aristotle

first, i read a whole bunch of books on filmmaking. i've made a bunch of films, but i've never studied how to make them. so, i started with some lighting books. i never knew that the reason they used to say "lights, camera, action" was that the lights were turned off between takes in the early days because they put out so much heat. nowadays, with cooler, brighter fixtures, they're on continuously, for the most part.

next i read some screenwriting books. there are a lot of them out there, most of them geared toward someone who's trying to make a killing in hollywood. i noticed that many of them referred to aristotle's poetics. i tucked that in the back of my head.

next, i picked up, at the recommendation of a friend, david mamet's "on directing film". it's a short little volume that packs a punch. in it, mamet, with a class, create two scenes from two different dramatic situations. it's fascinating to see how it unfolds. mamet also talks about poetics.

so, i went and got poetics and read it. i now understand why so many books refer to it. it lays out the essential structures and relationships for western dramatic tradition. it's to drama what patanjali is to yoga, i suppose: a concise written account of a practice, in the case of poetics, drama.

now that i'm all loaded up with good advice from 2300 years ago, i better get to work making some stuff up!