Celebrities.

[Yorick]

Originally posted by Silver Cheetah: Havent' read most of this thread so apologies if this point already made.. I would always go for the book, over the film, for one simple reason. I get an incredibly sensual pleasure out of the act of reading. It's like eating something really yummy. I can't sleep without I read at least a bit of book - when my eyes move along the page and I make pictures in my head, its just so wonderfully satisfying. Am I some kind of weirdo, or does anyone else get this? [img]smile.gif[/img]

Cheetah, the discussion is not what we enjoy the most, but what is the most effective medium of communication.

I enjoy reading. I'm an avid reader, and write as well. That is not the point.

O.k. another example is advertising. Video advertising is PROVEN to be FAR more effective at selling a majority of products, way above print media or radio media.

Now, if a medium came along where SMELL was transferrable along with all the others, that would thus be a better medium. Food advertising would be more affective. An experience would be communicated in greater entirety.

The positives you guys are listing about books only proves my point. A sucessful fiction writer will leave things to the imagination. Not communicate everything to allow a readers own dream.

But we are not just talking about fiction.

Lets talk about injustice. Do not pictures of atrocities impact the evil of Nazism with stark totality in a way words alone cannot?

Yes. Yes, yes yes.

There is no contest. The majority of creatives acknowledge this. Advertising acknowledges this. Propaganda specialists acknowledge this. The only thing that could rival film would be an interactive theatre/film, where a performer can indeed hug the spectator. Where the lines between spectator and contributor blurr.

The book just doesn't have the attributes, however enjoyable an experience it may be.

[Leonis]

Originally posted by Neb: quote: Originally posted by Yorick: Actually you are wrong. Film is the most powerful medium. Communicates multi-visually (a picture tells a thousand words, a moving picture millions) consciously through verbal language, and emotionally through music. The written word only conveys conscious thought, not the emotional languages that words can never communicate.

Okay, I would like to disagree heavily here. It is difficult for a movie to start as deep thoughts as a book, a book also brings your own imagination into play in order to visualize what you read since the movie provides everything for your senses. A movie can also NEVER have the depth of a book since there you are exposed to both the characters thoughts, emotions and actions whereas in a movie you only see and hear what they do and experience everything from YOUR viewpoint.

I say that the written word carries ten times the power of a movie. At least to me it does, I don't know about everyone else. Some people seem incapable of truly.... Experiencing, a book. Unable to enjoy it at all, I take this as overmuch exposure to movies instead of the written word. Those people are not used to using the imagination for the purpose of visualizing the written at all.[/QUOTE]Book: See Spot Run // Movie: Kundun

Book: The Prince // Movie: American Pie

[img]smile.gif[/img]

[ 05-10-2002, 03:37 AM: Message edited by: Leonis ]

[norompanlasolas]

i agree with dramnek in his previous posts. i will not add more to his comments because he worded it beautifully and concise enough. brilliant remarks.

regarding books, they are by FAR the most effective means of communication.

there is one sinle little example to prove this. ask yourselves how many lives, how many things, how history has been changed by the effect of books. both in positive and negative ways. from plato, to machiavelli, to marx, to smith. they have influenced man, its ideas, concepts of life, inspired philosophies, created religions, have changed countries, made wars, peace, and put in motion changes that have driven civilization as we know it now.

now repeat the same question for movies and tv.

[Neb]

Originally posted by Leonis: quote: Originally posted by Neb: quote: Originally posted by Yorick: Actually you are wrong. Film is the most powerful medium. Communicates multi-visually (a picture tells a thousand words, a moving picture millions) consciously through verbal language, and emotionally through music. The written word only conveys conscious thought, not the emotional languages that words can never communicate.

Okay, I would like to disagree heavily here. It is difficult for a movie to start as deep thoughts as a book, a book also brings your own imagination into play in order to visualize what you read since the movie provides everything for your senses. A movie can also NEVER have the depth of a book since there you are exposed to both the characters thoughts, emotions and actions whereas in a movie you only see and hear what they do and experience everything from YOUR viewpoint.

I say that the written word carries ten times the power of a movie. At least to me it does, I don't know about everyone else. Some people seem incapable of truly.... Experiencing, a book. Unable to enjoy it at all, I take this as overmuch exposure to movies instead of the written word. Those people are not used to using the imagination for the purpose of visualizing the written at all.[/QUOTE]Book: See Spot Run // Movie: Kundun

Book: The Prince // Movie: American Pie

[img]smile.gif[/img] [/QUOTE]Leonis, it might just be me who's slow, but what point are you trying to tell us with your post?

And what is it's relation to that which you've quoted?

[Yorick]

Originally posted by norompanlasolas: i agree with dramnek in his previous posts. i will not add more to his comments because he worded it beautifully and concise enough. brilliant remarks. regarding books, they are by FAR the most effective means of communication. there is one sinle little example to prove this. ask yourselves how many lives, how many things, how history has been changed by the effect of books. both in positive and negative ways. from plato, to machiavelli, to marx, to smith. they have influenced man, its ideas, concepts of life, inspired philosophies, created religions, have changed countries, made wars, peace, and put in motion changes that have driven civilization as we know it now. now repeat the same question for movies and tv.

This is beside the point. No-one is contesting the value of books, nor that they don't communicate ideas. Besides you have given examples of times when there was no film. How can there be a comparision, if one of the subjects doesn't exist?

The contention was made by Dramnek that:
print media "is still the only serious medium to impart the complex and profound ideas that are so important to understand in becoming a better educated person."

I contended that film is actually a more effective medium in communicating ideas.

