Why can it be so beautiful?

[Shawn Nelson]

Why?

Why do we enjoy an amazing shot? I say 'we' as in human observers, not trained filmmakers (who may enjoy something for technical achievement).

What is it about a well lit shot, or a well exposed outdoor shot that brings pleasure to the viewer?

This isn't a religious question, I'm not looking for an 'Allah wills it' answer, but rather what drives our response.

Aristotle answered that well-made stories brought pleasure because they fulfill the imitation desire and the desire for order. I find it difficult to transcribe these root causes of story onto what makes cinematography beautiful.

What do you think?

[Jay A. Kelley]

IMHO you're looking at the symtpom and not the cause.. It's the emotional context of the shot, which is a little different to every viewer.

In other words, you may find some base similarities, but the specific answer is different to every person.

Many will find the A-typical Sunset Shot pleasing, but there are also many who get more turned on by a shot of the full moon. That's why you shoot what works FOR YOU.. It's all you'll really understand and portray honestly (Of course I do not follow this advice!)

:)

Jay

[Mike Prevette]

I think shots that are considered beautiful to the masses are ones that remind people of something they have seen or felt within their own life. A sunset shot on screen is a crappy faximily of the real thing, but it reminds people of a place, time, or emotion they have felt themselves before. The common experiences of life that we all share tend to be the most pleasing to the most people. Kittens, sunsets, serine lakes, etc.

[ibloom]

(Disclaimer: I'm a darwinian).
I think it's a combination of things. One part is that we are hardwired to be more comfortable with certain images. We find them pleasing, because for example they have a full range of contrast, or they seperate the subject from the background, some of these hardwired things are perhaps useful to us as animals, and we naturally gravitate toward situations where we can for example see and understand what we are looking at.
The next level is a sort of story or mystery level. Our brains enjoy solving small problems, so an image that leads you down a path, tells a little story or unfolds and reveals a mystery is interesting and attractive. This falls into context as well, it's pleasing to fit together small pieces of the puzzle, in this case shots, into a larger context.

And beyond that who knows. That's like saying, what is art? Great subject for your first term paper in college, but whatever answer you concoct will probably be, well, very forgetable.

Ian

[Hoffman]

I think of the similarity in music. A bunch of notes jammed together can technically be considered music, but it is the pleasing harmony structure leading to a resolution in a progression that turns us on. We as people tend to seek balance in color and composition in our lives. Harmony - whatever form it takes.

[acehole]

Something that as film makers, you should all have as a very valuable tool in your filmmakers toolkit, is the knowledge of semiotics..The study of signs. Although it doesnt answer your question, I believe therein lies a great key to giving you a practical answer on to how to artifically stimulate a persons mind into seeing beauty, or conversely uglyness. Semiology is probably the most powerful tool in your quest to manipulate a persons mind. Manipulation.. such a powerful thing, because our minds are so susceptible to it. We draw majority of judgment and emotion from the signs we see, and sometimes solely just from the signs we see. Is Ibloom stated, we are hardwired to interpret certain signs and symbols to invoke emotion both positive and negative. And on another level we have a subset of cultural visual language which we use to reference the beautiful, ugly, bad and good.

The understanding of these very primitive and basic visual alphabets is the key in understanding and furthermore creating imagery which stimulates the viewer whichever way you please. Dont confuse this with art, as it is not art. It is design at large, art need not be understood in creation, and shouldnt be. There is method, there are formulas. A plastic surgeon can alter the shape of your cheek bones and jawline and nasal structure, brow bone, and what have you, to look more appealing or attractive to the opposite sex. And they dont take a knife to your face armed with just platonic philosophies of aesthetics and beauty. There is hard method and formulas to this stuff. Certain things make us see "good" on a semiotic, aesthetic, cognitive and emotional level. And understanding these basic signs is the basis for mass communication. The Nazi's and russians used this power in an horrific and profound way.

The human brain is also wired to look for pattern. Pattern or recognition lights up the neurons in your brain like nothing you can imagine. By pattern, I mean, our brains, unlike computers, don't store things in alphabetical order or we don't for example index things in our minds in a Dewie decimal system. We group things based on an intricate cross referenced system of similarities and familiarities. You see a persons face, and the your mind, in a staggeringly fast manner is able to reference that persons face against every person you've ever met, assembling the nose, eyes, mouth, even the slightest facial abnormality, into a recognizable pattern. What is it about a persons face that makes it a "face"? How on earth is the mind able to see a smile and link it to happiness? A baby, never before programmed to understand facial cues, will see her smiling mother and feel comfort. I strongly believe it is formulaic and the answers are all around you in the most primitive form. What is it about a well lit shot or a lit landscape? The answers in that sentance! Light! light = good, warmth, safety, life. The moon in the night can also be pleasing. But again, the answer to that lies within that sentance.

I think as film makers, one should have a good understanding of semiotics because it is the one thing you can consistently control and use to your advantage, and it is quite practical to those who don't possess natural talent for aesthetic vision. A film is not a photograph or a painting, it is more like a piece of architecture. You enter it, and it shapes your soul on so many dimensions and levels merely by showing you signs.

[Sanjin Jukic]

Acehole, well written.

I would add that FILM is a sort of COMPOSITION or even a sort of

CONSTRUCTION in TIME that deals with MOVING IMAGES and SOUND.

Then you could think about specific theories of film>>>LINK (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_theory)

What can it make to be so beautiful?

Mostly it's up to your's talents as a filmmaker.

[Álex Montoya]

Acehole, well written.

I would add that FILM is a sort of COMPOSITION or even a sort of

CONSTRUCTION in TIME that deals with MOVING IMAGES and SOUND.

Then you could think about specific theories of film>>>LINK

What can it make to be so beautiful?

Mostly it's up to your's talents as a filmmaker.

For a "conceptual thinker" as you like to describe yourself, Sanjin, I would've expected a far more elaborated argument.

[david farland]

Hey Shawn,

Why shouldn’t it be beautiful?

There’s wonder in viewing anything, particularly for the first time.

I remember the first time I went to London; even the bricks of the housing estates were beautiful!
And thinking as I saw my first Disney movie at 6 years that’s this is as good as it gets!
Maybe after seeing these things ten times some of the beauty wears off.

Bad filmmakers are like bad actors that get in the way of a great script….or a beautiful scene.

Find what you love to see, and film it…It’ll probably come out beautiful!

