Ah, I thought this was going to be a out entertainment. I remember driving late at night, alone for hours to go see my parents. The interstate was empty at 2am, so I would toss an iPad on the dash with it plugged into my aux port and watch a movie. 99% of the time, I’d be looking through the reflected movie on the windshield, paying attention to the road. But those scenes that are visual-only, I could shift my focus without losing my situational awareness to see what was going on and shifting it back. Only took a few ms, but I miss those days.
When I explain this to people they freak out. I’m not a big movie watcher, I like to listen to them though. So for me, it was just nice to see what was happening in those scenes where nobody is talking and you have to actually see it (you know, where the bad guy sneaks up behind the good guy and the dark music is playing). I think most people would probably actually try to watch the movie while driving, and kill themselves. Maybe that’s why they freak out.
I’ve also seen people reading a book while driving (before Teslas) and that. That takes some mad skills that I’ve never gotten even after spending hundreds of thousands of miles on the road.
Agreed. Listening to movies without watching is generally enlightening. I drove Scouts in a van with a TV for the passengers, for years. I heard lots of movies without seeing them. So many are crap. The only one I remember that held up was Liar! Liar! surprisingly. Intelligent dialog; engaging and well-written.
I really think it’s just the right frame of mind. I can easily forget why I opened some app on my phone, but yet I thoroughly enjoyed Alien, as well as 12 angry men. But these are not movies you just pop in and half-ass over, they require real concentration — people just often unwilling to commit their attention to one thing, not incapable.
I personally never liked movie going, it was worse than video games. At least with those you can still talk to your friends but with movies you have to sit in complete silence with just about zero interaction for over an hour. Honestly the whole thing felt like an almost complete waste of time.
Yeah you get a shared experience out of it but I'm not sure that's any better than just independently watching the movie
It's not about making the drive understandable. Everyone understands it in a general sense. Every 'lay' person I've ever met has some hobby they 'geek out' over, as its own reward.
For movies, it's a matter of making the story entertaining for the larger swath of people who (by definition) don't all geek out about the same things.
E.g. I'm a geek. I'm a gamer. I can't even get up the motivation to netflix King of Kong, let alone watch it all the way through. I understand and respect that those guys geek out over Donkey Kong. But that doesn't hold my interest.
Hollywood would have as much luck trying to make people understand the joy of hacking as we hackers have in trying to make people understand privacy and security.
Regarding how to "watch" movies: Its actually as simple as turning the TV on and listening to what comes out the speakers...
In the 80s, movies were actually much more story-driven then today. Even if you missed something happening because you didnt see the visuals, you would get it typically a few seconds or minutes afterwards, because somebody was refering to the event and therefore uncovering the riddle. Something like "Hey, did you see the car explode back there?"
These days, there is the concept of audio description.
You might have noticed a second audio channel with some movies or sports broadcasts, depending on what country you are in.
Even Apple TV has an ability to configure such a descriptive audio channel, and have it played back when the movie actually comes with one.
A few months ago I began finding my seat in theaters, hanging out with my friends, and leaving as the trailers began to stand in the lobby listening to music till the trailers ended before coming back in. Avoided all internet/tv trailers too.
I enjoy movies orders of magnitude more now not already having seen the set piece scenes / heard the important lines.
A fantastic thing about reading fiction is that it allows us to feel we are in somebody else's head. We can HEAR THEIR THOUGHTS. That is not possible in real life nor in movies.
Watching a movie does not create this illusion because we feel we are still we, looking at the scene.
Of course. Why should that be a problem? I often want to relax with a movie where I don't have to think. Transformers don't have to much of a story getting in the way of the action, so is excellent for relaxing viewing at the end of the week. If you check which movies are most watched you might even see that you are in the minority.
I find books to be a much better medium if I want the good story
The inability of adults to get totally absorbed into experiencing a movie (or a book) is a clear obstacle of enjoying the experience. Allowing the experience to wash over you without analyzing it while experiencing gets harder. Getting 3d or perfect reality virtual reality hardware is not going to fix that.
If you can do it as an adult, 2001 is great and Inland Empire from David Lynch is amazing. Inland Empire speaks directly to the unconsciousness and goes past of any explanation. You walk out from the theater wondering what happened. It's like you have been injected with something. The experience that lingers has no explanation.
I know quite a significant number of people that said the same thing. But it's not that they can't watch movies in itself: they can't _sit_ through an entire movie so what they do now now is watch those movies on TT, one short clip at a time, spread over a few days.
That all makes sense. There are some kinds of TV/movies where viewing is more mentally engaging. Mysteries, deep sci-fi or documentaries, anything where you are imagining and/or trying to understand aspects outside of the audio-visual experience. I was mostly just saying that in broad strokes that the most passively consumed written story still requires some 'active' imagination, where-as viewing a lot of TV/movies does not seem to.
On the other hand, we have movies you don't need context to watch; don't need to care or emotionally invest - just sit back and passively enjoy the sounds and colors. Like a 3 hour long cigar.
We need movies like this because a lot of people have enough drama and action in real life, and need audiovisual median to wind down and stop thinking
If I wanted to take a lesson, I could read the plot summary - it's the same information. For a 3 hour movie, I could resume all of Dostoevsky's works.
I do something like that, but I like to put one of the Matrix movies on. I've seen them all enough times now that I know what's happening, and I don't feel compelled to actually watch... but there's something going on that I can pay attention to briefly, when my mind needs a break from whatever I'm doing. It seems counter-intuitive, but it works well for me.
I stopped watching trailers for movies a few years ago - headphones and closed eyes during movie previews and everything, and it greatly improved my enjoyment of nearly every movie I see.
I go for the story and visuals, and studios long ago decided that story and visual surprise were worth sacrificing to get people into theaters.
As for figuring out what to see, I find that a combination of any of title, director, writer, genre, and occasionally performers are enough to make up my mind.
Existence of cellphone and google turns so many plots of even pre-1995 movies void.
Not only sci-fi, all of them - romances, dramas, action movies - it's very common to build drama by showing people doing something wrong because the other person can't tell them they are mistaken, or because they can't remember something and have to go to library or ask friend/old monk/whatever.
It's completely different world we're living, despite no hoverboards.
When I explain this to people they freak out. I’m not a big movie watcher, I like to listen to them though. So for me, it was just nice to see what was happening in those scenes where nobody is talking and you have to actually see it (you know, where the bad guy sneaks up behind the good guy and the dark music is playing). I think most people would probably actually try to watch the movie while driving, and kill themselves. Maybe that’s why they freak out.
I’ve also seen people reading a book while driving (before Teslas) and that. That takes some mad skills that I’ve never gotten even after spending hundreds of thousands of miles on the road.
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