Day One

The first day of film class begins and as soon as I sit down I realize, with a drop of my stomach, that I don’t know anything about filmmaking or the history behind it. After a minute of thinking about this fact, I come to the conclusion that everything will be fine as long as I pay attention and stay enthusiastic. I’m excited but scared at the same time, honestly. I think I’ll be okay at analyzing films, but the whole creating a film is a bit daunting to me. There are so many different possibilities in film making--so many different stories you can tell, ways you can tell the same story, characters you can introduce to the audience, and places you can take the audience even if just for an hour or so. I wouldn’t know where to begin, but that is what class is for after all: to learn.
I began to think about perspective a lot as a result of class and the discussions of how film evolved through the different techniques used. Film gives us a different set of eyes. We have no choice in the matter in what we see. We see what we are shown and we hear what we are subjected to. Your eyes and ears are no longer yours during a film. While I would argue that watching a movie or a show is a more passive form of entertainment than reading for example (in that you, the audience, are subjected to the visual and audio experience within the film), I think it is perhaps the most personal form of expression for the filmmaker. It takes a tremendous amount of creativity and vision to create a film (I’m guessing anyway). Through film we experience every sense except smell and because of this; films guide our emotions in a way.
It amazes me how people can create an entire alternate reality within the frame of a movie or show. Film is, in my opinion, the ultimate form of expression for the film makers. They are creating this entire alternate reality for the audience to watch, hear, think, and feel about. Obviously, everyone will not think and feel exactly the same way about a film, but the filmmaker’s vision and purpose is still present. The audience sees not only into the lives of the characters within the film, but into the mind of the filmmaker and everyone contributing to the film. I think that’s also one thing that strikes me the most about film--the connection between filmmaker and audience.