EVERYWHERE AT ONCE (1985) by Alan Berliner. On Thu, Aug 4, 2011 at 7:07 AM, David Tetzlaff <djte...@gmail.com> wrote:
> A citation eludes me (and my library is all in boxes), but one way I would > locate experimental film vs. conventional film in class discussions was by > referring to the concept of the 'content curve.' This is the idea, used in > conceptualizing 'mainstream' editing that any image - depending on its > visual complexity and context within the larger structure - takes a certain > period of time for the viewer to read. This is apart from narrative content > and concerns of rhythm or pacing: just as visual information there is a > certain 'natural' time window for an image to be on screen. Cut away too > quickly and the viewer says 'hey, I didn't get a good look at that.' Hold it > too long, and the viewer says, 'OK, be there, dne that. Now what?'. It's > pretty common for mainstream forms to mess with the content curve for > individual shots: the most common example probably being beer commercials > and music videos involving 'hot babes'seen only briefly as a form of tease. > (There was one by Van Hale > n/Hagar, 'Finish What You Started' as i recall). > > Anyway, it's very common for works in the experimental mold to just ignore > the content curve completely, for a variety of different reasons and via a > variety of different methods. 'Recreation' being sort of the extreme > paradigm on the short end of the scale. One of the problems newbies have > with experimental work, it seems to me, is that they stunble on the content > curve hurdle: the visuals move 'too fast' or 'too slow' and that's all the > newbie registers. Everything kinds of looks alike - Breer, Brakhage, > Kubelka. But, of course, they're not. > > It takes some getting-used-to to view work without engaging this convention > via reflex, to realize that there may be different things going on > temporally in different kinds of fast and slow, and to absorb what they may > be, and I've found that just discussing this issue, calling it to > consciousness, helps that process of getting-used-to for students. > > Another example on the other end of 'Recreation' I'm reminded of is > '(nostalgia)'. Some newbies tend to freak out as the ashes just sit on the > hotplate long after the photos are done burning. One tends to think that HF > is doing this as a tease, since you're trying to remember things to match > picture to story. It took me several viewings to figure out the duration > principle - each shot is a full 100' load, and the photos just take > different lengths of time to burn due to conditions of the paper etc., > leaving different amounts of ash-on-burner time before the film runs out. I > don't know (or really care) if this was HFs intent, but there's a reflection > of the photographer-to-filmmaker progression in this, where each daylight > spool = a single shot, like changing the plate in a view camera. > > On Aug 4, 2011, at 4:47 AM, Yoel Meranda wrote: > > Breer's REcreation (as an example of how some people think that the > > unit of cinema is frames, not shots, seems to me to be an obvious > > example). You could use Breer's own writing (or Kubelka's) as reading > > material. > _______________________________________________ > FrameWorks mailing list > FrameWorks@jonasmekasfilms.com > https://mailman-mail5.webfaction.com/listinfo/frameworks >
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