hyper-cinema manifesto
As cinema's established structures, methods, and tools for creation and distribution are reaching an Armageddic shift, we rejoice at its eminent demise! As filmmakers, we are painfully aware that current practices have not kept up with the advances in technology, and that they shackle us to archaic and restricting dogma.
We rejoice that the individual no longer need bow down to bureaucratic and unwieldy structures, born from the necessities of the technological limitations of the past. That we may get closer to expressing the essence or our initial inspiration, intent or story.
We embark on a journey to redefine the entire cinematic experience away from its place within the BROADCAST structure (BROADCAST, as defined by Gene Youngblood), back into a medium of inter-personal storytelling that facilitates and fulfills human needs rather than dictating them. A cinema that bypasses the socioeconomic and administrative movie making machine, a gauntlet that turns many a film into just another watered down and unsuspecting vehicle for the “big message.”
In order to make this journey, we must first break the shackles that bind us to formulas that regurgitate the mindset of anachronistic socio-political structures and keep us indebted to agenda-laden, corporate-influenced funding systems.
We are shackled! Constrained by the mandatory festival circuit, the marketing and distribution models. Made to feel obliged to use unwieldy procedures with large crew requirements that are no longer needed, and only serve to hinder the process (as well as maintain financial dependency.) Brainwashed by the geriatric maxims ingrained by film schools that breed inadvertent conduits for the Broadcast and perpetuate costly procedures that help sustain and maintain an economic subjugation to the machine that holds the right to approval.
For this journey, we will pack lightly, carrying only the tools we may need along the way.
1. We begin by eliminating the practices that have been developed as ways of dealing with extinct technologies - ones that required the division of labor because of the cumbersomeness of the “ancient” tools, the specialization and subsequent segregation of the creative and expressive process.
The mammoth cinema making machine will be pared down to its essential elements by reducing the variables at every possible moment. By re-evaluating current procedures juxtaposed against the actual requirements of the newly emerged technologies as it relates to the project at hand, we will then employ only the essentials.
However, we have no intention of throwing everything out and starting anew. We keep procedures and natural hierarchies that still empirically hold true. This is not an anything goes approach. The idea is to simplify, and not complicate the process .
2. We must redefine the entire cinematic experience around today’s emerging technologies.
In production, today's rapid development of camera technology points to new and unexplored possibilities for the camera person – abilities that allow them to actively participate in the action, interact with the performers in the scene, and effectively immerse the viewer even more fully in the experience.
We are designing and prototyping a new camera so as to fully explore these new possibilities.
In post-production, the division between editor, graphic and effects artist, colorist and finisher has been made obsolete by today’s technology, as is evident by the practices adopted here at i^3, where the division between production and post-production is also being questioned.
A single integrated and lean system can now accomplish tasks that once needed many separate departments and different companies.
Because of this, the creative process never needs to be curtailed at any specific stage of the timeline because of procedural or large budgetary restrictions. Everything from concept, to production, to post-production, to distribution, as well as the total back-story, which may at times be indistinguishable from the behind the scenes story, becomes part of one dynamic creative experience. Writing, shooting, re-writing, editing, re-shooting, re-etc. does not compromise efficiency because it is part of the technique.
3. We must redefine content creation, presentation and context around this new cinematic experience.
Unencumbered by the gauntlet authors have to walk through while manifesting their visions cinematically, we have the freedom to redefine cinema as the medium it can now evolve to:
*A cinema where the initial transition from theater to film can finally be completed, where the conventions of theater that were adopted because of the limitations of the early cameras and tools, can be recognized as compromises that can finally be made optional a century later. Dictums like those that hold the stage borrowed third person perspective as sacrosanct, where “breaking the fourth wall” is not just a novel theatrical concept, but a basic and essential part of cinematic vernacular. Where holding a scene for as long and steady as possible so as to not remind the viewers that they are watching a movie, is finally discarded as bullshit, or at least an easy trick, and new more cinematic specific techniques for holding immersion can be developed. On and on…
*A cinema where the viewer can experience an information environment that will incite their imagination and is as immersive and interactive as today’s technology will allow.
* A cinema were a new kind of camera person can emerge as a more intrinsic part of the action - as a performer interacting with the actors and capturing scenes from a first person experience, enabling a more immersive experience for the viewer. We are calling this “method camera.” More on this, as well as examples, later.
* A cinema where a new kind of actor, as well, will be emerging because of these new possibilities, performers that are more and more engaged in the whole process.
Where method acting, the technique in which actors identify as closely as possible with the character played by correlating experiences from their personal lives to the character, can be taken to a new level. Where we can create cinematic environments in which performers can live out their characters as much as is safely possible - performers that are, in effect, an integral part of the writing, conceptualizing, and creative process.
*A cinema where the script is not god but simply the spark that ignites the dialog. Meant to adapt to creative opportunities that arise through the process itself and the talents involved, and to reflect and respond to the current ever changing, and often times compelling internal and external social climate.
These are some of the head shifts, stylistic and procedural techniques, and tools we are developing that enable us to help redefine the entire cinematic experience.
- Arturo
