Wrapping It Up

Well, the sun has set on another semester. As you all head home and forget about classes, exams and assignments for a few weeks, I hope you won't forget all that you're learned. There's no question that you've worked hard, been deprived of sleep and had your mental and physical capacities stretched. So you've earned a break, but remember that as with anything in life, the challenges you face now, and the opportunities that are at your fingertips will not last forever.

Someday, you'll leave school behind (hopefully with a degree in hand), and you'll move on to the next phase of life. That too will present certain obstacles and open other doors to you. And it may not be until that day comes that you realize what this experience has been about and why it was valuable to go through some of the things that you've endured. But trust me, you're better people for it.

I know that I've asked a lot of you. Sometimes you may have questioned the workload or the assignments or just what the heck I was talking about half the time. Well, despite what you may have thought about me as a teacher, it's quite clear that each and every one of you learned something. We entered the semester with many of you having hardly even picked up a video camera, let alone use this medium to tell a story and edit it in a cohesive manner. And by the time it was all said and done, you had each made work that you should be quite proud of.

While I had my own struggles engaging you in the material and getting you to participate in discussions, in the end, you all showed me that you did in fact get something out of the class. The best part for me as a teacher is not to stand in front of you and pontificate about my own ideas of how to work in this medium or to weigh you down with assignments and busy work. I simply look to lay the foundation and then give you opportunity to use your own creativity to explore it. To see what you come up with when challenged, that is the best part for me. The work speaks for itself. It's through seeing this creativity on display in your projects that I know I have done my job.

Whatever you may have gotten out of the class, you can be proud of the effort that you put in, whether you end up continuing in the direction of making this kind of work or not. I certainly appreciate the end result and all that went into it. It was a pleasure to have each of you in the class this semester and I wish you a blessed Christmas season, a prosperous New Year, and all the best in your future endeavors.

Mainstream

One of my favorite things to do is to take a particular director, actor or writer and seek out a number of their films in order to draw out some themes in their work and contrast what they are doing from film to film. Usually, I look for classic films or independents that have a strong artistic bent. But I recently became interested in a more mainstream choice after watching Almost Famous, directed by Cameron Crowe. I've never paid much attention to Crowe's work, since to me he has always been associated with the more popular crowd pleasing segment of the movie world. But I found Almost Famous so genuine and engaging that I began to rethink this viewpoint.

So a few weeks ago, I went back in time to the 1980's with one of the quintessential movies of that period, Say Anything with John Cusack and Ione Skye. It's been a number of years since I'd seen it and although I remembered the iconic scenes with Cusack at the dinner table with the girlfriend's dad and holding the boombox over his head blasting Peter Gabriel's In Your Eyes, I couldn't recall much else. I cringe a bit when movies like this are dubbed classics. The word classic should be reserved for films like Citizen Kane or Sunset Boulevard. Nonetheless, these films do have their place in the film lexicon, and with a couple decades of hindsight, anything that's still worth returning to must have some merit, classic or not.

What struck me watching it all these years later is that it's not necessarily those iconic scenes that have the most meat to them. If you were to only watch those two scenes mentioned above, you'd likely have a very different view of the film than if you watched the whole thing. That's why movies that have great trailers often disappoint, because all of the best stuff is in that 2 minutes. Say Anything on the other hand holds up pretty well. One of the things that I love about watching a film like this is seeing a young writer/director and young actors figuring out how to make a movie, and often taking risks that other more seasoned filmmakers wouldn't dare. The film is offbeat, quirky and most definitely unique for it's time. And I daresay it influenced a generation of up and coming filmmakers who would seek to duplicate its success.

From the music to the dialogue, to the pure simplicity with which the film is shot, there is something nice and innocent about it, which seems to match the storyline quite well. It's utterly unpretentious, interested not in being high art, but true life. And while it's a Hollywood representation of love and relationships, it's still quite honest in many ways.

Sticking with the Cameron Crowe theme, I decided to then check out one of his more successful films that I never bothered to see, Jerry Maguire. Much like Say Anything, this flick seems to have a few iconic scenes, even more so than the former. Even if you haven't seen it, you probably recall Tom Cruise shouting "Show me the money!" into the phone with Cuba Gooding Jr. on the other end dancing around his kitchen. Or you might have used the line "you had me at hello", or perhaps had it used on you (if you're lucky). Unlike Say Anything, I found that Jerry Maguire lacked the depth and sincerity that Crowe had achieved in other films.

While it was entertaining, it was also rather predictable, and in many ways, cliche. Worst of all, the characters and the situations were totally unbelievable. There are times when we have to suspend our disbelief, but then there are times when movies ask too much of us in that department. I believe it was Martin Scorcese who said sometimes you have to make one for them so that you can make one for yourself. In other words, get paid to do the stuff that fills the theaters, and then you can afford to make a labor of love. Perhaps that was the case with this film, but it still felt rather strange to see something that so thoroughly lacked the qualities of Crowe's other work. Ultimately, I realized that with all the movies that come out these days, you can't possibly see everything, and sometimes, you're not missing much. Guess I better go back to the classics and indies.

Film Form

It's a question we often ask when we see a film or piece of art that utterly confounds us: "what in the world is this about?" As in life, we seek meaning out of the art that we consume. Film is a particularly tricky medium to tackle when it comes to deciphering meaning, as well as imbuing it in our own work. There are so many elements to consider. There is the content of the film from the characters and settings to the subject matter. We must also consider the narrative elements, not to mention the stylistic approach of the filmmaker and the emotional tone. It's a complex and daunting task to say the least. One of the beautiful things about a great film is that it's worth watching over and over again. I often find that each time I see new things in it and find additional meaning that I might not have gotten in previous viewings.

There are few writers today who have so thoroughly investigated the topic of meaning in film as David Bordwell. Our latest reading on the subject gave us a lot of ammunition in the war for understanding the things we are watching. While it's not necessarily important that we use every bit of criteria in the reading to determine what films are about, it's a good blueprint to begin with. From referential meaning, to the explicit and implicit meaning and the larger context of symptomatic meaning, there are many ways to frame the topic. How does a film move us? Does it fill you with sadness, anger, fear, joy or some combination of emotions? How is it crafted? Is it filled with effects, or very simply put together? These are the kinds of questions we have to ask ourselves as we consider what a film is about. As makers, we also have to consider these issues as we do our own work and what kind of reaction we want from the audience that watches our films.

After reading this, I found myself going back to films like The Wizard of Oz to look more closely at how these techniques are used. It's an interesting film when you look beyond the surface, and a useful one for considering how symbols and motifs play a part in storytelling. The filmmakers draw from such a rich palette, from the characters, locations, music, use of color and effects. While the message of the film is fairly clear, the methods for communicating those themes offer us a great deal to sink our teeth into as an audience. It's been imitated and alluded to again and again, but rarely matched in its mystique. There is a power to the film, even decades later, that speaks to new audiences and old ones. We can only hope that our work will endure as this piece has.