262mc Arthur Lipsett

The Media Practitioner I found interesting was avant-garde film director Arthur Lipsett. His first film, Very Nice, Very Nice (1961) is a collaboration of recycled sounds and dozens of photographs that he found in the bin. His films usually have a satirical message to them. Very Nice, Very Nice (1961) looks behind the usual stoic face we put on as a society and shows the anxieties we wish to forget. The best way to describe his style is slightly amusing with dark irony. His films experiment with elements of narrative, documentary, experimental collage, and visuals. Amelia Does (Senses of Cinema) writes, “Although he may not have fully realised it, Lipsett was using media as a ritual or gateway, acting as medium and prophet, and reaching into the subconscious of humanity.”  Stanley Kubrick also described Very Nice, Very Nice (1961) as “One of the most imaginative and brilliant uses of the movie screen and soundtrack that I have ever seen” (Dazed).

The film that inspired me the most was short film 21-87 (1964), which is a collaboration between his own footage and footage he has found in the editing room of National Film Board. For the soundtrack he cut together; field recordings, gospel music, church hymns and conversation. It is stated in Dazed “The film wasn’t just a portal into Lipsett’s own brain – he had plugged into, as he put it, “the collective consciousness and unconsciousness of a civilisation”. His film 21-87 was inspiration for George Lucas to create “the force” in the Star Wars saga (Dazed).

I am thinking of creating political film collaboration between my own footage and sounds and stuff under creative commons. It would be hard to find unused film reels like Lipsett did because everything is digital these days. The New York public library just released 200,000 images that people can use for free so I could use some of those. My film would be about a political movement or could incorporate more than one, for example the black lives matter movement, the refugee crisis and the Syrian food crisis. “His films generate a severe emotional reaction to humanity,” says Eric Gaucher (Dazed). That is the kind of reaction I want to receive from my own work.

Bibliography:

1961,. “Very Nice, Very Nice – Arthur Lipsett”. 2016. Web. 12 Jan. 2016. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mY7B2-Wqj6g

1964,. “21-87 (Arthur Lipsett, 1964)”. 2016. Web. 12 Jan. 2016. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFn-NobVaoI

Dazed,. Hannah Lack. (2015). Arthur Lipsett: Reel Visionary. Available: http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/22293/1/arthur-lipsett-reel-visionary. Last accessed 12th Jan. 2016.

Senses of Cinema,. Amelia Does. (2013) “Free Fall: Lipsett Is The Shaman, Film Is The Ritual”. Last accessed 12 Jan. 2016.

260 The Plight of the Refugees.

https://vimeo.com/147846385

This is our final film based on this photograph by Carol Guzy.

Our film is based on the refugee crises, ones from the past and the one that happening right now. We took inspiration from New German Cinema, Surrealism and the tasks from term 1.

260mc Flashbacks

A little research into how flashbacks are used in film and the best way to introduce them to the audience.

Flashbacks are a tool where the writer provides the audience with visual information that he or she cannot incorporate into the screenplay any other way. The purpose of the flashback is simple: it is a technique that bridges time, place and action to reveal information about the character, or move the story forward.

 

http://filmsound.org/murch/parnassus/https://vimeo.com/99139322

Walter Murch on Flashbacks:

“In any film with a flashback structure you do have an extra degree of freedom in the ways the “beads” of the story can be strung together. The connections from scene to scene, particularly the transitions into the past and back to the present, are more allusive than they are in linear material, where one scene seems to trigger the next.” 

A way we could could bring in a flashback would be to have a sound bridge start in the living room scene and bring in the audio from the woods, the branches snapping ect.

https://www.writersstore.com/the-use-of-flashbacks/

 

260mc Walter Murch and his rule of six

“Your film: three lives and two deaths. It is born in your head, it dies on paper; it is brought to life again during shooting, where it is killed on film; and then resurrected in the editing, where it opens up like flowers in water.” – Walter Murch

Think of a cut as a change in rhythm, a new thought.

Attempt to produce the greatest effect in the viewers mind, with the least amount of things on screen.

