Monthly Archives: April 2016

Week #6 Reading 2: The substance of story

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I like McKee. I mean, I don’t hate him. When going through this reading on the train back to Melbourne last night, I showed a friend what we were given this week and he told me he had a speaker come in and give in a similar low-down on the do’s and don’ts of screenwriting. Jokingly, I asked “did he say no deus ex machinas?”, referencing this scene from (the Jonze/Kaufman masterpiece) Adaptation. (2002):

And surprised was I ever when today it was revealed that this lecturer character is in fact the writer of (one of) this week’s readings (he was with us another week too if I remember correctly). The man, the myth, the legend: Robert McKee, played so spectacularly by Brian Cox (that sweetly serenading voice: also see, Zodiac (2007)).

McKee, of course, makes some good points, but with this piece having been published in 1997 I fear that it may be a little (maybe a lot) out of date; the ever-changing face of cinema, and the ever-changing faces of cinephiles seem to be beginning to reject some points McKee so powerfully asserts. Statements following lines such as “A story cannot be told about a protagonist who doesn’t want anything, who cannot make decisions” come off as slightly ignorant as many films have found their protagonist at a perpetually conflicted state, and it is this state which draws the drama in, sometimes in richer form. Obviously these notes are meant to be taken as scripture but McKee seems to be writing off any opposition to this template too quickly. It is the films which push these guidelines to the limits, or completely shatter them that stand out as unique, glorious in their doing so. But I guess you have to know the rules to break them.

McKee’s entire thesis strikes be as odd considering he never penned anything of worth (a few episodes of TV??) with such an extensive knowledge on the inner workings of narrative. McKees reluctance to refer to the protagonist as anything but ‘he’ is also odd, because clearly by 1997 a plethora of women-driven films had been put to screen by then (from The Wizard of Oz (1939) to Safe (1995)). Maybe I’m just being pedantic.

I’m glad that this is a thing.

 

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Also, my Office subscription ran out, so I guess my notes will be taken here for now. What lazily follows is a list of the ‘big’ (or at least bold) points McKee makes, saved for future use:

  • Two ends of a story: the substance V audience’s reaction to this substance
  • Protagonist: that who allows the audience to slip into a subjective and highly imaginative POV, to understand the substance of the story and how it performs
    • Single character
    • Plural-Protagonist: duo, trio, etc. possibly an entire class of people. Two conditions: all individuals in the group share the same desire, and in the struggle to achieve this desire they mutually suffer and benefit. Motivation, action and consequence are communal.
    • Multiprotagonist: characters pursue separate and individual desires, suffering and benefiting independently. eg. The Breakfast Club, Robert Altman (finally a mention).

 

THE PROTAGONIST

A PROTAGONIST is a willful character. 

The PROTAGONIST has a conscious desire.

The PROTAGONIST may also have a self-contradictory unconscious desire. 

The PROTAGONIST has the capacities to pursue the Object of Desire convincingly. 

The PROTAGONIST must have at least a chance to attain his desire. 

The PROTAGONIST has the will and capacity to pursue the object of his conscious and/or unconscious desire to the end of the line, to the human limit established by setting and genre. 

A STORY must build to a final action beyond which the audience cannot imagine another. 

The PROTAGONIST must be empathetic; he may or may not be sympathetic. 

 

THE FIRST STEP

In story, we concentrate on that moment, and only that moment, in which a character takes an action expecting a useful reaction from the world, but instead the effect of his action is to provoke forces of antagonism. The world of the character reacts differently than expected, more powerfully than expected, or both. 

THE WORLD OF A CHARACTER

“A character’s world can be imagined as a series of concentric circles surrounding a core of raw identity or awareness, circles that mark the levels of conflict in a character’s life.”

“The inner circle or level is his own self and conflicts arising from the elements of his nature: mind, body emotion.”

“The second circle inscribes personal relationships, unions of intimacy deeper than the social role.”

“The third circle marks the level of extra-personal conflict–all the sources of antagonism outside the personal: conflict with social institutions and individuals.”

THE GAP

STORY is born in that place where the subject and objects realms touch. 

ON RISK

The measure of a value of a character’s desire is in direct proportion to the risk he’s willing to take to achieve it; the greater the value, the greater the risk.

