From WXXI news.

This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour was made in a classroom at USC, where cinema and media studies professor Akira Mizuta Lippit had asked students to study one of the great final scenes in movie history.

They were watching Francis Ford Coppola's film The Conversation.

Here's how journalist Rose Horowitz described what happened next for her piece in The Atlantic quote.

At the outset, he told students that even if they ignored parts of the film, they needed to watch, the famously essential and prophetic final scene.

Even that request proved too much for some of the class.

When the scene played, Lippitt noticed that several students were staring at their phones.

You do have to just pay attention at the very end and I just can't get everybody to do that, he said.

End quote.

Horowitz found this was not a one off across the country.

Even in film schools, students can't sit through films anymore.

She writes, quote, after watching movies distractedly.

If they watched them at all.

Students, unsurprisingly, can't answer basic questions about what they saw.

And a multiple choice question on a recent final exam.

Jeff Smith, the film professor at UW Madison, asked what happens at the end of the film.

Jules and Jim, more than half of the class picked one of the wrong options.

Saying that characters hide from the Nazis even though the film takes place during World War one, or get drunk with Ernest Hemingway, who does not appear in the movie.

Smith has administered similar exams for almost two decades.

He had to grade his most recent exam on a curve to keep students marks within a normal range.

End quote.

Now, I found all of this deeply distressing.

After all, I remember my high school classes.

I remember days where we had a last minute sub and with no background on the class, it became a movie day.

And that just felt like a fun vacation.

Now that's a chore.

If you can't sit through a movie, you can't enjoy it.

Some film students say they'll only watch movies on two times speed.

So what happens when we can't concentrate long enough to even watch a movie, when we're so addicted to our phones or so distracted by other things?

Let's talk about it with our guests in studio.

Amy.

Adrian is an award winning film director and writer whose work is screened at Sundance, South by Southwest, Tribeca Film Festivals and on national TV and an assistant professor in the School of Film and Animation at RIT.

And Amy can sit through a movie.

I've seen it.

Welcome back to the program.

We watched Barbie together.

I know we did.

That was not a tough one to sit through the and or summer.

Thank you for being back with us.

And a couple of students with us in studio.

Hello to Joy Anderson, a filmmaker, screenwriter, and MFA student at RIT.

Thank you for being with us.

Thank you.

Louisa du Chien is also a filmmaker, a screenwriter, MFA student at it.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you.

And welcome on the line with us to Professor Craig Gerberding, who is teaching faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the author of filmmaking with Intention A Comprehensive Guide to Creating Engaging Motion Pictures.

Professor Ebling, thanks for making time for us.

Yeah.

Thank you.

And, professor, you were quoted in the Atlantic piece as well here and some of your experiences also, I really think worth sharing.

You know, how many students would even start the movies that you would assign?

I found all of this really distressing, professor opening.

So let me start with you.

Did you have any surprise at what you heard from your colleagues across the country when it all came together in that piece?

Yeah, it was really interesting to, see that, folks from some of the premier film schools also had, some issues with having students participate or sit through some of the, the, films that were watched.

But, you know, in general, I wasn't really surprised, because it's a different group of students now.

And, you know, when I went to film school a long time ago, it was for a much different reason than what a lot of students that are going to film school now are going for.

So, whether it be to create videos for social media or else, or something else.

The idea of sitting through something that is so long, such as a movie, is something that they see as an assignment, as a chore.

And, and, you know, in general, it's, it's too bad.

And one thing that I told Rose, during the interview process was, you know, it does change.

It does change when students start, at sort of like the introductory level, it is a little bit more difficult to get students to engage with films.

On their own time.

But, you know, by the time they get to the higher levels, and we've kind of trained them as to what they need to be looking for from a filmmaking standpoint instead of just watching for entertainment.

I've seen the engagement go, go up, but, but yeah, I mean, in general, we're just dealing with a different group of students and their intentions with with what they aim to create.

I think that there's several important distinctions that Professor Blake makes there.

So it's what the students are after in the first place.

It is also how they have grown up with technology.

So it's easy for me to sort of yell at clouds and get upset, and we'll talk a little bit about that.

I'm trying to resist that to to some degree.

But I also don't I don't want to shy away from looking at the problem directly.

And I think it's a problem if people can't sit through a two hour movie, even when it's assigned.

And I'm going to read a little bit more from Horowitz's piece here about, the conversation with professor opening, the journalist writes, quote, at the University of Indiana, where he worked until 2024.

Professors could track whether students watched films on the campuses internal streaming platform.

Fewer than 50% would even start the movies, he said, and only about 20% made it to the end.

That cannot be what it was like ten, 20 years ago.

No, I you know, when, I went to film school and I went to UCLA and DePaul University when a film was assigned, it was a film that likely none of us had seen because the sort of film literacy or the understanding, of, say, a classic film like The Godfather was one that it was just expected that you would already seen when coming to campus.

So, faculty could bring up examples from The Godfather or Chinatown and just know that everybody had already seen those films.

