13
It’s not a new idea. Ten still images in which to tell a story is a preliminary task to get into film school. However it was my partner who finally said “This is enough. Stop. You need a structure. You have 1/2 an hour. Go and storyboard 10 frames to tell the whole story.”Then do it again... five times.
So I have done three and though I have meandered off again this time I’m feel much more on track. Another two 10 frame stories in the next week as I rethink the areas I’m covering and then I’ll contemplate the five story lines I’ve proposed to see if one stands out or I should merge ideas into a final 10 frame story. This process brings up so many thoughts that I have had to stop and edit some more assemblies. Because my bin structure is not consistant or rather my logging doesn’t match my bins, the way that I have been able to figure out how to quickly view and access material is through iview. Version 1 that came bundled with Roxio Toast 5 is fast and suits my purposes for storyboarding and media management. However when my partner saw another assembly she got mad and said “just finish the 10 frames. Then you’ll have something to hang your edit on; something substantial.”
Of course she’s right but as I am learning what my material is in more detail I am starting to feel that I want to bring back footage and ideas that I’d forgotten about and felt were not a part of the project.
Think loosely act decisively... at this stage.
Having finished half this exercise I now believe that I am concentrating on four questions that I will propose at the beginning of the film:
1 What is the difference between a corroboree and a ceremony?
2 Are the people in these performances acting or being?
3 Who are the owners and what does ownership mean?
4 What are masks?
As for the new approach to back pain management. As well as a regular exercise program the issues concerning what that pain means for me continue and I am starting work on that. Sitting in front of a computer without a break for hours and the hankering for sugar are both comfort seeking, but in the long term, self destructive behaviours.
posted by Dominique at 5:01 am
8 Comments:
I'm pondering your four questions -- not that I'm looking at possible answers, but I'm thinking of what 'hits' me in the questions.
At this stage, just one thing comes up, and it's about the second question. The 'acting or being' binary looks odd to me. Where is becoming, in that binary?
Having read (some months ago) Massumi's remarks on the power of the false, and Deleuze's essay too, I'd say that acting has to do with becoming. Therefore, if there is a privileged term in the binary acting/being, the privileged term is acting, not being.
A postscript, on storyboarding. I haven't done any film-making, but I found it very helpful in the writing of my thesis as a whole, and in the writing of each chapter, to storyboard what was to be written. I imagined the work unspooling onto a screen.
That postscript comes with a caveat. My thesis may be a bad model.
While I wrote this I forgot that there is the potential to be checked on what I say. You are right in that my use of binaries to say acting or being doesn't make sense. I guess the answer I have come to understand from asking the practioners the question is precisely as you have said. Somehow as an actor it seemed important for me to know. As I think that corroborees are far closer to the term theatre than to the term ceremony it is interesting to see what forms that takes for the performers. There is discrepancy here because some people say it is acting and others say they are that "devil devil" during the corroboree. There is definitely room for the space in between.
Take the case of Hitchcock's VERTIGO. There are moments when the character Judy is acting Madeleine, and there are other moments when she is becoming, and has become, Madeleine. Thomas Carl Wall has a good essay on this matter of non-being at:
http://www.film-philosophy.com/vol8-2004/n23wall
Wall uses the term 'maybeing' to express what is happening. I think of it as the suspension of being. Being goes on hold, to give way to a becoming.
In ceremony, the figures represent something, whereas in theatre what we have is not representation. Putting it another way, ceremony does not respect the univocity of being, whereas theatre does respect the univocity of being. I think the binary that you seem to be getting at, in your comments on corroboree, is that between representation and [I do not have a term for what is shown and is not a representation]. Acting is _not_ representing. That is why the acting/being binary is misleading. Acting is, among other things, using the power of the false.
(Deleuze emphasises that one needs to stay well away from the Platonic practice of lauding the true and casting out the false.)
"In ceremony, the figures represent something, whereas in theatre what we have is not representation."
My understanding is the opposite of this. In ceremony the use of objects and people in the event are manifesting place, spirit and being. In that moment of performance it is. This is not a representation. Whereas in corroboree, as in theatre, the art is that of representation. However the hard line I am defining is not so clear because there isn't such an easily definable difference between ceremony and corroboree.
I associate ceremony with those cases of witnessing (witnessing a spectacle of some kind) where there is an implied or explicitly invoked authority, who prescribes the form of the ceremony. It’s true that ceremonies often have real effects in the world (eg inaugurating a Presidency, or changing somebody from being a non-member to being a member of a church). But those real effects, in the case of ceremony, are effects that hinge on the structure of the world as decreed by the relevant authority. The ceremony and its real world effects also help to preserve that structure of (or in) the world, by playing into the structure.
In other words, the real effects produced by ceremony occur in a world existing under the order of a signifier. (That would be true, I think, even in the case of Satanic rites.) The matter of subjection to the order of a signifier led me to think of ceremony as involving representation, but I may have been mistaken there. I agree that ceremony does not ‘hold a mirror up to nature’; ceremony is not representation in that sense.
It seems to me that theatre can and does cause bodies (ie tracts of living flesh and neural tissue) actively to break out from the order laid down by an authority or signifier. And certainly theatre doesn’t hold a mirror up to nature. (As a consequence of the univocity of being, nothing at all holds a mirror up to nature, and anything that claims to do so is playing games with us.) It is the active breaking out from a prescribed order that makes me think of theatre as not involving representation.
A caveat: I am immersed in Deleuze and Guattari's concepts in all that I write, including my comments here. Hence my comments may, or may not, connect well with what you are doing, depending on the concepts you are working with.
Years ago I was studying documentary filmmaking and we (students) were instructed to make a video documentary - or at least a storyboard. I was working on a friend's video and worried that I wouldn't have enough time to make my own, so I opted to just make a storyboard as my own project. I didn't feel like drawing the storyboard, though, so I took photographs. The idea was to explore some of my memories of playgrounds. I shot a roll of film and then realised I did have time to complete a video afterall: I projected the photographs onto a tarpauline and videotaped the slideshow. The point being, this totally improvised method ended up working much better (and faster) than if I had operated with less pressure and therefore in a more traditional manner.
Well, I'm just riffing off your experience. Best of luck with your frames (and your back)!
By the way, I'm also here now.
And those a four very interesting questions. I'm still pondering.
The last couple of days I've been a bit slow in getting my latest ideas up here. Thanks Pinkville and Kathy for prodding - that helps my process. The idea of photos to tell the story is a gentle reminder to slow down the 'information' I think I'm editing while in fact I'm jamming. Two contrasting images can tell so much while a thousand put together in 40 seconds may say nothing.
Tomorrow David MacDougall will check out for the first time what I've been doing for the last two years.
I'm excited but a bit nervous.
Oh to be a sound engineer as well.
As my partner says "No wingy woo."
To which my son replies " Yes wingy woo..."
and he also says when I'm tickling him "too much".
Thanks to the recent comments offering support.
It's appreciated.
Post a Comment
<< Home