The zoom: when and why? Part Three

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The one and only Brian De Palma, voyeuristic connoisseur and cinematic mastermind, authority on the split-screen and di-opter shots, and self-proclaimed Hitchcock devotee and frequent referencer, also falls into the category of filmmakers who define the zoom (in my eyes, at least).

Take (again) the beginning of this scene from The Untouchables (1987). The zoom heightens the tension to an almost unbelievable/boiling point level, allowing Ness’s cocking of the shotgun up through the bottom of the frame to build off of this drama—making the surprise even sweeter. Emotional investment is key to nailing the zoom. Unprofessional shmunprofessional.

The zoom: when and why? Part One

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♪ music for your reading pleasure ♪

In our workshop this week, we were set to the task of creating our own short interview, in preparation of our workings on PB3, and one tip struck me as being particularly flawed: “Do not use zooms. Zooms are unprofessional.”

Personally, I love zooms. I will defend them until the day I die. Zoom aficionados such as Robert Altman and Brian De Palma serve as reminders that the zoom can be used for cinematic grandeur, and not simply a conveyance of unprofessionalism.

This is the best video I could find which encapsulates Altman’s love for the zoom, though do yourself a favour and watch any of his films (a handful are playing at the Cinematheque in Fed Square over the next 3 weeks, you’d be a fool to miss them).

A lot (and when I say a lot, I mean a lot) of Altman’s shots rely on his boundless use of zooms, his reputation as a filmmaker more or less defined by this unlimited, free-flowing nature of filmmaking. Altman is recognised as a ‘maverick’ in making stylised films that are also highly naturalistic; he even produced a multitrack recording technique which presented overlapping dialogue from his multiple actors, wholly emphasising this balance between style and realism. Altman films are a sensory delight; they constantly remind you that they’re films (using zooms to draw attention to the camera’s presence) while encapsulating a devoutly human side (dense and improvisational dialogue) to the production and narrative that some filmmakers tend to reject.

In his prolific use of the zoom lens, Altman achieved a looming presence following the intricacies of his (quintessentially ensemble) cast, a scene from 3 Women (1977) comes to mind as a defining shot; Shelley Duvall’s character walks though her apartment courtyard, past a congregation of other residents (again, each with their own audio track), and the camera follows her on this journey, up and until she reaches her apartment door. (Haven’t seen 3 Women for almost a year, this could be completely misguided). Additionally, he often opted to have the camera always moving, a pursuing character in itself that desires to become part of the ensemble.

British film critic David Thomson wrote about Nashville (1975) noting how “it remains enigmatic how organized or purposeful [it] is. . . . The mosaic, or mix, permits a freedom and a human idiosyncrasy that Renoir might have admired.” and that MASH (1970), an earlier Altman film, “began to develop the crucial Altman style of overlapping, blurred sound and images so slippery with zoom that there was no sense of composition”, these techniques becoming so refined by the mid-70s that they defined what made Nashville “so absorbing.”

Although irrelevant, the life of Altman seemed to be a particularly explosive one, rife with studio complications and those on the business side of the industry (supposedly once “punching an executive in the nose and knocking him into a swimming pool because he insisted he cut six minutes from a film he was working on”). One Stanley Kubrick once complimented Altman’s camerawork, following with, “How did you do it?” – A true father figure in the cinematic world.

Week #4 Practical: Sound Exercise

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Problems, problems, problems: from the get go we were in deep, another group letting us in on the fact that they were told not to record in the library (“copyright”) so of course, we rebelled. Penelope and I commit treason against RMIT. On top of that, our recorded audio was quiet, partly my fault due to the fact that I knew my voice wasn’t coming through clearly but kept going along with it (don’t pretend like you voice is something you actually want to hear) but we didn’t let that stop us. At this point in time I’m as confused about the microphone settings as I was before we even discussed them in class (wind sock?). It has been a busy week (not in terms of work, I am so behind) in that I spent way too much time not doing what I should’ve been doing (reminiscent of my year 12 year), and too much time doing anything else. In turn, I delayed my learning about Adobe Audition until now, and in some ways I guess I regret it; I feel as if my audio file could’ve been cleaner, its ‘signal to noise ratio’ a little off in some parts, but 9+ minutes of dialogue is an effort to traverse your way through. I am a fairly quick learner when it comes to the likes of Adobe programs though, so I’m sure I won’t have too much trouble figuring out the intricacies of the software. The content of our interview is much more enjoyable than the presentation of our audio (poor quality audio is a pet peeve of mine, but I hope you can survive). Better luck next time.