But, you know, nowadays, when it comes to assigning films for students to watch, that statistic that you bring up is, is a little bit wonky.

But I mean, overall it is true, but it's wonky in that they didn't watch the movie through the portal that the university provided.

We don't have statistics for students that maybe decided to watch it on their own Netflix, or other account or, you know, did they watch it in groups together?

I, I can't say that, but those stats are, accurate in that half of the students chose not to watch the movie through the portal that we provided.

And when it came down to it, 20% of them actually finished the movie.

I would say on average, they would make it about 15 to 25 minutes through the movie before they would jump off.

And so, yeah, because of that, you know, I changed my methodology in the classroom to actually screen the movies in the time that was designated for our class and, do it in a way where I essentially talk through the movie, whether it be a classic film or a more contemporary film.

I stop and rewind and I say, did you see what happened here?

And try and get them to understand how to watch movies from a different perspective and, instead of just entertainment because a film student now, they may not necessarily be entertained by the movie, but there is some important element in production or theory or execution that we need to discuss.

Because filmmakers in the two films, students that you have there, I'm sure, understand the shorthand language of, hey, I'm trying to do this shot.

Do you remember the end of, The Graduate?

And that can explain a lot just in communication of of the filmmaker's intention.

And so having students watch the films through understanding what had to go into the creation of that moment is different than just watching it for entertainment.

So when this piece dropped, I immediately texted Amy, Adrian, and I thought I was going to be sharing something new with you and you'd already seen it.

I mean, like you and your colleagues are already sharing this.

This was quite the buzz.

It sounded like.

Yeah, yeah.

I, I think I told you my, my best friend in New York texted me that article and said, crazy and depressing.

Is this true?

Question mark, question mark, question mark.

So I had gotten that before I got your text.

And your answer to them was, what is it true?

Yes or no?

Yes or no?

I would say I mean, film students now are as creative and interesting and engaged as they have been ever, but we live in a very busy, very kind of hyper stimulated world.

So there is a lot that you need to battle against to focus and concentrate on anything, whether that's watching a feature film or reading a book.

And there have been a million articles about this new generation doesn't read books anymore.

Right?

So, I wouldn't say it's just films and it's just film students, but I think all of us are trying to carve out some period of time to be able to give ourselves over to some kind of longer experience.

And certainly you look at, I mean, there's so many TV series who are incredibly long that, you know, the storytelling arcs are really long and were with these characters for a long time, and people are obsessed with those.

So we're interested in long form storytelling.

I think we're all just battling.

How do I find time to focus on one thing?

Yeah.

You know, a year ago when my son was turning 13 and he had a few friends coming over, I made the mistake of saying, well, we can have like a movie night.

And one of his friends said, nobody our age watches movies.

That takes forever.

They looked at me like, what are you, an idiot?

So wow.

I mean, that was a that hit a little bit and then I kind of set that aside.

And then I read this piece where even college students are struggling.

Are students telling you that they're distracted?

Amy?

Are they telling you that this is not an easy task?

No, but they don't have to.

I'm distracted.

Are you distracted?

I am so I mean, it's like I can watch a movie.

Yes, yes, yes, and I also I also have two children, so I have two boys who are 13 and 15, and I certainly see it with them.

I think I told you, I mean, they've grown up watching YouTube shorts, reels, this kind of short dopamine content of people screaming at you in short bursts of time that you just kind of go from one, you know, piece of high stimulation to the next.

It is remapping our brains, I think all of ours and especially younger folks.

But I, I shared this with you.

I mean, I think there's hope.

My younger son recently got a phone and he's 13, and, like, I literally caught him sneaking Ted Lasso in the studio.

And I look at his phone, I'm like, you're watching the studio.

And I was kind of like, I don't.

It's not entirely appropriate, but at the same time I'm like, it's characters, it's worlds, it's story.

Like, yeah, watch this stuff instead of some guys just dreaming at you about like, protein and, you know, macros and whatever else that is.

Look, maxing and things like that.

Yeah.

Boy oh, boy.

In a moment, I'm going to ask join Luis to kind of take us through their own perspectives on this.

And, and maybe we're self-selecting for really strong students who are going to be outliers.

I don't know, but, we're going to talk to them in just a moment.

I want to listen to one clip, if we could, and ask the professors both to kind of weigh in on this.

And the clip has been widely shared.

It was cited in the piece, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck went on Joe Rogan's show recently, and they were talking about they talk about a lot of really interesting things.

They talked about AI, they talked about the future of filmmaking.

And at one point, Matt Damon talked about the the way that studios are expected when you do make films.

Now, to combat the distraction of people being on their phones all the time, I want to listen to what Matt Damon said, the standard way to make an action movie that we learned was, you know, you usually have like three set pieces, one in the first act, one in the second, one in the third.

And, you know, you kind of they kind of ramp up in the big one with all the explosions, and you spend most of your money on that one in the third act.

That's your kind of finale.

And now they're, you know, they're like, can we get a big one in the first five minutes to get some?

But, you know, we want people to stay.

Yeah.

