Posts Tagged format
The Golden Age of Cinema
I swear, more and more, whenever I visit the cinema something goes wrong with the projection. Bad print, wrong ratio, whatever. I don’t know if it’s getting worse, or if it just seems that way now everyone has big TVs, 5.1 sound, and crisp digital copies waiting at home.
Even ignoring the soft focus and muddy sound of well-watched VHS, I can remember when anything seen outside of a cinema was inevitably cropped. Panned and scanned for 4:3 TVs. It meant faces of less important actors on the sides of the frame were split down the middle. Climactic Leone shootouts were butchered, turning wide shots of two men in the corners of the screen into one man, standing alone, staring at nothing while ominous music played.
I was working at a video store when the first trickle of widescreen VHS copies arrived – for ‘collectors’, of course. I was constantly explaining to customers that they weren’t missing anything under those black bars now at the top and bottom of the screen. In fact, widescreen meant they’d actually be seeing extra footage on the left and right! At least half the time they couldn’t be convinced. They didn’t want to ‘waste’ any of their TV.
And in Australia, watching TV was even worse. We’d get shows months after the rest of the world. One channel stopped playing Buffy the Vampire Slayer halfway through season two, a voiceover announcing that it was the season finale. (Did I say announcing? I meant lying. Lying!) Our networks would ignore the usual TV act breaks to stuff in commercials wherever they liked. When we got shows at all, they were played completely unpredictably: I remember scrabbling for tapes to capture the last two-thirds of shows like Homicide: Life on the Street as they bounced around in ever-changing late night summer slots.
Writing in The Guardian, Peter Preston said that time-shifting has ruined the ‘water-cooler moments’ of collective TV watching. “It sounds somehow empowering as the habit grows,” he says, “but it also leaves you feeling alone…” In the UK and US? Maybe. In the rest of the world, downloading means we can finally be a part of popular culture almost as it happens, and join in the subsequent conversations online.
There are always articles pointing out cinema’s quality is rapidly declining. Mark Harris, in his celebrated GQ piece ‘The Day the Movies Died’, said: “…put simply, things have never been worse.”
Let’s say he’s right. (He’s not, I don’t think, but let’s say he is.) With correct aspect ratios, and multizone DVD players, and cheap imports of foreign films, and TV full-season box sets, and tiny, downloadable subtitles… isn’t this still the best time in history to be a movie fan?
Is VHS the New Vinyl?
Blow the dust off your old video player, rummage around for a VHS copy of your favourite film, insert it and listen to it grind to life. Once you’re used to high definition, your enormous LCD television probably looks like someone’s coated its screen in vaseline. Could the particular qualities of the VHS tape ever become prized in the same way that vinyl’s attributes are today?
The following is a piece I recently wrote for The Big Issue. I dedicate it to the much loved, widescreen, pre-‘special edition’ VHS copy of Star Wars I have somewhere around here.
David Herbert's sculpture "VHS" (2005). http://www.davidherbert.com/
Vinyl simply produces a better sound than a CD. While music websites are still bursting with arguments about this statement – most punctuated with frequencies mapped on angrily-spiked graphs – the idea has been around for so long it’s now almost considered common sense.
“Vinyl’s just a superior sound than digital,” says DJ Andee Frost. He’s been collecting vinyl since he was sixteen and until recently ran Melbourne’s ‘vinyl boutique’ Hear Now. “There’s something more human about it. A CD is too crystal clear. Music needs the same warmth that it had when it was recorded.”
Warmer; softer; somehow more human. When asked if he could imagine someone praising video for the same attributes, Andee’s not so convinced. “I don’t know whether you’d find too many people claiming VHS is a superior format. How many people do you know who still use VHS? That’s the real question.”
Meet Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. She’s a cinema researcher with a frighteningly large (and ever growing) collection of VHS tapes. “Initially,” she explains, “it was because I never throw anything out. I never got rid of my player, because I always had stuff on video that I needed for work.”
It helps that Alex’s interest is in exactly the kind of obscure horror movies likely to be considered disposable. Her first book, Rape-Revenge Film: A Critical Study, will be published later in 2011.
“Most of what I see on VHS is stuff that’s never been put onto DVD – so I like the treasure hunt of finding it. Now I buy more VHS than I buy DVD. It wasn’t a conscious decision; I just like the look of VHS better. A video will play even if the tape is chewed and curled. It deteriorates more organically. The colours and the sound wash out, and it fades more like a painting.”
