The language of film

Since I started making films instead of talking about them, I've had a hole in my heart. A hole that could only be filled by the artful examination of distance in film, the articulate appreciation of the zombie film, and the proper use of cinematic language.

A film lecturer I had once said that film critics could go on to make good films. He was referring, of course, to the Cahiers boys; Rohmer, Chabrol, Godard, Truffaut, but I'm holding out hope it can refer to me too. So far, hmm. Doubtful.

But upon the woeful absence of film studies as a requirement within my current studies, I feel that you cannot be a good filmmaker without being a film critic. And I'm not simply justifying my own existence, here. The amount of times we have been told that in order to communicate effectively in the workplace you need to be able to follow the discourse of the particular workplace, and I would still be reading shot lists that look like they've been prepared by Noah's wife in Wayne's World - I'm not in the film industry, but I watch a lot of films. Here's a list of your key terms, and trust me, you'll find them in any first-year textbook (it's actually the only one we have to buy):

Pan: this is where the camera moves from left to right, imitating a panorama. You do not pan up. You do not pan down. You do not pan forward or backward.

Tilt: Ah, now this is where the camera moves up, often referring to the way in which the camera moves when affixed to the tripod.

Crane: This is when the camera moves, often on, what is this? A crane. It's when you want to shoot something high up in the air. Wow!

Tracking: Oh, now see this is when the camera moves forward and backwards. On a series of tracks. Hence, the term tracking shot. It can move around too! Genius!

Why do I care about this shit so much? Because I just do. And everyone I know has gotten quite tired of hearing me rail on the subject. So now it goes into the Happy Spider Web, otherwise known as the world wide web.

If you can't speak the language of film, how will you ever communicate in the film world? We argue that every shot, every movement, every word of dialogue is a conscious creative decision, yet if we don't know why, isn't that sad? Or is it truly Csikszentmihalyi's utopia, in which we are so well trained in our culture that we do not have to make any conscious creative decisions at all? Is the entire point of learning in order to be completely unaware of having learned anything? Or is that the excuse I can use next time I can't articulate the meaning of the word Subjugation? And now, I'm thinking; do we use the institution of education to make verbs think they are inferior to us when we subjugate them?

This from a girl who has been preparing for her overseas trip by planning her haircut and colour.

But the thing that I missed most in my practical study of film is that no one really discusses film. Genre, conventions, the function of the music video as a means of synaesthesia, this all seems to fall by the wayside. Or maybe I'm just doing it wrong. Do filmmakers hate critics so much that they recoil from studying film for fear of simply uttering the words that will be used to heap scorn upon their masterpiece? Martin Scorsese was a film lecturer, for fuck's sake. And look at the magnificent dialectic of masculinity and violence he has been engaging in for thirty years!

Maybe we do just have an inherent understanding of some of these crucial concepts in films. All I ask is that you never direct me to pan backwards ever again. Ever.