The Choice That Can Define Your Entire Film 

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Thomas calling himself disorganised and messy while showing more of his office as evidence just shows how organised he actually is.

I inadvertently learned this with my first vlog I did waaaaay back in high school. We lived on a farm and I saw beauty there every day. So that first vlog was little snippets that I found interesting and worth giving time to see. I showed my parents and their reaction was, "oh my gosh, you make that messy backyard, chicken coop and garden actually look like something." I was puzzled until I realized their perspective on the backyard (that it was always a mess and full of junk) prohibited them from seeing what I saw. It's something I've taken forward in the last 25 years and thought about with every video project I work on.

Thank you for adding the caveat that "Objectivity" in a shot is still fiction, and still perspectivized. "objectivity" can be a useful heuristic, but its phenomenally dumb to think its possible to make or do anything from a purely objective perspective. the spectrum is key.

My biggest complaint for Killers of the Flower moon was the chosen perspective. I found myself wanting to see more of the Osage women than the lead actor’s. I even took to instagram to complain about it. Thank you for taking the time to make this video. I use perspective in a different way, (drawing comics) it’s an invisible art that brings more believability to the pieces I create. Can be hard to master, but learning different perspectives always helps!

I’m surprised that you didn’t bring up Aftersun as an example. That film explores a really interesting perspective on how some scenes play on something that seem subjective, but they are actually possible rationalizations from inside Callum’s daughters head on the kind of person he was.

You can't fool me, Thomas Flight, I know you love watching things blow up!

I love the interesting comparison between Lynch and Nolan. This shows how much two auteurs' visions could differ.

it's crazy that for a short time the scene, where Barbie has that emotional breakthrough and sees everything for what it is, was briefly considered being cut from the final edit. There's audio of Greta talking about this and how it HAD to be in the movie as it is the threshold for Barbie and paints how she sees everything for the rest of the film. Not painted pink but every color, and it's beautiful.

'Sound of metal' really uses subjectivity in a beautiful way

there isn't a better 'art' communicator on the internet. I usually struggle to keep up with film video essays but you manage to articulate your points and explain concepts in a way that's so easy to grasp and I appreciate it so much because it only adds onto already great works of art

Watched this on Nebula, but wanted to hop over and comment that this was such an exceptional essay. Thank you for your work!🎉

Take a shot every time Thomas says perspective

there’s something about how Thomas talks where as I listen while drawing I think “Hm. Yes, very true. I would agree.” even though i have no experience in film whatsoever

Love your essays and this one very much too. Wasn't expecting to feel so seen from you sharing your perspective of being coloblind and seeing "film grain" at times. Thank you for that.

Super interesting that Killers of The Flower Moon originally had more FBI focus, I think the FBI joined perfectly late in the story and had just the impact they should have had. Without the slow, awful, impending doom of the Osage people at the focus I don't think it could have justified the 3,5h runtime

Hey man, I've been watching your channelk for a while now, I don't comment much, but thanks for this video, your dedication to media literacy not only teaches me a ot, but it explains many of my theories and hitches I have for the reality we are living in and why people behave the way they do. More and more the factual obejctive of reality is becoming dissipated by peoples innability to want to watch it from another perspective that is not their biased one. Thanks man, have a good day. KEEP TEACHING THEM!

I got to watch "the Zone of Interest" on a film festival (Camerimage, with a Q&A afterwards). I think that's an incredibly interesting and relevant movie. The cinematographer and producer spoke about the movie being shot from an objective perspective, it's quite literally shot like reality TV. But one of the most interesting parts about it is the things it decides not to show. The camera only seems to enter the concentration camp once, and then you get the one close-up of a person in the whole film, avoiding the actual terror. It's a kind of objectivity which makes the visual language aggressively apathetic.

I think I spend more time watching these videos than watching movies. And I'm ok with that. Excellent stuff Thomas.

This year's MONSTER by Hirokazu Kore-eda is one of my favorite narrative uses of perspectives in a long time. You should check it out if you haven't already.

Was just watching Tinka Menkes documentary Brainwashed yesterday. It’s a talk she gave at Cannes reflecting on how film framing and Obj/Subj perspectives service sexism. It’s great stuff and talks a lot about what’s being discussed here from an industry professional

I love that motorcycle jump. Moving over the edge with him still really worked for me as subjective film-making.

