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The Cinematic Conversation

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Film Student Vs. Film

I don’t watch many movies.

Watching a film is something of a revelation. To me, watching a movie is like waking up from a nightmare. But, the exact opposite. A period of bliss. A time where I can release and become immersed within a world foreign to my own.

I love watching movies. It’s just that I do not typically have the time to spend ninety minutes or more in front of a screen. Therefore, film to me is a gift; a time of celebration. A celebration of life, of perspective, and of emotion. 

I take this celebration very seriously. And I hope to share it with the world. As the credits roll, I hope for a conversation. I hope for a cinematic conversation.

I am a filmmaker. I am also a film student. One creative, the other academic, I feel blessed to call myself both. I have created this blog in hopes of bringing these two roles together and constructing an environment in which my perspectives as each flourish together. 

I will analyze films with a discerning eye, discuss current trends in filmmaking, and work to compare them to the past one hundred years of cinematic history. Cinema is always changing. As cultures and technology evolve, cinema rides shotgun. I want to scuba dive the depths of these relationships and see what we can find. 

Since cinema’s conception in 1892, at the hands of Thomas Edison and his invention of the kinetoscope, the medium has traveled through four distinctly defined eras: the classical period, post-classical period, modern period, and post-modern period. Today we reside within the era of post-modernism. 

This cinematic conversation will feature films from across the periods, comparing them to one another while exploring each one in its own way. I want to take what I’ve learned from behind the camera, combine it with what I’ve learned in the classroom, and chock it full of what I’ve learned in life, all in the hopes of crafting a discussion you feel like adding to. Film is a medium in which everyone can partake, no matter your age, your race, your gender or your economic standing. It is a medium for the curious and a medium for the passionate. It is a medium for the narrow-minded and a medium for the open-minded. Film is a language that all individuals can read and write. As one of my favorite directors and producers, James Cameron, once said:

Pick up a camera. Shoot something. No matter how small, no matter how cheesy, no matter whether your friends and your sister star in it. Put your name on it as director. Now you’re a director.

We are all directors of our own lens. Through this blog, I hope we can partake in the medium of film together and learn something about ourselves, about our world, and about the very medium that has the power to change it.