Maya Deren

Okay, so this blog post may be several weeks late at this point, but I feel obligated to dedicate a post to the works of Maya Deren. I feel as though Maya was one of the most talented filmmakers we've seen so far this semester. Her first film, Meshes of the Afternoon was spectacular, and I feel like it's something I would be able to watch several times over. She combined her unique style with some very interesting camera shots. For example, one of the shots that sticks out in my head is when the woman was walking up the stairs. By tilting the camera side to side and having the actress fall off to the side, it gave the effect that the whole house was rocking side to side. Other unique aspects like the hooded figure with the mirror for a face and the key turning into a knife were nothing short of incredible.

Another one of Maya's films, At Land was also very unique. It started off with a woman walking around on a beach. She started to climb a cliff on the beach, and when she reached the top, she was suddenly on a dinner table surrounded by people dining. Maya used this several times throughout the film. For example, as the woman crawled across the table, it cut to her crawling through the grass. I saw these as comparisons that were meant to show the similarities between the wilderness and society. Maya used very effective means to make this comparison clear.

However, one of the most surprising things about Maya Deren to me was the fact that she didn't have any training in the art of film before making her first movie, Meshes of the Afternoon. While her husband at the time helped in many aspects of the movie, I feel like the fact that Maya went on to make several other films of her own displays her natural ability to make art, which is something that cannot be overlooked.

Documentary!

Week 6. I've finally located a figure I can refer to as, "a character," complete with his own story and some sort of action. Does this foreshadow what is to come? Is there a plot somewhere in the distant future? Only time can tell...

Last class, we only watched 2 films, but they were both rather lengthy. The first one was the first documentary film ever made, Nanook of the North. And let me just tell you. Nanook is the most badass man who has ever lived. Seriously, my jaw was dropped almost the entire film. It's hard to believe people not only live like that, but thrive! Watching Nanook kick ass in the harshest environment made me well aware that I would never survive if I got lost in the arctic. That and he was 10 times more successful at this whole living thing than I'll ever be. Seriously, I don't think I've ever seen anybody build a house on the spot like that. To have to do that every night is beyond my comprehension. That and ya know....the whole breaking a fish's neck with his teeth, and spearing a seal in the face through a hole the size of a quarter thing. That was pretty impressive too.

I guess I'll move on to the filming aspect of it. I can't imagine having to shoot something like that. I mean, I guess the documentary makers were able to set up camp on the side or something, but the thought of having to go through that harsh weather for an entire year to make this film would be enough to make me head back to brainstorming. And not only that, to do the whole thing on film! Every shot looked perfect. Every exposure spot on. I don't know how he did it, but more power to him! The entire project was impressive, and I applaud every aspect of it.

The second film we watched was The Man with a Movie Camera by Dziga Vertov. This film was a documentary of making a film in a sense! The entire thing was inter-spliced shots of a man setting up a video camera and the things going on in the city around him. This went on for an impressive 70 minutes or so! Now if I went out into the city, I don't know if I would be able to get over 10 minutes of footage to compile before I got bored! In an impressive, (and most likely painful) display of editing, Vertov created an incredible montage of countless sights. Not only was the editing of the entire thing painstakingly organized, every shot was so carefully planned out, that nothing seemed out of place. It was a very impressive display of both editing and mise en scene.

More Dada = Less Plot

Well our fourth class has come and gone, and we now find ourselves right back into the depths of animation! It's really surprising to me to see how influential animation is considered in film. I guess I never really thought about it before, but animation seems to be pretty deeply rooted. It's nice to see how other means of using the medium were being developed alongside the traditional way we see it used in movies. And just like film did, animation had made many very significant developments in just a few years. The first animations we watched in class were made in the first few years of the 1900's, and were very basic. Now in just 20 or so years, we are seeing animations that are still considered impressive by today's standards!

We started off with "Rhythmus 21" (1921), which I have to admit I was not a fan of. The film consisted of several squares which just got larger and smaller, and moved around on the screen. Had it been a minute and a half shorter, perhaps I would have enjoyed it more, but at the time I didn't see much in it. However, that doesn't mean I don't recognize it's artistic integrity. At the time, it was probably one of the first animations to give the audience a feeling of depth. The changing sizes of the shapes made them seem to get closer or further away, and the way they moved to the music showed that film had its own rhythm. And what a coincidence...that's what the film is called.

Next we watched "Symphony Diagonale" (1924) which I really enjoyed. The entire style in which it was drawn was interesting to me, and I even almost felt inspired after that, which is a rarity in itself! I think someone in class compared it to a neon sign, and I can't agree more! The entire film gave me the feeling of an old city or something, and I think that any movie that can make that connection in the audience's mind is successful.

From there, we moved onto "Composition in Blue" (1935) which genuinely looked like stop motion. I was very surprised to find out that the effect was achieved by shading. I can't even imagine trying to pull something like that off through drawing out each individual frame of an animation. The entire film was very impressive and continued to get more and more advanced as it went on. Unfortunately towards the end, I was overcome with the feeling I was about to have a seizure, so I couldn't fully appreciate the color-flashing shapes appearing and disappearing all over the screen. Shame.

Then we watched some of Harry Smith's early abstract works. Each of these were interesting, and a nice change of pace from Dada. Unfortunately, the artistic integrity of his works were completely robbed from me because I had to watch it in black and white rather than color! Geez! How lame!

...but seriously folks. Even in black and white, the animation was impressive. It was one of the longest ones we've seen thus far, and I can't even imagine how incredible it would have been in color.

Finally, we ended off the class with what just may be the greatest film I have ever seen in my life. "Ghosts Before Breakfast" (1928). This film used several different tricks and gimmicks that you just have to appreciate! There were quite a few points during the screening where I found myself smiling. It was nothing short of a masterpiece. Take that Citizen Kane!

Cubism and Dada

So in class last week, we moved on from the basic avant garde films, and jumped right into some of the really hardcore independent movements in film--namely Cubism and Dada. While all good films require an attentive mind and an artistic outlook towards it, the films that came out of the Cubist and Dada movements require you to buckle down and question whether or not you're watching the true meaning of existence portrayed on film, or just a bunch of spirals. And let me tell you, it's a thin thin line!

We started out watching a film called "Ballet Mecanique" (1923). This film is the perfect example of anything Cubist, as it completely tears apart how you would normally look at things, and shows you what the world would be like if you had kaleidoscopes for eyes. And I don't know about anyone else, but that's a question I've had since I was a child. But along side the incredible film techniques used to get that kaleidoscope effect, this film is laced with all sorts of powerful images. The use of repetition is very important to the understanding of the film, and there are quite a few figures that are shown to the audience in order to drill that concept into their minds. To name a few examples: the girl smiling, a few of the machine pistons moving, the sentence exclaiming "We stole a 5 hundred million dollar necklace, and of course the poor woman who just could not get up those stairs. When all of these unique ways of portraying a message were combined, it proved to create a very powerful film. "Ballet Mechanique" was very good and I feel like it can be interpreted in many different ways, which makes it even more artistically relevant. One of the most prominent themes was definitely the comparison of the movements of machines to that of humans, but there were countless others that could be drawn from it. Not to mention, it's filmed in a style that I could never imagine trying to do on old 35mm film! How they figured out of to get some of their shots and effects is absolutely beyond me.

We then moved on past the Cubist movement and into a new movement known as Dada. This movement is something that we as film students would probably be criticized for today if we tried to do something similar, and because of that, I will always be bitter towards it! It takes on the most simple form that film possibly can and uses it to show the filmmaker's apathy for the rules of film, not to mention who's watching. The first Dada film we watched was "Retour a la Raison" (1923) and it translates to "The Return to Reason," which is a very Dada-esque statement in itself. The film is very dark, and the use of this dark lighting makes the shadows objects in themselves rather than just a "reflection" of an object. The techniques used in this film are much more basic than those used in Ballet Mechanique, but there are still underlying messages which can be drawn from it. Another Dada film we analyzed is "Anemic Cinema" (1924). This film supposedly was a representation of a french game in which sentences were created out of random words. It started out with a large spiral which dived endlessly into the center of the screen. The camera then cut to a sentence (that made no sense) spiraling in a similar fashion. This continued for a good while, which eventually led up to the climax of the film--the end. I don't have much else to say about this one. If the film truly did spawn off of such a simple game, I feel like there is only so much a movie about said game can say!

