A Filmmaker’s Inheritance
Film is not made in a vacuum, but is a result of the various forms of expression. Kurosawa, Miyazaki, and others will tell the beginners to cultivate a rich life and memory. Every form of art stretches a creative muscle that is not involved in yet supply and amplifies the strength of others, like how arm stretches are good for the head. Yet, we have forgotten this, often taking film, and other art forms, for granted.
What is art? I have a few definitions:
Organization: It is the appreciation, negative or positive, of everything around us, the organization of emotional properties (what we know, observe, feel, and relate to) and appropriation of physical matter (clay, letter, etc). Thus an artform is a specific method of appreciation, organization, and appropriation, each a treasure and tradition. God organizes the formless into a form, the void into a voice. We are but arrangers of the toys God gave us, and we use the toys to emphasize something about the toy we are using, for all expressions are in of themselves expressions of the Truth. Sculpture says something different about reality than Literature.
Imitation: For God created, thus do we create. For God creates out of love and joy, thus do we create to appreciate that love and joy. For God tells the truth of the tragic situation, so do we imitate the forms and, from a distance hopefully, the essence, of the tragic situation to understand it.
Personalization: God’s art is His love, wisdom, and truth made manifest. Likewise, all of our human art is a personalization, for we are all unique persons. One might wonder, how are we imitating God if there is One Truth and many personalities in the human race? Well, though there is One Faith and One Truth, that of Jesus Christ, there are many expressions of that. Only Jesus Christ perfectly imaged God (For He is the Image of God, for He is the Son of God, God the Son, like Father like Son). We are all pieces that point to God. We are all unique, for, apart from heresies and cults, God expresses His love through many variations.
Celebration: God sings over us, if indeed if we are His, and He creates out of the pleasures of His good-will. Did not Adam sing and compose a poem when he first met Eve? Are not children, hopefully, the result of a man and a woman expressing their love and trust for one another? Are not drawings from children the expression of their love for things?
Preservation: When we make a work of art, we are remembering something through our act of making, imitating, personalizing, and/or celebrating. Many poems are written to preserve the processing of an intense emotional moment, and many paintings are made to celebrate the anniversary of something. Many, if not all, works of art are heightened glimpses of a moment in time, whether in History or mystory.
Where does film come from then? It comes from a combination of Music, Literature, Drama, Dance, Painting, Sculpture, and Photography.
Music: The use of sound and arrangement of notes expressed through instruments vocal and/or built to highlight and listen to emotions, realities, subconscious, and thoughts of a situation. In the beginning, God spoke, He sang. The language of the Word. The emphasis of rhythm, pace, and sound. The imitation of pure feelings. The celebration of what we hear and the unspeakable depths of something or someone.
Literature: The use of language, prosaic and poetic, written and spoken, rhythmic or plain, to convey universal and/or unspoken truths. God is the Word, thus all literature and language is the imitation of the Word. The music of language. The emphasis of words and intention. The imitation of thought and thoughts. The celebration of those thoughts and ideas embodied, indeed packaged, in sound.
Drama: The use of embodied actions and language to bring focused, staged, or platformed witness to something we’ve felt and seen in our daily lives. We call something Dramatic, I think, because personalities and their consequential choices are involved. The emphasis and imitation of action and choices. The celebration of living and activity.
Dance: The use of bodily movement set to rhythm, pace, and musical melody (A lot of the time, though not always) to convey the music of movement, the poetry of life. How the planets dance to gravity, how the righteous dance to Jesus Christ! The emphasis, imitation, and celebration of movement itself.
Painting and Drawing: The use of two-dimensional forms conveyed through pencil, pen, or brush, as well as color, light, and shades to project show an interpretation of what we all can see. Twenty artists will paint, not only due to skill but also due to perspective and interpretation, the same flower twenty different ways. How God paints a picture for us and gave us this basic skill, to draw, in order to convey, and symbols, such as letters and basic forms, to convey something easier! The emphasis, imitation, and celebration of outlines and forms.
Sculpture: The use of three-dimensional forms conveyed through clay, metal, and other physical material to showcase, more directly and embodied. The same function as two-dimensional art. The emphasis, imitation, and celebration of physical matter.
Photography: The use of the physical world, whether in poses or unrehearsed images, to convey a personal, historical, and/or interpretive moment. The emphasis and celebration of visible reality. The imitation of non-imitation, of having truly seen.
Film clearly integrates all of them. An edited sequence is the music of the eyes, drama documented with the camera’s eye, a presentation of moving, dancing forms, often photographic.
With all of these traditions and expressions mixed, how is Film unique?
Film is the organization, celebration, preservation, and appreciation of image, movement, and rhythm through either analog or digital frames. It is the personalization of many people of every department that it takes to make one film, for everyone’s choices lead up to the final picture. The emphasis of preserved moving observations and arrangement.
