ASSESSMENT ITEM 5

Research question: To explore the idea of performance in film through the use of the long take.

This semester in my media studio has been an incredibly interesting one. To be honest, six weeks ago, I really didn’t think that I would be able to figure out a research question that would allow me to push myself mentally and creatively. I finally came to the conclusion that I wanted to explore the nature of performance through the use of long takes in cinema. This came about after I became conciously aware of a number of scenes that I found to be incredibly inspiring and captivating to look at. Scenes that, in their perfect execution of the long take, allow the audience to focus their undivided attention on these bits of cinema magic.

In the class presentation that we had earlier on in the semester, the scenes that I used as examples that would help to shape my research project were the following:

Somewhere (Sofia Coppola, 2015)

Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, 2001)

Initially, I chose these scenes as inspiration for my project as I thought that the way that they execute the long shot to convey information and aesthetics was something that satiated the creative drive within me. After my presentation in front of Robin and our panel of guest creatives, I was made aware that all of my chosen scenes were performances. It hit me that what I was subconciously attracted to within these scenes was the performance aspect: the relationship between the performer and the viewer, through the use of the long take. This relates back to my initial idea of the audience interpreting information through long takes. Film is a performance. A film’s audience, like the audience watching a performer, interprets an individual sense of meaning from the performance at hand. I wanted to explore this by crafting my own performances and recording them. The results were a bit skewed. I’m a bit disappointed because I genuinely wanted to create a perfect harmony between my ideas and the execution of my project, but my creative motivation peaked a bit too early. The evolution of my ideas stopped dead in its tracks and I think I recorded some rather sloppy and safe little pieces of film.

My first draft was a performance piece of my friend Joe dancing. I wanted to convey a performance that was jubilant in nature. I did it all on my iPhone so i’m well aware of its technical shortcomings. The auto-focus is so bad on the iPhone, especially in low light situations and it really shows in the draft. I worked on remedying this for future drafts.

My second little piece was a recording of my friend Angie air-drumming to Evanescence’s ‘Bring Me To Life’. I wanted to create something that was still a bit rough and a progression of ideas, but something that was a little bit more ‘perfected’ in the way of technicalities such as focus and something that really conveyed the idea of the long take a bit more definitively. By this stage, I was starting to pay a bit more attention to the coverage within my shot. I wanted the scene to look mildly pleasing in terms of framing.

My final performance piece is of my friend Tess playing her piano accordion. I hired a semi-professional video camera from the tech guys at RMIT for this one, as I wanted it to have a nice mastered sheen to it, in terms of video quality as well as sound quality. This one proved to be a bit difficult as Tess was a bit rusty in terms of her piano accordion playing, so to get a long take of her playing it for longer than 40 seconds was really tough. Anyway – she still did great. I liked the way that I covered this piece, I really gave it a crack in trying to frame her well and in ways that really encapsulated the dark, resonating performance that accompanies the sound of a piano accordion. My editing definitely let this shot down. There different cuts of Tess’ playing are SO poorly edited… I tried to the sound to sync between all the shots as smoothly but it was so hard because we couldn’t get a shot with continuous music for longer than 45 seconds. It’s a bit frustrating but I feel like I definitely worked with what I had.

All in all, the thing about this project that shatters me is my lack of enthusiasm for it. When i’m one hundred percent invested in a creative project, I give it my all. I think my problem with this was that I just wasn’t confident enough to really feel what I was doing. It’s a shame because it’s such a good idea for a project, I just wish I gave it a lot more thought and put more hard work into it.

I’ve recut my project to give y’all an idea of what I set out to create: