Thursday, December 20, 2007
More Bruno, under "Fads of Noir"
"Moving along with the history of space, cinema defines itself as an architectural practice. It is an art form of the street, an agent in the building of city views. The landscape of the city ends up interacting closely with filmic representations, and to this extent, the streetscape is as much a filmic 'construction' as it is an architectural one." (27)
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Site Collision in the Subways
Now here's another idea...
What about every time, when we're sitting in the 4, 5, 6, crossing the 20's, and other 4, 5, 6 suddenly cross paths, creating a visual collision of windows and indiscernable faces? It'd also be great to contact mic the windows.
What about every time, when we're sitting in the 4, 5, 6, crossing the 20's, and other 4, 5, 6 suddenly cross paths, creating a visual collision of windows and indiscernable faces? It'd also be great to contact mic the windows.
Monday, December 17, 2007
Giuliana Bruno on Filmic Architectonics
"To build a theoretical map of an architectonics as mobile as that of motion pictures, one must use a travling lens and make room for the sensory spatiality of film, for our apprehension of space, including filmic space, occurs through an engagement with touch and movement. Our site-seeing tour follows this intimate path of mobilized visual space, "erring*" from architectural and artistic sites to moving pictures. Haptically driven, the atlas finds a design for filmic space within the delicate cartography of emotion, that sentient place that exists betwen the map, the wall, and the screen." (16)
*Bruno refers to erring as straying from a path
*Bruno refers to erring as straying from a path
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Reality - Space & Time
"Reality assumes presence, which has a priviledge position along two parameters, space and time; only the here and now are completely real. By its very existence, the narrative suppresses the now (accounts of current life) or the here (live television coverage), and most frequently the two together (newsreels, historical accounts, etc.)." p.22
Metz, Christian. Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema, University Of Chicago Press, 1990.
Metz, Christian. Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema, University Of Chicago Press, 1990.
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Going down the road, literally
Today during my Film Architecture class at Brown, I began thinking about another film that could further "explore" my thoughts on mobility, action in space, and the experiential effect that film could attribute by depicting moving through a physical stretch.
The idea is a personal narrative. Here is the story:
When I was eighteen, I got into USC's School of Cinema and Television on a full scholarship. Being the only child of my household, my slightly spendy father bought me a brand new 2006 Toyota Solara, fully equipped, and so on. So on "Move-in Day," my family (which consisted of my father, my mother, and I) drove down from Sunnyvale, CA (near San Jose) in two vehicles to go to USC. My father drove the van, which was full of my "stuff," and my mother and I followed in my new car behind him.
Right after we passed Los Banos, which was about 2 hours down, my father had a seizure at a rest stop. My mother had to go to the bathroom, which was why we pulled over at a roadside diner at the first place. So when I pulled up next to the minivan, what I saw was my father rolling down the window, convulsing. I ran into the diner, screaming for help, and soon after, my father was loaded into an ambulance.
Before I realized what time it was, it was getting dark out. Los Banos was kind of in the middle of nowhere, so the ambulance drivers asked my mother and I to tail the ambulance. We drove two cars, which would normally not be an issue, except for the fact that my overprotective father did not allow my mother drive on freeways, fearing that some type of inate incompetence (yes, how could he imagine?) would take over and she would get into an accident. So there she was, driving in on a long stretch of freeway, in the dark, by herself. I drove in front of her.
There were very few cars around us on the freeway. To our left and right, there was nothing. Barren, unlit fields, maybe. It felt like the edge of the earth. We soon, somehow, lost the ambulence, and I was just driving, down the dark road. Not knowing where I was, in the strongest state of panic that I have ever endured. For maybe the first time, I felt like things would not be alright, that there are stronger forces out there, taking me over, and my father was not there to protect me.
Out of the entire experience of my father's passing away, this moment was the most memorable. I distinctively remember my feelings at the time, and have as a result marked it the most painful.
The work that I want to do, as informed by this moment, is a video loop of the road. The space that contained this experience was very abstract and very infinite, no less very immersive in that it felt as if the disappearing vantage point in front of me was literally sucking me in. I want to retrace this physical path, film my point of view, and project it in a way that it expresses this experience filmmically and visually.
