Let's get one thing clear before I go any further. I don't like Greenaway's films. They always look so beautiful on the trailers, but I always find them disappointing, incoherent, and pretentious. So I would have happily skipped that bit of the day if I hadn't been dragged by Bill Thompson and BlueMaiya. Which would have been a huge mistake, because he was the most electrifying, challenging and fascinating speaker I've seen in ages.
"Cinema is brain-dead."
Those were his opening words, and from that moment on, I was hooked. He then proceeded to tell us why film wasn't the ultimate art form, and why cinemas were stupid. "You sit in the dark, and you're expected to remain completely still for two hours. You can't even do that when you're asleep... Film is a poor narrative medium - that's why it always goes to the bookshop for inspiration... We are still using the cinematic language developed in the 20th century to tell stories in the 21st century..." And so on.
He talked a lot about the four cinematic tyrannies:
- The tyranny of text: most cinema is still basically text. It's not a visual medium. It's a way of carrying the written word by other means.
- The tyranny of the frame: seeing everything on a frame is completely artificial. Film should be more experiential.
- The tyranny of actors: "an actor is just someone who is trained to pretend they're not being watched".
- The tyranny of the camera: you're not seeing something real, you're seeing something captured by a machine.
Well, machinima people, brace yourselves...
"The future of film is in Second Life."
Yup, he really said that. What Greenaway envisages, in part, is an art form where non-linear film happens in a shared virtual space, in real time, with a blurring between creators and participants. The film is created and viewed simultaneously. The cinema is also the stage, the editing room, the sound stage. The frame is where we choose to put it.
He's now moving on from films as we currently think of them, to doing live VJ performances, projecting animations onto paintings such as Rembrandt's Night Watch and Leonardo's Last Supper, and an incredibly complex multimedia project, The Tulse Luper Suitcases, which is part film, part game, part adventure. His next film will be funded by Nokia and intended for mobile phones, but will be more than just streaming webisodes.
So, will Peter Greenaway ever make machinima? Very possibly. He's fascinated by it.
Personally, I think his vision of a live performance in Second Life as "the future of film" is misguided. The experience of being at a live event, even if it's virtual, is completely different to the experience of watching a performance that's been prepared to do more than could ever be done live. He's speaking with the evangelical fervour of a musician who's got out of the studio and back on the road. In just the same way, being at a live performance of Dark Side of the Moon would be amazing, but it will never replace the CD of the studio recording.
After watching him present extracts from a dozen of his recent works, I still don't like Greenaway's films. But now I know why I don't like them. He's not a film-maker in the sense I usually think of. He's not a story-teller. He's a painter. And last week, he completely redefined for me the concept of the moving image. That alone was worth going for.
11 comments:
"The future of film is in Second Life."
Did he say whether he had tried second life? - Kate
Yes, he has. And other virtual worlds besides.
Well IMHO Peter has not let the Tyranny of Rationality touch his arguments :-) Film is storytelling; good films - like good books and good plays and good song lyrics - are where a good story is told by someone who has an understanding and insight into some facet of existence that is communicated in a variety of ways, and reaches people via routes both explicit (image, dialogue) and implicit (empathy and imagination). Allowing multitudes of people to jump in and add their own 2 cents' worth just lowers signal-to-noise, and raises the power of the lowest common denominator. There is room for both participative media such as Second Life and cinema - Peter presents a false dichotomy between valid (and yes potentially competitive) mechanics. It's not either/or.
Hmmmm.... Interesting ideas. I've stated often my interest in making films in Second Life. Apart from a number of the creative tools which I like to use for Avatars, Clothes, Sets and Props, I find that Second Life allows the option of both singular or multiple participation. I believe that the idea of storytelling in film is the same as storytelling in books, plays, photographs and paintings. The problem for me in live film (or even giant animation or computer generated films) is the need for larger and larger crews to do the work. And I include the people controlling the process at the top. A Director or film creator becomes a pawn by those who are feeding the process both in financial and "support" areas.
