Are Films Types?

John Dilworth

 

January 12, 2003

 

Noel Carroll has proposed an account of the ontology of film according to which films are types, whose tokens include both 'templates' such as a film print or videotape, and individual film performances or showings generated from such token templates. [1]  

This type view might seem to be a natural, or even unavoidable, basic position on the ontology of film.  However, I shall attempt to show that that it is vulnerable to a certain kind of counter-example which I shall present.  This vulnerability arises because of a logical feature of types, namely that there could not be a single token that was simultaneously a token of two distinct types of the same general kind.  For example, if dogs and cows are two distinct types of animal, then there could not be a single animal that was both a dog and a cow.  And similarly, if films are types, then there could not be a single film token, such as an individual template film print, that was simultaneously a token of two distinct films. 

But my counter-example will involve just such a case, in which two distinct films are associated with a single physical template, which therefore could not be a token of both distinct films considered as types.  Here is the counter-example.  

I.  THE COUNTER-EXAMPLE

My example concerns the making of two films. Two directors Leslie and Steve are independently approached by a scriptwriter Carla, who pitches a different script idea to each.  Leslie's film, to be called 'Greed', would be about a cold-hearted financier whose only interest is in money, who ruins the lives of all around her in her efforts to accumulate more wealth; on the other hand, Steve's film, to be called 'Sacrifice', is to be a story about a woman driven to great financial success by a desperate need to love and help those about her.

Both Leslie and Steve are sold on the different script-ideas presented to them by Carla, but there is a potentially crippling practical difficulty: neither can afford to make his or her film, since the cost of hiring Carla to write it, plus of hiring actors, studio technicians etc is for both Steve and Leslie almost twice the amount that each could raise from backers or other sources to pay for their respective films.

Well, desperate people will resort to desperate remedies.  One of the three of them, it doesn't matter who, comes up with the following unconventional solution to their dilemma.  To start with, Leslie and Steve will each hire Carla to write their respective films for them, but to save costs Carla will write the two scripts with a large amount of overlap between them.  Specifically, all of the characters, situations and dialog will be identical in each - they will differ only in stage directions and other materials explaining to the actors each director's different point of view on the characters etc.  Thus Carla has to very carefully write the two scripts in such a way that each of the characters, incidents and dialog in them is susceptable to both of the different interpretations she originally pitched to Leslie and Steve.

Is this possible?  Yes it is, because human actions are subject to different interpretations.  What Leslie sees as selfish, acquisitive behavior in the leading character (who of course could only be named 'Jana', for two-faced reasons) could be viewed by Steve as selfless behavior done with its only object being to benefit others.  Of course, not anything that Carla writes is susceptable to both interpretations, and as a result of this Steve and Leslie are often at odds with each other.  Hence they suffer through many awkward and even acrimonious sessions with Carla in an attempt to arrive at a single line of dialog in the two scripts which each can accept as embodying their differing overall conceptions of their respective films.

Once the scripts are finished, the next stage of their unconventional agreement must be embarked on.  To save costs Steve and Leslie have also agreed that they will use the same actors, studio technical facilities and shooting schedules for each of their films, with Carla serving as casting director and liason with the studio for each of the films.

By now Leslie and Steve are hardly talking to each other, given their divergent artistic conceptions and the great difficulties under which they are working, so the burden falls on Carla to see that everything is brought about in a manner which is satisfactory to each of them.  As casting director for both films she has to audition actors and explain to them the uniquely confining working conditions, under which (we recall) each has to satisfy not just one but two separate film directors, each of whom has divergent conceptions of what kind of human character each line of dialog in the two scripts is to reveal and develop.

After screening out those actors who will not agree to work under these conditions, or who fail the initial auditions or screentests, Carla then presents each surviving candidate actor separately to Steve and Leslie for their respective approval.  Naturally, each will approve an actor only if convinced he or she gives an effective portrayal of the character in each of their respective films. Hence many candidates are turned down by one or both of Leslie and Steve, with the result that they are rejected altogether.   Only when both Steve and Leslie are independently satisfied with an actor's portrayal of a role in each's respective film is he or she hired by each director to play each of their respective roles.

