This week was all about the auteur theory. Coming from the French word for author, the theory suggests that a film is the realisation of the creative vision of the director; basically, that the director is the driving creative force behind the project.

We started off by questioning whether it was fair to attribute all of the creativity in a film to the director – surely the writer, editor, cinematographer etc. were equally important to the creative process, weren’t they? This was especially important in considering classical Hollywood, when directors were on-contract and treated much more like employees, with specific roles to fulfill and much less creative license.

The studio system was an important consideration when questioning the auteur theory as it has historically been seen to somewhat limit directors’ creativity. Can a film truly be said to have been the creative vision of a director if it has been altered to suit studio requirements? And, in the context of popular cinema that seeks to be liked, audience expectations?

It was with this in mind that we turned to our case study for this week, Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 slasher classic, Psycho. Hitchcock’s film was like none ever seen before, constructing an undercurrent of violence and deviance that shocked an audience unused to seeing these themes depicted on screen. Both the censors and Hitchcock’s production studio Paramount were understandably worried by the pitch, leading to many alterations from Hitchcock and a significant financial input on his part (resulting in a much lower overall budget than he was used to working with). With these concessions in mind, was Psycho actually Hitchcock’s vision?

Psycho also provided a good way to look at the auteur theory through the lens of narrative conventions. If all popular cinema films rework key concepts (as is one of the key contentions of this course), perhaps the auteur theory fails because very little of a film’s content can be said to have been created originally by the director. In the case of Psycho, this perhaps was not the case as the film was quite novel, and yet if we were to say that about Psycho we might have to exclude it from the popular cinema canon by our definition of what makes a popular film.

This conversation was complemented nicely by the group who presented today, as they focused on the 1996 reflexive slasher-comedy Scream. In addition to Scream being a slasher like Psycho, it also worked nicely into our discussion as the group talked a lot about narrative conventions and self-awareness of originality. Scream creates humour and interest through its characters’ frequent references to the cliches of the horror movie genre and their application of those stereotypes to their own situation. This made for some interesting thinking around originality and the importance of the auteur; is Scream original in its almost-broken-fourth-wall subversion of these stereotypes, or is it subscribing to them? Is the concept of self-referential subversion all that original anyway?

The task this time was to write two paragraphs that told the same travel story, but from the perspective of a modern and a 19th century traveller. This is what I wrote for the modern traveller:

The highlight of the day would have to be getting to know our neighbour, Arturo. After a few false starts, our smattering of Spanish allowed us to understand that he was inviting us in for a meal. Eagerly we agreed, and were met with no fewer than 16 members of his extended family – cousins, aunts, siblings, and, of course, his abuela, who put on the most magnificent feast of meat, rices, chiles and flat breads.

Already exhausted from eating so much, Arturo then asked us to go out with him that night. Eager to experience the city nightlife, we put aside our yawns and headed out. It’s amazing how clubbing is the same all around the world – drinks, music, and low light seems to be the universal language for partying.

And this was for the 19th century:

Today I managed to make the acquaintance of a of a local man who, although he seemed to know no language I could decipher, was able to make me understand that his name was Arturo. It seemed I was being welcomed to a family gathering, and although apprehensive after hearing accounts of unsavoury and potentially dangerous food in these parts, I found the lure of observing local family life uninterrupted too tempting. It seems the importance of extended family here is high, as the ensuing feast welcomed no fewer than 16 people. Interestingly, this family seemed not to be ruled by any man, but an ‘abuela’, a term I took to mean ‘grandmother’. While the food was plentiful and their offering of it warm, I found I could not stomach more than a few bites of the spice that singed my tongue. I was then offered the opportunity to join the younger members of the family on what I assumed was a night exploring the city, but I felt I could not go unattended and so, giving my thanks, retired to my room.

So remember last week when I said I had a cool Shaun of the Dead-based mini-project on the go? Well here it is.

(PS If you’re looking for my Frampton post (DAN!) look at last week’s post)

As I mentioned in my last post, we watched four films last Tuesday and Dan picked out about five key frames for each and uploaded them to the OTF blog. Our task was to pick one (any one!) from any of the films and do two recreations of it. Because I enjoyed the film so much and because I thought it would be fun to recreate, I picked the above screenshot from Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead (2004).