Dave

[Graeme Nattress]

I think it all comes down to the basic core of how our universe works, and that's something we don't fully (or will ever fully) understand. Take for instance the golden ratio - it looks "right", and mathematically is (1+root5)/2. And that number crops up "everywhere" in nature, in seeds on a sunflower head, in the mathematics of chaos, dripping taps and chaotic pendulums.

To see that beauty comes from mathematics, you need look no further than fractals, Mandelbrot and Julia sets etc, or even just how prime numbers work.

We live in a beautiful universe, so let's enjoy it, together!

Graeme

[Lauri Kettunen]

desire for order.

In my understanding the brain seek for order be it an image or a story. But, the order should be rather surprising and have a flavour of novelity. Especially, our visual perception is very good in recognizing order. However, not all order is desired; The compression artifacts is an example of bad order.

what comes to mathematics Graeme seem to have a platonian view shared by many mathematicians. Still, I would say mathematics is a model of causality. For instance, the real number "square root of five" is a man made construction which is easily revealed by asking: please bring me a ribbon square root five inches/ centimeters long. In other words, the finger pointing to the moon is not the moon.

[Graeme Nattress]

Certainly maths is a description or model, but perhaps there's a lot more to it than that. But if you think math is a model of the universe, I'd also say that the universe is a model of math. :-)

Graeme

[acehole]

My stock trader colleagues always amaze me with the beauty of fractals, Elliot waves and their SCARY accurate predictions of world events and market behavior.. The universe no doubt is operating on some sort of master metronome.

[Sanjin Jukic]

For a "conceptual thinker" as you like to describe yourself, Sanjin, I would've expected a far more elaborated argument.

What can it make to be so beautiful?

Mostly it's up to your's talents as a filmmaker.

Another word(s) for that: it's up to you as an artist.

Or you are a person who creates art.

Also there are many theories of beauty>>>LINK (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beauty)

[David Birdy]

Why?

Why do we enjoy an amazing shot? I say 'we' as in human observers, not trained filmmakers (who may enjoy something for technical achievement).

What is it about a well lit shot, or a well exposed outdoor shot that brings pleasure to the viewer?

This isn't a religious question, I'm not looking for an 'Allah wills it' answer, but rather what drives our response.

Aristotle answered that well-made stories brought pleasure because they fulfill the imitation desire and the desire for order. I find it difficult to transcribe these root causes of story onto what makes cinematography beautiful.

What do you think?


I love the deep thinking...!

Composition and Lighting are my two top picks from a more utilitarian stand point.
My example is from this summer in Bermuda.. I walked off a ferry and stopped to look out over the ocean and with in a five minute window the most amazing sunset shot presented itself over the hotel pool….
Sometimes we wait for our environment to change to get the perfect shot and other times we need to keep the environment constant for our shots.

Certainly seeing beauty and translating the picture You see to thousands or millions of people that also perceive the beauty is a highly skilled trade developed over many years.(.Often a life time)…
That’s what we do and we Love it !

Ace,
I worked in Sydney in 2000 and love it...Best Olympics ever! Great people, Red wine at a fantastic price..
Is that a picture of you?.. I had to ask...

[acehole]

I love the deep thinking...!

Composition and Lighting are my two top picks from a more utilitarian stand point.
My example is from this summer in Bermuda.. I walked off a ferry and stopped to look out over the ocean and with in a five minute window the most amazing sunset shot presented itself over the hotel pool….
Sometimes we wait for our environment to change to get the perfect shot and other times we need to keep the environment constant for our shots.

Certainly seeing beauty and translating the picture You see to thousands or millions of people that also perceive the beauty is a highly skilled trade developed over many years.(.Often a life time)…
That’s what we do and we Love it !

Ace,
I worked in Sydney in 2000 and love it...Best Olympics ever! Great people, Red wine at a fantastic price..
Is that a picture of you?.. I had to ask...

Dave, no that isn't a picture of me.

Australia has a great wine culture indeed, I enjoy it thoroughly! We make the best Shiraz and Merlot.

Were you working on films in Sydney?

[David Birdy]

I worked with NBC for the Olympics at The Gymnastics venue as Engineer in Charge. Great Place Fantasic people..and you seem to find great models!
I'm a a big fan of the cabernet Savaingon !

[acehole]

Cool! Aussies are a laid back bunch to work with aren't they.

Love the cabsavy..

[PieroD]

Mathematics is a language. Like it or not, it is just a language. The Universe knows nothing about mathematics. It's us that use models to describe the Universe, or better, to predict it. The best tool we have for modelling is Physics, which uses Mathematics as its language of choice. There is an inherent interest we as humans have to find structures (or patterns), and fractals is one of the ultimate way of structuring complex signals. But the fractal structure of something, again, tells nothing of its way of working. Disconcertingly, at the end of the day, when you have defined the fractal dimension of an object, you know nothing more of its very nature. You are only observing the beauty of your brain. I'm speaking by personal experience. The beauty is in the quest, also for images....

[Graeme Nattress]

But language has content - it's not just descriptive. That we find that things in maths describe things in the universe is just useful coincidence. Of course, there are many things in pure maths that have no model in the universe that we know of, and exist purely in the form of mathematics.

[Mark L. Pederson]

But language has content - it's not just descriptive. That we find that things in maths describe things in the universe is just useful coincidence. Of course, there are many things in pure maths that have no model in the universe that we know of, and exist purely in the form of mathematics.

Of course, there are many things that Graeme says ... that I just pretend to understand.

[PieroD]

Totally agree Graeme. When we find that things can be derived from other things by mathematical functions, and find general laws for predicting the behavior of things along an independent variable, that's beauty, and generally you feel the power of the Universe when you are in this intellectual process. But in the mix, you need more than just Mathematics. Creativity is the most important ingredient in the mix (as for cinematography). Unfortunately Science students don't realize this. Do you agree?

[Adrian T.]

Mathematics is a language.

Math is NOT a language. Mathematical notation may be considered a language, but not math per se. Math is universal. Languages are man-made.

[PieroD]

big lebowsky

Who created Math?

[Sanjin Jukic]

But language has content - it's not just descriptive. That we find that things in maths describe things in the universe is just useful coincidence. Of course, there are many things in pure maths that have no model in the universe that we know of, and exist purely in the form of mathematics.

More about a connection between mathematics, philosophy, BEAUTY and art from

Bertrand Russell>>>LINK (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell#Logic_and_philosophy_of_mathemati cs)

Bertrand Russell expressed his sense of mathematical beauty in these words:
Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty — a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as poetry. (The Study of Mathematics, in Mysticism and Logic, and Other Essays, ch. 4, London: Longmans, Green, 1918.)

