So some advice came back to haunt me as I sat tonight with five browser windows and my script open on my desktop. My script left untouched, I was losing hours going from Facebook to Look at This Fucking Hipster. And I believe I wrote exactly two scenes. Hmph.
The advice? There's not a lot that will get done by simply sitting in front of the computer. I recall the good old days when I would write everything down on notebooks before I even turned the computer on. Now I complain that my job is unfulfilling, get home, fire up the laptop and sit on Facebook for three hours before watching a DVD I've watched a million times. Oh, but I've tried to get a job in my field (searching for jobs on Seek that require at least 2 years experience once a few months ago). I've made steps but I lack the motivation required to actually do this. I need to shake myself out of this ridiculous behaviour. I've become so lazy I hurt my back sleeping.
I'm hoping that even though this constitutes sitting in front of my computer, and that blogging must be done ironically, that keeping up this whole writing thing will be a motivation. With that in mind, here are some things I've tried to work on, or have discovered recently.
Runaways Review
This was supposed to be a collaboration, but, well, things get in the way, innit? Here's what I have so far:
“Their music is that raw energy that you feel when you're 15 and you're sort of coming into your body. You realise that you have a body, and people are paying attention to you, looking at you. The Runaways' lyrics are very primal. And then all of a sudden you're pushed in front of all these men that are going wild for you. That's what I was trying to capture: all those crazy feelings that they had.”
-- Floria Sigismundi
“Somebody's writing a screenplay from your book and you think to yourself, Wait, was my story not good enough for you? But I think all in all she's accomplished something interesting.”
-- Cherie Currie
Runaway – noun.
1.A person who runs away; a fugitive; deserter.
2.A horse or team that has broken away from control.
3.The act of running away.
4.A decisive or easy victory
5.A young person, esp. a teenager, who has run away from home.
Singer, author and artist Cherie Currie was just 15 years old when she took her place as frontwoman of arguably the first all-girl punk rock band The Runaways. Though her stint would be short, it is probably the most memorable. While this could have been yet another story of a young life extinguished by the lure of sex, drugs and rock and roll, it's both refreshing and comforting to know that not only would Currie live to tell the tale, she would write the book on which Director Floria Sigismundi's feature debut The Runaways is based.
The story centres on the forming of the band but is essentially the story of the relationship of Currie and guitarist and founding member Joan Jett. Jett, born Joan Larkin, would form the band with drummer Sandy West with considerable help from eccentric novelty and pop record producer Kym Fowley. If Fowley's declarations to the media are to be believed, The Runaways may seem more Spice Girls than Sex Pistols, but he is proof that sometimes, you should never let the truth get in the way of a good story.
While Currie may think that Sigismundi has taken liberties with her story, telling Elle magazine that it initially made her question Sigismundi's abilities as a director, the story of Currie and Jett's relationship has been expertly handled. The Runaways is more than a biopic – it's a coming of age story and an exploration of young female sexuality against a musical backdrop. Currie's journey in the film speaks volumes for any teenage girl and for every woman who remembers the feeling of freedom and perceived invincibility that comes along with growing up and opening yourself up to new experiences. Everyone has had a friend at some point in their lives who has helped them forge an identity free from the constraints of family and Joan represents this for Cherie.
Sigismundi's experience as a music video director has served her well, bringing these girls and their stories to life against a rock and roll palette – from the opening image of the blood of Cherie's first period to the bright magenta of Joan's blazer at the film's end, the film is saturated with the colours of rock and roll; black, red, white, pink, and silver. Her recreations of some of the band's most memorable moments, such as Cherie's performance of Cherry Bomb in lingerie in Japan perfectly captures the raw energy of the band and Currie's stage presence.
Without resorting to cliché, it seems the role of Cherie Currie is the role Dakota Fanning was born to play. At 15, she is the same age that Currie was when she joined the band, and no doubt is used to the experience of growing up publicly.
Jett recalls hearing tapes of Kristen Stewart performing some of the Runaways' tracks for the film:
“Early on, they sent me a test recording of a song called 'I Love Playing With Fire' that I in the Runaways, and all I could hear was me on the track. And I'm like, You have to send me another one with Kristen's voice on it – I didn't hear her...And they're like, No, it is Kristen. She had mastered my inflections, how hard I would hit words, every aspect of how I'd the sing the song.”
Not really sure how to finish this, but I'm hoping to some day, perhaps when the film is released on DVD. Sigh. I think I was going to talk about the costumes and make-up, you know, cover that whole mise-en-scene thing in depth that audiences get real excited about and shit.
Quotes were sourced from the following:
Durbin, K 'The Runaways' Elle.com, http://www.elle.com/Pop-Culture/Movies-TV-Music-Books/The-Runaways, accessed 4 August 2010.