The idea is a personal narrative. Here is the story:
When I was eighteen, I got into USC's School of Cinema and Television on a full scholarship. Being the only child of my household, my slightly spendy father bought me a brand new 2006 Toyota Solara, fully equipped, and so on. So on "Move-in Day," my family (which consisted of my father, my mother, and I) drove down from Sunnyvale, CA (near San Jose) in two vehicles to go to USC. My father drove the van, which was full of my "stuff," and my mother and I followed in my new car behind him.
Right after we passed Los Banos, which was about 2 hours down, my father had a seizure at a rest stop. My mother had to go to the bathroom, which was why we pulled over at a roadside diner at the first place. So when I pulled up next to the minivan, what I saw was my father rolling down the window, convulsing. I ran into the diner, screaming for help, and soon after, my father was loaded into an ambulance.
Before I realized what time it was, it was getting dark out. Los Banos was kind of in the middle of nowhere, so the ambulance drivers asked my mother and I to tail the ambulance. We drove two cars, which would normally not be an issue, except for the fact that my overprotective father did not allow my mother drive on freeways, fearing that some type of inate incompetence (yes, how could he imagine?) would take over and she would get into an accident. So there she was, driving in on a long stretch of freeway, in the dark, by herself. I drove in front of her.
There were very few cars around us on the freeway. To our left and right, there was nothing. Barren, unlit fields, maybe. It felt like the edge of the earth. We soon, somehow, lost the ambulence, and I was just driving, down the dark road. Not knowing where I was, in the strongest state of panic that I have ever endured. For maybe the first time, I felt like things would not be alright, that there are stronger forces out there, taking me over, and my father was not there to protect me.
Out of the entire experience of my father's passing away, this moment was the most memorable. I distinctively remember my feelings at the time, and have as a result marked it the most painful.
The work that I want to do, as informed by this moment, is a video loop of the road. The space that contained this experience was very abstract and very infinite, no less very immersive in that it felt as if the disappearing vantage point in front of me was literally sucking me in. I want to retrace this physical path, film my point of view, and project it in a way that it expresses this experience filmmically and visually.
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
"Walter Benjamin's description of the theatrical character of the townscape of Naples is an exact picture of the combined stage and auditorium in Rear Window: "'Buildings are used as a popular stage. They are all divided into innumerable, simultaneously animated theatres. Balcony, courtyard, window, gateway, staircase, roof are the same time stage and boxes.'"
From Pallasmaa: "Geometry of Terror" p. 147 on Walter Benjamin in "Reflections" p. 167
"The field of vision has always seemed to me comparable to the ground of an archeological excavation."
Paul Virilio. L'horizon negatif. p.1
From Pallasmaa: "Geometry of Terror" p. 147 on Walter Benjamin in "Reflections" p. 167
"The field of vision has always seemed to me comparable to the ground of an archeological excavation."
Paul Virilio. L'horizon negatif. p.1
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Touch of Evil
In reaction to the first shot of Orson Welles' film, "Touch of Evil," which was four minutes long and completely mobile...
How does space move within the contained environment of the composition?
How is the audience placed in the physical space constructed by these movements?
How does space move within the contained environment of the composition?
How is the audience placed in the physical space constructed by these movements?
Captured
Through film, we have captured a part of the real world. Simultaneously, we have connected with contained reality with other realities that relate and are able to co-inhabit with this reality in the same universe. We believe, that despite we do not see, we ae not cut off from the world.
In a floorplan, we are omniscient, even if this is impossible to do in reality. A cross-section is a more physical rendering. We are given the luxury of witnessing the simultaneous isolation and social interactions between those divided by walls. On the web, our experience of the cyberspace is heavily myopic, we can only interact with the now - the current page - but, our datebase (physical or intangible) organizes these jolts of information - interpretations of the outside world, in a systematic grid, in parallel with each other. This is how we like to access information now. The reassurance that all aspects of reality are there within our reach, that we are emotionally in touch with the world despite not seeing, is comforting. The more we adapt to the level of faith and comfort, however, the more detached we become in touch with.
Film is simultaneously an ostracizing and social medium. So is television. So are miniatures of architectural structures, digital and analogue displays of maps, etc - which all require a certain level of stepping away from the subject.
With the advant of webstraming videos and webcams, the ease of personal videography and documentation of self, I am becoming increasingly alarmed by the polarization between filmic authorship and and social interactions. This is perhaps why I am tackling these topics of society and isolation, spatial reality and spatial reconstruction, etc - at this particular moment.
