
worry if love will ever be requited or the family reunited...
Where
Entertainment, Information and Escapism are the by-product results of
watching it is Worry that is the essence of the desire to watch. Our
most primeval impetus as humans is to Hope for something to happen
whilst Fearing that it won't. Hope +/- Fear = Worry. And there is no
great work of cinema that doesn't with each shot, cut and word seek to
make us worry More...
This is what is inherently problematic
with the oft touted idea of cinema's reason for being and driving goal
being 'entertainment'. Entertainment can exist without Worry, can be
plain to view without the nexus of Hope and Fear. As such, whilst
cinema can (and should) be entertaining, entertainment is not of itself
cinematic. Any film whose primary endeavor is 'entertainment'
invariably risks failure - failure to engage the viewer with more
powerful drivers. Such films become the equivalent of a dog dump on the
lawn; funny, amusing, disgusting and alarming such a sight may be - perhaps
even a little emotional - but ultimately unmoving, disposable and
un-cinematic because whilst I may be entertained I am not in a state of Worry...
These
ruminations have become course mantras of mine for my students in
recent years but I was delighted to find much more articulate
expressions in the pages of the journal Lum:na; a publication of the Australian Film TV and Radio school(AFTRS) (where incidentally I now work - or will do come the 18th January).
Karen
Pearlman (head of screen-studies at AFTRS and an accomplished film
editor in her own right) lays out a compelling argument for the power
of Myth in her essay 'Make Our Myths' (a shortened abstract can be read on Urban Cinefile but I thoroughly recommend getting a copy of the full Journal from your local good bookshop)
The
trap for Australian cinema (and by extrapolation many national cinema's
outside of the US) has been an all too often unquestioned premise (most
often linked to government funding and subsidy) of telling our own stories.
Karen's argument (one that had me in near epileptic fits of
agreement-nodding like a scene from Waynes World) is that such a
directive has led "us down the garden path of naturalism to a rut
so deep that it seems people would rather stay at home and argue with
their own families than go and watch another Australian domestic drama
on screen." p32
More powerful than telling our own stories
is forging our own Myths. Karen suggests such cinematic myths are borne
of three tenets - Scale, Dynamics and Ownership and that evoking such
properties; "Does not mean movies have to be happy or sad, smart or
dumb, expensive or cheap, real or surreal. They must have scale,
dynamics and ownership by more than just their makers." p37
Following
similar empowering and informative perspectives is Ron Cobb's
sentiments on Science Fiction cinema with the pages of the same issue.
Best known for design work on Star Wars, Alien, The Abyss and Total Recall Cobb also draws connection with the power of mythical scale and grand-stakes. He observes the trap of mistaking Escapism as the primary driver of cinema "Nonsense
is okay so long as it is experienced as nonsense, understood as a
metaphor; escapism shuts of the grandeur of the world. It is
self-comforting and in that sense infantile." p99
He goes on to connect this issue in cinema to a deep and broad spread of modern societal problems;
"We
escape from reality at our peril. The current social realm of
pseudo-cures, cults, quackery, conspiracy theories, etc., comes from
gullibility, a desire to retreat into a dream world that I would not
like to see so accelerated." p99
Both these examples, which
draw from different impetus, point toward some powerful truths of the
cinematic experience - or perhaps, more correctly, highlight the flaws
of common misconceptions. Cinema is not driven by a desire for
entertainment nor for escapism (and certainly not information) but by
something simultaneously more complex and primeval - the desire to
teeter our senses on the fulcrum between Hope and Fear. The screenwriter and filmmaker's mantra therefore should not be 'Keep them Entertained or Interested or Informed' but rather 'Keep them Worried...'
We
watch because we like to Worry and if what we are watching fails to
make us worry because it's too concerned with an intangible and un-fulfilling desire to 'entertain' then we are relegated to the role of
watching the dog take a dump on the lawn... Amusing though it may be, it's
a poor substitute for a cinematic experience.
---
Lumina: Australian journal of screen arts and culture. Issue 2, 2009. AFTRS
The Phantom Menace (and all three Star Wars prequels) Sucked. Sucked such outrageously large lemons that it's hard to fathom that they came from the same person who created the original Episodes 4-6. So much so that the only conclusion to draw is that George had a LOT of help (Paul Hirsch, Lawrence Kasdan, Irvin Kershner) and that those great minds who helped him seemingly ABANDONED him leaving George's incompetence and ego fully exposed for the world to see.