Easy Riders, Raging Bulls by Peter Biskind
I was given this book by a friend for my birthday, and have been obsessed. It made me nostalgic for the American New Wave, for though I wasn't even born when it died, I studied films from the period and fell in love with the directors involved. Well, obviously not Spielberg and Lucas. Pft. I read an article by the writers of Bonnie and Clyde and wished I'd been there, wish I could write something that helped rewrite the rules of the Classical Hollywood Style.
Reading about filmmakers who were as nerdy about film as I am served to remind me how much I love writing about film and how it's so much more than just watching film and thinking it's good or bad, but about looking into that screen and trying to figure out why it makes me feel sad, or happy, or inspired. Not only that, but the sociological investigation form by that particular shot, or lighting setup, or gesture.
And sick of that look (the raised eyebrow, the open gaping mouth) that greets me whenever I reveal that I've never seen The Godfather, I finally watched, erm, the Godfather. And I must say, it deserves that look of incomprehension when someone who loves film reveals they haven't seen it. I now own that look.
I know that it seems proof of the kind of filmmaking Coppola wanted to avoid, or never saw himself making, but it's proof of his brilliance. It's proof of his faith in actors, and a willingness to allow composition to come to the fore. The contrast between the wedding and Don Corleone's business dealings, portrayed almost entirely through lighting (and that stray cat of Brando's - genius) was incredible. The constant struggle between business, family and tradition is played out within every scene. Suspense is built up through an economic use of sound, which made me jump like a little kid when Sonny is gunned down on his way to beat the living shit (again) out of Connie's deadbeat husband.
That feeling of frustration as history and perhaps mistakes are repeated is revealed in some incredibly powerful scenes - the relationship between Kay and Michael serves the primary function of revealing how close Michael is to the edge - Kay tries to bring him into the new world, but fails several times. Michael falls into the darkness, which makes the final scene chilling. It's also my favourite. The simplicity of the final shots, the last line ("Don") leaves you just...really fucking impressed. I cannot believe I have gone this long without experiencing that film. Luckily I had Taxi Driver to tide me over.
It's another film to add to my list of films that seem to be a history of American masculinity. What else is a girl to do?
PhD? MPhil? Nothing?
Ok, so this is how I summed up what I'm interested in researching in a recent email:
At this stage with my research I'm interested in the relationship between the screen and the spectator and the experience of watching a film, particularly with horror. There are some theories about bodily responses to film and I'm interested in how that works with horror and violent films, particularly because there's an argument for censorship that implies a really close relationship between the screen and the spectator and I want to investigate that idea (and hopefully not end up giving their argument more support - it's more about 'is it a genuine fear that there's such a direct relationship and this is where this argument stems from?'). Also, historically there's been talk of a gendered viewing experience and I want to know whether that's still relevant, and anyway, it probably sounds stupid and boring on paper. If you get me started talking or writing about it I'll never stop!
I have no idea if someone's written about this already (most definitely) haven't researched it at all for the last 6 years (lazy. well, stuck in Communication Studies hell, which as we all know is where bad people go when we die), but talked about it nonstop (procrastinator), but I guess we'll just see. Just wait and see...
Actually, no! I'll do and not wait and see!!! More exclamation marks to suggest how emphatic I am being!!!! I'm going to go laugh at some hipsters now.
Showing posts with label film criticism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label film criticism. Show all posts
Monday, November 8, 2010
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
They shoot film critics, don't they?
I was reading the latest issue of Vanity Fair and in it was an article about film critics and their deteriorating status in the arts and media community. Many high profile critics have found themselves unemployed, such as Andrew Sarris (I have quoted this gent in a few essays and was shocked - though if I recall I was disagreeing with him. Ahem.). The article discussed a debate these firings had raised regarding whether or not film critics are even necessary.
It's an interesting point if you think film criticism is merely a matter of deciding if a film sucks or if it's totally flipping sweet. Some people for a long time have probably resented the idea of someone telling them what movie to see. Others need to be told. I must say I have stopped listening to my beloved David Stratton regarding which new release to see - but I would go to one of his classes in a heart beat.
And it did make me wonder when I've spent most of my time recently watching films that you may argue are hardly the stuff of serious or high art; films like Sex and the City 2 and The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. Or even my beloved Step-Brothers or The Hangover...but these films are not without interest to the earnest film critic. Ahem. I would like to say that I am neither Team Edward nor Team Jacob. I am staunchly Team Bella's Dad, for the record.
I wonder if this same argument is turned upon art criticism or theatre criticism. Is it the same hierarchy of art forms all over again? Literature with a capital L as opposed to literature? Does a Global Financial Crisis mean that we suddenly start deciding what is necessary and what is a luxury and we've decided that since film and television isn't really art the practice of analysing it is also now redudant? I protest loudly, because the last time there was a similar economic depression, the movies did a roaring trade. And if you want a perfect summation of why something considered 'escapist' is not a bad thing but a wonderful thing, please read the Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.
