What Film Baggage Means to Me and Why

This week I learned what film baggage was, it is when you start making judgments, reviews, and expectations based on the past movies, ideas, or any influence you have experienced. Film baggage can be positive or negative towards a new film or show but it is never good to have if you are a film watcher or reviewer. It can blind you in seeing positives or seeing negatives, it is always important to be unbiased while seeing a new film and it is hard to do with film baggage. Your film baggage can collect over the years of watching movies if not controlled, we can’t completely destroy or throw away film baggage because we will always have our own opinions but it can be suppressed.

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Baggage can be collected over the years of movie watching

An example of film baggage could be with me, I think that most kids cartoons now are lower in quality compared to older kids cartoons, I think this because of the few shows I have seen that are for kids now. That’s why whenever I see a new kids show coming out or starting I am skeptical of watching it. My favorite kids show is Tom and Jerry(both the 1980s and the late 2000s Tom and Jerry) because of my love for Tom and Jerry I have always liked other shows that had the same style, this goes for my disliking of more modern shows, if they seem to have the same character models or theme I automatically start to judge.

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One of my favorite kids shows
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One of my least favorite kids shows

To start I have some negative film baggage such as my thoughts on different genres such as romance, drama, and horror. I personally don’t like horror because I can’t handle jump scares and I like to think about movies for days after I watch them, so I have never liked horror. Even if the movie has an amazing plot and actors I will still not like it because of the scare factor, this can blind me in seeing the things that I would acknowledge in a regular movie. I also have more positive film baggage, I love other genres such as action or comedy but this can affect my film watching too, for example the Transformers series, I knew that there would be amazing CGI in the sequels so that is what I focused on, I only noticed the negatives after a few times of watching the sequels.

I’m not sure how to completely zip up your film baggage and don’t let it influence you but I can think of some ways. One would be to practice being open minded to new ideas and experiences, you can do this by avoiding other people’s opinions so you don’t get influenced and stay close to unbiased sites when reviewing movies or other things. Hopefully in this class I can get away from my film baggage and learn to see everything in a movie both the positives and the negatives

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Peter Tuong 2/8/19

What Film Means to Me

Hello my name is Peter, I am a student at Cleveland Early College High School as a freshman and I live in Shelby, North Carolina. I am Vietnamese-American so when I was growing up my parents showed me a lot of Vietnamese films, I don’t think that this affected me much filmwise but I do see the differences in those movies and movies here in America. I would say my family has had a large effect on me movie-wise, because back when I was around nine or ten we would always go to the redbox in Walmart on Fridays and watch a movie. I don’t remember the first movie I ever watched but I know I have been watching movies since I was very young. My earliest recollection of a movie was a Mr. Bean movie. My favorite movies genres include action, comedy, and mystery.

Vietnam Halong Bay

My favorite movies genres include action, comedy, and mystery/thriller. My favorite movies fall in these categories such as “Get Smart” , The John Wick series, and The Anchorman Series. My favorite actors are usually the comedic ones such as Steve Carell, Will Ferrell, and Rowan Atkinson. I don’t know a lot of directors but one that I do know is Edgar Wright, and I love the movies he directs like “Hot Fuzz” and “Shaun of the Dead”.

Edgar Wright
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There are some genres I don’t like as well, such as romance and horror. I especially don’t like horror, I hate being scared and if I watch a horror movie (or even video) it gets stuck in my head for multiple days. The first horror I can recall watching was with my brother and cousins during a sleepover and it was 11/11/11(the Keith Allen film). I was seven at the time and that movie kept me up the rest of the night, I also was scared too to go to the bathroom when it was dark.

Now that time has passed I don’t watch that many movies anymore, at least not with my family, with the advancements of technology and streaming sites like Youtube, I don’t watch as many movies with my family, or any at all. I only watch movies now when I am bored, but there is the occasional get together with everyone in my family, including cousins, and usually we watch a movie. Movies have had a large effect on me when I was younger and helped me make many memories with my family like when we got scared or laughed together. Hopefully in this film class I can learn the elements of a movie that make the memories and notice them when I watch movies.

Post by Peter Tuong on 2/1/2019