I could rant on but I shall refrain in order to make room for a 70min bout of pure genius from a guy called Mike from Milwaukee.
On the surface this is a very funny and satiric appraisal of the Phantom Menace. But to view it simply as a tongue-in-cheek fun would be to miss what is one of the most astute, accessible and well illustrated examples of story analysis i've ever seen. Mike from Milwaukee may be taking the piss but his wry tone belies a depth of observation and analytical clarity that most film critics will never obtain. More importantly he finds engaging and wholly accessible ways to illustrate the deep flaws in Phantom Menace that whilst hilarious resonate with overwhelming and inescapable truth. (case in point being the last 5mins of Part 6 which beautifully sets up why fights scenes are NOT about fighting)
I insist you watch every minute and pray that George Lucas, Michael Bay and a score of other Hollywood hacks are watching too....
The
confession of most tertiary educated people (be it university or film
school or whatever) is that most of what they learned was acquired in the pub with
their peers over beer after class rather than the classroom itself.
Whilst I'd like to think, as a teacher, that this is not entirely true
there have certainly been a number of rather enlightening pub-based
conversations ive observed and participated in with students.
One
that I found highly intriguing was the suggestion from a student, fresh
from completing their first semester, that the future of cinema was a
conjoined, unified, hybrid mode of interactive movie-gaming. The idea
that supposedly passive cinema would be supplanted and reform into
this singular new and hybrid form.
Its a simplistic but
intriguing idea and one that has floated around before. But, as the old
adage goes, to understand the future you need to look to the past. Are
there any historical precedents to support this idea? Is there an
historical example of where a old-media form has engulfed and replaced
a new-media form?
The obvious touchstone is the printed word.
Guttenbergs printing press unleashed the written word upon the world.
From painstakingly hand-written bibles to mass production. From there
we get the newspaper, the magazine, mass publishing, the novel, the
comic-book and every other perceivable printed literary mode. We can
look to the rise of Desktop Publishing as a major revolution in how
mass media is made and consumed and the culture by which it is engaged
but fundamentally the Written Word, as a form didnt change. The birth
of the magazine didn't obliterate or supplant the novel. Instead it
expanded the contexts of reading; created more options and variability
in reading experience, distribution and engagement.
We
might also look to music, pre-dating the written word and see similar
patterns that show a media-form expanding and becoming multiplicitous
rather than expunging what went before. The invention of the stringed
instrument didnt mean the death of percussion and human voice from
which all music began.
So if we look at computer gaming and
interactive forms and ask will they replace cinema as we know it, the
answer is to say that there isnt any historical indicator to suggest
that this will be the case; no precedent. The Magazine didn't replace
the Book, it expanded the options for experience the written word. The
Guitar didnt replace the Drum, it expanded the means by which music
could be generated. Thus we might conclude that the Computer Game wont
replace or dissolve 'Cinema', it simply expands the platforms for the
experience of the moving image.
From this I would take another step, dissolving an often cited line of separation.... Gaming IS Cinema.
Cinema,
by definition, is the 'art of the moving image' and so the fundamental
problem is actually to view gaming as somehow separate and apart from
cinema. Gaming IS cinema because it is an artform of the moving image.
The fact that it is interactive is neither unique nor special. A DVD
with multiple angles and a selectable directors commentary is
Interactive. It may be a less sophisticated form of interactivity than
a game but a magazine might be seen as less sophisticated than a novel but that doesn't make any less a work of Writing and an art of the written word.
One might argue that in games the player and their choices effect
the outcome which is not the same as in cinema where the outcome is
pre-ordained. Yet this idea of varible player directed outcomes in
games is somewhat of a misnomer. The number of games where the outcome
is actually varible is very small outside of 'complete' and
'incomplete'. Almost every first-person shooter game ever made steers
irrevocably towards a singular ending. There have been recent
exceptions such as Bioshock where the 'moral' choices of the player can
change the nature and narrative of the epilogue but even here the
reuslt is nothing more than the gaming equivalent of 'DVD Alternate
Endings'. Even open-world 'sandbox' games such as Oblivion or GrandTheft Auto
imply a variable multi-path story but those paths are none the less
pre-defined, the player may chose the order and manner in which they
play through those story archs but the end results are still
pre-defined and largely unavoidable (so long as you dont stop playing
altogether).