The first recreation had to be a reasonably close imitation of the original, and for me, this was the fun part. It was never going to be as magnificent as this shot (which I’m glad Dan pointed out because I have to admit I didn’t notice the superb framing the first time around), but I had a lot of fun making this up:

As with all my photography, due to using my phone camera it’s not great quality, but the focus worked better than I had expected. Obviously the shirt is empty so it doesn’t achieve quite the same effect as in the film, although I’m pretty happy with my pink food dye blood (which I applied in RMIT’s media lunchroom much to the amusement of my peers I’m sure). I also may have cheated a teensy bit (the running girl is actually a photo on my laptop as I didn’t have a friend with me at the time to help me out) but I think (hope!) it does evoke that sense of depth.

Our second frame I found much harder. This time, we had to reinvent the picture (so we had a bit more creative license), incorporating a theoretical element from last week’s Deleuze reading. I found it really difficult to think of a way to incorporate Deleuze’s highly theoretical concepts into a photo, so eventually I settled on his discussion of geometry versus physicality. Deleuze discusses the universal measurement given to subjects by a camera, and argues (I think – I did struggle to understand some of it!) that a cinematic frame has to be either geometrical or physical, not both, and interestingly Dan disagreed with this. So, I decided to see if I could in fact, using the same effect in the Shaun of the Dead frame that is shooting the subject through something else, still create a frame that appeared to be entirely two dimensional. This is what I came up with:

Fairly simple, I know, but that was kind of the idea. I used notepaper as the stripes provided a good contrast with the striped couch behind, and I cut out a hole to take the shot through (as with the Shaun of the Dead frame and my imitation). While I think the depth is somewhat lost (and yes, I realise the strangeness of a photographer trying to eliminate depth), using my phone I found it difficult to hold the camera flat, and it was equally difficult to hold the paper still, so you can see where it moves around and I think that does give that sense of the third dimension. However, what is lost is the viewers’ ability to determine how much space there is between the foreground and background, so in that sense I achieved my aim.

What makes a star? It was a shorter discussion in cinema studies this week, as it was my group’s turn to conduct our presentation on the importance of Shrek to the popular cinema canon. We then turned our attention to this week’s film, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, as the basis for a discussion of stardom.

Because of course, if gentlemen prefer blondes, there is none greater than Marilyn Monroe, the star of the film. We spent most of the seminar looking at her in great detail as the exemplary ‘star’.

We started the discussion with ‘what is the difference between an actor and a star?’ Our answers all seemed to circle around the concept that a star is known outside of their roles, as their own name and, particularly, their own personality. This was our way into talking about Marilyn Monroe, and her persona.

Through the roles that she played, Monroe became known not just as a woman who played femme fatale, blonde bombshell characters, but a woman who was a femme fatale and blonde bombshell herself. That in turn fueled the roles that she was given.

But was she really like that? We watched a few short clips in class about Marilyn; one of her discussing her sexuality, and one of former husband Arthur Miller reflecting on her life. Both seemed to suggest that she was a far more complex, serious character than her public persona would allow for.

And therein lies the key problem with the concept of stardom. As was emphasised in the readings and in class, everything we know of a star comes from mediated messages; movie promotions, TV appearances, even so-called ‘candid’ interviews are edited and moulded to suit a certain agenda. What we know of a star can be very untrue; and yet it’s that image that influences their role in popular cinema.

So we had a little class exercise to do on Thursday, but I’m not quite finished yet, so I’ll do that as a blog post for early next week and talk about this week’s reading instead. From Daniel Frampton’s Filmosophy, it was called Film Minds, and talked about the idea that film is a type of thought.

Now, in my short time at uni I’ve already come across some pretty philosophical readings, but this one probably took the cake (that and last week’s nearly incomprehensible Gillies Deleuze reading). It was the idea that film could be considered a thought process in and of itself, because it mimics the human thought process.

Let’s break that down a bit. How is film like thought? Well, according to film theorists, the editing process is designed to link film shots and scenes together in the way the human mind links thoughts together. The shot/reverse shot mimics our conception of a conversation as our focus changes from one speaker to another; the ‘flashback’ mimics the way our mind recalls a memory amidst other action.

Even more philosophically, some film theorists think that film can be considered not only a mimicry of thought, but a thought process in and of itself. Now, I don’t really know that I believe this, or really understand it, but I’ll be interested to discuss it in class.

