I like film because I don't have to think about it, but I can if I want to. I often have trouble appreciating visual art and music without thinking about it. Now yeah, some music is designed to be brainless, and I tend to enjoy that stuff sometimes, but it's not my typical choice of music. I would prefer to take my time with some Pink Floyd rather than 'absorb' Taylor Swift.
It depends on what mood I'm in. Sometimes I approach film from a deeper perspective, but I don't have to. I've watched The Hunt for Red October probably 20 times because I lived through the Cold War, and that film makes me think fairly deeply about what we were doing back then, and this informs what we should do now. When I'm not in the mood for thinking, I'll watch an action movie or something where the plot is simple ("kill that guy" or "rescue the girl") - movies are great for that. There is always a movie that fits my current mood - not so with photography or music.
Music is my favorite art form to consume, but movies are my favorite form to create.
I like music because you can have more elements at once—more so than you can have with film.
I was just listening to a song in my car, and I realized I was jamming to so many different strands at once: the drums, two different melody lines, a voice, etc., all threaded together.
Now of course in any one shot of a film we have elements like color, costuming, writing, acting, etc., but they are not as married. They’re not especially equal.
And part of the reason is that when we watch a movie, we are usually preoccupied with trying to find and follow a story. It becomes, unfortunately, a more cerebral activity than the pure pleasure of music intake.
With music, there’s a flow, which is much better than a story—we can have peaks and valleys, or, in any case, movement through time.
I feel like it is harder for us to process all of the visual information we get in a movie at once, as opposed to the auditory information in music. We see music with our mind’s eye—or ear, as it were. Our imagination runs rampant. We can do other things at the same time—which should not be underestimated: Music is more easily tied into our experience. With movies, we are nailed down to the one visible reality in front of us (although the best films, of course, get our imaginative blood pumping).
And then, just personally, there’s a cap to what I can do musically—it’s limited to the dexterity of my fingers (or lack thereof) and my impatience with practice—other than the practice I got naturally by composing! I spent time in the recording phase tweaking parts to sound how I wanted, but whenever I played live I was nervous about what I felt was my amateur level of playing, and the added difficulty of having to sing and play keyboard at the same time.
Whenever I get the chance to make a short film, I can throw myself into all of the clothing of storytelling. There is time to construct the puzzle of another reality. And, at the very least, all I have to do is pick up a camera, which is a lot easier than needing to learn how to master an instrument.
But it sounds like you are combining all three in your own art, in which case, you get the best of all worlds. You can create a full, multi-dimensional piece, and exploit the spaces between the different mediums to astonish your audiences.
