----------------------------- Begin Original Text ----------------------------- But, aside from the aesthetic loss in using video, are students missing the whole (moving) picture, when we stress partial analysis? ----------------------------- End Original Text ----------------------------- (The following is NOT an attack on the perfectly reasonable person who posed this question, but is a cumulative response to the entire "video/film" discussion which has regrettably cooled off.) Pardon me, but doesn't this question answer itself? "Aside from the aesthetic loss...???!!!" Once the entire film has been experienced as it was meant to be by its creators, i.e., on a large screen with the proper resolution, in an audience setting and as a whole object, then "partial analysis" is perfectly fine and, indeed, a very good thing. But, are we seriously proposing to drop the aesthetic aspect of a film in discussing it? Has film been brought to the level of a social science that its "aesthetic" aspects can be shunted aside in order to provide the student and the teacher with a more convenient method of "reading" a film? I admit to being shocked (yes, shocked) to discover that such a discussion can be taken seriously. The sublime art (that's "ART") of film, on the occasion of its centenary, is being reduced to a vehicle for literary messages which can only be decoded by a jargon presided over by a priesthood whose language is so arcane that only initiates can hope to participate? Talk about elitism! And to think, just a few months ago we had a serious discussion of the place of a "canon" in film study! At the risk of sounding decidedly uncool, I think it is high time that people who love film denounce this pervasive cult which wishes to reduce the powerful film experience to the mere reading of "texts". Because, assuredly it is a cult, born of expediency and bent on reducing a dynamic art to a tame academic exercise. If all that is available in film schools is this single, narrow view, then I am prepared to advise future students to avoid film schools altogether. Let us simply leave it to the future academics who can be unconcerned about the practical results of their folly and can continue to examine their navels without the bother of relating to actual realities. (Whew! I feel better now. :-) ) Gene Stavis, School of Visual Arts - NYC ---- To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]