Digital Narrative
Bill Viola
Egg Hatch
What’s amazing about this piece is that the ‘art’ is inside the egg. And you’ll only see it if wait for a short period of time. The artist is control of the piece and the chick is in control of the time in which the audience are able to see it. This is unlike reality because in most cases when someone wants to create suspence, they do it digitally, whereas this piece remains to be natural. This mirrors many techniques that film directors use to create suspense. ‘Hulk’ is the first example that springs to mind. In the beginning of that movie, we only hear the loud foot steps and bits of his body. It doesn’t want to reveal all of it at once because the subject then wouldn’t be as interesting.
Emergence
Ocean without a shore
ADVERTS
After watching this piece, I asked myself ‘would the advert have worked or have been the same if there was a different genre of music being played’…..I think music is key in telling a story or wanting to get the audiences attention. One wouldn’t put a hip hop track by 50 cent into a film where someone is dying. In doing something as disastrous as that, a new form of story would be put before us. So by having a different soundtrack in a particular scenario, it would escape the story and reveal a new one.
This doesn’t strike me as being a good advert. However, humour has been infused to take its place over the common serious advertisements we see today. Having an extreme close up on the guys chin not only reveals the company’s ability to perform such a shave, but it depicts detail. Having a close on a subject creates an abstract because we see more detail than what we would have if the shot was at another distance.
The Pepsi advert has been well thought out and planned. The passing of the Pepsi from one individual who is from the past to another who is from the future is an interesting narrative and echoes not only the progress of age, but the continuity of those who still drink Pepsi and it really brings everything together….. much like the old meets the new rather than the old versus the new. I think the highlight of that piece for me was when the crowd was breaking down the Berlin wall and the guy stepped onto the other side only to find himself in a concert. So ‘progression’ as well as ‘time’ are the factors in which the advert encompasses.
EXPERIMENTS
I had a go at editing the knee slapper, ‘Rush Hour 3’. I liked the idea of subtracting in order to create something new. We see that Chris Tucker wants to see someone important, but we find the answer not through him, rather his partner Jackie Chan. So having someone that’s not the subject guide the audience to the truth is an intuitive narrative that starts in the beginning of the sequence. By editing out the tall guy’s facial feature, I have created what would appear to be an antagonist. And so what we’re left with is an interesting sequence of a roll reversal between humour and mystery.
I’ve fused an obscure sequence involving humour and humour. What I hope to leave the audience contemplating is whether the audio that is from ‘Family Guy’, funnier than the action sequence that is taking place in ‘Rush Hour 3’. I also hope to leave an opened to the audience to decipher whether action is more important than sound, or visa versa.
This is the same movie as before, only I’ve zoomed right into piece. In doing so, I can see more detail but in an abstract form. I haven’t a clue as to what’s going on in this piece other than shots being shown, ranging from rapid to slow. It’s some how interesting; not being able to see what’s happening but as it’s substitute we are receiving detail and abstract.
I wanted to emphasis a dream or escapism in the movie ‘In Hell’. We see a character put in a solitary confinement. We aren’t given any evidence as to why he is there, only that he wants to be freed of his shackles. The next shot gives us a better understanding of our character prior to his solitary confinement; we can see that he is a fighter. This possibly raises the question as to whether or not this had happened, or is going to happen or just a fantasy. What I can extract from the ‘dream’ is that his appearance is slightly different to his current; he has much longer, a beard and his actions more aggressive. In his reality he appears to be frightened and agitated and without sound being apparent other than the one we see in his dream world, this illustrates a different realm of time in which he either wants to get to, or repel.
The movie sequence in the background is of a girl wanting to get a pregnancy test. The scene itself doesn’t involve much action but more dialogue, whereas the movie on top does. When looking at this, even though there are more feats in the film involving the car, I feel that the movie beneath is drawing my attention. This exhibits how powerful sound is when it comes to telling a story.
What’s interesting about the sequence as a whole is that the theme prioritises itself on ‘time’ being theme. The movie involving the car depicts that the character is in a hurry to get to a particular destination whereas the movie involving the pregnancy test brings forward the awaiting of birth.