In a floorplan, we are omniscient, even if this is impossible to do in reality. A cross-section is a more physical rendering. We are given the luxury of witnessing the simultaneous isolation and social interactions between those divided by walls. On the web, our experience of the cyberspace is heavily myopic, we can only interact with the now - the current page - but, our datebase (physical or intangible) organizes these jolts of information - interpretations of the outside world, in a systematic grid, in parallel with each other. This is how we like to access information now. The reassurance that all aspects of reality are there within our reach, that we are emotionally in touch with the world despite not seeing, is comforting. The more we adapt to the level of faith and comfort, however, the more detached we become in touch with.
Film is simultaneously an ostracizing and social medium. So is television. So are miniatures of architectural structures, digital and analogue displays of maps, etc - which all require a certain level of stepping away from the subject.
With the advant of webstraming videos and webcams, the ease of personal videography and documentation of self, I am becoming increasingly alarmed by the polarization between filmic authorship and and social interactions. This is perhaps why I am tackling these topics of society and isolation, spatial reality and spatial reconstruction, etc - at this particular moment.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Thesis Committee Meeting Statement
My thesis aims to discuss and explore film’s potential to construct reality through the medium’s unique portrayal of spatial relationships, perspectives, and cinematography. I wish to examine these ideas through a small body of work in both traditional screen-based and installation formats.
Bicycle Camera
This is a reiteration of a work done in the Spring of 2007. A 8mm film camera capable of taking single frames is connected to a bicycle. Each spoke of the front wheel triggers a toothed gear in passing. One turn of the gear flicks the shutter one frame. The faster the bicycle travels, the more frames per second the film records. As a result, the faster the bicycle travels, the slower the actual footage of the travel appears during playback. The pre-established relationship between time and space is inversely altered. During the first iteration of the project, the mechanism functioned according to plan and produced five minutes of film, albeit being just off axis enough to exclude the road and the cars around the bicycle. The camera was also destroyed after being repeatedly stuck by the aluminum gear.
This semester, I will revisit the project with a better camera and more a reliable and non-destructive mechanism driven by magnetism. Most importantly, I will traverse a further expanse of landscape, from nature to suburbs, from the metropolitan downtown to the industrial underbelly of the city. The landscape’s change provides a deeper look at our emotional and cerebral response to movements in space as portrayed by screen-based media. In the framing of the film, I will also include moving objects in the bicycle’s surroundings, such as traffic, pedestrians, and fellow bicyclists to further emphasize the re-definition of time in space.
The relationship between speed and space is organized by time. We all have a strong sense of how fast we travel down a road based on the quickness of the objects passing by and the slip of the road beneath our vehicles. What I strive to achieve with this work is both a thorough reconstruction of the intrinsic nature of the film medium, and a discourse in regards to the physical relationship between the lens’ eye, the film (which is a linear continuum, a path), and the space interpreted by the camera.
Blowing Up “Blow-up”
Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Blowup” (1968) is a film about the construction of spatial reality through still images. The central character, the photographer, discovers the hidden truth about a murder through re-arranging and blowing up a series of photographs he shoots at the park.
What alarms me – and eventually provides the reason for my work – is the eye-line of the woman in one of the photographs. In the scene, she is having an affair. During her embrace, she looks worriedly toward the fence the lines the park. This gaze is what arouses the photographer’s curiosity, and in turn to take a closer look at the reality reproduced in front of him.
For this work, I will print out and arrange every shot in the park scene of “Blowup” to represent the park as a physical location. The key is to use the fragmented visual information provided by the cinematography, performance, and editing to construct my own sense of spatial reality. The work is not so much information visualization as it is an exploration of the difference between what we, the audience, register as the reality in the film and the hard visual facts presented by the film. With this work, I intend to depart from the original narrative of the film and generate a new audience perspective through the literal breakdown of perspectives.
Untitled Documentaries
This is what I envisioned as the structure of these documentaries:
I have followed several of my close, intimate friends from when they started to when they ended their days. These days were not particularly eventful days – nor were they chosen because they were the most uneventful of days. They were arbitrarily chosen.
