There was a time I watched about 3 movies each day. That wasn’t the thing about testing torrent technologies or psychological disability of manic traction to store every shit you find somewhere. No. I was an amateur video artist (cinematographer?) for all my life and I all that time I found interesting to look back and to check the basis on which many forms of contemporary creative types of video (wedding video, TV advertisements, video presentations, vjing, 3D animation etc.) had grew up.

Yes, sure, to spend all day watching movies is a pathological matter, at least for the thing, that I never fell asleep in front of the screen. So I watch or just wait until the movie ends. Fortunately, there aren’t many pictures which are boring or meaningless for a video artist. Any little bite of cinematography and its history can teach you for something, if you are going to get your own video camera and begin making your own video stuff. Camera movements, plot, composition of the shot, lighting, technique of montage, soundtrack… Every movie has its strength and the aim of the viewer – video artist – is to dig it out.

If you are not intend to enter university and to become a certificated professional the only way to break away from the amateurish level is a personal and sincere daily interest in videography. For me, cinema classics gave a lot: ingenious visual concepts of Wim Wenders, incredible slowness and overall indifference of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, snobbish aesthetics and ease of Wong Kar Wai, jocosity of Jean Luc Godard and so on. The time spent watching the greats is invaluable. Every time you start to edit your new video material you see so many possibilities to manipulate with it and to make a different sense out of it.

Everything you have ever read, watched, learned or just realized after long searches in a mysterious way lie down in a dark and unreachable parts of your brain, but always evoke unconsciously when it’s needed the most.

http://youtu.be/NCFFJbREVN0