SO we are all filmmakers now I guess

Op Culture

Aug 13

Apparently American Opera just became a film industry. And by that I mean, just about every actively producing opera company in America is “reimagining” their 20/21 season into a rolling digital film festival presenting homemade opera films. LET’S WISH THEM LUCK. I mean, LET’S WISH US LUCK, because we (OSSIA) are taking part in the free-for-all too (in our own way)! Singers are now directors, directors are now filmmakers, marketing interns are now producers, companies are studios, assistant directors are new media companies. Geez louise, I can hardly keep up! But hold on! Film and filmmaking and video making and moving image making has existed for well over a century. The resultant body of work is massive, not to mention the related scholarship, theory, and culture. So, as a performing arts industry of non filmmakers, where do we enter in? What do we mean when we suddenly start calling ourselves filmmakers? Are we associating ourselves directly to this lineage of excellence? If so, what are our references? What language are we adopting to make this visual document coherent?

IMPORTANT: Do any of us actually have any idea how hard it is to make a good film? Have we sat long enough with the challenges of creating meaningful video content? Is this collective hubris? Some 786 movies came out in the US/Canada in 2019. Those are industry movies with legitimate distribution and significant (even on the small end) budgets that involve thousands of super professional humans applying the full range of their talent to a years-long creative vision. Despite that, how many of those movies were good? (Depending on who is answering, probably 15 -20%. I’d generously say 150 good movies came out in 2019.) Does opera translate to film directly? Is every attempt just a less-than copy of Ingmar Bergman’s Magic Flute?

ALSO IMPORTANT: Are local corporate production companies that generally make stock 1080p law firm commercials the ideal instrument to facilitate this industry wide move? Are we thinking enough, or is this just a moment in which everyone is competing to have something to show for our extended coronavirus unemployment? IS ANY OF THIS FINANCIALLY RESPONSIBLE? DON’T MOVIES COST A LOT OF FUCKING MONEY?

I am still struggling with these questions in relation to my own craft. (There is a longer piece on that coming soon.) For now, I am sitting, smiling at the thought of all the strange, funny, sad, sentimental (98%), and accidentally interesting (2%) attempts that will come out of this moment. We should humble ourselves and take a moment to watch and learn, we group of humans that have dedicated decades and hundreds of thousands of dollars to learning how to execute an high skill art form and are now switching our iPhones to video mode, importing the footage into Final cut, and calling ourselves filmmakers. If authencity, rigor, training, and craft is what we as an industry pride ourselves in, let’s uphold the standard in this moment as well. Because let’s be honest, most of what will get made will be TERRIBLE and like, CRAZY EMBARRASSING…but we will persist!

As an industry, we will be the equivalent of freshman voice majors singing our Schubert song for studio class for the first time. We will barely have it memorized, we definitely won’t know our translations, and we will crack multiple times. We will also be foolishly proud of ourselves because we won’t know any better. But, just like freshman year, some people will take it seriously, practice outside of studio class, and eventually improve.

I’m certainly going to study as hard as I can because I intend to make better quality content than EVERY SINGLE OPERA HOUSE out there. Better video, better audio, better construction, and more imagination. But also I suck right now.

So here’s my starting point: Below is the building block of my filmmaking fitness regimen. It is a resource to help me train. Train for what, you ask? Well the American Opera filmmaking thunderdome, of course. It’s all a competition and we are all contestants, singers, directors, and institutions alike. So, let’s keep it clean, let’s keep it lean. This is the America Opera Thunder-dome and there can only be one winner. May god have mercy on our souls.