Absurdity

There's a piece of paper somewhere (I think my Mom has it) that is worth roughly $200,000, not counting the other tens of thousands it took to keep me alive long enough to get it - which, incidentally, took 16 years of effort. This piece of paper says that I am a certified Renaissance Man by today's standards, and by the considerably high standards of the last institution that trained me. This piece of paper also officially declares me a valued asset to society, a card-carrying member of the intellectual elite, an asset that has been crafted from an incredible societal investment of physical resources, financial capital, and time.

Nine months after having achieved this milestone, and I can officially say that Rahm Emmanuel lied to me in his speech to my graduating class. No one is looking for liberal arts majors. No one cares. All that work, all those years, all that money - all to make a man who can't even get part-time retail work without stiff competition from more desirable teenagers.

Was it worth it? Well, of course it was worth it. The journey, not the destination. The document I worked so hard to get is actually costing me money now that I have it, which if I remember correctly is the exact opposite of what the product description claimed it would do. But the things I learned, the people I met, and the places I travelled in my epic quest to earn it have been worth every penny, every tear, and every sleepless night.

I wasn't even in the top tier of my fellow classmates and I know more about the art of film than Steven Spielberg or Ron Howard ever care to demonstrate. I know more about the economics and social impact of globalization, capitalism, and industrialization than any of the people who are deemed more qualified to become agents ("Sales Associates") of the market. I understand environmental issues better than Al Gore and Michael Pollan combined. I can write poetry, screenplays, essays, blog posts, and prose better than I can masturbate (and I've been doing the latter for longer).

I just wish any of those things could pay my rent and my bills.

3D And What It Will Do to The Art of Filmmaking

There was a period of time in cinema that is remarkably parallel to the current situation with the advent of 3D - scratch that, the belated acceptance and current infatuation with 3D. That period of time was, of course, the introduction of sound. There was a strong sentiment in the filmmaking community that sound would ruin the art, and perhaps even kill it. Looking back on it now, you have every reason to chuckle and think, "Those short-sighted morons." Obviously, film is still around, and is still relevant. The thing is, though, for a while, those people were totally right - if you substitute "ruin" with "suddenly and irrevocably change."

When sound hit the mainstream way back in the late 1920s, it dealt a devastating blow to the arts of cinematography and editing that the industry did not recover from until the French New Wave in the 1960s (some might even argue that it still hasn't recovered). Early sound opened a veritable Pandora's Box of technical problems that required significant compromises in order to adequately compensate:

• Cameras were big, noisy machines, which posed an irksome head scratcher: how do you mic the actors without also recording the incredibly loud camera? The solution was to encase these cameras in a housing that served as a silencer. The problem with this solution was that this housing was big and bulky, which meant cameras could no longer move. This necessitated increased reliance on controlled environments, i.e. sound stages, and the innovation of multi-camera shoots. But it was the inability to move the camera that really dug a knife into the art of cinematography. Having a camera restricted to sound stages and bolted to the ground is like tying a soccer player's legs together. Sure, it inspired some innovation. But it harmed artistic creativity more than it helped.
• Microphones sucked back in the day, which meant that actors had to limit their movements, often in unrealistic ways, even with the innovation of boom poles.
• Most importantly, the conundrum of synchronizing sound sent shock waves through the realms of cinematography and editing. Primarily, the question of what the audience would be able to understand stacked the cards heavily in favor of continuity editing. The more innovative forms of editing and cinematography simply didn't have the advantages that continuity editing offered in this regard: simple, uncomplicated shots and straightforward editing meant that the sources of sound had minimal chance of being confused. "Invisible editing" made it easier for audiences to comprehend the new sound environment, and in any case, more avant-garde cinematic styles relied heavily on techniques that were no longer possible with sound equipment.

To illustrate the difference, I'm posting two samples that epitomize the best of both eras. The first is a short film by Dimitri Kirsanoff called Menílmontant, a personal favorite of mine. This film is considered a part of the Impressionist movement - the cinematic one, somewhat different than the one involving paintbrushes and canvas. I briefly considered posting a surrealist classic like Un Chien Andalou, but then I decided it would be a somewhat unfair comparison. Menílmontant is a narrative film, realized in a style that was equal in prominence to the continuity style it would eventually succumb to.

