On the Value of Primers

That is, of the "See Spot Run" variety, rather than paint or makeup. I just finished watching Visions of Light, a documentary about the history of film cinematography. I was alerted to the film by Roger Ebert's blog post regarding Variety's dismissal of film critic Todd McCarthy, who wrote and co-directed Visions of Light. Ebert's brief description spoke to the film nerd within me, so I added it to my Netflix queue.

Working on finishing my thesis and looking ahead to putting together reading lists for my comps has pushed me to think a lot about gaps in my knowledge of fields I'd like to work in, and how best to fill them. I'm interested in popular culture and media (that much is obvious), but from more of a cultural history standpoint than an aesthetic one; I've never done much literary analysis, art history or visual culture work, and while it won't be a major field of study for me, I don't want to neglect it either. A film like Visions of Light, which clocks in at a little over ninety minutes, is an ideal primer text for me, anchoring a discussion of an aesthetic history of film in a wide selection of clips that directly illustrate each point. If only every area of academic study could have such a painless, jargon-light breakdown.

I thought I'd also include my favorite primer clip - TCM's explanation of why they show films in the letterbox format. The clips they use to illustrate how pan-and-scan cropping alters movies will make you never want to watch one in fullscreen format ever again.

I recently watched Grease in widescreen for the first time after I saw this piece, and it was sort of astonishing to feel myself noticing new things in a film I've seen dozens of times in the cropped format.