Voir (2021) s01e05 Episode Script

[film projector whirs]
[whistling]
[announcer]
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
Opens at a theater near you
[Taylor]
There used to be a clear distinction
between films and television.
There she is!
You went to the movies
with comfy chairs
air conditioning,
and that ever-present sticky soda floor.
Shrouded in darkness,
you forgot the outside world.
And you gave yourself up to a story.
[laughs]
[Will Smith]
Carlton's on the basketball team?
[Taylor] Television, on the other hand,
came to you.
You stayed at home, in the living room,
surrounded by your everyday life.
You had control.
Let's go!
[Taylor] To change the channel,
turn up the volume, go get a snack.
[phone vibrating]
[steam whistling]
And the TV would still be going
when you got back.
But then something changed.
And the lines
between the two started to blur
making it harder to tell them apart.
I don't go to the movies much.
If you've seen one, you've seen them all.
[Taylor] So what exactly is the difference
between film and television?
TV rots your brains.
[Taylor]
What do they offer to you?
Our impulses are being redirected.
[Taylor] And what are they asking
from you in return?
To answer that, we need to go
back to where it all began.
Hi, there.
I want to talk to you about ducts.
- What else is on?
- Let's see what else is on.
[Taylor] For the first half
of the twentieth century,
film was the dominant
form of entertainment in the US.
[announcer] Across the nation,
three out of every four Americans
see a moving picture once a week,
in 18,000 movie houses.
[Taylor] But after World War II,
a new invention emerged,
which meant, for the first time,
movies had a direct competitor.
[announcer]
American television,
the world's biggest theater,
with daily audience
[Taylor]
So studios needed to convince the public
why it was better to leave the house.
They adapted successful books,
plays,
and Broadway shows.
[snapping rhythmically]
They reinvested in theaters
to make them more upscale.
[announcer]
Today, more than ever before,
audiences appreciate
surroundings of luxury.
[Taylor]
And they introduced new technology.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is Cinerama.
[majestic music plays]
[Taylor]
First came Cinerama
and other forms of widescreen.
Then there was
3D, stereophonic sound, and Technicolor.
special engagements, 70 millimeter,
Smell-o-vision.
All of these changes came so quickly
and at such scale that even
the movies themselves took note.
[woman] Today, to get the public
To attend a picture show ♪
It's not enough to advertise
A famous star they know ♪
If you wanna get the crowds
To come around ♪
You gotta have glorious Technicolor ♪
Breathtaking Cinemascope ♪
And stereophonic sound ♪
[Taylor] It was an arms race to make film
look better, sound better,
be better than the television
sitting in your living room.
And it worked.
[man, on TV]
Can you read this?
Well, it's pretty hard, that far away.
[Taylor]
Early TV was not a new form of the movies.
It was a radio with pictures.
And, like radio,
it was sold as a piece of furniture.
You can tune in this wonderful
new Westinghouse television set
with just one hand, like this.
[Taylor] The first TV networks
were all radio networks,
and they carried over the same
way of doing business.
Shows were free
because they were funded by advertisers.
Oh dear, I see the actors
won't be ready for another 60 seconds.
However, thanks to our sponsors'
remarkable foresight,
we have a message
that will fit in here nicely.
[announcer] Maxwell House Coffee
tastes as good as it smells, every time.
[Taylor]
In exchange, TV shows needed to build
an ongoing relationship with the audience.
By offering a new episode every week,
they made tuning in a ritual.
Ricky, wait a minute,
let's not watch television tonight.
- Not watch television?
- Not watch television?
What else is there to do?
[Taylor] TV episodes were structured
around commercial breaks.
Just like radio programs,
every few minutes there would be a joke
or a cliffhanger to keep people
interested through the advertisements.
Somebody's still in this building.
[dramatic music plays]
[Taylor]
Television succeeded because audiences
fell in love with favorite characters.
They were like family,
friends,
or coworkers.
Great TV shows understood that,
once an audience was invested,
even the smallest triumphs
could feel significant.
Pam. Sorry.
Um
Are you free for dinner tonight?
Yes.
All right.
Then it's a date.
[door closes]
[Taylor] And with syndication,
if a show got to a hundred episodes,
it could be resold
to another network again
and again, and again.
