Category Archives: solothink

Inspiration, move me brightly. (Robert Hunter)

the director spirit

10 years ago an ad made a bold statement: EVERYONE IS A DIRECTOR.

Making of Sony Two Worlds from Spy Films on Vimeo.

In the 1960’s this statement would have been ludicrous. Directors were grand masters of a young art-form, explorers of the mystery of movement and the power of story. Directors, at least in Eruope, were an intellectual avant-garde at the edge of all the arts, carrying the torch of inspiration, talent, individuality, genius.

Cinema directors of that time were like shamans, a living conduit between universal questions and small human stories told in frame-by-frame detail. Films often reflected experiences that the mostly grown-up audiences could recognize and identify with.

In a film by Fellini or Kurosawa or Antonioni one could expect to get lost in magical worlds that other arts could not yet access. The master directors blended material, physical and spiritual dimensions in personal, unique manifestos. No other art-form could move so dynamically: the monopoly on moving images, virtual travel, urban escapism and human darkness and dream belonged to the cinema.

Directors held the power to unleash Freudian/Junghian shadow dark sides. The new release by Kurosawa or De Sica was awaited (in almost every country except the United States) with fervor, more than a Lady Gaga show today. Cinema audiences were mostly still unspoiled by a world of inflated, constant, omnipresent imagery and constant swift manipulation and pressure to buy, not think or feel.

FeetyourFilm. Take your movie out for air.

A new cinemahead game: Feeturfilms. Longer than a feature film, further than you can walk alone.

It’s a contest for taking films around the world by foot or bike. You take a film. You take it with you, and hand it off to someone.

Yes, let’s look at a film Launch again. “Launching” means PR distribution campaings, big events and shiny lights. But what if filmmakers played along and let go of a film altogether? A film, in any format preferrably small (like USB) can be released into the environment in a dynamic way, meaning that a launch should allow the “vehicle” to carry on, to keep moving. To Launch is to let go in a way that the film (in whatever forms it is) keeps moving.

“Launching” a film the FeeturFilm way is not a radical event, not unlike “premiering” a film in a small town festival. You present your work, you answer some questions about your process, and you meet the people whom your film has just met.

A Launch could be leaving a film on a parkbench in a central park, in a visible place where it is likely to get picke up and moved forward. Launch packets can have QR codes for those who want info. A launch can be anywhere, but the idea is that it not be ignored, but rather spark an action-reaction chain that sets the film in motion, on its own feet.

Feeturfilms are longer than feature films. They go the whole way, they can go around the world even, but they travel slow: no engines, no fossil fuels, no inorganic waste.

Feeturfilms walk your way if you can give them a hitch, a ride, or just stick them in your pocket as far as you can go with them.

Think Geocaching.
you go treasure hunting for hidden caches armed only with smart GPSs.

Think Natural currents
Dropping a container with a USB drive from a ship into an ocean current to see where it lands. I once saw a golfer hit one off a cruise ship into the gulf current. That was in the 80s..

|| @dannialegi

Are film-makers innovators?

A film-maker is a “maker” in the open-source sense, a tinkerer with old tools and new technologies. Film-makers use familiar and unfamiliar materials to develop personal takes on story and film.

The meaning, as canadian animator Norman McLaren used to say, is between the frames of a film, between the lines, in the changing relationships and tensions between colours, shapes, the dark and light.

There is a lot of learning going on. Sharing knowledge is the smartest most tangible reward a collective society affords its citizens no matter if they are leaders or followers.  
 
Check out this short & funny TED talk about starting a movement.  The first person to follow an idea is just as important as the first person who jumped up and down screaming Eureka!

 

Film-makers are true innovators exploring, digging thru hybrid sources narrative environments to re:mix and share with a crowd they get to kno. Solitary reflections and social encounters. from garage to garage, from lab to classroom, from funded projects to home studios, help feed a landscape of one-of-a-kind miniature film-making platforms bringing together mentors and apprentices, developing and supporting projects and collaborations, encouraging freedom in storytelling and shared making-of experiences.

 

(part 2) Why is this blog called “Movies Without Cameras” ?

One of my favourite philosophy books is “Introduction to Metaphysics” by Henri Bergson, the “cinematic philosopher” who explored matter, memory and motion at the turn of centuries 19 and 20. Bergson saw links between the new art and science of cinema and almost everything around us. He made “Movies without cameras” inside his head.

A century-plus later, we make movies with smartphones, glasses and watches. We make images, that is, not always movies. What is a movie then? Or, as the film school jargon imposes, what is film?

Who are movies made for? Are they for audiences (yes) or for your the pleasure, or personal growth of the makers (also)?

This blog is called “Movies Without Cameras” because it is about thinking about movies and stories, but also about trying to get movies made in a simple and cheap way.

Is this blog for you? Well, this is who I am writing this blog for (the target)

those:

a) trying to say something with your voice as a film (but need an alternative approach?)
B) looking for a niche audience (that can become your crowd?)
C) interested in making movies (with new tech)
D) tired of movies as stars, money and celebrity (…)
E) studying Theory of film (but want to try making one, in Practice?)
F) with a film in post-production (and want feedback?)
G) under 25 years old (and looking for Youth Cinema funding)
H) who are writing scripts
I) looking for skills leading to a job in film & media (less is not more here)

DANIEL

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