{"id":1154,"date":"2021-03-22T12:22:11","date_gmt":"2021-03-22T16:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sahilnawab.com\/blog\/?p=1154"},"modified":"2021-04-11T20:51:19","modified_gmt":"2021-04-12T00:51:19","slug":"the-meaning-of-cinematic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sahilnawab.com\/blog\/the-meaning-of-cinematic\/","title":{"rendered":"The Meaning of Cinematic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Throughout the internet, or perhaps just in the spaces that I regularly visit, it seems that the word, \u201ccinematic,\u201d has become \u00e0 la mode. In fact, every year, new trends show up on YouTube where people explain how to create the most cinematic visuals; at one point, it was using drone shots, at another, slow motion, and another, a widescreen aspect ratio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I have always been a subscriber to the ethos that cinematic means like the movies<\/em>. And if you pay attention to movies\u2014or at least the ones that were actually great\u2014you might find that very few used the same cinematic tricks that YouTubers emulate and often overuse. What made the movie cinematic was not a gimmick, but rather it was the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In \u201cShow Your Work,\u201d Austin Kleon writes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The most important part of a story is its structure. A good story structure is tidy, sturdy, and logical. Unfortunately, most of life is messy, uncertain, and illogical. A lot of our raw experiences don\u2019t fit neatly into a traditional fairy tale or a Hollywood plot. Sometimes we have to do a lot of cropping and editing to fit our lives into something that resembles a story. If you study the structure of stories, you start to see how they work, and once you know how they work, you can then start stealing story structures and filling them in with characters, situations, and settings from your own life.<\/p>Austin Kleon<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
So far, this is the clearest definition of the word, \u201ccinematic,\u201d that I\u2019ve come across, especially from the perspective of a writer or storyteller. Cinema is supposed to explore a heightened sense of reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is the job of the filmmaker or the writer\u2014to take their own experiences, their own inspirations, their own dots that they\u2019ve stumbled across, and put them together into a cohesive narrative. It involves cleaning up the story, removing extraneous information, and focusing heavily on the emotional journey told through the experiences of characters, settings, and plots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/a>Image courtesy of Trent Palmer, 2018<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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