Narrative

Both films in the sense of point A and B can be considered a narrative. Both movies have a sense of time that we can tell. Not all films have that. For instance, right now I'm at work on this Thursday night back at home. I had to drive from school In order to get back home and work at the store I am working at now. I will then go home to go to sleep and return here Friday afternoon. If we were to make a narrative of this we would surely show myself at school, my drive here, and to the point where I'm so bored at work that I'm doing my homework. If we didn't want a narrative all the shots would be scrambled to show more of a portrait of me. Duck Soup was obviously a narrative due to its storyline, but The Way Things Go could be argued more. We can see that the chain reaction surely has a beginning and an end and has a uniform sense of time that we can define. The defining sense of time is what makes a narrative a narrative in my opinion. Time can be manipulated all it wants, but as long as we know at the end of the film when it all took place, it is a narrative.

Duck Soup seemed to be about a man in power who you would normally see in power. I saw more of the narrative than anything in terms of technical parts of filmmaking. The Way Things Go seemed to be more about a tracking camera than anything because it seemed like the chain would never end. This is what I got out of Frampton's idea of what a film is about. 

Insight on Interventions, Experimental Films, and Creativity

With the films we saw in class and the Intervention project coming up, I am even more unsure of what an Intervention actually is. My understanding of an intervention is just putting something of art where it usually isn't found. 

I've had a lot a trouble with experimental film as a whole. I find it confusing but yet somewhat intriguing. It seems like I can can make a film about virtually anything and it can be conceived as a great work of art. I have trouble thinking that this idea exists. My brain works on mathematics and logic, but when I watch experimental media, I feel that I am missing the formula to make a great experimental film like the ones we see in class.

Before I go on with this blog, which may turn out to be a long one (I guess I'm probably making up for missed blogs), I feel like this blog may be a good time to reflect not only on this class but also my first year in the film department and how it relates to this class. So here goes the rest. 

I find film school a little bit frustrating for a few reasons. First is caused by grade school. I knew during grade school that I seemed to be stripped of my creativity, but now here in film school I see that grade school certainly did do just that. Granted I worked with film, well, mainly editing and producing sports and educational shows, I see now that I'm having trouble trying to find that creativity to work on films outside of editing. I'm going to this school for editing, but in order to succeed here, I need to find my creativity. 

But then I hit a snag: what makes an experimental film a good film? Unfortunately, I have not found this answer. I was hoping to find it in this class, but I failed on doing so. Is there an easy explanation? Is it based one interpretations of others?

So back to the invention, I mean, intervention. It sure seems like the intervention has to essentially an invention. Obviously the creative factor has to present in this project, but it the project seems so easy. It seems so broad, but I feel like it is also within limits. Maybe I'm just making things way too complicated than what they really are. The interventions that I have seen in lecture and and in discussion brought some light to what an intervention is. I need to create something in a place where there is no creativity. I just realized while writing this that an intervention is basically the same thing I need to do to get my creativity back. Insert creativity where creativity is not usually present.   

What a film is all about.

Frampton explains that a film is about the most, or the meaning of the film is a noticeable and occurring part of a film or object in a film. Gunvor Nelson's "Natural Features" can have many defining meanings. It can be argued that the film is about an occurring object which this film contains many examples. In the film we see a paintbrush acting as a transition or the leader of the film. Another example is the continuous occurrence of faces. Faces are sculpted or painted throughout this film. The other occurring par of this film would be the shrieking soundtrack. The screams throughout the film make haunted houses look pitiful at spots. My opinion of what this film is about is deception. The faces, paintbrush and soundtrack all fit into this explanation. The faces change, but in fact seem like one or two people by the soundtrack. The paintbrush is the author of the film because it changes what we see and decides when we see it. This film made us seriously look at what the filmmaker was trying to accomplish. I think tat this was deception, and that the film was about something more, but I could not comprehend it due to the art of deception that "Natural Features" presented.   

Trying to keep up with math, film and these blogs.

I have always had an interest in math but have never heard of anyone compare it to art other than M.C. Esher's works of art. During the lecture James Benning did his presentation and the whole time I did not get how it was supposed to relate to filmmaking. I realized the next day that the math lecture was for us to relate the lecture to film in the way we want. I went over his lecture again, and saw many relations to filmmaking.

1) The Pythagorean Theorem showed us the films don't have to be silent to get a message across. This is shown when Benning did his proof of the theorem without talking or at least mostly not talking. 

2) Imperfections are not a bad thing. Math, the universal language, has problems with working out, well, problems. Film has the same set back but this problems are not bad. They in fact help the understanding of the film as they do to the understanding of math. 

3) Benning mentions that prime numbers have no purpose, but yet people write many dissertations in prime numbers. Benning puts in his opinion on this and say that its "beautiful." The subject of films can be interpreted in the same way. It is beautiful to explore subjects that are unordinary through films.    

"Splitting" Splitting and Spiral Jetty

Splitting was a very interesting film in that it shows creativity through destruction. Gordan Matta Clark takes a sculpture into the exact opposite of what the traditional sculpture is known as. Instead of creating he is destroying. The film itself shows at various angles the destruction of the house in ways that sometimes question what we as viewers are looking at. One image in particular is looking at the sun through the cut in the middle of the house. Spiral Jetty plays with the sun in ways of color, glare and movement. The fly-over of Spiral Jetty shows the Salt Lake change colors from red to brown and even a hint of blue. The sun acts as a glare and helps outline Smithson's sculpture and makes it that more amazing and beautiful. There is an instant that is particularly amazing when the sun is framed by the Spiral Jetty when the reflection of the sun is located right in the middle of the spiral.

Authors

In Two Dogs and a Ball, the filmmaker seems to  be the author of the film. The ball, being an interest of the dogs in the film is obviously the controlling factor of the dogs. But the question is, what is the ball was not a natural interest of the dogs? Would the author of the film still be the filmmaker? I think that there can be many arguments that can be made for this film in terms of who the author is. Some may even be that the ball itself is the author of this film. I say its the filmmaker to to the ball inability to move by itself without an outside force acting on it. The ball moved because the filmmaker moved it. But I also give some authorship to the dogs due to their movements of following the ball and changing stances. The main author is the filmmaker because there would be no constant activity without the ball movements.

Week 4

In Semiotics of a Kitchen, I found the film very interesting in the way that there was the unordinary in the unordinary. Let me explain. Semiotics of the Kitchen presents the ABC's through kitchen supplies, something you don't see everyday. 

With the film on an unordinary subject, the film goes down a path that it seems like the other films we have watched so far do not go down. This path is entertainment. Experimental media seems to not entertain the way it used to due to the Hollywood cinema. A lot of the entertainment value has decreased as the history of film grew longer. Experimental media relates much to early cinema, when the film camera was a new invention and the cinema as we know it now, was in development. Filming experimental media was the first step of cinema, and what we are viewing in class is what seems like a revival of early cinema. I wish this experimental media viewing was more entertaining, although it is very interesting. 

So thats the unordinary, now the unordinary within the unordinary. We have the ABC's of the kitchen, and we are presented in a "show-and-tell" type way of a kitchen instrument that starts with a given letter of the alphabet. Entertainment is made when the unordinary way each instrument is presented. Many the tools are presented with unconventional, violent actions. Knives are used in a stabbing motion and the pan is reacting a flip in a fast vigorous motion looking like it is meant to harm someone. That is how the unordinary within the unordinary is presented.