craft or art?

[mahavishnu]

Hey, things were just getting interesting!

[Lightivity]

Agree!

Art is when the films FEELS great. In whatever way is may do so. I suppose a well crafted film has better chans of giving me that feeling.

[Rock]

Everything is relative.

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[mahavishnu]

And everything is absolute!

heh

[mahavishnu]

Say you have a classic close up, in focus, the top of the head isn't cut off, 3/4 lighting, the person speaks, the sound is well recorded... that's craft. Art is questioning that craft - is there a more interesting way of shooting this? Why am I shooting this anyway? How does it fit conceptually with the rest of the film? What am I trying to say with this shot? Why am I making a film at all?

[chlngr1970]

this kind of debate belongs in the Soap Box.

Moving there now...

19

j

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[Lightivity]

mahavishnu:

Sure, art could be that

My kind of art (hoho) is about getting the audience to feel some kind of exitement; by that I don't mean that I don't use lightning (cause I do, very conscious), but I use it to tell a story, even if the story is only five seconds long.

I know that by putting the lightning from underneath the actors in a romantic scene (romantic because of context in dialog and other plot elements), close up on the actors, I transfer a feeling/emotion of something extra ordinary to the audience; in this case the extra ordinary situation of two people falling in love.

This feeling of extra ordinariness and lightning is based on evolution. When humans developed their sensory vision system and the conceptual system that made sense of that visual input, (a veeery long time ago), humans didn't have the ability to control lightning. All ligtning came from above (the sun and moon), so other human faces (and other objects) was rendered by shadows according to the sunlight (that came from above).

If you ever saw the picture of Niel Armstrongs fotprint on the moon, you would know what I was talkning about (it looks strange, because it looks convex, instead of concave. The lightning on the picture is coming from the "wrong direction", because on the moon, the lightning doesn't really match our human understanding. If you put the picture upside down, it will "fall into place"; then the shadows are falling accordlingly.

When humans began controllong fire and sources of light, it was too late; the evolution had done its part on vision. So, when lightning is coming from under the horizon, the effect is extra ordinary by that reason. When I put a lamp under my face to scare you when it's dark, it's because my face is illuminated in an extra ordinary way; I look, well, strange, because "strange" for human beings living on the earth is being not lit from above [the last couple of centuries havn't done much for human evolution, let me tell you ]. The reason I'm scary in the particular "lamp situation" is because the context has made me so. I'm extra ordinary, strange, and then I'm also contextually scary.

In the romantic scene, the lightning gives it an extra ordinary feeling, and it's then also contextually romantic (love is something extra, aint it?).

What I'm aiming for is my concept of art. The greatest thing a filmmaker could do, in my opinon, is to give the audience these kinds of "true feelings" (hypothetical feelings, ofcourse), so that they are able to get drawn into the story that the filmmaker is trying to tell. "Story" doesn't have to mean the entire developing cause and effect arc, but could mean small fragements of events, like the romantic scene.

Of course the elements of filmmaking (editing, lightning etc.) are important, (hey, without them there would be no film), but I don't usually talk about the editing with my friends after the movie; they would call me all sorts of things (starting with boring). We talk about the troubles that the characters went through, the feelings we get etc (was it good and so on). Of course, if we go to see Star Wars we talk about the effects, but only because the movie "felt great" otherwise.

Even if I, as a filmmaker, am aware of how to trigger certain feelings, when I go to see movies, I want to be drawn into the movie. If I do, I know it's a good one, cause the filmmakers accomplished what they wanted.

Surely, other films, that experiment with the feelings one get from ex. lightning and sound, are also art. They just have more specific goals to accomplish; sometimes they want to get the audience to concentrate more on the filmatic tools, or sometimes more on "individual" feelings etc- I like those films too and make no separation between them regarding the meaning of the word art.

It's just that I prefer one kind more than the other.


[This message has been edited by Lightivity (edited 03-30-2001).]

[mahavishnu]

What you are talking about is elevating the script and the acting and diminuating all the other - more exclusively cinematic - possibilities. This is not a choice to do something a certain way, it is a craftsman-like adherence to convention and a lack of understanding for the possibilities inherent within cinema.

[Lightivity]

Well, your definition is as good as mine.

Putting together a piece of image and a piece of sound and trying to rely on the interpretations of the viewer is not my kind of fun.

I appreciate those experiments, but I love well crafted material. That's art in my ears.

[This message has been edited by Lightivity (edited 03-30-2001).]

[Lightivity]

I think what's causing the trouble is the meaning we're trying to put into the word art.

Wouldn't it be proper to just use the whole word, not just the abbreviation:

Artificial.

Something created by humans. All other interpretations are individual and could be discussed to death. Not that there's anything wrong with that, though.


[This message has been edited by Lightivity (edited 03-30-2001).]

[mahavishnu]

'Art' is derived from 'artificial', it does not MEAN 'artificial'...

You seem to misunderstand me when you say "Putting together a piece of image and a piece of sound" - that's what cinema IS! A piece of image and a piece of sound. Talk of 'feelings' etc, are a diffusion because those feelings come out of that image, that sound. It's all you have to work with.

Most of the movies we are talking about are well-crafted. But I propose that only some of them are art. Perhaps on the other side of the scale, you have something like Godard's A Bout de Souffle or a Jess Franco film that is arguably not very well crafted, but makes up for it in sheer lucidity of ideas. Ideally, I like to see both, but given a choice I'll take the ideas.

[Lightivity]

Fair.