What we're talking about is taking art and attempting to find meaning within it, or to translate the images in terms of what they are expressing about our culture and society. Sure, I'm trying to justify one of my chosen careers (well, a future career necessitates that the career still exists in the future). If we think there is no value in film criticism, we may as well pack up half of the humanities department of every university in the world. Why don't we all do a Commerce degree and talk about the economy for the rest of our lives? Dear lord, take me now.
My field's endangered existence got me thinking about my goals and what I would like to do in this area both right now and in the future.
So here it is:
Some sort of superhero exploration - I find Watchmen such a fascinating superhero film and I have an article about it bookmarked and ready to read. But I found myself thinking that superheroes tend be quite an American phenomenon. Or rather, the Hollywood superhero expresses something quintessentially American. It would be ridiculously easy to say it's a fantasy designed to perpetrate the myth of America's control over the world. And I think it would be wrong. I think there's something more to be gleaned from the likes of Iron Man and their context in contemporary society and contemporary warfare. So I'm a gonna research this and try to write something meaningful.
The masculinity thing - I wrote a post about all this stuff I was researching and subsequently lost it all and being too lazy to write it over again, I did some bullet points and included pictures of boys holding hands. Would like to explore that and make it more intelligent.
Blog combining fashion and film - Russh magazine did a fashion spread based on Badlands and I wrote a post a while back about how my style influences are usually movie characters, not models or trends. I want to combine that and style looks from films, hopefully using clothing that is both affordable and available now. My friend was thinking of almost exactly the same thing so we need to put our heads together and write that shit!
Film and television scripts - I'm working on several ideas for television series with friends and a feature film that's a cross between gossip girl and sartre's nausea. Read more about one of the television projects, The Innocents, over at Hell Is Other People.
PhD - yes, for a while now the plan has been to do the old doctor of philosophy business. I'm interested solely in the relationship between the screen and the viewer and how that relationship has developed. Completely afraid that it has all been done and I am completely irrelevant. And a lecturer suggested in a seminar (not directly at me but I still felt the sting) that it was shortsighted. Fuck you! Says I. Maybe. Not really.
Teach in Uni - so I probably need to achieve the goal above first before I do this but I would dearly love to teach film studies at university. I've already designed two courses in my head, one of course on spectatorship (I don't think it's been taught as a subject in its own right very much) and one on music in film that is more about music as mood, genre convention and so on. I also would love to teach a course about horror - of course that's been done but I'd love the chance to make it my own.
So there you haves it! I think I'll achieve at least one of the things on this sucker before I die. I am an optimist, after all!
A word to all those naysayers re: film critcs: Cahiers Du Cinema (well, that's three, but you get my drift). And Wikipedia tells me Martin Scorsese is a film historian. So, go die.
It's an interesting point if you think film criticism is merely a matter of deciding if a film sucks or if it's totally flipping sweet. Some people for a long time have probably resented the idea of someone telling them what movie to see. Others need to be told. I must say I have stopped listening to my beloved David Stratton regarding which new release to see - but I would go to one of his classes in a heart beat.
And it did make me wonder when I've spent most of my time recently watching films that you may argue are hardly the stuff of serious or high art; films like Sex and the City 2 and The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. Or even my beloved Step-Brothers or The Hangover...but these films are not without interest to the earnest film critic. Ahem. I would like to say that I am neither Team Edward nor Team Jacob. I am staunchly Team Bella's Dad, for the record.
I wonder if this same argument is turned upon art criticism or theatre criticism. Is it the same hierarchy of art forms all over again? Literature with a capital L as opposed to literature? Does a Global Financial Crisis mean that we suddenly start deciding what is necessary and what is a luxury and we've decided that since film and television isn't really art the practice of analysing it is also now redudant? I protest loudly, because the last time there was a similar economic depression, the movies did a roaring trade. And if you want a perfect summation of why something considered 'escapist' is not a bad thing but a wonderful thing, please read the Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.
What we're talking about is taking art and attempting to find meaning within it, or to translate the images in terms of what they are expressing about our culture and society. Sure, I'm trying to justify one of my chosen careers (well, a future career necessitates that the career still exists in the future). If we think there is no value in film criticism, we may as well pack up half of the humanities department of every university in the world. Why don't we all do a Commerce degree and talk about the economy for the rest of our lives? Dear lord, take me now.
My field's endangered existence got me thinking about my goals and what I would like to do in this area both right now and in the future.
