Avatar - one of the most anticipated films of the year, or you could say 5 years since the time it was announced. Its mainly because of the technology used in the film - Its going to be stereoscopic, one of the firsts in the action genre; 45% of the film is computer generated, everything N'aavi (the blue people and their world) in the film is CGI and it definitely looks brilliant from what we have seen; lastly its James Cameron's directorial after Titanic. With the record he has - Aliens, Abyss, True Lies, Titanic; its expected to be a spectacular treat.
In all of this hype and frenzy, what bogs me down is the fact that we all know the story, we know how it looks and we know everything of the film. This seems to be a trend with all the films that are being released now-a-days. They let out everything from the film by releasing - teasers - trailers - 4 min "sneak-peeks" and scores of behind the scenes videos.
Where is the aspect of keeping the mystery? Where is the feeling of suspense? Remember when we saw "The Matrix" trailer? I was zapped. It kept everyone wondering what the film was about sans the spectacular visuals. Where is that now?
I remember going to watch The Matrix, itching to know what it was all about and when I saw the film I was riveted to my seat and glued to the screen. I wasn't looking for that one scene I saw in the "4 min sneak-peek. On the same lines - "Cloverfield" there wasn't a clue as to what the film was about until you saw it.
Well, one can say "dont watch the freebee if you want it to be a mystery". Really? Come on, if I dont see it, someone who did, will come yoodling about how amazing it looked or how crappy it was.
Anyways, thats not the point. What am wondering is - have Directors and Production companies lost faith in their audience, that they need to feed our visual greed with reminders that their film is around the corner? and we are talking about accomplished and well known Directors here.
We as audience also have gotten to incline towards substandard qualities of audio and video presentations. We seem quite happy to watch a horrible compressed video clip with bad sound on "you tube" or listen to a song on our cell phone external speakers. At the same time we tend to boast about our amazing flat screen television and our state of the art sound systems in our living room.
From the way I look at it, it looks like our need for information at our finger tips lets us make vast compromises just to be in the loop of current trends and events.
Little is more. A sneak peek should be a peak from behind the curtains to get a glimpse of what awaits, not tell the whole story in a few minutes. Keeping the mystery alive is an art, just like a magic trick. Keeping the suspense. To quote a dialogue from The Prestige -
Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called "The Pledge". The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course... it probably isn't. The second act is called "The Turn". The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn't clap yet. Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back. That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call "The Prestige"."
To relate the above to film making - "The Pledge" would be the trailer, "The Turn" would be the film, "The Prestige" would be the essence or the climax of the film.
