Okay, I know I've brought this up before but I am not a visual person.
And it's weird - or my friends and family have directly commented on how it is weird - because I seem so creative and analytical (and I would like to consider this true) that I can stare at things like architecture or traditional paintings and just not "get it". You could give me a single speech in a Shakespeare play and I can go on for hours about what it means for the character and the theme and the time and the theater. I have literally cornered people at parties and forced them to listen to a near full thesis about how brilliant Bram Stoker's Dracula is from the way it challenges and yet IS the basic Victorian Gothic novel to why the writing style is so important to the over all story to the smallest details that people tend to over look but that subliminally tie the whole thing together just so. It is my thing.
Plus, for me one of the best parts of studying the evolution of the novel, plot theories, how a story "works" is that once you've learned to recognize it in Shakespeare and Wilde and Dante than you can take all of that and apply it to Whedon and Rowling and Gaiman. Okay, sure, some pretentious individuals are inevitably going to go out of there way to denounce anything not deemed "High/True Art" but that's just what's so freeing about being able to really understand literary analysis. A lot of my friends think it's a burden because they'll see a movie with me or try and get me to read this book and I end up picking it apart and they'll sigh and say, "Mina, why can't you just enjoy it!" which makes zero sense to me. I am enjoying it! This is enjoyable.
The act of deconstructing how a story works is not only fun, it means I don't have to play "Literature Verses Genre" because I know they can be one and the same. And, yeah, of course the majority of work is substandard, but that just means when you find something that stands up to the criticism it makes it that much better. It only adds to the final product because while plenty of people might think, yeah, this is a good book you can really be in awe of it; the layers and details and work that go into making it GOOD. Guys, this is a pretty geeky website so I don't mind telling you than when I watch a well preformed Shakespeare play I giggle. Not just in the comedies, either, it can be the middle of Hamlet and I'm just --- because it's like your watching a car driving down the street and you can see right through the outer shell to all the working parts and you understand how complex and amazing that technology truly is, how each part has to fit together perfectly in order to make this simple looking car smoothly go forward. I had a teacher call me out on it when we were reading Paradise Lost in class and I was sitting there grinning like a madwoman because Lucifer. Just Lucifer.
But, right, like I said I'm not very visual.
However, movies have this annoying habit of telling stories (which I love) while still being at least 50%, you know, eyeball related so that's annoying. Usually I just wave it off and concentrate on the story regardless and I'm sure if I listed my favorite directors they would all be writer/directors and, hey, what's the big deal? So I like different things in movies than more visual people? But you know I've never really accepted just not knowing. I've had art students and math whizzes sit down and talk at me for hours about how brilliant those things are because:
1. Who doesn't love someone full of genuine passion for their subject? I mean unless that subject is like racial purity or something weird.
2. I am semi-intelligent, I can - given some explanation and coaching - learn these things, and I think there is a lot of value to that. Right now I am only seeing how half the car works and it's pretty amazing, but why should I be content with half? From my perspective it's difficult to tell that I'm missing anything interesting, I can see all these moving gears and it looks sufficiently complex. I don't even know I'm not seeing half the inner workings because I don't know what to look for. This metaphor should not be difficult to follow, guys.
End point, I'm sort of starting to pick up on it just reading this thread and I feel like people here seem to understand what they're talking about and are into cinematography as an art so I would love, like honestly, to hear all about it. Everything from what it is to how it effects the audience. Not that it' anyone's responsibility to teach me these things although fyi I am an excellent student. And I figured, hey, this seems to come up in conversation here a lot and I'm ignorant about it and why should you be afraid to ask for instructions when you don't know what you're doing. Don't like hide in the back or plug up your ears and pretend you can't hear the discussion until it goes back to something you know. Swallow your pride and raise your hand and ask a question.
Cinematography. I have no idea what I'm doing. And I have a couple of questions.
