Veronika Week 7 response

Reading the rules of “The Vow Of Chastity” first left me with one of the same questions that the author of “More Barnum that Dada?” had: Why? Initially, my first thought was that it was a publicity stunt, as the author also wondered. Surely these accomplished, experienced directors don’t actually think that they’re reproducing reality, or literally exhibiting “truth.” But, after thinking more about the rules, I wondered if it was more just to inspire and motivate other directors to expand their filmmaking methods, and to challenge the popular techniques of directing films. Maybe it was even just about challenging themselves. In any case, I don’t think the “rules” can really be taken seriously. I agree with the “More Barnum…” author that it could be a useful exercise, and that someone could produce an interesting, enjoyable film using these guidelines, but they can’t be used to illustrate the truth. Even just the wording of the last paragraph: “My supreme goal is to force the truth out of my characters and settings.” is bothersome to me. “Force” evokes thoughts of an unpleasant experience, not necessarily likely to put characters at ease and willing to display their “truths.” Rule #1 (about shooting needing to be done on location) seems a little pointless to me. I don’t understand why it’s acceptable to change to a different location altogether, but not to bring in a prop from that location. The same with the rule about lighting; if a light may be attached to the camera, how is that following with the guidelines? Let alone the fact that realistically speaking, the human eye can see in much lower lighting conditions than film can be effectively be exposed, so if the goal is to reproduce what a person would see if they were at the scene, why is lighting unacceptable at all? As the author points out about the hand-held camera rule, the human eye/brain filter out that shaky motion that happens from movement, but the camera does not. Consequently, when we see footage shot this way, it’s necessarily adding an element to the scene that is not naturally there. Which, whether tasteful, purposeful, or not, has been added by the filmmakers. I also agree with the author about the “superficial action” rule. While I think the point is not to add shallow, artificial action just to grab attention, if you’re trying to capture reality, how do you determine what to filter out…and isn’t it the point to start with NOT to filter anything? Finally, the rules about genre movies and not crediting the director seem almost superficial. Of course everyone knows that someone directed the film, like the “More Barnum…” author points out, if there’s no director, who is it that’s following all of these rules? It also seems like, even if all of the films made using these definitive guidelines didn’t fit nicely into a preexisting genre, they’d likely fit together into a new one

The belief that digital removes us farther from the real world and immerses us into an artificial equivalent. The most crucial artifact to the argument against video seems to be that celluloid uses photographic principles, and DV uses 1’s and 0’s. To the human eye there are sometimes marked differences. But the subject of DV films is somewhat implicit throughout the second paragraph. To contradict though, they evidence films that don’t rely on DV’s affinity for manipulation. The film, Russian Ark, returns to the roots of cinema. The movie is a 96 minute long take through the Hermitage Museum. Films like this are considered to be avant garde because of their experimental qualities and the lack of effects like the jump-cut, speed ramp, freeze frame, CGI aesthetics that now have become synonymous with DV recordings. These editing techniques inspired the Dogme 95 movement which discouraged the deformation of reality through the medium. In this movement, the filmmaker was to rely directly on site, sound, and purest optics, the movement denied a delineated form of control many directors had come to rely on. Becoming ever more popular in cinema, films like “Little Miss Sunshine” were dubbed critics of the Chicago Sun Times as the accepted avant garde. Though the phrasing is oxymoronic it still creates a few hypocrisies and ironies. Personally digital doesn’t seem to be any more manipulative of the reality we inhabit and identify for ourselves based on our own unique sensory organs. Melies created fantasy out of cardboard, paint, and mechanized sets. The immersion into another ethereal world has always been a desire of man; the methods have always been questioned. When we can’t help ourselves enough that they become mainstream, the following generations accept as what always was, and what always will be. Cradle to gave marketing strategies and digital manipulation of life will still only render reality as far as our imagination bends it. Society itself is a manipulation of the most widely agreed upon reality. Problems will present themselves and so will solutions. --A. Peltier