QUOTE>>>LINK (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_beauty)

[Adrian T.]

big lebowsky

Who created Math?

This could be considered a philosophical question. I say "math is".

[Graeme Nattress]

One of the most wonderful aspects of maths is that it is not created, only ever discovered!

And yes, creativity, whatever that might actually be, is vital! I mean, I believe that I'm creative, I just have no way of figuring out or defining what creativity is.

Graeme

[krd]

If "beauty" is sunsets, mountain ranges and waterfalls -- in a word, Academy Award photography, beautiful though it may be -- there are any number of serviceable explanations for human response: Platonic, Kantian, Darwinian, anthropological, neurological, etc. None are very persuasive, but they'll do, because nobody asking the question really expects to hear a convincing answer anyway.

It's the larger question of the pleasure of narrative and controlled artifice which (I'd argue) is the more interesting one. In this respect, Graeme is luckier than the rest of us. The bar to his chosen art is high enough that nobody gets there without internalizing its rules and a common language of discourse. But everyone in America is either a filmmaker or a movie critic. When there's no agreement on what's competent or serviceable, much less "beautiful", and the preceding 100 years of narrative film is largely unknown to most of the participants, how derive principles of aesthetic response? And how sustain an art form?

"Culture" and education may have once provided a mechanism to manage it, but today.... This could be one reason why there's so much "beautiful" photography in movies today, and so little actual narrative content to make sense of it.

[Lauri Kettunen]

Math is universal.

Universe is.

Math and physics are models. In particular, math is the model of cause and reason we discover. But, platorians see it in a different way and Graeme's view is an example of that. No point to argue on this.

Shawn's question is still interesting.

[Graeme Nattress]

But isn't that the beauty of it all - you can see it all in different ways, and it's that multitude of ways that adds to the beauty.

Graeme

[Adrian T.]

Math and physics are models.

Math is not a model. Physics is. There are "mathematical models" that describe physical systems.

Do you think some extraterrestrial intelligent lifeform doesn't discover the same mathematics as we do? They may describe it differently, they may use different notations, but the basic rules will be the same.

But as you said - let's stop arguing about it and enjoy the beauty of cinematic pictures. :innocent:

[DorkmanScott]

Do you think some extraterrestrial intelligent lifeform doesn't discover the same mathematics as we do? They may describe it differently, they may use different notations, but the basic rules will be the same.
When my father went to MIT, he took an entire course on the philosophy of mathematics that addressed, essentially, this very question. How much of mathematics is, in fact, universal, and how much is just a human filter on universal truth? Is math in fact, as others have said, an appropriate model that suits our perception, and would extraterrestrial life forms necessarily have the same perception, and therefore same "universal" concept of mathematics, as we do?

Ultimately the question is totally rhetorical, since any model of the universe that exists outside of our perception or capacity for understanding is, by definition, inconceivable to the human mind.

[karapetkov]

AFAIK, a great deal of things in math are based on the premise of the number 1.

If you want to calculate something, you need to step on some definite things which are singular, and have "one-ness".

One apple, one star, one RED ONE camera, etc.

If you don't have one thing or a number of things which are one by themselves, you've got nothing.

But what are the boundaries of the apple, where does it's one-ness end?

Where does the apple begin and where does it end?

All this is conventional, therefore relative and therefore non-absolute. And the name "apple" is even more conventional than its one-ness.

The absolute one exists only in theory. Where can you find it?

And furthermore, even if we can define the limits of the one-ness of the apple - it changes all the time, like everything else - worms coming in and out, eating it, radiation, atoms floating around, quarks and sh*t. Panta rei. Everything is everything.

Where is the absolute and indisputable beginning and end of the damn apple? Even on physical level it's not 100 % certain.

I mean math is a language and a way of designating and grasping things. It's just a tool that works, and works great, BUT there simply has to be more to life than a series of digits and algorithms.

Common sense says that "Yes, this is one apple."

But if you want the absolute truth, sorry! I personally want more.

Remember in Beautiful Mind, what the mental buddy said to Nash: "Mathematics won't lead you to higher truth. You know why?.. Cause it's boring...".

I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to bash mathematics, it is a great tool for science, but it simply cannot explain everything and it is not everything...

Or at least "I don't subscribe to this point of view."

And BTW,

What makes a woman beautiful? :sarcasm:

[Brian Ferguson]

Why?

Why do we enjoy an amazing shot? I say 'we' as in human observers, not trained filmmakers (who may enjoy something for technical achievement).

What is it about a well lit shot, or a well exposed outdoor shot that brings pleasure to the viewer?

This isn't a religious question, I'm not looking for an 'Allah wills it' answer, but rather what drives our response.

Aristotle answered that well-made stories brought pleasure because they fulfill the imitation desire and the desire for order. I find it difficult to transcribe these root causes of story onto what makes cinematography beautiful.

What do you think?

Wow I just read all of these pages of high level thoughts, great stuff.
I think many of our responses to imagery are more in the primitive core of our brain. Like have you ever noticed how we all stare at a campfire and derive a almost shared collective memory from our core being, our primitive mind. There are certain shapes and shadows that are hard wired into our subconscious for reasons of survival. Sense of seasons, procreation - things we do from the core of our animal self. I think the images that relate to these triggers evoke the strongest responses.

[omen]

I love this thread.

Great words spoken here.
I'll try to be concise, which will be very difficult with a subject like this.

The logic of beauty

As Ace greatly put, semiotics - understanding of symbolism is essential in understanding our perception of "beautiful".
Design, architecture and all visual arts are based on laws defined by shapes/symbols and are essential literature in every of those fields.

There are subconscious mechanisms, a "software" on which our triple being (spiritual,mental and physical) is based on.
We are driven by these subconscious "programs" to reach our goals, things we yearn to as human beings.
One part of our software is given with instinct and the other programed by our environment.
The more complex our environment and mind becomes, the more complex and wider our perception of beauty is.
This can be good and a bad thing, but I won't go there now.

Technically, I see beauty as a combination of links to positive emotions.

Our definition of beauty exists for all of our senses, but I'll concentrate on visual, since its our most important one and the topic of this thread.

Nature attraction- the beauty of natural creation, attraction to the universal, connecting to our natural environment, elements and beings,
energy exchange, healing/balancing of our being, relaxation, concentration, one of keys to unlocking the channels to creativity.
Mostly driven by instinct. We are one with the universe, regardless of how much we are aware of it.

Social attraction - driven by a need to be a part of a community, to be accepted, to be a "link" in our closest type of environment.
The beauty defined in this is a combination of instinct (to be in the "pack" & "survival") and environment.

