Part 2- Moving Pictures

WHY MOVING PICTURES?

 Man has always been an artist. Among the earliest records of man we find drawings on the walls of caves.

As man became more sophisticated, and as the struggle for life became less all-engross­ing, man began to carve in wood and to paint on the walls of build­ings. Then, when he gained control over the elements and had more leisure, man began to express his ideas and celebrate life in the design of his buildings and their furnishings, to sing of life in ballads and sagas, to carve his visions of life and of man in mar­ble and to paint them on canvas.

Art became part of man's wor­ship; he built temples, carved and painted images and composed prayers and hymns to the worship of God. And to the religious man the celebration of man was also worship of God, for he be­lieved man to be made in the image of God.

 

Today man has special problems and special opportunities in life and in art which arise from the structure and character of our society. Ancient man lived close to nature, and we see that close­ness to nature reflected in his art. The drawings on the caves are of living creatures, and the females are always pregnant. Man had great reverence for life, and celebrated life and the life force in his art. Also, man had more direct and personal control over the things he made. He could express his own personality and his own feelings, ideas and visions not only in poetry and painting but even in the clothes he made and the tools he fashioned.

Now life is more mechanized; man does not live so close to nature, and things are made by many specialists rather than by one artist or artisan. It is very difficult for one man to stamp his personality on things, and to express his own vision in them.

Man himself is in danger of being mechanized through living in such a mechanized society. He must fight for his humanity and for his unique per­sonality. The arts should help man to maintain his uniqueness of personality. The arts should help man to maintain his uniqueness of personality by showing him a true vision of man and of life.

 There is a danger  that mechanization and loss of the personal con­trol of work may lead to the mechanization of the arts themselves, and then they would not serve man's real need. The arts could be used to manipulate man rather than to enrich him. But this need not happen if the people keep control of the people's arts.

While mechanization and group production do present a pro­blem for the creative artists, they have made possible, on the other hand, a new art form in which a team of creative artists can pro­duce, a work of art.

The Moving Picture is not only an art form in itself, in as much as it can recreate a human experience, project a true image of man and give him insight into life; but, it actually combines all the arts to form one artistic vision. In the moving picture the poet (script writer), the architect (set designer), the painter and sculptor (cameraman), the dancer (actor), the musi­cian (composer and director of the background music) work to­gether to make one artistic statement. This new art has required the development of another artist, an artist peculiar to the modern world, the moving picture director.

 The director must see that all these artists work in harmony to interpret the vision created by the writer; and it is he who finally stamps his personality onto the work of art.

In addition to the traditional artists who collaborate on a making picture, many artisans, some of whom have developed their skills to the state of artistry, help to make a moving picture: Make­up artists, film cutters and sound engineers, script supervisors, car­penters and painters, property men, costume designers, colour con­sultants, film printers and developers, and a host of other techni­cians. There may be as many as ninety technicians on a movie set, filming a scene with two actors. All these technicians must work toward one end, to project one unified artistic vision.

Another art peculiar to this medium is that of the film editor. Since scenes in a moving picture are shot out of logical story sequence for economic reasons, and the same scene may be shot many times and from many angles, the film editor must construct the final work from many pieces. He will choose the angle which is most effective for a particular scene, trim scenes so that they do not drag and slow the pace of the picture.

In television, which is very similar to moving pictures, each show must be timed to the exact minute and second; the editor must time the film without taking the clarity and Unity out of the story. The film editor is actually an extension of the art of the writer and the director;  and many of the outstand­ing directors have perfected their art through experience as film editors before achieving the position of director.

Someone must organize this team of specialists into a team. That is the function of the producer. In some cases the producer works independently. He will then choose a script in which he be­lieves, engage a director and actors and technicians, allow them to use their creative gifts to make the picture, and then sell the final product to exhibitors, or release it through one of the major studios.

