welcome to this evening's performance of film theory before we begin tonight's presentation we kindly ask that you take the time now to unwrap any candies you may have because that's a thing that apparently annoys some people tonight's performance will include a short intermission provided brands care enough about this channel to spend money on a mid-roll ad now please turn off your cell phones and wait most of you are probably watching on cell phones don't do that don't turn off your cell phones keep your cell phones loud and active [Music] hello internet welcome to film theory
where today it's probably more accurate to call the show film theatrical presentation sent to direct digital release theory since we're talking about the broadway musical turned disney cash cow hamilton when it comes to talking about broadway musicals well usually it'd be outside the realm of my channels which is a shame since as many of you know i was in a past life a touring actor and director [Applause] but since a filmed version of hamilton just came out to near universal praise on disney plus looks like i finally have an excuse to talk about it and
let's just say i am not throwing away my shots oh and uh if you're already tired of these puns from the show got some bad news because never gonna be satisfied oh and uh for those of you who haven't seen the musical or the disney plus version yet this will be a mostly spoiler-free theory don't worry i won't go ruining anything big like telling you who wins the american revolutionary war you'll just have to watch it for yourself and find out what happens to that young scrappy and hungry country but rather than talking about how
dangerous it was to shoot a flintlock pistol straight into the air or go through the bizarre economics that explains why king george iii was probably right i'm doing something a little bit different today i'm gonna try to get hamilton qualified for the academy awards maybe not so far as a nomination and certainly not a win although that would be great today we're starting smaller we're just trying to get hamilton it's shot at taking home its very own oscar but to truly understand what i'm talking about why it matters and how today we might be able
to single-handedly change the entire face of cinema as we know it that's barely an exaggeration by the way we first have to rewind rewind rewind rewind we rhyme for those of you who don't know hamilton a musical about the life of founding father to the us alexander hamilton started its broadway run back in 2015. the next year the original cast recorded two live performances and then a third performance specifically for cameras the rights to distribute the resulting movie went up for sale and were snagged by disney who decided to lock hamilton in the good old
disney vault until 2021 but after everyone got themselves locked inside this year disney decided that well they had this complete movie anyway may as well release it to get everyone hooked on disney plus and it is great i mean it was a fantastic stage show to begin with and they filmed it so you know it's a great recording of what is a phenomenal live stage production anyway this has prompted many hamel fans to ask the question could this filmed production of hamilton actually be nominated for and heck even win an oscar because let's be honest
the field this year is looking pretty thin with many films being indefinitely delayed in order to get to 10 films in the current 2020 best picture lineup you're looking at something like sonic the hedgehog bad boys for life trolls world tour onward birds of prey call of the wild do little scoob artemis fowl and impractical jokers the movie i mean hamilton has to edge out at least one of those right now in a normal year the fact that hamilton started on a streaming service would actually disqualify you for the oscar their rules state that a
film needs to have debuted in los angeles county theaters before or on the same day as being streamed more specifically from the rule set quote a film must have a minimum seven day theatrical run in a los angeles county commercial theater with at least three screenings per day for paid admission now that might seem really dumb and super arbitrary but if you think about it it does kind of make sense the academy of motion picture arts and sciences the one that gives away the academy awards is built on the idea of preserving the art of
movies and the importance of seeing them on a big screen so making sure that a film runs in a theater is a big deal for their brand this year however things are different and due to almost all the feeders being closed down the academy has actually decided to allow streaming debuts to qualify huzzah hooray all you fans that were worried about the billion dollar 11 time tony award winning musical can rest easy now knowing that it'll get even more money and even more accolades or can you actually rest easy no you can't hamilton is still
disqualified according to an article by vanity fair on july 6 a representative from the academy said that hamilton is still not qualified because of a rule stating quote works that are essentially promotional or instructional are not eligible nor are works that are essentially unfiltered records of performances so bummer theory over right nope because i think the academy's wrong i think they're interpreting their own rules incorrectly and moreover i think they're interpreting what a movie is incorrectly and today i'm going to prove all of it because in a year we're at slim pickens for the academy
i think it might be nice it might be nice to have hamilton fans on their side first let's look at those oscar rules shall we while yes it is true that there is a rule specifically banning unfiltered records of performances this rule is specifically for the documentary category which is decidedly not hamilton i know this may come as a surprise academy of motion picture arts and sciences but hamilton is shockingly not a documentary about the founding of america i was surprised too but then i looked around and realized oh wait there are no slaves here
but all joking aside even if this was a wider sweeping rule hamilton on disney plus is certainly not an unfiltered record in fact it is neither unfiltered nor a record as i mentioned already the filmed version of hamilton was shot over the course of three different shows two of those shows were in front of an audience but the third show was done entirely for the camera so they could get those juicy close-ups those three recordings were then cut together to produce an entirely new work what we now know as hamilton the movie on disney plus
it's not the record of any one standalone event that ever happened instead it's a series of takes all edited together to tell a cohesive narrative just like you do with any other movie in existence they even ended up with continuity errors as the result of this multi-day shoot in the song satisfied flowers on angelica's blouse appear and disappear throughout the performance no flowers flowers no flowers flowers if this truly is unfiltered then i need to know exactly what substance those flowers are made of so i can make an invisibility cloak and finally steal the diet
coke secret formula in short hamilton on disney plus uses the two things that separate movies from stage shows cinematography and editing you see on stage you can always try to direct your audience's eyes to the things that you want them to see via techniques like lighting and blocking aka the position and movement of the people and things on stage but you're not guaranteed to that maybe the audience is just really interested in the elaborate backstory that chorus dancer number three has concocted for himself back there and chooses to watch him instead additionally at no point