I presented no directions to my subjects nor did I restrain myself from posing questions, framing my shots, or turning on/off my camera. For example, I would film the entire duration of a lunch enjoyed in silence and skip dinner entirely. Similarly, I did not impose on my subject any particular subject matter, actions, or way of going on about their days. Most importantly, I did not ask my subjects to ignore the camera. I kept rolling the camera until I felt that I record the essence of the moment, or until my subjects kicked me out of their personal spaces due to discomfort.
I wish to weave these documentaries together in the editing process. The arc of the work centers on the dynamics between my subjects, the camera, and myself as opposed to the sequential linearity of time. It is an observing piece that tries to challenge the traditional association one has between the documentary camera and reality.
A conventional narrative requires the storyteller to maintain a certain kind of distance from his/her subject matter. A story is succinct because it is causally driven by a chain of important actions. I am interested in the drama in the mundane. Through a series of documentaries, I wish to ask these questions: how exactly do we extract a story out of our daily lives? How do we get a sense of the reality of certain relationships? How do the presence of a camera and the specific identity of the documentarian mediate/alter the portrayal of that reality?
Bibliography
My work is informed by a blend of traditional and avant-garde filmmakers, video artists, photographers, philosophers, and art and culture theorists. Through my thesis, I wish to investigate the evolution and construct of film through cross-referencing these different disciplines, but still fully maintain the integrity of the cinematic language. During the thesis writing process, I will relate and discuss projects by filmmakers such as Dziga Vertov, Sergei Eisenstein, Georges Méliès, Jean Renoir, Karl Freund, Francois Truffaut, Alfred Hitchcock, Jean Luc Godard, Agnes Varda, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Lars Von Trier. I will draw from writings by Walter Benjamin, Gilles Deleuze, Theodore Adorno, Jean Baudrillard, Paul Virilio, Christian Metz, Guiliana Bruno, Jonathan Crary, Maurice Merleau Ponty, Slavoj Zizek, and Henri Lefebvre. Finally, I will respond to the bridge between the traditional film medium and new media through looking at work by Nam Jun Paik, Douglas Gordon, Luc Courchesne, Michael Naimark, Jeffrey Shaw, David Rokeby, Susanne Jaschko, Joachim Sauter, Dirk Lausebrink, and Masaki Fujihata.
Bicycle Camera
This is a reiteration of a work done in the Spring of 2007. A 8mm film camera capable of taking single frames is connected to a bicycle. Each spoke of the front wheel triggers a toothed gear in passing. One turn of the gear flicks the shutter one frame. The faster the bicycle travels, the more frames per second the film records. As a result, the faster the bicycle travels, the slower the actual footage of the travel appears during playback. The pre-established relationship between time and space is inversely altered. During the first iteration of the project, the mechanism functioned according to plan and produced five minutes of film, albeit being just off axis enough to exclude the road and the cars around the bicycle. The camera was also destroyed after being repeatedly stuck by the aluminum gear.
This semester, I will revisit the project with a better camera and more a reliable and non-destructive mechanism driven by magnetism. Most importantly, I will traverse a further expanse of landscape, from nature to suburbs, from the metropolitan downtown to the industrial underbelly of the city. The landscape’s change provides a deeper look at our emotional and cerebral response to movements in space as portrayed by screen-based media. In the framing of the film, I will also include moving objects in the bicycle’s surroundings, such as traffic, pedestrians, and fellow bicyclists to further emphasize the re-definition of time in space.
The relationship between speed and space is organized by time. We all have a strong sense of how fast we travel down a road based on the quickness of the objects passing by and the slip of the road beneath our vehicles. What I strive to achieve with this work is both a thorough reconstruction of the intrinsic nature of the film medium, and a discourse in regards to the physical relationship between the lens’ eye, the film (which is a linear continuum, a path), and the space interpreted by the camera.
Blowing Up “Blow-up”
Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Blowup” (1968) is a film about the construction of spatial reality through still images. The central character, the photographer, discovers the hidden truth about a murder through re-arranging and blowing up a series of photographs he shoots at the park.
What alarms me – and eventually provides the reason for my work – is the eye-line of the woman in one of the photographs. In the scene, she is having an affair. During her embrace, she looks worriedly toward the fence the lines the park. This gaze is what arouses the photographer’s curiosity, and in turn to take a closer look at the reality reproduced in front of him.
