Discussion on Mission to Earth

1. digital cinema is very different from traditional filmmaking in a tramendous way. Take

Mission to Earth(2005) as an example. It's a work of soft cinema which, explained by Lev

Manovich,  is "a 'cinema' in which human subjectivity and the variable choices made by custom

software combine to create films that can run infinitely without ever exactly repeating the same

image sequences, screen layouts and narratives"1. So that the film directly shows the influence

of online film clips by putting different clips simultaneously,which was impossible in the

traditional filmmaking history not only because of inmature techniques but also because that

without  online video watching webside such as youtube, audience can hardly follow the screen

 which contains 3 or 4 video windows at a same time. Besides, the allegory meaning of the

story makes it much more meaningful than traditional films which only wanted to create

fantasies.


2. Although digetal cinema is a new kind of art, it has its root in different art forms which exist

before. Like in Mission to Earth,  the way it is presenting remind us of collage, only those

different still pictures have been replaced by videos. This kind of way actually correspond to

today's websites we used a lot. Those website such as BBC news website have different 

information or small vidoe windows just like the film.

3. The construction of the film is also very unique and has a great difference with traditional

ones. It is not continuity film like traditional ones. Its narrative is cut into fragments by the stops,

and there is no one story but only some details of daily life. In the case of its isolation theme, it

achieve it quite well. It makes the male narrator like a voice diary of the woman.


Anyway, I don't feel like the film. But it did a good work at experimental film.



1:Lev Manovich, soft cinema, http://softcinema.net/?reload, 2005