Month: October 2022

This week we engaged in learning about abstraction in film going over the main two categories. Formal abstraction: meaning that the abstraction elements deal with the formal aspects of the media, for film an example would be scratching the film tape after shooting on it to produce an effect. Conceptual abstraction: meaning abstraction dealing with concepts and ideas, while it doesn’t necessarily mess with the form of the media it uses the language of the media to attempt to portray something conceptual like fear or a nightmare.

For my blog post I looked at the surrealist film ‘Meshes of the Afternoon’ (1943) by Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid. I would firmly place the film in Conceptual abstraction rather than formal. For why not formal it is because that while the content of the film is strange it does not mess with any formal elements of the media. No film reel has been scratched on, no cameras have had their lenses or cases cracked for light to leak in, formally the film is normal. The actual content of the film is conceptually abstract as despite being in 1943 it forgoes any use of sound at all, instead through iconography like the record player it alludes to sound. Its use of reverse footage and high speed footage to make the protagonist ghost like and move strangely conveys the dream aspect of the film. To me the film seems to be about a nightmare as a woman is trapped in a repeating loop, perhaps alluding to the entrapments of an abusive household?

For the homework I picked the movie Silent Hill

Archetypes are as follows:

• Hero: Rose Da Silva, the protagonist
• Mentor: Galia, the creepy old lady who tells her how Silent Hill works
• Threshold Guardian: Her first encounter with the monsters of Silent Hill
• Herald: The siren noise that indicates the world shifting into it’s nightmare state
• Shapeshifter: The cop Sybil
• Shadow: Chris Da Silva, her husband
• Trickster: The Cult Leader who initially appears to be helpful to our protagonist
• Allies: Galia, Alessa: the child controlling Silent Hill, The Darkness: the dark god granting Alessa power, Sybil

The 8 stages are as follows:

• You: Start of the film, Rose saving her child Sharon who sleep walks talking about Silent Hill
• Need: To find out what is wrong with her daughter/rescue her once she’s lost in Silent Hill
• Go: Enter the hell hole town that is Silent Hill
• Search: Rose’s journey to find her daughter
• Find: Getting her daughter
• Take: Sybil’s sacrifice to be burned alive to save Sharon
• Return: Leaving Silent Hill
• Change: They arrive home but are seemingly still trapped in the fog filled parallel world

Timeline: Presumably Rose Da Silva is born and leads her life till the point where she marries her now husband Chris, she then 9 years prior to the start of the film adopts a child and names her Sharon. She raises Sharon till the events of the film. The timeline becomes significantly shorter now as the events of the film take place. She takes her daughter to Silent Hill, goes through the events of the film over the course of what appears to be two or three days, exits Silent Hill and it ends with the final shot of the film which is her and her daughter home but stuck in a parallel reality.

This week our class focus was on discussing Mise-en-Scene, as I already have a BA in Film Studies this served more as a refresher for me though for a few others I’m certain it was their first interaction with film theory. For practice we analyzed a scene from High Noon (Fred Zinnemann, 1952). What I got from my analysis was this:

The shots of the railway make use of one point perspective to create a feeling of dread as our eyes are forced by the sightlines to the inevitable train approaching the town carrying the bandit ready to kill our protagonist. It also uses the soundtrack of the film to cut to the beat of the loud swells to help build tension. Along with that cutting comes a consistent motif of shots that started out as mediums becoming closer and closer shots ending in extreme close ups. This too works to build tension as it works as a visual metaphor of the impending dread our characters feel as the clock, being shot closer and closer as well, strikes high noon and the train arrives. These elements all come together to create an overwhelming sense of dreaded anticipation.

I’ve also begun to look into my topic which with my current understanding and research I have settled on it being:

The Ludic Nucleus is the idea that the city is a contradictory playground that is imbued with the ability to liberate. With this in mind I will examine how BBB use’s its Urban Fantasy setting of New York as expressed through its use of crowds and crowd shots to convey this idea.

Keywords: City Symphony, Urban Fantasy, Cities, Crowds, Urbanization

Works:
Webb, L 2014, The Cinema of Urban Crisis : Seventies Film and the Reinvention of the City, Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam.

The city symphony phenomenon : cinema, art, and urban modernity between the wars / edited by Steven Jacobs, Eva Hielscher, Anthony Kinik.

Mannolini-Winwood, Sarai (2016) Urban fantasy: Theorising an emergent literary subgenre. Masters by Research thesis, Murdoch University.

We spent most of the lesson going over the technicalities we had to follow for the class’s 1500 word critical report. Discussing what referencing format we had to use which was the Harvard Referencing system. This was a new system to me as in Canada the standard was MLA. I will have to learn this system.

We also broached the subject of coming up with topics though I found this difficult as I am unsure as to what the class itself is meant to teach us. As we only went over the technicalities of the critical report I’m lost as to what else the class will be spend discussing and learning. With some groupmates we did come up with some topics in loose relation to VFX. These topics were:

• How advances in VFX technology through the Harry Potter franchise affected its language
• Development of AI and its threat to creative development and copyright
• How changes in technology lead to changes in the reimagining of older films. IE the original Nightmare on Elmstreet Vs the remake
• VFX’s effects on beauty standards, creation of unrealistic beauty standards
• VR Game Immersion: Stylized Vs Realistic graphics and its effects on player immersion
• Risk of Deepfake on privacy and employability
• Metaverse data collection on children and their habits online with a focus on how this info collection endangers the children
• In Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness is a lack of readability in scenes a useful tool for conveying the confusing nature of a reality gone wrong or is it a hinderance that leads to confused readings and detracts from the experience.