In lighter news, instead of watching a film on Tuesday we watched parts of four different films. The first, Playtime by Jacques Tati, I was shocked to discover I’d already seen, having forgotten that entirely until we started it. The Third Man played with Dutch angles and had a great soundtrack, but it was difficult for me to appreciate it having seen only such a small part. Once Upon a Time in the West couldn’t have been more cliched, and yet it was hugely enjoyable, proving that cliches are cliches for a reason. And then finally we had Shaun of the Dead, a hilarious British zom-com that I can’t wait to see the rest of! It was the basis of the exercise that I’m working on now, so watch this space!

When looking at genre, you’d probably think that it was one of the easiest cinematic concepts to define. To most people, the idea of genre is very familiar because, as many of our readings this week pointed out, we frequently use it as a way to determine which films we’re going to sit down and watch. We all know someone who says, “I love comedy”, and we all know someone (namely, me) who claims to hate the romances.

But what happens when my favourite sci-fi movie has jokes in it, and a sub-plot about love? Do I have to hate it as a romance? Will my friend the comedy fan immediately fall in love with it?

My point is that, as we learned this week, genre is much harder to define than it first appears. One of our readings, called Genre in Film by Tom Wallis and Maria Pramaggiore, suggested that there were several different methods we could use to define genre. One was the prevalence of recurring story elements, including plots, characters, themes and iconography. Another was using social context – can the Marx brothers’ films be placed in the same ‘comedy’ category as Jennifer Aniston’s, or do their different social contexts create genres of their own?

Perhaps the most interesting way of defining genre as suggested in the readings – and discussed in the seminar – was the idea that we can define a genre based on the reaction it inspires in the audience. A comedy is a comedy because it makes us laugh. A ‘tear-jerker’, as Sarah Berry’s reading pointed out, defines itself entirely by its ability to make the audience cry.

It was with this mode of definition in mind that we turned our attention to this week’s text, the seminal Universal pictures’ 1931 feature Frankenstein, directed by James Whale. Horror, in any of the frameworks with which you try to define it, is one of the most clear-cut genres. Its iconography, plots and characters are well-known, and, like the ‘tear-jerker’, its title suggests how its purpose is to evoke a reaction in the audience.

This idea of the horror film’s effect on the audience was a particularly interesting aspect of our seminar discussion this week. Kyle Edwards’ reading Morals, Markets and Horror Pictures outlined the response of the authorities to Universal’s early horror flicks (Frankenstein, Dracula, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, etc), which represented society’s changing opinions regarding the way horror films could affect (and potentially harm) their audiences. After all, if the film’s appeal was its grotesqueness, and the genre’s very purpose to horrify, what could then be said about society’s morality?

This week in On The Frame we looked at the hypnotic not-quite-romance film In The Mood For Love by Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai (2000). The film provides an interesting alternative to Hollywood’s love-conquers-all motto through its exploration of morality and conflicting desires.

In introducing the film to us, Dan suggested that we look at it in direct contrast to last week’s film, the Italian L’Avventura from Michelangelo Antonioni (1960). Dan put forward the theory that where L’Avventura can be broken up into photographic still images that are each beautiful and artistic, In The Mood For Love relies much more heavily on movement.

With this in mind, Dan used In The Mood For Love as the basis for a discussion of the relationship between the frame and movement. We looked at the history of the moving image, from early zoetrope tricks to digital film, and thought about the importance of both physical movement and movement in time (the key element that distinguishes even the stillest of films from photography).

Then came the fun part: making media time! Inspired by the lecture and In The Mood For Love, we were to take out some cameras and shoot a sequence of one to three shots that explored an element of movement that particularly interested us.

It’s more difficult than it seems to come up with shots that explore an idea – especially when you’ve only got three to work with – but In The Mood For Love is certainly a good source of inspiration when you’re thinking about movement. My mind went back to a scene we had looked at in class:

It’s a beautiful scene; slow motion can so easily be tacky and yet here it seems lulling and rhythmic. The thing that particularly interested me though was when Dan pointed out the music. It’s really stunning, and as Dan observed, in a 3/4 time signature – the same as that of the waltz, the dance of love.

So I decided to see if I could create a series of shots in which the movement was matched to a piece of music in a 3/4 time signature. This is what I came up with:

Now, I’m conscious of the fact that the way I’ve uploaded this seems to invite comparison with In The Mood For Love, which I want to AVOID AT ALL COSTS – apart from the fact that I made it in about 20 minutes, I wasn’t actually trying to mimic Wong Kar-wai’s work; I merely wanted to explore the same idea of rhythm matched to an unusually-paced piece of music.