“Today’s avant-garde resurrects the anarchy of the real and the triumph of total cinema,” (p.204, Rombes). In his article, “Avant-Garde Realism,” Nicholas Rombes explains why digital cinema is responsible for the resurrection of reality in the world of film and video. Digital video is responsible for many changes that have taken place in the world of cinema, especially in the quest to portray realism. These days, there is a tendency to use digital cinema to capture these moments of reality through obtaining the raw material and presenting it as-is, instead of using material that has been manipulated. Artists today, such as Mike Figgis, director of “Time Code” and Abbas Kiarostami, director of “Ten,” rely on strict formalism, such as the divided frame and the long-take to experiment with the formation of reality. The divided frame technique is used in “Time Code,” a movie with four different scenes that are shown simultaneously in four quadrants. The long-take is a more common technique used to capture the reality within a scene, and can be seen in the film “Ten,” where the whole movie is shot by a digital camera that was placed on a car dashboard. These techniques are now thought of as being “experimental” or “avant-garde,” because they are rarely used in filmmaking today. Today, with the available technology, special effects are common, and editing is always used in the making of a film. The special effect that digital films share is reality, because there is no editing or manipulation involved, and this is what Rombes means when he says “avant-garde resurrects… the triumph of total cinema.” Reality edits itself in the world of digital cinema. I believe that portraying reality in films makes for interesting viewing, and is a nice break from films made with special effects and finely polished editing techniques. However, without the films that use such technology, such as “The Matrix,” or “The Lord of the Rings,” basic, unedited, realistic movies would not be experimental and would be simply less interesting.

I felt that the obvious was stated in Bordwell and Thompson’s article, “Principles of Narrative Construction”. They explain simplistic and well-known facts about narratives. For example, the idea of cause and effect is pretty self-explanatory, if not merely easily defined. However, they spend about two pages talking about it. Even though it was important, cause and effect does not need to be elaborated on as much as Bordwell and Thompson made it. On the other hand, the concepts presented about the distinction between plot and summary, I found, were very useful when learning principles. Normally one does not think that there is much a difference in these two concepts, but the authors prove that there is a difference. It is important to know certain distinctions like this one when working on a film. Overall, however, I thought this article presented information that was basically common sense. In Nicholas Rombes’ article, “Avant- Garde Realism,” Nicholas says that realism in film has been interrupted by the use of digital media. I disagree with his argument. Realism can be portrayed better using the digital technology. For example, to convey a natural disaster, a film-maker can use the technology to create the disaster and make the film more believable and add to its effect. He, also, says that realism can only be achieved using trickery. I do not agree with his theory. Even though new media can be used to enhance a scene and get a better reaction from the audience, it does not need to be used in order to convey realism. Realism can be seen easily without having to use special tools to portray it. Overall, I do not agree with Rombes’ arguments. Even though one article was very obvious and the other I had an opposing opinion on, the readings were very informative and can be useful for making films in the future.

