#purely fictional scenario. for comedy purposes

[callmedarthrevan]

>at the grocery store

>have no money

>grab an item

>crouch and pretend i am looking at item on bottom shelf

>check to make sure i am out of view of cameras and employees

>slip item into my tote bag

>item shows up red in inventory

>5 bounty added to Whole Foods

[thesublemon]

Imagination vs Speculation

Fiction has two modes: the imaginative and the speculative. The mode that has to do with pure, unbridled invention and the mode that tries to think logically about rules and consequences. So the imaginative parts of Lord of the Rings have to do with the whole-cloth contrivance of things that don’t exist: ents, hobbits, dwarves. The speculative parts have to do with how, given the rules of Tolkien’s universe, his characters might behave. What would it take for a homebody hobbit to leave home? This principle goes for stories that lack ‘fantastic’ elements as well. The imaginative part of Huckleberry Finn is Huck and Jim and their life circumstances. The speculative part is what it might take for Huck and Jim to bond and run away. Imagination is Jim finding a dead body. Speculation is Jim preventing Huck from seeing it.

(That good speculation requires a good imagination is a given. But it is still different, for my purposes, from the act of creating something from nothing.)

In order for speculation to be concerned with what might happen though, it has to be concerned with what is. Every act of speculation speaks as much about what rules a writer thinks govern a fictional world as it does about how those rules might manifest. And if a writer is trying to speculate about how reality could go, as many writers are, then they are proposing hypotheses about the way reality is. In a third season storyline of The Wire, for example, the show imagines that Baltimore establishes a zone for the legal use and exchange of drugs. It then speculates how the government, police, and citizens would react—revealing general principles about what motivates these people and why.

But fiction is weird. Fiction usually isn’t concerned with either a fictional reality or a real reality—but both, simultaneously. So in a satirical movie like Election, the story is at once attempting to distill a supposedly real phenomenon (what happens when unscrupulous people butt up against cowards and innocents) and be consistent within a necessarily heightened movie reality. Which means that fiction, in order to feel ‘correct,’ has to scan according to both realities. If you don’t think that automatons of ambition exist, or you don’t think that they succeed in the end, or you think using Tracy Flick to depict that kind of person puts unrepresentative blame on the heads of teenage girls—the speculation doesn’t track for you. On the other hand, based on what the movie establishes about Tracy Flick, we would also consider it ‘illogical’ or bad speculation if she suddenly behaved selflessly.

Interestingly, the more metaphorical or satirical a work is—in other words, the more it is attempting to have meaning—the more, I would argue, it becomes concerned with ‘real’ reality. The more, that is, its implications about reality affect whether or not it works. If I’m watching Transformers, it doesn’t actually matter that much whether it makes sense that a giant alien robot would pal around with a teenage kid. Because Transformers isn’t trying to claim much about reality.* But if I’m watching a production of Rhinoceros, it sure as hell matters whether I think fascistic impulses exist, or whether they colonize people in the absurd, virulent way Rhinoceros depicts. It matters less whether Rhinoceros establishes complicated rules for its fictional world. Though it should be (and is) self-consistent.

*(Insofar as Transformers is trying to distill a reality, one might claim it is trying to distill what a certain attitude or fantasy looks like. So it is consistent with the reality of the terms of that fantasy—cars, heroism, hot girls— rather than whether or not that fantasy is especially likely to happen. “If I were trying to make the perfect heterosexual boy fantasy movie, what would I include? In other words, what is the perfect heterosexual boy fantasy movie? What defines a heterosexual boy?” In a thoughtless execution of the het boy fantasy genre—XXX? Crank? I don’t know—this kind of consistency would matter even less.)

What am I getting at? I want to set aside the definition of ‘speculative fiction’ that acts as a euphemism for science fiction. And I want to examine what makes good or bad speculative fiction, and what counts as ‘speculative fiction’ in the first place. Right now, the terms ‘science fiction’ and ‘speculative fiction’ are a confusing conflation of three different genres:

1. Fantasy with tech or futuristic trappings. Star Wars, Transformers.

2. Speculation about the consequences of a scenario that doesn’t exist (a technological innovation, a social innovation, a crazy circumstance). Looper, A Handmaid’s Tale, Asimov, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Contact.

