Cinema Theory and Practice: the divide we don't need
More than any other art form Cinema has long suffered from an entrenched separation between Theory and Practice. Unlike forms such as Architecture or Music where a critical thinking premise and theoretical concept is often the beating heart of the creative work itself, contemporary cinema largely keeps concept and practice at a skeptical arms length.
Contemporary film-makers it seems are very rarely theorists of the form they are executing and seem innately reticent to even engage with critical discussions about their art (not to mention that far too many are just plainly incapable of coherent verbal articulation outside of marketing speil). Their films may explore themes, stories, characters but they rarely explore the cinematic form itself.
There is however an established history of film-makers as film-theorists - particularly Russian film-makers tracing a trajectory from Eisenstein to Tarkovsky. The works of these film-makers where conceived and produced as much as conceptual investigations of what cinema is and what it could do as they were of vehicles for narrative and character. Witness Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin which is as much a proof-of-concept work on Montage theory as it is a treatise on Tsarist dictatorship and an exercise in Soviet Propaganda.
Between making movies film-makers such as these filmmakers (and many others like them, particularly in France during the New Wave) wrote and spoke broadly of their art, their intentions, their experiments.
It seems that this mode of film making informed by exercise of theory is one poorly represented in the modern age. The number of contemporary film-makers actively engaged in writing about and examining the art form they practice are few and far between.
On the flip side the mantle worn by contemporary film theorists has long been one of ignorant external observation. It’s a sad truism to assert that the number of cinema theorists in the world who are Also film-makers - or who are least knowledgeable in the processes of making cinema - is but a mere handful.
This is not to say there isn’t a valuable place for the non-practicing research scholar, such roles are crucial for building a body of knowledge and understanding about the trajectory and patterns of an artform through history. That said however, there is a stream of inherent bias in the analyses and understanding of cinema that arise when the vast majority of those writing about movies have never made one. Invariably the modes of analysis from non-practicing scholars fall into, as David Bordwell has observed, Cultural Studies rather than examinations of the art of cinema and its aesthetics.
Worse still are the fractured results when scholars, possessing no real knowledge of cinema making, technology or process, attempt to arrive at viable conclusions derived from technology (such as digital cinema). Invaribly the basis for such conclusions is ignorance.
A recent reading of the book Cinetech by Stephen Keane (intended primarily for tertiary students) highlights such problems. The book has the subtitle of ‘film, convergence and new media’ and aims to consider “the major changes in modern film and the impact of the transition from analogue to digital” Adding; “How do special effects change our experience of contemporary film?”
Sounds good but alas the writer (an author, scholar and university lecturer from the UK - formerly university of Leeds and now reportedly at the Uni of Northampton) draws his assumptions and conclusions from what can only be seen as a cloud of ill-considered ignorance. It’s the type of cloud not only to be expected from someone who has never actually made a film or worked directly with the technology of film making, but also to be expected when there is a distinct lack of research accuracy and fact checking. The combination of which produces a profound work of ignorance.
From the text I can pull numerous examples - an overtly obvious one is where Keane refers to “the three main digital editing systems” as “Avid, Apple’s Final Cut Pro and Microsoft’s Lightworks”. (P39) Any film-maker reading such a statement is of course laughing out loud at the idea that Microsoft would (ot could) make a professional NLE let alone that the seminal Lightworks system be mistaken as having been made by a company whose otherwise extent of quality creative software development is clip art in MS Word. (Lightworks is of course an independent and long-standing hi-end editing system company and has no connection at all to Microsoft)
Is this just ignorance and poor research? A simple failure of fact checking? Or is there something much more intrinsically problematic here for a supposedly scholarly text dealing with, as the book itself saids, “the digital practices used in film”?
Is the core problem that factual information such as the correct identification of a production tool is considered inconsequential to a scholarly work? That such accuracy of technical detail does not merit the same level of accuracy that all other areas of professional academia would demand? If this is the case, as I strongly suspect it is (at least at a subconscious level if not a deliberate one), then it points to a major issue of contemporary cinema scholarship - that scholars such as Mr Keane fail to recognize the direct and inescapable triumvirate relationship between Industry, Professional Practice and Cinematic Form.
As any film-maker knows first hand the tool directly effects how the artist works and so has tangible impact on form, style and ultimately viewer experience of a cinematic work. The industry and market relationship between Final Cut Pro and Avid as corporate products matters to cinema as an art because both tools present a philosophical paradigm that privileges certain creative processes above others. (For more on this check out my mini-essay entitled the Philosophy of the Tools)
Keane’s lase faire (aka Use and Abuse) approach to the Technical in service of the Theoretical continues throughout his book… In an attempt to establish a platform to discuss the impact of Hi-Definition on cinema process and draw an argument about convergence, Keane seeks to layout the technical basis of formats for HD: he states on page 46:
“High definition is a generic name for professional standard cameras that take advantage of the versatility of digital film but enable a resolution and depth of field similar to 35mm”
This statement is wasteland of generalization, technical misconceptions and mixed terms. HD does Not refer to ‘professional standard cameras’; (there are many more consumer HD cameras on the market than there are professional ones) HD refers only to pixel dimensions and nothing more.
