Jawaad Ahmad Khan

It’s amazing how far we’ve come.

Assalamu Alaikum (Peace be with you) and get ready for the ride. However, this is a ride for your mind, so that means that people that the weak of heart, have a history of high blood pressure, are prone to heart attack, pregnant women, and even you youngster who is just an inch too short for the Hulk, strap yourselves in.

Okay, so this is primarily going to deal with the technology used in the area of film. I find that throughout the years, the advancement of the quality of the actual picture and footage has one purpose. Basically, we’re trying to recreate life as amazing as it really is. High definition is just to get the best quality picture you can of a shot. All these 3D Applications and animation software are only made with the intention of trying to make the most realistic animation they can, emulating real humans (unless the script dictates otherwise). Back in the day, we began with everything black and white (literally and figuratively). As my Journalism teacher described it, movies began with the old spaghetti-westerns (anyone know why they’re named spaghetti?) where the good guy wore a white hat and the bad guy wore a black hat. However, when describing the new movie The Dark Knight, he said that it seems that everyone is wearing gray hats. However, that’s another topic different from what I’m trying to get across.

Today, we have so much technology with editing programs, 3D compositors, steadicams, external microphones, histograms, white balances, manual focusing, dollies, high definition, de-interlaced, 3-way color correctors, 720p, 1080i, 24p, 60i, an all the other terms in my limited film vocabulary (I don’t even know what some of those are), and all they’re trying to do is imitate how we regularly see. When a person is shown on film, we try to color correct them and record in the highest resolution we possibly can with as many frames per second and capture the audio so crystal-ly clear, ALL JUST TO RE ENACT, SO PRECISELY, WHAT THAT PERSON WAS DOING ON FILM. We want it to look natural, we want it to sound natural, we want the audience to not be able to tell the difference between the person on film and the person in reality.

It’s like that long-misunderstood oxy-moron: act natural. When you’re acting you’re not in a natural state, you’re in a different state, trying to be someone else. A natural state would just to be yourself. So all this film is doing is acting naturally. It can never be natural, it can only emulate, imitate, and act natural.

Now to get a bit deeper and bring some religion into this. In a way, we are trying to re-create the image of people themselves. Emphasis on re-create. It may sound like caveman’s sentence turned cliche moral but: Man is trying to create man. Man is trying to copy Allah (God) in his creation of man. He wants to have the same power that Allah (God) has to create man. Some people use all this technology as a means of trying to achieve that goal. I’m not saying that’s the purpose people are making films. I’m just saying that this is a theory that in the underlying surface, without even the person doing it noticing that they’re doing it, it’s an age-old goal that man has had: to emulate and be God. Let’s look at Musa (Prophet in Islam, a.k.a. Moses) with Fir’aun (Pharaoh). Fir’aun (Pharaoh) wanted to be God. He claimed he was a God. He claimed that he took life when he killed and he could give life by sparing people. However, he couldn’t fashion the entire biological makeup of the human body from clay. Hitler wanted power. He basically wanted to rule the world. He wanted to be Allah (God), so he could have more power than any before him or after him. Kings in the past have claimed rights over others and claimed to be Gods. Rulers would use divine right (right from God to rule) to justify hostile takeovers. My point is, all of those people failed.

As filmmakers, we must first realize what our underlying purpose is and secondly realize that it is an impossible goal. However, Ihsaan plays a big part in this. Ihsaan is a concept in Islam which is translated into ‘excellence.’ However, Islamic words are more like concepts and are hard to translate into one English word. It seems I’ve gotten a bit off-topic (or right-on-topic) so I’ll conclude below with the explanation of Ihsaan:

Ihsaan is the professionalism, the excellence, the magnificence that we all should demonstrate in whatever we do. It is an amazing state of our work in which we take pride in (but not so much as to become arrogant). As filmmakers, we must take this Islamic concept of Ihsaan. As a Muslim, I try my best to follow this principle. In school, I always try my best. If you are given a task which seems foreign to you or you are not good at, strive for Ihsaan (which really, in essence, is perfection) and you will have done all you can do. Doing our best while still knowing our boundaries is the balance that creates success in this world. (You’ll have to study deeper into Islam if you want to know what brings success in the hearafter).

Assalamu Alaikum (Peace be with you)

~A voice for silent thoughts, in a time of loud ignorance

~JawaadAhmadKhan