Machinima has the ability (like writing or painting) to allow a creator the singular path of creation. Now that is not to say the work will be brilliant, but the choice of who participates or the number of people participating is controlled.
I believe it is the number of people involved which can make a film "brain-dead" - too many cooks. And the potential of a mirror image of the same is possible in Second Life.
The interest I have in Second Life for film making is the ease of content creation. The cameras and avatar control can be daunting. If Moviestorm or iClone could work on a platform like Second Life with the quality of their film making tools, then a perfect world may be found.
Brain Dead may be an aspect of too much multiple control and/or too much "helpful" participation.
Opps! Just to Clarify the presvious submission, Michael is Mike Joyce - Pineapple Pictures
If there is flack about my thoughts, might as well have them go to the right place :)
Thanks for writing this up Matt.
I love Peter Greenaway's films, although less recently as they become less comprehensible to me. Draughtman's Contract is probably my favourite and so I suppose I prefer a basis in text.
Many people feel his films are pretentious, but I think the word pretentious is part of an argument about how important art should be allowed to be. I'm on the side that thinks art is important so I don't mind art that openly treats itself as extremely high value.
Reading 'The tyranny of text' I also immediately thought of Koyaanisqatsi. The fact that there are so few films which escape this pattern shows that Greenaway is right.
However I believe his idea 'Greenaway is a painter' is in direct contradiction with his idea 'make films which yield control to the audience/participants'. My idea of a painter requires singular control of the end product. He does not mention the tyranny of the director in his list but I think he will be casting off that yoke too. Has he thought about control, the effect of sharing control, and moving it further away from the director? I'm skeptical he can give up on his painterly training and aspirations.
Mike - it's worth clarifying that PG specifically described cinema as "brain-dead", not film. The initial thrust of his polemic was that sitting in a dark room watching a linear film would soon be superseded by other ways to watch film: in different locations, or online on demand.
I don't agree with much of what he said, but it made for a thought-provoking session. I like to see story-telling in my films, I like to watch acting, and I find visual composition based on framing to be interesting.
Cinema is only brain dead in the way that theatre, say, is brain dead, or even literature. It depends completely on who is in control and what they want to say, what they are expected to say, and what they can afford to say. A film like Wong Kar Wai's 2046 for example, is cinema that is powerful and challenging, as is Haneke's Wolfzeit. Both 21st century films (and both, in my opinion, are way better than most of Greenaway's stuff, which I find tiresome and conceited; in any medium there can be art, but there can also be pretentious art...)
If he was talking about Hollywood, well that is certainly mostly brain dead, that's for sure.
The fact is that cinema is an expensive medium, and, up until fairly recently, no-one except the very rich or the very lucky ever got to just 'do their thang'. In fact, I expect we will see a huge explosion of interesting passive visual now that most anyone can create stuff (whether it will make it to audiences is an entirely different question).
Having said all that, though, I completely agree with his predictions. I think we're seeing the sunset of cinema as a form that inspires adventure and experimentation and true vision. And I think his ideas of where we might go are absolutely correct.
It doesn't mean that he'll make anything less pretentious with it though.
Yes, I absolutely agree, and couldn't be more pleased to hear. If anybody needs to hear more and directly from me and the great team i work with please go to http://www.pookymedia.com/ and
http://www.pookymediafilms.com/
This is just the beginning and I will be producing more machinima, more entertainment and using the cost effective, incredibly beautiful platform which is Second Life to deliver that which will resonate. Thank you Peter!, by the way, would you like to be on the panel for The 1st Question? I also produce the best live hour and show on the internet, weekly!
Thank you,
Pooky Amsterdam
Aw. I *love* Peter Greenaway. I haven't found his films to be pretentious at all, although I've only seen two.
It certainly makes perfect sense to me that Peter Greenaway hates cinema. I always got that impression from watching his films.
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