Attention all of you in the greater Massachusetts/Infinite Jest area: go check out the Giant Sale show at APE Gallery – for a number of reasons, but like one for example is the DVD of our short films now for sales for $5! Here’s the covers. The letter on the front is I think the best explanation of ourselves we’ve written:

Here’s the O, Nurse! trailer (btw, Happy Bastille day! O, Nurse! takes place 6 years ago today)

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Marianna¹ is starring in a play directed by Jeff Daniels?!!

Holy crap! Congratulations Mary!

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¹ You might know Mary from our movies Blood Stew or the Country Club Killer, Christmas in Its Youth, Fun’s Over and the fifth episode of Halloween Face: A Real Horror Show. That’s right Mr Daniels - we’ve been casting her since she was like 17.

NOTE: I didn’t study film theory at college and I’m happy about that. But, especially in this intro post, I might be doing work that’s already been done better. Whatever. Oh, and when I say “movies” I mean films, t.v., digital, fiction, documentary, surveillance footage, etc. It all moves.

All movies are interactive - it’s up to us movie-watchers how much. Different kinds of movie-watching allow for different levels of engagement.

The low level of engagement is “seeing” a movie. It’s based on the false idea that every movie has an intrinsic and concrete meaning. So all we have to do is “get” that meaning, and then like it or not. Because of the one-way relationship between movie and watcher, I call this level “un-creative watching.”

For people who like un-creatively watching movies, the worst thing is “miswatching” a movie. It can happen because the DVD skips, because there’s too much noise in the theater, or because the movie doesn’t mean what it’s expected to (”That comedy wasn’t funny!”). For whatever reason, they don’t get the movie they paid for (with time if not money). So miswatching is a failed transaction. That’s why people who like “seeing” movies are so finicky at the theater.

But, if the meaning of a movie is up to the watcher, then there isn’t one right way to watch it. Done consciously, miswatching enriches the meaning of movies by making our creative control explicit. It allows us to explore new ways that movies can mean things — and so, new meanings.

“Creative (mis)watching” is what I call this high level of engagement. It affirms that movie-watchers are producers, not consumers. Creative (mis)watching is a bit of a weird term, but it’s a very common thing. I can’t imagine someone loving a movie without creatively (mis)watching it.

There are countless kinds of creative (mis)watching; each determines different degrees and kinds of engagement. Over the next three posts, I’ll identify methods of creative (mis)watching and explore how they work. The posts will be organized into
three categories of creative (mis)watching: mentally altering a movie, physically altering a movie, and physically altering yourself watching a movie. In other words, soon we’ll get to all sorts of weird shit. I promise.