AccentedCinema

[Weekly Update] July 19, 2021

Added 2021-07-19 06:05:00 +0000 UTC

Sorry for the lack of updates here and on social media. Because of all the sponsor mix ups and delays, I've been feeling the stress lately. I decided to take things slower than usual. Rest assured, the two videos are still coming this month.

CHANNEL UPDATE

Not the next video, but the video after that is currently being edited. Yes, my schedule is this messed up. It's about halfway done and should be able to go live by the end of the week!
It'll be a video about my first impression on the cinema of India. It won't be the most analytic of videos, but I hope it'll be fun for you. And if you are from India, I hope it's not that painful lol.
Eat Drink Man Woman is still pending. Work should resume this Thursday or so.
Script for both videos will be uploaded tomorrow. I promise this time.

MEDIA CHAT

So, to de-stress a bit, I watched Loki... And did not like it.
It has some nice moments. It's clear the writers and director were trying to write witty dialogues and focus more on the battle of the mind. But not every moment is successful.
Most conversations are too shallow and straight forward, in both visual and subtext. It's almost always two people sitting down, saying what they mean. For a TV show featuring tricksters and conspiracies, people are always surprisingly honest.
The only really fun moment for me is when the two leads are hate flirting on a train. Two narcissist giving each other compliments. It's the subtext and double meanings that makes a conversation fun. But those moments are few and far between.
But here is the thing: This show isn't for me. Or rather, TV show by its nature just isn't for me.
I grew up watching TV shows from all sorts of places: Hong Kong, Taiwan, Mainland, Japan, and American. And today, I want to share my thought on different TV formats.
For majority of Chinese speaking regions in Asia, TV shows are essentially one 20 to 40 hours long movies. Chinese TV shows don't have natural story end points or start points. Sometimes, and episode would even end in the middle of a scene, and the scene would continue in the next episode.
In Mainland, this is likely due to the lack of TV show length standard. In Mainland, multiple TV stations can purchase the right to broadcast the same TV show, at the same time, even. And since each station has a slightly different commercial schedule, they would edit things down accordingly.
In other words, chasing after any sort of cohesive ending is a fool's errant.
It can get pretty annoying if you aren't used to this sort of format. But at least it doesn't dramatically affects a show's quality. It does make it very binge friendly. In fact, a lot of Chinese TV stations would play a TV show back to back to back for something like 12 hours straight from morning to noon.
For American TV shows, however, or at least the bigger budget ones, cliffhanger format is used very frequently.
This is when you end an episode moments before disaster, and start and episode watching the hero resolve this disaster. This format is also commonly used by comic book writers.
This is without a doubt my absolute least favourite format, as it rewards high promise, and low payout. This sort of continuous promises of something big while never living up to what it promises is the reason a lot of shows ended badly, from Lost, to Sherlock.
I know Sherlock isn't American, but the point still stands.
The fact that a lot of American TV shows comes in seasons, with no definitive endings in sight is also another thing I don't enjoy. I prefer stories with a tight and continuous arc. Without knowing when you have to reach the goal, the arc can never be set. That's why a lot of TV shows have characters going in loops.
This is one thing Loki also suffers from, as it is the only one that didn't have a definitive ending, unlike WandaVision and FatWS.
I guess that's why Japanese TV shows are the only format I enjoy. Just like Chinese TV, Japanese TV shows generally don't have seasons. Each TV show is filmed as a complete package.
However, Japanese shows are usually in an episodic format. Meaning each episode is also a self-contained story. It is narratively tight and complete.
For example, if it's a TV show about a prosecutor, each episode would be a single prosecution case. While those are resolved every episode, the prosecutor would also have some kind of personal drama that spans the entire series.
Which, by the way, are usually something like 8 to 10 episodes. I love the short length.
This format ensures every story has a definitive ending, and every journey is complete. It attracts you by paying off, instead of empty promises.
However, this format does mean that only a small portion of each episode is dedicated to the main character's long term story. As result, Japanese TV shows generally employs much more cartoonish characters, with exaggerated personalities, to compensate with the lack of time for deeper character moments.
This also makes Japanese TV shows kinda... same-y. I guess that's why sequels to a series are so rare. Rarely do I have an urge to want more, after I finished one series.