SPACE AND DIALOGUE. REAR WINDOW.

This paragraph I intend to focus less on how Bottle Genre functions and more the restrictions that can come through abiding genre conventions. John Belton, in his essay The Space of Rear Window states “The figure most frequently identified with the notion of “pure cinema” within classical Hollywood filmaking is Alfred Hitchcock”. Belton contends that cinematic storytelling is distinguishable from other modes of storytelling due to its ability to show, not tell and that Hitchcock is the master of this. When writing my Bottle film I knew that dialogue was the key to its success, I had mentioned to me that (for a good Bottle Drama) if I was to take out the vision and play the audio it should work as a radio play, so I knew if I had good dialogue, I would have an interesting film. Unfortunately when watching the final product I realised there wasn’t enough silence in my film, though their were moments of good visual story telling (for example when Sarah cuts her Finger and the final shot where Victor looks through the window) it was for the most part too dialogue heavy, which is a constraint of Bottle film. Hitchcock however, in his film Rear Window, masterfully avoids this constraint through the use of space. Hitchcock uses two seperate spaces in one location to tell his story. The first location is the interior of Jeff’s apartment and where (true to quintessential Bottle film) a dialogue heavy drama (this time in the shape of a love story) unfolds. The second is from Jeffries perspective, where a murder mystery unravels before him. Ingeniously this aspect of the story is told completely visually which gives the audience respite from the talkative drama. The juxtaposition between the two spaces is also profound, with the vibrant, colourful courtyard (a melting pot of life) contrasting with the dull, lifeless interior of Jeffries room. Hitchcock uses these alternating spaces within the one location as an antidote to the restrictive nature of traditionally dialogue heavy Bottle films. Their is one moment in my own film that alludes to Rear Window and thats the final shot of Victor looking through the window at the happy couple. Perhaps, if I had my time again I could have utilised that outside space more, potentially I could have told the story of what Victor does when he is alone in that space.

I have already established that the Bottle Drama is a canvas for realism. I now want to talk about how my Bottle Drama, as a naturalistic film, opens itself up for hybridity and self-reflexitivity. In his essay chapter ‘A Plague of Frogs: Expressionism and Naturalism in the 1990’s’ Steven Dillon talks about naturalism as being the perfect canvas for a filmmaker to subvert audience expectations. At the beginning of the chapter he talks of Paul Thomas Anderson’s decision to have characters unexpectedly sing along with an Aimee Man song (non-diegetic) from Magnolias soundtrack towards the end of the film. This decision from Anderson has been questioned by critics due its refusal to abide by the naturalism he set up earlier in the film. Dillon later defends Anderson by stating “So if the scene does not make sense, it is because of our generic expectations. It must be that we are reading Magnolia as basically realistic, expecting the physical rules of our known world to obtain”. In reference to Anderson’s decision he then ironically states “surely the genre train has fallen off its tracks”. I believe one of the most significant affordances of films that are grounded in realism is that they provide an unsuspecting canvas for the filmmaker to puncture with either self-reflexitivity or metaphysical elements, which Anderson did twice in Magnolia (the second time being with a frog storm). In my film I explored this by having established Western Genre tropes seep into the realism. One of the main ways I did this was by having the outsider (Victor) infiltrate the established relationship (Jack and Sarah). Its a convention of the Western for the outsider to be a symbol of progress upsetting the traditional ways of the community. In my film I wanted to turn this convention on its head by writing Victor as a symbol of the past. Victor wore a tweed jacket, he spoke with a light old English accent and alluded to the past with lines such as: ‘How times have changed’ and ‘A woman never used to speak to a man like that’. Victor was the source of all conflict, however true to Western convention I had the relationship be restored at the end; stronger due to the challenge it overcome. Joel portrayed Victor in a stylised, theatrical fashion because I wanted the absurdity of the character to juxtapose with the realism that other elements in the film created. The overly theatrical piano chords that occurred at the end of each ‘act’ were another self-referential nod to the theatrical elements of Bottle, they served to remind the audience that they were watching a film. In a similar way to what Paul Thomas Anderson did with Magnolia these stylistic flourishes were jarring, yet interesting.

