What are movies?

[Applerill]

Okay, I proposed this for the Cinematic Point of Discussion thing, but that doesn't seem to be getting off the ground, so I thought I'd ask it outside of that.

When I was a kid, I thought of movies as something very different than TV and life. Looney-Toons, for one thing, was a cartoon show and not a movie, and I thought the same thing with most other shorts I'd see on places like Cartoon Network. And when I thought about life and dreams, they seemed to have much more to do with video games than movies to my fourth-grade mind. Movies were features that were released in theaters, and everything else was TV.

But in 2016, I fee like this distinction is harder and harder to make. Is House of Cards still TV if all the episodes debuted at once? Is Game of Thrones a TV show even though it has a big budget and has aired episodes in theaters? On the other side of the spectrum, are the Hobbit movies really movies if they come out episodically like a miniseries? This becomes all the more complicated when you factor in YouTube and paysite clips (and Vines, and Snaps), but Devin Faraci explains this really well at http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2015/02/08/...ies-anyway.

And sometimes, I even feel like dreams can be movies. Contrary to what I thought as a kid, I've realized that I can't control what I do in my dreams like a video game, and that there is so much cutting in the dreams that is determined by the subconscious mind's auteur.

What do you think makes a movie a movie?

[Kool Keith Sweat]

I think the differences between movies, television, music videos, vines, gifs, etc. is a question of formatting, presentation, and what's expected of the length and content in each. You could squabble all day about the categorization but ultimately they're all the same kind of thing (usually), which is images sequenced to portray movement. The real question is "where's the line between images/photographs and film?" or "how discontinuous in time or space do representations of an object in a slideshow have to be before it becomes uncomfortable to call it a film?"

Not really thinking about videogames here.

[CellarDoor]

http://consequenceofsound.net/2016/03/s...-theaters/

...which is a pretty unsurprising idea for Lynch.

I recently read an interesting article on McLuhan's communication theories and how they influenced a whole bunch of artists in the 70s, including Lynch, and how the viewer of Twin Peaks is constantly being reminded of watching a show on a television screen, moreso than the crime plot itself (which was never intended to find a resolution). And how the Fire Walk With Me movie explores a visual transcription of the same plot to the cinematic format.

This may seem muddled and I really don't have time to expand, but McLuhan should answer a few questions on this subject for those interested.


#thoughts go out to my friends in Bruxelles
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I'll be your plastic toy.

[HazeyTwilight]

I guess the main thing I get from the line between television and film becoming so blurred is that film directors are becoming a lot more comfortable handling TV series. We've come a long way since the days when somebody like Alfred Hitchcock would use the platform for its significantly lower budget and 25 minute run times to craft short films made by either himself or others he managed to bring along in his Presents series. Similar situation with Steven Spielberg in Amazing Stories. Now we got big name directors, like the aforementioned Spielberg, and also directors like David Fincher being a driving force for the tone of House Of Cards and Frank Darabont developing his spin on The Walking Dead. That could be a reason the lines are blurred.

But yeah, there is a definite progression in television, though I wouldn't say that I'm surprised by it - well at least when showed in theatres as TV and film are synonymous. Game Of Thrones premiering episodes in theatres is not really that big of a shock, because it was birthed on a network that literally is a Home Box Office, so it makes some sense. Also, I guess why Netflix decides to debut all the episodes at once is to kind of emulate the feeling of a new film being released - that it will be there in the theatre/server for a few months, diminishing in showings as time goes on only to be followed by the inevitable DVD releases.

Digressions aside, despite TV series getting these awesome privileges bestowed upon them, whether it's because of their quality or the amount of hype its fans project onto it, TV cannot replace the role that films have. My line of thinking about the subject is more or less what Keith had pointed out. There's too many structural, formatting and budget differences in both mediums to warrant such a change just yet, and what ultimately sets TV and film apart is, in my opinion, the length. Simply put (maybe a little too oversimplified), if one episode of a TV series extends over 1hr15min (EDIT: actually make that 1hr30min because Sherlock's episode length is that long and Sherlock is the best) then I don't really consider it a TV series - or it's at least in that grey area like with shows that are made in the East, but that's a whole other topic to discuss.

The progression is exciting but defining what makes a film a film is pretty clear.
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