The sequence involves a couple sleeping and is then woken up by a phone a phone to later find out that there was a suicide attack. I tried to depict escapism or a dream when the woman picks up the phone and is then told of an attack. Towards the end of he sequence when she puts the phone down, the colour changes back to its original form, highlighting that it was a dream, because not only was it blurry, but it seemed that she was talking to herself because we weren’t given any evidence of the person she was speaking to. We know that she is back to reality because the audience is now aware of what the phone call in her ‘dream’ was about, suicide attack.
Vertov’s film Man with a Movie Camera
To begin with there wasn’t any immediate acknowledgement of character(s) other than the camera man himself. Strangely enough, to me, he wasn’t under the category of character because at times, we saw what the camera man was filming through his camera and going straight back to our natural perspective of the audience being seeing everything as well as the camera man himself. This ability to bend realty creates narrative and when we see the camera man, we don’t see an actor; we see a creator or a ghost.
In the beginning, the shots were long but had little or no impact to the audience. I found that earlier in the movie the shots were much longer but had minimal activity. As the day progressed in the movie shots where shortened which then had excess in activity. This is a metaphor for the progress of age; we begin life with little activity but have a longer life period, whereas when we age and our life span draws to halt and, we perform more activity.
What I found to be interesting, were the single images at the beginning that reveal a simplistic story. We were introduced to a woman sleeping at a close up shot. It then changed to man leaning forward at which point the shot immediately goes back to the sleeping woman. It then proceeds to introduce a shot of a man emphasising the finger gesture next to his lip and finishes with the woman sleeping. What I can extract from that small display is that the image of the man leaning in as if though he was about to wake up the girl (this is only an image by the way) directs us to the other man with the finger gesture to tell him to silent. Using only but a few images, we can create the ‘finished article’.
This process of single images telling a story continues for a short time at the beginning of the movie. Other examples are as follows; the bottle of beer that looks like a tower then proceeds to show an image of what appears to be an intoxicated man sleeping on a bench, a shot of a can saying ‘keep clean’ advances to a homeless child sleeping on the floor, a shot of a car wheel follows on to a shot of a factory; tracing the route of its creation, etc.
At one point of the movie, the music stops which then brings everyone in the shot to a halt. We then get introduced to a woman inside a studio, piecing and editing the footage which was put to halt. After assembling all the footage, the movie continues to play. I found this to be remarkable because music is the dialogue in the movie and by stopping it, a woman who isn’t involved in the ‘film world’ is editing right in front of us. This shows an entirely different perspective of the film reality by being able to stop and edit time.
RESEARCH
The ‘Counter’ is by far the simplistic form of narrative, counting backwards until reach zero. But I what find appealing, are the movie references that introduce the numbers. When you immediately see them, acting has stripped away from all forms of entertainment, and what has been replaced are numbers that have to be spotted in the movie. It’s a very fun and playful piece.
There is one scene in the movie ‘The Hurricane’ who is acted by Denzel Washington where he’s put in solitary confinement and begins to befriend and quarrel with himself, psychologically. ‘Time’ is the theme of this plot because unlike ‘Hero’ this is continuing in the same reality as the film world and not his own. There seems to be two Denzel’s because of the passing of time and the editing, however the sound helps it to be recognized as a dream because of the echo as well as the bitch black background, underlining a nightmare.
I’ve chosen ‘Hero’ as an example to show the ‘passing of time’ being the theme. At the beginning when we see Donnie Yen and Jet Li, the sequence was in colour, hinting that what you now are seeing is actually happening. But what I found to be intuitive is when they closed their eyes and began to find subconscious mind, from which the sequence changed to black and white, hinting the dream world.
What I find to be more interesting, which is going back to the ‘dream world’ is that once we are shown these two fighting, it’s no longer raining and before the previous edit, there was musician playing an instrument which involved strings but in the dream world, he too is in invisible. I quite like the idea of being in an enviroment when something is happening in the ‘real’ world of the film, and then when the subject goes through a psychological voyage, bits of the environment change along with the colours.
