this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2024
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Different, yes. But not as different as your example of a painting vs a TV series.
The modern scripted series IS the evolution of and replacement for the obsolete, way-too-short traditional movie. My analogy of the troubadour being replaced by the printing press is simply correct. We were only saddled with pathetically short movies, because people had to physically go to the theater, and still have time to get home and cook dinner.
Those days are over, and good riddance to them. The paradigm has shifted. There is no longer any reason to fuck around with arbitrarily far-too-brief motion pictures. Of course, there will always be people who cannot let go of the past, and insist that the limitations of obsolete media are somehow features, rather than bugs. Lots of people still unironically insist that black-and-white photography is somehow better, more serious, more artsy.
That's just nonsense. The page has turned. Technology has moved forward. Longer IS objectively better than shorter. Color IS objectively better than black and white. More IS better than less. Every child knows all of this. We only begin to deny facts like these, when we grow old enough to become insecure, and in need of things to brag about, show how "sophisticated" we are, etc.
We don't have to accept the limitations of yesteryear, unless we insist on it, for reasons of hipsterism.
I'm not sure I completely agree with your premise, but you're articulating your point well and I value your passion towards the topic.
Many discussions need to be spread over multiple comments on a post instead of being crammed into an over-long single post that still doesn't capture the point of view of the author as they intend.
Furthermore, often times people come back and edit their single comments into massive pages long diatribes and people just TLDR it, when they should have been part of a multi comment back and forth between the poster and their audience, and I think you're doing the latter well.
Haaaaaaang on....
That's fair enough.
I will admit that I'm over-egging the whole concept. However, I truly believe in the basic concept of what I'm saying. I think it's fair to say that at least a huge percentage of motion pictures have been more harmed by their limited scope than they were helped by it.
Note, as I mentioned in another comment, that directors themselves have ALWAYS chafed under the length restrictions of traditional cinema. They're always reined in by the moneyed interests, but if they had their way, even Syd Field's supposedly gospel paradigm of the three-act structure would be thrown out, in most cases.
And I can't disagree with the directors. The greatness of cinema has never been tied inherently to the runtime of a traditional movie. The things that are inspirational and beautiful about cinema all exist, whether the piece is a 45 minutes episode of a series, a 110 minute standard feature, or an epic 5 hour director's cut. The things that really define filmmaking are the photography itself, composition and lighting, acting and screenwriting, the subtle magic of the editor, the subtle-to-not-so-subtle magic of effects artists.
I genuinely believe the balance between all these factors is difficult enough, without having to fight about which scenes get cut, in order to fit in a singular feature length time constraint. Certainly, that shouldn't be seen as some kind of end-all, be-all, defining feature of motion picture art. I was being pushy and pithy about it earlier, but I really do believe that movies are only the length they are, because people only had a few hours to spend going to and from the theater.
I think so many directors of the past, if they'd had their choice in the matter, would ALWAYS have preferred to make a high quality series, rather than a limited movie. Especially if they didn't have to choose an objectively inferior picture quality and aspect ratio, as early television was lumbered with.
I think the final point is related to that, too. I think we're all still laboring under the prejudices of the early era of TV. Television was cheesy. Television was ugly. Television was cheap. Those attitudes are hard to shake off, even after we've all seen the current apex of the "small screen," and what it's capable of showing.