Reflective blog
This module as a whole has enabled me to develop a real sense of my own practice and in reflection I see it as a conducive and concurrent creative process. The first two elements of Practice 2 were outside of my comfort zone and I had to learn to negotiate and adapt my ideas. I found the notion of constraints to be most useful within phase 1 and 2. Mihaly Cskizentmihalyi, believes that constraints in creativity can be defined as “something new that is also useful or generative or influential” (Cskizentmihalyi, 1996; Simonton, 1999). The limitations created by the structure and literalness of the installation and Science Museum brief were useful because they allowed for concise thinking and creative problem solving and Generative because they allowed me to develop the ideas quickly. In regards to influential: interestingly, I found myself drawn towards surrealist literature in print and film; Walt Disney’s Alice in Wonderland (1951), Jan Svankmajer’s version Alice (1988), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Mel Stuart (1971) and Tim Burton in (2005) and A Clockwork Orange, Stanley Kubrick (1971). I am drawn towards the abstract atheistic and in these films and the intangible narratives that are packed with hidden meaning and context.
In the third phase of this module I stepped aside from the Sur-real into the Neo-real. My shift mirrors that of cinematic history. The transition from 1900’s Surrealism into the movements that are related to Neorealism in the 1950’s-80’s are fundamentally political and driven by notions of oppression, fascism and conflict. The reality of the political situations in Europe around both these movements was abysmal and therefore film and art offered an escape or means of expression. For the surrealist this was through the fantastic and strange. For the neorealist, through a flagrant representation of the notions of regret and the repercussions of bad political decisions. “They were deaf, blind and dumb, imprisoned in their ruins as in a fortress of wilful ignorance, still strong and capable of hatred, still prisoners of their old tangle of pride and guilt” – Primo Levi, “the Truce” (Shandley, 2001). They shot through the ruins of war torn Europe creating fictional recreations representing the reality of the impoverish situations that country now found themselves in.
Both Surrealism and Neorealism serve the same purpose; to blur the lines between the real and the unreal and both movements use dark-comedy to alleviate this uncanniness. Dadaist, Rene Magritte said of his painting of a pipe “C’est ne pas un Pipe”: It is not real, it a representation of reality. Harmony Korine’s anti-cinematic statement against Jean Luc Goddard “The camera tells 24 frames of lies per second” as opposed to ‘truth’, leads me to consider if anything can truly be real once it is filtered through the lens.
Harmony Korine’s modern neorealism influences my work because it creates the question – is that real or not? Korine uses a combination of scripted and non-scripted elements in his films which intensifies this dilemma. Korine’s films fuse melodrama with documentary and evoke elements of French New Wave and New German Cinema. In consideration of the New Form documentaries of the 21st Century, Korine was before his time in regards to the trend for voyeurism commonly consumed these days in the form of reality TV.
I see my project as a lens based, ethnographical study which is at the forefront of its felid because of the method. I will be deploying an abstract and alternative, almost anti cinematic skate video style film. This is influenced by the films of William Strobeck who is renowned for avoiding new HD widescreen and slow motion techniques in favour of the ‘up close and personal’ modes of the late 90’s skate film. To shoot the film like a skate video, I will need to be reactive to events going on around me (in order to capture “truth”). Dwayne Dixon explores how the camera becomes an extension of the film makers body. It transforms the way in which reality is depicted and brings us closer in an ethnographic sense to the “people”. The hand held camera is improvisational and reactive and allows the film maker to engage with the subject with better flow, blurring the boundary between the operator and camera itself. Dixon suggests that the machine (camera) becomes an extortion of the man (the operator). (Dixon, 2011) Rouch coined the ambiguous phrase ciné-transe to describe this:
“when the film maker really gets into his subject, preceding or following the dancer, he is no longer himself, he is turned into a “mechanical eye” with a “mechanical ear” (Rouch quote from The Drums, the Camera and the Man. P4)
In accordance with the theories of documentary pioneer Bill Nichols, my proposed film fits within the “Poetic Mode”. The Poetic Mode presents opportunities to explore “types of temporal and spatial arrangements made possible through interactive documentaries that use symbolic layering and branched narrative as means through which to represent reality.” (Castells, 2012. P 229). Further to Nichols Introduction to Documentary (2010), he is only now working to define interactivity documentary and considering how this New Form has changed the notion of his “modes” to new “Modes of Navigation”. My idea to free the notion of authorship creates a sense of visual realism through the subjectivity and experience of viewing, which lends itself well to the Poetic Mode, Personal Portrait documentary and the interactive platform.
My interest in the blurred lines between fact and fiction; cinéma-vérité and Neorealism and the real and the sur-real have driven the concept for my Major Study. The aim of my interactive documentary is to find a “real truth”. As BS Johnson states in his novel Albert Angelo (1964) “I’m trying to say something not tell a story, telling stories is telling lies and I want to tell the truth about my experience about my truth.” In order to fully immerse myself as a documentarian I take note from pioneers like Jean Rouch and Werner Herzog and influence from contemporary neo-realists such as Korine and Strobeck. I am developing the techniques that these individuals established and transforming them. My film uses Korine’s atheistic but is fully factual (not scripted). Strobeck skate videos are revamped into the factual film format. Herzog’s neorealist conventions are slightly subverted but maintained through my use of hand held camera, adlibbed dialogue and Rouche’s ciné-transe (reactive filming). I take these concepts into the forefront of documentary film making, through the interactive elements, which remove the set narrative structure and the liberation of the raw files allow the user full access and the ability to remould the film in any way they like.
Sources
Castells, A.G. 2012, "The Case of Guernika, Pintura de Guerra, the First Catalan Interactive Documentary Project", Studies in Documentary Film, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 229-242.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. Society, Culture and Person: a systems view of creativity, in R.J. Sternberg (ed) The nature of creativity: contemporary psychological perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1988 pp 325-339
Dixon, D. 2011, "Getting the Make: Japanese Skateboarder Videography and the Entranced Ethnographic Lens", Postmodern Culture, vol. 22, no. 1.
Johnson, BS (1964), Albert Angelo, Constable 1-180. print
Nichols, B (2010) Introduction to Documentary, Indiana University Press | Bloomington & Indianapolis
McRoy, J. & Crucianelli, G. 2009, ""i panic the world": Benevolent exploitation in tod browning's freaks and Harmony Korine's Gummo", Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 42, no. 2, pp. 257-272.
Rouch, Jean. "The Camera and Man." Cine-Ethnography. Ed. Stephen Feld. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2003. 29-46. Print.
Serna, S (2013) The drums, the camera and The man : ciné-transe in Jean Rouch's cinemahttp://www.nomadit.co.uk/iuaes/iuaes2013/panels.php5?PanelID=1713 [accessed 14-8-16]
Shandley, R.A (2001) Rubble Films: German Cinema in the Shadow of the Third Reich. Temple University Press, U.S. http://www.temple.edu/tempress/chapters_1400/1593_ch1.pdf [Accessed 26-8-16]
