Chronicles of Narnia

[Rhydderch Hael]

Is film or photography artistic?
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Not quite gotten my point. A movie can become an artistic endeavour. But, as I said in my above post, movies tend to commit a very grave crime in storytelling, a visual sort of information dump. Movies are very capable of doing this, more so than other expressions of storytelling.

Back in the days before CGI made SFX extravaganzas all-too-possible for every up-and-coming director, good filmmaking was accomplished through the serendipity of challenge: if it's not possible to flaunt it onscreen, then hint at it instead. The fact that you couldn't see much of the mechanical shark in Jaws proved to be an asset to Spielberg in more ways than one: the obvious reason is that he knew that the mechanical shark was too fake-looking to pass muster, but the very essence of fear comes from what you don't know about your antagonist. A theoretical 2006 remake of Jaws would not work not only because it would be a re-hash, but because the original's suspense-driven quality would not be the same if you now had fully-rendered underwater scenes of the shark swimming along.

It's like film noir: the shadows are as important as what gets lit because of what you don't get visually— but your imagination is working on to compensate.

Good movies that have compelled audiences with artistic storytelling onscreen tend not to show the audience everything all once and in the bright sunshine. Subtlety is a skill— hence the unskilled don't demonstrate it. The going trend—especially now that CGI has given directors to show the impossible in full color and scale—is to do the full reveal and give the audience all the answers in the end.

Some of the best filmmaking still leaves you with questions.