182 Moving Images: Making Movies, Understanding Mediaby budgets in the many millions of dollars. Th ere are also well-established
traditions of fi lmmaking that exist almost entirely outside of the mainstream
theatrical distribution chains that crisscross the United States and the globe.
Jon Jost’s fi lmography has been created through personal investment and
the support of fi lm foundations and public funding. During his long career,
he has made innovative and provocative fi lms like Plain Talk and Common
Sense (Uncommon Senses) (1987) and Th e Bed You Sleep In (1993) with a
minimal crew or even alone, striving to achieve the technical qualities he
desires while working with equipment and processes accessible within small
budgets. With the advent of digital formats, he and many fi lmmakers who
lack corporate funding are now choosing to shoot digitally.
Choices such as those made by Jost are representative of fi lmmakers whose
styles run counter to established norms, whether in narrative or non-narrative
formats (discussed in the next section). Similar choices for independence
can be seen in the implementation of highly mainstream productions as well.
Robert Rodriguez created an in-house production studio aft er he built on
the phenomenal success of his student fi lm El Mariachi (1992). Rodriguez
has taken full advantage of digital advances in fi lmmaking to control a wide
variety of aspects of production for his fi lms such as the Spy Kids series.Diverse Forms and Content across the World
Many of the people making movies today work in a variety of media. Like
many directors today, Michel Gondry began fi lmmaking during his youth, byFigure 5-15 Thought-
provoking use of moving
images in a frame from
Plain Talk and Common
Sense (Uncommon Senses).
(Courtesy of Jon Jost)Copyright 2010 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).