“You can put a hundred people in a room, and 99 of them don’t believe in you, but just one does, and that was him”

Thanks for helping me gather a better understanding on perspective. I have now become more aware of it and will become more conscious about it when a make films as school projects.

Your videos are some of the only videos on RU-vid that I wait for the right moment for so I can really digest what you are saying. Thank you so much for that!

We appreciate how well you've articulated your insights on this matter. We will always support you no matter what.

Holy cow I just watched Oppenheimer last week and Twin Peaks Part 8 a few days ago! This is insane, thanks for making this!

I've always been fascinated with perspective, enough to want to unpack the ideas in the medium of film. This video was absolutely fantastic and i tremendously value your perspective on perspective. 😅

My favorite thing about perspective is how it reminds me of the tradeoffs we constantly make while living. When you choose a perspective, you're automatically rejecting all others; even if you're switching between perspectives, every second spent on one is a second not spent on all the others. Life is the same. There's only one me, and I can only do one thing.

Great video, Thomas! I love this subject. Subjectivity vs objectivity in film was a central part of my monograph when I was graduating some years ago. I's been a long since I've seen anything about this so well commented on RU-vid.

Super well explained. Thank you for this video !

Spectacular work! Like always!

I love the deeper meaning that these videos reach. Art is so powerful

Excellent video and great work man!

always a delight to see Twin Peaks The Return mentioned

What an enlightening experience. Thanks for this.

Great video essay and you made a fantastic point

My brother, Thomas, can I just say that how do you make your lighting so damn good like holy cow. Even just you talking makes me even more hooked that you showing clips of the movies

BRUUHHH The ending bit where he checks his notes to really drive home the point of perspective...This man is genius I love this channel sm

We're going to need a "perspectives" word count on this one, Thomas! 😅

This video was absolutely fantastic!

Your explanation of perspectives and Scorsese changing the focal point of the story has honestly really helped me appreciate killers of the flower moon even more

one of the best examples of subjective sound design is Jean-Marc Vallée directed HBO mini series Sharp Objects.

Thank you for the reference. Very fascinating breakdown and you've managed to explain a lot aspects of representation really well, that I'm trying to get across in my videos and work. You and Tom over at LSOO were major influences in me starting my channel. Love the Podcast as well. Ahéhee' (Thank you)

I would say that in that peak climax moment of the explosion, Nolan does maintain a complete subjective perspective, but throughout the beginning and rising conflict stages of the story, we got to see plenty of "subjective" objective perspectives of the fission reaction and more, like the spinning electrons above his bed, the stars collapsing, the implosion device firing from the inside, the colliding of neutrons with Uranium atoms in moments when they describe the chain reaction, but as the trinity explodes then it only gives us the subjective perspective to further weight the impact. Arguabley, like you mentioned about the scene with the applause after the bomb, we could still say that we got a subjective version of the objective shots, because its what Oppenheimer was seeing in his mind at that moment in time. Very curious and powerful storytelling in both methods though!

Can't wait til you hit 1 mil! This channel deserves to be seen by every cinephile!

Man, those silences looking at the script after saying a line are so relatable. The whole video is great.

So Thomas has just decided to make some of the most thought provoking, entertaining and informative on RU-vid. I'm not complaining!

This is the first Thomas Flight video I've watched. I really enjoyed it. Subbed.

I’ve always gotten these two confused but this is the most straightforward way I’ve heard it explained. Thanks bud!

WHAT a stellar video. Thank you so much.

Screenplays are all about the flow of information, and perspective is the strongest tool writers have in their arsenal to shape that flow. This video is a wonderful deep dive, and I'm glad that you included the final chapter - the perspective on perspectives, because everything we watch - a photo or video is definitely a tightly curated perspective. In that regards, as a filmmakers, I do firmly believe that our perspectives are what will differentiate human creators from the AI tools that will eventually come to create art! Good time to hone our perspectives :)

Wonderful video which has given me things to think about in the coming days, and I will watch "the curse"!

Your video essays are so thoughtfully written. I truly respect how you discuss the ways in which filmmaking techniques can make a real-life impact on people's lives, such as when you mentioned the male gaze and representation. Your channel is filled with beautifully substantial essays like this, thank you so much for sharing.

Excellent, insightful, penetrating video... Thanks for the perspective!