Procreation - procreation is the strongest attraction. Every living being is led by it. Life is primary. It must go on. The creation of another life.
The beauty of opposite sex (or the same in some cases) drive us. Your partner, your key to offspring is beautiful. Your child, the life you created is beautiful.
Essential. Instinct. Shapes and ratios of a human body or its elements can be seen in many (almost all) beautiful human creations.

Expression - unlike more primitive organisms on this planet, we are given (or have achieved with time) the another fantastic gift - a power of creation of something other than offspring.
Tools, art... if you made it motivated by love or creativity or both - it becomes beautiful or causes beauty indirectly. For many people or only for you.

Fake attraction - strictly created by the environment. It exploits the combination of natural human attractions (and definitions of beauty) to achieve the desired effect (mostly profit with humans), which again is moved by the mutated primal desire of procreation (mostly) or social attraction, or both.


We could also go much deeper than this.
The laws of our universe are essential part of primal "beauty". The circle, golden ratio, fractals, Fibonacci sequence etc... We like it because it is a part of us.
The logic on which we and everything we know is based on.



Aristotle answered that well-made stories brought pleasure because they fulfill the imitation desire and the desire for order.


"desire to imitate "- all of our creations try to imitate The Original Creation, how ever one defines it - be they conscious or subconscious.
No matter which genre, movies are imitations of real life. Even Sci-fi is a combination of known and imagined. Abstract work is more subliminal.
Not only we try to imitate the "creation", we try to imitate the way of perceiving it.
We tell stories with copied elements through copied perception.

"desire for order"- in this case you could see a story as an order of events, a movie as an order of chapters, chapter as an order of scenes,
scene as an order of pictures, a picture as an order of symbols.

Like visual, this desire also exists to logical order, which is far more complex and subjective.
Priorities for these orders vary between people and this is why some very intelligent people live in the visual mess - because they see or need only logical order.

For a story to be good visual order is not enough. Logical order must establish the link between the visual.



Then there is timing. The rhythm.
A whole new topic.



Another essential factor:
Balance.

[krd]

The trouble with rational explanations of aesthetic activity is that they fail to account for what's actually unique about art. You can say that the original cave artists painted those beautiful bison out of some magical conviction that the animals would be easier to hunt or from a desire to include them in the human community. But that doesn't explain the beauty and accomplishment of the lines, which must have taken generations, maybe even centuries, to refine. A much cruder representation would have worked just as well, if the purpose was simply practical.

Or you can argue that Beethoven composed masterpieces because what he really wanted, whether he knew it or not, was access to women and the opportunity of passing on his genes. But in actual practice the level of monomania and dedication required by his work made "normal" relationships, and passing on his genes, impossible.

The writer Vladimir Nabokov, who was also an accomplished naturalist, pointed out that the "mimicry" factor in nature -- for example, an insect whose wings have the markings of a leaf, complete with bore holes, to confuse a predator -- exists at a level of detail which far exceeds the perceptual capacity of the hunter. In effect, art for its own sake.

The motivations for human behavior may be simple, but the behavior isn't. Just as human language use is inherently creative, beyond any immediate expressed need for sex, community, food, etc., so are these formal arts. The reasons for starting the work may be very basic or primal, but the execution, and the work of art itself, never is.

[Graeme Nattress]

There's a wonderful story from Bagpuss (favourite children's show of all time in the UK, stop motion animation) creator, Oliver Postgate (http://www.smallfilms.co.uk/seeing-things/) autobiography.

He was invited to teach at a film school, except they just wanted him on campus to "be" there and let his influence help students, or something like that... Anyway, he was attending a semiotics lecture, where some film studies lecturer was analysing the symbols in movies, talking about what the director meant by that etc and so forth. Anyway, as a director himself he had to laugh as the "symbols" that were pointed out were not put there by the director, and not intended, but were expedient solutions to shooting problems, or just happened. I'm sure I'm not telling the story well enough, and I can't seem to find my copy of the book, but it was a very telling story.

Graeme

[acehole]

There's a wonderful story from Bagpuss (favourite children's show of all time in the UK, stop motion animation) creator, Oliver Postgate (http://www.smallfilms.co.uk/seeing-things/) autobiography.

He was invited to teach at a film school, except they just wanted him on campus to "be" there and let his influence help students, or something like that... Anyway, he was attending a semiotics lecture, where some film studies lecturer was analysing the symbols in movies, talking about what the director meant by that etc and so forth. Anyway, as a director himself he had to laugh as the "symbols" that were pointed out were not put there by the director, and not intended, but were expedient solutions to shooting problems, or just happened. I'm sure I'm not telling the story well enough, and I can't seem to find my copy of the book, but it was a very telling story.

Graeme

Its a bit like art critics interpreting art pieces to the Nth degree, not realizing that often the artists are not that clever to think up what they thought they were thinking.. I think anyone that produces artwork will have experienced the odd critic or friend who tells you how genius and great the photograph you took of a blood stained toilet seat is.

But it does beg the question, even if the symbols that are in were inserted for reasons other than deliberate, the fact that they are in the film or artwork means they were not objected to by the artist and therefore have some degree of contextual legitimacy in finding their place in the medium.

[Graeme Nattress]

I don't think the issue is as much interpreting symbols, but as interpreting them as what the "director thought". And indeed, even if the creatives don't object to a symbol that could be a reason for it being, but often many things later seen as symbols were missed at the time or production and just happened.

[number6]

Wow! when I saw the first line in Shawn's post I immediately thought "because sex sells, and then I read further and decided that I should instead take the advice of that very great French statesman, Jacques Chirac and "not miss this very good opportunity to just shut up!"

[Lauri Kettunen]

Do you think some extraterrestrial intelligent lifeform doesn't discover the same mathematics as we do?

If I had to speculate I would say, probably yes. But still, this just means if there were somebody in Mars pointing his finger to the sun, his and our fingers just pointed to the same star.

Perhaps I should confess that I've spent forty years of my life studying like mad mathematical physics, especially electromagnetic theory and modern mathematics. So, this question is precisely something I've also discussed with some of the very best people in the world.