So here it is:
Some sort of superhero exploration - I find Watchmen such a fascinating superhero film and I have an article about it bookmarked and ready to read. But I found myself thinking that superheroes tend be quite an American phenomenon. Or rather, the Hollywood superhero expresses something quintessentially American. It would be ridiculously easy to say it's a fantasy designed to perpetrate the myth of America's control over the world. And I think it would be wrong. I think there's something more to be gleaned from the likes of Iron Man and their context in contemporary society and contemporary warfare. So I'm a gonna research this and try to write something meaningful.
The masculinity thing - I wrote a post about all this stuff I was researching and subsequently lost it all and being too lazy to write it over again, I did some bullet points and included pictures of boys holding hands. Would like to explore that and make it more intelligent.
Blog combining fashion and film - Russh magazine did a fashion spread based on Badlands and I wrote a post a while back about how my style influences are usually movie characters, not models or trends. I want to combine that and style looks from films, hopefully using clothing that is both affordable and available now. My friend was thinking of almost exactly the same thing so we need to put our heads together and write that shit!
Film and television scripts - I'm working on several ideas for television series with friends and a feature film that's a cross between gossip girl and sartre's nausea. Read more about one of the television projects, The Innocents, over at Hell Is Other People.
PhD - yes, for a while now the plan has been to do the old doctor of philosophy business. I'm interested solely in the relationship between the screen and the viewer and how that relationship has developed. Completely afraid that it has all been done and I am completely irrelevant. And a lecturer suggested in a seminar (not directly at me but I still felt the sting) that it was shortsighted. Fuck you! Says I. Maybe. Not really.
Teach in Uni - so I probably need to achieve the goal above first before I do this but I would dearly love to teach film studies at university. I've already designed two courses in my head, one of course on spectatorship (I don't think it's been taught as a subject in its own right very much) and one on music in film that is more about music as mood, genre convention and so on. I also would love to teach a course about horror - of course that's been done but I'd love the chance to make it my own.
So there you haves it! I think I'll achieve at least one of the things on this sucker before I die. I am an optimist, after all!
A word to all those naysayers re: film critcs: Cahiers Du Cinema (well, that's three, but you get my drift). And Wikipedia tells me Martin Scorsese is a film historian. So, go die.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
En Francais - c'est tres bien!
Some of you may already know this, but underneath the love of Will Ferrell, the appreciation of a classy euphemism for genitals, the gratuitous use of the words motherfucker and c**t, is a girl who is incredibly snobby when it comes to film.
Yes, just as I don't really like fart jokes, I also am very pretentious when it comes to film. Do not get me started on the subject of why filmmakers should also be film critics. Or try to suggest that watching narrative cinema is a passive experience. I will crush you with film analysis. I will also talk for a very long time with little to no pauses.
As recent posts will suggest, I'm not so pretentious about film that I enjoy art cinema. That's for people who can't tell a story or be bothered hiring a crew that knows what they're doing. It's also for wankers who know nothing about film to discuss the power of the images. Yeah, all I see is Jurgen Haarbemaster and Vulva - helping all of us who prefer to explore film in an interesting way to take the piss about people who can't do it right.
Why, then, am I a film snob? Because I detest films that reveal nothing about either characters, genres or visual styles. I want to vomit at films made purely to generate revenue. I get irate when casting decisions are made purely on looks and not talent.
I like Ingmar Bergman films. In fact, I think he was one of the best filmmakers of all time. I could, hypothetically, talk about why Citizen Kane is so amazing, or why Alfred Hitchcock's films are perfect for several days. I love Jean-Luc Godard and I think Robert Altman is still the master of ensemble dramas. I also think Romero is the zombie film's real father, if not its biological father. I can find subtext in many films people consider to be ridiculous, shallow, or just plain disgusting, like Wes Craven's Last House on the Left. Which is all three, in equal measure.
But more than that, the films I admire and the films I want to make are so ridiculously wanky in scope, that sometimes I astound even myself. I want to reach that perfect combination that filmmakers like Scorsese, Tarantino, Wright, and Coppola have done before me: that perfect blending of style and substance - an exploration of film that doesn't feel shallow, using characters so perfectly that you like them or are fascinated by them even if they are merely a device or yet another exploration of film.
I want to explore the work of other filmmakers and develop my style from them. I want to make analyses of genre so powerful that they inspire a hundred nerdy blog posts like this one. I want to hear lines of my dialogue quoted on the streets and in the statuses of social networking profiles. I want a visual style that people literally wee themselves over, they're so impressed.
I began this quest with the first film I actually wrote, or came up with the concept for. It was a music video for a friend's band. It was supposed to be an homage to those wonderfully bad B-Movies with monsters in them, using ridiculously poor effects. Check out my earlier post on it - Sirens by Fictions, formerly Montana Fire. Whether it was through poor shot choice or whatever, it didn't work. So what we did instead was intercut the band fleeing from a monster with scenes from the 1958 sci-fi classic The Day The Earth Stood Still. What started as pure homage and an exploration of old filming techniques became an exercise in montage, really. An ability to create meaning between two disparate sets of images. And still, in essence, an homage to old films that didn't have the same kind of technology we do.
The next film was another exploration of genre and the conventions of the buddy-cop drama, much in the vein of Hot Fuzz. However, I wanted to put a twist on it by changing the location of the drama for comic effect: the two cops became dishpigs, and the police station became a small restaurant. It was designed to be a sort of origins story that would form the basis of a television series or feature film, however, again, being student filmmakers and therefore still pretty rubbish, the film had to be modified quite a bit from its original form. The bad lighting couldn't really be saved with colour correction in post, so it became a black and white film. The audio issues couldn't be fixed without a lot more time, either, so it became a silent film. Not just any old silent film, either: a 1980s silent film. I'm pretty sure it's the only one of its kind. While again, my aim was still present - to do an analysis of genre, it's not quite what I had in mind, though people were quite blown away with it, although sadly not the tutors.
Well, that changed with the film I made recently. While on my student exchange, I decided I wanted to direct a film to see if I could do what I had wanted to do for quite some time. And the film I had to make was a film with a non-linear narrative. That was the part that was the most exciting. So when I first started thinking about it, this is what I wanted to do:
Make an art film that was not actually an art film, but a series of randomly assembled homages to scenes in films that sort of relied on an artistic feel - surrealism and all that sort of thing. The techniques some early filmmakers were going to be played with, too. So the scenes I wanted to rip off were the following:
The in-camera editing style of Melies
The organisation of time in Un Chien Andalou
The dream sequence in Carrie
The end of Blow-Up
Good, right? Yeah. The film changed but the pretentious ambition I always had for it never changed. The original story goes something like this: a couple are on a way to a party. They're trying to take a shortcut suggested to them by a friend of the guy. They get lost in these eerie, surreal woods and strange things start to happen. They become angry with each other and the guy leaves the girl. While they're separated, he stumbles across something sort of awful, but while looking for her he trips and bangs his head, knocking him unconscious. The girl looks for him all night and finds him unconscious, thinking he's dead. He wakes up, and in his groggy state he tries to lead her to what he found, with her help. And what is it that he's discovered? They're in a children's playground. They've been lost in a playground the entire time. To top things off, a little girl is playing and she was been playing with them while they've been lost, taking their things and giving them gifts.
The way it would play out is that it would start with the couple fighting, then cut to the girl by herself, staring at something offscreen. We'd then cut to them at night, trying to work together. Then back to day time, and they've found an old tape recorder. Upon discovering that it works, they dance to the music. Then back to the girl, only this time we would see a little more and also we would see the little girl staring back at her. Then slight tension between the couple during the day when they are trying to find their way. Then we would return to the fight at the beginning and see the guy walk off. From here, the film would be linear but still surreal - we'd then cut to the girl looking for the guy and discovering him, then discovering the playground. Then, the little girl would begin playing a game of imaginary tennis and the girl would join in.
Oh, wanna know the best part? The film is called La Cour. Which in French is...playground. See what I did there?
Structurally, the finished film is still the same, minus the dancing scene (we didn't have time, shame), however, we shot in such a way as to make it even more confusing than I intended. Basically, the film goes like this: we start with the couple fighting. We then cut straight to the girl. Then, we cut to them walking together at night. Then the title. Then, the slight tension on the bridge during the day, followed by the repeated scene of the girl staring at something, followed by a little girl. It's now obvious that they're in a playground. Then, we cut back to the fight again, repeated but not quite as long. Then we see the girl searching for her boyfriend and finds him. It's no longer clear what's happened to him. Then we cut to them reaching the playground. The girl helps her boyfriend sit down and, seeing the little girl, throws the imaginary ball to the little girl for a while.
It's incredibly confusing, but now I say it's supposed to be. And it is - through shooting the film it became more about this couple in this odd, surreal wood setting. The playground at the end makes it a little more hopeful than absurd and ridiculous and I wanted the structure to sort of suggest the state of mind of the characters. Now it could even resemble the girl's memories of that time in her life.
I'd now like to share with you some of what I wrote for my tutors when handing in the film:
What sources influenced your practice in this work? This must include works by filmmakers and/or artists, but could also include works of fiction/poetry; theory; newspaper articles; music; dreams or conversations (for example.)
When I first researched this unit of the course in Australia, I originally conceived of an artists' moving image film, and I wanted to use this film to explore the relationship between art cinema and narrative cinema. The film would be, in essence, an homage to surrealist film techniques and the more abstract moments in some of my favourite films, including Un Chien Andalou (Bunuel and Dali, 1928), especially the quote from Bunuel about the film: “No idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind would be accepted.” My rather lofty and perhaps pretentious ambition was to create a film that rejected all atempts to find meaning within it, using images from narrative films.
