Most of this session was spent watching experimental films (just in case nobody had researched them properly. Which was a fair assumption). I struggled with most of them because I simply kept writing them off as "weird" - things about them were putting me off watching them.
Ballet Mechanique - Fernand Leger
Mentioned in the article we were given to read, this is regarded as one of the first experimental films, and classed as something new and brilliant in it's day. Needless to say, I really didn't like it at all. It was an assault on my senses - I felt like it was trying to beat me up. It was very abstract and repetitive (I've always hated repetition in films; even when I watch documentaries I subconsciously pick out repeated clips and scoff at them). The music added to the chaos and made it even more nauseating.
Star Guitar - Chemical Brothers
In this music video, the footage is all gained from shooting from the window of a moving vehicle (mostly trains). The visuals match the audio - a key note or beat is marked on-screen by the image of a lampost, power line, etc. I liked this much more than most of the other films we viewed. I thought it was clever, however I think it needed more elements adding to make it more exciting and engaging all the way through (instead of until you have worked out the rules the visuals are following).
An Optical Poem - Oskar Fischinger
Similar to the Chemical Brothers' video, the visuals match the audio in this too - the cutouts of coloured shapes are meant to provide a visual representation of the music. I quite like this because the shapes and movements changed at various points, keeping me interested in what would happen next - it was also aesthetically pleasing.
Om - John Smith
This film has a simple concept - it begins with who we assume to be a monk, meditating. We see him in orange monk robes and smoke drifts from somewhere offscreen, purporting to be incense. He is humming "om", the sound we associate with monks and meditation. The context then changes, as a pair of hands with electric shears appear on screen and begin to cut his hair. The "om" sound we heard before now is attributed to the shears - while the sound hasn't changed, we now pinpoint it to be coming from the shears rather than the man. In the final part of the film, the barber finishes cutting the man's hair, and then removes the orange "robes", which turn out to be a hairdresser's cloak, and are covering a man in typical "skinhead" garb - fred perry polo shirt and braces, similar to the costumes in Shane Meadows' This Is England. We also discover that what we assumed was incense was actually a lit cigarette.
I found this film particularly engaging because of the way it changed the meaning of simple things through context - sounds and costume morphed into almost the opposite of what they had meant a moment before. I think this would be a great concept to play with.
Fisticuffs - Miranda Pennel
This film is centred around a brawl in a working men's club. Those involved in the brawl appear to be invisible to those around them, who are going about their business in spite of the destruction around them. I loved the use of overlaying clips in this - it created the scope for the action to be much snappier and more mind-boggling than it would have been otherwise.
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