Tuned in and can and, you know, wouldn't it be terrible if you reiterated the plot 3 or 4 times in the dialog because people are on their phones while they're watching?

You know, I mean, it's a then it's going to really start to infringe on creatively.

Yeah.

We're talking about the so that Matt Damon talking to Joe Rogan recently.

All right.

Amy Adrian, I mean again, one of the things if we let the clip play, you know, Ben Affleck says, look, we're still making movies and we're not doing all that stuff and we're doing fine.

But certainly that is an indicator of cultural and and sort of norms changing.

What did you hear there?

I mean, it's entirely depressing.

I mean, to think of storytelling and having to constantly feed people something to to keep them engaged.

I'm sure the streamers, they have all of the statistics and they know when people kind of check out.

So it's it's data based, I'm sure, but that's like entirely different from what I'm doing and what any of like the students are doing.

Like, why do we make movies?

Because we want to tell stories that we care about, and there are emotions and characters that need to be explored and shared, and it comes from the heart.

And like if you're trying to engineer something in that way, I'm sure there are pieces of entertainment that can be made that way, and maybe those can even be satisfying in some levels.

But most people don't get into doing what we're doing for any of those reasons.

You have something that you want to say, so, you know, I feel like the studios and streamers and, and, you know, the people who are running things have a certain way of, of doing stuff.

But I think it's largely going to be independent filmmakers and independent voices that keep this medium alive and doing and saying interesting things.

You look at the films that are nominated for, you know, Oscars coming up, pretty idiosyncratic, interesting films.

That's what ultimately engages people, not just the data told me I have to have like bang, bang, shoot, shoot.

And then, you know, here's who the characters are.

And here's the story again, just in case you're scrolling on your phone.

Marilyn Professor Pelling wrote Filmmaking with Intention A Comprehensive guide to Creating engaging motion Pictures.

I noticed chapter one was have explosions in the first five minutes?

Is that right?

Greg?

Absolutely.

That's coming in the rewrite.

You know, when I, when I heard that or I saw that article, and obviously, I'm sure all of us, when we saw that article kind of come out or from, the Joe Rogan Podcast, we all clicked on it right away.

And, you know, I don't know, I think that, you know, I think back to my days at UCLA when, you know, the professors, if they ever thought that something like that would be a sort of mainstream sort of approach to creating, films, I'm sure they all would have dropped dead instantly.

And, you know, so but I think the interesting thing is, at UCLA, when I was there, they said, you can write a screenplay however you want.

If you want to write the screenplay that sells, you're going to follow this formula.

And they kind of put a Hollywood formula in front of us.

And so is it that different than today when the market being, you know, Netflix that is going to buy, a movie that we should look towards, maybe modifying the, the formula, I don't know.

And that's beyond me to make that sort of decision.

You know, I do feel, though and to the other professor's point, if we start doing that, we are intentionally creating a formula that is less engaging.

And I think on the other end, you know, and what I talk about in my book and what I try and teach my students is, hey, if people aren't engaged with the the movies that we're creating, then we need to create them more engaging.

Right?

If if people's, tastes are changing when it comes to the type of content that they are consuming, then we've got to change the way that we create that comment or content.

Otherwise, nobody's going to receive the message or the story, or the character scenario or the emotional journey.

And that's our job, as you know, artist.

Yet we always have to think about who's the audience that's going to receive this and, and why are they going to stay engaged with it.

And how do we do that?

And that's a lot of what I talk about in my book is focusing on these visceral responses of, hey, if we're making a horror film, we need to make sure that there's these moments that people feel horrified, and if they don't, it doesn't matter how much we reiterate the plot, nobody's going to watch it anyways in the dialog.

So but to your point to I had a lot of Hollywood screen screenwriters come into my advanced screenwriting class, and they all talk about the same thing.

When people are doing coverage for existing screenplays, they're looking for that first page.

That first minute of the film better be dynamic.

Do I agree with it?

It doesn't matter.

The people that are making the decisions on to buy that film or to option that screenplay are making the decisions based off of that.

My students can decide to go and do that method or not.

It's up to them as to what they're writing the screenplay for.

But again, it kind of comes back to if you want to write a screenplay that sells, you may have to kind of like, you know, find a compromise in there and maybe that's okay.

Yeah.

I mean, this is the the version of I have two brothers who chased music dreams for years, and the studios kept telling them, can you simplify and just write us a simple hook, you know, like something that would play on the radio and they're gone?

I don't know, I mean, it sort of all feels like we're homogenizing things, but let's get to know the students a little bit about what they think about this.

Joy Anderson and Louisa Duchin are with us, who are both screenwriters and filmmakers and MFA students at RIT.

So you read the piece, Joy?

Yes.

Yeah.

And you thought what I it's definitely a trend I've been noticing.

Because I also work as a graduate assistant.

So I have, like grade, quizzes and things like that.

So it's a trend I've been noticing the past few years.

I which is what, like a lot of students aren't really, so some students really struggle with engaging with, movies, especially if they're, like, longer or, and retaining, like, reading information.