It's very difficult to say which one comes first mathematics or physics. My own explanation is, physics relies on the observation that there are phenomena which appear always the same way under the same conditions. That is, these phenomena appear in a logical manner. Mathematics, in turn, condense this logic into a framework --or language, if you like-- which does not rely in any instances. In other words, mathematics is free of examples. Say, take two stones or RED cameras and bring in another three to get five stones or RED cameras, respectively. In mathematics one says this by stating 2+3=5 without a reference to any instance. But, what we call number two, three or five, i.e., the natural numbers, is still a man made construction from the notion of set, empty set, and successor set. This boils down to the so called Peano Axioms. (If you want to know more, suggest to read Halmos: Naive Set Theory, Springer-Verlag or see a quick explanation at http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PeanosAxioms.html.) My guess is some "extraterrestrial intelligent lifeform" would phrase natural numbers pretty much the same way.

Getting back to Shawn's question a thought came into mind. When I saw the first episods of BBC Planet Earth series I found them totally amazing and was hit by the beauty of the images. But then, after seeing four or fives episods did not anymore find the rest as beautiful, for they repeated the same structure and pattern as the earlier ones. However, technically the last episods are as wonderful as the first ones. So, at least in my case, when I get the impression of beauty, there is a flavour or aspect of novelity. There's probably a lot of beautiful things around us we just do not realize as we are so used to them that we are no longer able to feel the beauty.

In fact, I'm rather grateful to Shawn raising the question. For, once I'll get my RED camera, will start to work with a new three year wildlife document project. The more I've processed on Shawn's question the more clear it has become that we have to seek very seriously for a new view surprising the audience.

[omen]

A lot of "laws" and patterns we define, or artistic details we try to find can simply be and often are expressed subconsciously.
If you have the talent you don't think about the golden ratio in a composition. It just feels right. I doubt great artists think about the laws. They don't have to understand it all.
Thinking too much can interfere with creative flow. Instead of defining, I feel it's more like listening, letting out what comes from beyond...

Symbols and patterns are a mere link, a sub element. Director's creative thought can be a point of origin which, if all is done right, leads to the final structure, an expression of that thought recognizable by the audience.

During every creative process, which itself is magical, another magic happens. An intervention of factors and elements not present in the original creative thought. Some can appear as lucky coincidences, some as obstacles, but they add something to the original idea.
I like to see them as gifts.

I'm sure that even the creation of Red consists of examples of such magic.

[omen]

And yes, creativity, whatever that might actually be, is vital! I mean, I believe that I'm creative, I just have no way of figuring out or defining what creativity is.
Graeme

I'd guess... a gift, ability to possess ideas and bring them to life. To express oneself combining known with imagined.
What could be helpful in defining creativity and even more intriguing is defining inspiration.

I'm interested in opinions and feelings about it.


....You can say that the original cave artists painted those beautiful bison out of some magical conviction that the animals would be easier to hunt or from a desire to include them in the human community. But that doesn't explain the beauty and accomplishment of the lines, which must have taken generations, maybe even centuries, to refine.
...Or you can argue that Beethoven composed masterpieces because what he really wanted, whether he knew it or not, was access to women and the opportunity of passing on his genes. .....
The writer Vladimir Nabokov, who was also an accomplished naturalist, pointed out that the "mimicry" factor in nature -- for example, an insect whose wings have the markings of a leaf, complete with bore holes, to confuse a predator.....
...If anything, these activities are self-destructive. It makes far more sense to become a plumber or a dentist, if the idea is passing on your genes and ensuring that your offspring survive.


Don't confuse the perception of beauty with art, inspiration and what triggers it.

Artist can also create ugliness to express himself and beauty can be achieved without art.

Concerning the insect and the leaf... it's a guessing game... maybe the plant taught the insect how to look similar...

[Shawn Nelson]

Wow, I love the responses!!

Acehole, yours in particular intrigued me. I find the idea of understanding the underlying reasons of things to be the key. Do you have any good book recommendations for understanding semiotics?

[Lauri Kettunen]

I doubt great artists think about the laws. They don't have to understand it all.

Omen, I like this very much, and in fact this reminds me of what Halmos says in the introduction of his book (Naive set theory): "read it, absorb it, and forget it".

So, you are probably right in saying people in creative work do not think about laws. Instead, once something is absorbed and it becomes a true part of someone's nature, then one may break the laws in a controlled manner, and the audience find beauty in the outcome and recognizes the creative mind behind the work. A lower level of art is just to create copies of existing ideas.

There's a very nice book Martha Hill-Art Wolfe: The Art of Photographing Nature, where Martha Hill gives an analysis of Art Wolfe's spectacular photographs. In this book Martha Hill nicely demonstrates that to take a photo or to tell a story some structure is needed. This book had a big influence on me when it came out about a decade ago and thus classify it in the category of recommend books.

[Elizabeth]

Thinking too much can interfere with creative flow. Instead of defining, I feel it's more like listening, letting out what comes from beyond...


During every creative process, which itself is magical, another magic happens. An intervention of factors and elements not present in the original creative thought. Some can appear as lucky coincidences, some as obstacles, but they add something to the original idea.
I like to see them as gifts.


Of course, there is the debatable truth that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". On the surface this statement seems simple, but for me it opens a whole box of Zen Koans.

If two people stand before a thing of beauty - one person has a fresh receptive spirit and the other is jaded and bitter - will they see the same beauty? If a blind man sits before the same thing of beauty, is it still beautiful? Can he not still touch it and perceive it's supremely skillful crafting or natural form? Is beauty reliant only on the observer having "the eyes to see" or is it inherent to the object itself? Is beauty only born from the emotional/intellectual response we humans invest in something or are there greater universal laws that dictate beauty?

There are different answers to these questions, but I do know that in my most divinely creative and intuitive moments, I have always felt (more than heard) the gentle whispering voice just on the other side of my inner ear "... put that line there, yes this word here, wait, wait, wait turn quick shoot this NOW like this ... yes ... yes lose that image, okay, place this image with this one, lay them down RIGHT HERE to this music ... yes ... beautiful!"

Then I do as I am told and more often than not, I find beauty.

I do not know where these imperatives spring from, nor do I question the source of the messages in the moment (only after the event do I re-assess what has come from this experience and begin to judge it as acceptable or not). Certainly there is a great deal of education, technique and knowledge all aligning with wisdom, life experiences, primal urges and pure gut instinct to create art and translate beauty ... still I do believe that there is also an "unknowable" force at play in these sublime moments of creation and (try as we might) we can never, ever really "know" exactly what this force.

So, for me it is REALLY a process of listen to and trusting an inner directive and then discovering what magic comes from the process. I never cease to be amazed.

[Phil Becque]

Wow, I love the responses!!

Acehole, yours in particular intrigued me. I find the idea of understanding the underlying reasons of things to be the key. Do you have any good book recommendations for understanding semiotics?


