Film-TV Reflection 2 | Question 3

I, like my classmates, was not very impressed with the film. The actors of all were the least compelling part of the film. The dialogue (was there even any? I cant quite remember) was almost completely void of identifiable emotion, and it made it very hard to decipher how each character felt in response to the situation; they all seemed rather uncaring.

This made the small amount of dialogue there was unimpressive. The film seemed to try and rely on visual storytelling more than anything with the flyers and a dead bird, but even then it was such basic imagery that it was tough trying to work out exactly what conflict occurred and who by, because suddenly there was a dead bird involved.

The framing of particular shots though was rather well done. In particular one of the final shots that we see  gave a nice sense of depth where the camera was positioned in a stone hallway looking out over the balcony. This was one of the elements that portrayed the drama of the situation better.

I think if the actors would have better refined their performance, it would have been easier to gather what the story was. From what I worked out the first few characters we see were participating in a kind of bird club, and some sort of bully tried to make one of the other characters look bad by throwing a dead bird over a balcony.

I think if character motivations were better established the story would have made more sense. For example if the dead bird was meant to be some kind of insult to the bird club, the conflict made have made more sense. As it was it seemed like the girls found a dead bird and accidentally dropped it over a balcony, which was not particularly compelling.

Film-TV Reflection 2 | Question 2

The Sight and Hearing reading was an interesting one, and it gave a new perspective on sound for me. One quote in particular that I liked was, “If the eye is entirely won, give nothing or almost nothing to the ear. One cannot be at the same time all eye and all ear.” It made me consider the dynamic between sound and vision.

Up to this point I’d never really thought about how sound works in combination with visual elements, but that quote made me think how exactly sound can be used to enhance an image. It could be a diagetic or non diagetic sound in the form of an exaggerated sound effect, or soundtrack.

While not in the reading itself, I also started considering the role of the foley artist as one I have never thought much about before. I’ve seen them at work before in documentary and behind the scenes footage, but it wasn’t until this point I considered the great spectrum they have to work with to create sound that can significantly change the tone of an image.

Film-TV Reflection 2 | Question 1

Clown Train used sound in a clever way I found, and rather than trying to create a rich soundscape, opted to use sounds in the least way possible to maximse the impact they had. Of what I can remember the sound of the lights flickering amongst a bare soundscape and going out was a particularly good effect. Of course, lights rarely make sounds like that when turning on and off, but the sound enhanced the sudden contrast of light to dark in the train carriage.

Horror seems like the biggest influence for this film. The jump scare technique usually relies on sound in a similar way where a victim lurks in silence, frightened, until a monster or the villain jumps out from the shadows accompanied by sudden, loud soundtracks or sound effects to enhance the visual effect.

Week 3 reading reflection

The extract from Bordwell and Thompson’s Film Art book I had already read last year as a part of my Cinema Studies course. Nevertheless, it’s concepts are certainly applicable across many disciplines, though in relation to Integrated Media and the study of Korsakow films we are undertaking at the moment, the ideas are something you have to construe a little bit to grasp in terms of multi-linear media.

The main points in the reading concern the most basic of narrative devices: time, space, the order of both of those, and arguably the most important, cause and effect. The question is how these will translate to films that cannot rely on a single narrative thread to be compelling; where traditional film has concrete motivations to proceed a story, non-linear media relies on the user to decide on these motivations.

A game I referred to much last year in the Networked Media course was Dear Esther, which is exemplary of a kind of non-linear storytelling, where the story is told in fragments, and delivered at random at certain checkpoints. The pace is thus dictated by the player, who can meditate on one area for as long as they like, and then choose where to proceed next. Of course there are many criticisms of the game, most regarding it’s supposed linearity, nevertheless it upholds an ideal of a story that is not reliant on linear time or space.

The extract from Film Art eventually moves onto experimental and abstract film. At a glance of course these hold very little narrative, but the text explores the use of visual and aural relations to create a kind of rhythm, that can be interpreted into a story. It mentions a particular film called Ballet Mecanique that seems to just show random images over several minutes.

Both the traditional techniques and the one shown in Ballet Mecanique showcase how relations are made between shots to help build the narrative, which – provided your aim is to create a narrative – is how multi-linear films such as Korsakow can achieve a narrative.

ACMI is a great example of contemporary non-linear storytelling though, and it’s permanent exhibition Screen Worlds is a more physical form of the non-linear narrative, where participants can explore a mediated history of TV, film, and video games in an open plan space to compose a narrative. The space relies heavily on the relation of space (you can follow a loosely built chronology of media) to give a sense of time passing.