The unlecture this week (are we still calling them unlectures?) was summed up (for me) by Adrian’s statement that everything is entangled, we can begin anywhere and end anywhere. The world of media is messy. Especially these days the lines between things are blurred, increasingly so as time goes on. The lines between amateur and professional are now blurred. Even the line between different mediums. For example the piece by Chris Marker “Le Jetée”: a science fiction series of photographs that tells a story however feels like a film.
Another point Adrian made was that we create things to fit a definition. When we think of creating a film we jump straight to idea of what will happen in the film; the plot, the characters, the setting etc. Apparently this is a mistake. Why do we assume to make the film in a rectangle? What about a square? What about a circle? Has anybody make a circular shaped film?
We never ask ourselves ‘What can I do inside a rectangle?’ using light, shadow, movement… We jump straight into thinking what will it mean?
This ties in with the reading this week that spoke about experimental films. Before this course I’d never taken much notice of experimental films, however, in Cinema Studies last year we were thrown into a pile of them.
Otherwise known as ‘avant garde’, experimental film doesn’t necessarily convey a story or narrative. Their purpose is obviously to ‘experiment’. The filmmaker can experiment either with the views or emotion being portrayed or even the medium of film itself. There have been filmmakers who pickled and blotched the film for effect. Or filmmakers who took a well known piece and re-edited it so that it became completely different (Judy Garland Alone piece which I can not find).