This film makes use of an old Soviet style of editing known as the montage style, a style that has seen a bizarrely mutated resurgence over the past decade in the form of intensified continuity editing (i.e., The Bourne Identity style). To grossly summarize, montage editing (and no, not related to the kind of montage where a hero learns how to fight) involved putting together pieces of a whole that were never seen together in the same shot, the idea being that the mind would understand the bigger picture through the association of the pieces. Note the breathless pace of this film nonetheless creates a slower, dreamier aesthetic. Also note that the cinematography in this film is quite original and creative, choosing shots that are timelessly unusual and wonderful.

Representing the talkie is a classic that made more original use of sound than pretty much any of its contemporaries, pioneering such clever techniques as the sound bridge (using sound to transition from one shot/scene to the next) and the sound cue (a repeated motif associated with a character or event). This film is, of course, M by Fritz Lang - a filmmaker who, interestingly enough, was also a master of the silent era's German Expressionist movement.

It's important to keep in mind that this film was above average in visual creativity for its time, incorporating some elements that were reminiscent of Lang's expressionist roots. Nonetheless, the limitations sound placed on filmmaking are clearly evident. The camera feels stiffer, and movement is restricted to tracks and cranes. A large portion of the sound elements were dubbed separately, and there are moments where the sound cuts out altogether. While there is still some inventive editing, the image has been simplified.

The consequences of this shift were far-reaching. Various forms of continuity editing dominated the world, and the severe restrictions placed on the camera and the editor led to many interesting stylistic innovations. Lighting became the creative outlet in film noir, and the long take, though never really replacing associative edits as the primary form of establishing space, nonetheless rose to prominence with such filmmakers as Max Ophuls, Jean Renoir, and the magnificent Jacques Tati. But, for a long time, filmmakers seemed as they had utterly forgotten the wealth of variety and unbridled creativity that reached its zenith in the early 1920s. It wasn't until experimental filmmakers like Stan Brackhage and New Wave auteurs like Jean Luc Godard and Agnès Varda that the medium found itself swimming in brazen creativity, and then the Americans arrived slightly late to the party with heavyweights like Stanley Kubrick and Robert Altman hitting their stride.

It seemed, though, that fast editing had been left in the dust - that is, until American action movies started to do a funny thing: they started incompetently incorporating ancient montage techniques to make fist fights, car chases, and shootouts nearly incomprehensible. To be sure, there have been a few shining talents who have revitalized the fast edit as a legitimate art form. Darren Aronofsky and, to a lesser extent, Terrence Malick, Ridley Scott, and Christopher Nolan have all used insanely fast edits in their films that enhance rather than detract from the experience (though The Dark Knight got lazy and featured a lot of really shitty action editing, and Ridley has been guilty of overdoing it as well). But the predominant use of fast editing looks something like this:

Which brings me, finally, to the issue of 3D and how it relates to all of this. Well, I wouldn't go so far as to say that 3D is as significant as sound, because I really doubt 3D will become so standard that every movie made, down to our home videos, will feature it. But it is nonetheless a major change that will affect the way films are made. Some will be temporary changes; the current cost of shooting in 3D ensures that there will be a higher likelihood that 3D projects won't be a colossal waste of everyone's time. In other words, blockbusters may temporarily be more like Avatar than Transformers. But there are some long term changes I'm sure we'll see, and as with the introduction of sound, I think it will kill off some stylistic techniques for a long time to come that we will definitely miss and some that we are much better off not having around.

• 3D is incredibly visually stimulating, but it is also a lot of work for your eyes to understand. It comes closer to mimicking how we actually see the world, without granting the viewer the ability to change where the image is focused. Consequently, the cinematographer has to make sure that they are composing their shots such that your eye won't find itself in constant disagreement with the film as to where it wants to be looking. This means that composing for anything but the center of the frame (and a simple, bold composition to boot) will quickly go out of vogue, since it is a lot harder to pay attention to the edges of a 3D frame than otherwise. More importantly, putting such an emphasis on the intelligibility of the shot will give filmmakers little room to experiment with composing shots with the intent of communicating subtext. If you want to put two characters on the far extremes of the frame to communicate emotional distance, well, too bad, that will be a little painful to the eyes.
• Relatedly, 3D only really comes to life when a shot has a long depth of field, something rarely seen in modern films. Hollywood composes mostly flat shots, probably because they are easier and faster to shoot, and don't require any of the meticulousness often required for shots of the kind that made Citizen Kane famous. Avatar really popped on screen in shots staring down a long corridor, for instance, when you could suddenly appreciate all the levels of depth. In contrast, all the facial close-ups didn't look like they were in 3D at all, unless some leaf happened to float by. This will hopefully revitalize cinematography by encouraging more deep focus and lush mise-en-scene instead of lazy, flat shots with lazy tracking movement to compensate for their boringness.
• But by far the most welcome change will surely be the return of sane editing. What impressed me the most about Avatar was that its average shot length must have been close to four seconds - an eternity in the contemporary era! Films like The Bourne Ultimatum and Transformers 2 have an ASL of, like, half a second. You literally blink and miss a whole shot. Obviously, blitzkrieg editing is even more incomprehensible in 3D than it is in 2D; at least in the latter, you can kind of zone out and get a working impression of what must be happening on screen. In 3D, though, your eyes are working overtime to process the image, and bombarding them with a mess of shots stapled together by a sugared-up toddler will make anyone nauseous.
• Unfortunately, this will also once again spell doom for fast, original editing of any sort. No more Requiem for a Dream, no more Natural Born Killers.

I hope that 2D will remain strong, because it will be the last haven for old-school artistry, the kind of brilliance that has been on the decline over the past two decades. And I hope that brilliant young filmmakers that far outstrip James Cameron in his prime will take 3D and innovate it beyond a simple gimmick. It is without a doubt, though, that we are witnessing a seismic shift in the medium.

Japan

Japan is a strange and beautiful place, though I suspect the same can pretty much be said about anywhere. The weirdest things, though, are not the ones everyone knows about (Japanese TV, robots, Engrish, big eyes on literally everything) but the things you'd never expect. For example:

1. Corn and Mayonnaise Pizza

That's right. This is Japan's version of the pepperoni pie: the bog standard, ubiquitous, and most popular flavor of pizza in the country. The fact that it exists is weird enough, but what's weirder is that a) it tastes great (for non-tri-state pizza, anyway), and b) you'll probably have the same amount of luck finding a pepperoni pizza as you would finding someone who likes Jar Jar Binks.

2. Bare Legs - In The Winter

Mind you, this is not SoCal winter, which at its very worst might dip below fifty. This is real winter, where the temperatures are more often mid-forties to high thirties when it's mild. For some reason, the women here just refuse to wear pants. Seeing someone wearing jeans is actually a rarity. Instead, the typical attire involves a heavy (and stylish) winter coat, high heel boots, a short skirt or short shorts, and tights. Often, though, the tights are discarded. And these scrawny little Asian girls don't seem to feel the biting wind one bit!

3. No Breakfast!?

Maybe it's just a Hakone thing, because I'm sure shit like this wouldn't fly in a big cross-cultural metropolis like Tokyo. But apparently, these people simply don't believe that a restaurant's duty should involve breakfast. The earliest they'll open is 10:00 am, and they'll often have their final serving at 7:30 pm. Which, relatedly, reminds me of my experience in Denver, where it seems the practice of serving lunch is verboten.

4. No Sausage!?

Well, not exactly. But sausage is incredibly difficult to find, apparently. Certainly not in a grocery store, so if you want to cook using sausage while in Japan, be prepared to work very hard to get it.

5. Traffic Cops

Actually, I'm not sure if they're actually cops, or just dudes in uniforms. Japan loves its uniforms, so it's a little hard to tell who's official and who's just snazzy. Anyway, there are dudes stationed at the entrances of every major parking lot whose job it is to tell the driver when it's safe to enter the street or enter the driveway/parking lot. It doesn't matter how simple of a task it may be, if there's a commercial parking lot or driveway, there's also a poor schmuck in uniform telling people information that should be obvious if you have eyes.

6. No Tips

This shouldn't be a surprise to anybody who has travelled outside the states, but tipping is generally a peculiar behavior in the eyes of the rest of the world. Try to tip someone in Japan, and they'll patiently attempt to explain to you (in as polite a manner as possible) that your math is atrocious.

7. Shitty, Shitty Maps

Cartography never caught on over here. The train and bus maps omit the names of stops, clutter the page with useless and contradicting information, and in the case of bus maps, are sometimes put on the wrong stop. Regular maps aren't to scale and don't actually look anything like what they're supposed to be a map of. Navigation is a bitch.

Well. Seven was a good enough number for God, so it's good enough for me. If anything else weird crops up, it'll definitely be posted here.

Youth

We stood together under doorways,
under moonlit autumn skies
and pregnant winter clouds
waiting.

We waited in mediocre restaurants,
in long, rickety trains
and car rides we both remember
for reasons we’ll never really understand.

We waited mere feet apart
in magnetic lock
and all those places looked the same,
painted for the blind by the echoes
of reluctant goodbyes
we each hoped would get the point across.

What were we thinking, I wonder.

We, standing there,
     staring
and waiting.