That's like a nice way of saying they didn't actually finish watching the movie.

They were assigned.

Well, I think Art, the thing with art is like we primarily do screenings, like in person rather than, like, assigned.

But I have noticed, like on quizzes, even still.

Sometimes people aren't, you know, remembering really key aspects of the movies that we're screening.

But it's not like they're allowed to be on their phones in class.

No.

Okay.

Like, most professors have a no phone rule.

That's what I thought.

Yeah.

What are they okay.

There's just struggling.

Yeah.

Yeah, I, I think honestly, I noticed this as a trend happened really after, Covid happened.

And I really think that, like, a lot of isolation in high school impacted because I think, you know, lockdowns were great from a public health standpoint.

But, I think it does have I think it had like long lasting impacts on, you know, education.

And so as we have like, you know, students coming who had, high school and during lockdown and are coming into college, I think that's I'm kind of seeing that potentially being, a consequence of that.

And but it is something I've noticed happening.

And I, I personally didn't struggle with that, because I love movies.

You can sit through a movie I can sit through.

When's the last time you watched a movie start to finish?

Probably this weekend.

This week?

Or last week.

I mean, every week.

And wait.

No, it yesterday.

Yesterday it was yesterday.

I mean, on your own.

Oh.

On my own this weekend.

This weekend?

Yeah.

Okay.

What did you watch the witch by, David Eggers.

Oh, yes.

Robert, Robert and I enjoyed.

Do you find yourself distracted by a cell phone?

I mean, do you watch at home?

Do you find ways to be not distracted, like, intentional about it?

If I don't like a movie, I'll get distracted.

But if I'm like, walked in to a movie, then I'll.

I won't really get distracted by my phone.

I'm trying to think of when the last time I was distracted by during a movie.

I think, I tend to intentionally pick movies that won't really distract me, but, yeah, I can't really think of the last time I was distracted.

Have you seen, by the way, have you seen It's a Wonderful Life?

Yes.

I love it's wonderful.

So here's a little confession.

You know, I'd probably seen it years ago, but had not seen it until this past Christmas Eve.

I mean, really watched it, right?

And I wanted to.

Yeah.

And I turned out I had another friend who was doing the same thing at the same time, but he chose, I don't know if it was Netflix or what streaming service it is.

You can get a like 25 minute shorter version.

Oh yeah, and it cuts out the most important part of the most.

The most important part.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I don't I think I can spoil it.

It's been a few decades.

It's, it's one of the classics.

So you, you know Jimmy Stewart whole revelation and Bing you know helped by the angel just gets cut right out of there.

Yeah.

For the sake of time because they noticed people would stream it more if it was 25 minutes shorter.

And I was like, I think you missed an important part.

Yeah.

There had to have been I feel like you should go back.

That have been something else they could have.

But that wasn't an 18 year old.

That wasn't a 17 year old saying, I want a shorter movie.

You know, that was a 40 year old.

So, I do you think our generation stereotypes your generation?

I think so in ways that are unfair.

Yeah, I think so too, because, I mean, who taught our generation in school, who raised our generation, like, you know, like I think, you know, I think we're all products of, how we were raised and, who taught us in school and things like that.

So it's not like this happened in a vacuum, you know, if that makes sense.

But I think, this this cuts a little deep joy.

So I'm not trying to call anyone out.

I just do think it's it's there's it's a very multilayered.

Your generation didn't end up with sort of this sense of being easily distracted, struggling to get through a book, struggling, struggling to get through a movie.

You didn't get there sort of by magic.

You got nature and nurture.

Yeah, because I think a lot of people, you know, clown on iPad babies, which are like, you know, babies that are addicted to their iPads.

But who's putting the iPads in their faces, you know, like they're that's not the babies aren't choosing to have an iPad.

The just the parents did that where them, Professor Adrian, I was going to say at that point in the article, it talks about the screen time of kids under two, under two, under two years old.

And you go, oh, and then in you know, 16 years, that kid goes to college and is having trouble focusing like is that that kids for is it you know so joy, I'm, I'm with you on this Okay.

And before I get Louisa Joy briefly, what do you want?

I mean, I think Professor Opening was making an important point that what you may want to do as a student, you know what, Professor Adrian?

Students, you may have a film student.

Doesn't just mean you're going to be a write a feature length film maker.

What do you want to do?

I really love screenwriting.

And I love directing, but I think screenwriting has been my biggest, like, passion.

In my, like, in my academic career.

So I really would like to be a screenwriter, and directing would be nice as well, but I think screenwriting is my biggest, goal out of out of, academics right now.

How much time you spent watching YouTube shorts?

Some, some lot TikTok.

I don't have TikTok.

No, no, I had to delete it off my phone because it's too distracting.

I mean, I actually, I, I really admire that, though.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because I have to really be focused in order to write, and I can't if I'm if there's easy distractions, I just can't.

No, I really do it.

And before we get to Louisa, let me just ask the professors.

You know, Amy, I'll start with you here.

I definitely I want to read a part of this piece from The Atlantic, and I want to acknowledge Joy's point here.

