Category Archives: Scene in the Cinema – Epiphanies

Reviewing the Act of Filming

Imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective, an eye unprejudiced by compositional logic, an eye which does not respond to the name of everything but which must know each object encountered in life through an adventure of perception.

– Stan Brakhage.

Throughout the first half of this semester I have been constantly trying to project my own living experiences onto screen (or more accurately in this case, recreate it through the act of filming). I saw the camera as only a lifeless tool that assisted my intentions (to communicate a sense of oneness with nature and a less human centered worldview through relationships with nonhuman characters). But it wasn’t until coming across Stan Brakhage’s idea of defining the camera as a non-human perspective that I realised what we often take for granted. The camera sees things that we are too limited by our human subjectivity to see. Though not an entirely an omniscient perspective (the very word implies the contrary), as reminded by an earlier inspiration John Smith’s The Girl Chewing Gum (1976) which sparked my initial investigation, the camera has its own unique perspective. Brakhage’s film Window Water Baby Moving (1959) presented the events of a birth from a neutral perspective yet portraying a realistically fragmented reality that is truer to our experiences in life than the conventional device of filmic continuity.

Since then, I have performed several experiments exploring the act of film by ways of seeing, filming and moving as well as investigating the relationships between them. Reflecting on my experimentations and observations, my research have diverged from the original research I proposed to conduct in week 8. Rather than developing a set of auteurist codes and personal filmic devices, I discovered tools that can be used to creatively navigate or engage the world around me. The act of filming when conducted aimlessly as a form of meditation, is an effective way to implement experimentation into the creative process.

I have also observed several classmates on their research projects as well as other productions outside of class. During these events, I observe and compare their methodologies to my own developing ways of working. This led to a further curiosity of whether or not they also contemplate about the meaning of the act of filming and the relationship between observing as a personal experience and the decision to frame or film something with the eye of the camera. With this in mind I conducted some recorded conversations with the people I have been working with to generate discourse surrounding this topic. The process of having conversations is an organic and dynamic one that I have discovered as part of my methodology, which I will continue to use throughout my creative endeavours. Through these conversations, not only did I get to know a bit about what others are thinking and how they perceive the act of filming. As well as generating a much needed local discourse surrounding film culture within the student community, it also brought upon insights on aesthetics, cinema, experience, identity, philosophy, culture and even politics. This became one of the significant revelations during this process: that cinema and filmmaking should be explored constantly in connection to the world around us, particularly in contemporary society.

Another epiphany led to the decision that a compilation video of my journey exploring the different perspectives on the act of filming, would be a more suitable documentation rather than creating a conventional scene or simply writing a reflection. The experimental footage and recorded conversations formed the basis for this visual summary:

As a result, accompanying this written statement is a film essay recapturing the journey of exploration and a concluding conceptual performance piece that summarises the relationship I have with the camera.

Research: Filming as Meditation

During this session of experimentation, I started off with a conventional perspective, holding the camera right side up and performing standard camera movements such as pans and tilts. But gradually my focus on such conventions dissolved, I started to ask:

– why do I need to keep the camera in the same position or orientation?

– why do I have to avoiding filming myself or avoid any kind of distraction from my subject?

I began to let my mind and my camera roam freely and separately, knowing that the camera is a free agent, capturing not my experience at the time, but its own perspective. I made turns and tilts that were mainly motivated by the simplest route to film from where the camera and I was to my next point of focus. This meant sometimes disregarding the camera’s orientation – landscape or portrait or on any other angle.

Without filming with any intention, my perspective and the camera’s starting to diverge. I focussed on my experience of being in the space, my physical and conscious interactions with the subjects, and the camera, in its own way, did the same without much of my direction (aside from loosely maintaining its perspective on the subjects). Doing so, instead of thinking about how to frame or what to film next, I was able to react to my surroundings as I filmed, experiencing several epiphanies during the process instead of after. Instead of discovering codes for how to film as I initially started out to look for, I discovered tools of how to creatively navigate or engage the world around me. The act of filming, when conducted aimlessly, can act as a form of meditation, an effective way to implement experimentation into the creative process.

Methodologies: an Update/a working Reflection

The beginnings of 4.2

After several weeks of experimentation and observations, it is time to review progress.

There have been several changes to the original proposed method and process of research in week 8.

Since then, I have conducted several exercises exploring the ways of seeing and filming and moving as well as the implications of their relationships.

