![\"shreddervimeo\"](\"http:\/\/smugfilm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/shreddervimeo.jpg\")
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See this rectangle? Not like this.<\/i><\/p>\n
There\u2019s a great YouTube video from 2008 called David Lynch on iPhone<\/a>\u00a0in which he discusses the ridiculousness of watching a film on such a device. The footage of him talking originates from the bonus features on Inland Empire<\/a>, and music from an Apple commercial has been added over it as an extra fuck you to the empire. Watch it now, if you haven\u2019t seen it already. It\u2019s one of the best pieces of found object art on the internet.<\/p>\n What Lynch has to say in the video, everyone in their right mind pretty much agrees with: an iPhone is certainly no fucking way to watch a film. But please, those of you who have an iPhone or some sort of iPhone-esque smart phone near you right now, do me favor. First, open up the David Lynch video again, if you closed it. Now, pick up your phone. Place the phone over the YouTube video. It\u2019s pretty much the same fucking size.<\/i><\/p>\n What this means is that you probably shouldn\u2019t watch a film on a fucking YouTube or Vimeo or Hulu or Netflix window either. Yet plenty of people do this. In the world we live in right now, I might add; not some future dystopian Idiocracy<\/a> world or whatever. How can a viewer give a film its proper respect, watching it this way? It\u2019s very difficult. Our laptops are our tools for judging. Most people do little else on them in a given day. We \u2018like\u2019 or \u2018favorite\u2019 things, we vote things up and down. Every new thing we see is something for us to be temporarily amused, bored, or angered by.<\/p>\n Film does not fit into this construct. YouTube shorts do, Tweets do, Vines do, etcetera. But not film. Not a feature-length fucking film.<\/i><\/p>\n A few months back, my documentary Rehearsals<\/a> screened at\u00a0Anthology Film Archives<\/a> here in NYC, as part of their New Filmmakers<\/a> series. A fair amount of the people in attendance had seen the film before on Vimeo, months back. I knew that some of these people hadn\u2019t liked it when they\u2019d seen it, and had simply come to the screening because they like me as a person and wanted to support me on my big day. After the film, several of them came up to me and, to my surprise, they had completely different thoughts on the film.<\/p>\n What had previously been a sluggish endurance test had now been a roller coaster, and they were as wide-eyed as if they had just gotten off of one. The emotional beats and arcs, which, during their first time with the film, they\u2019d hardly picked up on, had now been blaring as all hell. A few wondered if I had made changes to the film since they last saw it. I had not. It was exactly the same film, but seeing it on a big screen, looking up<\/i> at it with full attention and respect, had changed it completely.<\/p>\n One does not need to see a film at a theater to watch it \u2018properly\u2019, though. You can simply watch it at home, in somewhat dim lighting, on a properly calibrated flat screen TV (I recommend the Disney World of Wonder Calibration Blu-Ray<\/a>). Ideally, this TV should be positioned a little higher than head level, so your neck is craned slightly.<\/p>\n The fact that I need to explain this is quite sad. Shit gets sadder, though. There\u2019s an awful trend with people my age that a TV is ‘not necessary’. Everything they want to watch can be watched on their laptop, so like, why bother getting one? That\u2019s money that could be better spent going drinking and eating out! Lifehack FTW!<\/p>\n Rule of life: just because you can<\/i> do a thing doesn\u2019t mean you should. <\/i>Is it a beautiful thing that you can <\/i>watch a film on your laptop? Absolutely. Should<\/i> you? No. I\u2019ll cut you a bit of slack if you\u2019re on a plane or stuck in some similar situation (although you should probably just read a book in those instances) but if you\u2019re in your own home, buy a fucking TV.<\/p>\n The inferior way people are watching films these days presents a hell of a problem for budding filmmakers like myself. Since most people watch your films on a laptop, your stuff isn\u2019t being accurately rated. Back during the Spike, Mike, Slackers, and Dykes<\/a> era, daring, out-of-the-ordinary, low-budget independent films made by 20-somethings were being seen on big theater screens. They were given proper respect. If Richard Linklater were a young filmmaker starting out today, Slacker<\/a> would be half-watched on Vimeo or YouTube while the viewer (a friend of theirs or a disinterested festival curator) simultaneously browses Facebook. It also likely wouldn\u2019t make it into any festivals, and it certainly wouldn\u2019t be on Netflix.<\/p>\n Wondering why there\u2019s no new crop of groundbreaking indie filmmakers these days? Well, there are, you just don\u2019t know they exist. And part of the reason you don\u2019t is because people don\u2019t care about groundbreaking indie films as much anymore. And the reason they don\u2019t is because when they do<\/em> come across them, they watch them in\u00a0a way that strips them of ever possibly caring.<\/p>\n Art must be treated like art. A film is not a fucking cat video. Close your laptop and have a goddamn experience. Facebook will be there when you get back\u2014although you may find you suddenly aren’t interested in it. Being genuinely enriched by a thing will do that to ya.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" See this rectangle? Not like this.<\/i><\/p>\n There\u2019s a great YouTube video from 2008 called David Lynch on iPhone<\/a>\u00a0in which he discusses the ridiculousness of watching a film on such a device. The footage of him talking originates from the bonus features on Inland Empire<\/a>, and music from an Apple commercial has been added over it as an extra fuck you to the empire. Watch it now, if you haven\u2019t seen it already. It\u2019s one of the best pieces of found object art on the internet.<\/p>\n What Lynch has to say in the video, everyone in their right mind pretty much agrees with: an iPhone is certainly no fucking way to watch a film. But please, those of you who have an iPhone or some sort of iPhone-esque smart phone near you right now, do me favor. First, open up the David Lynch video again, if you closed it. Now, pick up your phone. Place the phone over the YouTube video. It\u2019s pretty much the same fucking size.<\/i><\/p>\n
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\n\u201cBut Cody,\u201d you butt in, \u201cmost of these people watching films on their computer are watching them full screen.\u201d That doesn\u2019t make it much better. It isn\u2019t the size that\u2019s the problem per se, it\u2019s the fact that your face is twelve inches from the goings on (that\u2019s what she said) and also that you are quite literally looking down on the film.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/p>\n