This quote from Rombes’ “Avant-Garde Realism” really stuck out for me: “While watching ‘Hero’ (Zhang Yimou, 2002), my son leaned over to me during a shot of an immense crowd of thousands of people and as asked me: “Are those people real? Perhaps ten or twenty years ago, we would have been amazed to learn that the crowd was a special effect. Today, we are amazed to learn that the crowd was, in fact, real. It is reality that astounds us.” This presented two sides of the same coin. First, I think I should start off by saying that the real isn’t avant-garde, rather we’re just going back to things we’d already tried before. The interpretation of capturing real on a camera has been around since the camera itself: for example, the works of the Lumiére brothers and virtually every home movie ever made. The idea of real in cinematography, to the extent of directors like Lars von Trier, isn’t so much as trying something new, the avant-garde, rather it’s an extenuation of the fad of “cinema vérité”. That being said, the idea of adhering to the authenticity of this real juxtaposed with the idea using special effects brings up a clash of mainstream technological favoritism and artistic realism. And, if you were going for the artistically real approach, then it would make sense to eschew away from technological favoritism and to focus on the real. And, in the context of modern society, that would actually be more “avant-garde” than technology because mainstream media has been so saturated with special effects that one is actually surprised when a stunt or a shot was done “manually” rather than with the use, usually overuse, of computer special effects. However, this isn’t to say that special effects are something which should eschewed away from in artistic terms. Primarily, special effects would work for a movie in two ways: either supplementing realistic content present in the movie or to disconnect connotation of real present in the movie thereby making it a surrealistic experience. Considering the former, the prime rule is to make special effects blend seamlessly into the movie itself believable. However, nowadays, the use of special effects have only seem to have been correlated to outlandish-style movie, meaning movies which involve ideas or plots which are so fantastic that they can’t happen in the real. The problem which lies with this is that the believability of special effect then lies solely upon its production values, making time and money a bigger part of the equation than anything else. And because Hollywood is more about making money than art, many uses of special effects end up disunifying the film (some examples, Idlewild, the Mummy “trilogy”, the X-Men trilogy). This isn’t to say that there aren’t haven’t been proper implementations of special effects: for example, the original “Matrix”, “Star Wars”, and Peter Jackson’s “King Kong” all managed to blend special effects believability into their sphere of reality. And in these cases, the special effects were required: we couldn’t have possibly actually built a machine city, nor do lightsabers exist in real life, nor could we genetically engineer a giant gorilla so we could shoot a movie on him. Other movies depend completely on these special effects to set up a completely immersive aesthetic, such as “The Waking Life” and “A Scanner Darkly” had heavy usage of rotoscoping to create a dream-like world. In all of these cases, special effects were combined into the existing elements of the film seamlessly to create a unified film. To say that eschewing from special effects is to deny oneself the use of a wonderful cinematic tool, though it is also pertinent to mention that the overuse of this tool can also lead to a terrible movie, simply because of the distracting production values.

“When the world, or reality, finds its artificial equivalent in the virtual, it becomes useless” (Jean Baudrillard). In today’s world, modern technology has advanced to an extent that are our forefathers would have never dreamed of. From devices that enable us to turn on or off our automobiles from a block away to gadgets that enable us to talk to friends clear across the world, so many helpful tools are at our disposal. But as all this technology engulfs our lives, we must stop and ask ourselves whether these modern technologies actually better our lives or hinder our true potential as human beings. In Nicholas Rombes’ “Avant-Garde Realism,” Rombes investigates to see whether cinematic technologies, such as the digital camera, helps transform raw material into living art, or if the digital camera mutilates reality. According to the traditional French translation, “avant-garde” is a word that means “ahead of the crowd.” In contemporary English, we might describe avant-garde as something that is “cutting edge.” In terms of filmmaking, avant-garde film makers want to experiment with new ideas, forms, techniques, and expressions and are often said to be "ahead of their time." Avant-garde films are characterized by a high degree of experimentation - whether it be in manipulation in narrative materials, in highly stylized visual representation, or in radical departures from the norms or conventions current at the time, avant-garde film is always a vehicle for the filmmaker’s expression. (www.miracosta.cc.ca.us) So if avant-garde film makers are marked by their means of experimentation, why should the digital camera and the virtual world be looked down upon? The digital camera offers a greater sense of immediacy and real, natural time. The purpose or reason for why these digital devices were created was so that they could provide people with a way to capture reality in a format that would not degrade as the years go by. Digital technology, in a sense, acts as a mirror to our lives. Instead of “mutilating” reality, digital technology allows us to arrange our memories as we wish to remember them. However, it is true that digital cinema allows us to use special effects to cut, edit, and manipulate footage at our discretion. I suppose I could understand the protest against digital cinema since it could be used to “rewrite” history rather than “retell history.” However, how is this different from oral traditions, in which stories are passed down from generation to generation. Over the years, oral stories tend to change and experience alterations to the original plot. Although the OVERALL plot or sentiments may remain the same, little details may change and become reinvented. Much like oral stories, digital cinema can be altered, however the overall feelings or montage may evoke the same intended response. In addition, I believe that the digital cinema is a great tool for avant-garde film makers since it allows cuts and fadeouts that mimic blinking, sleeping, and forgetting (Rombes 200). The beauty of digital technology is that it can be used in any way a person wishes to use it. Whether it be for documentary purposes or to make a music video for MTV, digital technology can be used for almost any purpose or intention. Why should it matter whether or not something represents the conventional aspects of a given time and place? If digital technology can help film makers express their ideas and visions, then by all means, they should utilize this convenient technology. Our lives are forms of mixed-media in themselves; digital cinema is a format that just might be able to capture the chaos that which is reality.