We're all distracted.

We're all prone to being tech addicted.

We're all prone to not paying attention at dinner, talking to a friend or a spouse, watching a movie.

I get it.

So it's not just about one generation, but certainly the case I would make is we.

We should still hold this up as a skill that's important to have.

Being able to concentrate and focus on one topic or one piece of material is important.

I never thought I'd tell my 13 year old, like, if you can watch a whole movie start to finish, you're ahead of your peers.

But like here, we are.

So, this is some of what, Horowitz writes.

She says the professors I spoke with didn't blame students for their shortcomings.

They focused instead on how media diets have changed from 1979 1997 to 2014, screen time for children under age two doubled and the screen in question.

Once a television is now more likely to be a tablet or smartphone, students arriving in college today have no memory of a world before the Infinite Scroll.

As teenagers, they spent nearly five hours a day on social media, with much of that time used for flicking from one short form video to the next an analysis of people's attention while working on a computer.

Time do they now switch between tabs or apps?

Every 47 seconds, down from once every 2.5 minutes?

In 2004?

So it's all of us, but I think it's a skill that should be cultivated if we're losing it.

I think just as if people can't read books anymore, I don't accept that.

That's okay.

I think that this is still something worth striving for.

What do you think, Amy?

Yeah, I mean, certainly, and I think it's probably about and I mean, I struggle with this mightily as well.

I, I recently read a book, Lady Director, which is a memoir by Joyce Chopra, who's a filmmaker who I love, who, did a film called Smooth Talk back in the 80s.

And that was I finished that recently, but it's like I had to kind of remind myself, okay, every night, put down your phone and read this book that I'm really enjoying.

And once I was in the book, I was like, oh, right.

Every time I read a good book, I'm like, why am I always not in the middle of a book that I enjoy?

But it's just about building that habit, and I think we're all, it's just so easy to have the temptation to have, oh, I'll just look at this thing on my phone and that'll just take a second.

As opposed to starting a movie or starting a TV show or reading a book.

But then the second turns into, you know, an hour or whatever with, with, that scroll.

So, I think once we invest the time into a book that we enjoy or a movie, even if it takes some kind of, perseverance to, to be in it, there's so much satisfaction in that as opposed to you think about, okay, spending an hour going from reel to reel or whatever.

And it's like it's just, you know, brain garbage.

There's like nothing that, you know, or not always, but there's not much that you likely retain from that.

So I think it's just building that habit.

Professor building.

Can you jump in on that too?

I mean, how important do you think it is to help students pick up this ability if they don't have?

Or I think, you know, back to the the the point that you made about, you know, the classic it's a wonderful Life.

You know, I the thing that I think that's really interesting with all of this is, you know, if they were to make it's a wonderful Life today, they wouldn't make it the same way that they made it.

I think that's kind of, you know, there's there's the tragedy of that because the original piece is what, it is meant to be and is one of for all of those reasons.

However, you know, that meant the audience of that time, you know, and I and I often tell my students to stop thinking about cinema, as, you know, the parameters of what the parameters were in 1942.

Because we don't do much of anything the same way that we did it in 1942.

And the future of cinema comes down to cinematic content.

And in my book, that's what I call it.

I don't call it a movie.

I don't call it a commercial or anything like that.

It's cinematic content in the way that we create stories to relay information that results in emotion.

And people watch things because of the emotion that it, that it imparts on them.

And so, you know, again, we don't watch much of a comedy when we aren't laughing.

You know.

So, you know, but does that mean that we're creating cinematic content that's always 90 to 200 minutes?

No.

And, you know, I, I used to work on the show Empire and the post-production side of it, and we made a 48 minute, show every week, 100 years from now, they could go and reedit all of that to be three second mini episodes in holograms.

You know, I don't know what the future of that is, but my students have a better idea of how to create content to meet their audience than I know.

And I know that the parameters which I learned at UCLA and the way that films were done, a long time ago aren't necessarily the best way to get students to make content nowadays that, you know, the big thing when we make these films, when we make the cinematic content, we want people to see it.

We want people to talk about it.

We want people to share it.

That's not that different from creating a short, on YouTube or a TikTok or a reel or whatever it is.

But how do we do it in a way that preserves kind of our heartwarming sensibilities of, you know, the memories that we had and seeing this in a theater or, you know, paying homage to the classic filmmakers.

And, and I think, you know, that's something that we it's our job as film professors or like you all we're talking about the community in general to kind of create that atmosphere and create, you know, those movies are going to look different in the future.

And I think, you know, that's something that we also have to be able to embrace to get people to engage with that cinematic content.

Well, when we come back from the break, we're going to ask Louisa about what she wants to do.

Louisa is, also a filmmaker, screenwriter, MFA student at RIT.

Louisa, enjoy our with us from our IT professor Amy Adrian is here.

Professor Craig is here from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

And we're talking about this recent idea that showed up in The Atlantic that said, do you think we can't read books anymore?

We can't watch movies anymore without being distracted, especially students, even film students.

And I thought, well, that's it, hang it up.

