There is a science fiction trope that over the years has become
popular and carries with it great currency, not to say the stuff of
prophecy. It is that with an implanted chip or a direct plug-in to the
brain stem a person can connect at will with the World Wide Web, thus
becoming one with the Internet.
When I first read about this concept, either in William Gibson, or
Bruce Sterling, or both, I had an eureka moment. That’s it, I thought.
People can now truly cocoon. They can stay put, live in a single
space, and limit his or her nourishment to only that which is
necessary to stay alive. Individuals could now live an inner life and
never experience the real or visceral world with its noise, its dirt,
and its concurrent difficulties.
Well, I have to tell you, though getting on the Internet with a
personal brain stem plug-in or a chip under one’s skin has not
happened, there is growing evidence that something similar is taking
place in film schools among some students studying the craft of
filmmaking.
Recently there have been newspaper stories about students in a number
of film schools who use as their only reference other films and even
the lesser breed of poor quality TV when they think of making their
own movie. It is easy to call them lazy. More importantly, it seems
they don’t trust their own instincts. Apparently they have no faith in
real life. How can they when those who make their own films do the
thinking and creating for them? After all, these students might say,
someone else’s proven instinct and ultimate act of creativity is
perhaps far better than what may come from his or her own still
unproven inspiration. Unless a film student pulls his or her own
trigger, how will they know what will come out the other side?
Students of film who take this approach rarely take into account the
hidden resources of their own minds. It could be the reason that many
of our films, most TV and almost everything else that had the creative
tag attached to it, fail. All you have to do is view, if you have the
stomach to, the plethora of junk movies that have a one-day shot in an
obscure theater or go directly to DVD.
Yes, you can learn by watching other films. It is instructive to see
and understand how important filmmakers work. However, do not believe
that life experience flows only from a movie. A movie’s life
experience is only what it is in that movie. Nothing more. Nothing
less.
Many in our youth-dominated society live their lives wrapped in ear
buds. The only sounds they hear are the songs and the often muffled
words that emerge from the device where they store their favorite
music, now their favorite TV shows, and soon coming to a hand held
gadget near you, if you believe it, your favorite commercial. In
itself, that is nothing new when we consider the history of the
Walkman, the machine that started it all. Lots of our young, and I am
sure even those who are older, multi-task beyond reason, allowing
nothing of importance to enter already cluttered minds. It means that
what little there is that is fresh, new, or invigorating, has no place
to land.
At one time a mentor advised his or her student, follower, or protégé,
to go out into the world and experience life. By following the
precepts of their mentor or muse for inspiration, these apprentices
could pursue their dream by doing. By doing. Think of that phrase – by
doing. It is an important, almost anachronistic concept and a strange
idea in the new narrow world of social networking dominated by what
people find only in their computers. By going out into the world,
students would see, feel and touch everything around them, or at least
some of life that surrounds them. There is probably a guru or two who
still gives that advice. There is one problem. Acolytes seem to be
doing little to imitate those who guide them, at least when it comes
to what I consider good advice, especially when making a film. Young
filmmakers who would rather create without any direct experience
appear to prefer to stay in a darkened section of their minds and
create by going nowhere and doing nothing. They believe, wrongfully, I
may add, that inside the reaches of the mind they will find everything
they require to generate the magic associated with making a movie.
Apparently the only experience some of our young require, and those
older who pander to anything new no matter how weak or fragile, comes
from television, broadband, their computer, an iPod or similar device,
and a host of movies in theaters and on TV, many of which are bad and
certainly derivative. Perhaps life has too many complications, so many
that when one gets near it, it is dangerous. It threatens survival.
Closing oneself off from reality, and thus choosing someone else’s
system of reality, limits the ability to think as an individual. A
closed mind that believes experience only comes from some sort of
machine limits itself to a narrow view of the world. The focus is
inward instead of outward. It could mean that creativity in the future
has little hope. The idea of knowledge in a vacuum is very dangerous
to the artistic part of our psyche, the part that we hope places us
into an environment that fosters creativity.
I grew up idolizing the avant-garde. I thought what it produced
unattainable unless madness prevailed, seemingly a common attribute
driving the artist. Some of us were jealous of the avant-garde because
it was beyond our reach. The ultra new, or what people today might
call punk or post modern with a touch of punk, even 2.0 in the digital
world, serves to open people’s eyes to deep hopes and fears which we
never realized was there until someone put it in front of our face,
under our noses, even between our eyes, and filled our ears with sound
we never knew existed. Much art is derivative. Little is genuinely
fresh. Time often dictates how we accept what a few call novel. Time
also helps to bury what is new because in many cases it is nothing
more than the old recast. Ultimately, we must be able to communicate
what is genuinely new. Being obscure answers nothing. With all this in
mind, I believe creative nerve that communicates has gone fishing. The
catch figures to be very small in the future. ........................................................................................................................
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.
Whistling
in the Dark