Suggestion is always more effective than exposition

Rule of six:

Emotion: A cut that is true to the emotion of the moment.

Story: a cut that advances the story.

Rhythm: A cut that occurs at a moment that is rhythmically interesting and “right”.

Eye trace: Keep focus on the same place when cutting to make sure you don’t disturb the audience. If focus is in the corner of the screen keep it there when cutting to next clip.

Two dimensional plane of screen:A cut that respects “planarity”- the grammar of three dimensions transposed by photography to two. The questions of stage line, etc.

Three dimensional space of action: A cut that respects the three-dimensional continuity of the actual space.

 

The editor for Mad Max, Margaret Sixel, keeps the focus in the centre of the frame during fast cuts because that’s where the audiences eye line is. Its keeps the important visual information in one vital spot.

 

 

 

260mc Audio Vison and Critical Listening

The majority of people think that film is a essentially a visual experience, however people need to realise the importance of sound design. Walter Murch once said, “The better the sound, the better the image”. Sound is a really powerful tool for storytelling, and giving impact to your film. You should plan the soundscape to your film before the filming stage and not just whack any piece of music over it in post production.

There are two types of music that you will find in a film, commercial and commissioned. Commercial music is where the music id licensed for the film and commissioned music means music that has be composed for the film. Usually a director will pick a Commercial song and ask a composer to create tracks that are similar and fit them into a film.

There are three types of sound effects that go into a film, Foley, Production sound and Post Production sound. Foley is sounds that have been made by humans in a studio, for example door slamming, footsteps, punches etc. Production sounds are the sounds that are recorded on set because it would cost too much to rerecord in a studio. Postproduction sound usually comes from a library and edited to fit the film.

Even though dialogue is recorded on set a lot of the time actors have to go into a studio to record their lines again due to sets being really loud, this is called Automated dialogue replacement.

There are four dimensions of sounds; these are rhythm, fidelity, space and time.

Rhythm doesn’t have to be music, rhythm can be made from numerous things for example in The Godfather, Walter Murch uses train cars to build rhythm and tension. Fidelity is how true the sound is to its source and the story.  Space is split between diegetic and Non-diegetic sound. Diegetic Sound refers to all of the audio elements that come from sources inside the world we see on the screen, including dialogue, doors slamming, footsteps, etc. Non-Diegetic Sound refers to all sound that come from outside of the world we see on screen, including the musical score and sound effects like the screeches in the shower scene in Psycho.

Time is also split between, Synchronous and Non-synchronous time and Simultaneous time and Non-simultaneous time.  Synchronous time is sound from the visuals. Non-synchronous time is Sound that combines sounds from one source with visuals from another.

 

Film is 50% visuals and 50% sound – David Lynch

Walter Murch uses the sound of the subway to build tension instead of using music.

Non diegetic sound is the easiest way to build tension within a scene. The way music is set to a slow pace and then speeds up makes the audience jump and interests them more to a scene.

260mc Artists Film.

From Avant-garde film to Contemporary experiments with moving image. 

What is Avant-garde? 

Its experimental, ahead of our time, pushes boundaries, inventive, goes against the mainstream. It can be applied to film, art, literature, and music.

European Historical Avant-Gardes and Film. 

Futurism: 1916. Attacks the traditional and old fashioned, for example, museums and libraries. They were fascinated with the “New World” and Technology. The first to experiment with film and photography. This first film, directed by A. G. Bragaglia in 1916 and released in 1917. It can be regarded as the first tentative for a Futurist cinema.

Dada or Dadaism: It was formed during the First World War and shows negative reactions to the horrors of the war. The art produced by dada artists is often satirical and nonsensical. Challenges and mocks the traditional notions of art, meaning and comprehension.

The Art Critic 1919-20 Raoul Hausmann 1886-1971 Purchased 1974 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T01918

German Abstraction: 1920 Germany. Abstract paintings, influenced by Cubism, Geometric shapes.

Constructivism: Originated in Russia in 1919. concerned with new, modern social and cultural artefacts to serve revolutionary social purposes.  developed new aesthetic vocabularies.  Its influence was pervasive, with major impacts upon architecture, theatre, film, dance, fashion and to some extent music.

