Magic, emotions and film producers: unlocking the “black-box” of film production

We often hear that the power of films lays in their emotional impact. In recent years, some corners of film studies have been preoccupied with the investigation of the senses and the body, which could be related to the view of films in terms of emotions and affect (Marks: 2000; Elsaesser & Hagener 2009). Much of the filmmaking process rests on creating and communicating this emotional power of the films. Instead of thinking, like Powdermaker did, that the film workers are collectively involved in story-telling, or like Bordwell, Thompson and Staiger, that they are preoccupied with the generation of a particular style of filmmaking, I would like to argue that films are collectively involved in generating, assembling and crafting the emotion of the film. In the last ten years theorists working in the sub-section of management studies, called organisational science, have been interested in seeing organisations as “emotional arenas” and in the ways in which ‘our work lives are mediated and shaped by material objects (...) and how we often invest such objects and spaces with emotional qualities, reflecting our own identities and moods’ (Fineman 2000: 2). Fineman refers in particular to the work of his colleagues, Gagliardi and Strati, who researched the impact of aesthetics as vehicles for emotional response. Fineman writes, ‘such emotional and aesthetic experiences have been examined, where the aesthetic captures feelings of form or flow experienced from the places and objects where people work. The machines, office layout, colours, geographical setting, noise, music, task activities, foods are objects of sound, sight, touch or smell that trigger feelings: rightness, discord, warmth, harshness or alienation’ (Fineman 2000:2). We could rethink the emotional aspects involved in the process of filmmaking seen in terms of organisation of individuals interacting not just with each other but also with materiality of the set. And then we could try to re-establish how this emotional material is inscribed into the body of the film, or perhaps creating the body of the film, the source of filmic emotions. To think about filmmaking process in terms of senses, emotions and affect will also help us rethink this process in gender terms, and, hopefully, to become more sensitive towards cultural variations which make the filmmaking process different depending on its cultural context.  To conclude, the magic of cinema is in the emotions experienced not only by the spectators but also by their makers during the process of film-production.