Film and video can be seen as the art of
time and unlike other art forms we have the ability to manipulate it. In traditional narrative structures, time
is used as a vehicle to unfold sequences and events.
In video we can have complete control of time and manipulate it to give our own work the desired effect we want:
- accelerate time
- slow
it
down
- freeze it.
- repeat it
- erase
it
- reverse
it.
- create flash backs
- flash forwards.
This inherent property of the moving image can be used to redefine the past, present and the future.
We watched a few videos in the session to look at the use of time and the manipulation of time itself in films:
La Jetée by Chris Marker
This film was really interesting as it was all still images rather than moving images. It focused on flashbacks, with a voice over, leaving a lot to the viewers interpretation.
The scene with the "museum filled with
ageless animals” is probably the most significant scene in the film.
The stuffed animals are lifeless, immobile, and dead. But so are the two main
characters who appear just as paralyzed in the still shots. The lack of
movement could be seen as a metaphor for mortality. Although the characters
perceive themselves as alive, seen through the photographic lens, their death
has already happened or is just a matter of time.
Mothlight – Stan Brakhage 1963
www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5P5vkegmvU
The film can be seen as a prime example
of Brakhage’s
attempt to overcome the conventions and stereotypes of cinema and the act of
seeing. This was quite a fast paced short film, but very interesting. The images sort of flickered across the screen, which I found really intriguing as you couldn't always tell what they were of. This is a film I would love to create a response to, as I found it really interesting to look at and watch.
‘Over the lightbulbs there’s all these dead moth wings, and I … hate that. Such a sadness; there must surely be something to do with that. I tenderly picked them out and start pasting them onto a strip of film, to try to… give them life again, to animate them again, to try to put them into some sort of life through the motion picture machine’. - Stan Brakhage
A Little Death - Sam Taylor Wood
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYka4ouQXqk
This short film was a time lapse of the decaying corpse of the rabbit. It was somewhat interesting to watch, but I still felt it very uncomfortable to see. However, it really showed how interesting time lapse can be when shooting something that changes over time. It made me interested to give it a go myself.
Sleep - Andy Warhol
http://www.warholstars.org/sleep.html
We didn't watch this film in its entirety as it's so long, it just documents a man sleeping for hours on end, however this was an interesting subject to capture with time.
The Raft - Bill Viola
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwA2TrBzWWI
This short film was shot with a slow motion effect, making it seem much more dramatic and longer. Slow motion is really interesting when you play around with things such as water, as Viola did in this film. You can really capture peoples reactions and the impact of the water as it hits their bodies.
Blue – Derek Jarman 1993
This short film uses only audio and a blue screen, which is really interesting. It makes you focus more on what is being said rather than whats on screen, whilst the blue overtakes the room and really relaxes you.
Looking at all of these examples really made me think about how I can use the manipulation of time in my own experimental video, and as a mini project we have been asked to create a short 1-2 minute film that challenges and fractures the structure of time, inspired by these examples above.
‘For the photograph’s immobility is somehow the result of a perverse confusion between two concepts: the Real and the Live: by attesting that the object has been real, the photograph surreptitiously induces belief that it is alive, because of that delusion which makes us attribute to Reality an absolutely superior, somehow eternal value; but by shifting this reality to the past (“this-has-been”), the photograph suggests that it is already dead.’ - Barthes