And what exactly is this ‘digital film’ that HD takes advantage of? Does Mr Keane mean ‘tape’ or more broadly that HD looks like ‘film’ but is cheap like DV? This itself is a falsity owning to the enormous diversity of HD formats (tape and tapeless) from the cheap and lo-fi to the uber expensive and hi-fi. HD can just as easily look like poor cheap video as it can look like high quality cinema depending which camera and a myriad of other technical and creative factors wholly independent of the resolution. Such a generalization is both pointless and useless, demonstrating a lack of even a basic understanding of what HD is and how it is employed.
And of course we won’t mention Keane’s total neglect of 2k and 4k digital recording. The book was written in 2007 so not mentioning 2k/4k seems a major oversight in any discussion of digital cinema.
Further, any suggestion that HD ‘equals a depth of field similar to 35mm’ indicates a writer who has obviously no knowledge at all that DoF is derived from sensor size, aperture and lens quality and has virtually nothing at all to do directly with Resolution - HD, SD or otherwise.
But as Mr Keane continues to try and present a textbook (for film and new media students no less) exploring cinema concepts based on cinema technology he continues to present still more grievous factual errors that render flawed any summations he may subsequently draw.
Keane sets out to define the major HD formats and lists them as “HDDV, DVCAM, DVCpro, HDCAM and, most recently, HDTV.” As both a film-maker and theorist its hard to know where to begin to correct such a fundamentally incorrect statement as this. First there is no such format as ‘HDDV’, one can only assume Mr Keane means HDV but since HDV has never been referred to as anything but a three letter acronym in both logo and text and has never been referred to in any form as HDDV its hard to imagine how such a mistake could get under the radar of fact checking. Second, DVCAM and DVCpro are NOT High Definition formats at all, they are old-school Standard Definition only. In fact not only are these two formats SD and not HD but both these formats are identical in everything but track pitch to common everyday DV. Both DVCAM and DVCpro (25mbps) use the same standard DV codec and have identical quality offering nothing over ordinary DV save for being slightly less prone to error due to spacing the information more across the tape (ie shorter record times - 40-45mins on a 60min tape.)
This seems a particularly woeful error of accuracy for Mr Keane to make since this itemized list of formats is used by Kane to subsequently make an argument of “Hollywood fighting back against the use of Digital Video (DV standard Det) by independent fm makers.” At a root level the argument is flawed since the adoption of HD was driven by the broadcast sector and not by Hollywood. HD was certainly Not Hollywood’s ‘response’ to anything as they had to be dragged to it kicking and screaming in protest.
Keane does cite Mike Figgis commenting on Hollywood’s over investment in technology and pointing to the very high-end (and expensive) digital processes of Star Wars as an example of Hollywood attempting to show that they’re on the ‘HD train’. Figgis’ point is that Hollywood hasnt really changed its spots and whilst moving to HD slowly it is still resisting the cost effective efficiency digital can offer; maintaining its dependency on huge and unnecessary budgets.
It would appear then that Keane has used the simple, off the cuff, comment by Figgis to justify a host of fallacious assumptions and technical inaccuracies. The sentiment may have some small merit but Keane fails to take account of any other issues in regard to HD and backs up any weak case he does make for Hollywood’s perspective on HD with reference to non-existent HD formats…!
Mr Keane finally gets one right with the reference to HDCAM (giving him a score of 1 out of 5 correct HD formats) but jumps right back into the pit of ignorance and inaccuracy with an assertion of “HDTV” as the most ‘recent’ HD format succeeding from HDCAM.
Now for the sake of our non-technical readers (and hopefully for Mr Keane’s benefit if he’s reading - and I do hope he is) HDTV is NOT a production format at all and nothing has ever, or will ever, be shot in ‘HDTV’.
The term HDTV is simply an umbrella term to loosely and broadly describe the broadcast delivery of TV signals in Hi Definition resolution. More commonly HDTV is simply used to describe a TV set capable of displaying 720 or 1080 HD resolutions. HDTV is Not a shooting format nor is it a production process nor is it a technical specification (as HDCAM, XDCAM, HDV, AVCHD and DVCProHD are), it is simply a generic term mostly used by consumers and TV marketing.
Even more infuriating is that Mr Keane goes on to cite director Lars Von Trier has having shot his 2003 film Dogville on this fictitious non-existent format of “HDTV” (it was in fact shot on a Sony F900 camera which uses the HDCAM format.) Keane even claims that George Lucas used the “HDTV” process on Episode 2 as opposed to the HDCAM format he’d used on Episode 1. Again there is no such thing as shooting ‘with HDTV’ nor is HDTV a description of any kind of technical production process. Still not content Keane cites Stephen Spielberg’s Band of Brothers as being a HDTV production when it was in fact shot on celluloid film and simply aired as a HD broadcast.
