Texture in film, of film, from film
Before writing this post, it took me quite a long while to figure out what the word ‘texture’ means in this week’s lecture slides, which pretty confused me as this word contains 10 different definitions according to Dictionary.com (sigh…)
“In its Latin roots, the literal meaning ‘to weave’ evokes the material construction of fabric… texture beyond processes of creation — the weaving of cloth, a web or a narrative — to a more definite relationship between the nature of a composition (its form or style) and meaning… is more commonly discussed in relation to visual art and design, music and literature than film as a fundamental aspect of form, the combination of small-scale detail which holds the structure together”
Donaldson (2014)
In the book Texture in Film (tl;dr, I had just skimmed the first few paragraphs to be honest), Donaldson described that ‘texture’ in film could represent any of the elements that weaved a film, which means that it could be any of the tiny items in a piece of clip then, soundtracks, camera movements, the tone, or even the CGI made UFO in the film Arrivals.
Arrivals, a 2016 Hollywood film, one of this week’s video-form of ‘readings’, which talks about how human could communicate with extraterrestrial species. In that 7-minute extract, what ‘textures’ had impressed me, would be the clock scene which had appeared quite a few times, the massive amount of CGI a film could have, and the ‘standard’ Hollywood-like color grading.
The reason why the above elements could impress me, had help creating the ‘texture’, the quality of, and our reactions to this film in some way, as I guess the ‘texture’ here refers to the philosophy behind those textures (elements), the intention why these ‘textures’ had been used or applied in order to help building our immersive experience.
Clock – the passage of time, help creating the intense atmosphere of our protagonist doesn’t have much time left to decode those alien’s messages, those signs which contain meanings
CGI – the CG of UFO, explosions, spaceship, etc., showing that it is sci-fi film, where a massive amount of CGI could also stimulate our nervous system in order to have a sense of excitement, then gradually immersed in it
Color Grading – a dark blue and cool tone, which could somehow represent sophisticated and intelligent, illustrating that it is an intensive and serious film, attracting spectators who’s interested in this kind of genre (me?)
The dark blue tone which seems ‘reflected’ by monitors
Immersive Experiences
One of the media that had immersed me recently, was a YouTube channel called Taiwan Bar, a company which using vivid motion graphics, with appropriate sound effects to explain the history of Taiwan, and certain general knowledges in a pretty interesting way. For instance, the narrative with a fascinating tone, emerging jokes into informative contents in order to make it more entertaining that looks totally different from a lesson in school, and naming those who appeared in the video in a humorous way (e.g. The character who’s playing a typewriter role called ‘Type Writer’).
I bet that you would still feel relaxed while watching their videos, even though you can’t completely understand it~
Their most viewed video in English subtitle