Shot Length/The Long Take

Bottle films, unlike contemporary Hollywood films, use different editing techniques in order to immerse the audience in the films narrative. In her essay The Action Sequence (2011) Lisa Purse cites David Bordwells writings on contemporary editing.Bordwell suggests that due to the inexpensive nature of editing “todays films are on average cut more rapidly than at any other time in US studio filmmaking”. Later in her essay Purse references Geoff King who talks of Impact Aesthetic, a mode of filmmaking characterised by: objects being hurled towards the camera, shaky cam, loud noises and quick paced editing. This mode of filmmaking immerses the audience  by assaulting their senses- it’s designed to unsettle yet entertain viewers in a similar fashion to riding a rollercoaster at a theme park would. The experience is more reliant on cheap filmic thrills as opposed to thought provoking narrative.This paradigm shift has meant that many contemporary films do not have a narrative punctuated by moments of action, instead the narrative is derived from many fluid action sequences. This unfortunate trend of rapid fire editing can be attributed to the Western Worlds broader media environment, where advertisements, ‘flash’ Facebook videos and paragraph length articles dominate. Bottle film in its very nature subverts this type of film making. Instead of maintaining audience interest through quick cutting it instead uses the confines of its single location. The genre requires a slow edit in order to draw the audience into its space. In the creation of my piece I discovered that the single location setting when mixed with the long take creates an unparalleled sense of realism that is reminiscent of being at the theatre. In editing my Media piece I discovered that the scenes shot as long takes were the most interesting because a) the actors have more to do, they didn’t have the opportunity to quickly turn off and on a character like in a short take B) There was more information in the frame, at times all actors were doing interesting things and C) The long take grounds Bottle Drama in realism, when the camera is fixed in the one shot for a long time the viewer gets a fly on the wall perspective which has the effect of making the viewer feel like they are really there and that the scene is actually happening. Unlike other genres where the quick cut is often used to disorientate the viewer within the filmic space, the long take in Bottle film subversively presents “space and time uninterrupted by the cinematic cut” which, in a day and age where the correlation between film and theatre gets exponentially smaller, is far more interesting.

This has been a really big week for me in exploding genre, but as always I’ve learnt a heap. On Tuesday Dom and I put our final media piece into production, which was a huge challenge. We filmed our script from 5:30-11 that night with three actors (me included), Dom on the camera (a Sony Ex3) with his brother doing sound.

What I found

• Looking over the footage today the things that Dom and I felt went well on the night did, but the things we thought fell flat unfortunately did as well. At the start of the night we covered the action quite meticulously and the actors couldn’t really get a good flow going-the film felt in general a bit choppy and a bit rushed. Though we were covering everything we were also rushing and as a consequence the actors made mistakes and so did we. However as the shoot went on, we realised that we wouldn’t have time to film everything unless we did long takes. This was a blessing in disguise because it allowed the actors to get into there characters and gave the film a more theatrical feel-which is a common characteristic of ‘Bottle’. Watching in the edit today it seemed as though the longer the take, the more interesting the performance. My friend who does a fair bit of theatre was a character in the film and I felt as though the longer takes not only suited his acting style, but really brought out the best performances from him.
• The Lights gave it a melancholy, theatrical feel. The stylised lighting gave the film a very old, retro look-which (when mixed with the quintessential Australian dining room) gave the film a idiosyncratic feel. Though Dom and I were unsure whether to use lighting, I think the the risk we took certainly paid off.
• I found what Dan said about directing quite interesting-that you should never hand feed the actor how to say a sentence. The best directors make the actors feel as though all their good characterisation was due there acting abilities not due to the directors direction.
• In regards to the exegesis I’m giving myself Monday and Tuesday next week to write it. However after filming and having a bit of a think about what Dom and I did on Tuesday I have decided what I want to write about. In other words, I think I’ve found something. My exegesis will centre around Bottle-which I will contend is not a genre. In my exegesis I will define what I believe genre to be and state that Bottle doesn’t fit in with critical aspects of what genre is. I will then argue that Bottle, though it isn’t a genre, still has a set of conventions that are innate too it and that these conventions, I believe lend  themselves too interesting filmmaking. Some of these conventions I’ll talk about are: The use of space, the long take (and how it is subversive in todays age of fast paced film making) and Bottles link to theatre (though I haven’t looked into it yet, I may talk about how the location plays a larger part in Bottle films than it would in standard films, I may draw links between the suffocating feel of Bottle films and the isolating, alienating feel that Westerns have. Due to there in there sparse settings.
• Lastly, I should add that I will write my page for the exploding genre website once I’ve done my exegesis 🙂

This week in Exploding Genre I’ve been watching some films, doing some readings and writing my script and shot list with Dom for our final media piece.

dinnerforthreescript

In order to grasp an understanding of Bottle I watched Hitchcock’s Rear Window and read John Beltons ‘The Space of Rear Window’. I found how Belton interpreted space in the film was quite interesting, he contended that when the viewer was looking at the Jeffries story (the part love story part paranoia drama that unfolded in his room) we (the viewer) were the intruders, we were the ones snooping in on a story that we wish we hadn’t had seen (one of paranoia and the discovery of murder). When we were placed in Jeffries room, Jeffries went from the spectator to the spectacle, which I thought was rather interesting-and quite meta. I also found the theatrical elements of the film quite interesting, the way Belton made a link between the fade to blacks in the film and the curtain within the theatre (generally used to mark the end of an act) was quite interesting. This along with Hitchcock’s minimalist set (for Jeffries apartment) and small cast-(there are really only 4-5 characters that get significant screen time) as well the film occurring in entirely one location demonstrate Rear Windows links to theatre.

I’ll have to admit I’m not the biggest fan of action films so I wasn’t super excited for this week, however I enjoyed Ronin far more than a standard action film, possibly because what a ‘standard’ action film is has changed drastically in my teenage years (early 2010s) as opposed to what it was like in the 90s. The reading  suggests that in our current day and age narrative is tied up in action, the action is no longer seperate from the narrative. For example in a modern superhero film or a Michael Bay movie, the action and the story are linked (this is because of the films monotonous yet relentless pace), whereas in Ronin and classic Hollywood action films the action punctuates the drama/the story. Bordwell suggests that this change has occurred since cutting has become inexpensive and that speed has become a defining principle of contemporary editing, especially in action movies where there are often lengthy sequences of film where each shot goes for 1-2 seconds. I remember watching Deadpool this year and in the action sequences I counted the time between each shot (because I picked up on the rhythm and new it was going ridiculously quickly) and no shot held for longer than two seconds, most peaked at 2 but some were even quicker. I think some of this is tied up with the role media now plays in peoples lives-its now well established that people have shorter tolerance for lengthier pieces of media (because we are so used to super quick Facebook videos, posts and interactions on our phones) so for any film wanting to appeal to the masses (people that aren’t necessarily fans of cinema) they need to keep shot lengths down just to hold the viewers attention. Lastly, it isn’t just shot lengths that create a quick paced feel in action cinema, it is also other techniques such as: Cutting on bursts of light, Vehicles or other big and quick objects moving quickly in the foreground, jerky camera movements and whiplash pans.

Attached is a copy of the script myself and Dom have been working on in the last week or so.

Looking from today into the future, I hope to make a 7-8 minute short film (with Dom) for my final assessment. Without knowing too much about what a ‘bottle film’ is, it had an instant appeal to me based on the practicality of the genre (single setting, dialogue focused). Before I begin to write on Rear Window, here are some of the notes of taken in class about Bottle Film as a genre.

• Occurs when the production team runs out of money, often after a big run of expensive episodes.
• It often comes after a plot line is resolved and the production team needs to blow off steam and create something different.
• It’s often dialogue heavy.
• Every character has tense emotional moments that reveal something, everyone learns something about the characters on and off the screen.
• Minimal Cast.
• A Clash of Ideas, A Clash of Personalities that creates the conflict, as opposed to an external event.
• A small space that is defined by editing and cinematography.
• Often it ends with characters going into the real world, looking into the future- they escape the bottle.
• In the screening of Community we saw the characters react to a singular event in there own entertaining, idiosyncratic and ultimately comical way. Community is a very meta show, Ahmed referenced the episode within the episode saying something long the lines of ‘oh no its going to be a bottle episode’. This gave the writers free reigns to take all the elements of a conventional bottle episode and channel it into there own parody episode. In that episode we saw quick paced dialogue (and lots of it), a great deal of hyper emotional moments that were warped into comedy (that amount of emotion is rarely displayed in traditional comedy), the emphasis on performance (if the actors didn’t nail it, it would have been a cringe worthy episode) and a singular setting that created a claustrophobic feel- to the comedy/mock drama of the episode.

Rear Window is Hitchcock’s most cinematic work. Its one of the few films I’ve seen that can exclusively be told through the medium of film. Rear Window switches perspectives from a love story that centres around Jeff and Lisa to Jeff’s perceptions of fellow people who live in the apartment complex. Half the story (the half that focuses on Lisa and Jeff’s relationship) is sensibly directed and comes across like a rather conventional piece of film and/or theatre. The audience is put in a privileged position where a story is delivered in front of them from an omniscient camera. However, the other half of Rear Window is told entirely from a point of view shot coming from Jeff’s perspective-everything he sees the audience sees, everything this he doesn’t see, the audience doesn’t see. In theatre you can’t replicate a characters perceptions like in film, you can’t technically do a point of view shot, you can’t literally show what they’re seeing-the brilliance of Rear Window is that you see half the film in this exclusively filmic manner. This is why Alfred Hitchcock continually cited Rear Window as his most cinematic film.

Lisa either has all the agency in the story or none of the agency in the story. She is the person that turns Jeff’s ideas into reality, she actualises his theory and through her courage she uncovered/shone a light on the crime. Its quite liberating as having a woman as the hero, however one could argue that the only reason she got involved in the first place was to get Jeff’s attention back (he became infatuated by looking out the window). Another argument would be that She got involved with the story in order to show her adventurous spirit to prove to Jeff that she was good fit to be his wife. Lastly, is the only reason a woman was the hero because the leading man was temporarily wheel chair bound? This on top of other throwaway lines such as “She’ll get her happiness and one man will lose his” and (when referring to food his carer made) “No wonder your husband still loves you” makes Rear Window comes across as dated and at times sexist, leading me to think that the agency Lisa had in the story derived from her want to win Jeff’s affection. Another thing I took issue with was in one of the final shots of the film where the film shows Gene Kelly putting away an adventure magazine in order to read a copy of Bazaar. This came across as if Hitchcock was contending that Women innately find comfort and fashion more  appealing than action and adventure-irregardless of how much they wish to please there husband.

I really appreciated the strong sense of place that came from the film, I often feel as though in Bottle Films that place-though it stays the same becomes more significant and has a greater effect on the tone/mood of the story than a story that takes place in several locations. I remember last semester I did a documentary class (for this course) and my initial plan was to film in a few places and create a story that would take the audience places, however later on (the night before the filming) I decided to keep the whole documentary just set in one place and in turn it became not only more focused but the sense of place that developed because of it gave it an intimate feel that worked really well for the project. The two most recent Hitchcock films I’ve seen has been North By Northwest and Rear Window and Rear Window came across to me as being more memorable and somewhat warmer than NBNW because of it taking place in a single location.

Most of my ideas are original however I did read Josh Beltons ‘The Space in Rear Window’ in order to get the ball rolling, I thoroughly enjoyed his comparisons of Rear Window to that of theatre.

Brydan Meredith, Project Brief 3 Exegesis

The Western is at its most significant when subverting conventions traditionally inscribed within the genre. The 1992 film Unforgiven is a quintessential example of a film unwilling to abide by genre conventions as it critiques and re-interprets myths embedded in the old West. Director and star of the film Clint Eastwood, a man who has built a career off Western Mythology and has since become a part of Western Iconography, told the Los Angeles Times that Unforgiven “summaries everything that he feels about the Western”. This quote frames the films meta-narrative that continually comments on the genre.

So what does a man so synonymous with the genre have to say about it? Firstly, there is an apology. Sally, the silent American Indian character in Unforgiven gives Clint Eastwood’s Will, as his character later puts it ‘the evil eye’. Sally is only in the film for 2 minutes and during her screen time she sporadically glances at Eastwood’s character with a look of hatred. Will symbolises protagonists in quintessential, traditional Westerns- where American Indians were treated as cruel and immoral animals. In Unforgiven Will is a fading Western hero who doesnt shoots gun and can’t mount a horse, he is no longer young and his days of race fuelled violence (just like the genre) are over. However, Will seems to have forgotten those days, he (like the genre) has the ability to put it behind him, whereas Sally and the rest of the Native Americans haven’t. Sally looks at him with disgust because the past has stayed with her and Will, as a symbol of the Western genre, is Unforgiven.

Eastwood continues to demythologise the Western through his depiction of violence. The violence in Unforgiven isn’t glorified. The most brutal depiction of violence is of Quick Mike slashing a prostitute in the face with his knife. This scene is horrific, the viewer hears her screams and sees the knife cut her face. This is Eastwood commenting on the reality of violence. Many of his past films (as well as other traditional Western Films) romanticise it, when a ‘bad guy’ gets shot a bucketful of red paint squirts from him in an entertaining yet unrealistic fashion. In traditional Westerns people die in a way that allow the viewer to become numb to the significance of death. Eastwood problematises this in Unforgiven as he attempts to show the disparity between reality and mythology. The reality of the West is that it is a physically cruel and barren land where people die in futile, unforgiving circumstances. This is unlike the myths that spawn from the Western frontier in the form of film and literature which suggest that death is glamorous and killing in the name of good is honourable and justified. This false mythology has created a framework used to rationalise violence in Western Film, which Eastwood (by depicting violence rooted in realism) wants to inverse. This shift away from genre norms, by questioning the morals of its basis, gives significance to Unforgiven and stops it from becoming a simple genre film. This is what I’m trying to do in my own piece of Media, I created a scene from a traditional Western where the significance of death isn’t trivialised and its permanence and gravity is understood. This is why my protagonist writes a sign that says ‘Forever’ on it in order to mark the place of his death. I am emphasising to my viewers that death in Westerns should be grounded in realism in order to evoke pathos- I am taking issue with the fact they are often depicted as trivial, insignificant often humorous events that simply speed up the narrative and entertain the viewer.