Althermodern
I went to Tate Britain and when ever I see modern art, it escapes from traditional art and rely on intellect rather than how skilful one must be to paint and sculpt incredible pieces of work. I am beginning to adapt to this intellectual side of art.
Marcus Coates
I couldn’t tell whether I had walked half way to the movie or if it had just started. It was a very obscure and amusing piece that involved a man wearing a badger on his head and a hare stuffed in his jacket with its head, poking out. With these two animals being worn, the chap begins to make animal- like noise. The audience finding it completely hysterical, there are two other people in the movie, just watching his epic display of animal clatters without breaking a smile. To me, this brings animal cruelty as part of the concern. I wouldn’t know of any other way to present that piece, because it’s difficult to entertain an audience when it comes to serious facts.
Franz Ackerman ‘Gateway’
Out of all the pieces in Tate Britain, I found his to be the most appealing. It’s very intuitive and correct. As soon as I walked in, I was bombarded with an abundance of urban styled art. Right in the heart of the piece was a 4 by 4 cage, prohibiting anyone to go inside. What was interesting is that the cage had nothing inside, it was completely empty and yet I felt the erg or the need to be inside the cage, forgetting about all the colourful urban pieces surrounding me. I’m a bit lost as to what this installation is supposed to mean. Perhaps it expresses a feeling of being forgotten (the urban pieces) and being remembered (the cage).
David Noonan
I didn’t quite understand what I was looking at the first time. But when I adjusted my position, the piece revealed itself. And so automatically it says to me that depending on where you stand to see the art, the result will always be different, ergo, the final piece will always be new and that there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way of looking at a piece.
Research
Narrative
In lesson, we were discussing what a narrative is, and if it was just a rambling collection of words. We established that narrative is about progression; be it in character or story.
We used the film ‘Crash’ as a prime example. What’s dissimilar about this movie than most is that the film starts at the end. We began to dissect the reason as to why the film editors performed such an action. We came to a conclusion that the sequence of reality is in non-chronological order. Having the ending start at the beginning entices the audience and leaves them wanting to ‘investigate’.
We also discussed Steven Spielberg’s fascinating approach the film ‘Jurassic Park’. He made the audience believe that we were always seeing dinosaurs throughout the entire movie, where in fact, all we ever saw or heard, were the roars and the ripples of water when the dinosaur was approaching. If one were accumulating all the minutes of seeing a dinosaur in Jurassic Park, it wouldn’t be nearly as much as we thought we were seeing. The one thing we took away from that investigation is that sound plays 60% of a movie.
Terminator was another subject we touched upon. Instead of story narrative, we concentrated more on the machine played as Arnold Schwarzenegger and how the character does progress. Instead he remains to be the same and emotionless throughout the movie and allows the audience to question the character.
During lesson, we were shown examples of digital narrative project by previous students. Some were as followed; a student used final cut pro in action movies to tell a different side of a story. The one that was exhibited was the ending scene of the film ‘Heat’. He had made two versions; one was of Robert DeNiro pursuing Pal Pacino, however he edited it so that the viewer did not see Al, and one where you were able to see Al but Robert. It was interesting because a whole new dimension to the film was created and so the audience was driven away from knowing who was the good guy or bad.
Another example was of Kill Bill, when Uma Thurman was fighting Lucy Liu at the end. Again, he edited out the parts of the fighting scene and what were left were the dialogues and the fighting poses before executing an attack. Naturally, the other part of the edit was only the fight scene; cutting out all fighting poses and dialogues. Again, another side story is being told here; the audience is unaware of what the quarrel is about.
Another example of a digital narrative piece was also done using final cut pro. He used a particular scene from the movie ‘This is England’ when the shop was being robbed by the skinheads. He had done several edits; one was bleeping out the taboos, one was bleeping out words that weren’t taboos, one was blurring the victims face to hide his identity, etc. This was interesting because he was controlling what the audience were able to hear and see and again, a entirely different way of telling a story is being introduced.
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