{"id":3806,"date":"2013-11-27T00:00:38","date_gmt":"2013-11-27T05:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/smugfilm.com\/?p=3806"},"modified":"2013-12-11T19:32:33","modified_gmt":"2013-12-12T00:32:33","slug":"the-internet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/the-internet\/","title":{"rendered":"I Want To Talk About The Internet"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nWhen YouTube started to happen, it seemed like the great leveler.\u00a0 Kids in their basement suddenly had distribution equal to that of the major Hollywood studios.\u00a0 And following in the wake of cheaper and better video equipment, it looked like the control of all media had shifted from \u2018The Man\u2019 to the everyman.<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

The results of this have been dismally revealing.<\/p>\n

Thanks to the internet, and YouTube, we now have confirmation that 99.999% of all art completely sucks.\u00a0 Before, we could only look to the establishment and their putrid output to see how bad everything is.\u00a0 But with every person on earth making stuff, and throwing it up on there, we now have proof that almost nobody can make anything good.
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\nIn the olden days, it seemed like simply completing a movie was<\/i> the accomplishment.\u00a0 When you look at the early movies of every single notable director, they are all god awful, from Spielberg’s Amblin\u2019<\/a> to Scorsese’s The Big Shave<\/a> to Zemeckis’s A Field of Honor<\/a> to Kubrick’s Fear and Desire<\/a>.\u00a0If any of those directors started out today<\/i> with those efforts, they would go nowhere fast.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=N1T93rJ9p-s<\/p>\n

All those guys did was prove they could put a film together.\u00a0 And just by doing that, they were given a chance to make a real movie for real money, and we watched them grow in front of us.\u00a0 Mean Streets<\/a> still sucks, but it’s that much better than It\u2019s Not Just You, Murray<\/a>.\u00a0 Taxi Driver<\/a> is that much better than Mean Streets, and by the time you get to Goodfellas<\/a>, he’s a genius.<\/p>\n

Nowadays, you can\u2019t just prove that you can direct. You have to prove that you can write, shoot, edit, and do special effects.\u00a0 And what’s funny is that kids today can<\/i> do all those things\u2014just not well<\/i>, because the artistry is gone from each one.<\/p>\n

The assembly line system is used by Hollywood as a means of efficiency and economics.\u00a0 But it also just plain keeps talented people from being spread too thin.\u00a0 If I’m making a movie, I don’t need or want my editor focused on anything but cutting the story\u2014someone else can do the effects and graphics, someone who’s awesome at effects and graphics because that’s all they do.<\/i><\/p>\n

Editing used to be an art form unto itself, and it’s not just the cheaper tools that shallowed the well, it’s the delivery system, mainly the internet, that killed editing.\u00a0 It’s not just that everybody can be an editor, it’s that everybody has to be an editor in order to create their own content.\u00a0 You know how Director\u2019s Cuts are always shitty because they’re just like forty minutes of extra footage in a movie that’s already way too long?\u00a0 (I’m looking at you, Apocalypse Now Redux<\/a>.)\u00a0 Well, imagine if all<\/i> directors had to cut their own shit.\u00a0 Movies would not only be too long, they’d also be even more directionless. than they already typically are.\u00a0 What I mean is, now, on set, a budding director has to worry even more about the edit than he already does, because he’s the one that has to cut all his own stuff.<\/p>\n

The funny thing is, being born in 1986 and growing up in this era, I can’t imagine it any other way.\u00a0 I’d be nervous to have somebody else shoot and edit my movie.\u00a0 In an auteur sense, it would just be hard to trust other people to carry out my vision.\u00a0 Having to learn to edit certainly shaped my vision and filmic sensibilities, but I would certainly benefit from having a talented team of artists to fallback on\u2014you know, the way it worked for the first 85 years of movies. As you know, I think about 55 of those years completely sucked, but I think the process makes sense.<\/p>\n

The concept of a \u2018shot\u2019 is completely dead.\u00a0 In a real movie, the shot is the smallest segment of a sequence. The shot has a purpose, and fits together with the shots around it to create an idea<\/i>. Now, the shot is just The Thing That\u2019s Currently On Screen.\u00a0 Movies used to be shot for the theater experience, but now that the theater release is merely a large commercial event that promotes the DVD and iTunes release, movies are shot for the small screen.\u00a0 This is one reason why TV has risen in recent years and movies have declined (artistically speaking I mean, and also, this is according to people at large, not me, I don’t care about modern TV, I think it sucks).\u00a0 TV nowadays looks more like movies, and movies look more like TV\u2014they\u2019ve met in an ugly middle.<\/p>\n