Once casting for each film is completed, the (if possible) even more awkward combined shooting sessions are embarked upon.  By this stage Carla has to really crack the whip over Leslie and Steve, to force them to come to agreement on the specifics of the shooting schedule for each film, the order of the scenes, technical and interpretive matters of lighting arrangements and camera angles, and so on.

But even with these prior arrangements finally ironed out, the actual shooting sessions often turn out to be abortive, since of course each director has veto power over any session which does not individually satisfy each of them as properly carrying out their individual artistic intentions for that shooting session as part of each's respective film.  Hence many retakes of scenes are often necessary before both directors are satisfied (both on the film set itself and after viewing the filmed outtakes from these sessions) with their adequacy for her or his own artistic purposes.

The final artistic battles between Steve and Leslie take place in the cutting room.  Originally each director had intended to edit his or her own film from the surviving film stock produced from those shooting sessions which were jointly acceptable.  However, after initial trials both Leslie and Steve are quickly convinced that they lack many of the necessary but rare skills required to convincingly edit each of their films.  They realize that each needs to hire a professional film editor with a proven artistic track record to complete each of the two films.

However, here as before, financial constraints force them to economize and hire a single film editor Tom to complete both films.  But what is worse, because of his great reputation Tom’s  time is extremely expensive, and so as before both directors are forced to use the very same extremely confining joint-approval techniques in making use of Tom’s services.  They are forced to individually work with Tom in a way similar to that in which each originally worked with Carla in producing the script: each individual segment or scene edited by Tom for each of them must be approved by each of Steve and Leslie for their own separate artistic purposes before it is allowed to remain in either's final edited film, as spliced together in a single length of film by Tom.

A final point: since neither director wants his, or her, film to be associated with the name of the other director (since, above all, they wish to avoid the accusation that they have merely succeeded in producing a jointly directed single film), they agree that neither of their names will appear on the screen in the film credits.  And for the same reason they agree that the titles for their respective films will also be omitted from the on-screen credits.  For naturally Leslie does not want the audience to be informed onscreen that they are watching Steve's film 'Sacrifice', for she intends that they should instead be watching her film 'Greed'; while, as one might expect, Steve has similarly strong views about potential onscreen confusion for the audience with respect to his own film. [2]

The outcome of these processes is a single physical spliced length of film which 'embodies' [3] two distinct, separate films ('Greed' and 'Sacrifice'). Thus ends the counter-example.

To conclude this section, I claim that if this example really does show what it seems to, then we already have a conclusive refutation of the view that films are types.  Because if Tom’s final, single spliced length of film is indeed a single putative token both of Steve's film 'Greed' and of Leslie's distinct film 'Sacrifice', then those distinct films cannot be types, for the purely logical reasons already given.

II. DEFENSE OF THE COUNTER-EXAMPLE

Next, here are some arguments supporting the genuineness of the example.  There are two parts to this discussion: first, did each director indeed produce a genuine film?  And second, if the film or films are genuine, are they also distinct films?

As to the genuineness of each film, it seems undeniable that, if the single, spliced master print produced by Steve was exhibited to audiences, they would then agree that they are at least watching a film.  And surely the film that they are watching could only be Leslie's film 'Greed', or Steve's film 'Sacrifice', or both simultaneously, since there are no other directors involved in the relevant project.  Thus Leslie and Steve can at least be credited with each having produced a genuine film, whether individually or jointly, that is, whether or not their films are distinct films.

To continue, here are some arguments for the distinctness of the two films 'Greed' and 'Sacrifice'.

First, each film was directed by a different film director using different plot ideas; recall that Leslie's film 'Greed', is about a cold-hearted financier whose only interest is in money, and who ruins the lives of all around her in her efforts to accumulate more wealth; while on the other hand, Steve's film 'Sacrifice', is a story about a woman driven to great financial success by a desperate need to love and help those about her. [4]

Second, it is not inconceivable that the lead actor in each film might, in the case of Leslie's film 'Greed',  win an Oscar for her brilliant, convincing portrayal of the main character's single-minded egotism,  whereas in Steve's film 'Sacrifice' she might generally be condemmed for her shallow, unconvincing portrayal of a woman desperately trying to help those around her.  Indeed, arguably any greater success in her portrayal in one film is bound to correlate with some lesser success in her different portrayal in the other film, given the divergent interpretations given to the two characters by each director. 

