Project #3 Proposal

For Project 3, I’d like to research a community I feel I know very well, but not well enough: the film world. As an aspiring filmmaker, this community interests me like nothing else. Daily, hourly, I’m on Wikipedia, Indiewire, AV Club etc. reading about directors, future projects, Oscar hopefuls, release dates. It’s all I know and it’s all I want to know about. With this new, foreign environment of college I’ve been living in for the past two months, it’s become both a little more difficult and a little more satisfying when quenching my thirst for film. I’m at the Athena twice a week, I take a scriptwriting course and try to watch as many movies, TV shows, YouTube clips as possible. Film is a constant for me, and it is something I wish to continue to explore and experience for the rest of my life. Hopefully this statement doesn’t come back to haunt me in the future.

             I think the film community offers itself as an extremely ripe research topic. For starters, it’s universal. Everybody’s seen a movie. But it goes so far beyond that. There’s a film community in Los Angeles, in Austin, Texas, in Japan. It’s everywhere, and while there are common threads, each community has its differences as well. If you were to compare a mainstream Japanese film to a Hollywood blockbuster, there would be undeniable similarities, be they plot, characterization, music. But there would also be large, idiosyncratic differences between the two that would distinguish them as American or Japanese. That’s what I love. It’s all cultural and distinctly different but all very similar at the same time. Influence can be tenuous, explicit or somewhere in between, and as a cinephile, it’s what I think I love most about film. Being able to recognize a director’s inspiration, be it for one frame, a line of dialogue, or an entire plot point, is something every serious lover of film prides himself on. So with that ability to recognize outside influence comes a certain vocabulary that cinephiles employ regularly when discussing film. These terms range from filmmakers’ last names to a type of shot/camera movement or an era, such as the French New Wave, that’s had a particular influence on a filmmaker. This terminology is used all the time in scriptwriting, which, in itself, has its own vocabulary.

            With this discourse community, I believe I’ll be provided with many helpful resources that’ll strengthen my research. The Athens film community is large and welcoming. I frequent the Athena Theatre regularly, where there are many other movie lovers willing to talk about and discuss any particular facet of film. I have a screenwriting textbook in my room, which I read from for class, and when I go to that class, I’m met by a teacher equally as fascinated by film as I am. The Internet also offers an immeasurable amount of information rich with the vocabulary and idiosyncrasies that help distinguish the film community for what it is.

            With this amount of readily available resources, I truly believe that the film community is perfect for this assignment. It is what I’m interested in, and that is imperative when conducting this type of research. You must be engaged and willing to continue. And I will be. Film is always heavily debated, and that may be its greatest characteristic. It can be so powerful, so polarizing. Everyone has their own opinions and interpretations, and when two opposing ideas clash, it can result in something beautiful, and maybe even revolutionary.