Hi Shawn, I'm sure Ace has other references but here's one you may finding interesting:

http://assets.cambridge.org/97805217/80056/sample/9780521780056wsn01.pdf

I did purchase a film making booklet which mentioned this topic and went into the basics quite well - but I'll I can't put my hand on it right now.

I'll send you a note if it turns up.

As for the topic of how something strikes our perception in such a way as to become beautiful - well that's quite a mystery really although here are my favorite clues:

First - I think comes context - setting up a context is quite tricky because you are always doing this in film - either intentionally or by accident. In any event once you have a context it's possible to 'reveal' something which is 'relevant' to that 'context' and make it more likely to be percieved by the audience as 'beautiful'. The way you do this 'reveal' is crucial - get it wrong and it you can have quite unexpected results.

The other aspect of the 'reveal' is that you want to cause 'resonance' for the viewer. Again - that's quite subtle. Another aspect of beauty (already refered to in this thread) is 'ratio'. It's easy to over cook or under cook things - so getting just the right 'ratio' (which includes rythym and timing) is also part of the semiotic.

The other thing is 'relationships' - not the interpersonnal types here, but the relationships between the images and in many cases the accompanying music - that's a highly personal thing of course. Not everyone is going to 'get' the connections that form in your head when your are doing the editing - but some will - and they'll love it.

My latest project was recently described by a Film Festival as "visually beautiful, mind altering and cinematic" which, as you can imagine, I was delighted about! The fact is, I was striving for those things; though to be brutally honest I wasn't sure how successful I'd been when I finished the project. Also, the exact same project was castigated in the most offensive manner by some other '(english) movie buffs' as "fact free, santimonius twaddle" which only goes to prove the old addage that "one mans meat is another mans poison".

Good luck with your developing your film language skills and don't forget that you have the freedom to make up your own!

All the best, Phil

[number6]

Thanks for sharing the link Phil. Very deep... I even understood some of it... I think.

[krd]

Acehole will answer for himself, so take my two cents for what they're worth:

Like other post-modern academic disciplines, semiotics employs a highly formal language, verging on the oracular, and understood by very few, to dignifiy what amounts to untestable theories or impressions. This discourse may actually yield an insight worth having from time to time, but it's useless for anyone actually working in the arts, as somehow distinct from knowing and understanding the craft of that art or technology.

If, to use Acehole's example, you want to learn how to reconstruct a face or compose an image, not as art (as he's quick to note) but as a functional technology, you need (obviously) to study plastic surgery or composition, respectively. Semiotics, as an independent discipline, may in part describe the discourse of reconstructive surgery or the golden ratio, but it's no substitute for them. You wouldn't go to a semiotician to get a broken nose fixed, that's one post-modern experiment you don't want to perform.

Some might cite Umberto Eco as the exception (as well as being a highly regarded theorist, he's also a novelist) but that's a subject for another day. However, if you want to see a popularized and very entertaining version of semiotics in practice (quite unlike the download above), look at Eco's essay on "Casablanca". You'll also see how useless this kind of knowledge actually is for filmmakers whose subject isn't semiotics (as it often is in Eco's novels).

But I suspect Acehole wasn't speaking to the academic discipline of semiotics. Trouble is, there really is no other form of it which can be put to any use, beyond casual conversation -- or it's just a fancy word for "craft", the sort of things people learned and taught themselves long before semiotics became a university department.

But let's hear what he has to say.

[Phil Becque]

Thanks for sharing the link Phil. Very deep... I even understood some of it... I think.

Hi number6,

Another link for you - possibly a better read?

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem01.html


Hi krd

I disagree with this statement "You'll also see how useless this kind of knowledge actually is for filmmakers"

Semiotics is the study of how to convey meaning to your audience through sight and sound. Call me old fashioned - but I would have thought that might come in useful in film making?

All the best, Phil

[krd]

I disagree with this statement "You'll also see how useless this kind of knowledge actually is for filmmakers"

Semiotics is the study of how to convey meaning to your audience through sight and sound. Call me old fashioned - but I would have thought that might come in useful in film making

My view is simplistic, and even more old-fashioned: life is long, and so is art, and we all find our craft in different ways, or we find the wrong craft or an incomplete one, and the truth is, most of us find nothing at all at the end of it, not craft and not art. If all this could be taught with semiotics, film and literature would cease to be art and become technology, the product of companies, not individuals. That process may be happening anyway, but not thanks to the Semiotics Department.

And even if semiotics revealed the true structure of things in the realm of propaganda or information technology, the method of inquiry is based on the notion that the true structure of things is not a product of conscious intention, or that conscious intention is irrelevant, in the same way a geologist doesn't worry about the intention of a mountain range when he looks at the plates below. So you may think you wrote a pulp novel about sex, fraud and murder, but the semiotician knows it's really a neo-Platonist elaboration of mercantile relations between de-gendered phantom signifiers in a jubilance of ahistorical revisionism. And, for all I know, he may be right. But how this will help anyone to write a novel, any more than traditional literary or art criticism teaches people how to write or paint (it doesn't), is beyond me, unless maybe you're writing an academic satire.

For the record, there is at least one "semiotic" filmmaker more or less in the mainstream: Todd Haynes. Which could explain why all his films are based on other films -- "meta-films", as it were -- and why they have an incomplete and pallid existence on their own, at least as I see them. Then again, the guy raised $15 million for his Dylan biopic, so what do I know? Long live semiotics.

[Phil Becque]

LOL - ha you've really got it in for Semiotics Department - that's great!

I know what you mean about semiotic discourse sounding like pseude's corner; peopled by inbreds who were born with an oxford english dictionary up their ar*e. But when I came across the concept I found it quite useful. But then I do like analysis . . . .

I do think that Art and Craft are very important - but then I do have an unnatural aversion to those words for reasons that go back to my stunted artist development as a child.

Good luck with all of your projects and remember if you really don't which direction to go; the toss of a coin is probably as good as anything else.

All the best, Phil

[Shawn Nelson]

hey acehole! You never chimed in on whether you think there are any good book worth reading on semiotics!

[karapetkov]

I had an experience... when I was younger.

It was a late summer afternoon and I was like... 15...

My sweet little neighborhood was quiet... its lazy whisper was flying through the half-opened window...

I was taking a nice nap and my teenage mind was lingering between the realm of Morpheus and the gentle breeze of August...

I woke up and walked to the window... for no particular reason...

And then something happened with my vision... my eyes were acting weirdly...

It's hard to describe, but I was like,.. in another regime of seeing.

