week 3 response

I Am Curios (Yellow)

The scene change from a series of interviews regarding the class system in Sweden to another interview on the same topic starts to unravel the reflective qualities of the film inside of the film-taking place. In this scene the director is doing the interviewing and there are shots of Lena relaxing with another member of the film crew, cameramen taking photographs, the interviewees wifes quietly interjecting, and also of the camera that is filming the interview. The sequence of variety of shots covering the one scene seems to be a strategy employed by the director to further the audiences understanding of the complexity of the film being created in the film. A jolting sound breaks up the scene and we see the director editing what the audience is viewing; he pauses and the tension in his face and body explores that possibly the shot of Lena and the gentleman weren’t part of the film he was editing but perhaps a memory he is recalling while the interview was being shot. He continues the editing process and Lena interrupts him and they begin to bicker about their relationship, what is useful out of this scene is that Lena explains she doesn’t understand the whole topic of a class system. This is helpful to construct moments of “real” Lena and “acting” Lena, even though “real” Lena is still a fictional character. I find this conclusion not very fitting because so much of the film is Lena as a strong social activist, maybe this was the filmmaker’s intention to have a character with such strong ideologies to coerce others to be more socially attuned and liberal like Lena. After all Lena Nyman is played by Lena Nyman the choice made by the director to keep her same name promotes trust in the validity of the character of Lena and the film as a whole. 

Symbiopsychotaxiplasm:

Interconnectedness is explored by Graves in this film by using footage of the cast and crew contemplating the film consciously and also subconsciously. Everyone who participated in the creation of the film is connected to it, for example if someone is filming the angle and close ups of shots was a conscious choice by the person filming. In a scene where Graves is directing the two actors the cameraman chooses to zoom in on Graves hand motions, by making this choice Graves hand becomes a bit of a character. Even though Graves is the director he relies on everyone involved to create dynamic interchange. There are scenes where members of the cast and crew are being filmed out of scene, such as the male actor calling a crew member a “dirty rat” for recording him talking not so brightly about the female actress brings forth this actors true personality and also those of the crew as the laugh a little to themselves; all of this interplay creates symbiotaxiplasm.  The harsh dialogue between the actors is the only seemingly scripted aspect of this film, and Graves decision to include such dialogue pushes everyone, even the audience, out of their comfort zone but while all of this is taking place Graves grazes through the film cool as a cucumber. Is he preforming as a director or is he actually a director? He is the director of this film and I think it was highly intentional that he crafted this persona to both aggravate and smooth the filming process to reflect on how interconnectedness is part of every moment whether we realize it or not.

WEEK 4 FILMS

I've decided to arrange the screenings this week so we can stick closer to the themes of simulation addressed by Baudrillard, which I think we'll find quite relevant when looking at the following media. In addition to the two features, I've provided a few shorter pieces to look at.

We'll begin by watching a few pieces by David Hall. What is important to keep in mind with the TV Interruptions is that they were originally broadcast on television, unannounced, unexplained, and Hall himself remained uncredited. Similar to most early video artists operating in the 70's, Hall is interested in the space of the television monitor and in the function of broadcast. He was reaching into people's homes and creating an "interruption" in their normal viewing, evoking strange cerebral interruptions. These videos are directly reflexive of their medium, sculptural objects intended to reflect the space of the screen in which they unfold.  

David Hall - TV Interruptions: Tap Piece

 

 David Hall - TV Interruptions: TV Shoot-out piece

watch here: https://vimeo.com/80365655

This next piece by David Hall was not necessarily designed for broadcast, but it displays the same type of immediate reflexivity that the previous two examples do. This piece takes it a step further and utilizes the medium itself to distort and destroy the integrity of the image. This piece was created by re-videotaping the screen over and over until the image turned into pure noise. 


 


David Hall's work offers a perfect example of how an image can achieve the status of metacinema by the reflexive use of the medium. Any image that calls attention to itself as an image or calls attention to its medium is essentially metacinematic.