Avant Garde in French means front guard, advance guard, or vanguard. People often use the term in French and English to refer to people or works that are experimental. According to its champions, the avant-garde pushes the boundaries of what is accepted as the norm within definitions of art/culture/reality. These are the definitions of avant garde, in the article by Nicholas Rombes, he states that “the nostalgic for the golden age of celluloid must recognize in digital cinema the revenge of the real upon classical cinematic practices that mutilated reality”, Rombes believes “today’s avant-garde resurrects the anarchy of the real and the triumph of total cinema.” I agree with him because with the technology and the advancement of cinematography, not only do we have more freedom to express ourselves in many different ways of cinema, we can create, edit, change what we see as reality. In the ages of black and white films, there was no way to express certain emotions, or set the tone of a film by using color, with the advancement of colored film, film seems more real. Now, we can accentuate certain colors, to setup lights and to use editing skills to emphasize on the color we want, or the feeling we are trying to create. What we can create now is virtual reality, many films can create reality in a virtual world, or virtual world in reality. Films mentioned by Rombes such as Memento, Adaptation, Mulholland Drive, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind, plays with time, memory and other interesting reality ideas that can not be defined. For the digital postmodern parlor creates today’s cinema around what was the impossible. The films we watched in class, Run Lola Run, uses rapid cutting, animation, and vivid colors, on top of that, it deals with the idea of multiple ending, multiple resolutions, maybe even reliving the past and changing the past. Even on TV today, films have incorporated reality into the virtual worlds, reality shows such “Flavor of Love”, “Survivor”, “Real World”, casts a group and puts them in front of TV, creating a set just for them and see how they react in different situations. Everything that happens is real, yet they are placed in a virtual world, where nothing seemingly would affect their lives other than the show. This brings me to the idea of the first film we watched, where a guy shoots his whole life with cameras built in his house, he exposed himself to the world and lives in the real world, yet to others, there’s no difference between his world and the virtual world on other TV shows. Avant Garde today, is much more creative today than the avant garde 20 years ago, it can create what we see in our heads, what we want to see, and what people want to see, puts them on the big screen, use different editing technology, different cameras to create the virtual world that seems so real. -p

While reading the article on Principles of Narrative Construction, it explains that a narrative serves as essential social and cultural function; it is partly through stories we make sense of our world. Narratives help us understand the relationship of film and theology. In Bordwell and Thompson’s article provides an excellent exposition around their definition “a narrative is a chain of events in cause-effect relationship occurring in time and space. Principles of Narrative Construction, allow us to understand the relationship of story to plot, as well as the importance of causality, time and space, the range and flow of story information, particular in its dynamic relationship with audience, narrative principles, especially in relation to the film genre, the construction of character, and the relationship to the narrative to the film’s diegesis. In a feature film exists within a give time frame; and it controls what we see and hear. Bordwell emphasizes the importance of construction he also mentions that it is the viewer who constructs the story in the first place. Comprehending a film means that the spectator “seeks to grasp the filmic continuum as a set of events occurring in defined settings and unified by principles of temporality and causation.” My point here is not to take a personal stance about David Bodwell’s argument on conventions for narrative genres such as detective film, gangster film, and horror film. Although of the obvious parallels between the classical Hollywood cinema and narrative, film and literature are different in one important aspect, which is the cinematic narration “resist traditional language-centered notions of the narrator. Where as, Bordwell ignores the existence of a narrator in a film. Bodwell’s notion that “a classic narration tends to be omniscient” is however rather too simplistic.