When bringing to bear all the benefits of books you are ignore the reality that, as has been stated, books have been around for hundreds of years. Reading/writing for thousands.

When writing first began, and indeed still within in the chinese language, it was/is a form of visual art. Held in place on walls and then on stone tablets, or flimsy papyrus it was hardly of the calibre books are now.

Compare this to the development of film, a hybrid of writing, visual art, drama, music, photography and dance/movement. It is at the moment the most complete medium.

How it is being used is irrelevent to the diuscussion. We are discussing the MEDIUM itself, not whether humans have harnessed it's POTENTIAL to it's fullest.

Think about it. A film could simply be written words scrolling up the screen. A moving book. It could be a film of a book, with each page filmed for a few seconds, to be paused on DVD.

A film can be everything a book is, yet can be so much more.

It could be those words simultaneously heard - a voice reading them aloud. Thus you're receiving two senses input. The more senses impacted the greater the memory retention.

As I have stated, Educators value the video. In one gesture an educator on video can SHOW a necessary action, whereas the book is open to confusion and misinterpretation.

As stated, propaganda and advertising are most effective using the film medium.

As stated, a good fiction writing includes LEAVING THINGS TO THE IMAGINATION. An acknowledgement of removing communication to enhance the receivers experience. Too much description in writing is a distraction, heavy, tedious. A film in one gesture, a flash, can show pages of descriptions in an instant.

There is no reason for people to get defensive here. I'm not writing off writing. I read a bible, I read history, I write, I've read politics, fiction, biographies, newspapers, atlases. Much knowledge have I gained from such an invaluable source. Were I to put my ideas down, I would clarify them in writing first, regardless of whether a film was built around the said writing or not.

What I am saying, is that film, in it's raw potential, minute for minute is a far better, far more effective means of communicating than the written word alone.

It includes, and expands upon that written word.

[ 05-10-2002, 12:12 PM: Message edited by: Yorick ]

[Horatio]

AAHHH! My thread, my beatiful thread! You have completely gone of topic! I'm melting, melting, oh, what a world, what a world...

[Talthyr Malkaviel]

LOL, the funniest thing is that none of you had realised or remembered that reading is visual interpretation.

Film is simply too impractical to be conspired as a serious medium for the imparting of deep and complex ideas. For example you need displaying facilities if you even wish to see it.
Secondly you cannot impart complex and deep ideas through it, for example from Karl Marx’s book, “The German Ideology”,
How are we supposed to effectively impart the ideas of “Contradictions of Big Industry: Revolution” from “Theses on Feuerbach” in a way which is more practical and enlightening than simply reading it? What took Marx & Engels 5 pages, would easily take many hours of film to effectively convey the meaning of, whereas I can read those pages in a few mere minutes.
Simply showing pictures or music will not aid in understanding of it. Also to have words simply scrolling across the screen is far slower and impractical than simply reading it.
A film cannot be everything a book can be, simply from its limitations as a medium. The written word can convey thoughts and motivations and emotions and ideas directly and quickly, whereas with film everything must be hammered across so there can be no hope of misunderstanding and it also takes longer.
“The Prince” effectively gives a complete guide to being a dictator in its 141 pages, whereas a film to convey all this information would need to be so many hours long it would become completely impractical and useless by all reasonable standards.

[Yorick]

Originally posted by Dramnek_Ulk: Film is simply too impractical to be conspired as a serious medium for the imparting of deep and complex ideas. For example you need displaying facilities if you even wish to see it. Secondly you cannot impart complex and deep ideas through it, for example from Karl Marx’s book, “The German Ideology”, How are we supposed to effectively impart the ideas of “Contradictions of Big Industry: Revolution” from “Theses on Feuerbach” in a way which is more practical and enlightening than simply reading it? What took Marx & Engels 5 pages, would easily take many hours of film to effectively convey the meaning of, whereas I can read those pages in a few mere minutes. Simply showing pictures or music will not aid in understanding of it. Also to have words simply scrolling across the screen is far slower and impractical than simply reading it. A film cannot be everything a book can be, simply from its limitations as a medium. The written word can convey thoughts and motivations and emotions and ideas directly and quickly, whereas with film everything must be hammered across so there can be no hope of misunderstanding and it also takes longer. “The Prince” effectively gives a complete guide to being a dictator in its 141 pages, whereas a film to convey all this information would need to be so many hours long it would become completely impractical and useless by all reasonable standards.

It depends on the writer and the filmaker concerned mate. A book can hammer something across also. It's called verbose, overexplanatory writing. You're closing your mind and looking at books YOU have read and comparing them to films YOU have seen, instead of seeing the possibilities in that which may yet not exist. You are thinking inside the box of things already present instead of being a visionary, and seeing the potential in a new and exciting medium, which has only been comparitively exploited.

You cite that words scrolling up a screen are too slow. In this you focus on the USE of the media rather than the media itself. If there are no films which convey that which you are advocating, then it is because filmakers have not directed their energy in that direction, not that the medium cannot achieve those ends.

I have no doubt, that before the printing press, people would have regarded public speaking as the best way to convey messages to an illiterate public.

[Yorick]

Originally posted by Dramnek_Ulk: Film is simply too impractical to be conspired as a serious medium for the imparting of deep and complex ideas. For example you need displaying facilities if you even wish to see it. .

What do you call a printing press, or the book itself, other than facilities for projecting the medium? A book doesn't exist out of thin air. The only thing that needs nothing but onesself is the spoken word. Oh yes, which can be recorded on film

[ 05-11-2002, 01:47 AM: Message edited by: Yorick ]