We should try again on Mars.

It was a good experiment on this planet.

It lasted for a while, but it turns out I'm being a little too cynical and we're going to come back.

We'll welcome some of your feedback.

And, we'll talk a little bit more about the future of filmmaking and connections.

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I'm Evan Dawson.

All right, let me get some listener feedback and then we'll get Louisa here.

Roy's been waiting.

Hey, Roy in Rochester.

Go ahead.

Hi.

Y'all date myself?

When I took film 101 out in Portland, Oregon, my professor looked at us and he said, my name is blank.

Blank?

I refugee from occupied Hollywood.

He was one of the Hollywood 18 and we had a very interesting film course, I think the old.

But I did walk out on only one movie, this satirical, and I made 15 minutes and then I left.

So in my life, I love the big screen.

I still like the big screen.

I think these days it seems like people want to imply things in their films rather than being explicit.

I, I tend to find the opposite, except for some of the arthouse films.

I find films less subtle.

But I'm not the professor, and I'm not the student.

That's not my expertise.

The only film that I should have walked out of was Congo.

I sat through that whole thing, and, you know, Michael Crichton wasn't perfect, man.

But listen, there's, everyone's got different tastes, right?

And I appreciate your your love of being in the theater.

My concern is we're not that far away from a lot of theaters being gone.

I think the little theater and the the arthouse theaters, the independent theaters, the drive in theater.

I hope they survive.

But I think it is going to be very, very different.

And it's not far away.

But just just briefly, professor Adrian films less subtle, more subtle.

He thinks.

He thinks that there less on the nose.

It depends on what you watch.

Certainly.

Hollywood films.

I think there's not much subtlety at all.

Yeah.

Fair enough there.

I mean, I mean, certainly we can find example of subtlety, Professor Appling, but, in general, how would you describe the genre?

What are we moving more subtle or less subtle?

Well, I, I agree that the stuff that's coming out of Hollywood that studios, you know, they're not taking those same risks.

Whereas the more personal, smaller character arc stories which Hollywood isn't creating, the independent filmmakers are doing that.

So I would agree that there probably are more independent films than studio films, and the filmmakers that are creating those independent films are probably focusing more on implicit, you know, sort of emotional sort of.

And I think that that's great.

I have so much email and I haven't even mentioned that it's connections at Excite Network.

So I'm going to set that aside.

We're going to get to your emails in just a second.

People have a lot of opinions on this.

Louisa Duchin is a screenwriter, filmmaker, and MFA student at Our City.

When's the last time you watched a movie on your own accord?

Well, I'm actually really proud of myself.

I did a double feature for the first time last Thursday, which I didn't think I had any, but we did it.

What was it?

I went to the I was on a trip to Toronto and I went to the Tiff Lightbox theater, and I saw a Tropea, which is, I can't remember the director, but it's with, Alia Shawkat.

And how I don't remember his name.

One of the men in Hollywood.

And then the other one was one of the Canadian top ten movies.

That was at Tiff this last year.

And that was called Wrong Husband, and it was an annual movie.

And these things take stamina.

Stamina, stamina, all this attention span, everything is just, muscle, and stamina that we don't necessarily have as much anymore because we're not working it out and we don't always need to.

I think that's a big thing.

You're not working out the capacity to just stay engaged with one film for two hours, 90 minutes, 2.5 hours.

Is that what you're saying?

Yeah, I think the, act of watching any, like, media content movie is TV, whatever you want, because it's at home and we have the leisure of having our phone right there.

We aren't being forced to, just maintain that level of concentration.

And when we would do that, there was like the kind of decorum of going to a movie theater and watching that.

And even that's not always the case.

Like even I'm also a teacher at all.

Right?

And like, you know, sometimes when a student pulls out their phone and looks at it in class, it's not exactly subtle because you can see the the light from their screen lighting up their face.

It's like a buzzer goes off.

I'm part of the problem too, though I will be honest.

I was telling Professor Adrian and Joy on the way in here that even while reading this article, I checked my phone a couple times.

I can't even get through the whole article, and I listen.

I I'm sure that that's me too.

I mean, that's so many of us that's not limited to one generation.

I remember reading, the great essayist David Rakoff, who wrote a book that came out in 2005.

This is really before social media.

And he wrote about, as a writer how difficult it was just to get a piece of writing done because of the constant temptation to check your email and your pager.

This is before Facebook accounts, Twitter accounts.

I mean, he was already, as a writer, feeling pulled away, distracted, unable to concentrate on a task.

We're seeing the effects of technology in that way.

I mean, Louisa, are you on TikTok?

I'm not on TikTok because of all the, like, privacy things that have been going on, but I am on Instagram Reels and I am pretty, pretty bad with that.

I am a victim of the infinite doom infinite scroll, doom scroll, doom scroll.

It's pretty bad.

Do you enjoy that or is it just something you do?

Well, it's.

I think it's really interesting and like the context of, like, film students and watching movies and TV lately because I kind of get choice paralysis.

There's so many movies.

