Lessons from Watching 2 Movies a Day
I’ve been watching 2 movies a day since quite some time, and this is what I learnt…
Let it be known that the title is a bit misleading. It won’t be entirely true that I always watch 2 movies a day, sometimes I watch series as well. So, a fair assessment would be that I at least make sure that I watch more than three hours of cinematic content each day. Now, it was not like this since Day 1. When I started watching movies, it was not because I wanted to make them. Such is the case everything that you want to do in life, you don’t start doing it because you want to earn a living through it, you do it because doing it movies something inside you. If you ask me, when did it all start? I don’t remember but I have been doing it for many years. Now, not necessarily these lessons can be acquired only if you watch 2 movies a Day, you can learn faster or slower depending on your skill ceiling and your comfort and the time you want to devote to hone your craft. I find that the number 2 works well, as it allows me ample time to process the films that I have watched that day. Personally, watching 1 movie a day would give me too less learning, and watching 3 movies a day would hinder my learning. You of course, are free to decide your own pace.
It’s better if I list these lessons down in a more straight forward manner rather than going around in paragraphs as I do in rest of my writings.
i. Helps in understanding the coming together of other Art forms.
A film as an art form is amalgamation of all other Art forms. To write all you need is yourself, a paper, and a pen. Minimal resources. To be a sketch artist, again, a charcoal pen and a paper. Minimal resources. To make a film albeit an avant garde one, you need a script or someone who can write a script, a camera and someone who can operate that camera, a video editor, a sound designer, also you need actors. There are probably million other things that you need but I listed bare minimum and even then these are a lot of resources. The functioning of these resources together is essential in theory as much as it is essential in practice while shooting a film.
ii. Makes you comfortable with visual language.
We all probably would have learnt to speak and read and write first than to make sense of abstract video images on TV. I feel there is a huge difference in understanding the written language and understanding the visual language. Since our childhood, we are always told stories in one form or another, none of us is raised with parents shouting, let me show you what I did one time rather they always go, let me tell you what I did one time. So when we are exposed to the notion of moving images, our brain starts to form an idea of what the culmination of these images over a span of time would imply. Let’s take a basic lay man’s example: imagine I show you two photographs – Photo #1 shows a man standing on the street and looking above at a sky scraper whereas the Photo #2 shows the same man standing in front of a door ready to ring the bell. Automatically you will connect the dots and realize that this door in photo #2 is within the same building in photo#1. Now, let’s take a slightly tougher example: The script says, he sat there staring the empty glass in his hand. Suppose Director#1 wants to film this is a still wide angle, giving the sense of the empty room and the empty glass that the man is contemplating over. And say Director#2 films the same line of script in a close up shot of the man’s face with the camera slowly panning towards the empty glass. So, now can you tell what does Director#2 wants to say that is different from Director#1?
iii. 10,000 Hour Rule.
Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule has some truth in it. At least, I believe that it has some truth in it. Let’s bring in Stephen King on it as well. King in his book On Writing said, “You need to read more to write well.” Well that is true for any Art form. You need to consume as much possible to be able to create. You need to watch a lot of movies to make good movies. Watching movies is education. It will help you know what has been done before you and how it has been done before you. It was make you aware of what you inherit from the masters while you educate yourself. Let’s do some math because I’m unable to escape my engineering background. Suppose average length of a movie is 90 mins. Let’s say you watch 2 a Day for over 2 years. This gives us 1,460 movies watched (my mouth is watering already). This in turn implies that you have spent 2,190 hours on watching movies. You still are 7,810 hours away from touching the holy mark of 10,000 hours. So how do you expect to make a half decent movie if you have only spent so less time watching good movies? My count so far is somewhere on 5,800 hours.
iv. Assists you in referencing when you actually make a movie.
Now, this one might be a little tricky to understand if you have not headed a creative project yet. If you are truly honest a lot of innovation has been done before you make your first movie. You know about all those innovations because you have watched a lot, and a lot of movies. I’m more pragmatic about Art than most people believe me to be. I know that my first movie won’t be 400 Blows, and neither I want to make my first movie as a masterpiece and then spend all of life trying to live up to the expectations of the first film. I want to fail fast, and learn fast. So, when I work with my team on any project, we talk in references. First objective when we are story-boarding is to do the storyboard through the reference of the movies we all have seen till date. After that initial storyboard of reference, we start to tweaks things accordingly (tweak according to how I want the final cut to be like). A scene where two people are talking, and I want 180 degree rule to be broken, I will let my editor know which movie and the scene that he/she has to refer while editing our raw footage to break the 180 degree rule. I want to show a montage, I will let everyone on the team know from which film to refer the visual representation of that montage. You can say I am stealing the ideas already presented by the masters of cinema. Yes, I am borrowing them and learning how they did it. My time for innovation will come, but it won’t necessarily come in my first or the second or the third movie.
v. Differentiates You From Being a Cinephile and An Artist.
A lot of people watch movies. There are more cinephiles than filmmakers. Running joke is that every Cinephile is a failed Director. I do not intend to sound harsh or rude towards people who love to watch movies. What I want to present is the idea that an Artist has something higher at stake. A cinephile, may not necessarily watch a movie to learn something. An Artist has to learn something. Watching a bad movie may simply imply the wastage of time for a cinephile whereas for a working Artist it might imply a boost in confidence, that if this movie gets made, then so can mine. Watching a great movie may blow the hair away for the cinephile but for a working Artist it may not only teach him something about the craft but also act as an inspiration, that I would too want to make a movie like that someday.
Needless to say, all these lessons are subjective and written in retrospect about the addiction of watching 2 Movies a Day. I was not aware of what it would do to me when I started. I was just too curious to not watch movies. Everything else shaped from my curiosity. I hope that for you as well, the experience of movie watching starts with the curiosity of how the world and people in it feel, and act and behave to circumstances.
Happy Watching!
