Sunday, 11 October 2009

Planning & Making A Film

I made this blog last year, made one post, with the intention of providing the world with a collection of film reviews and assorted writings. Those good intentions never ammounted to much more than an unposted review of a selection of films I watched one evening, which were have been Julien Donkey Boy (1999), The Aluminium Fowl (2006) and Bomb The System (2002), for what it's worth. This year, however, my blogs flame has been reignited with my new second year module, Planning And Making A Film, for which one of our assignments is to create a blog on which we are assessed. I was not disheartened by the fact that my first and only post prior to my new module probably doesn't present me in the best light to the tutor who will be marking it, but I felt the need to recycle my old webpage, as it's only a matter of time before the ammount of unused webpages on the world wide web will be lambasted by the Daily Mail for polluting the atmosphere, and I don't know if I can hold that weight on my conscience.


Our first assignment was to watch a dozen short films and write about them, commenting on their narrative structure with regard to Aristotle's ideas on dramatic plot structure. Luckily I had already watched four short films this week before I actually received the assignment, those being La Jettée (1962), which we watched in my Film & Philosphy class, Rubber Johnny (2005), Rabbit (2005) and The Last Trick (1964); the other seven were films which I selected from my DVD collection, which luckily almalgamated to a decent variety of short films. My dozen in its entirety (with links when available) is as follows (in order by year of release):




http://www.vbs.tv/watch/the-vice-guide-to-travel/the-radioactive-beasts-of-chernobyl



Watching these films whilst trying to identify the 'start' in accordance to Aristotle's theory was trickier than expected in some cases such as The Last Trick and Rubber Johnny, which are more abstract pieces without any clearly identifiable narrative structure. The relevance of Aristotle's theory was even present in films which weren't made for dramatic purposes, such as Amarillo By Morning and The Radioactive Beasts Of Chernobyl, both of which were documentaries. Both of these films loosely follow 3 parted plot arc, the premise of the documenary is set out; the interviews/exploration is conducted and a conclusion is reached. I also found myself questioning the notion of what classifies as a short film, in terms of length, content and context.




For example 3 of my films are smaller parts to larger films, but seperate as films from their larger projects. Dekalog, Dwa is one which is often regarded in different forms, it is the second part of a ten part television series, in which each episode represents one of the Ten Commandments; so it is questionable whether it is to be regarded as an episode of a television series, a short film or a part of a larger film, the question is further complexed by the fact that the whole series, Dekalog, frequently features in top film lists, listed as one film, as do two of its individual parts, A Short Film About Killing (Dekalog, Piec) and A Short Film About Love (Dekalog, Szesc), both of which are available on individual DVD releases. Similiarly Life Lessons is one part of a 3 parted film, New York Stories, in which each part is from a different director and The Radioactive Beasts Of Chernobyl is one part of a DVD collection called The Vice Guide To Travel.




The content of other films also came into question, such as Rubber Johnny, which seemed could be equally argued to be a music video as a short film, as the soundtrack by Aphex Twin could just as well be accompaniement to the film as the film could be to the music. Similarly La Jetée is a film which is constructed from still frames representing the voice of a narrator, this raises the debate of the definition of film, and whether this is to be classified as a slideshow or a film, when in fact it is essentially the same structure as a film just not shown at 24 frames per second. What length a film has to be to constitute a short film also arised, with films such as Sherlock Jr. at 45 minutes often being regarded as a feature length rather than a short, as it was released as such at the time, as in the early stages of cinema length was not something which was questioned as it is today, films were not categorised as short films or feature lengths, as they were all feature presentationsonly available to be viewed cinematically.




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1 comment:

  1. Unknown13 October 2009 at 00:27

    Great start to the module Gus. Excellent selection of films. I have been thinking about using la jetee in session too! Have you watched the making of 12 monkeys?

    respect! Mike J

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