“Sometimes I don’t like the crisp HD look. It’s too harsh,” says Cassandra Tytler, a Melbourne artist working in Paris but soon taking up an artistic residency in Finland. Her work often has a pulpy, purposeful lo-fi look. “For one of my early films, I re-shot scenes right off the TV to give it a real ‘videoey’ quality.” Cassandra mentions Trash Humpers, the latest feature by cult American filmmaker Harmony Korine. Korine purposefully shot with the cheapest VHS camera he could find to give his film the authentic feel of a lost object.
As Cassandra points out, though, “I would say the real question is what format things are shot on, rather than whether it’s DVD or VHS.” Trash Humpers might’ve been shot on video – and Korine even made it available to buy on VHS – but most fans will still end up watching it on DVD.
And that ‘videoey’ quality is appearing more and more in popular culture. Just like every second music video was once filmed on Super-8 to give it that opening-credits-to-The-Wonder-Years glow, it’s now common to see the soft focus and horizontal static-lines of VHS. Mark Ronson’s new music video for the single ‘Somebody To Love Me’ looks like it’s composed of archival video footage. Even before you realise you’re meant to be watching a young Boy George, the specific quality of the image generates instant nostalgia. Is that retro appeal all there is to lingering affection for VHS?
Vinyl and VHS share another thing that separates them from their digital counterparts, and that’s their undeniable bulk. “You’re actually buying something, investing in something, when you buy a piece of vinyl,” says Andee. “And you’re getting beautiful cover art. It takes up more room; that’s how it becomes part of your life.” Alex waxes equally lyrical: “I love the materiality of VHS. I love that tapes are big black monoliths like in 2001. That’s the same with vinyl – you spend your money, and you get an art object. DVDs aren’t art objects. They’re consumer products.”
Could VHS ever make a comeback like vinyl? Andee says there’s one all-important difference: vinyl never went away. “Vinyl’s always been there,” he says, “and vinyl will still be here after CDs have gone. When no one even remembers what a CD-R was, you’ll still be able to buy records.”
Alex, however, doesn’t hesitate. “In certain circles, we’re there already. I strongly recommend that you jump on eBay and try to buy some VHS. I just thought I’d get a copy of Dario Argento’s Deep Red for a dollar or two, but I ended up paying $35 for it from a guy who only sells VHS. These people already exist. They’re out there.”
A version of this story first appeared in The Big Issue #374. I’ve edited out the embarrassing bit where I was fooled by the authenticity of the ‘Somebody To Love Me’ clip mentioned above. Damn you, Boy George!
Shiny, Shiny Cowboys
Right now, DC Comics must be hoping that all publicity is good publicity – even if it’s of the oh-god-please-make-it-stop-worst-movie-of-the-year-kill-me-now variety.
The Jonah Hex movie has just been released, starring Josh Brolin as DC’s Old West anti-hero. It is, apparently, hellishly awful. I haven’t seen it yet, but I’ve already decided to forgive it some of its apparently glaring flaws – if only because it Todd DeZuniga says it was such a thrill to see his name in the credits. He’s the artist who co-created Jonah Hex way back in 1972, and he deserves all the thrills he can get.
To capitalise on the film’s release, DC have released a new hardcover graphic novel called No Way Back – a companion to the regular Jonah Hex series that’s been running for fifty-something issues now. Just like the series, it’s a solid example of stripped-down genre storytelling. The fact that almost every issue of Jonah Hex is a complete story, done-in-one, means it ditches most of the pleasures of ongoing continuity; instead, its writers – Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti – thrive on the tension that exists between repetition and variation.
Another corrupt sheriff, another bounty claimed, another woman who can’t be trusted. How do you make each different than the last?
The best thing about the graphic novel, though, is that DeZuniga returns to draw it. His artwork is sketchy and unpredictable: lines like they’re cut into the page, angry faces half-formed, all perfect for capturing the filth of Jonah’s world.
That’s why it’s entirely ridiculous that it’s printed on shiny, shiny paper.
DeZuniga’s art is fundamentally wrong for this plasticky stock. I know it seems like a superficial criticism, but as I read it dragged me out of the story like high-pitched squealing layered under a favourite song.
I’ve talked before about how some comic books – once intended to be disposable at best – sit uncomfortably in enormous, expensive hardcovers. That’s why I gave full credit to DC for its refusal to overly fancify its recent omnibuses collecting Jack Kirby’s Fourth World saga.
(Yes, “fancify” is a word. Maybe you should buy a fancier dictionary and look it up.)
They’re printed on something like regular newsprint, just a little thicker. This decision caused what critic Tucker Stone called “the irritating paper debate”:
“…meaning that a lot of random websites and Amazon reviews are still crying foul about how DC decided to print these Kirby books on what seems to be all that Baxter paper left over from the 80s.”
I mean, how did “shinier” become synonymous with “better”? It’s not, no more than television in 16:9 widescreen is somehow automatically of higher quality than what’s shot in good old-fashioned 4:3.
I’d say that when even the cover of your graphic novel is faux-aged – with small tears and scuffed corners pre-added for maximum Old West authenticity – maybe it’s a sign you should rethink your high-gloss interior sheen.
For best results, read Jonah Hex: No Way Back after dragging it for a few miles behind your horse.
Do You Deserve That Hardcover?
“Earlier this year, my publisher informed me that my book 32 Stories was about to go out of print. “Thank god! Finally!” I replied, a wave of euphoria and relief washing over me.”
That’s Adrian Tomine talking about the last collection of his early Optic Nerve mini-comics. Now Drawn & Quarterly – the publishers holding the title for the best / worst pun in the business – have released a new version of the same work.
I don’t want to talk about the stories. I want to talk about the packaging. (I’m shallow like that.) Because now instead of a fancy book, they’ve been collected as loose facsimiles of the original photocopied comics in a brown cardboard box.
Tomine explains why in his new introduction:
“But it’s not just the content of the book that makes me cringe. It’s the book itself. The format – the very thing that tempted me in the first place – seems too professional, too aggrandizing for the material. […] Maybe I’m wrong, but I feel like there’s a different criteria that we apply to a little Xeroxed pamphlet versus a fancy-pants book, and in the translation from one iteration to the other, these comics of mine suffered.”
If you want to go back and read his early work, Tomine wants them read right. It could be seen as an annoying, pre-emptive apology: like a first year creative writing student standing up before the class and beginning their reading with a mumbled uh it’s not very good so uh you know.
But I think it’s genius. It illustrates the importance of context. Some films are perfectly charming and engaging, but stagger under the weight of too much acclaim. Everyone’s had a perfectly good album ruined by the expectations of oh-my-god-dude-best-album-ever hype, right?
Now let’s look at the exact opposite impulse. Marvel and DC’s determination to throw more and more of their comic book runs into giant, deluxe, slipcased hardcovers. I wrote about this over at Bookslut:
“More and more comic series are now reprinted in collections for your reading convenience. Not just paperbacks; oversized ‘collector’s editions’ with recoloured art and thicker paper between embossed hardcovers. You don’t have to be a cynic to suspect these editions are a way to let older, cashed-up fans repurchase their favourites – and to help justify their habit with handsome, not-for-kids, objets d’art.”
Some of these stories can support this new weight of greater expectation, but others seem vaguely ridiculous. It’s the contextual equivalent of seeing teenage boys forced into ill-fitting formalware.
It’s like the old equation: the more pretentious the literary quote in the front of a horror novel, the more terrible that novel will be. Many of these comics are perfectly fine – good, great even – for monthly adventures. But collected all important like this? It brings their flaws into focus.
There’s another side-effect, too. Remember in Kathryn Bigelow’s Strange Days, when Mace (Angela Basset) is trying to shake some sense into Lenny (Ralph Fiennes) about his addiction to the past? “Memories are meant to fade,” she says. “They’re designed that way for a reason.”
Comic book continuity works the same way. I’ve spoken about this before, but I admit I’m still thinking through the ramifications. Superheroes need to be able to forget, otherwise continuity stumbles under the weight of their backcatalogue. It becomes an unpleasant tangle of personal tragedies and pointless minutia – and requires an endless stream of cosmic reboots that can hurt more than help.
How do you balance this, though, with the pleasures of a shared superhero universe? That’s a big part of the fun of Marvel or DC; and an even bigger part of what makes superhero comics a unique literary artform.
For superhero writers, it’s both blessing and curse. Knowing your work will be collected, rather than disappearing off the shelf of popular memory, means you’ll try harder to create quality that’ll pass the test of time. However, it also seems to encourage some of the worst tendencies in comics – especially the urge to produce stories based on tiny details of past narratives, designed to resonate only with a rapidly aging fanbase.
As much as it pains what’s left of my collector’s heart to say it, I think that some stories work best when read, thoroughly enjoyed, and then remembered as half-forgotten background noise.