Vashon goes to the movies

watch the hand

Yes, another another. This one comes along on the heels of a mention by Eileen at the Theatre that they are considering the move to 3D projection. i would advise against it, but that’s just me. Call me a Luddite or a purist ( you would be close to correct on the latter), but in this so-called information age, we are being bombarded with stuff on the merits of its packaging, with less and less emphasis of the content therein. i suppose a good metaphor here would be the Playboy Bunny- lights are on (and would you check out those headlights) but nobody’s home. i could mention Avatar here, but i would be repeating myself.

one of the things i was reminded of last fall as i worked on my film class  projects was that the visual quality of film- even super8 film- is still powerful and stunning. While i do find the crispness and clarity of high definition to be truly amazing, i don’t really believe that it is necessarily a requirement for good story telling. A recent example i would insert here is a film i haven’t seen but, because of reviews and comments i’ve read about it, i plan to take it in. It is the documentary Sweetgrass, about sheep ranchers in Montana, and the reviews have been glowing, except for the mention that it should have been shot in high def to fully capture the beauty of the scenery. It is unfair to pass judgement without having seen it, but the fact is that beautiful scenery has been filmed and appreciated for over a hundred years without the “benefit” of digital technology, so either the cinematographer (or videographer in this case) is to blame, or the expectation is unfair- i will wait and see. 

So, what is too much information? Some people  thought that adding sound to films was, and it seems that one could go even further back to make the claim that adding motion to a still photograph was an overload. One of the things we learned in last night’s doc history class was that when the Brothers Lumiere first showed their 50 second films to the public, it was simply the movement of things that intrigued the viewers. Workers leaving a factory; a train coming into a station; a baby eating lunch- all became fascinating because they moved within the frame. There was no story in many cases,  just movement, but people watched just because of that.

One can think of  a few “new” tech ideas that we are better off without. What comes to mind first was the concept put forth in Alduous Huxley’s book Brave New World of  going to the Feelies- movies that give you the feeling (through knobs on your seat arms which you grasp while watching) of what is happening on the screen. One can see the problems here- would feeling Bruce Willis’ Die Hard pain bring box office or law suits?  i know, the premise Huxley was running on was more about pleasure than pain, but these things can and do get used for purposes other than their original intent.  More recently we have the virtual embedded war correspondent experience as portrayed in the great, but little known film, War, Inc. Here reporters are injected with a microchip and given virtual reality goggles and seated in a motion simulator so they can “go into battle” while not really going there. Some would argue that that’s where embedded reporters already go, but that’s another story. One can also not forget John Water’s trip to another dimension in his film Polyester, where audience members where given a numbered scratch and sniff  ‘Odorama’ card and prompted throughout the film to augment their olfactory experience with fragrances that ranged from roses to flatulence. While i think the concept was brilliant and funny, one could make the case that what Waters puts on the screen is already enough information to make his point.

We could, at this point, go into Ted Turner’s colossal misstep into colorizing  classic black and white films, but that is too much like fingernails on the blackboard. As it is, i already get engulfed in films without glasses and cine-wizard tech. In fact, the more i know of the wizard’s hand in the mix, the more i find myself rejecting the construct.

Perhaps, like the Lumieres showed in first opening the cinematic box of Pandora (not the Moon), we only need time before a 3D storytelling does become the accepted mode of operation. But in stepping back in time to the beginnings of the movie tale, it seems all one really needs is a good story and a flickering picture to tell it.