An epiphany I had early last week was that rather than creating a scene or just written reflection, a compilation of my journey exploring the different perspectives on the act of filming would be a more suitable documentation. The experimental short clips and conversations with other filmmakers will be the main source materials for this final statement. It may also feature some reflections or quotes I have previously posts as well as some footage from other people’s projects which I have participated in.

Whilst looking at experimental films in another class, a quote from a reading intrigued me deeply and also began to answer the many questions I have been thinking about this semester:

“Imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective, an eye unprejudiced by compositional logic, an eye which does not respond to the name of everything but which must know each object encountered in life through an adventure of perception.” – Stan Brakhage.

Throughout the first half of this semester I have been constantly trying to project my own living experiences on screen (or more accurately in this case, recreate it through the act of filming). I saw the camera as only a lifeless tool that assisted my intentions (to communicate a sense of oneness with nature and a less human centered worldview through relationships with non human characters). But it wasn’t until coming across Stan Brakhage’s idea of defining the camera as a non-human perspective that we often take for granted. It has its own perspective, sees things that we are too limited to see. His film Window Water Baby Moving (1959) presented the events of a birth from a neutral perspective yet portraying a realistically fragmented reality that is truer to our experiences in life than the conventional device of filmic continuity.

As well as a video compilation and a final written statement, I will also like to do a performance piece that summarises the relationship I have had with the camera.

Research: Movement

Following the first scene I posted that initiated this research, here are some of the self conducted investigations of movement:

Dancing Pedestrians – This exercise was originally aimed to film the movement of the escalator. It was one of the most uninteresting footage I shot when I first reviewed it on my phone. However, when transferred to the computer, the file was registered upside down. It suddenly became an amazing study of our physical movement from an unfamiliar perspective. We are so used to watching each step fall downward toward the earth below that watching this in any other direction seem almost like floating or defying gravity.
Streetlights – an attempt to capture the movement and pacing of a car through its relation to its surroundings. The frequency of the streetlights provide a rhythmic indication of the car’s speed. The effects are also seen in the unstable handheld gestures of the camera as it is subjected to the physical vibrations of the cars movement.
Sun Dance 1 & Sun Dance 2 – after 5 minutes of wandering around with a camera in my room to some music, I found something to focus on. The music, my movement, and the visual that was captured in the camera merged into one performance that felt like it had a purpose. The result was mesmerizing and meditative. One of the videos is played backwards. It surprised me how the music sounded just as melodic and emotional when played backwards and also provided another level of interpretation to the piece.
Cat project scene – Over the week I also assisted on a project outside of class. The project was a story from a cat’s perspective. Although I was volunteering to act and provide location, I also participated behind scenes in working out how the ‘cat’ was suppose to move around. It was a unique exercise in trying to understand, mimic and capture its liveliness without showing any part of the cat itself. I chose to include this shot because it also captured an unexpected technique I may use in the future. When the camera is inside the box, it captured the pin hole image of the exterior world inside as I moved around. This was a unique way of capturing movement that we accidentally discovered.

As I am investigating movement in these exercises, some of the videos have been muted so that the viewer can focus on the visual movements in frame.

These exercises may be inspiring and creative endeavors, however, they are no more useful than poetry. I hope that in my next lot of investigations, more methodological process will be discovered.

Week Eight: Reflection/Epiphany

This week I attempted to investigate camera as movement.

“In the first volume of Cinema Deleuze reclassifies classical narrative filmmaking as a cinema of movement-images – naturally structured stories in which we do not usually feel the attitude of the camera (for example, the film will normally simply follow and react to character’s movements), and where edit shifts are there to deliver an indirect (realistic) image of time, time in its empirical form.” – Daniel Frampton, Filmosophy

A few ideas came to mind…

camera being pushed around by natural causes, moved by unintentional physical influences.
perhaps the camera doesn’t capture the moving object visually or photographically, but through the physical influences of its movement on the camera. This led to the next idea.
A dancer/performer with a camera strapped on in front or attached to them as they move and react to music. The dancer is never seen on camera.
a character sets up a camera ready to film, walks away, different characters come in, without predetermination, interferes/moves the camera around and displaces it or alters its visual settings.

…but nothing practical or solid that I could really shoot a scene on.

What I realised this week is that the research I have set for myself was inspired by an aimless experiment which led to a discovery of subconscious methodologies upon reflection. And what through me down the rabbit hole was the attempt to design the experiment by determining its outcome before conducting it. Therefore, the investigation from now on can not be “designed”. Perhaps the experiments are focused, not on such discoveries, but on technical/narrative/conceptual investigations. Another thought is to assist and participate in other classmates’ shoots to study their methodologies, whilst working out my own without having too much concern with narrative or the end product.

