From: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com (aml-list-digest) To: aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Subject: aml-list-digest V2 #228 Reply-To: aml-list Sender: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Errors-To: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Precedence: bulk aml-list-digest Tuesday, December 2 2003 Volume 02 : Number 228 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2003 11:41:12 -0700 From: owner-aml-list@lists.xmission.com Subject: [none] [66.1.180.220]) by mimis.host4u.net (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id h9NGXUu17920 for ; Thu, 23 Oct 2003 11:33:30 - -0500 Message-ID: <3F980318.9050106@wwno.com> Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2003 10:34:32 -0600 From: "D. Michael Martindale" Organization: Worlds Without Number User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 (ax; PROMO) X-Accept-Language: en,pdf MIME-Version: 1.0 To: aml-list@lists.xmission.com Subject: Re: [AML] Towards a Mormon Dogme Sender: owner-aml-list@lists.xmission.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: aml-list [MOD: Apologies for the looong delay in posting this, which is entirely my fault. --Jonathan Langford, moderator-in-hiding. Note, by the way, that whatever shows up as the source of this, it was ACTUALLY written by D. Michael Martindale.] Eric Samuelson wrote: > What I think we need is something akin to the Dogme 95 manifesto. Here > is the 'Vow of Chastity' taken by the Dogme 95 filmmakers. I've > included my own comments and suggestions for applications for LDS > filmmakers. > The reasons for Dogme were what they called a 'technological > revolution' which in their opinion was killing film. Often, when humans react to an extreme condition, they go too far to the other extreme. To me, that describes Dogme. Their rules of "natural" filmmaking are as disruptive to effective storytelling as any technological revolution going on in Hollywood. >1. Shooting must be done on location. Props and sets must not be >brought in (if a particular prop is necessary for the story, a location >must be chosen where this prop is to be found). A massive number of stories would be either prohibitively expensive or physically impossible to film following this rule. Would anyone want to see a Dogme adaptation of "Lord of the Rings"? Should Kubrick have gone on location to Jupiter to film "2001"? > Certainly God's Army and Brigham City followed this rule, as did In > the Company of Men. It suggests a certain kind of realism. While using real locations can bring realism to film, I know for a fact that God's Army and Brigham City did not use existing props. Using real locations is a semi-reasonable rule. Bringing no props in is idiocy. >2. The sound must never be produced apart from the images or vice >versa. > >(Music must not be used unless it occurs where the scene is being >shot). It's true that Hollywood films have very controlled sound tracks, which depict natural sound in a very unnatural way. Real sound is very noisy in the background. But not only would that be annoying in every film, it's not how we hear natural sound. We filter out all the background noise. Film sound tracks cannot do that, except by artificially removing it. Hollywood sound tracks are definitely artifical, not natural, sound, but why is that a bad thing? > Although I don't think this rule needs to be rigorously followed by > our filmmakers, I would love to see us getting away from perhaps our > worst cliche, the swelling music underneath backlit long shots. I agree with your assessment of use of music here, but to equate that with rule #2 is a nonsequiter. Rule #2 merely bans it. >3. The camera must be hand-held. Any movement or immobility attainable >in the hand is permitted. This rule would exile my wife from all films. She became physically ill from watching "Blair Witch," and not becauseof its artistic quality. The constantly wiggling image gave her motion sickness. Please, give me a camera on a tripod as the default! >4. The film must be in colour. Special lighting is not acceptable. (If >there is too little light for exposure the scene must be cut or a >single lamp be attached to the camera). > > >5. Optical work and filters are forbidden. Still photographers would guffaw at these rules. They use artificial light and redirect or block natural light and use filters to massage colors all the time. They understand that film does not record images in the same way the human eye sees them, therefore "natural" unmassaged images will look unnatural on film. Optical work is essential for telling many kinds of stories. It's true that movies where the effects are there for their own sake and not for the story. But to ban all effects is a dumb way to solve that problem. >6. The film must not contain superficial action. (Murders, weapons, >etc. must not occur.) This is just politically correct nonsense. > By losing a focus on murder and crime, the Dogme guys have freed > themselves to explore fundamental religious questions. Miracles, > actual religious miracles, are NOT forbidden. The only reason they needed to "free" themselves in the first place is the artifical bias among filmmakers that religious questions and miracles are politically incorrect topics for film. They don't need this pointless rule to free them. They can free themselves simply by rejecting the bias. >7. Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden. (That is to say >that the film takes place here and now.) This may be the most arrogant rule of all. How many legitimate stories are banned by this rule! >8. Genre movies are not acceptable. Oops! This may be the most arrogant rule. >9. The film format must be Academy 35 mm. I don't know why this rule exists, so it's hard for me to comment on it, other than to wonder why we need to canonize any particular film stock. >10. The director must not be credited. While I agree that the "auteur" philosophy of filmmaking that says the film IS the director's is invalid, to refuse any credit to the director is an example of going to the other extreme. I acknowledge the purpose behind Dogme as legitimate, but I think Dogme is as destructive a "cure" as the original disease. It kills films with an anti-technological revolution. > I would add three new rules, and perhaps cut or amend rules 2, 3 and > 9. I would take the sound principles Dogme tries to address, internalize them, and toss the rules. For all time, humanity has suffered under the oppressive hands of Pharisees (even in modern times, even within the latter-day Church). I grow weary of dealing with them. > My rules: 1) I will cast people who look like real people. > 2) I will refrain from preaching. These come across more like sound principles than rules. > 3) At no time in the publicity process will the cost of the film be > mentioned. We're creating art. How much art costs is irrelevant. It's relevant to investors and to other filmmakers, who had better learn the business side of filmmaking if they want to be able to keep making films (just ask Jongiorgi). Not everyone can ply their art under the protective nurturing of a university that shields them from the economic realities of life. > Here's the final part of the Dogme manifesto: > > Furthermore I swear as a director to refrain from personal taste! I am > no longer an artist. Is there any other form of art where the practitioners would think this is a good idea? > I swear to refrain from creating a "work", as I > regard the instant as more important than the whole. That sounds like a recipe for a bad film. The filmmaker had better regard the whole as at least as significant as any of its parts, or only dumb luck can save him from a disaster. Of course, the director may delude himself into believing he's not regarding the whole, while his subconscious intuitively looks after the whole for him. But that's not quite the same thing, is it. > My supreme goal is to force > the truth out of my characters and settings. I swear to do so by all > the means available and at the cost of any good taste and any > aesthetic considerations. This is pure disingenuousness. The rules of Dogme _ban_ many of the means available to accomplish this "supreme goal." Dogme is the plan of Satan applied to filmmaking: "I don't trust myself to be able to implement correct principles of storytelling in film, so I want externally imposed rules to do the policing for me." >Thus I make my VOW OF CHASTITY." This is not a vow of chastity. It's a vow of relinquishment of artistic responsibility. Dogme can be useful if used in the proper way. That would be as an educational experiment to see what the filmmaker can do under such limitations, as a way of learning to slough off the ill effects of Hollywood's technological revolution. But when the laboratory experiments are over and it's time to enact some real filmmaking, Dogme is a cure that is as destructive as the disease it claims to treat. > What I think is, we've created this movement without any kind of > philosophical or theoretical underpinning, and so we're creeping > rapidly towards a mini-Hollywood model. And that seems to me most > unfortunate. I agree with your assessment here, but I think using Dogme as a starting point for an LDS cinematic model is a bad idea. The model should be a loyalty to the story and to truth. All else should be subserviant to that, including the artificially "natural" rules of Dogme. - -- D. Michael Martindale dmichael@wwno.com ================================== Check out Worldsmiths, the new online LDS writers group, at http://www.wwno.com/worldsmiths Sponsored by Worlds Without Number http://www.wwno.com ================================== - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2003 16:15:41 -0600 From: "Bill Willson" (by way of Jonathan Langford ) Subject: Re: [AML] Harry Potter [MOD: My apologies for this post not making it out back when it was originally written, nigh on six weeks (!) ago. --Jonathan Langford] Jacob wins yet another well deserved *WELL SAID!* award. I sent the first one privately, but he is getting so good at it I think he deserves list-wide recognition. Thank you Jacob! I also get weary personal opinions being offered as the Gospel of the Muse. When a simple, *I didn't like it for this reason* would serve the purpose. We all assume what is posted on AML is the poster's own opinion, but IMHO some seem to be trying to establish unwanted or unnecessary standards and restrictions on the craft of writing. This kind of criticism is within reasonable expectations for the responsibility of an English Professor in an English 1010 class, however; I think it is inappropriate criticism for an author of five going on seven best sellers whose residuals for one book alone was over $100 million. I've always said opinions are like belly buttons, we all have them, and each one is unique. What a shame it would be if all the medical schools in the country refused to graduate their obstetricians until they all could tie exactly the same umbilical knot with the same resultant healed mark. Regards, Bill Willson - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 