The colors were stronger, richer and more saturated... I was seeing more detail.... clean and crisp... I believe that even my eye's "latitude" was like - bigger :).

The only way I can describe it is that I had a kind of film vision.

Everything looked like a movie, like a super-high-quality film-stock. Dreamy.. surreal.

This lasted 5-10 seconds max.

I'll never forget it and I certainly cannot explain it.

Maybe it was a kind of "breach" in the flux of my perception. Maybe some teenage chemical was dancing though my brain, I dunno.

But it sure showed me that, what one usually sees is not all that can be seen.

Regarding beauty, vision and cinematography, there are a lot of things you can learn and be taught in school and other places. A lot of theories, explanations and reasoning...

But all these are secondary, IMO.

What if you can study the semiotics of your heart?

The basic, the visceral, the instinctive, the primordial...

A professor at my University has an interesting theory on the "first setup" of our perception. Our first, pure, natural "eye".

"So wonderful the mind of a child is." :)

Education helps, I suppose... But it also blocks some very important ports in our mind.

I bet that if a person knows his "first setup" well, he'll make a hell of a DP. :)


P.S. Things that happen for no particular reason are usually the best.

[Nick Wolf]

Can you go into more detail about this theory of "The first Set-Up"...

[Joe Carney]

From a pratical standpoint just about any of the pre Pixar Disney animated films depended heavily on Semniotics , though they didn't call it that. Lots of info on this in the book "The Illusion of Life". You actually see it in most western animated films once you start looking.

[karapetkov]

dogday:

It's quite a big book on philosophy of science, but I'll try to give a synopsis.

zeke:

I'm not bashing semiotics or anything.. just expressing thoughts..

[Joe Carney]

dogday:

It's quite a big book on philosophy of science, but I'll try to give a synopsis.

zeke:

I'm not bashing semiotics or anything.. just expressing thoughts..

I didn't think you were. Just some people don't want to read a dry academic treatise on the subject, so "The Illusion of Life" might be more fun to get the fundamentals.

[Bill Anderson]

Good luck with your books on Philosophy, semiotics and math equations y'all.
There might be beauty in math, but there's no math in beauty. At least none worth the trouble of averting ones attention from the beauty itself. Bertrand Russell said it well, almost poetically, but Bertrand was no Poet, or painter, or musician, or filmmaker; he was something else.
And notice how Mr. Russell qualifies his statement with "Mathematics, rightly viewed..." What is, "rightly viewed"?
Which pretty much brings us back to the original question of this thread.

"Is that perfume from a dress, that makes me so digress" wrote (more or less) TS Elliot. Breaking the perfume down to its chemical constituents might be fun for some - even a passionate endeavor for the likes of Primo Levy; see his novel -The Periodic Tables - for a beautiful and artistic account of bridging the gulf between chemistry and the human condition. However, as far as this thread goes, the important thing about the novel is that Levi used no math in its message, he, like Elliot, digressed. He had to rely on the essence of math- math without the numbers.
And Carl Dreyer relied on the essence of the human spirit when he showed Joan of Arc's hair- brutally shorn off- being swept into a garbage basket, emphasizing and beautifully abstracting Joan's (brief) shunning of her religious ideals.
Put away your calculators lads, there ain't no cure for love (:

[Graeme Nattress]

There's a lot of math in beauty - look at fractals, the golden ratio that just pops up everywhere in nature, cellular automata, madelbrot sets....

Graeme

[Bill Anderson]

Fractals.... aren't beautiful.
And what do you mean by "in beauty" : "There's a lot of math in beauty".
When we begin to consider the math- the beauty succumbs, and is replaced by a poor, cold surrogate- perhaps with a "beauty" of its own; like the planet mercury, a most beautiful place, till we try and live there.
The Golden ratio is as much a part of beauty as are the host cells that constitute the greatest part of my girlfriend's skin- but I do not love them. And I will never mourn for them. It's our definition of beauty that parts us. Hence, fractals are ugly. (:

[Graeme Nattress]

The only definition of "beauty" I know, is "that which I find beautiful." It's a very personal and subjective thing.

What I mean by their being math in beauty, is that a lot of things we (as in not just me, but many people) find beautiful, have math behind the scenes. Like a sea shell that has a log spiral on it. Or a pattern produced by cellular automata rules, or the spiral of seeds on a sunflower head that has the golden ratio as it's mathematics, or the chaos of a dripping tap, or the fractal fronds of a fern leaf. I see beauty everywhere! We live in such a beautiful world.

Graeme

[Bill Anderson]

But I find sunflowers and waterfalls and ferns beautiful too. And I'm sure they were always considered as beautiful as now; even before Fermat and theorems and the likes. But I see the math as being apart from the beauty, at least when it comes down to trying to define beauty with an eye toward recreating it.
Perhaps an anology would help illustrate (my feelings):
The credits have just rolled on an unambiguously powerful movie, there are tears in your eyes. An epiphany has occurred and you'll leave the theatre a slightly different person. And as you sit there weighing the reasons for the movie's impact, you dig deeper and deeper, passing beyond story and acting and writing and music, even passing through the locatiion scouts and foley until you hit an organism: the RED team, the creators of the camera that just made the movie. And then you begin to single out parts of that organism, and you come up with a couple of names: Jim and Graeme, and you feel compelled to write a postcard to them, thanking them for your experience. Well, you might not be wrong altogether, but...

[Graeme Nattress]

I think through my studies of math, I have a different perspective that other people. I see the beauty in the thing itself, and that is made more beautiful when I understand "how" or "why" it's made the way it is. It's additive.

Graeme

[Bill Anderson]

Knowing an object's makeup must add to the experience, indeed.
I've studied the natural scene as one might study cryptography; looking at things for what they might also mean.
All the knowledge of how something is put together doesn't help us express it in terms of beauty, and art. It might provide the information required to write a poem about an Event Horizon, but it won't provide for our lack of sensitivity anymore than it'll help us position a camera as effectively as Hitchcock.
You, like Bertrand Russell, may see things in all their complexities and understand them on a level far greater than I; but to express these things in the language of art, mathematicians are as much at a disadvantage as most. And that is what I'm trying to get my head around with regards to this thread's query about why things strike us as beautiful. I hope I'm not beating this to death.

