Seventh Art

SEVENTH ART
by Caleb C. Werntz

To Miss Zimmerman, Miss Hardin, and Doctor Bolus – you inspired me.

In ninth grade, I wrote my first screenplay about a man who had multiple personalities. When I finished writing, I burned it outside of my basement. After high school, I enrolled in an Associate of the Science of Film at The Los Angeles Film School in Hollywood, California. After a good start, I directed my attention from cinema into smoking weed, dropped out, became homeless, and took a 4,000 mile bicycle trip through the northwest before I landed back on my feet in Oregon. This essay is a reflection of the craft that aims to forecast the direction that cinema is headed through the topics of theory, story, and placement.

What separates the emotion you have with a picture from everyday is life is safety. Emotion in real life is interpersonal where we are a variable to interact while a picture happens within itself (1). As we watch a movie, notion is suspended to leave room for the presentation to express itself (2). Since many works of art depict life in a different way, we are safe to observe them without giving judgment. When we open up to a film, we host an internal process since the viewing leaves no room for outside dialogue. Given we can absorb a production’s entirety, we have allowed ourselves time to exercise an internal function as well observe the processes of other people who gathered to create that began with the text.

With the screenplay, a writer is taught to put down what can be captured by sight and sound. With cinema and its relevant montage of artistic strength, the ability to communicate is broad. “The time of resurgence of a cinema newly independent of a novel and theater will return. But it then may be because novels will be written directly onto film. (3)” As a writer who originated with the screenplay, I find great freedom with rewrites that open a formula of variables for the entire production to work through. In contrast to an adaptation, there is not a matter of cutting to size, but rather a full utilization of space created within the parameters of movie length. The way movies are made and consumed has changed and the writers are standing in the middle (4). In the earliest years of cinema at the studio level, writers were contracted and their work never was what they envisioned it to become. Of all that movies are – as art or high budgets – the constant is story. We may see a change in format and platforms, but stories will not cease (4): the future of cinema depends on the effort of writers.   

The consistency maintained when a movie is shot, edited, exported, and uploaded now has the ability to remain through internet streaming and eye of a viewer. Studios hope for money, so the first fruits of an affordable online network of quality movies will be led by a combination of a studio picture and the ensemble foundation of quality productions that seek to have a platform established. Through the ability to host libraries online, the medium of cinema will find a new home on platforms that are a direct pathway into the homes of an audience.

            My conclusion on cinema is for its purpose, content, and future yet to be held. Motion pictures are an artistic medium that continues to flourish. As digital capabilities allow for independence, the writers will lead the transfer of duties from studios to passionate filmmakers, first through a body of text. Whereas in a century we saw the remarkable arc of internal material go from the static art to its radiance of motion, I expect the same growth in the form of consistent display from capture to edit, host, and view from equipment of the same quality with focus on the host platform and accessibility from personal devices. Cinema is a young art form that matures with radiance and is at the cusp of a transition to accessibility.    

REFERENCES

1. Wiley, Norbert. "Emotion and Film Theory." Studies in Symbolic Interaction (11): 169-87. Emerald Insight. Web. 13 Dec. 2014.
2. "The Phenomenological Reduction." Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. N.p., n.d. Web.
3. Bazin, André. "What Is Cinema?" (n.d.): n. pag. Film Adaptation. City University of New York, 1 Aug. 2012. Web. 16 Dec. 2014.
4. Migdol, Robin. "Screenwriting in the Digital Age." Diss. USC, 2013. Abstract. (n.d.): n. pag. Dissertations and Theses. Web. 20 Dec. 2014.