Historical Context?

W

wheatgrinder

Iv noticed a few posts lately lamenting the 7 cardinal sins of noob filmakers, or the colorist trends that make all movies look similar etc.. and I got to thinking...

what if we turn that discussion on its head. Instead of what is WRONG with these things, lets consider these trends and new behaviors in a larger historical context. I think we can all agree that moving pictures is a newish art form. It has not been around as long as say, oil painting, or stringed instruments, or story telling.

It seems to me that the NEWISH ness is starting to rub off, and the body of classical art understanding is finding is way INTO the latest movies.. Specifically, color treatments. There is a reason why we respond to the orange face in the teal background.. its a classic color scheme, everywhere in nature, in pleasing places.. we all know that this is the natural color scheme at sunset in most the world. Particularly in open savanna like places.. perhaps we like it because of some genetic memory, recalling the end of a day on the grasslands of ancient Africa where the sun was setting, signaling the troop to come together for comfort and safety. Orange light in blue shadow "feels" good to most people..

Maybe someday, movies like Casablanca will be held in the same regards as primitive pottery, sure neat and all, but not near as beautiful and advanced as the Deflt china plate. (ok, burn me at the stake now!)
 
All forms of art have too much material which looks or sound similar, film is not going to be any different.

But as always, no one will complain or think about the usual color palette when something is done right and well overall.

And i understand what you mean when you say that abt Casablanca but i hope that day never comes!
 
Interesting thoughts, wheat. I think only time will tell. I think I understand and agree with your sentiment on "Casablanca". I don't necessarily mean to say specifically that we will ever see it along the lines of "primative pottery", but I do think that so many of the artistic devices that have been added to a filmmaker's war chest have improved the art, because there's simply more stuff at our disposal. Part of that comes from filmmaking techniques, and part of that comes from technology.

I mean, compare the beautiful tracking shot at the beginning of "Touch of Evil" with any of the three long-takes in "Children of Men". I love Orson Welles, but c'mon -- anyone can admit that this technique he used so wonderfully has advanced, considerably.

There are so many examples I could make -- Spielberg's zoom-in/dolly-out shot (or vice-versa). Judd Apatow's improvisational techniques. And now, we've got cameras and equipment available to the masses, allowing us to produce stuff that ain't that far off from what Hollywood is doing -- what's gonna come of that?

In the end, though, I think there's one very important reason why "Casablanca" will never be equated with "primative pottery", and that is because, though our techniques and technology have arguably improved, one thing is true now, just as much as it was back then -- this is an art of storytelling, and the beloved classics will forever shine brightly in that respect.
 
wheatgrinder said:
Maybe someday, movies like Casablanca will be held in the same regards as primitive pottery, sure neat and all, but not near as beautiful and advanced as the Deflt china plate.
Click to expand...
I think that might be already the case.

Many people will not watch a movie in black and white
and many people find the pacing of of pre 1980 films
too slow. I know many people who cannot watch a
comedy from the 1930's and 1940's. Sure, they're
neat and all, but too contrived and dated to actually
be funny.

Cracker has made that point already. The "Touch of
Evil" opening is fine, the the "Children of Men" shot
is amazing. The "Jaws" trombone shot is great but
Hitchcock's use of it in "Vertigo" didn't have that impact.

It's already happened when it comes to technology. And
for some people it's happened with storytelling.
 
directorik said:
The "Jaws" trombone shot is great but
Hitchcock's use of it in "Vertigo" didn't have that impact.
Click to expand...

Ohhhh, so that's what it's called - trombone shot. Thanks.
Spielberg used it so wonderfully that I always thought he invented
the darned thing. Now, I gotta go watch "Vertigo" (my experience
with Hitchcock is shamefully low).
 
TROMBONE SHOT, ooooh mann the hours I've spent thinking how they would do a shot like that (I didn't google, and I don't know why). I used to think that it was a special type of lens that would create this effect, its so SIMPLE!
 
I'm going to look back to something that occurred to me in my Anthropological Theory class while we were learning about all of the changes that have come through the field: from Classical to Marxist to Processual to Post-Processual. These are regarded in that field to be distinct trains of thought, but the reality is that there was generally a gradual shift between them and time compressed the beginning and end points together to just show the beginning and destination rather than the whole transition.

This temporal compression makes the past look all neat and tidy as we see Rembrandt's distinctive style or Picaso's distinctive style... what gets ignored is the hundreds of other painters who were doing work that was just barely pushing the boundaries or was exploring the same things as those painters, but time has simply misplaced.

Either through better financial connections, exposure or what have you, the big painter's pieces become ART and the others working on the same discoveries are left behind as perhaps one reacts poorly to a critic and reverts back to what was selling for them or everyone gets sick of what will eventually come to be known as the painter's "Blue Period."

In cinema, we've seen this happening before... none of us bat an eye at the new trend of 2.35:1 ratios used in the film industry, or the 24p frame rate, but these at one time were considered novelty as well. and time has ironed out all the wrinkles through better promotion/advertising, studio budgetary concerns, world economies and standardizations. We don't know where this will land us, but at some point, go back and watch some older technicolor films -- the 2 strip technicolor and look how much more "Cinematic" that feels to the more realistic colors that the video camera is capturing. The simple chemical/physical realities of the old technology wrote a new grammar of color that still tints cinematic language to this day.

The physics of light and our perceptions thereof define that complimentary colors help to separate objects from their backgrounds... it's why camouflage works. In the B/W world, it was chiaroscuro that separated the fore and back grounds... darks on light and lights on dark. That technique has been commented on by an old DP who stated "I'm going to continue to shoot dark figures on light backgrounds." (can't remember who the interview was with -- the images were from a Capra film though).

Watching 70s films with their color washed frames or all orange were nothing more than the modern color version of the color tinted B/W frames of the past. The coloring was done by putting a filter on the camera to shift the light coming into the camera one way or another. This is the same thing we're doing now, but we're doing it selectively... in 100 years, we'll see 2 examples of films from now and think it's quaint how they were relegated to such broad strokes with grading.
 
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