TV falls back on shooting coverage a lot more than movies do for two simple reasons\u2014the scenes are most often just people talking in a room, and because it needs to be shot much more economically since you need to create many hours of content a year rather than just ninety minutes.\u00a0 We, as an audience, accept this reality, and have come to understand (perhaps subconsciously) how TV shows look.\u00a0 Movies were always thought of as slightly more advanced because the luxury of time and money afforded them to look more alive.\u00a0 But the movies of today have been deadened by the integration of TV and internet and movies.\u00a0 It’s all blending into the same medium.<\/p>\n

This is also why movies have become bloated in length.\u00a0 The Dark Knight Rises<\/a> is three hours in order to justify rising ticket prices and to denote a point of separation from TV.\u00a0 Ironically though, it just looks like TV\u2014boring coverage with bland fight scenes and some \u2018cool\u2019 effects to distract you for a minute until the next ten-minute talking scene.<\/p>\n

When I was a kid, I dreamed of making movies.\u00a0 And when I was a little kid, movies were still movies.\u00a0 They were created for the theater and were separate from all other similar forms.\u00a0 Jurassic Park<\/a> and Titanic<\/a> were theater<\/i> experiences.\u00a0 The shot composition and editing was designed to flow together by using the space, size, and depth allowed by a gigantic screen that you look at in the dark.\u00a0 It obviously helped that those movies were made by visual auteurs, because twenty years later, they’re still shooting the same way, if not much grander.\u00a0 So I guess my point here is that a great filmmaker can transcend the form.<\/p>\n

What prompted this piece, by the way, was the addition of Kyle Mooney to the Saturday Night Live roster.\u00a0 Hiring him was an obvious validation of his work online, and further proof positive that the majors are watching and using the Internet as a proving ground and even a barometer for talent.<\/p>\n

The problem is, Kyle\u2019s big break is actually a huge demotion.\u00a0 Now, instead of being able to artistically flourish in a medium that he’s more than comfortable in, he’s forced to fit into a box of comedic homogenization.\u00a0 The worst Kyle sketch online is leagues better than the best SNL sketch in the last ten years.\u00a0 And Kyle will be forced to pay his dues as a featured performer, with the mere hope of landing a secure role in the cast.\u00a0 A spot on the cast would ensure more screen time, and the ability to cultivate characters, but it will never match the freedom of the internet.<\/p>\n

That freedom is what made, and still makes, the internet beautiful.\u00a0 The internet is not the final frontier\u2014in fact, it’s probably the first step into a larger blending of mediums and delivery systems.\u00a0 Kyle Mooney is the pig in Animal Farm\u2014he fought for his voice by making dozens upon dozens of hilarious web clips.\u00a0 His voice was heard by the system, and now he is a part of the system.\u00a0 He hasn’t sold out at all, but his SNL paycheck, and all the credibility it earns, comes with a price.<\/p>\n

But enough with that.\u00a0 I want to get back to talking about how everything on the internet sucks.<\/p>\n

It’s no wonder every Hollywood movie sucks, because every dumb thing every person makes sucks way worse.\u00a0 At least Hollywood tries to tell stories, and pays people to do it.\u00a0 On the internet, everybody’s shit just feels like somebody’s eighth grade project, but shot on HD with a dolly and a bunch of lights.\u00a0 For instance, Time Machine<\/a> and My Streets<\/a>, the subjects of my previous post<\/a>.\u00a0 Justin Kady is the modern auteur, and the internet has provided him with a venue.\u00a0 In his case, nobody but me is watching, but in many other cases, people are\u2014sometimes by the millions.<\/i><\/p>\n

I mean, Fred<\/a> is a thing.\u00a0 Have you seen Fred?\u00a0 You have to remember that Fred is somebody’s artistic output.\u00a0 When you remember that that’s what it is, and not just what it appears to be\u2014which is nothing<\/i>\u2014the internet stops being a beautiful frontier and turns into a junkyard.<\/p>\n

But of course, it’s not all bad. The aforementioned Kyle Mooney is part of a group of artists who used the medium to flourish.\u00a0 Kyle belongs to Good Neighbor<\/a>, a sketch group based in California.\u00a0 Kyle has cultivated a few characters, and the group has done a bunch of successful sketches\u2014this one even got them a letter from Spielberg telling them to keep up the good work:<\/p>\n