3. A technology or a fantastic setting as a metaphor for a real world phenomenon. The Forever War, Metamorphosis, Frankenstein, Xenogenesis.

There are good and bad executions of all of these genres. And of course they tend to overlap. But in order to talk about whether a given work is failing or succeeding, we have to talk about which realities the works are trying to make claims about (or take as a given), and therefore whether or not the claims are accurate or convincingly depicted.

The first category mostly only needs to scan according to its fictional reality. When this kind of story makes a claim about real reality, it usually tends to be a claim about human emotion or human values (what is tragic, what is virtuous, what is cool). The questions you ask about Star Wars are things like “Is this fun?” or “Does it make sense that Luke is sad here?” The last category, in turn, mostly needs to scan according to its real reality. Something like Xenogenesis makes you ask questions like “Is this effectively evoking the conflicted, shell-shocked experience of cultural assimilation?” Frankenstein is more of a story about hubris rather than a story primarily about the actual consequences of reanimating the dead. Stories in this category can be tremendously complex on the narrative level, and care about being consistent and exciting on that level, but the speculation part tends to exist primarily in the service of a concept rather than itself.

I think of it this way: speculation in service of a concept will be closed, rather than open. The Wire’s Hamsterdam storyline is open because there was no way it really had to go, other than the way that the writers thought logically sprang from the state of Baltimore’s citizens and civic institutions. But something like District 9 is trying to convey a pre-established position about the mechanics of prejudice and othering. District 9 is more effective if its narrative logic is sound, but there was also no way District 9’s plot was going to depict any fallout from alien contact other than xenophobia. Top-down rather than bottom-up storytelling. Evidence-based versus theory-based. This isn’t inherently a good or bad thing, for the record, just a distinct difference in genre. In metaphorical stories, the logic of something is considered more or less known to the author; the problem is how to get other people to internalize the logic.

True speculative fiction (category 2) and true narrative fiction (category 1) seem to resemble each other more than they do metaphorical fiction (category 3) because they both take the bottom-up approach. What is something like a sitcom (situational comedy) other than putting characters in a scenario and asking what will happen? Beyond approach, what Friends and Star Wars and Game of Thrones and Isaac Asimov all have in common is a curious paucity of thematic content (that is: it’s difficult to say what they are “about”), but not in a bad way. Extremely hard speculation like The Wire tends to not be terribly thematic because theme requires a certain amount of artistic control that epistemically honest speculation doesn��t lend itself to. When works of hard speculation are thematic, and when they’re good, they seem to mostly lend themselves towards themes about the complexity of systems. Which makes perfect sense. Hard speculation is also different from “hard science fiction” that mostly applies its hardness to its setting and not to its narrative. Only occasionally, like in things like The Silmarillion, does a hard worldbuilding story understand that its worldbuilding is the story and put the focus there accordingly.

All this said, most works of speculation are in-between things. Things like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or Brazil or Her or Children of Men or Contact or Snowpiercer. Eternal Sunshine is fairly honest speculation about how people would use a memory-altering technology, but the only reason the story proposes that technology is to explore things about romantic relationships. Most stories, in other words, choose their speculation in a thematically pointed way, even if they’re not transparently allegorical.

The thing I want to figure out is why the way that something like Eternal Sunshine speculates thematically is so much better than the way that something like Her does, despite the fact that they have similar subject matter and approach. While both pure narrative and pure metaphor and pure speculation can all, to a certain extent, get away with ignoring one or both of the above, blended works seem to ignore the other categories at their peril. The absolute worst executions I can think of are the metaphorical stories that are undermined by a refusal to speculate. Stories that have such a poor understanding of consequences or such a lack of curiosity about them that it ruins the metaphorical and literary power of the reality they are trying to convey (see: what it means for a work of art to take itself seriously). A good metaphor will not simplify reality, but will open it up, and this is impossible to do without a good understanding of what reality is (or a respect for the fact that understanding reality is overwhelmingly difficult).

