How I Watch Movies

Any piece of Art that will blow your hair away will always warrant multiple outings. Art of course is subjective.  There are certain movies that I thoroughly enjoy because they invoke a personal semblance. There are some great movies that were simply too unnerving of an experience and despite all their merits may not warrant multiple viewings. To make movies, you have to watch movies, there is no question in that. But how should you watch a movie?

One of the best examples I can think of about the magic of watching a movie is Midnight in Paris. Now, I come from a background in science and engineering, and usually I am a logic freak. I question all the absurdities within reason that a movie tries to extrapolate or reveal in exposition. Yet, when I watched Midnight in Paris, I somehow never questioned how is the Time-Travel happening or why is it even happening or what is the logic to all this? And I did not have these questions because I was immersed and so into the story that nothing mattered to me, I simply wanted to be part of the journey with Owen Wilson’s Gil Pender. Now a lot of critics would not say that Midnight in Paris is of magical Realism in genre but I beg to differ. To me any story where you do not question the otherworldly is magical realism.

Now how does this all relate to How to Watch Movies? You see, any movie that takes your attention away from its flaws or short-comings is actually a great movie with a lot of lessons in effective storytelling. As a student of the Art, it is important to look for those flaws that the movie is trying to hide from you. You are not looking at the flaws because you want to critique the movies but to learn how you will be able to hide the same flaws when you decide to make a movie.

These flaws have no names. They can be flaws concerning character development, plot holes, exposition, editing, sound design, out of focus footage, terrible acting, continuity errors only to name a few. Movie making is a hugely collaborative effort and the permutations and combinations of what can go wrong are hugely immense. There is a culture of hanging the albatross across the neck of the guy who yells, “fix it in the post” during the shoot. And there is a good reason for that. If you are deciding to fix something in the post while you are on shoot then it means something was erroneous during the pre-production. This though doesn’t imply that you should not experiment while shooting but that you should always be prepared. Therefore, counter-intuitively, the best way to learn to hide the flaws is actually by watching movies rather than on being the set.

I usually watch a movie at least twice if its story and its process of filming appeals to me personally. The first time is pure joy and experience of watching a movie without trying to deconstruct it. First watch should always make you question will I ever want to make a movie similar to this? If yes, then what changes would I make, or how my film would be different to this one whether in story or otherwise. After that, if the movie speaks to you personally, you will want to watch it and will watch it. But this time you ought to be careful and remember to take mental notes, while deconstructing the movie at each scene and each frame. It’s a huge task to deconstruct anything in seamless viewing, but you will be able to do it after some practice. I’ve been watching movies daily for many years only with the objective of making them myself. Then often I will watch a movie a third time, this time taking notes on paper and pausing the movie whenever possible to deconstruct in even greater detail noting if I still remember my deductions of the movie from the previous viewing. For example, I watched a lot of chamber movies multiple times when I realized that to make my first movie with next to zero budget, I would have to make a chamber movie myself. This all sounds like a lengthy and laborious process. It is. But you will do it, because there is nothing in the world that you want to be more than expressing your emotions through your Art, your own movie.

This brings me to another observation. The movies that have actually taught me something are the ones which I have watched alone in the vicinity and seclusion of my own room. The cinema hall is too distracting for me. The purists may say that it is belittling the Art if one wants to watch it on a laptop or a smaller screen. But to me, movies are just another medium for making us learn about the world and the people that inhabit this world. I can appreciate a movie on a smaller screen just as I can do it in a theatre, provided there is no one in the theatre. Usually, when I am excited about a new film, I try to watch it in the theatre, and if I like it and feel that there is a nugget in it that can teach me something about making a movie, I watch it again alone in my room.

We all should first be able to define what kind of movies we want to make. This is not to imply that one has to stick to a genre but to narrow down what kind of a storyteller you want to be. If I were to say about myself, I usually like to explore the dynamics of human relationships in my stories. So my movies are not about the protagonist trying to achieve anything external, it is mostly about him resolving internal conflicts against the backdrop of a certain genre that I am writing about. Does it make sense to you? It’s a very personal and subjective idea of what kind of movies one wants to make. And this personal and subjective idea is what later your voice becomes. Like a Taika Waititi film is a Taika Waititi film from scene one. Or a Guy Ritchie film is a Guy Ritchie film from scene one. So defining the undercurrent of your personal M.O. in regards to what kind of movies you want to make will define your personal process of watching movies.

The idea is that after repeat practice of doing anything, it becomes your second nature. So when you would have watched say a 10,000 hrs of movies; deconstructing movies, according to your subjective vision of movie-making, will become a subconscious choice. Thus, I watch movies so I can firstly; understand the world and its people better. Secondly, I watch movies so that I can make better movies. And these two reasons of Why I Watch Movies, define How I Watch Movies.