Why films we see today aren't what they used to be
Often complex and lifelike, movies have been described by Uri Hasson, a Princeton psychologist, as something nestled between the chaos of reality and a lab experiment. Beyond entertainment and art, films have the ability to make people’s brains tick together and the manner in which they react to a particular image can offer a great insight into the human mind.
Change
In the last century, films have undergone a sea of change, a lot of it owing to the technological advances. Even though storytelling techniques have remained unchanged the manner in which stories are being told today, things have for the first time changed the way we are connecting with films. The angle, the cuts, and montages remain the same but with cellphones and iPads becoming a big factor in the consumption of the image our emotional connect with cinema is not the same.
Imagine a dark cinema hall full of people across different social backgrounds, age groups, and preferences but all transfixed with the unfolding image and possibly giving the same reaction. Surprising, as it may seem, hundreds of strangers reacting the same way and at the same time is a testimony to the movie taking over the brain responses of the viewers.
Compare the two attack sequences of Sholay one where Jai (Amitabh Bachchan)and Veeru (Dharmendra) kick Kaalia (Viju Khote) and the two cronies out and the second where Gabbar Singh (Amjad Khan) descends upon Ramgarh. The first has a series of shots showing the idyllic village life and most of these are mid-shots and hold on for long enough to show the day-to-day activities that the attack of the bandits disrupts. The second attack unfolds suddenly after the Holi song and shots’ cutting is frenetic, the duration shorter, the magnification tighter than previous and the focus is on the harm inflicted by Gabbar. The difference is more than conspicuous and the impact on the viewer palpable but many miss to note the subtle change, as they are enthralled with the unfolding of the action.
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| Photo: Indiatoday.in |
In a recent experiment conducted by Prof Hasson, brain scan data collected during the viewing of different video clips showed that structured movies had great mind-meddling power over viewers. While viewing a tense robbery scene from Dog Day Afternoon there was a significant correlation in activity across nearly 70 per cent of their cortex. But can the viewer response alter if the same was viewed on a mobile phone screen or iPad? Perhaps yes.
The advent of new platforms such as social media has made art a more participatory experience where a survey conducted by Pew Research Centre suggested that the Internet has increased people’s engagement with arts. But what is not studied in detail, at least not yet, is how the platform and access have changed storytelling.
In Foucault’s Pendulum, Umberto Eco had suggested that literature would be changed by the existence of word processors, so wouldn’t film, and film theory, be irrevocably changed by the new media? The advancements in technology arguably affect what stories are being told, who is telling them, and how they are being told and most importantly where they are being told. When asked how digital was changing the nature of movies, Manohla Dargis, chief film critic of The New York Times, observed that the effects of digital cinema can simply be seen in the ubiquity of hand-held camerawork, which, at least partly, was also a function of the equipment’s relative portability.
Technology
Technological advancements have a far-reaching impact on the narrative beyond the introduction of sound or colour. In the 1930s the average duration of a shot was 12 seconds and today it is 2.5 seconds. This would be readily attributed to the MTV generation of filmmaking where low attention spans are a given but more than that it is the newer kind of storytelling that came about thanks to newer digital cameras that were more accessible to filmmakers that can be held responsible for this.
Personal stories sometimes meant lesser characters and, therefore, a filmmaker didn’t need to hold on longer. The faster films and later digital cameras that increased the dynamic range (the difference between the darkest and the brightest part of a frame) made it possible to have the dark portion of the frame much darker. This resulted in the elimination of areas that the viewer didn’t need to look at. This increased the focus on what needed to be looked at, and this explains shorter shots.
Take for instance the shot from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 where the entire screen is black save for the glowing tip of Lord Voldemort’s wand that lights up his face and hands.
Privacy
Similarly, the privacy of watching films on personal devices has changed the kind of stories being told these days. Today, thanks to portals such as Netflix, etc, filmmakers can pre-decide how the viewer would access their work and that in turn gives them the freedom to tell stories. Had this option not been there, a film like Brahman Naman (2016), which was released worldwide on Netflix in July 2016 and was about a group of young sex-starved men searching for women, might not have existed.
Traditionally, a film was a witness to something that happened in front of it and the play between light and actors captured forever. The emotional investment between the camera and the actor was deep and physical. Unlike film, the digital format might not be the same physiologically and even emotionally, as many times; actors have to imagine not only the setting but also their co-stars who are later added digitally. Sometimes even the emotional connect between two characters is an afterthought like a digitally-added tear that was punched in to enhance what Jennifer Connolly felt at the end of Blood Diamond.
Even though the digital format captures only a part of the whole thing, it perhaps might be more important than the film format when it comes to storytelling. It is for the first time that format makes it possible for art to respond to the viewer as much as the viewer responds to art.
(Courtesy: Mail Today)