Collectors of our landscape photographs often inquire about the switch we made to filmmaking. It was in large part due to reaching a state of satisfaction with the portfolio of images we had amassed after two decades – the itch had been scratched.
Additionally, the chance to explore a wider palette of captured experience in filmmaking was tempting. In fact, the films of Terence Malick – especially "Days of Heaven" – had always seemed to reflect the essence of what we were trying to do with photographs. Not surprisingly, Malick himself arrived at filmmaking when he found that studying and writing about philosophy was unfulfilling.
In a video essay about Malick's films, the narrator quotes Harvard philosopher Stanley Cavell regarding the distinction:
Film can perceive the world for us without our meddling selves getting in the way. It can train us to pay attention to it in all its sensory details… its sounds… its textures, whereas a written account can only describe, film can reproduce.
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