For this work, I will print out and arrange every shot in the park scene of “Blowup” to represent the park as a physical location. The key is to use the fragmented visual information provided by the cinematography, performance, and editing to construct my own sense of spatial reality. The work is not so much information visualization as it is an exploration of the difference between what we, the audience, register as the reality in the film and the hard visual facts presented by the film. With this work, I intend to depart from the original narrative of the film and generate a new audience perspective through the literal breakdown of perspectives.
Untitled Documentaries
This is what I envisioned as the structure of these documentaries:
I have followed several of my close, intimate friends from when they started to when they ended their days. These days were not particularly eventful days – nor were they chosen because they were the most uneventful of days. They were arbitrarily chosen.
I presented no directions to my subjects nor did I restrain myself from posing questions, framing my shots, or turning on/off my camera. For example, I would film the entire duration of a lunch enjoyed in silence and skip dinner entirely. Similarly, I did not impose on my subject any particular subject matter, actions, or way of going on about their days. Most importantly, I did not ask my subjects to ignore the camera. I kept rolling the camera until I felt that I record the essence of the moment, or until my subjects kicked me out of their personal spaces due to discomfort.
I wish to weave these documentaries together in the editing process. The arc of the work centers on the dynamics between my subjects, the camera, and myself as opposed to the sequential linearity of time. It is an observing piece that tries to challenge the traditional association one has between the documentary camera and reality.
A conventional narrative requires the storyteller to maintain a certain kind of distance from his/her subject matter. A story is succinct because it is causally driven by a chain of important actions. I am interested in the drama in the mundane. Through a series of documentaries, I wish to ask these questions: how exactly do we extract a story out of our daily lives? How do we get a sense of the reality of certain relationships? How do the presence of a camera and the specific identity of the documentarian mediate/alter the portrayal of that reality?
Bibliography
My work is informed by a blend of traditional and avant-garde filmmakers, video artists, photographers, philosophers, and art and culture theorists. Through my thesis, I wish to investigate the evolution and construct of film through cross-referencing these different disciplines, but still fully maintain the integrity of the cinematic language. During the thesis writing process, I will relate and discuss projects by filmmakers such as Dziga Vertov, Sergei Eisenstein, Georges Méliès, Jean Renoir, Karl Freund, Francois Truffaut, Alfred Hitchcock, Jean Luc Godard, Agnes Varda, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Lars Von Trier. I will draw from writings by Walter Benjamin, Gilles Deleuze, Theodore Adorno, Jean Baudrillard, Paul Virilio, Christian Metz, Guiliana Bruno, Jonathan Crary, Maurice Merleau Ponty, Slavoj Zizek, and Henri Lefebvre. Finally, I will respond to the bridge between the traditional film medium and new media through looking at work by Nam Jun Paik, Douglas Gordon, Luc Courchesne, Michael Naimark, Jeffrey Shaw, David Rokeby, Susanne Jaschko, Joachim Sauter, Dirk Lausebrink, and Masaki Fujihata.
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Continuous Action and Time
During Cliff's session, I began to sidetrack myself by visualizing the construction method of my "Blowing Up Blow-Up" project. The main roadblock at the moment is how to correctly render each still so that it implies a space, like a sequence of actions, interpolated by stills that progress through time. For example, if Vanessa Redgrave's character runs across the field and her action is captured by a continuous camera pan, do I stitch together all these frames so that there is a time-based extrusion of Redgrave's character running down the field? Or do I eliminate her all together?
This makes me think about how action relates to space. Action is transient, it is the information in before still moments of being. In a sense, if I were to convey the park's space with multiple, messy extrusions of all the characters' actions, then I have captured a large summation of a motion. It is a moment that spans a larger than expected period of time, but a moment non-the less. If I were to pick one frame of Redgrave, one frame of Hemmings, and one frame of the man with whom Redgrave is having an affair-like relationship, then I have captured a smaller, but more specific moment – which is problematic, since the piece is not about a particular point in the narrative, and my selection of that one moment, if I were to do make a selection, would be somewhat arbitrary (something I don't want to do). Which leads the final option: the removal of characters altogether, which leads to all sorts of issues of the removal of identity through the removal of actions, of time, of the referentiality to the film, etc.
