The Zoetrope Principle

Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas had this sort of shared dream thing going on.

One day, so the dream went, movies would be made not by multibillion dollar Hollywood corporations, but by kids, with cheap digital movie cameras, expressing their ideas, not marketing concepts.

Neat idea.

Interesting to see how their own careers followed this principle so closely.

So what would happen if kids were given the opportunity to create movies using cheap digital cameras and were allowed to express their ideas?

Well, naturally, you’d expect they’d follow the cold, concrete rules of an existing genre, and ape as closely as possible the marketing concepts of Hollywood.

Right?

Well, you be the judge, you cynical old thing.

Here are two exhibits from that global panacea for the Studio System, YouTube.

The first is ‘The Black Pages’, by Andrew Pearce, a student at a school somewhere, who has been recognised for his film-making skills by getting into Top Screen, a showcase of student video works arsing from the VCE (Victorian Certificate of Education), and hosted by ACMI.

The second is ‘Wild Thing’ from Tropfest, dating back a mazillion years (2003), and created by Jake Simkin, who lists his address as Disneyland, Never Never Land, Australia.

Now, Jake is 28, sure, but remember that anyone under 47 (in 2008) is technically considered a kid, since that makes them younger than the youngest Baby Boomer.

I don’t make the rules.

And remember, when he made this, he was only 23, which makes him practically a gamete.