Matt Zoller Seitz: What Does 'Cinematic TV' Really Mean (video essay)
“What makes The Knick so unusual even among genuinely cinematic series, is how what’s on screen confirms that the people who made the show had definite ideas of what every scene and moment is about, and what to watch, and whose scene it is. And (how they) have made bold choices to put all of that across.
The Knick is strongly influenced by cinema of an earlier era, when movies were shot with large film cameras (…), and a lot of thought had to be put into where the camera went and why it went there. And how the shot would be lit. And what the purpose of it all was. The shots told stories. They also made comments. They didn’t just deliver information, they had purpose. They had beauty. They had a soul.
In this earlier era nobody covered scenes in the manner of current filmmaking, where the point is to generate footage, convey information, and give the producers lots of options as they figure out what the scene is. Filmmakers made decisions. They did things for a reason and not always for a purely practical one. They acted as if they were building a house, or creating a ball gown. They wanted to get it right the first time.” -Matt Zoller Seitz, What does ‘Cinematic TV’ really mean?
Recently I have been thinking a lot about the differences between TV series and cinema. We live in a time where TV series are more popular than ever and there are now so many big production TV shows out there that a lot of people I know hardly watch any films anymore. Instead they choose to binge yet another TV show. I know storyboard artists with the desire to work in feature animation, and even some of them who actually already are working on features, who choose not to watch films at all. I don’t think this is a good thing.
Personally I am not the biggest fan of TV shows as a format, because more often than not I miss deliberateness. In a well crafted film, the filmmakers have spent a lot of time thinking about the way they want to tell their story. When they shoot a scene they know what and who it is about. The quote at the top of this post is from the featured video essay by Chris Wade and Matt Zoller Seitz. In it they delve into what makes a TV show cinematic and along the way touch on a lot of problems that I have with TV series.
Now, please don’t think that I’m saying that it is wrong to enjoy a TV show. As somebody once said, don’t yuck somebody else’s yum. The fact that I don’t really enjoy series as much as a feature doesn’t mean that I feel everybody should feel the same way. But I do think that if you want to work in story you really should watch and study films. Now maybe if you don’t have the intention to work on features it is ok to just watch TV shows, but really even then I think you could probably learn more from the craftsmanship of a good movie.
Below is a partial transcript of the video essay on Cinematic TV:
The word cinematic gets thrown around a lot in relation to ambitious TV. You hear that a particular show is very cinematic, or that a certain scene was cinematic, or that the direction was cinematic. But what does that word mean, really? Why do we see it thrown around so often to describe television shows?
A lot of the time it seems to mean that the people who made the show spent a lot of money on it and you can see the money on screen. And it feels big. Game of Thrones is a series that is often described as cinematic. It is believed to be the most expensive ongoing series in TV history. Is this particular kind of production really cinematic, though? Some of the time, absolutely. Some of the most memorable scenes on GoT have been thought out in terms of camera movement, blocking, composition, rhythm. Every movement, every gesture, fits together like a piece in a puzzle.
But there are many more scenes where it is mainly just people talking. Delivering information. I don’t mean to single out GoT, because most TV, even the most deliriously entertaining TV, is done pretty much like this. You’ll get bursts of inspiration, a beautiful scene, or set-piece, or montage, and then it will go back to shots of people talking.
You might have heard that TV is a writer’s and producer’s medium, and theatrical film more of a director’s. That’s still true. It’s changing, but not as quickly as you might think. The primacy of the work, coupled with the fast production schedule of most TV shows compared to movies all means that the main objective is to cover scenes. Not necessarily to direct them. Cover like with a blanket.
Modern TV shows are not directed in the way that older TV shows and older films were directed. The answer to the question where do I put the camera is usually: wherever you can get a reasonably attractive shot of somebody talking. The main job of the TV director is to get through the day on time, and to generate as much footage as possible. So that the writers and producers who run the show can have options when they and the editors put it all together.
On TV storytelling is mainly about plowing through the plot and making sure that everything gets across that needs to be put across. And not confusing anyone. 70, even 80 percent of any TV series, comedy or drama, is about that kind of direction. I call it: housekeeping.
When you see something that isn’t housekeeping you notice, because it is usually spectacular. It’s where the money goes. It’s there to get your attention and to make you feel overwhelmed by scale, by awesomeness. To make you feel like you have just seen something cinematic.
But cinematic value doesn’t automatically equate to scale or expense. To paraphrase Martin Scorsese: cinema is a matter of what’s in the frame and what’s out. Where the camera goes, and why it goes there. Whether we see the most important person or thing in the shot or we rather deliberately do no see it. Or, if we only see glimpses of it.
(…)
Sometimes great cinematic direction is a matter of tone and rhythm. As in the montage from season one of True Detective, where Marty and Rust “borrow” some drugs for use in an unauthorized undercover operation. Nine out of ten shows probably would have scored this to superficially menacing or exciting music. And they might have cut it faster, to make the team seem as cool and macho and in-control as possible. Instead everything is staged and edited patiently and gracefully. The episode also undercuts the content of the montage with a slow, quiet, rather tender song with a female vocalist. The effect is to make these two guys seem very lonely and kind of sad, and in the grip of compulsions. Much more so than being in control, or on top. This montage could have just delivered information, but it goes a lot further. It tells us something about the difference between how these guys probably see themselves and how the world sees them.
Truly cinematic TV exercises that level of formal ingenuity and brings that level of insight. It uses filmmaking tools not just to move the plot forward, or to develop characters, or to make an already pretty exciting moment more intense. Although, of course filmmaking does and should do all of those things and more. No, truly cinematic TV in its highest form creates beauty and mystery. Poetry. It creates a little movie within the larger movie that is the episode or the season. And it gets right to the heart of what a moment means.
