In order that’s the way you do an consuming scene! How TikTok swallowed the flicks | Films
F.ilm TikTok gives the film an energy explosion, a performative and democratized version of Cinephilia that celebrates, imitates, teases, lip-syncs, mashes and mocks the film – but constantly rubs against it. Susan Sontag in Against Interpretation called for a rich, intuitive type of criticism that celebrates and reproduces the sensual impact of art, rather than imposing a cool pedagogical analysis. I think she would have loved movie TikTok. And it did so in just a few short years, driven by people under the age of 25.
Aside from everything else, Film TikTok is potentially undermining one of the most fundamental tenets of cinema: that the screen must be in the “landscape” style, since everything else looks amateurish and fake. British filmmaker Charlie Shackleton recently spoke about mentoring a group of young Australian critics and realizing how immersed in the TikTok language they are: when asked to take a picture of them on his cell phone, he recalls his annoyance at turning it sideways – “Like a fucking Lumiere brother!”
Jean-Luc Godard collaged the films in his epic essay project: Histoire (s) du Cinéma. And film TikTok does something similar, but without the noticeable cultural weight and weight. It appropriates constituent elements and scenes and then mixes them up again or cuts in new silly reenactments. This juxtaposition is a critical act. It is overwhelmingly driven by humor and comedy, and by the way, Film TikTok loves the doppelganger’s main TikTok trope – the shot-back-shot of the same people speaking to themselves as different characters, slightly from below added to underline the absurdity.
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People always fake movies, inevitably Wes Anderson, but I like the videos that approach the movies from a more slanted angle. Illeleana Karis has a fascinating report in which she pastiches film tropes, but creates her own content, the supposedly critical purpose of which is not immediately obvious: her microfilm I Am the Girl in Red is strangely captivating. It is something? A criticism of movie trailers? The idea of a single white woman? I don’t know, but it’s great. In another video, she cuts herself into a scene in Greta Gerwig’s Little Women so that she can be the one who rejects a desperate Timothée Chalamet.
Hunter Clark is one of the biggest film influencers on TikTok and arguably one of the most important film critics in the world, with 2 million followers for his Hidden Movie Details account, in which he does nothing but pick a detail from a film and a show You missed a little something. His geeky little insights get under your skin and his videos are absolutely addicting and tell you things you didn’t know before. His about the “Hunnybunny” scene at the beginning of Pulp Fiction was an eye opener.
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Probably my favorite person on TikTok is David Ma. He is Ad Director and “Food Artist” who breaks down his 1 million followers into how food advertising is done – but also shows the secrets behind every other feature film and shows how effects are invented in the films. He is brilliant at “food acting” and shows that whenever someone is shown chewing, a cut is made before swallowing – so the actor can spit the food into a bucket. Actors cannot be expected to eat one by one or they will feel sick.
He also shows how “mirror” scenes are created so that the camera team is not caught in the reflection: A dummy image of the set and the characters is created with body doubles. Linda Hamilton of the Terminator was shown opposite her twin sister for one such scene.
And – to come back to Pulp Fiction – it shows the machinery that “chomp” burgers create for the Travolta / Thurman dance scene: a dozen different burgers that are bitten out with one set of metal jaws so that the food scene achieves continuity through many different takes will.
With its boldness, usability and cheek, the film TikTok puts fun again under criticism.
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