Week Beginning 7th Dec

An easy start to the week with no classes on Monday. Tuesday was a screening of "This film is not yet Rated". I found this film rather fascinating to watch. First up, it was very very funny in places, especially in the description of what is permissable in each classification. Second it raised some interesting issues, albeit in a very one-sided and polemical fashion. There were some things which it presented which I heartily concurred with. (1) There is no need for the ridiculous levels of security and privacy surrounding the voters. (2) The high handed attitude of the MPAA and their unwillingness to reason out the issues, enter into dialogue with the film-maker and supply information is also needless, bullying and ultimately counter productive. (3) The make-up of the voting members from the laity rather than from specialised professions, such as phsychologists, sociologists, film-makers even councillors and politicians is foolish and makes a virtue of ignorance. It also taps into the mythical notion of "normality" and "the real world".
Having said that, there were also certain areas in which I disagreed with the film, or at least didn't support it as much as I might have been expected to. The implication that sex - with all the array of fetishes that go along with it - is safe for anyone and everyone to see is, I believe, false. I just yesterday read an articule about G.K. Chesterton, author and journalist from last century. He has a quote: "All healthy men, ancient and modern, Western and Eastern, hold that there is in sex a fury that we cannot afford to inflame; and that a certain mystery must attach to the instinct if it is to continue delicate and sane". I think our culture is significantly too free and easy with something so elemental, raw and powerful as sex. Further, I think the argument of "artistic freedom" only goes so far. Zam was talking about genre, and how within a genre movie, each scene can have a different genre, for example within a horror film, we can have a romance scene, a comedy scene, a thriller scene, and action scene or a social drama scene. Similarly, in pretty much any genre of movie produced today, we can have a scene in the pornographic genre. Seeing two characters, naked, simulating sex (or indeed actually doing it - though that is a whole new kettle of fish) and letting the camera languidly linger on them as they do so, is, in my book, pornography, and is (insofar as I am going to generalise) a Bad Thing. If for no other reasons than the objectification of women, the exploitation of young desperate wannabe actresses and the cynical attempt to sell a poor or average film on the back of an pornographic section.

I could write oodles more about it, but I feel I should curb my rant and move on - just after one final thought. The thing I just didn't get was the NC-17 rating itself. Why do cinemas not show such films? Is it because they tend to be pornographic and small-town America would not stand for their local cinemas showing porno pictures? After all, looking at the British system, we are even more strict. A lot of the films they rate as R we would rate as 18 (even stricter that NC-17). Yet cinemas still show such films and although they won't do so well as lower-certificate film, they will still draw in enough profits to make them worthwhile. This seemed to be the missing piece in the jigsaw.

Wednesday and Thursday morning were a class with Zam, looking at genre: in particular at comedy, and how that has manifested itself in different ways over the decades. Certain films I found vastly funnier than others, but we saw that the key things were the set up and the punchine; the reaction - better being underplayed; the timing of the reveal; the pacing of the scene and the turnaround in where the audience thinks the scene is going.

Thursday afternoon was editing: just a case of viewing and annotating footage ready for the assesment next week.

Friday was a screening of some of the films DFTV have done over the last year. The two that really stood out for me were "Slag" and "Little Clown". It would be nice to see more external projects being done by more people.

From Friday - well from Thursday, really - I have been knocked out by a flu or cold from which I am only just recovering. Very nasty. Today I feel like I have been run over by an elephant (or arguably a herd of giant squirrels) but I no longer feel infected, so hopefully I shall be able to get back on form for tomorrow.