Revising my academic question and the research element of my work
What am I trying to achieve???
I think I am trying to develop a technique of ‘recollection’ – attempting to bring back flashes of the past using a certain style of filming and editing – (so far this has taken the form of long, uncut shots walking through a space, a handful of different effects such as an unstable frame size and a very harsh and blocky black and white and a score which incorporates different elements such as voice-notes referencing memories, distorted found audio and echoing and looped musical refrains).
I had previously described this as ‘representing an unfilmable past’ but that isn’t a phrase I think works any more, need to come up with a new title, something about ‘recollection’ which is a term I’ve used a few times and I quite like.
What I do think will be interesting will be comparing this style to more straightforward and plain urban exploration type shooting – which I would characterise as less experimental and poetic, more wide and static, need to find more examples of this that aren’t just YouTube videos – and then also comparing it with more artistic projects about things like memories, dreams and home – films like Ashes (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2012), Maat means land (Fox Maxy, 2020) or Visions of an Island (Sky Hopinka, 2016). I think my film should hopefully fit somewhere between these two ‘schools’ combining elements of both.
I think it will be interesting to try and discuss how this ‘technique’ I am developing could be applied to other locations in the future – not really relevant to the course or the essay or my film but something I have been thinking about.
Best elements of the first 7 minutes to break down:
The shooting style – handheld, shaky, almost always in motion, not cut, walking from room to room, occasionally lingering on certain moments but then going back into motion.
The visual effects – a slowly shrinking frame size, which almost sneaks up on you and takes you by surprise, a fade into a harsh and blocky black and white which renders the footage into lights and darks, bringing out the shadows and highlights and obscuring a lot of the footage.
The score and soundtrack – a slowed down, echoey and reverb-heavy score made up of elements of found audio reordered and distorted combined with a voice recalling memories from the location, mixed into the score and seemingly coming from different directions and a voice-over describing thoughts and comments from the present day (this is possibly the weakest element to describe and will likely need some more work and is probably the least original and cliché).
Academic Resources I can draw on:
Guy Debord – Theory of the Derive
Walter Benjamin – On the Concept of History
Walter Benjamin on childhood
Walter Benjamin on the uncanny
Conor McBride 