Film

Faculty Talks: Fred Strype on "The Citizen Film Maker"

by Frederic Richter

Tuesday September 30, 2008

During orientation week, filmmaking faculty member Professor Fred Strype explained and debated the merits of “the citizen film-maker”. He elaborated these points through a series of film clips, first of Francis Ford Coppola from the Hearts of Darkness documentary, a film originally began by Coppola’s wife but then put aside till it was revisited by two young film-makers 10 years later. In it Coppola discusses his hopes about the future allowing for filmmakers to “break” from professionalism and the regimented studio system. Strype points out that in Coppola’s prime years, if you wanted to make films “you really had to want to” but that with the advent of digital filmmaking it becomes a much simpler process, even when he himself was in film school he was given 24 hours to make a movie, which was a seminal moment. This new era of accessibility has been lauded by some as the “democratization” of filmmaking, but “how much of the stuff on U-tube do you actually want to watch?” The audience answers varied, but Strype concluded that 98% is “probably junk…Maybe 1-2% that has tangible value.” This was “the best and worst thing “ which granted everyone access and showed a famous quote from a certain superhero film that “with great power comes great responsibility.” Responsible many of these ad-hoc film-makers are not, as the result is that “It’s all coming out-it sounds like a bodily function—though maybe that’s art” as it is really hard to apply a value to art. Brandishing a scene of Robin Williams reading Whitman, Strype says it is the footprint of art, the thing your art leaves behind which makes it unique and worth producing. Some suggest there exist only a limited number of stories which can be told through plays, film or literature, but something that is in fact highly original and creative will in all likelihood draw on another story, film or book. He gave the example of our conference papers; we all like to think of them as original, but at the end of the day they largely draw on other sources, yet it is our view and perspective, which makes them unique. He showed this in a video montage of the difference between Zeffereli’s adaptation of Romeo and Juliet and Tom Stoppard’s Shakespeare In Love. Both works are adaptations of the same material; one a more traditional and reverential version, the other a breathtakingly original post-modern one, using the method of a play within a film. Strype continued his excurses by pointing to West-Side Story, again, the same material, plot-points and scenes but wholly different in the way it is drawn together and in his montage one could easily see this. The first 15 minutes of most films “show you where you are” and offer a “suspension of disbelief, the need to establish your world” which is something that Baz Luhrman definitely does in the opening of his visually modernist but surprisingly faithful Romeo and Juliet. In the initial scene, we hear Shakespeare’s opening sonnet read out by a news reporter on a small TV screen, which is then reiterated by a more forceful narrator juxtaposed with striking visual images from the film. Another montage was then played, showcasing the many similarities in spite of the plethora of visual and aesthetic differences in these films. It is for this reason that he surmises that there “is great originality in all of them” with each one distinctly different but all the same. “The play goes on and you may contribute to it,” he concludes. As a special treat, the audience was then shown a satirical musical comedy about an Israeli Romeo and a Palestinian Juliet, which not only captured the essence of the plot but also tackled a very complicated political situation with tender insight and wit.