Loved when you zoomed out, I screamed "The Van Hoytl!"

Nice change of thumbnail. Had a good chuckle this morning

Brilliant!!!! Thanks for the great vid!

Srranger Things 4 uses perspective to work on the characters' feeling. That's why it is my favorite photograph from all the seasons

Great video and mindful perspective on...perspective

Really made me happy to see that Boy With Apple print. Eventually I'll live in a house again, and I'm definitely going to get myself one of those

This is a fantastic video. As a big fan of Michael Haneke I think about perspective often but it’s still hard to grasp fully, this was insightful.

I wasn’t blown away by the story of the killer but the technical aspects of the film are certainly well polished. Fincher is versatile he knows how to deliver a nuanced and subjective experience with each movie he makes and the killer was no different.

Hey Thomas, great video (as always!)! A suggestion or idea from my side, what would maybe increase the understanding for the topics you are highlighting in your videos. How about a quick note at the beginning or in the video description with a list of movies/series, that would be great to watch before watching your video? For this one for example Oppenheimer Barbie The Killer No country for old men Or more?

There is an idea from developmental psychology that is useful in thinking about the nature of subjective vs objective experience. In discussing our experiences, Robert Kegan points out that we can either be held captive by them, or "subject-to" our thoughts and experiences, or they can be the "object-of" of our thoughts as we experience them in a sort of out of body awareness (meta-awareness). In the "object-of" mode of experience, we manipulate our thoughts and experiences as if they were a physical object. But when we're "subject-to" them, we are just immersed in the grip of our thoughts and experiences. I love these dives into the psychology of film, keep them coming!

I would love to see a top 10 list of your favorite films this year Thomas

Great video 👏🏻

Great discussion thank you. To your semantic point, there's a book called Personal Knowledge by polymath Michael Polanyi which explains how subjective/tacit knowledge is just as valid as objective/empirical knowledge. The intro to the book gives a good summary of his thesis. Thx

I love how much we can learn about ectives

For the first half of this video I just kept thinking "is he going to talk about The Curse?" Called it!!

an interesting case study of cinematic sub/ob/narra might be Malick. Malick makes perspective itself the subject and object of his work. Malick uses both forms distinctly, technically which Thomas describes. Equally,Malick breaks down the division between sub and ob. Deployment of Heideggerian existentialism & temporality in his work does not deploy a singular perspective holistically within each singular ‘movie’, but blurs subject and object, so the movie object as representation takes a perspective of physical & metaphysical. So a spectrum is used within the film, but blurs this by going outside, beyond, the extreme ends of the spectrum, looping and joining the two ends again. There are many examples in his work, but technically, the Texan town where extras went about their business in ToL or actors not even aware who the star character might be in TRL...

Not sure quite how it fits in the conversation and I guess it ends in questions, but in some past discussions regarding film perspective, the subject of mimesis tended to be a part of it. That can be a broad topic, but in the specifics of film making I have heard it used as the ability to allow the audience to feel what a character feels/experiences through choices made in the technical (but not restricted to the technical) presentation (this is the idea of "showing" as opposed to "telling" here). The example I was first provided to explain it is Nolan's *Memento* (and pardon me I have not seen it in a while). The scenes of the film are presented in reverse chronological order. This is done so we (the audiences) can incompletely feel and experience the difficulties and disorientation of Leonard's anterograde amnesia. In this case, the narrative presentation mimics Leonard's condition so we are given some insight into his extremely complex subjectivity, but not in this instance by a subjective point of view from the lens (though that may occur in this film, too... I haven't seen it recently). Also, in the film *Shiva Baby* most of the perspective is subjective to/from Danielle from the lens. As we follow her through the shiva, most of the shots are close-ups on Danielle when she is in conversations that for a variety of reasons make her uncomfortable. Though the close-ups include perspectives from her eyes of the people in these conversations, all these close-ups over the duration of the film, along with different lens choices (beyond my technical knowledge and understanding) create a deep feeling of claustrophobia and scrutiny for the audience that, again, mimics Danielle's subjective experience for the audience partly through framing. While this seems a subjective perspective, our proximity to Danielle and our scrutiny of her character add to her feelings, because we, behind the fourth wall, are pressed near her by the camera like the other people in the conversations and are scrutinizing her character, like the other people in the conversations. Perspective is important for reasons that Thomas explains very well (imo). But I guess my question is: How is the conversation altered when the subject of perspective isn't one just of a spectrum between subjective and objective? What if this spectrum is the X axis of an X/Y plane where the Y axis is a spectrum of mimesis and diegesis? I don't have answers myself here. Mimesis, as I understand it relative to film and try to relate above, and subjective could be equivalents, but doesn't it seem that *Memento* and Seligman's *Shiva Baby* refute that idea? If perspective in film is subject to this broader plane, then is its ability to influence audience's perspective more powerful or less, and how intentional can all of this be? Again, I am asking questions as I puzzle through this and try to articulate it. Any constructive insight would be appreciated. Thanks

