You can make two kinds of movies: a film, or an experience. Which would you rather make?
While the two cross over into each other in many ways, a film generally feels like a film, which is focused on the art of visual stortelling. It is something you watch, or observe. By contrast, an 'experience' as I'm using the word here is mainly concerned with providing an 'I was there' sense of reality, or of presence and immediacy. I think I am more fond of this approach, and I probably have been all along.
It's like asking the question: Which is generally more captivating, watching something or doing it? The answer is quite clear for me. Take for example the film MILK. It was good, but I didn't like it. Watching it was like going to a museum. I felt like a fly on the wall, onlooking but never able to participate. Of course it's 'real' in many ways - it's practically a documentary. Yet still the physical & emotional 'reality' of it was too distant, too textbook for me to connect with.
And this is why movies like AVATAR and THE HURT LOCKER are so profound for me. Avatar, for instance, elevates itself as so much more than a 'film'...not only because it's as wild as someone's imagination, but at any given moment it feels real, as if we were actually experiencing it alongside the characters. Watching a character standing on the edge of a cliff feels like STANDING ON THE EDGE OF A CLIFF. Now that's invigorating! Don't get me wrong - it is a movie & a story in every sense of the words - but every time I've seen it it puts me through a visceral sensory & emotional experience that can only be replicated by really flying or really falling in love. The difference of course is the timeframe in which we have the experience, and the lack of consequences.
It's these sorts of movies/shows/docs/videos that I probably appreciate above all others - fiction and non- alike - and the ones that i feel a true calling to make.