Works like Her and Snowpiercer seem weak to me because their artistic reach extends their grasp, but in a lazy way rather than a forgivably ambitious way. They imagine overly wholesale fictional circumstances: all the people fall in love with their computers, all of society is trapped on this train. These are huge statements about the pervasiveness of both loneliness and the stratification of society, yet neither of them are convincing on the individual character or narrative level, and so their huge claims fall flat. Theodore mostly seems to be lonely because he’s an almost inhumanly stunted person. I found myself wishing the movie were just a simple story about an individual in the real world that falls for a catfisher. Similarly, I felt that Snowpiercer would almost be more convincing as a story set in an actually oppressively stratified country. Those “realistic” stories would be less symbolic, but far richer. Although movies like The Matrix and Children of Men also have overly ambitious speculative conceits, both put considerable effort towards the complexity and excitingness of their narratives and also make much smaller claims about reality. The Matrix is a metaphor for a more generic feeling of unreality and aimlessness, while Children of Men tries to be a thriller in a speculative circumstance, but makes few sweeping, moral claims about society that it has to prove. Poor speculation, in other words, takes its ideas as “given” and uses metaphor as a kind of autotune to conceal a lack of work.

[Credit both to Peli Grietzer for autotune as a figurative concept, and Gabe Duquette for this specific usage].

[zak-animation]

BA1b Narrative Research: The Seven Plot Types and Why We Tell Stories

In this post, I’m exploring the seven types of plot as outlined by writer Christopher Booker, and looking at the psychological reasons why we tell stories in the first place.

Firstly, a little bit of background on Christoper Booker: a British journalist and author, Booker developed The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories over a period of 34 years. In this tome, Booker presents a Jungian-influenced analysis and discussion of stories, and their psychological meaning. He studied stories almost his entire life, and condensed all of these narratives into seven basic plots, of which all stories (apparently) are derived. It’s important to recognise that some stories can have overlapping plot types: what matters is the story follows one of them.

The Seven Plot Types are presented below, along with a well-known example:

1. Overcoming the monster

The protagonist must defeat an antagonistic force which threatens the protagonist and his homeland. Example: Dracula

2. Rags to Riches 

The poor protagonist acquires tings such as power, wealth, and a mate before losing it all and gaining it back upon growing as a person. Example: Cinderella

3. The Quest

The protagonist and some companions set out to acquire an important object or to get a location, facing many obstacles and temptations along the way. This is probably the one we’re most used to, and describes the Hero’s Journey nicely. Example: Lord of the Rings

4. Voyage and Return

The protagonist goes to a strange land (psychologically and physically) and, after overcoming the threats it poses to him, returns with nothing but experience. At first they’re looking for a new adventure, but the new world becomes dangerous and frightening, so they start to long for home again. Example: Alice in Wonderland

5. Comedy

Light and humorous with a happy or cheerful ending; the central motif is the triumph over adverse circumstance, resulting in a successful or happy conclusion. Aristotle divided plots into two types: comedy and tragedy. Comedy normally centers around regular, average people: and not powerful heroes. These often ended with a wedding whether literal or metaphorical union, and not surprisingly, then, that the majority of romance films fall under this category. 

Example: Four Weddings and a Funeral 

6. Tragedy

The protagonist’s character flaw is ultimately their undoing. The story follows their fall from grace, and ends with the fall of a fundamentally good character.

Example: Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet

7. Rebirth

Illustrations taken from https://www.presentation-guru.com/on-structure-the-hidden-framework-that-hangs-your-story-together/ as a simple way to visualise these concepts. 

An event forces the the protagonist (a villain or otherwise unlikable character) to change their ways and often redeems themselves at the end of the narrative; the villain hangs up his cape becomes the town hero. Example: Megamind

My Thoughts Personally, I think this is an interesting idea. As someone who has a genuine interest in narrative and story, I find it quite exciting to look at a breakdown of story into basic plots, not only for inspiration but as fuel for the fire: reading these classic descriptions of each plot makes me want to challenge the established and predictable; to go against type, cliche and subvert the audience’s expectations of a story. This isn’t true (or necessary) in all cases, but I feel like taking one of these basic plots and subverting the audience’s expectations atleast once in regards to how the story plays out can result in an immensely entertaining and fresh narrative: take Pixar’s Up for example, which flips the boy-hero and wise old mentor dynamic on it’s head.

