Sorry if this point has been brought up already, but i'm just too lazy to read all that :P Anyway...

Cinema has one problem: recurring ideas. I had this problem a while ago where i kept coming up with amazing ideas an then they were almost always "stolen." I can't think of an example at the moment, but i remember me getting REALLY ticked off.
Same with cinema in general. If it has an idea, it's gotta build on it. The problem is, that idea almost always is built upon multiple times or flat out duplicated. For instance: the three biggest titles in the theatres this summer (so far) have been Spider-Man 3, Shrek 3, and Pirates of the Carribean 3. Instead of thinking of something new, they had to make a sequal to a sequal, but the original would've stood on it's own. Then there was Deja Vu, which had some relation to the short lived series Daybreak. Land of the Dead? Suck... Remake of Dawn of the Dead, good, only because the original idea was great.

Originality makes good movies, but they won't be original for long.

u got a right mind to see this bro, but you cant keep looking at the cinema for the answers. They have always been doing this. Ever since JAWS decided to coin "blockbusterS" have we been seeing JAWS 666!

And if u remember the reason why JAws is considered the blockbuster, its cause it made $. So what could these films be doing in the theatre? Are they trying to push our minds to a new world ? Are they inviting us to another? Are they questioning their own value? Of course not they are single minded $ *****s. So when u start asking for original ideas, remember u cant go looking for inspiration at Blockbuster Video/hollywood video. I have given up much of my time of watching films .I find it best to see only 1 film a month (if any at all)Any idea u have that shows up i na film, you should be grateful for not ever having to be responsible for...you gotta keep digging deeper to find the real reason you decided you want to put a mirror up to your world. What is in your eye?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Kyle Johnson,

Yeah and I freaking hate Jaws... so boring, but everybody tells me it's because I wasn't actually alive when it came out. Then [allegedly] I would've been totally scared.

Have you seen Adaptation, khaos?

People who say stuff like "Nothing's original anymore, so who cares!!!" are stupid. If you actually believe that no one can ever make anything original anymore because "everything's been done" or that the same plots keep showing up, you're missing the point of cinema completely.

And I don't think anyone is talking about big budget studio films anyway. Are people here still actually trying to get studio deals and stuff like that? Does anyone here actually want to be controlled by producers in hollywood?

quote:

Originally posted by braininabox:
Have you seen Adaptation, khaos?

Yeah, Kaufman alone pretty much proves the idea that nothing can be original any more to be completely wrong. There are plenty of film makers out there who prove that wrong. Film is a very young medium. It has a loooot of evolving left to do.

I love Kaufman's work, but he bothers me in the sense that I think he often chooses to plug things into his scripts that are original, sort of stream of concious, but they ultimatley distract from the core story.

Originality should be our concern but as film is used to explore humanity, there will be some reoccuring themes. I believe an originality of perspective is more important than originality of execution. If you can honestly express yourself, you add more to the medium than just trying to be original.

And you can't go into a seafood restaurant and complain about the smell of fish.

Oh great, another movie with a person it. What a ripoff.


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Cinema is too popular!

quote:

I believe an originality of perspective is more important than originality of execution.

Yes! You've hit the nail on the head, if you'll excuse my unoriginal figure of speech.

haha. 6your perception determines how you execute it. theyre the same thing!

quote:

Originally posted by Kyle Johnson:
haha. 6your perception determines how you execute it. theyre the same thing!

No not at all, although i enjoyed the maniacal laughing.

Perception is a point of view, in film often called a world view, it's your cognition or understanding of a subject or situation.

Execution is a a mode or style of performance or use of your technical skill. It's a choice of delivery method for communicating your perception. One does NOT have to inform the other. In fact it's great when they are in opposition. Say a balzing social satire delivered in the form of choppy, cut out animated kids from Colorado.

So you could have the same perception communicated over a varied array of executions or styles without one determining the other.

They are certainly not the same thing.

Meh.
I am going to have to side with Kyle on this one.

I disagree. Perspective/perception is entirely different from execution. Are you defining execution and perception the same was as Red, cause that's how I understood them.