"...a cinephile looking to better understand what you're watching" I would LOVE a rundown on "how to understand what you're watching" from your perspective (heh). I'm also a patron so if that makes more sense to have over there, so be it ;)

thank you man ❤❤❤❤

Are you still gonna post on cinema of meaning? It's been the highlight of my week and it'd be great if we could get an update

Hey homie, we met once in downtown Asheville while getting coffee. Just want to take some time out of my day to say how much I appreciate your work. Very interesting and enlightening as well as relaxing. Thank you.

What a noble sacrifice, saying "objective", "subjective" and "perspective" this many times for a RU-vid video, I hope the semantic satiation by the time you were done recording was worth it, you may have mentally scarred yourself...

Ooh, Quiet Girl discourse! I love it, more please.

Kept thinking about 'Public Opinion' by Walter Lippmann as I was watching this - great book on this topic from the perspective of politics rather than cinema

this brotha doesn't miss a video

Great video.

I'd love to see you do a video about Werner Herzog's narrative fiction films, particularly "Even Dwarfs Started Small" and "Heart of Glass." I'm in awe of Herzog's/his cinematographers' gift for many-layered and powerfully geometric compositions, but my knowledge of filmmaking techniques is very limited so it'd be great to see an analysis by a critic whose opinions are actually informed.

While I do agree that the detonation scene in oppenheimer is one of the best in the film I think that it ultimately undermines the finale of the film. The scene in Oppenheimer is so good because it is all about the anticipation the scene is more about whether or not something will go wrong. So when the bomb finally goes off we experience relief and then awe as the ethereal music plays. As you said this might very well be how oppenheimer felt at that time. However later in the film he starts to change his mind about the bomb. The audience (or at least me) might feel conflicted because we have only seen it through this subjective lens of relief and awe. When taking david lynch's approach it feels terrifying and I could see why Oppenheimer would change his mind. As Oppenheimers perspective changes it might have been better to recontextualize the explosion from this more objective perspective

already know this video about to be peak before watching it.

Great video! Also did I miss something, what happened to the Cinema of Meaning podcast?

Great video! And random, but where did you get your office chair?

Great video

I love your videos 😃❤️❤️

you really blew my mind with the 3 cups

We are all human, therefore we can all understand and judge, once informed, the value of a perspective and be right to some degree.

10 years later I still get chills from this

A thorough and deep dive into the various subjective/objective perspectives in filmmaking - thanks for that! 🙏I couldn't help but chuckle, though, when it gets to the video where you describe the moment when Barbie wakes up 'to reality, the fakeness of the corporately constructed world just slips away and you see life kind of as it really is' in what is essentially a massive Barbie/Mattel advert. I wonder how many times you said 'perspective'?

Don‘t forget, there is also a female gaze in movies. Mostly more in narratives than the male gaze. One example is still presented in this video. It is the Barbiemovie. Another example is the movie from 1960’s Hitchcock “The Birds“, when the female protagonist follows the men on boat. Here also a visual example. Interesting, that nobody is talking about.

Godzilla 2014 was another movie that showed off subjective perspective perfectly!

It's at almost perfect video. It lacks a littlle mention to Citizen Kane!

A classic example of how social media junk can hype your choices, I didnt even make it through either of these, I think I made it through 10minutes of barbie its the end of the year and Ive still got to watch the rest of it meanwhile Im obsessed with SALTBURN.

The movie Rashōmon from Akira Kurosawa, is an exemple of different perspectives of the same incident.

Anyone notice the microphone just pop into existence? 10:14

Well, it would appear that it's all, in fact, about perspective.

Drinking game!: One shot of Tequila every time Thomas says perspective!