This makes me think about how action relates to space. Action is transient, it is the information in before still moments of being. In a sense, if I were to convey the park's space with multiple, messy extrusions of all the characters' actions, then I have captured a large summation of a motion. It is a moment that spans a larger than expected period of time, but a moment non-the less. If I were to pick one frame of Redgrave, one frame of Hemmings, and one frame of the man with whom Redgrave is having an affair-like relationship, then I have captured a smaller, but more specific moment – which is problematic, since the piece is not about a particular point in the narrative, and my selection of that one moment, if I were to do make a selection, would be somewhat arbitrary (something I don't want to do). Which leads the final option: the removal of characters altogether, which leads to all sorts of issues of the removal of identity through the removal of actions, of time, of the referentiality to the film, etc.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
I want to meet this man
"But I want the lens now to disclose the intensity of human consciousness to us through the intermidary of visual phenomena which are so subtle and so rapid i nature that we have no means ourselves to discover and record them; we are unable to observe them, we simple feel their radiance." (113)
Le Corbusier, "Spirit of Truth"
From "Espirit de verite," Mouvement, I (June 1933), 10-13
"The splendor and drama of life emerges from the truth; and 90 percent of the cinema's production is delusion. It simply exploits a remarkable technical advantage: the elimination of transitions, the easy possibility of suppressing "dead spaces." Thus, it soothes us with images, sometimes engaging ones. And we wait patiently, we wait.
We await the truth."
"The splendor and drama of life emerges from the truth; and 90 percent of the cinema's production is delusion. It simply exploits a remarkable technical advantage: the elimination of transitions, the easy possibility of suppressing "dead spaces." Thus, it soothes us with images, sometimes engaging ones. And we wait patiently, we wait.
We await the truth."
Thursday, September 20, 2007
The deal with Blowup
In extension to my previous entries about Antonioni's "Blowup," here is the project (in the works) that stemmed from it...
When Dave Hemming's character, the nameless photographer, develops his negatives of the part, the first fishy thing he notices about the print is Vanessa Redgrave's eyeline. Despite her intimate ...what seems like an affair...with the elderly gentleman, her attention gazes off screen (off-photo), onto the fence near by. This gaze arouses the photographer's curiosity. So he blows up the portion of the photo with the fence in it, and sees something. He still can't make out the details, so he blows it up some more. Finally, he finds the gun. Likewise, he does it with the blurry mass behind the trees, which turns out to be a dead body.
This is a classic example of how film, 2D in form, communicates 3D space. By placing these still frames of photographs together, the photographer recreates a reality. Similarly, by using photography as a medium as the metaphor for the construction of real space in cinema, Antonioni immerses the audience into a reality generated by the compositional relationship of the film's montage. There is a keeness to "perspectives" at play throughout the film, especially in this scene. We are made to look closer to find more details, to piece together what is there with what isn't. Decontextualized from the rest of the shots, the close-up of the body looks abstract, but woven into the sequence, the space contains a compelling narrative.
With all this said, here is the project that should articulate my points about film space, in specific reference to this film:
I have converted all the frames of this park scene into stills. Through directions of gaze, character interactions, the peculiar contour of the park, its geographical features, and the photographer's depiction of the space through the arrangement of his photographs, I plan to recreate the park sculpturally, by printing these stills onto paper and weaving them together. I will only work with the visual information provided by this scene. Whatever is missing or implied will remain so.
When Dave Hemming's character, the nameless photographer, develops his negatives of the part, the first fishy thing he notices about the print is Vanessa Redgrave's eyeline. Despite her intimate ...what seems like an affair...with the elderly gentleman, her attention gazes off screen (off-photo), onto the fence near by. This gaze arouses the photographer's curiosity. So he blows up the portion of the photo with the fence in it, and sees something. He still can't make out the details, so he blows it up some more. Finally, he finds the gun. Likewise, he does it with the blurry mass behind the trees, which turns out to be a dead body.
This is a classic example of how film, 2D in form, communicates 3D space. By placing these still frames of photographs together, the photographer recreates a reality. Similarly, by using photography as a medium as the metaphor for the construction of real space in cinema, Antonioni immerses the audience into a reality generated by the compositional relationship of the film's montage. There is a keeness to "perspectives" at play throughout the film, especially in this scene. We are made to look closer to find more details, to piece together what is there with what isn't. Decontextualized from the rest of the shots, the close-up of the body looks abstract, but woven into the sequence, the space contains a compelling narrative.
