User:LarsNoback/MR/MR

Draft:

I make things, mostly with moving images that I captured with a camera. Which makes me call myself a filmmaker. I direct my own work. I usually work alone or with very few people. In any case I like to be involved during the whole process of creating, from concept to development.

I’m a conceptual thinker. What I create usually makes sense to me. I start out with a particular interest towards a certain subject. I start researching and thinking, combining subjects, themes, thoughts, formats and ideas until there’s a point in my mind where everything fits and makes sense. This is also the point of no return, when this concept exists in my mind I have to realize it.

I’m trying to explore what being a filmmaker is to me. Whenever I make something it usually ends up being either a video, or something that contains a video, like an installation with a projection. If there’s no video involved there’s usually a photograph. I never really digress too far. What I make is mostly either film or about film. As an artist this might be a narrow-minded way to work, always using the same medium. I think it’s part of the way I think. I specifically call myself a filmmaker, before anything else like artist or designer.

I enjoy looking at the world through a camera because I can use it to show the world in my own subjective way, while at the same time being relatively honest to the ‘truth’, because you can only capture what already exists. I use film as a tool to show my view, the things that nobody else sees.

I think it’s interesting that when a new medium comes into the world, people tend to describe it with things that already existed before. For example film was described as moving photographs, like it was supposed to replace photography altogether. Instead of it being two different mediums.

If you look at some developments in film, people have the same reactions. For example, virtual reality supposedly is the next big thing. You know, why watch a film if you can be part of it? But what if film and virtual reality are so much different that neither can really ‘replace’ the other. What I personally enjoy about watching films is that you don’t have to make any choices. Which is also the nice thing about making a film, you get to make choices about what you want to show.

I’m not saying that virtual reality isn’t something exciting. It comes with many new possibilities and experiences, but it’s just something else. So this makes it frustrating for me when people talk about new technologies like it’s just going to revolutionize the world and change everything we know about film. I really enjoy films and I personally don’t feel like anything needs to be changed or developed or revolutionized within this specific form. But film is still a business and they need to make going to the theaters more attractive than streaming movies at home, so they come up with 3D movies and shaking seats.

The future is exciting and I would love to try out and explore these new technologies but I think it’s always important to know what you’re dealing with.

The way I display my work is almost always digital. Even the physical things I make end up as a digital documentation. However, I’m starting to feel more drawn to the physical features of film, like in celluloid film or VHS, but also the physical elements of the way we watch film. Digital film is the result of each of its successors. Its’ a historic process, but the physical elements still echo through in the digital realm.