Surrealism: 1924-1939 psychic automatism, the power of unconscious, sigmand freud, importance of dreams and free imagination. Art and revolution,  Salvador Dali

American Avant-garde: 1940s. Maya Deren. Avant-garde is usually associated with European filmmakers, however America has its own rich tradition of avant-garde and experimental filmmakers. Very loosely defined as any film that doesn’t use narrative cinematic technique to achieve its goals.

American Underground: 1960/70s non conformism, challenge to conventions, sexual revolution, gay lesbian movements. Minority movements, Films are tools for personal and social freedom.

Performance, Body Art and Feminism:  

Carolee Schneem ann (1939) Meat Joy (1964)‘Meat Joy is an erotic rite:

excessive, indulgent, a celebration of flesh as material: raw fish, chicken, sausages, wet paint, transparent plastic, ropes, brushes, paper scrap. Its propulsion is towards the ecstatic: shifting and turning among tenderness, wildness, precision, abandon; qualities that could at any moment be sensual, comic, joyous, repellent. Physical equivalences are enacted as a psychic imagistic stream, in which the layered elements mesh and gain intensity by the energy complement of the audience.’

Vienna Actionist Group: Film used to document art works, short and violent. The group is probably best remembered for the violation of social boundaries, the use of naked bodies, destructiveness and violence.

 

London Filmmakers Co Op: was established in 1966 to support work on the margins of art and cinema.  It uniquely incorporated three related activities within a single organisation – a workshop for producing new films, a distribution arm for promoting them, and its own cinema space for screenings. The physical production – printing and processing – of a film became a vital part of its creation, and is what distinguished the LFMC films from other avant-garde work of the period.

 

 

260mc experimenting

https://vimeo.com/144989854

At first I experimented with putting a small Kalidescope in front of my camera lens, I think it gives a really nice effect however it wont fit for the feel of our film. I think it would work if I were to film a dream sequence in the future and with artificial lighting instead of natural light. The second thing i experimented with was tights because I read that during the feeling of Atonement Joe Wright used nets behind the lens for the scenes of Briony’s childhood in Atonement, giving it a romantic softness to the images. “Net diffusion” is simply the practice of placing a thin, net-like fabric, often stockings or pantyhose, in front of or behind the lens. I like the effect tights give in the first video I shot because you cant see the detail of the netting unlike the last two. The third thing I used was a clear bag that I placed over the lens to give it a hazy old feel. The last thing I experimented with was lens whacking where you take the lens of the camera to let light in and in and out of focus.

https://vimeo.com/145139889

260mc Drawing from the Arts

What is the relationships between Cinema and painting?

Art is dependant on other art.

An example of how Art has influenced film is in the Alfred Hitchcock film Psycho, the ominous Bates house was modeled after Hopper’s 1925 painting House by the Railroad. (1)

Guillermo del Toro’s discussed the art historical influences behind his dark fairy tale Pan’s Labyrinth in an interview with The Guardian:

“Goya was an obvious reference, specifically with regards to the character of the Pale Man. There is a scene in which the Pale Man bites the heads off the fairies. That comes straight from Goya’s painting of Saturn devouring his son.”(2)

David Lynch;

Calls his films Soundscapes that move.

There is an interconnection between painting and sound

6 men getting sick was Lynchs first exploration into film. Lynch describes it as “Fifty-seven seconds of growth and fire, and three seconds of vomit.”(3) He first started out as a painter then transitioned into film after he wanted to “see his painting move.”

“I was painting very dark paintings. And I saw some little part of this figure moving, and I heard a wind. And I really wanted these things to move and have a sound with them. And so I started making an animated film as a moving painting. And that was it. I wasn’t in the film business.” (4)

“I always sort of wanted to do films. Not so much a movie-movie as a film-painting. I wanted the mood of the painting to be expanded through film, sort of a moving painting. It was really the mood I was after. I wanted a sound with it that would be so strange, so beautiful, like if the Mona Lisa opened her mouth and turned, and there would be a wind, and then she’d turn back and smile. It would be strange.”(5)

“Cinema is the 7^th art.” 

