The Scene: Next step from week 10 and into 11 Methodology

Now that I have touched on concepts and used ideas from Orson Welles to construct my last experiment, I can now branch out and use techniques of voyeurism.

To give a bit more background on what mean by this technique; I used to walk in on relatives conversation and tuning into their conversation. Usually family gossip. Or when my parents talk about their mutual friend going through a divorce. I’m just sitting in the back of the car pretending not to listen and much less care. Its nothing new, a very documentary style of coverage. The fly on the wall technique.

After I thought of this idea of eavesdropping with a camera, I looked at films differently. It felt like this is the whole point of watching a film, to pretend and be the thrid person in the room who just witnesses life, without participating in dialogue nor replies. I watched an Anime last night called 5 centimetres per second And it was presented in a way that is similar to Sans Soleil (Sunless) directed by Chris Marker (which isn’t his real name). Having the voice of God spoken to us by a nice sounding lady who is reading letters to a friend and having visual cues to ‘aid’ the story but not necessarily re-iterating the dialogue. Much like how music is used in films. But in 5 centimetres per second, its a lot less abstract, there actually is a coherent story but the MAIN difference is that they use cut away shots to establish the location and thus the mood. Fig 1 and 2 are one of the few shots used in between scene changes.

Fig. 1
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Fig. 2
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A clever use of it is changing the speed of each scene. for example: thoughts of the protagonist are carried out with long beautiful and empty shots of japan but when he meets his dream girl and its time to leave, the cut away shots were fast forwarded. meaning the shots didn’t linger on. So it served as a tool for us as viewers to give the feeling of how good moments are so short while bad ones last.

I suppose that technique is more about editing and precision. But for the future, with these editing techniques in mind I will know what to cover. I refuse to consider my research about editing to make it seem “realistic”, because it’s the second thing to consider (for me at least). But it is not to deteriorate the potential that a scene can achieve with precise editing.

I will also loosely base the next experiment on David Lynch’s Blue Velvet. The scene where Jeffrey is hiding inside the closet looking through the wooden ribs and looks through what really happens to a singer he becomes infatuated with eventually due to the horrific things he had seen behind that closed door. Fig 3 and 4 is the scene I’m referring to. If I didn’t know any better, It would have seemed as if we were looking through the eyes of Jeffrey.

Fig. 3
blue velvet 2

Fig. 4
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I have made several prose and dialogue, but I haven’t fit any constraints and techniques around them. So, I’ll find one that’s perfect for this assignment.

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