02 Dec 2003 11:05:17 -0600 From: "D. Michael Martindale" (by way of Jonathan Langford ) Subject: Re: [AML] Violence in Movies [MOD: Apologies for the lengthy delay in posting this, which was entirely my fault. --Jonathan Langford] Clay Whipkey wrote: >>From: "Susan Malmrose" >> >>My reaction has always been that I don't >>need to see someone's guts spilling out on a movie screen to understand >>that war is horrible. > > > I totally agree. I can't help but feel that some arguments to support > the value of using violence to teach lessons about violence come from > motivations to justify the secret enjoyment of watching it. Maybe I'm > being too judgmental. I have at times found myself deeply affected by some=20 > violent scene, and in a way that is VERY different from the way I have > been deeply affected by a spiritual experience. Yet, there is some part of > me that kind of enjoyed the dark disruption, but in a way that is acute but > fleeting, akin to the rush of certain sins of the flesh. The titilation > soon gives way to a cold sadness. True, we know war is horrible without experiencing anything about it. Intellectually, it's a no-brainer. What "Private Ryan" did was let us feel deep down in our soul just how horrible it is. By watching it in a movie, all that was required of us was to sit in a comfortable room and experience a recreation of the reality from a safe distance, knowing when it's over we can walk out of the theater and go get some ice cream. Those who go to war have to experience it first hand, and have no clue if they'll experience ANYTHING afterwards. If we all could come to understand the horror of war deep down in our gut like "Private Ryan" helps us to a little bit, we can not only have a deeper appreciation for those who sacrificed for our liberties, but also have a more intense determination to avoid requiring that sacrifice in the future any more than necessary. No amount of intellectual "knowing" about the horrors of war can replace KNOWING deep down. As for the suggestion that those of us who appreciated the experience "Private Ryan" gave us was because we were secretly enjoying a pornographic thrill of violence, then came up with the rationalizations later to justify it, that's about as far from my experience as you can get. My experience was entirely a visceral awareness of how horrible it must have been and a greatly enlarged appreciation for those who lived through it--and died in it--for me. It was an entirely positive, if unsettling, experience. > Some make the claim that there is some geat value in coming to such > realizations about the dark things we are capable of in our worst > moments. > As if that is some unique opporunity to learn or choose the right path. > But I have learned as much from the scriptures, that we are flesh and thus > weak, compounded by constant attacks of temptation and [subtle]distortion of > truths... and if we don't keep these things in check we are capable of > terrible things. Why do people NEED to have those terrible things > described and acted out for me in gruesome detail in order to _get_ that? Because that's how human beings work. If you can come to fully understand life just by reading sermons, you are in an enviable position. Many people aren't that way. Many people need to see it "acted out" before the lesson is internalized. Even if you can "learn it all" through scriptural sermons, there are varying levels of internalization of knowledge that influence how effectively a person implements the lessons in his behavior. For example, if a person sees a film about someone who, in self-righteous arrogance, judges other people whom he sees as lacking, then we are able to see the tragic consequences of his judgmentalism play out on screen, it's very likely to cause us to rethink how we treat other people, even when we are convinced we're right and they're wrong. On the other hand, Christ's sermon "Judge not" doesn't seem to get internalized much at all. I submit sermons are the least effective form of teaching. They only give us abstract platitudes that we must then try to implement in our lives. That they are least effective is illustrated by the fact that even sermons will often include stories to illustrate and drive home the point of the sermon. So if stories are important to drive points home, then surely a method of telling stories (like film) that is vivid and impactful is a great way to learn things, even things you theoretically already knew. Like war is horrible. I already knew that. But the first 20 minutes of "Private Ryan" made me KNOW it in a way I never knew it before. The part that was most effective in doing that was the constantly zinging bullets. No other war film I've seen depicted that. I never realized that intense rain of bullets existed on a battlefield, and one could catch you at any instant. I stand in awe that a single person ever survived the Normandy invasion. > Does > Tarantino need to make a running gag out of a young man getting his > brains blown out in the back of a car when the bad guys hit a pothole, > and the greatest concern is the upholstery... just so he can convey > the message that murderers eventually get their come-uppance? No one here ever claimed Tarantino movies were good at teaching moral lessons. To take such an extreme example to disprove our assertions based on much more responsible filmmaking is not an effective argument. - -- D. Michael Martindale dmichael@wwno.com - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ End of aml-list-digest V2 #228 ******************************