Movie Making

The other day I was, as usual, thinking. This time I was thinking about movies vs. books and I had an epiphany that left me pleasantly surprised. All this time, I'd been thinking there was really nothing to movies. As much as I loved watching movies, watching them was just something that was a lesser alternative to reading books and I, being a sometimes stupid youth, also wrote off all the people that went into making a movie as people who had failed at producing a book.

I know! So stupid it almost makes you sad. I was listening to Harry Potter on tape and was about to watch the movie when it hit me, all the things that writers just get to say, like Harry is feeling this and Dumbledore looked like this, movie people have to create. Oh my god, lets think about what that means. When a writer says the room looked comfortable with shades of brown with the feel of a sanctuary, movie people have to create a room that matches all of those things! That's crazy. And when they get it right, which they do frequently, that's talent. Take actors now, the character felt scared and angry and happy all at the same time. How does one pretend to be that character feeling all of those things? To me, that seems impossible; to an actor, that's what their job. Never again will I compare book making and movie making because really, one is not better than the other, they are just completely different things.