To be honest, I’m not sure that I achieved this. I think my biggest problem was not knowing what piece of music I would use before I started filming, as it meant my timing of the movement was a bit off. I’m also aware that it’s fairly simplistic; however, as an in-class exercise I guess I can’t really expect it to be a masterpiece. I think noting that it’s simplistic though has helped me appreciate the difficulties of creating artistic and subtle movement in the frame, and has given me more to think about in developing the ideas I’ve already got for my final project.

This is not the first time I have done a noticing/marking exercise; in media one we were asked to make a list od all he media around us, and the task was frankly overwhelming – in reality, the sights, sounds and smells of what surrounds us are infinite. To more extremely notice what’s going on around me, I have chosen to sit in what is usually the most unobserved and unremarkable of functional spaces – the stairwell. Long hated for the physical effort it represents, long past are the days of decorated and grand entranceways of bygone eras. I have to say, it’s difficult to clear my mind enough to focus on what’s going on around me – I’m caught up in my own world of sporting selection, covering work shifts and even social-media-less me is struggling to resist the temptation of jumping onto my phone to check for a response to the emails I just sent. But here goes. What do I see? This one’s easy. I see the bright red chucks of the girl – was it even a girl? – who just walked past me. I see a thousand grip spots on the steps, worn smooth (I touch it now) by use. I see dull silver stair edges leading to a brunette lacquered brick wall, bordered by a pattern before it turns to white plaster. What can I hear? White noise; that whirring, buzzing sound that could be an air conditioner, a plane, a boiler; or even a thrumming motorbike or a plague of cicadas on an African savannah. I honestly can’t tell; it’s like trying to focus on some text just slightly too small to read: letters emerge, and thus possible worsd, but then the g turns into a j and, second-guessing yourself, you give up. In higher focus is the constant satisfying click of the doors falling into place, the almost cold in its singular functionality lift bell and the uneven yet somehow iambic slapping of footsteps hitting the floor. In actuality the whole place is cold – this is what I can feel – but not to the point of discomfort; I almost imagine I can feel a machinated breeze passing through on the way from some temperature control epicentre. I feel the hard bannister edge jutting into my lower back; it’s time to go.

Today’s Popular Cinema seminar was all about using our text for this week – the classic and much-referenced Casablanca – to look at traditional Hollywood storytelling and style. The point that was most interesting for me was the question is Hollywood style invisible?

It was a point suggested in our first reading by David Bordwell called Classical Hollywood Cinema: Narrational Principles and Procedures. Bordwell calls his first section ‘The Straight Corridor’, because he contends that the Hollywood narrative relies on clarity; it centres around “psychologically defined individuals with clear-cut goals” and storylines that follow a structure of what we called in the the seminar “linear causality”. It sounds like a pretty simple concept  – that a story  progresses by one event causing another – but there are definitely filmmakers who subvert this, so it’s important to remember that this method of storytelling is familiar only because it’s favoured by Hollywood.

It’s perhaps because we’re so familiar with this “linear causality”, and protagonists who are “psychologically defined”, that Bordwell suggests that to some extent, the ‘Hollywood style’ is invisible. He argues that linear causality and defined protagonists encourage “a rational and logical interpretation of plot”, meaning that Hollywood’s style is solely about the most effective transmission of information and therefore is not really noticed by the viewer. This, of course, is only one interpretation of classical narration – and one that Bordwell doesn’t completely agree with himself – but it’s an interesting way of thinking about Hollywood style.

We continued this discussion of Hollywood narration into the seminar, using Casablanca as a template. In our second reading, Umberto Eco contends that Casablanca is a cult film precisely because “it is not one movie. It is ‘the movies.'” He suggests that it fits into popular culture because it references multiple narration and character cliches that transcend one particular story or genre and are recognisable and memorable. He says, “Casablanca brings with it the scent of deja vu to such an extent that the spectator is ready to see in it also what happened after it.”

Put in simple terms, we’re talking here about the film’s quotability. Even for those of us who hadn’t seen the film before, it was hugely recognisable due to the iconic images and quotes that have entered – and will forever remain in – the popular culture canon. Thus, as Eco’s ‘movie of all movies’, Casablanca was the perfect exemplar of Bordwell’s narration theories and we spent the seminar discussing it.