Kyleigh Johnson

August 29, 2023

FILM 270-02

The first thing that Steven Soderbergh talks about is his experience on his flight to get to
the film festival he is speaking at. He says that in this day in age we can’t do anything without
having a “soundtrack” he says no matter where we are or what we are doing music is always
being played in the background and we never really go anywhere without it. He then talks about
this man that he saw on the plane. He explains how the man had a bunch of different action
movies downloaded onto his tablet and throughout the flight he went through almost all the
movies skipping through the plot and just watching the action scenes. This really made
Soderbergh think about the people of this time. Soderbergh thinks that art is inevitable because
we are species that is driven by narrative. We need art to make since of all the chaos that we live
in every day. Art can be transformative and help us not feel alone in situations and can even be
problem solving in an elegant way.
When Soderbergh is explaining the difference between movies and cinema he says that a
movie is something that you see while cinema is something that is made. It doesn’t have
anything to do with where the screen is or what kind. He says it could even be a commercial.
Cienma to him is an approach in which everything matters, the opposite of generic because it is
not made by a company or the audience. It is made by the film maker and if the film maker were
not to make it then it would simply not exist. Soderbergh says that at this point in movie making
there are very fewer and fewer executives who know and love movies that are producing them.
People like this are deciding what movies directors are allowed to make. Studios decide what
movies are getting made based on what travels best, making a movie starts at 30 million and it
only goes up from there and then you have to think about if you are actually going to get that
money back.
Listening to Steven Soderbergh talk really made think about things that have never really
crossed my mind. The first being that I didn’t even know there was a difference between cinema
and movies. I thought that they were the same thing one was just a fancier way of saying movie.
He really made me think about the behind the scenes of movie making and who is producing the
things that I am watching on my screen. I didn’t think that I had seen any of his movies but it
turns out that I have seen his Magic Movies. Sadly those are the only films I have seen by him
but after watching this video and seeing his passion for his carer I will definitely watch more by
him.