What is interesting, and what I absolutely do not agree with, however, is Booker’s thoughts on stories and narratives that diverts from these plots. In the book, Booker dismisses these as flawed stories; perverse, even. I feel like a plot that is truly artful, one spoke from the heart or a pure assemblage of surreal parts has a real value in a time of generic block buster movies. The idea that a film is bad because it doesn’t follow a set structure is a ridiculous one.

Resolution vs Revelation The lecture then went on to discuss two separate types of plot structure: resolution and revelation. Defined by Seymour Chatman in 1980, these two types of plot adress plot as a basic narrative question: what will happen? A plot of resolution explores the answer to this question, in which we follow events that take place over the course of the story, often to a main character. This is a classic approach to plot, and one we’re all likely to be familiar with. A more modern and contemporary take would be the latter, the plot of revelation.

In these types of narratives, the question becomes what could happen. Here, there is a focus on character descriptions and setting whilst events, actions and happenings tend to take a lesser role. These are character-orientated, often dialogue-heavy stories in which the focus is on illuminating the characters and setting. Plots of revelation often address a larger thematic question, concept or idea such as adulthood or psychological trauma. Things often stay the same from the beginning and end of the narrative, as we follow a snapshot of a person’s life. As a film fan myself, I enjoy these types of plots on a regular basis: films that put spectacle and action on the backburner in place of a detailed, illuminating and riveting character study.

The Florida Project. (2017). Sean Baker.

A contemporary example of this plot type would be The Florida Project, an effecting and poignant look at childhood. We follow six-year old Moonee and her rebellious mother Hally over the course of a single summer, living in a hotel just outside of Disney World.

Finally, we then moved onto a more introspective and interesting topic of discussion: the reasons why we tell stories. This is something that I’ve touched on before on this blog with the idea of The Dramatic Code, but to put it simply: stories are about more than just entertainment. I’ve discussed how stories exploring a version of The Hero’s Journey inspires us (on a psychological level, atleast) to be better versions of ourselves - but here I’m exploring some other reasons why we tell (and consume) storytelling that moves past just inspiration.

These reasons were established by John Yorke, a British screenwriter who reveals that there is a unifying shape to narrative forms - one that echoes the fairytale journey into the woods, and like true art, comes from deep within the artist. Yorke analyses ancient myths and big budget blockbusters and explores how humanity uses storytelling, both in society and on an individual level. In his book Into the Woods (2014) Yorke suggests six reasons why stories are told.

The Rehersal Reason The human brain is like a muscle, and gains strength by practicing for difficult scenarios, and learning how to avoid them. We can receive life lessons from consuming narrative-based media, and live vicariously through these fictional characters, from the comfort of our own sofas.

The Healing Reason We watch a character heal his flaws, and in the process, we recognise our own. A character is undergoing an experience we have, and that’s appealing; we get a cathartic healing through a fictional character who is going through the same thing.

The Information Retrieval Reason Stories make information easier to remember (by showing us cause and effects). In real life, we like to make people heroes and villains, when the truth is often no so black and white.

The Panacea Reason Stories with happy endings give us hope: even history can be rewritten to suggest a sense of order and justice.

The Procreation Reason A story ends in sexual union, or it’s symbolic manifestation through marriage’ on a basic level these stories encourage the continuation of the species. This applies to fairy tales in particular.

The Psychological Reason Stories separate the disparate parts of our own psyche into external characters: they “play out a process of integration” in helping us to achieve this - overcoming our own shadows, giving up on our shallow ego-driven wants in order to fulfil our needs. Yungen’s idea of wholeness as a person is ideal, and something to work towards.

This last reason, of overcoming our own shadows and maturing into a good person, is what John truly describes in Anatomy of Story, the Dramatic Code. Growth and evolution is integral to a good story, and as Aristotle said over 2000 years ago, ‘all stories are about change’.

