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Anyone who reads my columns knows I easily become out of sorts when I
see attempts to have technology rule creativity. Sadly, it happens
these days with regularity. Frankly, I prefer being even-tempered
rather than angry. It takes too much energy to live that way
permanently.
There is no greater sin than when someone uses what is new only
because it is new. It usually ends up as a futile and uninspired
attempt to be original when it is only a gimmick. Because many seem to
worship technology over art there is always a new method of doing
something. It does not mean that technique will work to enhance our
understanding of the world or tease our senses in unexpected ways. For
every new technology that arises, and they arise seemingly by the
minute, there does not have to be a creative component. Usually when
this happens the so-called artist subverts quality for the sake of
what he or she perceives as innovation.
Clearly, what I think hardly matters to those who come up with what
they believe are brilliant ideas about how to use these new tools. The
cellphone is the latest toy of businesses devoted almost exclusively
to the young. There will always be those who are busy thinking how to
use these means of communication for other than what they were
intended. Though, in the case of the cellphone, their original intent,
as a phone, has long gone in other directions.
Recently a third party sent me an e-mail from a filmmaker named
Gregori who plans to shoot a movie using cellphones. In capital
letters he nearly flames out when he writes, “WE WILL BE SHOOTING THE
ENTIRE 100 MINUTE FEATURE FILM ON MOBILE PHONES!! That Simple.”
Considering that cellphones have the capability to create video in
very short takes, Gregori wants to put together a conglomeration of
these to make a feature length movie. Will wonders never cease?
Is this a bright idea, or what? Unlike me, some will not dismiss it as
lame brained. We know that cellphones can shoot short video sequences.
Many of these so-called short films come in 10-second bursts. That
about covers the attention span of most people in the desired
advertising demographic. Advertisers, who really control the medium in
ways they controlled any medium before, and their crass programmers
are only looking for more eyeballs. The number of clicks per second
generated by highflying fingers is the way they judge success. Success
is not the quality they program. Pictures on cellphones are awful.
That is a frequent complaint of mine but one largely ignored by our
information-obsessed age. Send and get text messages. Get sports
scores. Get the Dow Jones average for the day. Find movie start times.
Locate a restaurant. Even get news alerts. But make a movie? I do not
think so. Gregori, who attended film school, is looking to make a name
for himself -- and anyone who joins his venture – by using this early
21st Century technology to make what he says will be a compelling
film.
Let me tell you something more about the movie Gregori plans to
produce. He calls his project a “micro-budget feature film.” He plans
to audition actors, and then rehearse a cast and crew for his
directorial debut feature film, which he plans to shoot for ten days
in May or June this year. He says he will have a completed feature by
August 2006. Gregori lays out his storyline that I will not go into. I
find it weak and derivative, meaning not very original.
Gregori is offering anyone who owns a Sony Ericsson W900i mobile phone
the opportunity to contribute to his feature. He wants “aspiring,
hungry, up-and-coming filmmakers, video production people and even
non-filmmakers” to contribute to his dream. He contends they will be
part of a team that will usher in groundbreaking, guerrilla
filmmaking. Sure. Everyone in the project has to work free, though. No
one should expect anything other than a unique credit, he maintains.
Gregori goes on to explain how he will gather the material, and how he
will edit it. Mainly though, he rails against the established
filmmaker community in general, specifically in New York. Reading his
e-mail gave me a headache. It is so passionate in its hype that it
threatens to burn anyone who touches it. He lets us know that he
received mostly negative responses from New York filmmakers for his
ideas. This makes him angry and determined not to allow those
rejections to deter him from his self-anointed role of creating
something new in what he considers the normally staid world of
filmmaking. He says, “most of these NYC filmmakers are too jaded or
cynical to realize a great networking opportunity when it is laid at
their feet…”
However, I will make no effort to see his film. It is obviously a
clever ploy to attract attention. Clearly technology rules this
project but where is the art?
There is always the chance I am wrong, and his idea is brilliant. But
I don’t think so.
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At NBC News for 35 years, Ron Steinman was bureau chief
in Saigon, Hong Kong and London, was a senior producer on Today and wrote
and produced for Sunday Today. At ABC News Productions, he produced
and wrote documentaries for A&E, TLC, Discovery, Lifetime and the
History Channel. He has a Peabody, a National Headliner award, a
National Press Club award, a International Documentary Festival Gold
Camera Award, two American Women in Radio & Television awards and
has been nominated for five Emmy's. He is a partner in
Douglas/Steinman Productions, whose latest documentary, "Luboml: My
Heart Remembers," aired on PBS' WLIW/21 and the History Channel in
Israel, April 29, 2003. He is the author of, "The Soldiers 'Story",
"Women in Vietnam," and most recently, "Inside Television's First
War: A Saigon Journal," University of Missouri Press, 2002. |