With all this said, here is the project that should articulate my points about film space, in specific reference to this film:
I have converted all the frames of this park scene into stills. Through directions of gaze, character interactions, the peculiar contour of the park, its geographical features, and the photographer's depiction of the space through the arrangement of his photographs, I plan to recreate the park sculpturally, by printing these stills onto paper and weaving them together. I will only work with the visual information provided by this scene. Whatever is missing or implied will remain so.
Pudovkin?
Great quote in Film Language about filmmaker Pudovkin (whom I don't know, but now probably should):
"The isolated shot is not even a small fragment of cinema; it is only raw material, a fragment of the real world. Only by montage can one pass from photography to cinema, from slavish copy to art. Broadly defined, montage is quite simply inseparable from the composition of the work itself." (p. 32)
"The isolated shot is not even a small fragment of cinema; it is only raw material, a fragment of the real world. Only by montage can one pass from photography to cinema, from slavish copy to art. Broadly defined, montage is quite simply inseparable from the composition of the work itself." (p. 32)
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Blowup: The Park
Here is (roughly) the shot-by-shot, position-by-position layout of the park scene in "Blowup," as mentioned in the previous entry:
There is a point to this. I swear. More after 7 hours of sleep...
There is a point to this. I swear. More after 7 hours of sleep...
Constructing Meaning
One of the most amazing scenes in the history of cinema is undoubtedly the park scene in Antonioni's "Blowup." I'm going to spoil the film here in case anyone who has not seen this film reads this. However, this film is one of the rare cases where "spoilage" would not do it harm.
To sum up, a photographer wanders into a park in London to take photographs. He sees, on a field in the park, a flirting couple. He takes pictures of them unapologetically, until the female of the couple notices him, runs up to him, and begs for the film. He refuses, but she persists. Finally, they come to some type of agreement. They part. She runs away into the distance. He takes more pictures of her as she disappears into the field.
This scene would not be so historically important if not for the scenes that followed. The photographer (who has no name in the film) blows up the pictures after developing them because something in the film appears intriguing and mysterious (the woman's eyeline points to somewhere in the bushes). And he continues to do this, until he finds the "truth."
Here are the photos he blows up, placed next to each other in his studio. The film shows these photos filling up the frame, in succession, is if they were in motion, being edited directly into the movie:
What is really amazing about this sequence is how the photographs become not only a metaphor, but also an agent of the cinematic language. As individuals, they are still moments devoid of drama, but together, they acquire the significance of time and logic.
Spatially, this is also a pivotal moment. We see the geography of the park blantantly laid out in front of us, almost panoramically. In film, we are restricted to seeing what is framed by the lens. Every movement (and lack thereof) is intended by the cinematographer and director. This means that what we see generates all the information we should know about that particular moment (and what we do not see should also generate common subconscious responses). Editing provides us with a variety, if not always more information. By placing all the shots together, we paint a mental canvas of the spaces in scenes in a manner designed by the filmmaker. But, as mentioned before, we don't see the whole picture. We are suggested a physical locale, as we are suggested causal actions that take place within this locale, but the information, when it boils down to solid visual evidence, is incredibly fragmented. This film is about the construction of truth through piecing together the fragments, and it is ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT.
To sum up, a photographer wanders into a park in London to take photographs. He sees, on a field in the park, a flirting couple. He takes pictures of them unapologetically, until the female of the couple notices him, runs up to him, and begs for the film. He refuses, but she persists. Finally, they come to some type of agreement. They part. She runs away into the distance. He takes more pictures of her as she disappears into the field.
This scene would not be so historically important if not for the scenes that followed. The photographer (who has no name in the film) blows up the pictures after developing them because something in the film appears intriguing and mysterious (the woman's eyeline points to somewhere in the bushes). And he continues to do this, until he finds the "truth."
Here are the photos he blows up, placed next to each other in his studio. The film shows these photos filling up the frame, in succession, is if they were in motion, being edited directly into the movie:
What is really amazing about this sequence is how the photographs become not only a metaphor, but also an agent of the cinematic language. As individuals, they are still moments devoid of drama, but together, they acquire the significance of time and logic.
