Film Manifesto

What I’d really like to accomplish is to create a piece that tells something so profound, it is regarded as shocking or moving. It would need to be the truth. It would need to be original. I feel I have met the former criteria in most of what I’ve done in the past. It is difficult to distort the truth behind images, just how they are collected and presented. In all manners of expression, I pride myself on holding to the truth in that process. It is the latter criteria that I feel is especially daunting.

I have no style. That is, to say, I have a style, a loose pastiche of a lot of different directors’ styles. My style belongs partly to someone else. In a probabilistic sense, someone had to have used a lot of the cinematographic techniques I recycle time and time again, but it still draws heavily upon someone else’s experience. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I’ve gushed the most over my brother’s work. We grew up with a Canon GL1, iMovie, and too much free time. The first summer we had both, he tried to redo Fight Club and I tried to do a version of Big Brother with my friends. It was downhill from there; whenever he made something, I stole a lot of the little devices that made his work unique. I knew it then, and he knew it too. And he yelled at me, in that you-took-my-stuff-without-asking kind of way. When he left for school and I had no one to steal from.

Next to my brother, Run Lola Run defined my formative years. I’m still obsessed with non-linear narrative, time, and repetitive imagery. It’s these last two characteristics that pervade my work, including my recent pieces for this class. There’s something about manipulating time, in that you can’t manipulate time in reality, which fascinates me. It’s such a good device for getting through 20 minutes in just 1, to cite an exaggerated case when you would use it. My other biggest influence was Kubrick, particularly in my attempt to remake The Shining, with long shots and steep angles. I did, however, dedicate it to his memory due to his then-recent death. That was clearly not enough to absolve me for not being original. Granted, I was an impressionable eighth grader.

As an engineer, it is my fondest hope to advance the cause of technology through innovation. As an artist, I hope to do the same for our creative consciousness. This is a gradual process. I don’t expect it to happen within the course of developing one piece, but rather over the course of a long, creative campaign. Like science, the process is one of trial and error, and breaking away from established routines to find new ways to understand the world. The medium of film is the same, discovering what works, what doesn’t, and how it affects how an audience, or even the artist, comprehends the world. It means breaking away from old patterns and distancing myself from what I’ve seen before.

Dare to be unique, and see the world in your own way, this is the means to which I can say the truth.