you can't tell me that on an intellectual basis, ALL films make you, the viewer, feel manipulated? the fact that you are sitting there watching it can irritate you. personally, i love being manipulated and love to see what tricks are up the magician's sleeve.

so it's all about perspective =).

I never said that all films make me feel manipulated. The best ones don't, even though the director, writer and other artists involved have worked on my emotions. If the story feels real, I will be transported beyond the artifice.

I don't know how many different ways I can say it.

Theater depends on illusion. If you can see the man behind the curtain, he's not doing a very good job.

yesh but i was stressing that theater depends on illusion. on an intellectual basis, most of the audience know that there is a man behind the curtain. same thing with film, we (as DVI guys) know what goes behind the scenes. every single decision that the director makes is going to manipulate the audience one way or another.

my point is that i love being manipulated if the director knows what he's doing. for example, orson welles. in citizen kane, he purposely had the characters talk over one another because he felt that it was funny. i found it incredibly funny as well! =). i luv that type of irreverent action.

Yi Yong Fu, of course the audience knows that they are sitting in a theatre watching something that was produced. But the reason the vast majority of people go to see a film is not to go: "oh look, here comes the plot complication" or "I can't wait to see the crane shot coming up" or "I want to see the new AI flocking system". That may be why many filmmakers go see films but the vast majority of the audience go there to be thrown into another world, to escape their own, to experience a story, to feel an emotion.