First Meeting Recap: Is film becoming too fast?

So, I figured it might be cool if after every meeting I wrote a sort of mini-recap about what we went over--what went down, more or less, in the wicked hour we spent together. I doubt anyone will really care to read it, but that won't stop me from writing it! :)

This will, then, be a summary of our first ever meeting (however uneven it may have been), where we asked ourselves if film is becoming "too fast" and assessed the notion of "chaos cinema."

We started off by watching a video essay that proposed the notion of an increasingly sloppy, fast cutting, even incomprehensible style that has more or less afflicted modern Hollywood (and in particular modern Hollywood action films). As the essay essentially argued, in somewhat alarmist terminology, the trend toward the "chaos" technique is a detrimental deconstruction of the even, spacial continuity of an older and better Hollywood. 

So what we examined then, in response to the essay's notice of stylistic "degradation," was whether contemporary action film has indeed devolved into chaos, or if there is worth to be found in that chaotic style. That is, we asked ourselves, does chaos cinema have some value, or is an older classical style simply superior by intrinsic value?

The pretty much unanimous answer was, unsurprisingly, yes and no. 

Yes, we agreed, some modern films do employ the style to a negative effect. Most notably, as was pointed out, filmmakers like Tony Scott and Michael Bay indulge excessively in the "amplified intensity" of fast cutting, blurring, explosions, camera movement, and etc. They were our prototypical examples of chaotic excess--stylists who go overboard, and assault their audiences with an overload of sensory information too fast to perceive. Filmmakers who engage with the chaos style constantly, we decided generally, were noted to have a depreciating sense of effectiveness as things wore on in whatever of their films—the chaos gets tiring, and as a narrative progresses it grows exhaustive and waters down any moments that may have had particular poignancy. The predominant emotion is simply intensification and vague unfocused excitement—there is little room left for anything else.

And then, no, we agreed, chaos cinema, or intensified continuity, is not something to dismiss outright. There are moments we noted where film can employ speed effectively. The quickness, perhaps in fleeting fight scenes (as one example), can be used as an effective tool for anxiety, intensity, and so forth. The Bourne series, in particular, was noted as an effective example where, despite fast cutting, the speed was used to an effective end. Danny Boyle was also mentioned as a stylist who sometimes employs a chaotic editing style but does so in a meaningful way (though I personally am no great fan of his take on chaos).

Thus, the ultimate conclusion was ambiguous. Whether chaos cinema is a timely reflection of an ADD generation or a terrible destruction of “real” cinema was deemed a thing to be assessed for each particular film. It is not a blanket term that should be applied over a whole genre—just over Michael Bay films :)


Here is the link to the video essay if anyone wants to watch it: http://vimeo.com/28016047