Movies I watched this week – 08/04/16

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Week #5. I need a break.

 

Zodiac (2007) dir. David Fincher
02/04/16
rewatch

Written for Letterboxd:

“I just want to help.”

An absolutely celestially exhausting experience. One that poises knowledge as the highest form of power, the need for closure as the driving force and the mystery as the formal bind that ties its inquisitors together only to tear them apart when they stretch too far. Knowing when to call it is the curious man’s only saviour. Gyllenhaal appears to surface as the only figure safe from the catastrophe until full-frontal obsession kicks in gear and the fringes of a homeliness woven by his initial fascination begin to tear at the seams; boxes upon boxes of files inhabit rooms in the place of those close (Sevigny’s “It was just the date that never ended” breaks my sore heart). Manages to appear ethereal all the while conscious that it is drenched in both exposition and information, Fincher juggling multiple characters and time periods without missing a single booming beat. Pre-Avenger Ruffalo and Downey Jr. corroborate on exactly why MCU needs to fade away or at least loosen its restraints and give the superhero stockpile some eminence away from the superhero stockpile. Eternally wishing Fincher and Reznor (and Ross, if he wants) starting collaborating a couple of works earlier, the grimy and industrial reverberations sorely missing from the hazy streets of San Fran. A man can dream. ★★★★★

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) dir. Stanley Kubrick
03/04/16
rewatch

It’s becoming an annual event to experience all of Kubrick’s glory in 70mm at the Astor in April. Still as dazzling as the first time. ★★★★★

Retaliation (1968) dir. Yasuharu Hasebe
04/04/16

What a treasure trove the Swanston library is!! I have never been more impressed by a library’s collection of films (the amount of OOP copies they have is mind-boggling). Retaliation itself is an admirable feat from Hasebe (who would later on go on to create the Stray Cat Rock pentalogy, which I hear are something special), his frames here are always crowded, replicating the characters reservations and hesitations in their mob-related scheming. Nothing particularly special, but any Japanese movie with a sword fight is worth viewing at least once. ★★★

Zodiac (2007) dir. David Fincher
05/04/16
rewatch

Twice in a week for my Intro to Cinema course, but regardless of its length and jam-packed expository content I feel as if I could watch this at least twice a week, every week, for the rest of my life. Fincher is a magician, this has no right being as enjoyable as it is. Clean, gritty cinema. ★★★★★

Crushed (2015) dir. Megan Riakos
05/04/16

Received an email from someone high up in the Media program with an invitation to a free screening at Nova, and who wouldn’t take up the opportunity? For an Australian independent film, it looked and sounded incredibly crisp, Riakos certainly nailing the mood of country Australia without pushing it to parody (although, this featured an incredibly hilarious (intentionally, I assume/hope) bogan guy who generated a fit of laughter with every sentence spoken). Becomes a hilariously messy film by its conclusion, but enjoyable to say the least. I just wish the lead could’ve been replaced with someone with a little more oomph. ★★★

Querelle (1982) dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder 
06/04/16

Undoubtedly the gayest film I have ever seen, and will probably ever see. Every character appears drenched in sweat, tightly-clad leather wrapped in binds around their tanned flesh, speaking not-so-poetically in spiels of derogatory descriptions of private parts and private acts that the whole idea of sex becomes so public, an inescapable reality. These men attempt to conceal their pent up homosexuality, in straight up denial to any titles that could possibly emasculate them, yet when given the chance strip down and give in to the pressures. Querelle‘s entire look is so explicitly artificial, shot (in opposition to Fassbinder’s usual on-set shooting preference) in a studio, a pulsating, expressionistic warm pink-red light drenching every inch of the location. Phallic architecture stands so obviously in the streets of Brest, much to the discretion of the sailors who inhabit these streets and loom between ruins and beneath the surface in sewer-esque corridors, trying to mask their true feelings. Scenes in which fights break out tend to appear reminiscent of dance, choreographed so that the actors twirl in circular motions around each other rather than take swings. A truly theatrical and uncanny achievement (and in glorious 35mm!!). ★★★