Execution is style, mechanics and architecture of the piece, visual and aesthetic themes.

Perspective is your take on the subject. Themes, moods, story-lines, morals, fairness, consequences, etc.

Perspective and execution may be two seperate entities, but they are so delicately entwined in their interaction that you really can't seperate them.

Sweet we're picking sides, hey wait, this isn't a shirts and skins kinda deal cause I'm not comfortable with that.

In fact we're sort of on the same side of the argument we're just discussing semantics. You say tomato, I say juicy red devil fruit that spreads hateful lies.

In fact me and Kyle have the same gigolo father who travels from town to town producing film wannabee love children and solving peoples problems.

But I will say perception and execution could never be entwined in the sense that a person with a worldview rarely has unlimited resources. So I would love to tell my stories in beutiful 35mm glory but I settle for DV. This is a choice of execution determined by fiscal restraint not perception. And the constraint does little to influce my worldview and only determines my production choices.

Alright I see where you are coming from now.

(Now pointless to say since the conversation has moved on, but here goes.)
I'm not saying that there's nothing original anymore, sorry if it sounded that way. I'm just saying that with CGI and millions of dollars, it sometimes doesn't try to be original. The poeple with little finance or who are new to the business seem liklier to have more ambition about their work, therefore, making good movies.
Fantastic 4, Rise of the Silver Surfer sucked. (That's because all it cared about was, in fact, the silver surfer, leaving the rest to shrivel up into crappiness.) it's not an original story, and it wasn't good because it wasn't the writer's own idea, therefore, he wasn't ambitious. Most movies aren't good because of that, that's all i'm saying.

I think saying perception determines execution (as a rule) is going too far. However, I also think they can't actually be isolated from each other as people here are suggesting -- there IS a relationship between perspective and execution. So I'm going to side here with braininabox.

Take D.W. Griffith's introduction of the close-up. On the one hand, this is a radical change of execution. It caused a huge shift in the way we understand movies, and changed the basic unit of film from the scene to the shot. In narrative terms, the close-up allowed a new kind of intimacy with the character -- it influences the way we understand what we're looking at, it changes the situation, the world view of the picture. Here, suddenly, the world of film has this new intimacy as a possibility, a character's inner life can become our focal point. By the definitions we're using, this has to belong to Griffith's perspective or perception.

In the case of South Park, the reason the choppy, cut out execution is meaningful at all is precisely because it DOES have to do with the show's point of view. One does inform the other -- this the purpose of the opposition. In South Park, it creates irony.

In general, I think the reason we can have a sense of point of view or perspective at all in a film is because of the execution. Perspective comes out of an accumulation of choices made about execution, and nothing else, because a film is physically nothing else. You may not have unlimited resources, but you make choices about the resources you have -- you express your perspective nonetheless. For example, a three-act structure is also a world view -- it's a world where every loose thread is likely to get tied up at the end, though we know this isn't what life is like. A perspective, a specific point of view is at work.

(Also, since this thread was started by Nervous Larry, and since I didn't have a chance to try to make amends on the "No Country for Old Men" thread before it got locked -- Nervous Larry, my apologies for the way I responded to your very sincere post. "Jaded stupidity" was a pretty fair assessment.)

You're saying here that perspective comes from a series of choices on execution. I think perspective in this discussion has been referring to the perspective of the filmmaker, not the perspective the filmmaker gives to the audience (which does indeed stem from choices in execution.)

Well for this we'd need to define execution. Because on a technical level, execution can be compromised by budget, which was originally why South Park looked like it did. Execution rarely matches up with what we had planned, and often times that's what makes a film better. If a film came out exactly the way a director had planned, then he didn't collaborate enough with everyone else on set and probably made a terrible film.

You have a certain perspective on things which often leads to your type of execution. And any time you do something that is out of your perspective, and something you don't understand, I think that constitutes experimental film. Even if it's weird by everyone else's standards, if you know exactly what you're doing and planning everything out, it's not experimenting with anything.