Post Preduction Editing

Last weeks class completely changed my conception on the way that the film making process is carried out. When you take into account the ways in which the allotted financial backing for a motion picture is distributed, you begin to associate the bulk of the film making process to the actors. I always thought that the director created a script and a basic outline for scene placement and filming styles and relied on the hired actors and camera crew to bring the story to life. After watching the bonus disc features from the Star Wars and Lord of the Rings trilogies, it seems that the actors, themselves, are one of the least important aspects of the film making process overall. If you think about it, it’s really kind of hard to validate the amount that actors are paid these days. The way that Lucas and Jackson were talking, they could take stock footage with seemingly anyone standing in on the roles they created and use post production processes to make a masterpiece.

The discussion from last week got me thinking about the future of acting as a career. I was discussing the idea that, eventually, advancing computer technologies and financial demand will cause the acting profession to disappear. Why would a company supply the money to pay expensive and demanding actors when a director could use computer graphics to create the same cinematic experience for a fraction of the price? As soon as we are able to create computer generated graphics that are indistinguishable from real flesh and bone, I believe that those who make a living on acting careers will be part of the unemployed.

The most fascinating part of last week’s lecture, in my opinion, was the section from the Return of the King that gave an account of the crew that ventured from place to place using various materials to bring a scene to life through sound. I am probably not the only person that doesn’t give much credit to the sound aspect of a movie apart from the accompanying music score. As dumb as it probably seems, I have never actually thought about the sound clips as an entity separate from the images they are incorporated with and certainly never considered the time it times to create them. In my mind, it kind of seemed like the process of creating the images that I see on screen produced the sounds that give them detail; as if the creation of one automatically led to the creation of the other. I’m pretty amazed by how naïve I was to the process.

After being educated on the amount of work that sound technicians are assigned for each motion picture, I can’t help but wonder why there are no awards that serve to recognize the work those teams undertake. Aside from the team that assembles the filmed shots and sound clips to make the final product, I think that the sound crew has one of the most important and time consuming job in the entire film making process.

Class Begins

I'm not quite sure what I expected a class on film to be like, but it somehow managed to take me by surprise. The first day of the semester served as an introduction to moving pictures in general. It seems kind of odd to me to think back to the days when film making was just getting started; when things that we take for granted now were someone's groundbreaking ideas. It's sort of like trying to imagine how you would live life in a world without automobiles, electricity, or even simple tools. We have grown up simply associating these complex things as a common part of life, in much the same way that we overlook and even expect advanced film techniques and dazzling special effects. I can not imagine the reaction of a crowd the first time they witnessed a moving picture with sound any more than I could imagine the thrill of taking the first ride in a motorized vehicle or receiving the first call on a telephone.

To appreciate where we are I guess it's fitting to learn where we came from, but I will never be able to fully appreciate the technology that I use daily. If you think about it, there hasn't really been anything that's happened to our generation, technology wise, that was so groundbreaking that it managed to capture the attention of the world and drastically alter the way people live their lives and interact with each other. The technologies we use today are just upgrades of the technologies that were around when we were born. Sure, the internet is faster and of course cell phones can do things unimagined to generations that came before, but those are concepts that we have grown up with. Perhaps something will come along in my generation that changes life as we know it, much the way automobiles do in the early teens and the plow did in the days of the pioneers.

I was looking through Doug's first blog because, well, the kid just interests me. He got me thinking back to my first encounters with film. As sad as it seems, I believe that the first movie I ever watched was Babe and after that, I don't remember watching anything until my mom drug me along to watch Titanic. It's odd for me to think back to that day at the movies where I was so bored that I ended up falling asleep. It's amazing how oblivious kids are to the world sometimes. I could never have guessed, at that age, that I was watching one of the most popular and highest grossing movies in history. I think the world would be a wonderful place if everyone viewed the world through the honest mind of a child.