Theoretically, there are some
shows that could be on the air forever.
[theme song] Where everybody
Knows your name ♪
[door opens]
[Taylor] By contrast,
what was special about the movies
was the feeling of being taken
into a fully immersive world.
It's an experience
that is often described as cinematic.
Think of cinema as a language with its own
unique vocabulary and grammar.
It can be minimalistic
or extravagant,
realistic,
or surreal.
But for many years,
feature films were more fluent
in the language than television.
Here's a great example.
The same story made twice
by the same filmmaker.
Once for television
and six years later as a feature film.
Even on the most superficial level,
the TV version is more limited.
The lighting is flatter,
the backgrounds are less detailed,
and every scene
feels like it's done in close-up.
Notice how every shot
conveys a single piece of information,
usually placed near the center of frame.
But the feature film
had more time and money.
The lighting is more dynamic.
The backgrounds are richly textured,
and the compositions
are given room to breathe.
This opens up the film,
allowing us to experience moments
purely through image and sound.
Let's take a look
at the famous diner scene.
In the TV version, notice how the editing
follows the actor who is speaking.
What are you, a monk?
No.
I got a woman.
What do you tell her?
I tell her I sell swimming pools.
In the movie, the editing often lingers
on the actor while they're listening
because it's the reactions that are given
the weight of importance, not the words.
What are you, a monk?
I have a woman.
What do you tell her?
I tell her I'm a salesman.
[Taylor]
Movies were expected to have more depth,
to be more cinematic, not just because
they had more money and resources
[gunfire]
but because they could use more
of the vocabulary and grammar
of the language.
The cinematic language of the TV version
tended to be very literal,
which meant lots of talking
and lots of close-ups.
- What the hell's the matter with you?
- [panting]
Why'd you fall for this, huh?
You were free like a bird.
[Taylor] But the feature film
was allowed to be more figurative.
It was able to create moments
that said it all
without needing to say a word.
[dramatic music plays]
And for 50 years,
that was the dividing line.
A movie was a cinematic experience
in a theater.
A TV show was a weekly ritual
in the comfort of your own home.
Every once in a while,
something would come along
and blur the boundaries between the two.
[man]
It's Laura.
[Taylor]
But the hierarchy was firmly established.
And that's the way things stayed.
Until one day
a premium cable network made a crime
drama about an Italian-American family.
[theme song]
You woke up this morning ♪
[Taylor] The Sopranos was
in the right place at the right time.
It was cinematic.
- It attracted talented performers.
- [gunshots]
And it was able to sustain
a serialized story for almost a decade.
Most importantly,
unlike network television,
there were no worries about advertisers
getting squeamish over public opinion
The very idea ABC would even think of
producing that stereotypical goombah fest.
Fucking kill you! What are you
[Taylor]because HBO's economic model
was based on subscriptions.
And the Emmy goes to
[Taylor] As The Sopranos was showered
with awards and critical acclaim,
HBO gained prestige
and more paying customers,
which meant other networks had to compete
because now there was an audience
that was hungry for ambitious television.
As of this moment, we are at war.
While all of this was happening on screen
behind the scenes,
the digital revolution was taking place.
The great switchover
to digital television
[announcer]
On August 31st
We will officially make the switch.
only through a digital signal.
[Taylor]
For most of its lifespan,
television was transmitted
over the airwaves based on
analog standards like NTSC or PAL,
which meant at home, you are watching
a lower resolution version
of the true image.
Meanwhile, movies were shot
and shown on film,
which for years was the highest
resolution available.
[western music plays]
But within 20 years,
both television and movies
switched their entire pipelines
to digital
which meant that the two mediums
started to look more and more alike.
[newscaster] We live in a world where
movie theaters face more competition.
[woman]
People not coming to the movies
really struggling
[man] keep theaters competitive
with streaming options.
[Taylor]
Just like in the 1950s, the movie industry
needed to convince the public
why it was better to leave the house.
So they relied on the same method
that worked so well before, because
If you wanna get the crowds
To come around, you gotta have ♪
Special glasses!
- [announcer] 4DX!
- [man] Artisan popcorn.
- Nice little dinner.
- [announcer] IMAX.
