So we had a little class exercise to do on Thursday, but I’m not quite finished yet, so I’ll do that as a blog post for early next week and talk about this week’s reading instead. From Daniel Frampton’s Filmosophy, it was called Film Minds, and talked about the idea that film is a type of thought.

Now, in my short time at uni I’ve already come across some pretty philosophical readings, but this one probably took the cake (that and last week’s nearly incomprehensible Gillies Deleuze reading). It was the idea that film could be considered a thought process in and of itself, because it mimics the human thought process.

Let’s break that down a bit. How is film like thought? Well, according to film theorists, the editing process is designed to link film shots and scenes together in the way the human mind links thoughts together. The shot/reverse shot mimics our conception of a conversation as our focus changes from one speaker to another; the ‘flashback’ mimics the way our mind recalls a memory amidst other action.

Even more philosophically, some film theorists think that film can be considered not only a mimicry of thought, but a thought process in and of itself. Now, I don’t really know that I believe this, or really understand it, but I’ll be interested to discuss it in class.

In lighter news, instead of watching a film on Tuesday we watched parts of four different films. The first, Playtime by Jacques Tati, I was shocked to discover I’d already seen, having forgotten that entirely until we started it. The Third Man played with Dutch angles and had a great soundtrack, but it was difficult for me to appreciate it having seen only such a small part. Once Upon a Time in the West couldn’t have been more cliched, and yet it was hugely enjoyable, proving that cliches are cliches for a reason. And then finally we had Shaun of the Dead, a hilarious British zom-com that I can’t wait to see the rest of! It was the basis of the exercise that I’m working on now, so watch this space!