ART AND THE VACUUM

Art is not made in a vacuum.

Whether it is literature, music, watercolour, oils or photography, all art is affected by what came before it and also the social context it was created in; it is both action and reaction. The best art not only has something to say for itself but is a comment on its social context and the world around it, and is also informed by its peers and predecessors.

Whether consciously or not, the world of the creative artist has a major impact on his work, from social and political concerns to his influences and preferences. Even his personal circumstances all have an effect on what is created, both as a reaction to his world, and as a direct consequence of who and where he is.

And perhaps nowhere can this be seen as acutely as in the world of film and film-makers.

Because of the visual and collaborative nature of film making it is perhaps easier to see how the circumstances of creating this art have affected the content and methodology than it would be if we looked at an artist in his studio, or a writer sitting at his desk. With film, so many factors and outside influences affect the final product that we can more easily see how the end product was reached.

Except for the likes of Cecil B. Demille, budgetary constraints and the interference and influence of the studios and their attendant executives have always affected what is filmed and how it is filmed. With very little money or facilities one cannot produce a “Star Wars” on the weekends.

One can, however, make something fairly similar to “Friday The 13^th”.

On a practical level, one does not have easy access to special effects facilities, soundstages, production designers, construction crews, casts of thousands, costume and wardrobe departments, creature workshops, spaceships or alien worlds, or the means to create facsimiles thereof. What one does almost certainly have access to is a group of friends and collaborators, houses and homes, open woodlands and countryside, “prosumer” camera and editing equipment and cheap fake blood.

There is no use writing a complex effects sequence relying on digital trickery, stop motion and compositing if those means are not open to you. Making a virtue out of the limitations before you is something that when done smartly grabs the attention of fans and critics alike, as we will see from the three films and their case-histories that I shall concentrate on here; Sam Raimi’s “The Evil Dead” (1981), Daniel Myrick & Eduardo Sanchez’ “The Blair Witch Project” (1999) and Orel Peli’s “Paranormal Activity” (2009).

There is something inherently “chicken and egg” about these films and the low-budget horror movie in particular; does the budget affect the product or does the product affect the budget?

This is something I shall investigate in more detail later.

Of course, there is much more going on within these movies than their budgetary limitations; they are products of their influences and the movies that came before them; they are products of the technology that made them and that feeds into and shapes the narrative; and they are products of, and reactions to, the times and society they were made in. They reflect and comment upon the state of the world in microcosm and macrocosm at that time, and so provide, in the way that art does, a unique snapshot of the world that shaped them.