There's so much stuff out there that like when I have to pick exactly what I want, what I'm in the mood for, what genre, what actor should I be doing research?

Should I be watching for enjoyment?

I don't have to think when I'm looking at my phone when you're in Instagram, right?

And so I feel bad because I'll sit there for like maybe an hour sometimes when I should be doing other things.

But I don't have to have a thought in that process.

I do enjoy a movie.

I watch a lot of movies, but I have to set the time aside and make sure that I do that.

And one of the things I really like about, like our ads program, when we do have film screenings, is that I don't have to always, like, choose what movie I like.

I know that these movies are going to be something that I signed up for and something I curated for you, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Do you wish social media were never invented?

Yes and no, I don't know, I, I do feel like there's such a giant distraction now from, like, just person to person contact.

Just like being face to face, having a conversation.

Even if you're having a conversation of, like, resisting the urge to pull your phone out mid-conversation, my mom checks her emails when I'm talking to her interface, you know, so she'll be like, hold on, I have to check my email.

And then ten minutes later, we resume our car conversations right in the middle of the conversation.

Oh, yes, I it's it's just it's just a part of life now, you know.

But at the same time, I think we are connected in a way.

We see a lot of things that we would not ever be able to do.

You know, we're connected globally, culturally, it's kind of really impressive.

But I think it was manufactured in a way that is to grasp our attention and keep it there.

I think one of the things with this article that was really interesting about it in this conversation earlier about like screen time for kids under two and iPad kids is I don't think it started there.

We have I grew up watching a lot of like movies that were made for TV or like just movies that were in theaters and then playing on TV.

We had commercial breaks, you know, I would have that time to get up, go to the bathroom, go get a snack, or think about doing other things, and I would be able to again, like consume like another media work on homework, anything like, and now it's just we don't have the commercial breaks.

We just have the commercial break in our pocket that we have access to whenever we want.

What do you want to do with filmmaking?

I am a screenwriter.

I really enjoy writing, I really enjoy, I do, I enjoy directing, but I spend a lot of time in the production design.

Like in the art department.

I really enjoy.

Kind of like seeing the details of the script and making that come to life, because that's like, what's so eye catching eye makes the world so real.

So I go, I do a little bit of everything.

I'll be honest.

Okay.

Drew, would you, abolish social media if you could?

I give you the power that says it was never invented?

The thing is, that's hard for me to answer because I guess I miss the social media of the 20 tens.

Before it became like an algorithmic, more popular with me, almost purely on pure.

Yeah.

Because I, I would abolish the algorithmic social media in favor of, like, the timeline that you just, you get to, like, curate and choose what you see rather than having the social media choose what you see for you.

Because I think that led to, like, a lot more addiction, to social media, and a lot more, you know, division and things like that.

So I would abolish it in favor of previous versions.

Okay.

That's interesting.

I was just listening to a conversation Ezra Klein had about how to build a better internet.

Basically saying when the internet came out, we did not envision that this is what the experience would be.

This is not good for most people, and most people say that.

But set that aside and ask what would be the internet that you would build?

What would be the social media you would build?

What would it look like?

And I think that's a useful exercise.

A lot of it's not anything like what it is now.

So, I mean, Joy's point is maybe not to throw it all out, but throw out all the algorithmic stuff that is designed to distract you, that's designed to pull you in.

Okay.

Here, before I dive through a bunch of email, just briefly, I'm very curious.

Louisa, what is your favorite movie?

Oh.

Moonstruck.

Moonstruck.

Okay.

Joy.

Conclave.

That was fast.

Conclave.

Recent one.

Yeah, I rewatched it a lot.

Oh, like a lot.

And you thought about it when Pope Leo was being.

Yeah.

You think about.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Remarkable.

So, two different very different films there.

I really enjoyed talking to the students.

Now, let me work through some of the email from the audience here.

Here's Sheila who says, as a former high school teacher who taught film studies units, I will say that the look it up generation of students are more likely to Google something than they are to discuss it.

For example, of a student doesn't understand what's happening in a classic film such as Rear Window or Casablanca.

They no longer ask a question about it.

They merely go to Google or Wikipedia and look it up.

This, I found, destroys the conversations that we have around cinema, including meanings and techniques.

Many teachers I know actually hand out study guides so that students can keep track of techniques, conflict, and plot.

I once had an 11th grade class begged to watch A Few Good Men.

I told them no, this was a talking movie.

I only relented when I told them.

As soon as the first person got their cell phone out, I would stop the movie.

Only one class out of the three sections made it through the entire movie, but then they talked about it for the rest of the year.

So Sheila is saying a lot changed here, but the fact that students will just go, well, I'm not going to ask a question.

I'm not going to pro, but I'm not going to discuss it.

I will just Google it.

Amy, does that happen in your classes?

Are you worried about that, that lack of really stimulating discussion on technique and idea and theme?

No, ma'am.

Your students are pretty good about it, right?

I mean, yeah, I agree, I agree.

Like, yeah, of course there's always like a spectrum, but when you watch a film, yes, there's there are techniques, there's story points.