The above examples constitute minor simulations of the medium and of the screen. The two feature length films we'll watch this week conjure much more complex simulations, simulations of cinema, capital and even the human being. In addition to these two films, please re-visit Baudrillard (the first 20 pages) and read Vito Acconi's article, posted to D2L. 

IRMA VEP - Olivier Assayas - 1996
POSTED ON D2L. You will need to download the files and VLC if you don't already have it (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/). Please contact me ASAP if you have any questions.

 

 















HOLY MOTORS - Leos Carax - 2012
WATCH ON NETFLIX. 

  

Week 3 - Lynda

Symbiopsycotaxiplasm: Take One

In Sybiopsctaxiplasm we are introduced to the ‘meta’ factor quite early. There are three cameras shooting the film. One camera is used to shoot the actors. Another camera is used to shoot the camera shooting the actors. The third camera is used to shoot the camera that is shooting the camera shooting the actors. It would be interesting if the kept adding cameras to build on this chain of footage. I was not really sure if the director went into the film with a clear intention or not. I wonder if he ever intended just to show the film containing the actors. With the super lame script and everything. I also wondered if he had intended all this time to leave everything open ended--to let the film create itself. At one point a crew member mentioned that the film could be edited 300 different ways and never have the same meaning. That is interesting to me. I found the viewing of Symbiopsycotaxiplasm: Take One to be an experience. I still am unsure of how genuine it is. But there were definitely certain  moments that seemed completely genuine. For example, the moment when the actor explained that he just wanted to be a better actor. I feel like he actually felt that way. I guess we’ll never really know what was scripted and what was not.

I Am Curious – Yellow

Much like Symbiopsycotaxiplasm: Take One, I am Curious – Yellow was another meta experience. There were many times that I forgot I was viewing a film within a film. At certain points it felt like a documentary—when Lena was interviewing people on the street. Other times it felt completely played out—when certain things would come on the screen such as a question mark. The film definitely plays with the viewer in that way. Whenever we break the wall and are reminding that we are watching a film within a film. It’s like a “oh yeah” moment for me. I became invested in the characters that the characters were playing. Once I was reminded that they were playing characters, there was something taken away from that investment. Possibly it was the lack of genuine emotion. There are moments and scene that make the viewer question what is surely apart of the film and what is apart of the film within the film. A good example of this is when Lena and her “lover” are fighting in the cabin and the director shuts the door. Another example is when the film feels like a documentary—where those genuine responses from random interviewees on the street? I would like to think so. It certainly felt that way. I really enjoyed my experience of this film and the way that it made me switch back and forth between what I thought was “real,” which was fake anyways, and then what I knew was not real, which were the moments when the wall was broken and it was apparent that they were filming a film within a film.

Symbiopsychotaxiplasm // I Am Curious

William Greave’s Symbiopsychotaxiplasm is performance art about film as a genre within a film. The film opens with a dual screen scene between a man and a woman with terrible dialogue and soapy direction. Eventually we take a step back and meet the crew that’s putting this together; including Greaves at the lead, directing his way through Central Park. We then take another step back into a post-shoot meeting of the crew, engineering a sort of mutiny against Greaves for doing his job poorly, and not being a clear leader on the project. The crew does some philosophizing about why they are shooting this meeting, and what exactly are Greaves intentions in making this film.

With three cameras on-hand, it’s hard not to believe that Greaves was conducting an experiment in filmmaking. With two cameras on the actors acting, and a third usually doing behind-the-scenes shots all on screen, Symbiopsychotaxiplasm opens itself to us, allowing minute details to breathe. The crew knows there are cameras present the whole time, and they notice Greaves behaving differently in front of them; the idea of acting and how we act is a clear through line in the movie. The scenes that are the most authentic are when people don’t realize the camera is rolling, like when the male lead jokes about his co-star, or when a homeless man comes and talks to the crew. As an experiment, I would say it’s largely successful. Symbiopsychotaxiplasm plays with our notion of power dynamics and directorial voice.

