Blog Post #294: "This Is Just the Beginning!"

The following musing was directly inspired and influenced by the writings of my dear friend John Reeves, who unknowingly contributed to my intellectual, creative and artistic development for nearly two decades! Most grateful!

The convention of prioritizing the guidance of an audience through a film's narrative design in a linear fashion (i.e., beginning to end) occludes a far more intriguing possibility of designing a film that can be effectively appreciated from any juncture (i.e., ending or middle as entry point); akin to architecture or a handbook where there is no predetermined order of access. The widespread availability of scrubbable media interactivity encourages this more non-linear, versatile and navigable form of engagement.

Although virtually every filmmaker I know feels great pride upon inspiring repeat viewings of their work, the prevailing modus operandi among them is to design a film as a strictly linear experience. I believe this leaves our medium's potential for yielding greater cognitive reward at the door. How patient we are to sit through the redundant song-and-dance of exposition and narrative hand-holding when we choose to revisit a given film in prosaic fashion. I know we can do better but it may involve challenging some basic, though refutable assumptions about film form.

In 2023, I experimented with this thesis in my 3rd film Death Cleaning, which was conceived of as a fundamentally modular film consisting of a scrambled array of approximately 180 scenes; perhaps the first film to fully embody this rather bold idea. It was a novice attempt to incorporate an essentially different organizing principle into my film canon and I'm long from done in the laboratory.

Whether you're sympathetic to my central contention or not, I wouldn't underestimate the yet-unseen potential of a merely 125-year-old art form! So, forward!