Amadeus

For the second week in a row, I went to movie screening. And I am very glad I did. It was good that I went to it just the day after we discussed movie making so I could look for some of the things we discussed. First of all, I loved this movie. I saw it 20+ years ago when it came out, but just as a video rental, not on a big screen. This movie does better on a big screen. It was fun to identify some of the things we talked about in class. They used cross cuts a lot, showing that two things were happening at the same time in different locations. The close up shots were very effective as well.

One scene that got my attention was when Mozart's father comes to visit him in Vienna the first time after he has gotten married. They could have just had his father come to the door and knock on it, but instead Mozart is outside just coming home, and sees his father up the on the stairs, so there is a low angle shot looking up at his father, and a high angle shot of his father looking down at him. He looks small and weak in this way. This shows that his father is dominant, and even though Mozart is a grown man, his father still has some kind of control over him.

All of those things together (and many more) combine to tell a great story, and many lessons can be learned from it. What struck me is how Solieri's jealously consumed him and eventually destroyed him. Seeking to destroy someone else seems to only destroy oneself. Rather than appreciating the talents he had been given (he composed operas for heavens sake!), and appreciating and enjoying the talents of others (Mozart), he only wished for what he did not have and tried to destroy the one who had it. At the end of the movie, Solieri utters a line that jumped out at me - he said, "I am the patron saint of mediocrity." This caused me to question at what point do we accept "mediocrity" and be satisfied, and at what point to we strive to be more? If he would have accepted his mediocrity, his life would have been happier and more fulfilled. But at what point do we accept our mediocrity, and at what point do we try to move beyond it, push past it, and try for greatness? I would suggest that Solieri's mediocrity came not from ceasing to pursue greatness, but from comparing himself to someone else's greatness. It seems when we do that, we always loose.

Class Discussion on Movies

I never knew much of anything about movies before our class discussions. I go, I know if I like it or not, and then I leave. I didn't know that there are certain types of shots and cuts, etc., and how that can have an impact on the way you view the movie and what you think about it. I almost feel manipulated in a way! But it is a good manipulation for the most part, because it helps you to get into the story, to know what is coming next, and to move the story along. I think it interesting how film making evolves. In the movie screening I went to last week, Bang the Drum Slowly, it seemed quite slow moving, and I think it was because there were fewer cuts from one scene to another. The camera showed one scene for a longer time. Before learning about scenes and different types of cuts, I could tell that it moved slower, but I wouldn't know why. So that is kind of cool.

Video Reading

After reading the article about video art, I couldn't picture what they were talking about. I found that my imagination couldn't wrap itself around what it would be like, or how it would be worthy of a gallery exhibition. In the article it says that, "video art stands as a potentiality of artistic expression's major roles in human communication: to give access to other ways of conceptualization." I guess I just wasn't conceptualizing in other ways. So, I went to the web site of the artist mentioned in the article, Nam June Paik to see what this was. It was really interesting - in some pieces there were many TV screens, each with images, that combined into one big image. Other pieces were TV screens with images put together to form TV people. Very creative, and an interesting truly different and new medium than art of the past. It could only be modern. Check out this web page for a different kind of art. http://www.paikstudios.com/gallery/gallery_index.html