This gives credence to Yorke’s belief that stories carry ‘a blueprint for survival’ in their DNA: if all stories are about change, and encouraging it in the reader, this would be true. Humans can only survive by changing and growing, rejecting the old and embracing the new; something that also describes how society advances forward too.

My Thoughts I’ve spoken about the purpose of stories before, but never explored it on an academic level with the reasons established here. Learning about the different plots is always interesting, and reading these set out stories always gives me ideas on how to challenge the conventions and subvert the audience’s expectations: something that I think would result in an engaging storyline. I’ve always considered storytelling to be primarily a form of ‘edutainment’ a way of both educating our audience, but giving them a fun ride in the process. This isn’t true of all narrative media, of course, but if we’re discussing it as a whole - it’s these main reasons - to educate, inspire or entertain - that drive most stories today.

For my essay, I plan to revisit all of these narrative theories and concepts and apply them to my chosen film of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. In this case, I would explore the film’s use of various plots and what the general public received out of watching the film. I feel like the film uses a range of the plots described here, and it is arguable that the film adheres to most of the reasons Yorke describes here, with the notable exception of The Procreation Reason (even though a central character ends up trying to fix his failing marriage, so even that might apply here).

Next, I’m going to discuss experimental animation; the various types and why these can engage (or often confuse) an audience.

[simple-geometry-blog]

Roleplay Preferences Sheet!

Tagged by: @sonxflight

Please repost, do not reblog!  Feel free to add to any of your answers!  The purpose is to tell your partners about the way you write!  For the multiple choice ones, bold all that apply and, if you want, italicize if it’s a conditional answer!

– B A S I C S –

NAME: Neptune ARE YOU OVER 18?  Yes / No IS YOUR MUSE?  Yes / No  WHEN WAS YOUR BLOG ESTABLISHED?  06/08/16

– W R I T I N G –

ARE YOU SELECTIVE ABOUT WHO YOU WRITE WITH ON THIS BLOG? No (anyone) / Semi (most people) / Yes (some people) / Highly (few people) / Private (mutuals only)

ARE YOU SELECTIVE ABOUT WHO YOU FOLLOW ON THIS BLOG? No (anyone) / Semi (most people) / Yes (some people) / Highly (few people) / Private (mutuals only)

IF YOUR MUSE IS CANON, HOW MUCH TO YOU ADHERE TO CANON? Not at all / A little / Some / Mostly / Strictly / NA

WHAT POST LENGTHS DO YOU WRITE? One Liners / Single-Para / Multi-Para / Novella

DO YOU USE ICONS AND/OR GIFS? No / Gifs / Icons / Yes

DO YOU WRITE ON OTHER PLATFORMS? No / Yes (I also write on Discord - hmu if you’d like to rp there)

WHAT LEVEL OF PLOTS DO YOU WRITE? Unplotted / Open-Ended Plots (set up a meeting and see what happens) / Semi-Plotted (one or two steps ahead) / Fully Plotted Epics (plotted beginning, middle, and end)  (It all depends on how we play our muses - sometimes I like doing little sporatic things and sometimes I like to plan stuff out.) 

HOW QUICKLY DO YOU USUALLY RESPOND TO THREADS? Very Slow (more than a month) / Slow (3-4 weeks) / Average (1-2 weeks) / Fast (less than one week) / Very Fast (less than three days) ( It depends alot on how I’m feeling/work schedule) 

WHAT TYPES OF THEMES DO YOU LIKE? (feel free to add!) Fluff / Angst / Smut / Violence / Tragedy / Domestic / Family / Conversational (I’m open to most themes - though some I prefer to plot out over others. Like, heavy battle/violence or sexual themes are best talked over first) 

WHAT GENRES DO YOU LIKE? (feel free to add!) High Fantasy / Supernatural / Science Fiction / Historical / Horror / Comedy / Romantic / Drama / Action / Adventure / Espionage (Again, I’m up for most things, though some I like to plot out if I’m unfamiliar with them/I have a massive idea in mind) 