- [woman] Alcohol.
- [man 1] Luxury seating.
[man 2]
Laser projection.
[woman]
Stereophonic sound ♪
[Taylor]
And this time, it didn't work.
People still lined up at theaters,
but increasingly,
it was only for blockbusters
that relied on spectacle.
Plenty of others stayed at home
What happened to the movies?
First, they got worse than TV,
and now this!
[growls]
[all gasp]
where they had a front-row seat
to the showdown happening
on the small screen.
Get down off your horse.
Please lower your blaster.
I admire a man with confidence.
I don't see no sweat
on your brow neither, bro.
You wanna dance?
Let's dance.
The fuck?
You are up to no good, obviously.
What the hell are you doing?
[man]
That is how an RBMK reactor core explodes.
[eerie music plays]
[Taylor]
On that superficial level,
movies and television
looked more similar than ever.
But there is still
a fundamental difference.
Take a look at two stories about the same
subject written by the same writer.
Once as a film
and again, as a series.
The Queen tells a complete story
over the course of 90 minutes.
It quickly sets up the main character,
the major events
Diana, Princess of Wales,
has died after a car crash in Paris.
and the theme of the film.
- He's going to try and modernize us?
- I wouldn't put it past him.
[Taylor] After that, every scene exists
to relate back to the Queen or Tony Blair.
If you imagine I'm going to drop
everything and come down to London
before I attend to my grandchildren,
who've just lost their mother
then you're mistaken.
The Crown, on the other hand,
is a serialized long-form story.
Each episode has a different focus
but a similar format.
There is a crisis,
a meeting with the Prime Minister,
and the question of what this means
for the monarchy.
I was a similar age to you when your
great-grandmother, Queen Mary,
told me that to do nothing
is the hardest job of all.
People will always want you to smile
or agree or frown, and the
minute that we do,
we will have declared a position.
[Taylor] The crux of the feature film
is that the filmmakers only get one chance
and a set amount of time to tell a story,
so they have to make every moment count.
Everything we see on screen,
even if it's pure subtext
is there to enrich
the character's journey.
If we compare
the beginning of the film to the end,
we see a change in the characters
that might seem surprising
But I can see that the world has changed
and one must
modernize.
[Taylor]
but was, in fact, inevitable.
Well, perhaps that's where I can help.
The essence of the series is that
there are many chances to tell a story.
Each episode may follow a format,
but this allows for a multitude
of ideas or characters
to weave in and out
of the larger tapestry of the show.
A minor character in one story
can be the central focus in another.
[man]
And no one wants you to be you.
They want you to be it.
A statue. A thing.
The Crown.
That's what they've come to see, not you.
[Taylor]
This is how TV works.
Many glimpses of a character that allow
the audience to explore different facets
of their personality
over a longer period of time.
Television is good for normal people.
But that was the whole point,
to show everyone that behind palace gates
we are perfectly normal people.
No, ma'am. You are not normal.
[Taylor] So if you want a single,
standalone experience
that gives you a definitive ending,
watch the movie.
If you want many little stories
that build on each other over time,
watch the show.
Perhaps you might comment
on what's on the television.
It would be easier if there was something
remotely amusing to watch.
I agree. This is deathly.
[Taylor] So what does all of this mean
for you, the viewer?
Movies ask for a lot upfront.
Going to the movies is a night out,
and not a cheap one at that.
[beeping]
But for your time and undivided attention
the film agrees to give you a streamlined
and heightened experience.
It promises an ending
that will leave you with lasting memories
of a world you briefly visited.
Television asks for less upfront.
One episode isn't very long,
and you don't need to leave your couch.
But the smaller investment
grows over time.
You expect to care about these characters
and to become more deeply invested
with every episode.
There's nothing in the world more
powerful than a good story.
[Taylor] The trade-off is that you might
not get an ending that satisfies you.
And who has a better story
than Bran the Broken?
[Taylor] For over 70 years,
each medium has vied for your attention.
But maybe it's time for the discussion
between movies and TV to be reframed.
From the world's greatest
library of film classics
[Taylor]
At the end of the day, what really matters
are the stories that capture
your imagination
in whatever form they happen to come in.
[dramatic music plays]
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