But the most heinous crime Keane commits with these errors goes to the heart of my macro-concern over the divorced nature of theory and practice in contemporary cinema. Having falsely and inaccurately exerted that HDTV is a specific HD format for production (which it plainly is not) and a successor to HDCAM no less, Keane then uses this false premise to draw a conceptual conclusion on the nature of cinematic convergence. He claims that this evolution of the supposed HD suffix from ‘HDCAM’ to ‘HDTV’ is symbolic of a “synergy between film and television”. That it somehow shows that ‘film’ and ‘tv’ production are ‘merging’.
In effect what Keane has done is the equivalent to assuming blindly that 2+2=5 and then coming to a conclusion therefore that 2×3=7.5 without ever checking if the original calculation and conjecture was correct.
There is no such production format as ‘HDTV’ and no HD based ’successor’ to HDCAM, therefore any summation that the shift in nomenclature suffix from ‘CAM’ to ‘TV’ has significance is plainly baseless and unfounded..
The bigger picture conclusion I must then draw is that Keane has committed this mistake because he is (sadly like so many others) a cinema theorist not only insulated and isolated from actual cinema practice but also a scholar bred on a defiant arrogance toward technical knowledge as somehow inferior and secondary to the study of cinema as an art.
I can’t help but see Keanes blatant misuse and ignorant misrepresentation of technical facts as an overt means to leverage an unfounded conceptual argument. Perhaps Keane knows full well that those fellow scholars who would judge his book would share the same profound ignorance and so be oblivious to the blatantly poor scholarship invested in the text. As a result Keane knows there is no need to invest the technical aspects of his work with the same level of scrutiny as other academic areas would demand.
In any case the end result is that any worthy ideas Mr Keane might have had on the nature of cinematic convergence are rendered worthless and invalid. Similarly, in turn, any useful role of respect scholars may have had with film-makers is again scuttled. Is there any wonder that film theorists are so readily dismissed and scoffed at by film-makers? Is it any wonder we have a film making culture where scholarship on the nature of digital cinema is not regarded as valuable by those that make it?
The technical and academic spanking could go on - the assertion by Keane that Danny Boyle shot 28Days Later (made with a DV format Canon XL1) with frame rates up to “16,000 frames per second” (p55) borders is ludicrously absurd since the venerable XL1 had no over-crank feature at all and was locked to the standard 25fps. This is of course not to mention that there is no camera ever made by human hand capable of such a fast frame rate as 16,000fps.
But to get to the point of why I find this so infuriating as both a film-maker and a film-theorist is that if such factual errors as these above were made in regard to traditionally scholarly information - theoretical principles, names of texts and authors, or in reference to accepted scholarly terminology - then the book would never have been accepted and never gone to print. Such inaccuracies and fallacious would (indeed should) have been picked up in the fact-checking and referral process under the intense due diligence all academic work is given. Anyone who has written a university essay or thesis of any sort will be well aware of how pedantic such referring and fact-checking processes can and should be.
So it begs the question why in texts such as this by Stephen Keane (and common in so many academic texts that venture into production areas of cinema) there seems a thorough lack of oversight and due diligence in regard to the technical accuracy from which any conceptual theory on cinema aesthetics must arise.
It may appear that I’m exerting the crimes of so many scholars onto the sole head of Mr Keane - picking on him so to speak. Certainly Mr Keane has delivered a particularly heinous text, one seemingly about cinema technology and yet constructed on a basis of absurd technical ignorance and seemingly non existent fact-checking. But I do use Stephen Keane’s text as a microcosm of a larger systemic problem; the entrenched divide between cinematic theory and cinema practice.
Where are the scholars who come to their conceptual ideas through the process of cinematic practice? Where are the scholars who embrace the techno-cultural nature of cinema aesthetics in tandem with cinema’s cultural constructs? Where are the scholars who realize that cinema IS technology and until you understand its mechanics and tools you will never understand its aesthetics and impact?.
They do exist, I’ve met a few, indeed I consider myself one, but they are, none the less, tragically out numbered.
This rant isn’t just about indignation over bad scholarship, there are palpable ramifications if the divide between theory and practice in cinema remains so divorced. On one hand, the ramifications for theorists are that they will continue to have little relevance and impact on cinema as an art. They will be impotent commentators read by few, comprehended by fewer and significant to none. More importantly that the role of cinema scholarship will become purely one of after-the-fact commentary rather than forward-thinking speculation and investigation.
.For film-makers (and subsequently the cinema watching public at large) the ramifications are even worse and may be expressed no more succinctly than with the term ‘Stale’.
Without the proactive theoretical investigation of ideas of form, technique and the impact of cinema, film making practice becomes a stagnant cesspool re bubbling to the surface the same old structures, the same old images, the same old clichés.
Theory needs practice to be relevant and practice needs theory to be dynamic.
I fear so long as scholars such as Stephen Keane masquerade as authorities on digital cinema we will not shake off the divide between theory and practice.