can i as the director of the show present that audience member with a different view of the events happening on stage they're either getting the 600 view from orchestra center or the student discount view where half the stage is obstructed from side balcony a but with film cinematography allows you as the director to manage all of that stuff i can choose to focus the camera on specific characters or actions and ignore others i can move the camera to create angles that you would never be able to accomplish on stage and hamilton on disney plus does
exactly that thanks to the magic of cinema we get some amazing shots like this one of angelica's face immediately after she introduces alexander to her sister giving up her own chance with him during the story of tonight the camera makes sure to stay centered around the four characters of the gang by keeping the framing tight it helps the cinematic audience forget the huge empty stage around the actors which makes their ideological cries for freedom seem much more important in all-encompassing rather than ringing out to an empty hall later while thomas jefferson is gloating that hamilton's
never gonna be president we're treated to a top-down shot now i know seating for hamilton's limited but i didn't realize they were putting the audience in the rafters they even use the camera cuts to enhance punch lines like the moment king george iii finds out who's taken over for george washington john adams each one is an intentional camera placement or movement that uses the medium of film to change the way that the viewer perceives these scenes relative to the way that they would experience them as the audience in a live theater show but the other
half of this equation is editing in a live show you can't go back and erase a flood line or choose to redo an emotional beat to make it stronger but in a film you can editing choosing what takes to keep and how to best splice them together that helps tell the story just as much as the actors do when it comes to the art of cinema and in the filmed recordings of hamilton again they choose to do exactly this in the song satisfied it's taken to an extreme with rapid cuts from varied angles that keep
the viewing audience as off-kilter as the character on stage who's trying to figure out how she feels about everything going on around her in the song non-stop it's a bit more the opposite longer shots with the camera swinging around in wide arcs pulling ever more characters and action into frame as hamilton's head spins and of course you can't ignore the editing decision to leave every juicy king george appearance in extreme close-up foo the first row needs to come with a splash guard warning so at this point i think it's pretty clear that hamilton falls squarely
within the rules of a movie that should be qualified for oscar consideration not a guaranteed nomination or anything but at least worth being considered for one but let's stop talking about hamilton specifically and ask the wider question why is filmed theater being disqualified in the first place i mean it used to be valid back in 1966 sir lawrence olivier scored a best actor nomination for his performance of othello in a filmed stage production then again in 1976 the film give em hell harry which was a live theatrical recording of a one-man stage play was nominated
for best actor so why would filming something live on a theatrical stage in one long take inherently disqualify it as an artistic work i mean think about it honestly in the past few years the oscar for best cinematography has gone to both 1917 and birdman two movies that have expressly used longer takes and disguised their edits in order to make it seem like one long continuous shot and then what about the acting for those sorts of movies shooting those sorts of extended takes requires the actors to be in character longer hitting their marks and being
emotionally invested in the scene for longer periods of time quite literally the exact same things that theatrical actors are required to do on stage each and every night ironically enough films have been pushing towards and getting rewarded by the academy four pushing towards more of a live theater aesthetic for the better part of the last decade so to exclude live theatrical recordings seems both narrow-minded and arbitrary it also brings up the challenge that you've now set up for yourself where do you draw the line how theatrical is too theatrical theater and movie making both require
large teams with sets blocking hitting marks memorizing lines lighting sound in filmmaking sometimes you take the 300th take but sometimes you take the first take is getting it in one take any different from getting one shot at a theatrical performance do you see how this quickly becomes a slippery slope movie industry case in point what about the very intense and experimental movie dogville starring nicole kidman one of your favorites and directed by the famous lars von trier it takes place on a black sound stage with location outlines drawn and labeled on the ground with props
and set dressing all being pant-mined or alluded to via sound effects it's a film certainly but it's using very theatrical conventions the minimalist style is actually very reminiscent of the theatrical work of famous playwright and director bertolt brecht who tended to use bare staging to focus the audience's attention on the acting and storytelling by exposing the conventions of the theater not trying to hide things like lights and sets his hope was to make viewers constantly aware of the theater's artificiality dogville the movie plays heavily in this theatrical world and yet dogville is still very much
a movie winning numerous awards at film festivals around the world so again i ask how theatrical is too theatrical where does the line sit to me the only only differentiators are cinematography and editing by those two tokens you require nominees to be anything that's been put on a camera and displayed on a screen and why not why would you want to limit it to much more than that if you open the door to hamilton so what what's the risk that hollywood suddenly gets shown up by broadway good people in theater deserve more respect many of
them are more talented actors and directors than some of the biggest names out there yeah i said it uh sorry i've wanted to rant about that for years but this was my only chance to do it i just think that theater actors get totally trampled on anyway i ask again what's the risk of opening the door to filmed productions of live theatrical performances are theatrical shows gonna be at a disadvantage yeah i just talked about the continuity errors on angelica's blouse so you know hamilton probably won't be winning any editing awards this year and from
a cinematography angle yeah they're using some fun shots but it's still pretty basic could it win for acting though sure why not it contains some of the best acting that i've seen on a screen all year and shouldn't that be enough theater and filmmaking are cut from the same cloth they're variations of an art form and in a year where the slate of potential oscar nominees ain't looking too great i'd much rather see leslie odom jr or renee elise goldsberry get rewarded for their incredible work that they did on film than have to give the
win to a blue cgi hedgehog doing the floss but hey that's just a theory a film theory and scene