Spatially, this is also a pivotal moment. We see the geography of the park blantantly laid out in front of us, almost panoramically. In film, we are restricted to seeing what is framed by the lens. Every movement (and lack thereof) is intended by the cinematographer and director. This means that what we see generates all the information we should know about that particular moment (and what we do not see should also generate common subconscious responses). Editing provides us with a variety, if not always more information. By placing all the shots together, we paint a mental canvas of the spaces in scenes in a manner designed by the filmmaker. But, as mentioned before, we don't see the whole picture. We are suggested a physical locale, as we are suggested causal actions that take place within this locale, but the information, when it boils down to solid visual evidence, is incredibly fragmented. This film is about the construction of truth through piecing together the fragments, and it is ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
The Ruins of Pompeii
I was walking in the ruins of Pompeii a few months ago. It was late July, during a shade-less afternoon. Pompeii was one of the last destinations of my Italy trip. I have traveled from north to south for the past three weeks, and have seen a lot of good art, but nothing really inspired new work so strikingly as the ruins of Pompeii.
I was glad that all the artifacts were either excavated or looted, because the bareness of the architecture was honest and un-staged. Moving past the roofless walls down a kilometer of streets that were simultaneously anonymous and specific, layers of rooms, common halls, and courtyards shifted past me. I witnessed multiples at the same time, a strange clash of vacancy and society. The rectangles and squares in the walls formed infinite configurations of filmic compositions. It was the highlight of my year.
The next day, I began to investigate precisely why I was so moved. I listed several topics that have always fascinated me and driven me to self-expression. I wrote down in my sketchbook this response:
This real-life cross-section of an entire society is something that has fascinated me since childhood. I was perpetually drawn to it with unexplainable force. As I aged, this attraction has not subsided. If anything, it grew stronger and more complicated. Even now, I am fixated in exploring space, breaks and continuums in space, simultaneous actions within and around spaces, visible and invisible sense of space. I fully recognize my passion, but rarely asked why. It’s been with me for so long. Standing against the ruins, I suddenly began to wonder – it was the first time I have been immersed within a dreamscape-like arena where my usual sense of spatiality was challenged. It has never happened before…where I could so clearly see multiple planes of divisions simultaneously. I could visualize the people that used to possess these spaces moving about, all together, in one continuous web of interspersed strings. The story of the place suddenly becomes about the inter-relationships, the energy of transitions, as opposed to any singular object. The simultaneity of actions triggered by multiple people is a form of calm rhythm.
After this reflection, works that I have never considered personal have become quiet intimate. My film work attempts to describe the conflict between isolation and coexistence. The situation is often mundane, or at least nothing “happens.” The dramatic tension in the narrative exists not in the subjects, but in the physical void between them.
I was glad that all the artifacts were either excavated or looted, because the bareness of the architecture was honest and un-staged. Moving past the roofless walls down a kilometer of streets that were simultaneously anonymous and specific, layers of rooms, common halls, and courtyards shifted past me. I witnessed multiples at the same time, a strange clash of vacancy and society. The rectangles and squares in the walls formed infinite configurations of filmic compositions. It was the highlight of my year.
The next day, I began to investigate precisely why I was so moved. I listed several topics that have always fascinated me and driven me to self-expression. I wrote down in my sketchbook this response:
This real-life cross-section of an entire society is something that has fascinated me since childhood. I was perpetually drawn to it with unexplainable force. As I aged, this attraction has not subsided. If anything, it grew stronger and more complicated. Even now, I am fixated in exploring space, breaks and continuums in space, simultaneous actions within and around spaces, visible and invisible sense of space. I fully recognize my passion, but rarely asked why. It’s been with me for so long. Standing against the ruins, I suddenly began to wonder – it was the first time I have been immersed within a dreamscape-like arena where my usual sense of spatiality was challenged. It has never happened before…where I could so clearly see multiple planes of divisions simultaneously. I could visualize the people that used to possess these spaces moving about, all together, in one continuous web of interspersed strings. The story of the place suddenly becomes about the inter-relationships, the energy of transitions, as opposed to any singular object. The simultaneity of actions triggered by multiple people is a form of calm rhythm.
After this reflection, works that I have never considered personal have become quiet intimate. My film work attempts to describe the conflict between isolation and coexistence. The situation is often mundane, or at least nothing “happens.” The dramatic tension in the narrative exists not in the subjects, but in the physical void between them.
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