Nevertheless, and feeling rather desperate, I shot, with my phone, whatever movement I could capture.

Week Eight: Research Proposal Feedback

My research proposal

Objective:

In my research I will be exploring the role of the camera and the implications of the act of filming.

Producing our own scene last week have set my investigation on an early start. I realized in the filming process, or during the process of ‘decoupage’, that I started to develop my own set of film ‘rules’ that are based on how I interpret my experience of reality. In this scene, the camera is used as a representation of the act of observation – playing my consciousness or awareness of my sense of self within the scene, as well as the absence of it when I am doing the observing upon others. Having established this representation, I then applied them to the different events or shots in the narrative depending on their nature. Whether it was a personal observation of another individual or just consciously observing my own self, a simple task quickly became an exploration of ontology and a question of the nature or act of observing anything.

Noticing the way I think about and respond to films, I find that I am generally trying to make sense of or rationalise the existence of a camera:

Camera as perspective
Camera as movement?
Camera as a participant/performance
Camera as an omniscience/omnipresence
Whether it is depicted as a physical object recording or baring photographic witness to the events in front of it or an invisible window through which the viewer is looking.

This led to an epiphany of how I can explore my research through methodological experiments.

Schedule:

The language I develop over the next weeks will reveal how I seek to interpret the world as I create them.

I will first develop a series of filming exercises.
Through observation and reflection on the exercises, I will set up a list of my own devices that expresses and represents implications about the characters’ or my own experience of reality.

This list will be applied to the events or acts in the final scene according to express what they indicate.

So far, what the exercises will be is undetermined. But I have come up with a few possible directions that can further explore method (or the filmmaking process itself) as an act of creating meaning or documenting the experience of reality:

Covering an unscripted scene that is dictated by the firsthand experience of a place or event
Composing a narrative dictated by any kind of sensual data of a piece of non-lyrical music or the space in a building etc.
Writing down an action or event that occurred each hour/day/week etc. to form a story that is condensed and flows continuously in time.
I am also open to work off found scripts or something anyone else has written.

Outcome

This list of ‘codes’ is not a canon to how to use or communicate with film language, and it may not be an absolute treatment of reality and neither are the more institutional and traditional ways of filmmaking. It is merely a personalized and individualized artistic expression that may potentially be a way of consistently expressing my own experience of reality.

Last week all focus was on our proposal presentation. It was interesting to have teachers and mentors from other different courses to sit in on our project proposals since everyone is interested in conducting research in different areas. It was very helpful to get feedback from a diverse panel.

Some of the things that were mentioned in my feedback:

Dziga Vertov’s writings
documentary or drama
heightened reality or fiction

The next step from this point is to set up some exercises. I also plan to participate/assist in other’s exercises in order to observe and compare our different approaches to methodology. As my own research is mainly to do with reflecting after filming a scene, I have no need to form a story or construct an actual scene myself at this point anyway. Also, working with others keep my non structural investigation grounded as it may easily become too conceptual and irrelevant to methodology in the end.

Week Six: Reflection/Epiphany

Having time this week to share and discuss our ideas for proposal with our classmates was certainly very helpful and inspiring on many levels. Not only because we can use this opportunity to deeply think about what and how we are going to investigate, but also because we can hear what everyone else is interested in and are going to investigate. For me, that is the most intriguing. Although we were introduced to work with one another at the start of this course, we don’t seem to know much about each other or what everyone is interested in or want to do after this course. I think we all felt the strongest sense of community during that class as we all listened to one another and tried to suggest ideas or help each other out. We all got to know each other truly as individual creative thinkers rather than just a collaborating partner in a weekly exercise.

Week Five: Reflection/Epiphany

I felt that this week’s exercise was a lot more organised. We have the opportunity to plan our first exercise. Not only that but because we started straight away on our 3 hour class, we got to do 2 exercises. Our first exercise was a little uninvolved given that we had a crew of 10, and there wasn’t enough for everyone to do. That is not an issue though as sometimes that’s just how it is in a real production.

Performance:

In the single take this week, the script was a very suitable to explore performance and focus on the little gestures and the actors’ interaction with space. Reflecting on our groups’ choice to have the camera transition between different framing as the actors moved from one composition to another was quite effective (as opposed to having a static frame where they move back and forth in). It was challenging to perfect with such little time, but the concept was an inventive one.