This term was first coined by an Italian Film theoretician named Ricciotta Canudo.

The other arts are:
1st art: architecture
2nd art: sculpture
3rd art: painting
4th art: dance
5th art: music
6th art: poetry
7th art: cinema

Referring to Cinema as “The Seventh Art” is a nice way of reminding the  audience that films are significant in their own way and ought to take place right alongside the other arts. In the oxford dictionary art is described as “The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.” This definition applies to film just as it applies to painting.

References:

1. http://selvedgeyard.com/2012/06/12/alfred-hitchcock-and-the-making-of-psycho-tsy-required-reading/

2. http://www.theguardian.com/film/2006/nov/17/2
3. Eilene Fisher, “Classics in His Closet,” Applause, May 1989
4. The Late Late Show, Feb. 26, 1997
5. Blue Velvet Press Kit

260mc Ideas

Our first idea for our short film is to have a soldier in the centre of the screen and he walks through derelict towns and countrysides and eventually ending up at a refugee camp. In the background we would see lots of different refugees carrying their belongings. At the camp side there will be a large crowd on either sides of the fence and at the end you will see a baby being lifted over the fence wearing bright blue clothing amongst greens and browns.

Our second idea is to have an onlooker or a soldier walking forward in the centre of the frame. In the background lots of different refugee crises will be shown one by one. Firstly it would be the Jewish refugees from the second world war, then Cambodian Refugees, then Kosovan refugees, and then ending with the Syrian refugees.

If we can use pre recorded sounds, we could add gunfire and similar things but really quietly to show the audience what the refugees are running from. The sound could change for each refugee group.

 

260mc Affect, Colour and the Devotional Object

We were given a task to adapt a quote, which was “One day he got there about three o’clock. Everybody was in the fields. He went into the kitchen, but did not at once catch sight of Emma; the outside shutters were closed. Through the chinks of the wood the sun sent across the flooring long fine rays that were broken at the corners of the furniture and trembled along the ceiling. Some flies on the table were crawling up the glasses that had been used, and buzzing as they drowned themselves in the dregs of the cider. The daylight that came in by the chimney made velvet of the soot at the back of the fireplace, and touched with blue the cold cinders. Between the window and the hearth Emma was sewing; she wore no fichu; he could see small drops of perspiration on her bare shoulders.” This is from Madame Bovary written by Gustav Flaubert.

The colours we decided to use where magenta and cyan even though they are binary opposites however we did use orange for one scene. Originally we wanted to use blue and yellow however after doing some research I noticed a lot of things in “Hollywood” is blue and orange and we wanted to move away from cliche and experiment a bit. Check out this link to see for yourself.  http://theabyssgazes.blogspot.co.uk/2010/03/teal-and-orange-hollywood-please-stop.html

https://vimeo.com/144053536

We decided to experiment and tell the story using photographs, music and narration. We wanted lots of overpowering light and no white on screen at all. We tried “ghosting” where we had a really long exposure time and our actor slowly walking through the frame to capture motion in our photographs. From the text the emotions we picked up on were angst, apprehension, and restlessness, because of this we decided that the two characters should never be in the same frame.

https://vimeo.com/46620661

We watched La Jetee to gain some inspiration for our own film. After watching we decided to add narration and some music that added to the atmosphere of our film.  We also modernised and edited the text so our narration matched our images, and we also made it first person so it was more personal. This is our edited version of the text:

“One day I got there about three o’clock. Everybody was in the fields. I went into the kitchen, but did not immediately catch sight of Emma; the curtains were drawn. Through the chinks of the wood the sun sent  long fine rays across the floor, that were broken at the corners of the furniture and trembled along the ceiling. The fly on the table was crawling up the glass that had been used, and buzzing as it drowned itself in the dregs of the cider. The daylight that came in by the chimney made velvet of the sofa at the end of the room. Between the window and the door Emma was sewing; she wore no jacket; I could see small drops of perspiration on her pale forehead.”