In other cases a major studio will produce the picture, the story of which is chosen by the studio executives and then assigned for production to a producer on the staff. Some directors attain so much prestige that they actually function as producer-directors of their films, e.g. John Huston, Fred Zinneman, George Stevens. Some  directors write, produce and direct their own pictures, e.g., Fellini, Bergman and Kurosawa. These pictures generally have a unity and integrity far above the usual product.

Kurosawa

 

Even the so-called low budget moving picture costs a consider­able amount of money to produce; so there must be a business man involved in the production. The producer is the business man of the team. He must obtain the production money.

Few individuals have enough money to finance a major moving picture production. The money is invested by a corporation, borrowed from a bank or supplied by a major studio. This method of financing brings about problems for the producer and the artists. Since the moving pic­ture industry is a business as well as an art, the business men may try to impose their will over the artistic men for business reasons. One of the functions of the producer is to defend the artistic integrity of the creative people from Interference by the business people, This is often very difficult to do. The producer will sometimes have to compromise, and this is a real detriment to realizing the artistic ideals of the moving picture. This problem is most severe in com­mercial television, where the final decision may be made by some­one who is primarily concerned with selling a product through the medium, rather than perfecting an artistic achievement in the me­dium.

Because so many people can influence the final product, it is essential that each specialist be free to function in his own field and that no one invade another's field. While each is dependent on the other team members, still other people can sabotage their efforts. An actor or the director can misinterpret the writer's dialog or characterization; the camera may miss the gesture of the actor; the editor may cut out his best scene or play it off another actor. If the cameraman wants to Invade the writer's area or the actor wants to take over in the director's realm, or even if the script supervisor fails to correct a wrong line of dialogue or fails to record a scene, the picture could fail. Each person involved must give himself to the idea of the picture as a whole and to the director's interpreta­tion. The producer must keep the team working in unison.

In spite of the pitfalls of production, the teams often work in perfect harmony. When they do, films which enrich us are the happy result. We will take up the contributions of various artists and technicians in more detail. We must emphasize here, how­ever, the key element in realizing the potential for good of the moving picture:

Part 1- What's Art?

To really appreciate films, we must first try to understand what is ART 

WHY ART?




Art is not a luxury but a necessity for man, a necessity arising from his very nature.

 Man is not a machine which can be turned on and off; he is a being with immanent life, functioning 24 hours a day.

But man is a limited being, so he must have rest and re­creation and relaxation in order to restore his energies. And above all man is an intelligent being; he is the only creature of earth able to reflect on himself and the world around him. He must feed his mind with ideas and his imagination with vision as well as feed  his body with food and restore it with rest. Art fills that need in man for ideas and visions.



Man is not manufactured, not put together by forces outside himself; rather, he develops according to his nature, by his own acts, through his own experiences and sharing the experiences of other men, and according to the ideals and visions of life and of man which he shares with other men. The more truly human ex­periences a man has, the higher his ideal of man, the clearer his vision of man, the more of a man he will become.

Since man is a limited being, his actual experiences of life will be limited. However, through works of art he can have vicarious human experiences; and if a novel, a poem, a painting, a song or a drama is a truly human experience, honestly recreated, it will help a man grow as a man. It will help him understand himself and the world around him.


Fictional art is sometimes called "an escape from reality” This is not wholly true. In a sense art is an "escape into reality."

If we would truly understand life we must see it whole; that is, it must have a beginning, a middle and an end. But in our own lives we do not see life whole; we see only the middle.

 We come into life after it begins and we have to leave before it is over. For in­stance: John F. Kennedy and Winston Churchill lived lives which will affect the lives of millions of other men. However, neither Mr. Kennedy nor Mr. Churchill could fully understand their own lives and their effect on the world. They were too much involved, too close to the events which they shaped and which shaped them.

Some day an artist will come along who will write a book or make a moving picture of the lives of Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Churchill, with a beginning, a middle and an end. Then those who read it or see it will understand that life and understand more about all of life.

That is why Aristotle says that a work of art must have a begin­ning, a middle and an end; only then can it help us to see life whole and to understand life.