Reading Film

At first I thought this was going to be another dull reading, especially when I saw how many pages it was. It didn’t take long for me to change my mind however. Dziga Vertov seems to be a very interesting and, dramatic individual. He explains himself in some very unusual ways threw out the selected articles. He also seems to have a very, pragmatic view of cinematography and how it needs to change.

The section that caught my attention the most was at the very beginning, the selection from the Manifesto of the Beginning of 1922. At first he is describing the Director, the writer, movie goers, and owners of movie theaters in very interesting ways. He then goes on to say how they are all waiting for the “New Six real feature.” He talks about how this will not happen unless something is done about it and that something he personifies as a bloody and gory revolution that will only happen once everyone realizes what must be done. That I found to be a very different approach to the subject that I am used to.

I also found the selection from “Down with 16 photographs per second” to be interesting. In this he talks about how the movie camera is better then the human eye. He says that the camera is not required to be in any position or have any sort of “limit to the number of moments to be observed per second.” He says that we cannot improve our eye more then nature has already, but the movie camera we can improve forever.

So ya I was looking at the requirements for the mock debate and can someone tell me what 3-4pp mean? I have a feeling it means paragraph but I just want to make sure, silly question but ya.

Seeing as how this was a formal piece of writing I expected to find many if not all of Harvey’s Elements of an Academic Essay. The first element I wasn’t surprised to find was a Title which in this case was “Projecting the Self”, I would have been surprised if their wasn’t a title to be honest. The next element I wasn’t surprised to find was a Thesis were Sherman explains how a film is always subjective even if the director doesn’t do it intentionaly and tries to make it objective (sound familiar?).

He then goes on to using the next element which is to have Evidence were he backs up his belief that all films are subjective by telling that even if it is done unintentionally a director always puts his personal views into his film. Sherman also seems to Structure his writing very well it is not confusing at all and doesn’t jump all over the place. Another element that Sherman uses and that I have noticed almost all formal writings use is Stitching to combine his thoughts together and are usually extra details that are not necessarily critical to the argument but are things that the reader will think about throughout  the reading. Sherman also decides to be respectful and sight his sources which he does many times, the first being were one of his statements is from Jacobs.

The final element I was able to identify was Orientation. Sherman does it quite nicely throughout his essay, subtly orienting you to his next argument also using it to structure his essay nicely. So as I have stated before I was not surprised at the number of elements that were in Sherman’ Projecting the Self’, these elements are something that all good formal or academic essays follow. I guess you can say that formal essays are also subjective since even without the author realizing it they always write using these elements

1. Shot of a college

2. shot of Regina and first question

3. Shot of the Sun

4. picture of a brain with no ‘lines’

5. Shot of second question

6. a person who appears to be high trying to write

7. Regina and third question

We started off the class continuing the conversation we had on Monday about the clip we saw from “The Last Action Hero”. We focused on what made it stand out and what was wrong with it in terms of things that didnt fit in the Hamlet time frame or story. The conversation then took those things and we tried to figure out the meaning of those things like the Uzi or the explosion at the end. At this point we went into the essay we read about Romans in movies and Prof. Ferguson had us focus on one sentence. The sentence were Barthes uses the word ‘sign’. He uses it differently then we normally would and in his view a sign has two possible ways of being viewed: as the literal interpretation (e.g. a rose as a flower) or the deeper meaning to it (a rose symbolizing love). We then moved to a conversation on style and we re-read Barthes essay and tried to figure out his style and found a few things like he likes to use questions to start a topic. Finally we watched a clip from Julius Caesar and did a free writing session on what we thought were three symbols or signs, what they meant and whether you needed to know more of the story to understand them

Transcript

Adrian: Hello this is Regina Harsanye and we are going to be interviewing her today. Regina, what is your favorite movie and why?

Regina: Um, my favorite film is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Um, the actors are compelling first off, I would watch it a million times, It was directed by Michel Gondry written by Kaufman, Charlie Kaufman, and anything those people do is amazing so… umm ya.

A: Alright, what is your favorite novel?

R: My favorite novel is The Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs, its a B generation novel, thats what Burroughs was famous for. And uh I mean he wrote it in a hotel while he was on heroin and Allen Ginsberg who was a famous poet put the novel back together, cut and paste, order it, basically random order, its something i really enjoyed.

A: Alight, what is your intended major?

R: I’ve already declared my major actually, Im majoring in art history. (pause because I forgot to ask why) Umm I’m doing this because I have wanted to be an art curator ever since I was twelve years old, Art speaks to me in volumes, I mean… I’m in front of a painting and it makes me feel laden like nothing else does its something I feel I have a calling towards.

A: Alright, What are your hobbies?

R: I read a lot, I go to the city, I’m glad i live closer to the city now, umm go to museums, I watch a lot of Netflix. Netflix is my entire life so..

A: Alight, If you were stranded on a desert island what three items would you take?

R: I would have to bring, well in your video you said generator so I’ll say generator as well, a charger for my Ipod and my Ipod, my music is really all I need.

A: Alirght, Thank you.

Reflection

When we were first given the Interview assignment I was worried mainly because I only knew one person in the class and because even though I really like movies and video editing I have never been good in front of a camera. After class I spoke to Regina for a few seconds and we decided that we would contact each other the next day when we were both free to film the interviews.

The next day we met up in front of Klapper Hall and started the interviews. I went thinking that we should go with more personal questions but Regina thought we should also make it relevant to college so thought of a few questions that could cover both. I was interviewed first and I tried to relax but I kept thinking ahead to the next question and I kept messing up but eventually got it down.

Next it was Regina’s turn and I was filming. I realize now from watching the interview that I wasnt really paying attention to Regina or her answers because I think when im trying to record a scripted performance i get nervous that I might do something wrong so to calm myself I try to pay attention to too much, the camera angle, lighting, background activity, thinking of the next question and if I could here what the camera was picking up I would have listened to that and I think that while its useful in some cases an interview isent one of them but its a bad habit I picked up from a year of Video editing classes and I wish I could have relaxed more when I was the one being interviewed and also the one doing the interview because I think it would have turned out better.