I then decided to develop a narrative and was inspired by an episode of The Twilight Zone called 'Strange Planet.' In the episode, three astronauts crash-land on another planet, and without resources or a way home, tension begins to mount between them. One walks away and the others look for him. As they search, they find a symbol drawn in the sands. When they find him he is near death and before he can explain the symbol he does in fact die. As they continue searching the landscape, they make a horrific discovery: the symbol was supposed to represent power lines. They have been on Earth the entire time.
The films I wanted to pay tribute to were the following:
Badlands (Terence Malick, 1973) - the scene in which the young lovers escape to the woods and dance to the song 'Love Is Strange'. I really liked this part of the film, because it represents a slightly surreal and almost absurd moment between the characters. I wrote a scene as an homage to this scene both to heighten the more absurd elements of the story, and to provide light relief in the mounting tension between the two characters.
Carrie (Brian DePalma, 1976) - Susan's dream, in which she visits Carrie's grave – it was shot backwards and reversed in the editing process and I wanted to employ this technique, as I was still interested in experimenting with different ways of filming to create a surreal effect. Within my script for La Cour, the moment in which one of my protagonists, Laurie, is literally separated from her boyfriend Cabe, it is at a point when she is most affected by the landscape – she has been searching for him all the night and she is numb with cold and fear. I wanted to reflect this visually through the shots and also the editing.
Blow-Up (Michaelangelo Antonioni, 1966) - the end of the film, in which David Hemmings' character revisits the park in which he captured a murder on camera. The mystery is never resolved; when he gets to the park, a group of mimes play imaginary tennis, and for a moment he plays along. The film is about a photographer who witnesses a strange event in a park, and the unassuming park becomes a dangerous other realm through the lens of his camera. He believes this evidence he has captured will change his life, but it changes nothing – he is still witnessing other people through a lens. After his experience and a night of hell looking for the woman who may know more about the murder, he returns to the park only to find the mimes who had disrupted social order in the street earlier in the film have disrupted the order of the park. At this point, the absurdity of his situation seems to hit him and he has nothing to do but to play along with the absurdity. I wanted to recreate this as the ending of my film, as I felt the story echoed this element of Antonioni's film (yes, I am actually comparing myself to Antonioni. How uncomfortable), the characters going through a night of hell only to be presented with an absurd and almost meaningless resolution. The horror of realising they had been in a park all along would give way, especially for Laurie, to a sense that she could do nothing now but to play along with the game she and Cabe had been unwittingly been involved in all along.
I was also inspired by the structure of the novel Catch-22, in which the structure of the novel reflects the memories of the main character, and one incident that forms the end of the novel is constantly referred to throughout the book, using one particular image.
During preproduction, and after consultations with Joe and discussing the look of the film with Sioned, I also looked to the television series Peep Show, which is shot entirely using subjective pov of characters within the show. This was to play up the element of the characters being watched and played with. This was because Joe suggested that the idea of who is playing a game with the characters could be clearer, and Sioned and I decided on shooting the film in the style of Peep Show, in that every shot in the film would be the subjective pov of one of the characters. Much of the shots we had using the tripod were designed to reflect the pov of the small girl we see in the playground at the end of the film. What I was suggesting most of all is that as the writer and director it was me playing the game not so much with the characters but with the audience, however, I'm not skilled enough as a writer or director just yet to make that as clear as I maybe could have.
Yes, just as I don't really like fart jokes, I also am very pretentious when it comes to film. Do not get me started on the subject of why filmmakers should also be film critics. Or try to suggest that watching narrative cinema is a passive experience. I will crush you with film analysis. I will also talk for a very long time with little to no pauses.
As recent posts will suggest, I'm not so pretentious about film that I enjoy art cinema. That's for people who can't tell a story or be bothered hiring a crew that knows what they're doing. It's also for wankers who know nothing about film to discuss the power of the images. Yeah, all I see is Jurgen Haarbemaster and Vulva - helping all of us who prefer to explore film in an interesting way to take the piss about people who can't do it right.
Why, then, am I a film snob? Because I detest films that reveal nothing about either characters, genres or visual styles. I want to vomit at films made purely to generate revenue. I get irate when casting decisions are made purely on looks and not talent.
I like Ingmar Bergman films. In fact, I think he was one of the best filmmakers of all time. I could, hypothetically, talk about why Citizen Kane is so amazing, or why Alfred Hitchcock's films are perfect for several days. I love Jean-Luc Godard and I think Robert Altman is still the master of ensemble dramas. I also think Romero is the zombie film's real father, if not its biological father. I can find subtext in many films people consider to be ridiculous, shallow, or just plain disgusting, like Wes Craven's Last House on the Left. Which is all three, in equal measure.