The edited scene this week was the most efficient and organised shoot I have participated in so far. Everyone assumed a role and our director (Amy) did an awesome job! I find that having a first A.D and allocating very specific roles to each team member is the key to making a film shoot run smoothly and a pleasant experience. In terms of performance, we gave our actors the liberty to interpret the role they were given, in this case the ‘robot’. The executive team did have to suggest and guide the performance in some ways such as speech tone, movement, gesture, and timing, but it was the actor’s ‘flamboyant charisma’ that brought the character to life!

Although I didn’t direct the performances for this week, it was a chance to observe and compare how others approached the task. In the exercises which I did assume the role of director, I generally focused on getting the actors on the same page as the way I planned it. Communication is a very important part of this. I would walk them through each action and even explain the motivations behind why they were doing something, this included things like looking out of a door before walking, turning around to close a door before spotting someone behind the wall, etc. A big part of my process was determining motivation and causality in the scene (which may seem a bit too literally at times) or creating or including a gesture or movement that makes sense.

To me, it was also an effective strategy to try to incorporate all the timing into the physical movements and actions and curating the sequence of events based on how they would actually proceed in reality. For example, in the shot (week 7: own scene) where my mother had to walk into frame the moment I closed the fridge, my initial instructions was to walk towards the kitchen from the center of the lounge. I predicted that this will allow some time for me to open the fridge and close it. We had to make slight adjustments but it was a much more natural way of timing and synchronizing the actors. Rather than telling them to just wait and walk in. I also believe that the natural progression of the action also make it seem more natural. They get into character before the actual shot.

This is my epiphany for this week.

Week Seven: Reflection/Epiphany + Methodologies: 9

Making Own Scene:

Producing our own scene this week outside of class time was an exciting and meaningful challenge. On the one hand I was keen to test out an idea I had since last year. On the other, it was meant to be a much simpler task of coverage much like the previous exercises we had done in class. And this meant that finding the time and people to help put it together was a greater challenge, especially with such short notice. Never the less, it was a huge turning point for my research of methodology, from hypothetical questions and potential investigations to a solid practical experiment.

Reflecting on the outcome, it made me realise once again my technical weaknesses:

exposure
colour grading
frame consistency in footage
continuity
and, I just realised how soft the sound is, the speakers in the editing suites are way too loud…

However, it also have set my investigation on an early start. I realised in the filming process, or during the process of ‘decoupage’, that I started to develop my own set of film language that is based on how I interpret my experience of reality through different representations. Having established these representations I then applied them to the different events or shots in the narrative depending on their nature, e.g. whether this is a personal observation of another individual or an act of being conscious of my own self. A simple task quickly become an exploration of ontology and a questioning of the nature or act of observing anything.

This led to an epiphany of how I can explore the questions raised in my research of methodology. I can set up a list of my own film language or a philosophical implication of each film language, and apply them to a scene in the final weeks. The language I develop over the next weeks will be some sort of code that will be embedded into the scene. This will be applied according to how the event or act in the story is and what it indicates. Before creating the final scene, I will first investigate and develop the set of ‘codes’ through observations and reflections on a series of filming exercises and how I seek to interpret the world as I create them. This list of ‘codes’ is not a canon to how to use or communicate with film language, and it may not be an absolute treatment of reality and neither are the more institutional and traditional ways of filmmaking. It is merely a personalised and individualised artistic expression that may potentially be a way of consistently expressing my own experience of reality.

Methodologies: 7

“The difference may be the difference between finding a world and creating one; the difference between using the preexisting materials of reality and organizing those materials into a totally formed vision; the difference between an effort to discover the orders independent of the watcher and to discover those orders the watcher creates by his act of seeing. Voyeurism is a characteristic visual device of the closed film, for it contains the proper mixture of freedom and compulsion: free to see something dangerous and forbidden, conscious that one wants to see and cannot look away. In closed films the audience is a victim, imposed on by the perfect coherence of the world on the screen. In open films the audience is a guest, invited into the film as an equal whose vision of reality is potentially the same as that of the director.” – Leo Braudy 1977, The World in a Frame, p.49

Another passage from Leo Braudy’s book triggered an epiphany of an idea for a scene that could potentially be my research topic:

A character (represented by appropriate camera movement) who somehow became invisible to the world around him. The scene is of him/her watching a scenario between two other characters (or maybe one). The invisible character’s reactions or gestures are not signified. The only way the audience know of its existence is to imagine. Maybe hands and body may appear in the edge of frame to indicate a person; or simply, more subtle, by head movements and sudden panning. Humanly movements but no physical presence.

A few days after this epiphany, I came across this short film The Girl Chewing Gum by John Smith who also directed Blight.

The Girl Chewing Gum, 1976

Blight, 1996