The Tip of the Iceberg

The second week of film class was comparable to eating an orange without peeling off the rhine. The outside was a bit tough to choke down but the contents were unarguably enjoyable. Despite the massive amounts of information that traveled, undigested, through my ears, I did manage to realize the extraordinary amount of talent, knowledge, and effort that goes into the production of a movie. But to my surprise, I found the supernatural level of organization required in production to be even more amazing. Such coordination appears to be a vital key to production success, such as the thread that holds together a finely crafted quilt. From writer, to producer, to film and sound editors, the system of creating a movie requires almost harmonic orchestration. Under this recognition, I started to think back about our online skills evaluation survey. One of the abilities available for selection was organization, and at first I found this selection to be almost semi-humorous for I failed to see its connection to film production. But now, after the knowledge extracted from our last meeting, I realize the vitality of organization and I almost wish I could return and uncheck the box. This is only because I feel that the ability to synchronize a film project would rival, if not surpass, any applicable skills that I could offer.

Despite my amazement with organization, the volume of work necessary does deserve to receive some credit. In class we learned how the creation of The Lord of the Rings trilogy was an impossibly extensive process and I found that watching the work flow- i.e. script modification, storyboard creation, filming decisions, and editing decisions- was even physically exhausting for me to contemplate. In my wildest dreams I wouldn’t have speculated that film production could be so labor intensive. Enough hours were dedicated in the mere evolution of the storyboard that my patience expired long before its completion. Upon viewing such unexpected effort put forth, I realized that maybe film should be looked at as a mosaic. Each piece signifying a different individual’s efforts and that the final product, when looked at properly, is but a window into the world of film. A world that in my new introduction I have viewed the tip of the iceberg. However, through this introduction I have a new found respect for all movies which, in an odd sense, may even extend some appreciation to films that I find quite distasteful. So now I wait in anticipation to dive down and explore the rest of movie production.