First thing I read this morning is that Steven Soderbergh will actually not be retiring from film making but will be doing a series with Cinemax starring Clive Owen. This is great news. Just last night I was talking to somebody about how sad it is that possibly America's most innovative and creative talent in the prime of his career is leaving behind cinema. Besides, arguably, David Fincher, Soderbergh is the top of a list of critical American directors, positioned as a pioneer into the digital future of moving image and cinema.
Soderbergh’s speech at the San Francisco film fest a few weeks back has been getting circulated quite a bit. Going into detail about the nightmare it is to work in the film industry these days, it makes complete sense for somebody like him to go into television. HBO has a reputation for not caring about surveys but more in the artistic intention. Soderbergh says that America is still living in trauma from 9/11 and that the industry and consumers are only interested in escapist films. I completely agree with this and it seems that the industry is not going to come out of this state of PTSD any time soon and so the challenge becomes how do we create new narratives and by what means. Television is definitely a choice and has been getting better and better every year. The mini series has been an excellent model for feature film directors to explore, something that European film makers have been doing for decades.
I have been going back and watching a bunch of Soderbergh movies lately. Mostly watching ones that I have missed in the past few years. Some are better than others, Side Effects being the worst of the group but still admirable nonetheless ( good examples of workflow, see below), Haywire and Magic Mike being my favorites. Both of those movies excited me way more than I thought they would. Haywire being an excellent action film and one that probably should also go under his reoccurring themes with the body ( Magic Mike, The Girlfriend experience ). The choreographed fighting is close to John Woo but even closer to dance choreography and movement studies. The lead female actress played by real life cage fighter Gina Carano is amazing.
Workflow is an idea that keeps coming up in the conversation surrounding Soderbergh. Workflow is basically a new way of organizing information from production to post production. With new cameras like Red and Arri Alexa, cameras that record visual data rather then capturing it and with the help of DIT’s ( digital imaging technicians) directors are able to edit rough cuts on set. This would give one the ability to add zoom and change lighting and camera movements without losing the quality of reshooting. Soderbergh calls this “ strategic reshooting” but its not really reshooting at all. This brings up an interesting challenge for critics in trying to figure out the relationship between what a director has done on the set of a production and what has been done in post production. Workflow is a word to be thinking about and might be part of film vocabulary soon enough.
