Uncle Jazzbeau’s Gallimaufrey

dv (is) not film

An entry over on the 2 Blowhards got me to thinking. No, thinking is too strong a word. Rather it set me to ruminating: chewing the cud, free associating. One of the two, Michael, went and saw Once Upon a Time in Mexico and didn't have a good time. That's OK. Probably lots of reasons for that. (I haven't seen the flicker in question and so I'll refrain from defending or dismantling it.) Are movies shot on DV different than those shot on film? Well, yes, but no, too. You should really just go and read his entry and then the comments. Suffice it to say, I was struck in the same way by the critical apparatus that Rudolf Arnheim erected to explain the aesthetic differences between silent movies and the talkies. You know the drill, expressionism (B&W, silent, montage) versus realism (color, sound, mise-en-scène). I've certainly seen movies that originated on DV that could've been shot on good old-fashioned film: e.g., Italiensk for begyndere. And, I think that the problems of a movie like Attack of the Clones had little to do with its origins in DV; cf. the similar problems in The Phantom Menance. I think that Michael's criticisms have more to do with how the movie was lighted, shot, edited, written, directed, etc., than what medium the images were stored on. One thing that was brought up in the comments, is whether there exists a pattern language (à la Christopher Alexander) for the movies. I think there is, but I've never really cared for most of the patterns you could describe using it. There's a pattern that a friend pointed out to me after Gladiator hit the screens: why are there so many gasoline bomb explosions in movies today that are supposed to take place in antiquity. The answer is because they look neat, and the folks in Hollywood know how to make them. Roger Ebert has been collecting these (anti-)patterns for years. (It's always been a fine line between genre and formula.)