The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972) dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder
06/04/16

Written for my cinema studies blog post:

R.W. Fassbinder’s haunting The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant exposes the beauty of mise-en-scene, its importance potent in every frame; the entirety of the film’s 2 hour duration is spent closed in the bedroom of one Petra von Kant, no action taking place any further than a few metres from her bed (setting existing as its own character, etc.). As the tale progresses, Petra’s reliance on make-up to cover the insecurities and shortcomings of her highly stylized and material life is attended to heavily, with the change of a wig and switch of an outfit defining each five parts of the narrative. Here, Fassbinder exerts complete control over his actresses (all female cast!), Petra herself receding from a drunken buffoon into an unaccustomed reserved nature by the film’s conclusion. The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant also exists as a perfect how to guide of the technique of blocking; the emotional frailty of characters’ woefully defined by their steps, their overlapping bodies as they slump side by side on the edge of a bed. ★★★★

Army of Shadows (1969) dir. Jean-Pierre Melville
07/04/16

Written for Letterboxd:

So outrageously frustrated in my disappointment with this. Call this rating an extension of my immense tiredness as a uni student and cinematic fatigue emerging from the never-ending cinema-going experience that has defined my life these past months, or just a cop-out, a rendering of my poor cinematic judgement, but know I wanted to love this. Melancholic tinges of blue that Melville so perfectly executed later in Le Cercle Rouge fade into a grim greyness, achieving a distinctly more miserable visual tone (accompanied by seriously dismal murders, particularly the strangulation of young Dounat where what are presumably his shrieks of sorrow happen to be coming from a member of the Resistance) to the detriment of the overall form. Nothing Melville puts to screen here ever left me bored, but rarely anything particularly involved me either (some isolated occurrences; namely moments when a hard not to love quasi-spy theme rings off, and scenes in which Melville, as he so illustriously does, leaves the silences to do the talking) and left me craving more of the close-knit crime clan of Rouge as opposed to the distanced leading ensemble that is played out here. I failed (miserably) to find any strand of emotion worth investing in this band of Resistance misfits, and in turn, (the masterpiece that supposedly is, and one day I hope to find as) Army of Shadows failed to slip through the hazy boundaries of imprisonment and into my heart. And yes I know, I’m a POS. ★★★

Taking the weekend off. I hope.

MEEZ-AHN-SEHN

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In the cinematic world, a setting, an outfit or the colour of a light can exist itself as a character within a film. The city of San Francisco bleeds through every visceral frame of David Fincher’s Zodiac (2007) just as the three respective European locations in which the films of Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy (1995-2013) [Vienna, Paris, Peloponnese] breathe life into the conversations and happenings between its two leads, giving birth to crucial context in which the film’s events unfold. Through these location choices (with a little help from Linklater’s inspired direction), dialogue is given room to flow within each location, representing a different chapter of the character’s lives, with each portion a unique (yet undoubtedly European) look and mood, natural and authentic. On the opposite end of the spectrum we are given an auteur like Wes Anderson, who is famously (or infamously, depending on your taste and tolerance for aesthetics) known for his artificial and manufactured settings, often opting for custom purpose-built sets, stop-motion animation and miniatures (many exteriors in The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) are minis).

R.W. Fassbinder’s haunting The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972) exposes the beauty of mise-en-scene in every frame; the entirety of the film’s 2 hour duration is spent closed in the bedroom of one Petra von Kant, no action taking place any further than a few metres from her bed (again, setting existing as its own character). As the tale progresses, Petra’s reliance on make-up to cover the insecurities and shortcomings of her highly stylized and material life is attended to heavily, with the change of a wig and switch of an outfit defining each five parts of the narrative. Here, Fassbinder exerts complete control over his actresses (all female cast!), Petra herself receding from a drunken buffoon into an unaccustomed reserved nature by the film’s conclusion. The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant also exists as a perfect how to guide of the technique of blocking; the emotional frailty of characters’ woefully defined by their steps, their overlapping bodies as they slump side by side on the edge of a bed.