Both films are about the “Group” colliding with “Individual”. In Symbiopsychotaxiplasm, Bill Greaves pits his crew against him, and he gives them a creative voice in the film. I Am Curious - Yellow, has similar themes of Group vs Individual. There’s a lot of different things happening in I Am Curious, so it’s difficult to parse the plot into words. First off, it’s a movie about personal politics and politics large. Lena, an actress and Socialist activist, stars in a movie for director Vilgot Sjöman about lovers. Lena and Vilgot are lovers themselves so he has reservations casting who she wants to be lovers with, for fear that she will leave him for her. So it’s also a film about personal relationships, expectations and self-fulfilling prophecies.

The lines between realities are constantly being blurred. Our reality and the film’s merge in “woman on the street” style interviews where Lena questions people on the street about class, nonviolence, and income inequality. Vilgot interviews Martin Luther King Jr. yet there’s a strange disconnect between the shots of Vilgot and the shots of King in a filmic manufactured reality. Within the movie, the reality between the movie within a movie and the film itself are being blurred as well. We see a scene of the two lovers within the movie arguing after a string of movie within a movie scenes. They argue and it cuts to the camera crew shutting the door, a clear indication that this is not the film within a film anymore, but one reality away. Combined with text on screen, fake contents in the middle of the film, and constant switching between realities, I Am Curious proves to be a disorienting viewing, constantly forcing us to to re-align, re-adjust and re-think within it’s reality. It’s a strange ideology film, that wants you to commit to nonviolence while showing you how ridiculous it is.

Week 3 Response - CS

Symbiopsycotaxiplasm: Take One

This film, dir. by William ‘Bill’ Greaves, is about the control the filmmaker has on his film. Throughout the film we see the workings of a low-budget film shoot in a New York park. It is apparent from the beginning that this shoot is mismanaged. The actors seem lost on their direction as well as the crew. For example: there is a sequence where we can see the footage from all three cameras simultaneously and the crew is attempting to follow both actors as the woman attempts to flee from the man. At many points in this sequence we can see the crew in all three shots rendering them unusable for a conventional film. The crew later meets and records a ‘private’ discussion on how the film is progressing. They complain about the director’s mismanagement and the poor script. However others allude to the poor management as a choice by Greaves to yield the film he wants. In their final meeting shown, the man with the moustache says that their ‘secret’ meeting could all be a rouse to trick the audience. The director could be standing just outside the room giving directions and leading their conversation. This kind of unseen control is very similar to how the filmmaker controls the film in post production.  The choice of what to include, exclude, the duration, and shot sequence all effect how the film is perceived. Even when it appeared that Greaves did not have control over production, he, in fact, has the final say over the entire film.
It is also of note that the concept of the film in the film, although not explicitly stated, changed. It began as having a working title, “Over the Cliff”, to just being a screen test for the actors. Then the actors were replaced. However, these sequences may be chronologically out of order, further elaborating on the control the filmmaker has over the project.

I Am Curious- Yellow

In this film Vilgot Sjöman (the director) also plays himself as the director, but here he seems to have more control over the production and a similar control in post. The film begins with Sjöman and Lena having a love affair and they discuss making a film starring her. After that, Lena begins asking people on the street politically charged questions about the current state of Sweden and the world. This leads into the drama of Lena’s home life and her love story with Börje. The movie continues on this track for a while, without mention of Sjöman or his movie. But once it seems like the film is going to be just about Lena’s drama, the crew and director is shown calling the shots, reminding us that what seems like the movie, is only the movie in the movie. In a later scene in the country house, Lena and Börje get into a huge fight. It is, at first, assumed that this is just further drama of the film in the film, but the camera cuts outside to show the director and crew bewildered at the fighting. One of the crew members closes the door which symbolizes the filmmaker’s loss of control of the characters (actors) at that moment. An action like this makes the fight seem closer to “reality” because it is only one filmic level away from our “reality” rather than two levels away for the film in the film.
This film straddles the line of not knowing which events are happening in the film and which are happening in the film in the film. It is confusing to differentiate which level the film is currently on and how deeply metacinematic the film becomes.

