I enjoyed connecting Prince’s articles to the clips we watched in class, because it consistently made me analyze how film is so multi faceted, a medium that has to mix multiple art forms to create a world. Often film can be regarded as a visual form, but sound is also very, if not more, important towards creating that world. The titles, the landscape, the mies-en-scene, are also of big importance towards this creation. For this reason, Prince points out that “Cinema is photographic, yes, but it is also, among other things, a medium of painting, and I mean that literally…The normative practice of filmmakers in cutting from shot to shot takes the medium closer to the principles of collage than to photographic composition, (Prince, 154).” This is why I see film as such a transformative and relatable art medium. Its ability to immerse the viewer in a world, emotionally and aesthetically, is rooted in its technical and multi-faceted nature. The more dimensions it has, the more we often give into this world.
The clip from the Moulin Rogue that we watched in the lecture is a great example of what Prince was talking about. The director wanted to immerse the viewers in the old Paris aesthetic, and he used digital tools and animation to carry the story along and enhance the environment. As Prince says, “the environments seen on screen frequently are painted ones.” He talks about early films and their use of Matte paintings as backdrops. This reminds me of the Moulin Rouge, which intermixed live action cinematography and digital landscapes of Paris to add dimension. This is also similar to Zodiac and its recreation of San Francisco. Because it is a period piece, the recreation of a dated San Francisco is essential to the storytelling. The digital tools, in this case, immerse the viewer more, and because it is done well, the viewer is not distracted by it like we were distracted by the James Bond clip. Overall, Prince makes the point that utilizing multiple mediums in film, in particular crafting the environment and story through animation and painting elements can only add to the production value. Lastly, Prince’s argument reminds me of the boom of video games. They are able to immerse the gamer in a world (in many ways) more then a film can. Video games use landscapes, paintings, textures of many sorts, and sometimes live action cinematography to drive the characters and storyline. With the increase of virtual reality, I can see how it could be applicable to Prince’s argument about immersive environments. Overall, to use more mediums is to give more shape to your world and to your film.
American Cinema 