Something to Think About Art

lately, i have been getting frustrated with the prices of equipment that i intend to eventually buy. equipment such as a synthesizer, computer, camera, audio/video editing software... all so i can work on making music and film. but to get good equipment- professional-quality camera, decent syntheziser, macbook- it takes a lot of saving. not to mention saving to get a car.

art is expensive, and that's annoying. you'd think self expression would be much easier.

also, think about this: so many untalented rich kids have easier access to good tools, while all the talented nonrich kids have to deal with less. that's pretty unfair; many geniuses have to make due with very little, while an idiot, as long as they're rich, has access to the best.

then i realized that maybe that is actually a good thing. if a genius had everything easy, would he still reach his potential? maybe the reason people become good at what they do is because they have little, and they're forced to rely on their own skill, rather than rely on tools to make something good for them. a genius often becomes a genius because of those challenges.

maybe that's why the general quality of many arts is going down in recent years; music, movies, and writing lately haven't been as good as they used to be (in general). everybody has so much more access to tools now; people can create virtually anything with very little work. during my parents' childhoods, video cameras were a much bigger deal; they had to put in time and effort just to get a simple home movie. they couldn't just refilm something if it went wrong, because it went on film. they then had to go get it developed. they didn't just fool around with video cameras, making goofy videos with their friends; they couldn't have afforded to. they couldn't even edit video.

nowadays, making things is extremely easy. with digital technology, we can afford to screw up, because we can just delete and start over; we can then edit video clips, and show them to the world virtually instantly. that's another thing that's a big deal. we can publish ourselves. people can view or hear our creations any time they want, instantly. creativity is made so easy, and almost anybody can add to the creative atmosphere of the internet.

this can be a problem, in that because anybody can create, our standards are also lowered. because most people don't have amazing talent, we get used to average, and stop appreciating genius. when things were harder to do, the creations people saw were the ones made by people who continued to pursue their craft despite the challenges; they had more practice at it (it usually takes years for a person to truly master their art), and the very fact that they persevered meant that they had a passion to put into their creations. to add to that, people who sucked didn't succeed because companies wouldn't give them funding to make crap. natural selection of art. now, that selective atmosphere is gone; everybody is screaming their own individual ideas of creativity, regardless of whether they're good or not.

on one hand, we are in a kind of second renaissance. on the other, we are in a loud, chaotic, mediocre period in which everyone is more concerned with their own attention than appreciating good creativity. i'm interested to see what the future holds for the world of creative minds.

Anyway...

rich idiots have more access to good tools than poor geniuses. this would seem unfair. (keep in mind, i'm not saying that rich people are idiots or poor people are geniuses. i'm just pointing out how the way of things is a little fucked up sometimes.)

but then... if you think about it. a genius may be made a genius by not having access to fancy tools. they're forced focus not on their tools, but on their talent. people need that challenge, or they'd get lazy. you can have all the special effects skill in the world, but without good skill at telling a good story, you're movie is going to suck. on the other hand, you can have the shittiest camera, a crappy computer with only basic editing software (no effects), and create a masterpiece. it's all about what you focus on.

an artist should always focus on what they want to portrey, not their medium. the medium will be taken care of if the creator knows what they want to do with it.

~thenicklad~

ps- i think this would be a good spot to put my two cents in about movie sequals... every movie needs a theme, a vision, something that drives the plot, moreso than just a simple chain of events. that's what makes a great movie great. when sequals are made simply to continue the plot, they won't be as good. if there's something more the director or writer wanted to portray, then a sequal has potential to be good. but without a driving force of the plot, it is rather pointless to try to continue what's been finished. my example: the terminator movies. the first one portrayed fear; that fear of an unstopable force threatening you. that's what made it such a great movie, not the fact that it had great action sequences (those were awesome, btw). for the sequals, they simply wanted to continue the plot further, but didn't have a theme to go on. so the sequals weren't very good- but i haven't seen salvation yet, so i can't judge that.

pps- however, i do feel that terminator: salvation is going to be a bad movie because one of the things that amazed me so much about the terminator movies was that they told a story of an entire war without actually showing the war. come on, that's epic! but then they had to make a movie about the wars... meh. i'll have to see it, but i doubt i'll like it.

ppps- i just referenced terminator twice in a blog about art... *giggles*