ARE THERE ANY THEMES YOU’RE UNCOMFORTABLE WRITING ON YOUR BLOG? (not triggers) No / Yes (Straight up rape scenarios, underage smut/sexual themes with large age gaps and suicidal themes. It’s less that I WON’T write them at all and more I don’t like having those scenarios on a Tumblr specifically. If I ever wrote on those themes, they’d likely be on discord where I can be sure everything is planned out and not making anyone uncomfortable)

DO YOU HAVE ANY TRIGGERS?  HOW DO YOU REQUEST IT TAGGED? No / Yes (I have triggers for panic anxiety, but none of them are visual)

– S H I P P I N G –

WHAT TYPES OF RELATIONSHIPS ARE YOU OPEN TO? Romantic / Platonic / Familial (canon) / Familial (OCs) / Romantic (OCs)

WHAT TYPES OF PRE-ESTABLISHED RELATIONSHIPS ARE YOU OPEN TO? Romantic / Platonic / Familial (canon) / Familial (OCs) (Pre-established ships are weird for me. If we did have a pre-established ship, it would be plotted out, not automatic, and would also be an AU verse.) 

DO YOU HAVE OTPS? No / Chemistry Only / Yes (While I have OTPs concerning art and pure concept alone, I never ship just because I like the ship’s concept alone. I always like to know my rp partners and how they play their muse before entering a ship)

DO YOU HAVE NOTPS? No / Yes ( shim.ad.acest is pretty much it. I’m also not much of a fan of rein + h.anzo either) 

WHAT IS YOUR MUSE’S SEXUAL ORIENTATION? Heterosexual / Heteroflexible / Bisexual / Homoflexible / Homosexual / Pansexual /Demisexual / Sapiosexual / Asexual

WHAT IS YOUR MUSE’S ROMANTIC ORIENTATION? Heteroromantic / Heteroflexible / Biromantic / Homoflexible / Homoromantic / Panromantic /Demiromantic / Sapioromantic / Aromantic

ARE YOU COMFORTABLE WRITING SMUT? No / Selectively / Yes

HOW EARLY IN A RELATIONSHIP DO YOU SHIP ROMANTICALLY? Autoship / During plotting / After a couple IC interactions / Several IC interactions / Slow burn / Never (not open to romantic ships)

ARE YOU OPEN TO TOXIC SHIPS? No / Selectively / Yes

ARE YOU OPEN TO PROBLEMATIC SHIPS? (canon history, age difference, complicated, etc.) No / Selectively / Yes

ARE YOU OPEN TO POLYSHIPPING? No / Selectively / Yes (on Discord maybe, but not on Tumblr) 

ARE YOU AN EXCLUSIVE SHIPPER? No / Sometimes / Yes (Every ship I make has its own tag/verse. I will ship with multiple re.ape.rs/sol.diers/wi.dows etc but each one with have their own verse and I have to interact with you OOC first.)

DOES CRACK SHIPPING EVER HAPPEN? No / Yes / Not really

– T A G G I N G! –

@silver-haired-76, @snsdva, @honordriven, @calavcro, @pericolosabelladonna, @aligxrous annnnnd anyone can steal this just tag me if you do

[catwasteresearch]

Critical Journal Thinking

For the past few weeks I have been deciding what to write the essay on, beginning with looking into paracosms, Shrek/fairy tales, women’s fashion and costume, cross-dressing, looking at  silent films such as The Artist(2011) Nosferatu(1922) and a Trip to the Moon (1902). Watching films by directors Fellini, Hitchcock, Spielberg, Tom Tykwer. I have been writing a lot using the Cut Up technique by William Boroughs and Brian Gysin. I have mainly been motivated to do creative writing and to learn more about writing. I considered doing an essay on language and comparing language used within different genres of films, or comparing a book to its film adaptation, or take a feminist stance and compare the language used by women characters in comparison to male. 

I want to create a short film from a story I have written. I am interested in creating questions through my work and answering questions through making rather than writing an essay. 

Key themes that pop up from past work: childhood, playfulness, make believe. 

