I thought I'd watch a movie. I had just had a nice conversation with a good friend, talking about movies and such, and then a smoke. As always with so many choices to choose from, it took ten to fifteen minutes to decide and I started one called Swimming Pool. It was a cool French sort of movie where each scene was brought to bear with proper care and style.
During the beginning of the movie, as the scenes unfolded lazily I toyed - the smoke offering some lucidity - with an idea for a movie. It would be a reel that hovers in between motion and stillness, almost ready to flutter into life and had not an invisible hand come along to still it, it would have taken flight and soared away. If it can tell a story in the process, even better. Pretty soon, as stupid dreamers are wont to do, I was thinking about how awesome the movie would be, how it'll be acclaimed all over and I'll be winning awards and such. Soon thereafter, I was thinking other thoughts and how they would revolutionize physics, sticking true to the stupid dreamer's code.
Which is when, curiously, the movie surprised me. The data stream started stalling in a peculiar way. The audio kept running fine, but the video became discontinuous, catching up to the audio every two or there seconds. In the scene, the protagonist was talking to herself and so, even though I could hear her thoughts, she had become a bunch of stills incapable of fully expressing herself, unable to tell her story fully. As if there's a cage ready to imprison any time, allowing her only momentary fragments of freedom.
The pleasant surprise was that the question I'd meant to ask through the movie idea had been partially answered. Imagine a movie reel asking itself one day, "What am I ?" The adventurous way to answer such a question is by trying to find out, "What am I not ?" or "How much can I change or disfigure myself till I am no more ?" Another way to answer the same question is by stating a purpose("I am a doctor because I cure people"). Thankfully, for a movie reel and almost all media, this kind of answer is simple. To tell a story.
During the beginning of the movie, as the scenes unfolded lazily I toyed - the smoke offering some lucidity - with an idea for a movie. It would be a reel that hovers in between motion and stillness, almost ready to flutter into life and had not an invisible hand come along to still it, it would have taken flight and soared away. If it can tell a story in the process, even better. Pretty soon, as stupid dreamers are wont to do, I was thinking about how awesome the movie would be, how it'll be acclaimed all over and I'll be winning awards and such. Soon thereafter, I was thinking other thoughts and how they would revolutionize physics, sticking true to the stupid dreamer's code.
Which is when, curiously, the movie surprised me. The data stream started stalling in a peculiar way. The audio kept running fine, but the video became discontinuous, catching up to the audio every two or there seconds. In the scene, the protagonist was talking to herself and so, even though I could hear her thoughts, she had become a bunch of stills incapable of fully expressing herself, unable to tell her story fully. As if there's a cage ready to imprison any time, allowing her only momentary fragments of freedom.
The pleasant surprise was that the question I'd meant to ask through the movie idea had been partially answered. Imagine a movie reel asking itself one day, "What am I ?" The adventurous way to answer such a question is by trying to find out, "What am I not ?" or "How much can I change or disfigure myself till I am no more ?" Another way to answer the same question is by stating a purpose("I am a doctor because I cure people"). Thankfully, for a movie reel and almost all media, this kind of answer is simple. To tell a story.
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