The idea (Blog Post 1)
A blog post by: Kelsey Reid
When first researching the definition of what experimental film actually is, one statement in particular stood out “It’s helpful to think of experimental cinema as pushing the boundaries of what most people think movies are – or should be” (Barsam, 2013). This immediately told me the kind of creative freedom that this module would allow us as filmmakers to explore compared to the ‘standard’ methods and content when making drama films.
[Click link to see film]
The story is told purely through the characters actions without the use of any dialogue, which goes against the typical storytelling conventions of cinema. Yet we can clearly pick up the themes of jealousy and competition.
Consequently, we felt this was a strong and relevant idea to go with for our experimental film.
When first researching the definition of what experimental film actually is, one statement in particular stood out “It’s helpful to think of experimental cinema as pushing the boundaries of what most people think movies are – or should be” (Barsam, 2013). This immediately told me the kind of creative freedom that this module would allow us as filmmakers to explore compared to the ‘standard’ methods and content when making drama films.
However, with so much creative freedom it can be difficult to pinpoint what to actually make a film about. Therefore, the best thing to do was to explore the world of experimental filmmaking and see the kind of art that was already out there. Here is just to name but a few and the key things liked in the film:
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| Breathless (Dir. Oleksii Sobolev) |
The story is told purely through the characters actions without the use of any dialogue, which goes against the typical storytelling conventions of cinema. Yet we can clearly pick up the themes of jealousy and competition.
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| Period. (Dir. Emilie Thalund) |
Liked the way they used certain abstract images to add to the feelings of pain, discomfort and fragility associated with women’s menstruation. They weren’t there without meaning, every image used in the film had reason.
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| The Weight (Dir. Ben Stamper & Michael Ellis) |
This was the first screen dance short seen when having the initial browse of experimental films. The way in which the story is told through dance and the movement of the human body made the film so much more powerful.
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| Hands (Dir. Jesper Lindborg) |
In this film, though you are only watching the film with your eyes, it’s like you can almost sand between your fingers and in the palm of your hand.
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| All These Voices (Dir. David Gerson) |
This film similarly had the same affect as ‘Hands’. In the opening sequence the protagonist is seen hitting his head off the back of a wall and the more he does it, the more it hurt to watch it, flinching in my seat each time he’d throw his head back against the wall for another time.
'Hands' and 'All these voices' brought me back to a film article once read that stated “We see and comprehend and feel films with our entire bodily being” not just our eyes and ears (Sobchack, 2000). Therefore, this explains why other parts of my body were responding to what I was seeing on screen. This concept is very interesting and if incorporated into our experimental film it would provide more of an immersive experience for audiences, something not greatly explored in typical standard filmmaking.
'All these voices' for some unknown reason, inspired the idea of internal struggle. Consequently, through inspiration of all the films seen online, 4 scenes came to mind to create an overall image and feeling of internal struggle. One of which included the banging of a head as seen in “All these voices”, another included an abstract scene as seen in “period” and another scene focused on dance sequence as seen in “the weight”. In addition, the idea is that the the theme of struggle is made evident in the film mostly through the edit, character actions and the combinations of certain diegetic sounds, with as little dialogue used as possible - thus inspired by 'Breathless'.
Moreover, during our first group meeting we discussed these 4 scenes, but felt there needed to be a 5th scene which revealed the reason for this person's internal struggle to give the film a greater purpose.
During the meeting, Darleen brought up the idea of the internal struggle of the character being a non-native individual who is struggling to communicate to an English-speaking person.
Therefore, we went on to do some research to provide evidence that this is a relevant subject matter in today’s society and here are some of the statistics and findings found:
- 864,000 people of the U.K population said they didn’t speak either English or Welsh well or at all.
- “Brits are famous for not speaking foreign languages”.
- “62% of people surveyed can’t speak any other language apart from English”.
- “The European Union average showed that 56% speak at least one foreign language, 28% speak at least two and 11% speak three or more.
Therefore, a native English speaker should give non-native speakers the benefit of the doubt and be patient towards them when they are trying their best to communicate with them in English.
- "Learning languages is hard because it requires brand new cognitive frameworks. Simply translating the new structures through the filter of a native language isn’t learning."
Consequently, we felt this was a strong and relevant idea to go with for our experimental film.
Additional references
Barsam, R. 2013. Looking at movies: An introduction to film. 5th ed. New York: W.W. Norton
Sobchack, V. 2000. What my fingers knew: The Cinesthetic Subject, or Vision in the flesh. [online]. [Accessed 10 November 2018]. Available from: http://sensesofcinema.com/2000/conference-special-effects-special-affects/fingers/
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