Thus, arguably the distinctness of the two films is a simple matter of logic: the lead actor's portrayals could not both be convincing and unconvincing unless they were portrayals of distinct characters, in films which are themselves distinct because of (among other things) the differing underlying intentions of the two directors with respect to those two characters. [5]

And third, there is an equally clinching, though perhaps more technical, reason as to why the two films must be distinct.  It is generally agreed that the title of an artwork plays an integral part  in characterizing the aesthetic qualities of any artwork--so much so, that even two otherwise identical artworks must be distinct if they happen to have different titles, as has been convincingly argued for by Jerrold Levinson in the case of musical works. [6]   But in the present case, the two films in question--Leslie's film 'Greed' and Steve's film 'Sacrifice'--do indeed have distinct titles, [7] which graphically sum up each director's differing plot ideas, and hence which films must be aesthetically, and hence ontologically, distinct works.  Indeed, arguably this point alone is sufficient to conclusively refute any attempts to explain away the current two-film case as really a case of a single, jointly directed film.   

III. IS THIS AN ISOLATED COUNTER-EXAMPLE?

As a last desperate defense of the type view of films, it might be claimed that my counter-example is an isolated special case, which does not prove that films in general cannot be types. But this desperate expedient can also be refuted, as follows.  All that is necessary is to show that either film could have been produced without the other, so that it is a merely contingent fact about each film that it was causally produced in the unusual manner described: thus there is nothing logically or ontologically unusual about either film as such, and so the counter-example does refute the type view for films in general.

The basis of my refutation is that the very same single spliced master length of film discussed above could have been arrived at by a series of causal processes which involved the shooting of only one of the relevant films--such as Leslie's film 'Greed'.

For there are of course many ways in which the actual causal sequence could have been different, and yet still have been physically the same causal sequence which produced Leslie's film.  For example, one of the scenes which was shot on a Tuesday might have been shot on a Wednesday instead. (A trivial causal difference.)  Another scene might have been produced as the result of the first attempted shooting of a given technically difficult scene, instead of what was in actuality the nineteenth attempt at that scene (a less trivial causal difference.)

But most importantly for our purposes, the particular causal chain which produced Leslie's film might not have involved Steve's film-making at all, nor any of the (admittedly somewhat mind-boggling) complications resulting from his concurrent attempts to make his film while Leslie was making hers.  It seems undeniable that Leslie could have made exactly the same directorial decisions regarding her script, casting, scene-shooting and final cutting decisions that she did even if Steve and any activities of his had played no causal part whatever in her film-making.

Indeed, not only could Leslie have done this (in some abstract empirical sense, such as that her doing so would not have been incompatible with any known physical laws), but we have good evidence that it is a realistic artistic possibility that she would have done this, assuming that her general artistic intentions were the same in each case.  For at each and every stage in the film-making process Leslie freely made the artistic decisions that she did, even though she could have made different ones if she had wanted to.  As a competent, serious artist Leslie would not have allowed her overall artistic purposes to be deflected or compromised by any of the difficult practical hurdles or stumbling-blocks which are part of the environment in which every artist must work - including those unusual difficulties which arose because of Steve's film-making activities.  Hence there is no reason to think she would have proceeded differently, even if Steve's activities had been causally absent from her film-making.

The upshot of this discussion is that Leslie's film is indeed logically independent from that of Steve, because it is a realistic possibility that she could have, and would have, made the same film, with the same overall artistic intentions, even if Steve had played no causal part whatever in her film-making. And of course a similar line of argument to the above, as applied to Steve's film 'Sacrifice' would also establish its artistic independence or distinctness from Leslie's film 'Greed'.  Thus, in conclusion, there is nothing logically or ontologically unusual about either film, and hence our refutation of the type view of films in the present case results in its demise for films in general. [8]

 

 

 
Notes