Currently I am unsure if it is the still or moving image of the cinematic which I am drawn to. But I enjoy the process of filming and recording videos better than photographing.

I have an idea to structure it by looking at

Writing (Creative Writing, Script to Screen, Narrative structures, Character Development?)

Painting (Lighting, Composition, Symbolism, Colour, Philosophy of making films as if a painting - poetic images)  

Performance(Directing, Acting, Performance Art - Alter Egos, Character Development ).

Then relating this all back to the cinematic and grounding it in research relating these practices to film and the adaptation to screen.

In terms of talking about past work, I can talk about a few projects in relation to painting, and performance section although writing is more of a new tool - apart from when I was a child and using creative writing as an outlet. I am interested to reflect on some old pieces of work and reference them, but I mainly want to focus on pushing my current work and future work. I think by making a short film by December, this will significantly help me to go into the next semester with a lot of new knowledge and experience in filmmaking. It will give me confidence and I will face organisation and technical challenges which I am sure I will learn from. I am planning on showing a film for my degree show so this will either be used for that or more likely help to create the next one and a new basis for making. In the future after GSA I want to work on films. Mainly I want to make my own but I want to gain experience from other practitioners and work behind the camera. As I am passionate about this way of seeing and enjoy the process of filming/looking through a lens and getting into that trance. In summer I worked as a production assistant for a 6 episode comedy webseries called FEM101. From this energy on set and talking to other creatives in the field, it confirmed that this is an area I would like to work in. However I also am interested in making more finart/expressive work/avant garde/exploring themes in an abstract way.  

In terms of practitioners, I take inspiration from artists in all of these disciplines and can talk about them in each section

Performance

I did my source review on Hollywood/Independent filmmakers takes on directing, and I think this will be useful for the Performance section for sources and ideas on how to direct.

I was thinking that it could be partly to do with adopting a persona as a director, and also to adopt a method of helping people to perform. - So I will look through different methods and decide which ones I will implement. The director could be a man from New Zealand (For some reason when I do the New Zealand accent it makes me way more outgoing, I also love Flight of the Conchords which is why I started practicing it- Comedy TV musical show/parody.)  His name could be called Gino (A name that cropped up in a creative writing piece I did describing a room I was in).

“She bought expensive art that she knew nothing about. One of the new editions in her luxury apartment was - diagram of drawing.. labeled: Smears of paint - red and black- on a white background. Looks like shit and blood smeared across. Some writing scattered about faintly in the background - A man called Gino has signed it using black paint in the bottom right hand corner.”

An alter ego for this film who will help the work to be generated and for me to have more confidence when directing/ to lose inhibitions.

- make a background/foreground for Gino similar to Run Lola Run where they introduce small characters/ people walking along the street by displaying 6 photographs or so of them in the future, showing what happens to them (and that is all you find out about them in the whole film).

This would not be shown in the film.. Probably.. But would kind of be more for the generation of the character and for myself/ people I am working with to find out a bit more about him. Probably am going to enjoy this part a lot, that maybe it will be a separate project in itself.

Also to read up on performance video art and understand how my work relates to that. I have a few of old projects I can talk about in this section in relation to video performance and past experience as director from which I can learn from. (Both separate from each other)

The work I most enjoy to see/relate to in galleries tends to be video performance work, especially when people adopt personas on camera and are parodying characters. Although I have not done much reading into these states. But I know that is a way I would like to make more of my work.

A recurring theme in my work has been Make believe - All stemming from childhood and the process of play which you are able to inhibit so easily when a child. I spent most of my childhood playing playmobil, playing sims, and playing make believe where you pretend to be in different scenarios or characters.

I am interested in anthropomorphism and projecting characters onto objects and personifying them. I like creatures and weird looking things, maybe a bit creepy. But I prefer for things to be humorous than scary.

Think about sound/music - setting a mood while filming to help.- not necessarily use that sound though in the film

[1] Robert Edgar-Hunt, Basic Film-Making 03; Directing Fiction , AVA Publishing p.30

Paintings

I also did my curation essay purely on paintings - I could potentially look back at these paintings

- although they are less traditionally cinematic and more figurative abstractions. One of the most interesting projects on our course (COM DES) was when we turned a painting into a film piece. We used otto dix painting for ours. Interesting starting point for generating work which I have wanted to use again.

