Talk:Film
|
|
| Contents |
Cinema, Film, or Movie as the primary page
It doesn't make a lot of sense to have separate articles for cinema, film, motion pictures, and movie. Currently all redirect to this article titled 'film'. Here's a refactoring of the arguments that were made on this talk page, mostly in 2004:
- movie is not a popular term outside of the U.S., and since it has a colloquial origin (like talkie) academics will not likely start giving "degrees in movies" at "movie school". Danny points out that "movie" generally refers to a Hollywood-style feature, leaving film for everything else (shorts, documentaries, foreign, etc.)
- cinema is more often used to describe the place where movies are seen (a movie theater) than the industry itself. Using the term for the field/industry might be considered "somewhat humorous and pretentious".
- film is academic, used internationally, and understood. Technical people (such as those using the wikipedia) dislike the term's tight association with celluloid film, citing the industry's consistent march towards various kinds of video. Yet it has historical inertia, and for years people have been using video cameras and calling what they are doing 'filming'.
- motion picture is probably the most accurate cross-medium description of the scope of what the article intends to describe. But (a) it's more of a definition than a term, and (b) outside of the MPAA, nobody says it, e.g. "I saw a great motion picture last week"
It would be tempting to use the Wikipedia as a bold step towards sorting this all out, and Michael Snow suggested to put the discussion of filmstock under film, while explaining moving-pictures-as-we-know-them under cinema. Yet a Google search done by Eclecticology showed strong support that the word film is heavily used in combination with each of festival, studies, school and documentary.
Because this issue has generated so much interest and discussion, zandperl suggested a section (after History but before Industry) that would discuss different connotations of the words "cinema," "film," and "movie" as used in American English, vs. British English, and maybe other languages. The current compromise is to list all the terms in the first paragraph of the lead of the article. Though it was suggested to make them bold, the manual of style says that words-as-words should be shown in italics. Metaeducation 13:23, 29 May 2005 (UTC)
- Just as significantly, it should be noted that the various sub-articles to this one - the ones on more specific aspects of Film - have the same problem, both in title (Cinema of [insert country name here]) and within text, where "movie", "show" and "cinema" may all appear within the same text, while "film" may not be used at all. The primary term used in this particular article will be rendered meaningless if not accompanied by extensive textual editing elsewhere. (And, BTW, I have heard/read the statement "I saw a great motion picture last week". All the terms under consideration do, in fact, have widespread usage, at least in the USA, particularly if you look back through time: "film" and "cinema" may dominate in contemporary academia, but I think a check of most other encyclopedias will find the topic title "Motion Pictures". But I'd much rather see everything just get organized under one common term rather than quibble over which is better; and "film" will do as good as any.) 12.73.195.41 20:13, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Scope of this article
There are countless topics in film production, so the question of the scope and priorities of this article comes into play. Mark feels it is important to mention the various theories of film, and Peter has advocated a section on "Film as Escapism"
Currently, this article is about the medium as well as the industry, and has a focus on history. Noisy suggests that the Cinematography article could be left to cover media and technology, and some history as well. More content is covered in Movies basic topics, in any case. Metaeducation 13:23, 29 May 2005 (UTC)
- NB, there is a competing article, and quite a bit longer, History of cinema, which needs to be examined & integrated in terms of relevant content, and the balance consigned to subarticles. There is also a contradictory section title, Cinema, in the site index at the Culture URL at the top of the 'pedia main page, and this leads to a number of different subtopical articles not linked to Film. The redirect process only works on the site-search field, and only if you enter the word "cinema" (or "movie", "motion picture", etc.) by itself.
- We are working at consolidating all these link-points as a "table of contents" to Film. One reason, we can't stand scatter or mess! Also, hopefully, getting all these articles collected and classified in one place should help define the scope of this particular article insofar as it can't, alone, cover *everything* which can be said about film technology, film industry, film personalities and film product, but can serve as a summary lead-in to the details. Then comes the laborious process of conforming all the article titles to the word "film". 12.73.195.41 19:44, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Mentioning Specific Films, Directors, Actors, Editors...
Frequently, references to specific movies are added into the article, which seem rather arbitrary. For instance, when talking about the idea that some movies today use black and white for artistic effect, there was a reference to Schindler's List.
Though it could reasonably be argued that citing specifics is good for support, it opens a Pandora's Box of people adding links to their favorite films. It quickly gets to:
- "The movie was a major critical and commercial success when it was released and has remained a popular favorite since. Kline won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his work. [...]
- In 2004 the magazine Total Film named A Fish Called Wanda the 41st greatest British film of all time."
<KF> points out that the same thing is happening with literature topics, and they are solving this with separate articles like 100 Best Characters in Fiction since 1900. A good rule of thumb seems to keep it out of this article, point out landmarks in the History of cinema article, and perhaps collapse a lot of other information under film award or film awards. Metaeducation 13:23, 29 May 2005 (UTC)
External links
There are waaay too many external links in this article. Did all of these websites send their minions to spam the Wikipedia, or what? --Ardonik 19:05, Jul 15, 2004 (UTC)
- Some articles are starting to order their external links by Alexa traffic rankings; I think that would be a good idea here. --Ardonik 19:05, Jul 15, 2004 (UTC)