There is obviously more to exmine here than a journal-post can accommodate but the key point is that making a seperation between gaming
and cinema on the basis of 'interactivity' is to argue difference based
only on degrees of interactivity, which is tenuous at best. Likewise to
mark distinction by whether the viewer/player effects the outcome is
very far from consistent or even common in games. What is more
important by being more useful is to comprehend the relationship
betwene gaming and cinema not by what seperates them but rather by what
unifies them; what is consistent rather than what is divergent.
What is fundamental to understanding the evolution of media-forms;
how they expand, multiply, exchange and evolve is a set of ideas from
media theorists Bolter and Grusin who penned the framework of Re-Mediation.
In simple terms their idea is that NEW media begins by replicating the
forms, tenets, language and modes of OLD media before it finds its own
language elements. For example the birth of Photography re-mediated paitning. Early cinema re-mediated
Theatre and Photography before finding more unique sensibilities. This
same pattern can be seen in much computer gaming; games re-mediating
other forms. An example would be games (particularly FPS) which have
long re-mediated traditional cinema - the cut scene, the passive
non-interactive cinematic sequence that plays out as a movie between
playable sections of the game. Its interesting that the first major
FPS game that did away with the movie-like cut scene to fully immerse
the player from beginning to end in the singular person first-person
perspective was Half Life. The FPS genre remediated movies before
finding a more unique visual language - the unbroken single take
perspective.
It
therefore becomes highly problematic to view new forms of cinematic
experience such as computer gaming as some how consuming cinema; they
are of themselves cinema and so their arrival is simply the
evolutionary expansion of cinema. The diversification of cinematic
experience into multi-platform and scalable delivery through a process
of re-mediation rather than the more traditional singular and unified
mode that dominated cinema for most of the first 100 years of its life.
So
to really understand what Digital Cinema - as a cultural entity and
arts sphere more so than a technology- we need to take a more broad
perspective of where the overlaps and influences between cinematic
forms are because its the joins between that encompass the dynamic
possibilities and long-term influences of what the many faces of cinema
will become. Old-media isnt replaced or consumed, its simply
re-mediated and expanded.
A fascinating essay by Manovich entitled plainly What Is Digital Cinema? is available online here and it provides this insight....
"We
no longer think of the history of cinema as a linear march towards only
one possible language, or as a progression towards more and more
accurate verisimilitude. Rather, we have come to see its history as a
succession of distinct and equally expressive languages, each with its
own aesthetic variables"
How are ethical decisions made on screen? How are choices between good and evil, right and wrong, light and dark, depicted in screen media? How do the renderings of such ethical conundrums of character, plot and circumstances differ between film and game incarnations?
Game Ethics is a new research project I am involved in that seeks to examine the depiction of ethical choices in screen-media. In particular this research looks at film>game adaptations and in particular the work of Russian filmmakers and game developers.
We've set up a new site to house this work as it develops which you can view at gameethics.weebly.com
There's nothing like being paid to watch movies and play video games :)
From the outline to the research:
This project will investigate character construction and narrative
structures in the adaptation of cinematic texts into interactive
computer games. This is a new and urgent field of inquiry in the
emerging Russian media and film studies. Focusing on three recent
Russian blockbuster films Night Watch, Antikiller and Company 9 and
their adaptations into computer games, this study will investigate the
strategic revisioning of film characters and dénouements under
conditions of interactivity. Outcomes from this research will be the
first survey of the burgeoning field of Russian domestic computer game
development in the context of a booming local box office.
I have updated and expanded my definitive detailing of Free tools, utilities, resources and applications available online. Not just a list of links I have sought to provide a little detail on each tool and sort the collection into easily navigable groupings.
Almost every tool listed in one I personal use or have used and in doing so have found 'useful'. The collection includes free-standing apps, plugins and add-ons as well as online tools and resources.
