kdjgsksdfjbfkdsjbgsf okay here's a cinema studies thread

cinema is an incredibly young art form that is still changing rapidly. what cinema "is" is not solidified. there are theories of cinema, and modes of cinema, but yes, you will see people arguing about what "counts" as a movie.

a major topic of conversation in my curation class in college was the black box vs. the white room. showing narrative cinema in an art gallery (a white room) is going to have a diff. effect on the viewer, and vice versa. different modes of cinema feel most natural in diff spaces.

to see people in games refer to games as "cinema" feels not only like a comparison that's just... lacking, it doesn't point to what kind of cinema they mean. most of the time ppl mean oscar bait. but "cinematic" can also look like brackhage or deren, right? why don't AAA games?

further, the presitge drama affectation of AAA games means that the methods of storytelling present in those movies are copied without an understanding of the cinematic language--why the frame is being composed like it is. it feels like a weeb dropping japanese words in speech.

because, and this is just a small example and i am nowhere near an expert on the subject, to compose a frame means something different in games than in cinema. one example: in cinema, shots are limited by the physical reality of the world. in games, the camera can be ANYWHERE.

a lot of the time in a shot that i know has been composed painstakingly in a AAA game, i still can't tell you WHY the camera is where it is. why the cuts are where they are. it's in service of the player, but that changes the method of storytelling.

when i think about what makes games games, i do think about interactivity. i don't think it's the only signifier, and movies are also interactive dont @ me, but the way that your input drives narrative is just so different from cinema. the way you tell stories is different.

embracing a method of storytelling inherent to games means embracing that game-yness. i think about strategy games like dwarf fortress or CKII here. they're not telling a story, but in a way, you are using that game to tell a story, a different story everytime. incredible shit.

there's nothing cinematic about the way dwarf fortress looks or plays. but when i think about the scope of its narrative, the breadth of the world that it creates, i can't help but think about la grande illusion, how that movie magnifies a small drama in the midst of a global one

wanted to add: if you're interested in the technological innovations in cinema that are still changing the medium RIGHT NOW, i would suggest watching the movie Side By Side directed, where christopher nolan gets super mad at the sheer prospect of other directors shooting on video