It’s A Great Time To Be A Geek
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The other shoe
Even though I may be getting high on the techno-wizardry seen on the screen, the trip will eventually wear off. After all of the Flash! Boom! Pow! (insert Batman-a-go-go graphics here) has died down, what happens when you apply the cold cream to these visually enhanced loverlies? I’m hoping we don’t discover that what we thought were great movies are nothing more than shriveled up hags coaxing us into dark regions just to get our money. [an error occurred while processing this directive]Let’s face it; there have been plenty of movies that have come out that were nothing more than eye candy with no sustenance (can anyone say Mummy Returns?). The thing that will keep these movies going over the long term will be in their ability to tell a great story. As we have seen time and time again, the story is what will rule the box office, not the glitz.
If you actually want to see a movie with great story, you should go see Better Luck Tomorrow. It is a wonderful little film with great characters. The best thing about a movie like this is it isn’t driven by special effects, glamour, or an overly hyped soundtrack. Instead it is a story about people, believable people who make decisions and have to live with the consequences (oh yeah, there is also peer pressure, drugs, and murder in it too). For some reason it seems that independent films have a better grasp at story telling than those sitting in the ivory towers slapping themselves on the back and claiming they are masters of the universe. These indie films are the ones that make you think, ponder the message, discuss openly with other viewers, and, in some cases, keep you scratching your head for weeks after the viewing. Sometimes I would rather see 100 good independent films than one really average blockbuster.
For the movie loving geek, now is the best time to be alive as more and more studios are funding smaller and smaller projects. With the onslaught of at least 15 huge movies hitting the screens, the money the studios will have to fund these small films will increase. And that is good for those of us who want to produce and distribute our own films.
Everyone is a winner because Hollywood is making us gooey by delivering us the best on both the large and small end of the film spectrum.
But it is also a vicious circle.
Unfortunately, the indie films never have a long life in the theatres. Films like Better Luck Tomorrow run the risk of being dropped after only a two week run because the promotion and publicity behind the films is lacking. And that is bad for us geeks. We are missing out on some really terrific cinema and some fantastic directors simply because the theatre can make more money showing Matri/X-2 on five screens instead of two.
So my suggestion over the next several months of movie watching is this – Have your heaping helping of the ga-ga blockbusters to sooth the craving, but also fill your soul with the best of the indie films out there.
When not working deep in the labs of the DMN Central Division testing the latest and greatest software/hardware products Stephen Schleicher can be found at the local university teaching a few courses on video and web production. He can be reached at schleicher@mindspring.com. You can also visit him on the web at www.mindspring.com/~schleicher
Source: Digital Media Online, Inc.
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