Battlefield Conditions

It's been a while!! Christmas really zapped my willingness to continue this project, but I'm a fighter and I'm prepared to continue the journey and fight filmwatching fatigue. I received and purchased several new films for my collection which I'm looking forward to seeing what they can teach filmmakers and filmwatchers (especially this watcher) and storytellers when they pass through the queue.

I'm tired: physically, intellecually and emotionally due to the events of the past two months and it reflected in my last entry. As a result, I'm going to share some tips on preparing the best conditions for the art of watching films. These will be brief, I'll cover the details in future essays.

Be Prepared (great song from the Lion King, by the way!!) -- whenever you engage a film, prepare you mind, body and soul for what the film will do to you. I can't count how many times I've tried to engage with a film while tired, vulnerable or ill prepared to take the spiritual (the damage done from lacking discernment) consequences. Last entry, for instance, I wrote from home at 1:30 in the morning at the beginning of my trip there. My usual theater rests at an elevation of 500ft above sea level and my hometown rests at 3000ft. So I was oxygen deprived and not accustomed to the fatigue it would give me. Plus it was 1:30 in the morning and I was tired anyways. Therefore I failed to be at my best and the response suffered the consequences.

Pay attention. Nothing should distract you. If you are planning to engage critically, it's best that you are alone, fed, and physically well when you do so. However, if you are going to share the experience, talking with your companions will ruin your concentration and also distract them from their journey through the story. In my experience, thus far, I've found it difficult to critique while talking on the phone, as the hearing is impaired and attention elsewhere. Illness also will impare your concentration as you are distracted by the disease of your body. Be sure you eat, either before you begin or during in a non distracting manner. If your filmwatching lab, like mine is, is located at your home, and hunger finds you, getting up to fix yourself something disengages you from your object of study and destroys any concentration you've had up to this point, so remember to eat. If anything does distract you, go back a few chapters on your DVD until you are past the point of the distraction, then reengage.

These "battlefield conditions" will give you the best watching experience. Happy watching and I'll see you sometime this week with Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas!!