The very mention of the words ‘theory’ and ‘practice’ in close proximity tends to produce an ossification of the mind, at least for those who have seen the terms bandied about for a few decades. Their dyadic invocation implies that they belong together in some way and yet our teaching institutions, from which this invocation most commonly comes, seldom integrate the two terms in any meaningful way. Those who believe there is a necessary linkage between theory and practice have only occasionally devised an institutional frame within which this idea can take root. What replaces it most often is what we might call ‘doxa’, received wisdom, opinion, or, in the type of phraseology that actual occurs, ‘This is how we do things here.’ The ‘doing’ may be that of critical analysis and conceptual framing or of actual film production, but within these domains there is a customary form and for these two practices that form remains, to this day, strongly segregated.
Why then does the idea of an integration of theory and practice retain its aura? Is it that of a utopian ideal, a moral compass, a specific way of doing theory and making films; is it the Ideal Form most fitting to the university or college setting? The latter seemed to fuel the initial integrative impulse as film studies gained a foothold in the academy as a humanities rather than social science or art studio subject. Just as a novelist, whose formation included the study of literature, would be expected to know the tradition within which she works and be able to locate her own work within it, so the filmmaker, whose training included a range of humanities-based courses in history, criticism and theory, would be expected to possess knowledge of the cinematic tradition within which she works. This ability to describe a conceptual location for one’s work, and, in the best of all possible worlds, apply some aspects of what film studies imparted to the actual making of individual films, would distinguish the university graduate from those who rise through the ranks along the path of the craftsman or artisan apprentice. The graduates’ awareness if not their practice would be informed by a conscious, critical familiarity with their chosen medium. They would be aware of critical methodologies and theoretical debates; they would know how to contextualise and theorise, whether these skills entered into their work directly or not. They would be well-rounded in a classic sense and we would all be better for it.
However noble or even correct this argument might be, the simple fact is that it has not prevailed. Most film students do gain knowledge of film history and criticism, if not theory, but those who aim themselves at a career as filmmakers generally see this as a background field against which their filmmaking practice stands out, with a fairly high degree of separation. Unlike deep focus cinematography as a narrative principle, where foreground and background action interrelate, it is more as if film study and film production occupy very distinct conceptual planes that share a certain contiguity but also maintain a sharp separation.
In many ways, given the tendency toward specialisation and division of labour that informs the university as much as the rest of society, this is not entirely surprising. Introductory level courses lead to more advanced courses in more specialised areas of the general field. From a basic intro a student might go on to a course in a genre or national cinema, in studies, and to a course in lighting or post-production sound, in production. Rare is the introduction to film that couples screenwriting and film editing assignments with critical essays and rarer still advanced courses that expressly dwell on the practice of theory or the theory of practice. From square one assumptions operate that foster separation. Attempts to integrate theory and practice then become a catch up game, or a heroic attempt to rescue a jeopardised ideal.
Critical Cinema: Beyond the Theory of Practice both describes, in essay and interview, the current state of the field in relation to this question and suggests ways in which the prevailing assumptions and institutional structures might be altered. Some chapters propose new forms of pedagogical thinking for instructors, some address issues that readily cross the theory/practice divide, some are utopian and some nearly dystopic in their view of the state of the field. Collectively, they invite pause, they encourage reflection, they ask their reader to rethink doxa and question received wisdom. There is no map or blueprint here for how to redesign the university, restructure the curriculum, or reorient the industry, but there is ample ammunition for those who wish to take up these challenges to do so with fresh vigour.
For example, the discussion of practice commonly revolves around the production and post-production phases of filmmaking. Where to put the camera in relation to the implications of the camera’s gaze for male and female subjects? How to edit in relation to the theory of suture, and so on. It has often struck me as a closing the barn door after the horse has gone approach. Production and post-production involve massive investments of time and energy in the making of concrete sounds and images and in their assembly. Once a shot is completed (and paid for), intense discussion of why is was done one way and not another, what the camera’s gaze implies ideologically, whether the intended colour symbolism succeeds or not all becomes in a basic sense of the word, academic, which, as one dictionary defines it, entails discussion that is ‘theoretical and not of any practical relevance’ (OneLook, an on-line dictionary). It is, in short, too late.
As some of the chapters here suggest and as I have found in my own teaching practice, the ideal time to attempt an integration of theory and practice is in pre-production. This is when everything is up for grabs, when the very topic and approach, theme and tone, structure and effect of a film is the precise subject of discussion. Shooting a film without a carefully thought out idea, without some form of script, or as Ian Macdonald suggests in his chapter here, a mutually comprehensible and commonly shared ‘screen idea’, is, more often than not, folly. This is when a student can dredge back through examples and counter-examples, learn from the best, avoid the worst, and articulate a framework within which their own conception fits comfortably and intelligibly. This is true whether the intended film is an avant-garde exploration of vision, a polemical documentary about health care, or a narrative fiction about a doppelgänger. Precedents always exist. All of the various ways of seeing and showing that have characterised the cinema can come into play, if teacher and student are willing to step back from the practical production issues a given film proposal raises and begin by locating and contextualising it within the conceptual frames to which it belongs. This is a dialogue in which studies students and production students can contribute meaningfully, and in which that very distinction begins, in fact, to blur. This has, in any case, been my own experience, even though my institutional setting and the compartmentalisation that goes along with academic specialisation make it rarer than I would like.
As a student moves into the actual production of a film the time for reflection and revision rapidly begins to fade. That is not to say that theory and practice have parted company, far from it, but the pressures and tensions that limited time and money produce, as aptly described by Coral Houtman here, take on a reality of their own. As she points out, this calls for a distinct pedagogical model if some sense of integration is to persist; her chapter is a provocative model for one such mode of integration.
Ideas for films ‘come up’. How and from where exactly is one question but how to cultivate and refine them once they do come up is quite another. Developing film ideas in a university setting is where they can be nurtured free from immediate economic implications, where they can be set apart from assumptions and expectations that have formed the doxa as it exists at any given moment, where an exuberant sense of the possible can join hands with a rich awareness of already accomplished. This is a space of exploration and discovery, one that is neither in an idea nor in its surrounding context exclusively but in the dialogical space of encounter between thought and action, idea and form. Never as ideal as we would like to imagine it, it is nonetheless more ideal than we often dare to think possible. It is where the image becomes flesh. Its ancestry and descendants now join with their relatives, both near and far, in theory and practice, to continue the long line of film as a living medium.