Week #5 Reading: Everything is a Text

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♪ Music for your reading pleasure ♪

I’m intrigued how a wide majority media (texts) seem to be obsessed with pinning down what various aspects of media actually are, as opposed to other subjects (eg. science-y stuff) where what’s written in the textbook is the one and only truth. Media practitioners seem to be publishing and publishing days on end in attempts to uncover the (hidden) meanings of the practice, showing that the enterprise is still very much a work in progress, full speed ahead. emphasis on ‘the role that media plays in our lives’—undoubtedly the overall aim of the subject—is played out in almost all readings. Perpetually meta in the sense that not only can the study of media itself can be read as a ‘text’, but also the fact that it uses texts to understand how to read texts—all presenting their own version of reality, a kind of bumbling, cyclical philosophical mess that and I’d be lying if I said I don’t enjoy it.

Alan McKee in this week’s reading (‘Beginner’s Guide to Textual Analysis’) aims to open the eyes of the regular person to the inner workings of textual analysis, providing guidelines on the do’s and don’ts underpinning the underpinning methodology itself. McKee asserts that there is no single ‘correct’ interpretation of any text; as soon as we describe a something as a ‘text’ we are implying a certain approach to, and way of making sense of, it and no single rendition can entirely define the text’s meaning. ‘Never claim that a text is an ‘accurate’ or ‘inaccurate’ representation, [and] never claim that it ‘reflects reality’, he continues, cautious of the fact that ‘every version of ‘reality’ that we might measure out text against is always—inescapably—another representation’. Just ‘another text’.

Context is key: ‘you can do nothing with a text until you establish its context’, boasts McKee. The context is the thing that grounds the text in interpretation; alter or remove this context and interpretation reshuffles. Context also exists and an inescapable constraint, we are unable to describe a text without implicitly putting it into context (McKee gives the example of an indigenous Australian video being described as ’empty’ or ‘shots of landscape’ and this putting the video in a Western context).

McKee’s piece was a little easier on the mind than the accompanying ‘Looking at Photographs’ by Victor Burgin (maybe my 9am sleep-deprived brain was working against me at that point), and although I extracted some especially thorough points on photographic analysis, the ideologically-comprehensive, aggressive and loaded style of writing he employs causes my head to collapse to the point of implosion. Burgin’s writings on Jarches’s photography (General Wavell watches his gardener at work, 1941) struck me as particularly fascinating, the ideas of ‘paternalistic imperialism’ and ‘vis-a-vis photography (and how its dominant alternative is voyeurism (a particular fascination of one Brian De Palma (who is a particular fascination of one Samuel Harris))).

“…work in semiotics has shown that a photograph is not to be reduced to ‘pure form’, not ‘window on the world’, nor is it a gangway to the presence of the author…the photograph is a place of work, a structured and structuring space within which the reader deploys, and is deployed by, what codes he or she is familiar with in order to make sense.”—Intriguing work.

In Review: Self Portrait v2.0

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Presentation is one of the things I fear most in the world. Slowly but surely the pillars of my self-confidence are building, largely thanks to my move to Melbourne (I think) and to some degree my growing faith in my ability to create and write. Oral presentations are my definite weak point, and while I don’t fret at the idea of screening something I created it’s not something I am particularly keen on.

The audio in my assignment plays an enormous part of its overall intention and precision in editing, and (sorry Rachel) I think the volume was a little too low for my work to have any real impression, the omnipresent reverberated ticking of the clock and distorted conversation between my mum and sister seeming to pass over my classmates’ heads. Either that or it really did blow.

Wildly embarrassed by my attempt to incorporate photos in my project from the moment I imported them (the first 40 seconds flow so smoothly that I can help but feel insanely self-conscious at the final 20), I thought up a better way to add them literally 5 minutes before my screening but by then it was too late; my fate was sealed. Following that, the overly obnoxious onscreen ‘TICK TOCK’ acted to deepen the redness of my, at that point, already rosy cheeks. There were so many things I wanted to change after watching it with an audience that I’m surprised I didn’t notice them in the editing process. After having watched my video at least 20 times by the time I closed Premiere for the last time honestly thought I had perfected my idea, but seeing them come (briefly) to life on screen I couldn’t be more against the majority of my creative decisions. I’m glad my class gave me an awkwardly reserved clap. That’s all it’s worth. Always room for improvement.