We wrapped up last week by watching "Entr'Acte" (1924) by Rene Clair. By the time this film rolled around, I was already half dead and hypnotized by the spirals of Anemic Cinema...wait a minute...that sonofabitch hypnotized me! That must have been Duchamp's plan all along! To hypnotize the entire world into realizing that caring about things is totally overrated! How very Dada...anyway! Entr'Acte was a film about something. I'm not at this point 100% sure if there was a definitive plot, but I was used to that by this point, so I tried not to look at it from a linear standpoint. Instead I looked at the images and camera shots, and there were plenty of those which made this film interesting. I can also see how this film might have been a very groundbreaking film back when it was made, because it introduced many techniques that probably hadn't been seen before. For example, the false ending where the man who had been killed jumps through the word "fin" at the end. He is then promptly kicked back through it and the real ending occurs. While we've seen plenty of this on YouTube and in bad horror movies setting themselves up for a sequel, this may have been one of the very first movies to trick the audience like that by breaking the fourth wall.

The Dawn of Film

So everything has to start somewhere, and while it's sometimes easy to overlook anything that doesn't have special effects and fancy film-work in modern day cinema, even the simplest of movements on screen were awe-inspiring in the early days of film. After all, the sheer concept of "moving pictures" was something that people could never have imagined before it was shown to them. It was only natural that they would question the legitimacy of people and objects moving around and interacting with one another on a screen.

Which leads me to ask when was the concept of making images moved first explored? I think one of the stories I am most familiar with is based on a bet that two people made on how a horse moves. In order to figure out whether or not there is a point in time where all four of the horses feet are off the ground at once as it runs, they had to devise a machine that would take dozens of pictures at a rapid rate of a horse running. When looked at one after the other, it would seem as though the horse was actually running. I remember a year or two ago I was shown a flipbook of this exact situation in which the images were each a different part of the horse's movement creating the illusion that it was running. Oh, and for the record: there IS a point where all four of the horse's feet leave the ground.

Now I'm sure that story is exaggerated, and I'm positive that there were other people before that story that probably examined the illusion of moving pictures, but that is an interesting story nonetheless. Shortly after this phenomenon was discovered of course, there were countless experiments of it. I've seen several of these experiments, and if there's one word I can use to describe them, it's basic. They are all very basic. Turn the camera on. Have someone dance or jump rope or run around in front of the camera. End of film. But when I really think about what these experiments accomplished, I can see the importance of them. These experiments were a way to show the world what could be done. Here was the first time anything like this had ever been introduced to people in mass. Here was an invention that showed promise and could give people a glimpse of something that they wouldn't have been able to see otherwise. Stories could be told and images from far away could be brought home. This was something that had never been seen before and it was literally unbelievable by some.

But lets go back to what film really is. It actually almost came as a shock to me when I heard that film is just a big optical illusion. I mean...of course I knew what it was and how it worked, but I had never thought of it as an illusion before. It's one of those things that made me do a double take. When it's worded like that it almost makes film seem like a big trick! And it's incredible to look at some of Hollywood's biggest productions nowadays with explosions and car chases and all sorts of advanced filmmaking and think of it in terms of single frames. It's something that, despite its simple concept, is still extraordinary. Naturally, since our eyes are unable to see each individual frame, it all almost blends together to create something entirely different. And I can't help but find it a little unsettling that, as a film major, I'm going into a field of study that is entirely based on an imperfection of the human eye. My future is going to be based upon one big illusion. When I think about it like that, I can't help but laugh!

So back to the early experimental days of film. I've seen several short early films by the Edison company and after our first class of Independent Cinema, now the Lumiere brothers as well. Needless to say, they're very similar. Quick, short, basic little sketches acted out in front of a camera. A woman feeding birds, a train or a car moving on and off camera, and my all time favorite from the Edison company: Boxing Cats. But while they all seem very basic by nature, if you analyze them in series, you can see progress. You can see the films to begin to get more and more complicated as new techniques were discovered. For example, camera cuts. The idea behind this was by cutting the camera and setting it up somewhere else, they could film two separate blocks of footage. When the two blocks are played next to each other, then the second block can be seen as a continuation of the first block. For example, in The Life of an American Fireman(1903), there is a scene that takes place outside of a burning building where firemen are trying desperately to put out the fire. One fireman puts up a ladder and climbs up into one of the windows. Then the camera cuts, and when the footage starts rolling again, the camera is set up inside the house and we see the fireman enter through the window. This trick was able to guide the audience through a story and ultimately did away with small single take skits.

Through further experimentation, other tricks like camera movement, zooming in/out, and transitions were discovered. Techniques were developed that would become the very core of filmmaking. And it is through these techniques that we can truly see the impact of these early experimentations. Not only were they opening the public's eyes to an entirely new medium, but they were also guiding that very same public on a rapidly progressing course into the future of film.