From: db (email suppressed)
Date: Sun Jul 02 2006 - 11:13:14 PDT
On Jul 2, 2006, at 8:47 AM, Anna Biller wrote:
> If you were shooting an HD movie, you would probably not want
> people to think it was a quicktime movie.
Well, actually, it most likely is a quicktime movie. Just a high
resolution quicktime movie.
So maybe "movie" is the most appropriate generalist term at this
point in time.
On Jul 2, 2006, at 7:44 AM, Anna Biller wrote:
> I don't think video has to have that connotation. People usually
> refer to HD video as HD, which makes people know that it's not low
> quality video.
I'm not particularly interested in "redirecting" the focus of this
thread (does that make me a filmmaker? sorry, bad pun), but this
nebulous subject of "quality" represents a pet peeve of mine. Namely,
that format choice has anything to do with "quality." In the sense of
"characteristics" and physical makeup, I suppose one could call these
differences "qualities," but there's work that was made on 1/2" open
reel of tremendous quality and value if one tosses aside the material
composition of the medium. When "format" trumps content, I become
quickly disinterested because that only leads to the feedback loop
(no pun intended, though it is a good one) of
video will never be film
who says it needs to be?
but video will never be film
who says it even wants to be?
Materialistically, film will never be video and video will never be
film except on the basest level and as a result of "reproduction"
choices (one of my realtime video experiments was transfered to and
projected as film as well as shown on CRTs, and now it exists on DV,
so what is it for me? -- a realtime experiment that is either shown
on CRTs or projected on film). However, being a bit of a materialist
myself, I'm a great fan of works that explore the physical makeup of
the medium or mediums chosen for expression as an essential
characteristic of its "storytelling" path--and I would argue that
storytelling, even in the most abstract of cinematic expression, is a
given.
I was just thinking about this matter in regards to a piece I just
completed. I re-realized that I am far more interested in the
visceral impact of my creation (say, ala Artaud's take on theater)
than I am in storytelling, but there is no way I can deny that there
is a "story" in this work. It represent my chosen path, with
beginning, end, and the things that occur between those two points.
To others, my choices might seem completely arbitrary or beyond their
ken but, for me, there is absolutely nothing arbitrary about my
decisions or the end product.
But I do call it a video because at no point was it ever anything but
electronically generated. And I would probably call it a film if I
had it transfered and projected that way. But if someone were to ask
how it was created, I would probably qualify that designation by
saying it started as a video but I am projecting it on film, and it
is available in either format.
db
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