[Bill Anderson]

Something I should also make clear with regards to my claim "... there is no math in beauty": even though there is math in the object ie. the sunflower; the object is not the beauty. They are not one in the same. Objects are not inherently beautiful, but they inherently include math. Does math's nature differ when describing an ebola virus as opposed to a rose? Does math vacillate in its praise of matter?
Beauty is an idea; math a constant. Take away the human element and the beauty evaporates, even though the math persists. And the idea of beauty is generally skewed toward all that is conducive to the survival of our species: water, sunsets, clean air, big breasts, and the belief that the planet has taken a liking to us.

[Joofa]

Objects are not inherently beautiful, but they inherently include math. Does math's nature differ when describing an ebola virus as opposed to a rose? Does math vacillate in its praise of matter?
Beauty is an idea; math a constant.

I don't think that beauty has to quantified always in terms of math. There are cultural interpretations here that are perhaps more important.

Math is limited, it is many times internally self-incomplete (Google Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem,) sometimes inconsistent with our notion of physics (Google Banach-Tarski theorem).

Rationality is not always helpful IMHO. Beauty can't be quantified!

[omen]

With every deeper insight through science...biology, physics, astronomy, math, psychology...one gets greater admiration for miracle of creation around us.

All that had to align to create life...
All that had to align to create intelligence...

All that had to align for me to be able to type messages on one slim glowing silver plate in my lap,
sending my thoughts through USB HSDPA thingy on the other side of the planet...

Understanding everything is not essential for expression.
In the moment of expression knowledge should be subconscious.
You focus on what you want to create, not the laws, techniques or tools.
Otherwise you can't clearly hear what you need to hear and bring out what you're supposed to...

But...if nothing else - knowledge makes you appreciate things more.
Curiosity itself is an important characteristic.

Understanding also helps your work evolve, because you define your current level and can define keys for the next one.
If that is your goal.

I perceive it this way. Some don't.
Difference in perspective is essential. One of the elements which makes every human creation unique.

[Bill Anderson]

Joofa and Omen. I don't think you've read the thread carefully, at least not as far as understanding my position is concerned.

[agwah]

"I don't think that writers or painters or filmmakers function because they have something they particularly want to say. They have something that they feel. And they like the art form; they like words, or the smell of paint, or celluloid and photographic images and working with actors. I don't think that any genuine artist has ever been oriented by some didactic point of view, even if he thought he was."

Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999)

For me, the above statement sets up an important priority. It explains an intuitive feeling I have always had but never saw put in words before. I have been drawn to film and photography all my life, I find beauty in stuff that resonates, or rather, reverberates deep inside bouncing of distant echoes of memories, fantasies and desires.

A while back I got into a long time of thinking about positive and negative emotional reactions from images. I decided to try to capture an image totally without any emotional impact. Looking for the perfect "zero" image. The image that is right in between yin and yang, an unemotional image. Needless to say, it is impossible, but it was a fun experiment.

As for beauty in film, it seems impossible to divorce it from the structure of the story. As an example: In "the lives of others" a superbly constructed script, there is this scene at the very end of the film where a man is in a bookstore, he reads a line of text and it alters the entire perception of all the images that came before, what was once a dreary image, now is a beautifully remembered image. This is masterful filmmaking.

[Bill Anderson]

And Omen, surely you mean the "miracle" of evolution.

[karapetkov]

Good luck with your books on Philosophy, semiotics and math equations y'all.
There might be beauty in math, but there's no math in beauty. At least none worth the trouble of averting ones attention from the beauty itself. Bertrand Russell said it well, almost poetically, but Bertrand was no Poet, or painter, or musician, or filmmaker; he was something else.
And notice how Mr. Russell qualifies his statement with "Mathematics, rightly viewed..." What is, "rightly viewed"?
Which pretty much brings us back to the original question of this thread.

"Is that perfume from a dress, that makes me so digress" wrote (more or less) TS Elliot. Breaking the perfume down to its chemical constituents might be fun for some - even a passionate endeavor for the likes of Primo Levy; see his novel -The Periodic Tables - for a beautiful and artistic account of bridging the gulf between chemistry and the human condition. However, as far as this thread goes, the important thing about the novel is that Levi used no math in its message, he, like Elliot, digressed. He had to rely on the essence of math- math without the numbers.
And Carl Dreyer relied on the essence of the human spirit when he showed Joan of Arc's hair- brutally shorn off- being swept into a garbage basket, emphasizing and beautifully abstracting Joan's (brief) shunning of her religious ideals.
Put away your calculators lads, there ain't no cure for love (:

There's the logical and the illogical part to all that. Noone is denying the illogical or we can say beyond-logical part of things.

And actually there's a lot of math in poetry, d'ya know? Hexameters and stuff. But it isn't all math, alright.

[Johan Pabon]

All I can say is that sometimes when shooting everything gets into balance. The lighting is perfect, the actors are perfect, you adjust perfectly to the circumstances and everything is fine... at this moment you can't go wrong, as long as you remain a servant of beauty and truth.
You started off with hard work, study, disappointments, pleasure and growth. And so things continue.
I think it's something to be very humble about. We all have a great job!

[supernovafilms]

"The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible." --Albert Einstein

[Jeff Coatney]

In reference to Shawn's original post, I would add: With all due respect to all my brilliant colleagues, I regard math as a language of sorts.

The aesthetic experience that we find pleasing when viewing a particular shot or sequence I believe transcends our linguistic limitations. I think it awakens the part of our brain that dreams. Cinema could be described as a shared dream. When we experience imagery that awakens that part of the mind that is dormant while we're conscious, I believe it triggers an emotional response. I think the feeling Shawn describes, IMHO, is the only time when our conscious mind and our unconscious mind achieve a shared moment of equilibrium. When the dream crosses the transom of reality and for the briefest of moments, we can feel something that could be described as divine.

[Johan Pabon]

I fully agree on that one Jeff, I guess the same thing that I described during the making.... You could describe it as divine...

[Paolo Tinari]

In reference to Shawn's original post, I would add: With all due respect to all my brilliant colleagues, I regard math as a language of sorts.

The aesthetic experience that we find pleasing when viewing a particular shot or sequence I believe transcends our linguistic limitations. I think it awakens the part of our brain that dreams. Cinema could be described as a shared dream. When we experience imagery that awakens that part of the mind that is dormant while we're conscious, I believe it triggers an emotional response. I think the feeling Shawn describes, IMHO, is the only time when our conscious mind and our unconscious mind achieve a shared moment of equilibrium. When the dream crosses the transom of reality and for the briefest of moments, we can feel something that could be described as divine.

Me Love this one

[omen]

Totally.

When the dream crosses the transom of reality and for the briefest of moments, we can feel something that could be described as divine.


"The moment"



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDUKkMGSjn8

Listen...



Bravo, man.