Oh Screen, Where Art Thou?

It's always tricky writing about the past in an honorific way; nostalgia is a powerful lure. But the more time I spend creating--and viewing--web cinema, vlogs, etc, the more I wonder about the aesthetic trade-offs of watching movies on a computer screen. If movies are more than the sum of their content--if they are in fact about their very medium and the aesthetics of that medium--then I wonder about the pleasures of web cinema.

Of course viewing practices always change and are in flux; even a brief overview of early cinema shows that our idea of a what it means to "go to a movie" has changed greatly over the past 100 years. Our very conception of the screen (Lev Manovich's essay "An Archeology of a Computer Screen" is an excellent exploration of this) is always changing. So maybe the next generation of movie watchers will be so accustomed to viewing movies on personal screens (computer or otherwise) that the notion of the public movie screen, the darkened theater, will seem quaintly old-fashioned.

Perhaps the fact that I am left cold by many movies I watch on the web says more about my entrenched viewing habits and expectations than the medium itself. And not because the movies are bad--there are some startlingly good web movies. In our give-me-what-I-want-when-I-want-it culture, it's not surprising that movies should no longer be bound by the time constraints of movie theater start times. If the VCR popularized the concept of time-shifting, and if the DVD extended this by offering greater control over the chronology of film itself, and if the DV and web revolution said that it's possible for many not only to make movies, but make them available to a worldwide audience, then it seems logical that the very experience of viewing movies should continue to evolve.

And yet...the experience of watching movies (videos) on the web is almost painful, and sort of lonely. For one thing, it's not as easy to be conned, or tricked: looking back on it, Revenge of the Sith was a really poor movie, yet at the time--sitting there in the dark with my family--I thoroughly enjoyed it. My memories of that evening will always have more to do with the experience of sitting in that theater with people I loved than the movie itself. Who's to say that the experience of watching a film in a theater with friends and strangers in the dark is not as much a part of what makes a movie "good" than the movie itself?

Watching a movie on the web lays bare its tricks, strips it of the hucksterism that has always been part of the movie experience. I can easily click to another web page if I'm bored, or it loads to slowly, or the sound is bad. Pleasure on demand. Perhaps this new way of watching films will develop its own irrational aesthetics, its own myths, its own way of letting us know that a film always operates on a sort of double-logic: the content of the film itself, and the experience of that content.

Comments

[Will Luers]

great post.
interesting to reflect on this hunched-over, late-night viewing of vlogs and web cinema. but isn't this like being hunched over edison's kinteoscope in some parlor after work? i don't know. i have great hopes for cinema after spending time with vlogs. its like we went through this hundred years of learning how to talk, now we can all have a conversation. is this still cinema? i think so, a parallel cinema.

[Amanda B]

Your insights on the implications of digitizing cinema are really thought-provoking. It's interesting to think about what is both lost and gained with the advent on web cinema. There's definately, as you pick up on, a threat to social habits. However, I don't think you stress the fact that by watching movies on the internet, we substitute quality for convenience. I still believe that if we want that real cinematic experience, we will get up from our seats, stretch out our hunched backs, and head to the theatre. Unless.. we can get our hands on a bigger computer screen.. One day soon I'm sure.

Anyway, thanks for your weblogging. I'm doing an assignment for uni where we have to create a weblog on our choice of digital media. I'm looking at digital cinema. I'm just starting, but your ideas have given me great inspiration. Check it out.