[Frameworks] film vs digital

[David Tetzlaff]

Joan:

You didn't ask for thoughts on your dilemma, but I'll offer mine anyway.:

> I have spent two months trying to get approval for a concentration in film production in our
> dept... we already teach the film classes; we're just trying to get an actual notation on the students' transcripts saying they've completed a cycle of 4 production courses.

Why? You're in a Studies oriented program, rooted in the Humanities. Four courses hardly constitute a 'concentration.' It seems that offering any academic program under the rubric of 'production' is working against your department's core mission, perhaps aiming to attract enrollment by promising something you can't really deliver. If the students are taking the classes for the right reasons, they should be satisfied with the substance and not concerned about what it's called, right?

>  Another dept that's invested in digital production has been raising objections, seeing this as an encroachment on their territory

I looked at the course descriptions in your Dept. and in Telecom and they DO overlap. You offer a Documentary class taught on video. So do they. The catalog description for your C460 Advanced Motion Picture Production reads "Students produce one personal project (narrative, documentary, or experimental) from script to screen, using either 16 mm. or digital video." I see a more specific (and I assume more recent) description in the term-by-term course listings that indicates the course has been reframed towards the experimental and is taught exclusively with 16mm MOS cameras. Not to excuse the silly territoriality of your colleagues, but one could see how they might be confused.

The description of your C360 Basic Production class reads:
> This class is a hands-on introduction to the technical and aesthetic basics of making l6mm silent films.  In one semester you will learn and practice how to produce, shoot,and edit a short film.  You will become familiar with the basics of treatment and script writing, cinematography and lighting, and even animation and sound.

The most recent description of C361 Intermediate Motion Picture Production reads:
> This class introduces students to the making of 16mm sound films, including the recording and editing of sync sound. You will learn how to use a sync sound camera, a digital tape recorder, a flatbed editor, and a digital editing system, and you will participate as a crewmember in the other students'productions. Aside from these more technical subjects, we will also address questions of scriptwriting, directing, acting, and the like.

What is your rationale for teaching sync sound, and narrative scripting/directing/acting in 16mm? I notice C360 is offered every term, while C361 was most recently taught two years ago. How is this a coherent 4 course sequence? If you've moved back to Bolexes and Filmos for C460, are you still maintaining sync 16mm for one class, or are you in the process of reformulating C361, if and when you offer it again?

> I just came home from the most exhausting meeting with two deans and the other dept's chair trying to explain why"film" really means film

No, as a description of actual educational practice, 'film' does NOT mean celluloid. Your department's studies classes no doubt examine Hollywood naratives shot on celluloid, Hollywood narratives shot and edited digitallty, documentaries on celluloid, documentaries on video, TV shows created with a variety of technologies, all under the rubric of 'Film'. Film scholars can write about 'South Park', no? By the same token, many 'Film' programs teach what production courses they have on video, but call the work 'film' because the sensibility that informs it is best invoked by that word as opposed to the sensibilty invoked by 'video.'

> [Film] is not just some catch-all term for all modes of production.

Yes, but what distinguishes 'film' from other modes of production is not the ever-collapsing technological distinctions, but different sets of communicative/aesthetic purposes and approaches. TV journalism 'packages' are not 'films', nor were they 'films' when they were shot with CP16s instead of Ikegamis.

> And then my digital counterpart told me that no matter what medium the students were working in, it all came down to lengthy projects that tell a story and follow a narrative arc. Ye Gods!

Well, your course descriptions kinda seem pitched towards stories and narrative arcs. Even the C460 description reads:
> We will also study a variety of non-traditional approaches to cinematic storytelling, such as film diary, montage, cine-essay, structuralist film, and others... we will view films by filmmakers as diverse as George Méliès, Hans Richter, Maya Deren, Stan Brakhage, Bruce Connor, Jonas Mekas, Hollis Frampton...

Why frame experimental work as a subset of 'storytelling'? What's the story in Rhythmus 21, Meditation on Violence, Black Ice, Marilyn x 5, Zorns Lemma?

16mm technology does not constitute a coherent pedadgogical focus, which your production sequence seems to lack. I see two possible routes to creating a focus for a production sequence within a 'studies' program. 

One would reframe the whole production curriculum along the lines of your C335 Production as Criticism class. That is, the aim of production classes would be for theory to meet practice, to explore the concepts of critical interpretation from the other side. Applied semiotics. Here students WOULD work within more mainstream forms, not for the purpose of career training, but in order to better understand film language and film culture. That WOULD involve stories and arcs and whatnot, but it would be best taught with cheap sync sound gear with an easy technological learning curve (so students can focus on the conceptual issues), which means video. In some ways, this approach would make the most sense for the overall mission of the Department, and you could argue with the Dean that what makes your course offerings completely different from those in Telecom is your humanities based approach, as distinct from the pre-professional connections-to-the-business-school tack of the other program.

Though that's a better argument than one of technological distinction, I doubt the T-Com folks would be cool with it, as it would threaten their claim to academic legitimacy in some ways (and rightly so, but...) Their turf-protection could grow beyond blocking your 'concentration' being put into the catalog into actual messing with your ability to offer the courses, hire staff for them etc.

The other approach (and you did post your rant to Frameworks, not Screen-L or the UFVA listserv) would be to stay with 16mm but refocus the classes onto the kind of experimental work that arguably needs 16mm or at least makes sense pedagogically with 16mm as a tool in the 21st century. That would mean dropping all mainstream terminology from the course descriptions and concepts. No privileging of story, no studio-system-type crew positions, no sync sound. No directors, actors, screenwriters, cinematographers -- just film artists pursuing the expressive possibilities of the medium. This would clearly distinguish your production sequence from the offerings of the Telecom department. "No, the projects are short, and don't have stories or arcs, at least not as you understand them." The question then becomes: what is the rationale for an experimental orientation (more typical of the Fine Arts) within a humanities program focused primarily on critical interrogation of the dominant culture? The answer would be to connect the two via complementary contrast. The experimental breaks open the reification of mainstream norms - the idea of "of course, that's how it has to be done." the avant garde's otherness would be treated as fundamentally deconstructive. (I know many people would not choose to approach experimental film that way, but it's an approach that fits a Communication and Culture program, where other approaches would not.

Perhaps fewer students would sign up for a 'production concentration' defined on such terms. Good. The dirty secret of many 'communication' programs is that they offer a smattering of production coursework mainly because it helps build enrollment, and while they may or may not actually make false promises about the curriculum, they do little or nothing to prevent students from drawing the wrong idea about the true nature of the program. I spent a good chunk of my career working with students who thought they were signing up for something very different than what they got as Comm majors, and it's no fun for them, no fun for the poor schmo who has to try to teach them, and it messes things up for the students who actually are in tune with the broader intellectual agenda at hand. Let the hard-core Hollywood wanna-bes go to Telecom, where they belong, and hold onto the ones who actually care about exploring film as discourse.

I was SOO happy to get out of Communication and get to do my thing under a distinct 'Film Studies' nomenclature... But these questions still push my buttons, thus my counter-ranting...

My cat has just emerged from hiding. Must feed her and get some sleep.