That... is a thing of beauty.
You could do the same thing for Cinderella and An Officer and A Gentleman. who's Matt Bateman? btw, DAE, thanks (I think
). however clumsily delivered I appreciate your recognition of passion.
My general feeling about aesthetics, especially with my clients, is that lay discussion and communication through subtle device is more important than a list of referential design cues or over blown systems of organizational discipline or titanic gesture in creating the theater of environment. If you get too caught up in story, you lose... the emotive content and it becomes an exercise in monologue which would comprise a great book that could be hung in each stall of the building's toilet rooms. Often in that kind of introverted excercise, the final work is so intellectualized as to become boring or self masturbatory to the degree that the end user gets bored or distracted by the work and never makes it to the toilet to read the story.
I'm an agoraphobic. I HATE large public spaces (yes, like football stadiums). As long as I'm on the edge of them I'm comfortable but I find myself EXTREMELY uncomfortable in the middle of a large space, or in the middle of a crowd in a large space (or in a grocery store for that matter).
Example story: A few years ago the posse converged on Chicago and a buddy of mine and I went out to see Gehry's new band shell in Millenium Park. I walked around the edges of the great lawn, bigger than a football field, kind of hugging the scale of the green buffer at the perimeter. My buddy got into conversation with another member of our wandering tribe, and I decided I needed to get photos of the thing from the middle of the lawn. I walked out there... and was... shocked. The media trellis he placed over that space... gave me scale... probably the only comfortable moment I've ever felt in a space that large. I photographed it, the wild curving titanium panels bending on a whim with childlike exhuberance, and then it hit me... what he had done, and I broke into tears, grinning.
In the environment of theater, the theater of environment... he had responded to the nature of this building type by choosing one of the two masks and had built... frozen laughter.
It's the conveyance of emotion in work that sometimes we feel and don't have to intellectualize that is far more important than the physical work or subtle reference that goes into it, along with all the pragamatics. In Gehry's case, in this application, I felt a little boy with a roll of tin foil that didn't give up until the shape was just right. and I laughed until I cried knowing that I heard him laughing as he formed it. call that passion, or a recognition of timelessness in the creation of place... it's Alexander's "guality without a name," even though I hate Alexander's writings.
To bring this full circle regarding your observation of passion, DAE, I find it unwise to treatise the perspective of an aesthetician. It doesn't get to the heart of the cool emotional content. And it's ok not to know why a piece feels right... it's better to make one that does feel good knowing that the tool kit was used in such a way as to convey the emotion required for the application. I do teach my clients, and they ALWAYS teach me, leading me into explorations of perspective that's always fresh and a reason to wake up in the morning. In the end, the most important thing to me.. is the emotive response to my work, even if it's so subtle as to be un-noticeable.
That's my relationship to the experience of film. I am an entertainment in creating environmental theater. I hope that I have the ability to respond to program, need, and gesture to convey the spirit of place required to suit a clients needs. I do not choose to impose a style upn them.. I do try to be a mirror to who they are and give them what they don't know they are looking for, and feel equipped to do it because I'm gifted with the ability to see what they might be thinking about when they are not sure how to communicate what they need. Makes my days special.
When I think on the Academy ... I see a host of excellent people... folks blessed in the craft of the temporary suspension of disbelief, which really is what all creative endeavours aspire to. I see those folks as fallible but genuine in their efforts to better their craft, just like the American Institue of Architects, who seem to stumble on their feet in their lobbying more than any other professional organization in the country. At least with the Academy you know what you're getting. bigger than life self promoting goofballs that wanna make a buck over talkies, but with a core group that promotes the value of craft over revenue. That's an entirely different discussion, but brings us back to the title of the thread.
What constitutes value in perception and experience? There's a good question.