The convention of good conquering bad through violence is a genre trope that the viewer expects in every Western and unsurprisingly Unforgiven abides by it. However the film isn’t as simple as good vs bad. There are no heroes. The film abides by the trope to the extent of the protagonist (an anti-hero) killing his nemesis in the final moments of the narrative. In traditional Western films the the viewer doesn’t understand that they’re tricked, they’re tricked into believing that the good is justified in killing the bad. Unforgiven contends that they are never justified. This what The Schofield Kid learns. At the beginning of the story (like the viewer) he is fascinated and enthralled with the ways of the west, he actively self-mythologises, he wants to turn himself into a legend ‘I’ve killed five men’. Later in the film he kills his first man, a women beating criminal, and the significance of the death he dealt makes him weep. This is The Schofield Kids redeeming moment, he is ignorant and insensitive at the beginning of the film and changed when he begins to ponder the significance and permenance of death. Instead of coming of age as a superstar cowboy gunslinger (something the traditional western would promote) he instead matures in a more real sense. He has the realisation that guns and violence aren’t really all they’re cracked up to be. This is Eastwood contending that the mythology embedded in the Western is best left a myth, it should never be celebrated or brought into reality. The Schofield Kid is a surrogate for the audience, he comes into the film celebrating death and violence- he is desensitised by his own idea of the West. However by the end he understands (like the audience) the cruel and merciless reality of the West. Unforgiven is ultimately a cautionary tale warning its viewers that the Western itself is innately flawed.

1. 2-3 minute presentation due in-class Week 7 (5%, pass/fail); tell us what you’re exploring, try to identify where you’ll head for later projects; what really interests you about genre? What’s inspired you? This presentation should indicate your ‘Genre Trajectory’, which will be important for Project Brief 4.

Brief Intro

• In Project Brief 2 I explored the difference between neo-traditional romantic comedies (films like Annie Hall and Sleepless in Seattle) and Hollywood Romantic comedies (the example I wrote about was the far-fetched love story in Singing in the Rain). A major difference between these two sub-genres is that the neo-traditional comedy is rooted in realism whereas the Traditional Hollywood ones aren’t. This makes these Neo-Traditional comedies much more relatable and in turn the audience can identify and empathise with the characters on a more significant and intimate basis.
• I then began to explore identification and empathy within genre. A theorist called Berys Gauts suggested that there are two categories of emotions in cinema. The first is artificial emotions (which are emotions purely drawn from film technique such as a beautiful shot, music, fantastic editing). In this case the audience doesn’t need to know anything about character-its all film (so like an opening shot of a movie that evokes a certain feeling). The other type of emotion is Representational Emotions where emotion is not drawn from any film techniques but from the Story Events in the film. This type has everything to do with story, narrative and character.
• I’ve Currently shifted away from that. I’ve been looking at the Western Genre. In particular Revisionist Westerns and how revisionist westerns exploit genre traditions. I watched ‘Unforgiven’ and ‘Once upon a time in the West’. Unforgiven is by Clint Eastwood, written on my DVD of the film was a quote that Eastwood told the Daily Telegraph. He said that it was everything he had to say about the Western Genre. It questioned the authenticity of Western storytelling by suggesting that the stories that spawn from the frontier are hyperbolised to the point of fiction-they are not grounded in reality at all (in the film there is a writer who does this). Eastwood is saying that the reality of the west and the depiction of the West is very different. He also depicted Violence in a unique way. Traditional Westerns romanticise violence to a point where the significance of death becomes numbed and people die everywhere and the audience doesn’t feel anything however in Unforgiven a young gunslinger quits his life as a cowboy after killing one criminal because he took absolutely everything away from the man-he understood the significance of it. Once Upon a time in the west is significant because it isn’t clear cut, Leone doesn’t offer a world of good vs bad like in normal westerns, instead he offers an ultra-capitalist world where everyone operates at random in order to benefit themselves. These films and the relevant essays I’ve read on them and the genre lead me to my contention that The Western is at its most significant when operating outside of genre tradition.
• I think in my next project I’m continue exploring genre films subverting and operating outside of genre traditions.