There are things that people who've studied the films and understand how cinema works, can can share with audiences and with students.

But the point of watching something is what it generates.

And you also, and we have a lot of great conversations about what that is.

And as, as a professor, you're both kind of teaching the techniques of cinema and how to build certain effects and how it's done and how it's crafted.

Film is a craft, but also you want to encourage students to have their own individual experience of films and also regarding what they want to make it right.

The production program, they're they're writing their own films or making their own films, and you want them to, you know, not be looking for answers somewhere else, but really investigating for themselves.

What do they want to say?

And often those kinds of things are not things that they've seen in media a lot before.

I mean that that's what we're there to, kind of, not unearth, but kind of encourage students to follow.

Absolutely.

Professor.

Reporting, what do you think?

Yeah.

You know, I, I kind of feel like if the students are engaging, even with Google, or even with a, in a way where they ask some of these questions that they're investigating, at least they're looking into it, you know?

And, you know, part of me is somewhat okay with that, especially if it's supplements.

Some of the discussions that we have in class.

I mean, obviously, you know, university level film courses approach some of these things a little bit differently.

So, you know, having those discussions in class are a little bit easier to, to manage.

You know, but but I will say this, you know, and, I can't leave here without having said this.

My wife, went to this next school over at Eastman.

She used to work at the little theater there.

You know how amazing it is.

We went to the nitrate picture show there a few years ago before, going to, see Paul McCartney at in Syracuse.

So, you know, the idea that, you know, to take the music, you know, that Paul McCartney still has people, you know, 60 years later listening to his music or to think that Frank Capra probably would be blown away, to think that people are still watching It's a Wonderful Life 80 years later.

You know, even without the 25 minutes, you know, we're creating this and the legacy of of what they do at Selznick and what they do with, keeping those older sort of films alive.

And I know a lot of archives are looking for ways to modernize some of that content to bring Capra and Hitchcock and a lot of them to this younger audiences in a way that isn't necessarily the, you know, hour and a half, lengthy, you know, paced slower picture.

You know, and I think that that's one important thing that, you know, that we, we do and that we should, you know, impress upon our filmmaking students is that, hey, you know, bring back to life some of the, the joy of these films and, and re reinvigorate, some of these classic names.

Maybe it's in a different way.

A lot of nods here.

Joy, filmmaking, joy.

This shouldn't be a slum.

It should be interesting, could be challenging.

But joy, briefly here, I'll get through a couple more.

Patrick wanted to know.

He said, Evan, how's baseball practice going?

Can teenagers sit through an hour and a half long baseball practice without being distracted?

He happens to know I'm a baseball coach.

And the answer, by the way, is yes.

I think one of the great ways to get kids away from the distraction is to have, I think, hopefully positively led structured sports.

So it's almost never an issue.

Patrick, although a colleague of mine, had an elimination term tournament game last year, and before the game there was one student, one student, one one player not on the field warming up.

He was in the dugout.

He said, what are you doing?

So I got to get my my picks in for fantasy football.

It's like it's elimination playoff game and we're on the phone.

Sports betting, that's a whole other conversation.

But mostly Patrick, we're mostly we're pretty good with it.

And briefly Kathy, Kathy says this discussion is make me wonder if it's got something to do with passivity.

Plenty of kids follow iteration after iteration of video game.

They play their way through multiple levels.

They want to be involved, and films might be viewed as passive activity.

Briefly, Louisa, what do you make of that theory?

I think that's really interesting because I played a lot of video games, and there is like a level of action that you get to put in there.

But I also enjoy playing those games for the story.

And so I will try to I think it's, part of the film keeping the active.

And that's kind of its job to do that, too, for a lot of people.

But I think if I'm attentive, then I'm participating in the film as well and having thoughts.

Well said.

Joe, what do you think?

Yeah, I agree with that.

I when I'm watching a film, I'm really I feel like I'm almost immersed in this world.

But I do think that, I guess I feel more immersed in the theater.

It does feel a bit more passive when I'm watching it on a TV at home.

So I think those two experiences make make it that sort of like make one's more definitely feels more active because they're going out to see a movie in a theater.

But if you're just, you know, sitting home at, at home, stay at home watching on TV, it does feel a bit passive.

Yeah.

Well, listen, I want a great conversation and and for me, a pretty optimistic conversation, you know, I mean, we don't have to hang it up just yet.

We can keep working on it.

There's a lot of great students doing great things.

And that's what professors, Adrian and Burbling are telling us.

There's a lot of great students.

There always have been, a lot of great students, and their ideas are going to be brought to us in very interesting ways.

That's Joy Anderson and Louisa Duchin are going to be doing that.

Thank you both for being with us.

Thank you very much for being here.

Thank you.

Our thanks to Amy Adrian from, among other places, a professor in the school, film and animation at RIT.

Great to see you.

Thank you for great to see you.

Thanks for having me.

And I just found out.

Of course, professor, opening all roads lead back to the little theater in Rochester from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Thank you for making time for our program today, professor.

Yeah.

Thank you so much for having me.

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