Week 3

The two films we watched Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One and I Am Curious were both metacinema in the way that both films were about making films. However Symbio (As I will resort to using it in short) is a documentary about a film that director William Greaves is working on and he insists that not only will he have his camera crew shooting the main action of the actors but he has another camera crew shooting the crew shooting the actors. To add on to everything Greaves is seemingly sabotaging the making of the film and the way he goes about it in order to get a catastrophe on set. This theory of course wouldn't be a part of the film if it weren't for the extra scenes where the crew filming the actors and working more closely with Greaves discussing what the hell the film is about and what the hell the director is doing. Greaves himself seems to be a character in all of this as he comes off as acting while in front of the cameras.  I found this use of metacinema the most interesting use we have seen so far. I thought this idea for a film was brilliant however it was a little short with not a lot of substance beyond the theory of the crew.

I Am Curious: Yellow was a film that I had never seen before and I understood why after viewing it. The film is about a director who is making a film with this woman who is a drama student. For me this film was very dull however I get what it is doing. I Am Curious lives up to its name as the lead character is asking social questions such as "Does Sweden have a class system?" or something along the lines of "Do women have equal opportunities". This film displays metacinema because it follows this director making a film and on several occasions we see a film crew. The director during the entire thing is very jealous of his lead actor and it ends with him and another girl which leads me to believe it's just a never ending cycle.

Week 3

Week 3 Response

The films that we watched this week both seemed to appeal to meta cinema in a very clear way. Both of them featured films being made within films (and in the case of Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One, films within films within films). In "I am Curious: Yellow" we are given a fictional version of this, where as in "Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One" we are given real documentary footage about a fictional movie being shot. It gets sort of complex. In "I am Curious: Yellow", we follow a man in the process of making a film, one about social issues in the world. He finds a good looking young theater girl to play the star role in it. Over the course of the movie, you sort of forget this initial setup and sink back into the typical viewing experience of watching a fictional film. However, later in the movie the "crew" show back up and play, again, a role in the film. The film sort of backs up and looks at itself when later in the story, our "director" begins feelings of jealousy toward the actor. The film cheekily ends how it began, with our director meeting up with another young woman. 

In "Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One" (that's the last time I'm typing that out) we are given a more straightforward, but at the same time more complex version of something similar. We start out with a few scenes from a film, sort of out of place and out of context. After the titles we back up and see behind the camera. We see the director, the sound guys, the actors out-of-character, and the setting around them beyond the fictional areas within the frame. The director orders the other camera men to film different things. One crew will film the making of the movie, sort of like a behind the scenes documentary. The other crew is told to film THAT crew while they film the OTHER crew. So like inception, we just keep going deeper. All at the same time we get a fictional movie, a documentary about a movie, and a documentary about a documentary filming a movie. Even better, the director goes out of his way to cause trouble on set, doing his best to stir the pot. The end results are chaotic, and certainly well documented. What sets this film apart from "Yellow" is that not all of the meta cinema here is unauthentic. Even though some people appear to be playing characters, and although the film is documentaries folded in on themselves like matryoshka dolls, a lot of what is shown is off the cuff and really happened. What I really enjoy about the directors approach here is that he somehow managed to create a somewhat honest environment despite the number of cameras floating around. Whenever someone knows that a camera is pointed at them, they act differently. Even if they play it cool, they end up playing some kind of character version of themselves. But when you've got eight cameras all filming different things in utter chaos, it's the same as having no cameras. The true personalities come out, and we see what things are really like on set (granted, it seemed like the director was "playing the part" and purposely stirring the pot to create tension.)