Also could look at diff paintings, see what I like about them and try and link that together to form a theme for this work.

Also look at David Lynch philosophy on painting through film

And Francis Bacon talking about painting - reminded me of my experience of filmmaking.

Looking at the relationship between painting and filmmaking - want to use this to improve my cinematic lighting- have a really useful book for this called Art History for Filmmakers.

In this section I will talk a lot about the technical side of the process - the compositional side. Why all aesthetics have been taken into consideration or not.

Bringing in techniques like Tableux Vivant into a scene in the film.

Look at Russian Ark (2002) by director Alexander Sokurov. Dp. Tilman Buttner

-unseen narrator is played by the camera (point of view shot).”Watching the film, one cannot help noticing that the Hermitage museum, which is filled with art from every period of human history, acts as point and counterpoint to the action on the screen. The paintings and sculptures of the museum are as much a part of the cast as are the actors. “

Queen Christina 1933 Dir. Rouben Mamoulian, “Scenes reminiscent of traditional court painting, like ‘The PersiaVermee painters crucial 2 light. Lighting tells us where to look. “The language” of lighting in film derives from lighting in painting, developed over 100 years since the Renaissance. Oil paint allowed for this,

Rembrandt and Caravaggio use light/dark contrast (chiaroscuro) for psychological purposes.

Potentially in

Black and White- chosen as recently been drawing in black on white paper and this is helping me to go back to basics, i find that now when i add colour it improves my drawings significantly, But i need to set limitations to help to push areas which I am not so good at. Eg) lighting  

Writing

Discuss what I have written in blog already about writing.

“A key skill to develop is the interpretation of a script. For new directors it is good practice to realise the scripts generated by other writers. In this way, it is possible to see what it takes to move a script to the screen and where confusion may arise..Take a script for a major film and see what happened in the process of the translation to the screen. The script is a template for a director, but also for the heads of department and the actors.” [1]

I am trying to develop writing which will help me to form a script/visuals/narrative for my film.

Ways to develop writing: cut up technique - then look at themes within that, that i am interested in, improve writing from cut up. Look at Elements of Eloquence, listen to Werner Herzog. He says about writing and writing to a top calibre. Then think about translating from script to screen.

Story telling and ways of telling stories, narrative, setting, place, character, considering all of these

Questions to consider from canvas:

Context for your studio work

-critical/theoretical and practical contexts for your current studio practice. What category of art or design do you see your work belonging to and why? What are the issues, questions of concerns which motivate your work? What critical terms or thinkers have informed your work and your perspective upon the work of others? What historical precedents or contemporary examples help you to reach that conclusion? This section should make reference to examples of your recent and current studio work.

Current status of studio work and developments to date:

Reference old work - With reference to precedents mentioned in the context section where possible, set out the main decisions and departures of your studio progress.

where does your work differ and depart from precedents(earlier work/actions)? And why? What did u learn through practice that made you change direction or consolidate your studio activity? What difficulties emerged from new directions or experiments studio. How were these addressed through your processes, research methods and outputs. This section should be carefully supported by illustrations of your recent and current studio practice.

Future : assess the pros and cons of future direction for your studio work. As with first two sections you must remember to make sustained reference to your research and reading throughout, reflecting on the work of those artists or designers or writers who have been in similar fields. This is an opportunity for you to critically propose and defend ideas which may inform research towards your degree show presentation, based on earlier sections of journal.

Bibli:

Interviews with Francis Bacon - David Sylvester, Thames and Hudson 1975

Art History for Filmmakers, The Art of Visual Story Telling - Gillian McIver Bloomsbury Publishing 2016

The Elements of Eloquence, Mark Forsyth, Icon Books 2014

The Animate! Book, Rethinking Animation, Benjamin Cook and Gary Thomas, Lux London

The Film Paintings of David Lynch, Challenging Film Theory by Allister Mactaggart

Films:

Russian Ark - Alexander Sokurov