But more than that, the films I admire and the films I want to make are so ridiculously wanky in scope, that sometimes I astound even myself. I want to reach that perfect combination that filmmakers like Scorsese, Tarantino, Wright, and Coppola have done before me: that perfect blending of style and substance - an exploration of film that doesn't feel shallow, using characters so perfectly that you like them or are fascinated by them even if they are merely a device or yet another exploration of film.
I want to explore the work of other filmmakers and develop my style from them. I want to make analyses of genre so powerful that they inspire a hundred nerdy blog posts like this one. I want to hear lines of my dialogue quoted on the streets and in the statuses of social networking profiles. I want a visual style that people literally wee themselves over, they're so impressed.
I began this quest with the first film I actually wrote, or came up with the concept for. It was a music video for a friend's band. It was supposed to be an homage to those wonderfully bad B-Movies with monsters in them, using ridiculously poor effects. Check out my earlier post on it - Sirens by Fictions, formerly Montana Fire. Whether it was through poor shot choice or whatever, it didn't work. So what we did instead was intercut the band fleeing from a monster with scenes from the 1958 sci-fi classic The Day The Earth Stood Still. What started as pure homage and an exploration of old filming techniques became an exercise in montage, really. An ability to create meaning between two disparate sets of images. And still, in essence, an homage to old films that didn't have the same kind of technology we do.
The next film was another exploration of genre and the conventions of the buddy-cop drama, much in the vein of Hot Fuzz. However, I wanted to put a twist on it by changing the location of the drama for comic effect: the two cops became dishpigs, and the police station became a small restaurant. It was designed to be a sort of origins story that would form the basis of a television series or feature film, however, again, being student filmmakers and therefore still pretty rubbish, the film had to be modified quite a bit from its original form. The bad lighting couldn't really be saved with colour correction in post, so it became a black and white film. The audio issues couldn't be fixed without a lot more time, either, so it became a silent film. Not just any old silent film, either: a 1980s silent film. I'm pretty sure it's the only one of its kind. While again, my aim was still present - to do an analysis of genre, it's not quite what I had in mind, though people were quite blown away with it, although sadly not the tutors.
Well, that changed with the film I made recently. While on my student exchange, I decided I wanted to direct a film to see if I could do what I had wanted to do for quite some time. And the film I had to make was a film with a non-linear narrative. That was the part that was the most exciting. So when I first started thinking about it, this is what I wanted to do:
Make an art film that was not actually an art film, but a series of randomly assembled homages to scenes in films that sort of relied on an artistic feel - surrealism and all that sort of thing. The techniques some early filmmakers were going to be played with, too. So the scenes I wanted to rip off were the following:
The in-camera editing style of Melies
The organisation of time in Un Chien Andalou
The dream sequence in Carrie
The end of Blow-Up
Good, right? Yeah. The film changed but the pretentious ambition I always had for it never changed. The original story goes something like this: a couple are on a way to a party. They're trying to take a shortcut suggested to them by a friend of the guy. They get lost in these eerie, surreal woods and strange things start to happen. They become angry with each other and the guy leaves the girl. While they're separated, he stumbles across something sort of awful, but while looking for her he trips and bangs his head, knocking him unconscious. The girl looks for him all night and finds him unconscious, thinking he's dead. He wakes up, and in his groggy state he tries to lead her to what he found, with her help. And what is it that he's discovered? They're in a children's playground. They've been lost in a playground the entire time. To top things off, a little girl is playing and she was been playing with them while they've been lost, taking their things and giving them gifts.
The way it would play out is that it would start with the couple fighting, then cut to the girl by herself, staring at something offscreen. We'd then cut to them at night, trying to work together. Then back to day time, and they've found an old tape recorder. Upon discovering that it works, they dance to the music. Then back to the girl, only this time we would see a little more and also we would see the little girl staring back at her. Then slight tension between the couple during the day when they are trying to find their way. Then we would return to the fight at the beginning and see the guy walk off. From here, the film would be linear but still surreal - we'd then cut to the girl looking for the guy and discovering him, then discovering the playground. Then, the little girl would begin playing a game of imaginary tennis and the girl would join in.
Oh, wanna know the best part? The film is called La Cour. Which in French is...playground. See what I did there?
Structurally, the finished film is still the same, minus the dancing scene (we didn't have time, shame), however, we shot in such a way as to make it even more confusing than I intended. Basically, the film goes like this: we start with the couple fighting. We then cut straight to the girl. Then, we cut to them walking together at night. Then the title. Then, the slight tension on the bridge during the day, followed by the repeated scene of the girl staring at something, followed by a little girl. It's now obvious that they're in a playground. Then, we cut back to the fight again, repeated but not quite as long. Then we see the girl searching for her boyfriend and finds him. It's no longer clear what's happened to him. Then we cut to them reaching the playground. The girl helps her boyfriend sit down and, seeing the little girl, throws the imaginary ball to the little girl for a while.