“To have regard for reality does not mean that what one does in fact is to pile up appearances. On the contrary, it means that one strips the appearances of all that is not essential, in order to get at the totality in its simplicity” (199). There is some truth to this statement but it is not entirely accurate. As attempting to capture reality, it is necessary to strip the appearances to see inside the subject, but just as one looks at a person you have to capture what’s on the outside as well. “When the world, or reality, finds its artificial equivalent in the virtual, it becomes useless” (199). This is true. I think it reflects the way reality exists. Reality is captured through the lenses of the eye and exists in the space of the mind. That reality is just as real as anything captured in DV even it is manipulated. However, reality vs. illusion isn’t what interests man in this context. Man is in awe of the power that exists in reality captured in 1s and 0s. In the space of the mind reality is only able to be manipulated to a puny degree compared to the one captured in a film or video. When the mind captures the screen through his eyes the “virtual reality” on the screen becomes reality in the mind. Thus film becomes powerful because it actually manipulates reality in a fantastic way. However, it is not exactly that simple. Rombes mentions that in the movie “Hero” it was hard to tell if the mass horde of people was real or fake. To him it was amazing that it was more difficult to imagine them as real people instead of fake people implying that digital imaging is so good that it can accurately imitate reality. That’s the key. DV’s ability to accurately imitate and manipulate reality in a way that uses the same principals the mind uses record reality makes the fantasy feel real. This is Avant-Garde because it pushes the envelope at tricking the mind to fall in love with the video. Rombes’ last paragraph is the most thought provoking for me. He refers to digital cinema as a practice that mutilates reality. It is true but the negative connotation is what I take argument with. Hasn’t it been film’s…no man’s ambition all along to mutilate reality, for what power is in mutilation man has always quested. Perhaps it is not this specific case of old versus new that is posing the biggest problem here but a more general old versus new. Older people “nostalgic for the golden age” (204) don’t want to adapt to a new technology. This is true in almost every case. Inside every person desires to be lazy and indeed it is easier to stay used to an old but familiar way instead of fighting within one’s self to learn a new technology. Perhaps this is where avant-garde resurrects the anarchy of today’s total cinema. This context of total cinema seems to imply a sort of total war. This gives insight to Rambes’ war within himself.

After reading “More Barnum Than Dada?” and “The Vow of Chastity”, I disagree with “The Vow of Chastity”. I think that it is a step backward in filmmaking as a whole and not a movement that very many people will follow because it causes a backward motion in filmmaking. I think that the effects and advances of modern cinema are what keep people wanting to watch films. If they wanted to see real life, they could see it without a film or they could watch a documentary. Rule 1 (no props or sets) is not helpful because there is no room for imagination or the creation of an unknown space. It can also make shooting a film harder because of the inability to control the people at the location one is filming. People may be walking around and could possibly change the intention of the shot. I feel that sets are often necessary when making a film because it gives the filmmaker control over what is being produced. Rule 2 (no foreign sound or music) creates an almost boring atmosphere. As I learned from project 2, background music has a huge impact on the movie to keep a certain pace or provide something besides the image. It also hinders sound quality because there can be nothing added in the studio. If the director does choose to include music, it must be recorded at the time the image is recorded, which can be a difficult thing to do. It gives the director another thing to monitor as well as not being as good as possible quality wise. Rule 3 (hand held camera only) creates jerky movement of the camera and makes the presence of the filmmaker known. The camera movement may be distracting to the audience and could possibly become annoying or make the film look less professional. Rule 4 (no special lighting) and rule 5 (no optical work or filters) add to the notions that the film may loose quality because there cannot be any special attention paid to things like lighting or optics. Rule 6 (no superficial action) is somewhat acceptable because there can be a film without this, but there are often times when superficial action adds to the plot, so it must be taken on a case to case basis. Rule 7 (must take place in the here and now) leaves no room for flashbacks or future shots: there cannot be any movies that take place in the past or fictional movies that take place in the future. If every movie took place at the current time in history, it would get boring. Rule 8 (no genre movies) takes away most movies because there cannot be any genre movies. Rule 9 (must use Academy 35mm film) is also acceptable because it does not limit action, but only film type. Rule 10 (must not credit director) seems unfair because the person who works on the film to direct it is not allowed to take any sort of credit or acknowledgment of their efforts. This is only unfair to the uncited director. All in all, I do not agree with “The Vow of Chastity” and it makes sense to me why it did not last very long or create very many movies.