Entranced, the deer
stops in her tracks, captured by
sleek, shining beauty --
so she flees,
foliage in
frantic flight. Hooves
crackle her untouched
wild heart which races
a handheld gun that shoots
but misses because she fears
that foreign fire in her heart:
she is a blur,
uncatchable.
Hello, all. It has been a long time since I made a post in my own normal voice. I wanted to speak into the general void about a new discovery I made in the past few months -- film.
As I've made it pretty clear on this blog, I have been deeply interested in literature and writing for as far back as I can remember, from storytelling journal entries I wrote in first grade to the "chapter book" I wrote in third grade to the various little stepping stones I've crossed to get to this point in time. There's no doubt that writing has drastically changed who I am, how I think, and how I view the world. In fact the word "drastic" isn't even the right word because it implies a sudden change. Writing, for me, has never been a novelty. It has been a lifelong companion.
Recently, however, a friend of mine introduced me to a YouTube channel called nerdwriter. Run by Evan Puschak, nerdwriter is a video essay channel that investigates film, creative arts, and history with a very evidence-driven lens. From there I learned about the detailed eye with which one can watch movies, such as through his analyses of "Arrival," a movie I really enjoyed but didn't specifically know why, among many other video essay film analyses. Although I knew film was an old (albeit much younger than writing) art form which has created many beautiful and life-shaping artworks, I don't think I fully understood the impact and artistic significance of the medium until I began watching these videos. Immediately intrigued, I looked into more film analysis channels and to my delight found some awesome channels like "Every Frame a Painting," "Lessons from the Screenplay," "Cinefix," and many others.
While writing is my most comfortable art form in which I feel able to express myself with the least resignation, I found myself utterly drawn and obsessed with the versatility, expressiveness, subtlety, and power of film. In freshman year of college I took a course about the relationship between visual arts and written arts and learned that each medium is suited for different expressive purposes, so I was primed to the concept of "X art medium is probably better fit to express Y idea." In fact, after taking that course, my story ideas began morphing into new dimensions. Sometimes I would come up with a concept and realize that it was probably better suited as a sculpture than as a poem, or think of yet another idea and wish I could realize it into a movie rather than a short story. Learning more about cinematography, screenwriting, and other aspects of film made me understand even more what film could really do to both well-read and casual audiences.
Since then I've been captivated by the art of film. It combines so fantastically the poignancy and power of photography, the descriptiveness of writing, the subtlety of music, and so many other disciplines. Isolating just one aspect of a movie already yields so much material to learn and analyze. While writing is able to endure time and use language to encourage readers to draw an idea in their head, film lets its watchers experience another life at a set pace with set visuals. It feels much more real and allows for much more subtlety that otherwise has to be buried very deeply in literature. This is not to say that one form is better than the other; just that they are vastly different in their strengths yet both so uniquely powerful.
I just wanted to express this newfound love on this blog and encourage people to look into the aforementioned YouTube channels. They're wonderfully educational and have opened my eyes to the great world of film! If you are interested in seeing me gush even more about movies, I have created a secondary blog here on film reviews and analyses.
Thanks again and happy reading/writing!