Me at the Movies

I love cinema. 

Sitting in the darkness, waiting for the screen to light up has been one of the most wonderful feelings I have ever experienced. 

I hear some noise from the crowd, who is about to share the same moments with me.

My eyes are wide open, not knowing what the story is going to be like on the screen.

I hear some noise from the crowd who may possibly experience the same excited feelings as I do. My eyes are wide open, fixating on the center of the screen—I know I am about to watch a film, but I don’t yet know what the story is about.

I feel my heart pumping, ready to dive into another universe.

While watching it again, I noticed my mind having a conversation with itself: 

 “Look at the ‘depth of field’ from the table here to the window there!”

“Look at the composition—everything looks so organized and pleasing!” 

“Look at Welles’ acting here! The mirror shot is SO COOL!”

My eyes were insatiable, desperately catching details here and there, while my brain was constantly thinking about how this shot related to a piece of knowledge I had learned 1.5 years ago.

The same old feelings came back to me again, like waves patting the shore. I couldn’t help but reminiscence about my past journey as a film student. How did it begin?

I guess it could be traced back to 2005. I was born in Shanghai, China. Throughout my childhood, I explored my parents’ cabinets full of DVDs and CDs—all were their beloved collection since college. But to a curious kid like me, DVDs were not attractive; what amazed me was how the DVDs could be turned into colorful moving lights and shadows on a black square in front of the sofa.

My mom loved teary melodramas when she was younger, while my dad was crazy about Sci-Fi and action films. One day after a drawing class, my dad took me to the cinema to watch I, Robot (Proyas, 2004). This was my first time watching a Sci-Fi film on a big screen. 

The moment when I saw Dr. Lanning (James Cromwell) talk to Del (Will Smith) through a floating virtual reality screen, I couldn’t help but think what I saw was real. The film amazed me as it created stunning and spectacular visual effects. I’ve loved cinema ever since, but I didn’t study films in a formal way until I took Intro to Film during the Fall of 2019. 

Professor Burnett’s classes were so fantastic that I looked forward to every single Monday and Wednesday throughout the semester. After hearing that handwriting helped me learn more, I took detailed notes in my notebooks and jotted down notes on screening prompts in the darkness during the weekly screenings. 

I went to nearly all of the Intro to Film office hours, and during the “Weekly MM Session,” I learned to trust my initial feelings when watching certain shots, boiling my observations down into film analysis.

I often studied in the Film & Media Studies office in a beautiful place called Seigle Hall to work on papers and to prepare for exams. It had a magical atmosphere where I challenged myself to take a closer look at the films.

During the 14 weeks, our screenings ranged from classical black and white films like Citizen Kane (Welles, 1940), to iconic French crime films like Breathless (Godard, 1960) and poetic war films like A Man Escaped (Bresson, 1956), to the nerve-bending thriller Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958) and the goofy time-traveling film Back to the Future (Zemeckis, 1985), contemporary animated films like Spiderman: Into the Spider-Verse (Persichetti & Ramsey, 2018) and blockbusters like Inception (Nolan, 2010).

I rode my bike to attend nearly every screening I had, because films look best on a large screen. I touched the breeze while treading on the pedals. Sometimes, I saw a bright moon hanging above me, shedding soft light on me. I felt more connected with the sceneries I saw along the way, feeling my life enlivened by films I was about to watch. 

Just like a pilgrim traveling far to find a sacred oracle, I began to watch films very attentively, with eyes desperately capturing every single detail within each shot. 

Long after the film class was finished.

Sometimes this impulse to pause a shot and analyze it is “annoying” to my family and friends, especially when we watch films on a laptop instead of going to the theaters—

Look at the color and costume—Elsa (Idina Menzel) and Anna (Kristen Bell)’s costumes have complementary colors! (Frozen II)

Look! When Héloïse (Adèle Haenel) stands beside the seashore in a silky green dress only showing her back to us, it looks like a piece of oil painting! (Portrait of a Lady on Fire) 

Listen to Joe (Jamie Foxx)’s piano…It’s music to my ears! (Soul)

Fortunately, my family and friends are movie lovers too, so they get what I am talking about and choose to “resume” our friendship.

Looking back, I am grateful that I have never ceased to try new things. Becoming a film major was a new thing to me back in 2019 when I had only taken one intro-level course, but it was worth the attempt.  

After knowing the power of images and sound on the omnipresent screens surrounding me,  I see more, hear more, and feel more. 

Above all, I appreciate films more. It is like a third language aside from Chinese and English. The pleasure is all mine.

My journey in film points to the future. To me, it is like climbing a mountain—the more I move upward, the wider my worldview will be.

Merry May Ma ‘22 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at liangboma@wustl.edu.