File spoon-archives/film-theory.archive/film-theory_1995/film-theory_May.95, message 4


Date: Wed, 3 May 1995 00:28:45 -0400 (EDT)
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: Big Video



Niether film nor video _wants_ anything; people do. This isn't a minor 
distinction; it's an argument against an essentialism vis-a-vis media. 
Beyond this, there are phenomenological issues at work dealing with 
screen size and placement; when I teach television aesthetics, I have to 
deal intensely with this. (Issues of the horizon of the body, the 
television set as object being watched or monitored, the history which 
stresses the audio track for example in the afternoon in the 1950s to 
create female audience loyalty, and so forth.)

Alan


On Tue, 2 May 1995, Robert Withers wrote:

>       A video might want to be made big (projected) so that it could be
> seen by a large crowd of people at the same time in a big space.  A film
> might want to be made small so that it could be seen by one or two people
> in an intimate space, at the precise time of choice.
>       To make a video because you can afford to make a video and not to make
> a film is not a sign, IMHO, of bad artistic faith, but of intelligent
> artistic strategy.
>                                               Robert Withers
> 
> 
>      --- from list film-theory-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
> 


     --- from list film-theory-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---

     ------------------

   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005