Month: April 2015

everything is story, story is everything

This week we went over what warrants something as a narrative. We loosely defined narrative as any kind of retelling of a sequence of events with logical ordered sequences, but is that really the only way to form a narrative. There is obviously the factor of causality ,cause and effect, within narratives but can’t a story exist as a expression and vague ideas rather than a clear outlines plot? Obviously a story cannot exist without certain key aspects. For a story to exist there needs to be characters, actions and events caused by those actions: logical progression from one event to the next. However it could be argued that some narratives don’t need all of these to create a narrative.

Like this short film, not all stories need to be clear cut and defined by the mainstream ideals of narrative. A story can exist through many different things. In class we had to find reasons of how “We Have Decided Not To Die” was or was not a narrative.

Jeremy found narrative aspects in:

• The title cards creating a linear story
• The conclusion cross-cutting between the three characters connecting their stories
• People as central figures helps audience connect to them
• How they arrived to their situations (backstory)
• Movement could indicate pain and struggle, and narrative can stem from character suffering
• Thematic connection, patterns of representation
• Different places create a journey
• Parallel events (parallel editing)
• Title gives film causality and character motivation

I explored the non-narrative aspects that could be possible including:

• There was no obvious causality
• No clear character development
• No clear diegetic plotline
• No clear linear events tying scenes together
• That the graphic matches were to make art, not story
• Lack of cohesion
• Non representation (something not explicitly said can mean it is not a narrative element)
• Lack of conclusion/sense of closure
• No character motivation or interaction
• People were seen as props not characters

This exercise was difficult for me because I tend to not think to abstractly about film’s and products, but after the lesson I think I have a better grasp on what dictates a narrative and what people can interpret from moving image. Narrative could be subjective, and it is up to the viewer to decide whether to imply story to something or just to observe it as art.

In class we analysed an image that contained what was assumed a family of 5 and their 2 pet dogs sitting outside on grass. We broke down what were the signifiers and signs/symbols associated with what was presented to us. The image denoted 5 human beings + 2 animals sitting down on the ground outside. Then we used formal codes (shot scales, composition,genre) and social/ideological codes (family, gender, class, sexuality, race, identity, nationality) to analyse what the images connotations entailed. Then we looked into what information the captions can provide and how it works with an image to create meanings.

P.S: After scouring the internet, this was the closest I could find to the original image.

Everyone reads texts differently. It’s like how technically I don’t see the same colour red as you, I can’t interpret a story the same way as you. As an individual we all grow up in different contexts, environments and social standings. Your personal experiences help shape how you view the world and what you interpret from it. Different audiences see different texts. What you see as a tragedy I could interpret as a comedy. It is all subjective. But this doesn’t stop us from trying to understand the same ideas. Just as well as we can’t make up meanings, we are socially bounded by societies interpretation of a common theme. There are dominant meanings that dictate how we should shape our opinion on a text, and there are also normalized, resistant, and alternative readings.

Textual analysis is an educated guess at some of the most likely interpretations that might be made of a text, and it is up to us whether we accept or reject them.

https://vimeo.com/125379750

Found Footage source – https://archive.org/details/Preventi1940

For the task I followed the style of a short film I watched in my Cinema Studies class that I really enjoyed, The Illustrated Auschwitz (1992) – Jackie Farkis. This film incorporated found footage and voice-over in a simplistic viewing that allowed the audience to draw connections between what they see on screen and what they hear, and didn’t pack in too much content into every frame and shot. I found this technique to be very helpful in using found footage, as I didn’t necessarily have to produce or seek too much new content. This part was very successful, and if I were to go back I believe I would still follow through with this stylistic choice.

One of the criticisms of my project is that I could have spent more time finding better content quality found footage shots. Personally I think I could have sought out more conventional clips to illustrate what Jon was discussing with me. There are some creative choices that I’ve made that seem questionable. For example pairing the image of the two boys with Jon’s mention of outsmarting your opponent. To me I could see the possibility of one boy tricking the other for some water, but to others it may not come across obviously. Because of this I don’t think my film is effective in portraying Jon and his passion for Magic the Gathering as I had hoped it would be.

Something I will take away from this project is to be more careful in the pre-poduction process in any task. One setback I encountered was not properly checking that I had transferred all the audio I had recorded on the Zoom mics to my laptop, which resulted in me having to re-record the entire interview again. The original interview was fresh and although went well into overtime had a lot of interesting comments from Jon that could not be replicated in the second recording. At some points in the film you can almost hear his voice sounding unenthusiastic, despite the fact that he is talking about one of his major passions in life.

Overall, I found the task very engaging for me in the editing process, but I do believe that it is lacking in some areas of content. I’ve learnt to roll with the punches and draw from as much of the experiences and learnings I’ve had to date to make a task easier for myself.