In this week’s media seminar we finished discussing student’s ideas for the next upcoming project. We also covered the concept of the essay film and discussed what makes an essay film. Some of these features included the unique one-person voiceover, showcase of a variety of subjects and creating a search to find the answer to a particular question (rather than making a documentary expecting to have your point of view proved right).

This week’s reading by Laura Rascaroli discussed the essay film becoming more popular as a ‘new documentary’ form. The essay film disrespects traditional boundaries, is transgressive both structurally and conceptually and is self-reflective. Some characteristics of the essay film described in this text were:

  • Transgression (protean form)
  • The essay must manufacture the conditions of its own existence.
  • Reflectivity
  • Subjectivity – there is an influence of the personal and autobiographical in essay films
  • Critical engagement

I agree with Aldous Huxley’s point that the essay film is ‘a literary device for saying almost everything about anything’. In a sense the essay film is a type of ‘unclassifiable’ film and thus exist the risk of using the term ‘essay film’ indiscriminately in order to classify films ‘that escape other labelling’.

Some things I will be taking away with me from this reading include:

  • ‘The essay aims…to preserve something of the process of thinking’ – Good
  • ‘…thought does not advance in a single direction, rather the aspects of the argument interweave as in a carpet’ – Adorno
  • ‘The essayist must now become conscious of his own self, must find himself and build something of himself’ – Lukacs
  • ‘The essay film produces a particular articulation of subjectivity; the mere presence of a strong subject does not make an essay film’ – Rascaroli
  • ‘Our identification is with the audience as a collectivity rather than with an individual behind the camera. In what ways does the subjectivity of the essay film differ from that of other subjective forms (fictional or documentary)…’

This week I’ve been thinking about how to incorporate these features into my own essay film. I will be going with the idea of having one voiceover and will aim to present my story as a quest on a journey to find the answer to ‘How has Melbourne’s food culture changed over the last 30 years and why?’ I would like to be the least subjective in my presentation of this video; however, as one of my classmates brought up – nothing is true, everything we see is what the producer wants us to see. The involvement of the producer/director in post-producing, editing and the final creation of the video entitles them the right to choose what makes the cut and what should be left out. I think this is one crucial point in itself.