For this assignment, I’ve chosen Priming as the word I am going to explore noticing through. For me, Priming is the exposure to one stimulus which influences a response to a subsequent stimulus. I think I’m going to focus specifically on the audience for this task. I haven’t really thought through the process yet but I want to focus on priming the audience to feel a particular way throughout my final piece, namely discomfort or confusion.
Something I want to incorporate into my film is a shooting technique used by James Benning in his film Los. Filmed around Los Angeles with a stationary camera/tripod, all 35 shots in his film were exactly 2 and a half minutes in duration. This idea of letting the camera do the editing for you is very intriguing to me. Along a similar vein is an exercise we did in class today. We had to do 5 shots purely duration based (we did 10 seconds) and then we had to do 5 shots where something within the frame dictated when to start/cut (we did when someone began walking up the stairs).
For my assignment I think I will use a bit of a middle ground between the two (our piece and Bennings’) and shoot for around 30 seconds per shot. Obviously I’ll need to refine the duration constraints once I’ve established what Im actually shooting, but I’m definitely intrigued by the idea of constrained shooting.
Benning and Silke Panse in their interview “Land As Protagonist” also discuss this notion of disregarding the idea of a subjective narrative in order to “see something that is not them”. I’m definitely drawn to this idea and, like Benning, will use a tripod with static shots throughout my piece and in those longer 30 second shots. Perhaps juxtaposing that with rapid quick cuts in order to create that sense of unease in the audience that I am aiming to prime.