Making movies is hard. Even more so when the director, writer and cinematographer are different people. It must be a real test of skill for these roles to be able to communicate their visions to each other. One can imagine the loss incurred in the transmission of the director’s imagination to the cinematographer’s comprehension and recreation. On top of it, the scale of things from the original vision might have to be curbed due to sheer logistical challenges of imprinting imagining on the celluloid.
An arbitrary paragraph of inconsequential thoughts for an average person like me who is far removed from showbiz. Unrelated, trivial and casual. But even so, my thoughts for a large proportion of my free time are occupied by the film world — of course on camera but also all associated worlds in periphery. I am either pondering over movies, movie making, technicalities of a shot, colour scheme, sound design, characters, or the related people and their lives and experiences. I am quite invested in the actor/director/writer/cinematographer/lyricists/music composer/anyone and everyone related to the visual medium and their opinions, expertise, fashion and life experiences.
All of this obsession, but I seem to make nothing productive out of it. It is more like an input than an output driven hobby, more passive than active. Which keeps inducing a guilt in me from time to time.
Somehow this thought keeps haunting me that if I dedicate such a big chunk of my brain capacity to this sphere, I better do something with it. So that somehow pursuing such a seemingly trivial thing could be justified. One of the many YouTube movie critics that I really enjoy is Jammy. At some point he decided to act upon his interests and he gradually made a career out of it. He makes in-depth and enjoyable videos on YouTube related to movies and series, and is increasingly getting opportunities to even interview actors. Apart from the bounties of YouTube content, I also listen to a tonne of movie podcasts. I don’t claim that I am more passionate than the people making such content, because I still have a day job and they are the one who escalated their interests into something more “meaningful”. But I do keep getting this feeling that I could too perhaps use this random (basic level) know-how and try to produce something out of it. But a crucial thing to note here is that this is not an urge that I have, rather just a recurring feeling of guilt.
I tried writing a couple of pieces about some films and characters like here and here. But I’ll be honest, I enjoyed thinking about these ideas more than I enjoyed translating them in text. And I can very confidently say that these weren’t even the best works of writing that I have produced, even after the fact that the topic was something I clearly felt a lot for. Although, one that I quite like was where I reminisce the year I watched 128 movies. But film writing is actually a serious job. By the looks of it, it might seem easy because you’re apparently just recapturing what transpired on screen during those 2 hours. But good film writing also feeds from perhaps what was not on the screen, what could have happened, what you made out of the artists’ vision and how you position this small cog in the wheel in the bigger microcosm of the cinema history and in turn our society. I have no hesitation in admitting that I am far from reaching such a level of expertise in writing where I can perform such a meta-analysis. But the more important question to ask here is — do I need to reach that level?
The other day I was watching a video on YouTube on the friendship recession. Anyway, one of the points that the speaker was making was that most of the friendships exist not because we want something from that relation for ourselves or it serves us tangible benefits. We have friendships just for friendship’s sake, we aren’t in it for anything else. The friendship is the gift. This rushed my brain immediately to how I think about hobbies. Pretty random analogy, but it sure works similarly.
One can sometimes mistake a hobby having the same utility as a ‘side hustle’. The lines could get easily blurred and it is easy to fall into the productivity trap where you starting evaluating the time you spend engaging in hobbies. For quite some time I used to feel unsettled about my deep interest in movies or for that matter any kind of visual story telling medium. And that it was mostly an input and there aren’t many direct outputs seen. How is this meaningful? What purpose does it serve? How is this helping me in any way? I still haven’t been able to get entirely over this, but increasingly I am trying to have this conversation with myself. That I just might be interested in the cinematic world, and that is that. Me absolutely enjoying this world of make-believe as well as real stories doesn’t necessitate me starting a career in film making. My love for films doesn’t need validation of me acting upon it in a more conventional sense. Movies are enchanting for me, and that should be enough in itself. I don’t have to guilt myself for being “unproductive” about it. You are supposed to enjoy hobbies for their own sake. That is the best part of it.
But to also say that this doesn’t impact me at all and has no benefits whatsoever is also a misestimation. Cinema has given me perspectives that I cannot calculate. It has helped me live vicariously in settings of various peoples, communities, languages, cultures, times, struggles, fantasies and hopes. It has made me more empathetic and has helped in shaping my world view and opinions. That should be something, right? It gives me plenty to learn by just listening to and learning from the work and life experiences of the people involved. The fashion doesn’t have to be phoney glamour. It too has history, it tells stories of its own. And if nothing else, cinema allows me to have great conversations with like minded people who also find solace and beauty in the reel world. I think this is meaningful enough.