It's incredibly confusing, but now I say it's supposed to be. And it is - through shooting the film it became more about this couple in this odd, surreal wood setting. The playground at the end makes it a little more hopeful than absurd and ridiculous and I wanted the structure to sort of suggest the state of mind of the characters. Now it could even resemble the girl's memories of that time in her life.
I'd now like to share with you some of what I wrote for my tutors when handing in the film:
What sources influenced your practice in this work? This must include works by filmmakers and/or artists, but could also include works of fiction/poetry; theory; newspaper articles; music; dreams or conversations (for example.)
When I first researched this unit of the course in Australia, I originally conceived of an artists' moving image film, and I wanted to use this film to explore the relationship between art cinema and narrative cinema. The film would be, in essence, an homage to surrealist film techniques and the more abstract moments in some of my favourite films, including Un Chien Andalou (Bunuel and Dali, 1928), especially the quote from Bunuel about the film: “No idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind would be accepted.” My rather lofty and perhaps pretentious ambition was to create a film that rejected all atempts to find meaning within it, using images from narrative films.
I then decided to develop a narrative and was inspired by an episode of The Twilight Zone called 'Strange Planet.' In the episode, three astronauts crash-land on another planet, and without resources or a way home, tension begins to mount between them. One walks away and the others look for him. As they search, they find a symbol drawn in the sands. When they find him he is near death and before he can explain the symbol he does in fact die. As they continue searching the landscape, they make a horrific discovery: the symbol was supposed to represent power lines. They have been on Earth the entire time.
The films I wanted to pay tribute to were the following:
Badlands (Terence Malick, 1973) - the scene in which the young lovers escape to the woods and dance to the song 'Love Is Strange'. I really liked this part of the film, because it represents a slightly surreal and almost absurd moment between the characters. I wrote a scene as an homage to this scene both to heighten the more absurd elements of the story, and to provide light relief in the mounting tension between the two characters.
Carrie (Brian DePalma, 1976) - Susan's dream, in which she visits Carrie's grave – it was shot backwards and reversed in the editing process and I wanted to employ this technique, as I was still interested in experimenting with different ways of filming to create a surreal effect. Within my script for La Cour, the moment in which one of my protagonists, Laurie, is literally separated from her boyfriend Cabe, it is at a point when she is most affected by the landscape – she has been searching for him all the night and she is numb with cold and fear. I wanted to reflect this visually through the shots and also the editing.
Blow-Up (Michaelangelo Antonioni, 1966) - the end of the film, in which David Hemmings' character revisits the park in which he captured a murder on camera. The mystery is never resolved; when he gets to the park, a group of mimes play imaginary tennis, and for a moment he plays along. The film is about a photographer who witnesses a strange event in a park, and the unassuming park becomes a dangerous other realm through the lens of his camera. He believes this evidence he has captured will change his life, but it changes nothing – he is still witnessing other people through a lens. After his experience and a night of hell looking for the woman who may know more about the murder, he returns to the park only to find the mimes who had disrupted social order in the street earlier in the film have disrupted the order of the park. At this point, the absurdity of his situation seems to hit him and he has nothing to do but to play along with the absurdity. I wanted to recreate this as the ending of my film, as I felt the story echoed this element of Antonioni's film (yes, I am actually comparing myself to Antonioni. How uncomfortable), the characters going through a night of hell only to be presented with an absurd and almost meaningless resolution. The horror of realising they had been in a park all along would give way, especially for Laurie, to a sense that she could do nothing now but to play along with the game she and Cabe had been unwittingly been involved in all along.
I was also inspired by the structure of the novel Catch-22, in which the structure of the novel reflects the memories of the main character, and one incident that forms the end of the novel is constantly referred to throughout the book, using one particular image.
During preproduction, and after consultations with Joe and discussing the look of the film with Sioned, I also looked to the television series Peep Show, which is shot entirely using subjective pov of characters within the show. This was to play up the element of the characters being watched and played with. This was because Joe suggested that the idea of who is playing a game with the characters could be clearer, and Sioned and I decided on shooting the film in the style of Peep Show, in that every shot in the film would be the subjective pov of one of the characters. Much of the shots we had using the tripod were designed to reflect the pov of the small girl we see in the playground at the end of the film. What I was suggesting most of all is that as the writer and director it was me playing the game not so much with the characters but with the audience, however, I'm not skilled enough as a writer or director just yet to make that as clear as I maybe could have.
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