The French New Wave vs YouTube
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(music)
Hello, Internet friends!
Hey, how's it going, bros?
Hello, this is GloZell. Is you ok? Is you good? 'Cause I wanted to know
Ok, if you’re a film snob this might not be
for you. But if you’re a YouTuber, this should be a
call to arms.
We’re going to compare the French New Wave
to what’s happening on YouTube.
Now that everyone can film themselves talking,
isn’t it time for all of this to evolve?
Coming out of the film journal “Cahiers du Cinema”
critics and writers like Francois Truffaut
and Jean-Luc Godard had grown up with film
in sort of the same way today’s YouTubers grew up with new media.
It was everywhere
and it was exciting.
With the release of cheaper and more portable
cameras like the Arriflex and the Eclair NPR,
filmmakers could do more than ever before.
In a time when the
average cost of a film
was just around three-hundred-thousand-dollars,
directors like Agnes Varda
were producing films for a fraction
of that cost.
Earlier critics and theorists like
Andre Bazin and Alexandre Astruc
said things like, “The filmmaker
is at last equal to
the novelist” or “The cinema of
today is capable
of expressing any kind of reality.”
To them, newer and easier technology
allowed directors to experiment
and get further away from what they called their
their father's or grandfather’s cinema.
Eventually some of those critics became
directors themselves
and the result was a torrent of films,
each one made with an incredibly personal
voice and style.
Casey: Gear doesn't matter.
Let me explain:
Narrator: With film making technology now accessible to nearly
anyone with a smartphone, we
too have seen an explosion of content on YouTube and new media.
And like the French New Wave directors,
YouTubers and New Media creators also
experiment with form,
often yielding similar stylistic results
like jump cutting, and camera movements.
So what is keeping all of this new
content from becoming a fully realized movement?
The directors of the French
New Wave were compelled by a quest for truth
and reality through
cinematic form.
They gave us things like Cinema
Verité, whose
offspring could be seen as the vlog,
but what exactly motivates something like
the vlog?
Sure, we get a dose of reality,
but do things such as likes,
comments, and views fully
justify why that type of content is
being made?
Let’s really think about this
“The film-maker writes with his camera
as a writer writes with his pen.
… to evolve a
philosophy of life …"
What distinguishes a film movement from mere experimentation
are the theories and philosophies
created by and from that experimentation.
Yes, the French New Wave directors
were experimenting, and even if it seemed like they were
pulling stuff out of their derrieres,
at least they were taking bold risks based
on their philosophical outlook towards cinema.
And it wasn’t just movies they
studied. It was other art forms, books,
and politics.
Breathless broke the fourth wall to show us how film
as a mass media was changing our everyday lives.
Jules and Jim challenged
relationship norms and revealed
social upheaval in the early 20th
century. Cleo From 5 to 7 dealt
with mortality, feminism, and the French War in
Algeria.
Their experiments were pointing to a
bigger picture,
the undeniable truths of their times.
Now, not every YouTube/New Media video
has to make a bold social or political
statement, and to be fair,
not every film from the French New Wave actually does this either.
And it’s not to say that there aren’t some
interesting voices out there that are perhaps
championing the dawn of a new era of
independent television.
But why haven’t more of these types
of projects served as a jumping off point
for a really bold artistic
movement in New Media?
Maybe we’re in an era deafened by
experimentation, and unmoved with
the lack of philosophical conviction?
There’s certainly self promotion and money
to be made with new media. And if that’s
your thing, no one’s trying to stop you,
everybody’s gotta eat.
And a lot of people point to YouTube’s
ability to convey authenticity.
But how many
of us have actually considered
what authenticity means
or why it’s important?
Because now that making a film
really is as easy as point and shoot,
there might be more time...
to think.