Potter and Visual Literacy Intertwine

Still not a big fan of the new haircut, but
any excuse to put a headliner of Emma Watson is a good one

I've spent most of my free time this past week trying to come up with something interesting to talk about today. That didn't really work out as expected, so instead I'll be ranting for a bit about one of those nags that's been on the back of my head for a while.
(Warning: rants done by the Fool in the Cave may go completely off subject, you have been warned)


Back when I was still an energetic youngster at the beginning of my final year of High School, one of my best friends told me and a bunch of my other friends that he wanted to make a sitcom. Specifically, he wanted to write, cast, stage and film and edit the first episode in what was meant to be a pilot for a youtube sitcom of sorts. Like most grand ideas we used to have back then, I shared in the enthusiasm of the moment, but I never really thought anything would actually come of it.

By the end of my Senior year we'd made this:

Looking back at it now, it really isn't that great of a pilot, or even a story at that. But I still really cherish this little senior project of ours because it introduced me to the world of cinematography. What I mean, in plain English, is that for the first time in my life I discovered that there was so much more to film making than just acting out a story without a stage. I gained not only a great respect for filmmakers and what they do, but I also began to see films in a very different way. I was suddenly understanding so much more when I went to see a movie in a theatre than I had ever understood before.

My new interest in filmmaking led me to taking two film courses in college: one basic course on the art and history of cinema, and another, more practical course, on narrative storytelling. Through the combination of these two courses, and what me and my friends learned through trial and error making Galen House, I found myself visually literate.

Now, you might be asking what I mean by visual literacy; allow me to illustrate. Many years ago I had the chance to see the first Harry Potter movie and, just like any other fan of a popular book, I berated the movie for not living up to the books. It wasn't that I had not enjoyed the movie, it was simply that the books had so many more details about the settings and the characters that made the story so much more richer and detailed than the movie ever was.

Since the final Harry Potter film made its debut this summer, I recently found myself watching Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone once again. My experience was completely different this time. Now, I found myself not enjoying the movie because of its weird pacing and its nit picky adherence to particular scenes of the book; a complete reversal of how I felt the first time I watched it. I attribute this to becoming visually literate, to having gained the ability to comprehend the visual language that film (as well as photography, comic books and manga amongst others) use to convey information. This is the reason why these movies only started getting good when the directors stopped caring about reenacting scenes from the book just like the readers remembered them (a freedom they had simply because Potter fans were going to watch it anyway).

Before ending today's post I want to ask why? Why are we not teaching people to read films the same way they read books? Why are we not teaching the nuances of the visual method of communication in the same way we teach everyone about the written nuances of communication? If we have all agreed by now that film is very capable of conveying complex ideas and instilling them within people (see propaganda) isn't it about time we begin teaching people how to read them so that they can feel even more justified in spending their money to sit in a theatre for two hours watching moving pictures? We do it for books, and reading seems to be on the decline as of recent; why not do it for film?

P.S. These are my favorite films of all time if you're wondering: