After watching AMERICAN MOVIE, I concluded that there is a relationship between creativity and time which is worth exploring in this paper. I believe the medium of film is not something whose progress can be measured in ‘real-time’. I think it’s less defined than that. Rather I would believe it to be so. What does it mean when people say, “production was completed in 30 days or 2 years”? When does a film start? When does it end? What qualifies as work being done? And what effect does time have on the making of a film?
In American Movie, Mark is trying to complete his 30-minute short film COVEN which he has been working on for almost 2 years now. We don’t get to hear a lot about the film itself except for the 2-minute scene in which he describes a vague plot. As time goes on, we see Mark struggling with his sanity, being increasingly passionate about ending the film rather than the film itself. It’s NORTHWESTERN that he cares about. But because of financial problems, he has to complete COVEN and prove his capabilities to certain people. I think this thought of ‘Ending’ something is a massive curse. The word itself frightens me to the core. I heard it in HEARTS OF DARKNESS as well and it reminds me of people, captains I suppose, who are at the helm of their ship guiding it through a storm wanting it to be over. But films are not ships, the minute you are thinking of the end, of the destinations rather than the journey, I feel like you’re doomed. That mentality alone can wreck a film. And Mark has been making this film for 3 years now, how many times has he thought of ending it?
So what is this relationship between time and creativity? What is the difference between the production of a feature film that is finished in 3 months and a 15-minute short film that is finished in 3 years? Of course, financially it’s night and day but what effect does creativity have over prolonged periods of time? I think stories which are thought of and stored in our minds are very tangible and greatly relate to our own psyche. Even if we can’t track it consciously, every second our subconscious is changing the way we think about the story we have. The longer a film goes on, the more changes it can go through. Now, when you start filming on the first day, little by little things become more defined. As one side of the story becomes concrete, we try to adapt the rest of the story to what we see on screen. I believe that. It’s not conscious. And it’s also not visible to the naked mind. This adaptation is very natural and also very important to filmmaking, it is the essence of all disaster management. So for me, the difference in the earlier question would be the rate of change. This change might be good or it might be bad. It depends on how much we hold on to the very essence of the story that made us fall in love with it. One good and bad thing is that we as directors won’t see the change but the people who support us, who have less stake in it, will constantly remind us of the differences between the film we wanted to make and the film we made. In Mark’s case, I feel the documentary acted as a catalyst to speed things up, but in the end, he, his friends and his actors were just glad that it was over.
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