This week we had practicing artist Eldon Booth talk to us about his work. Booth produces work in moving image, film making and has also done some collaborative work with artist Deborah Crowe which are small objects that include sound and video components.
Booth is interested in blurring the lines between fact and fiction when it comes to film and television. His work looks at the idea of reality and illusion, which he addresses by use of film and editing techniques such as split screen, shot counter-shots and montages.
When looking at his work, Booth's short film's seen to focus on stories and circumstances that relate to the human condition within New Zealand societies and communities.
In Booth's first film 'Withdrawl' (2001), which was shot in collaboration with Jason Crane, he addresses this idea of reality and illusion. He has accomplished this by creating a documentary feel about the film. Documentary film is the visual expression of, "a broad category of moving pictures intended to document some aspect of reality." (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/documentary+film)
Booth went on to explain that in the late 90's, which was around the time he started filming 'Withdrawl', reality television programmes were a big thing. For example, Emergency scenes caught on camera, etc... He then talked about how he liked the fact that the camera couldn't anticipate the event before it happened, as well as mentioning the fact that these reality instances were mostly caught on hand-held camera which resulted in jerky hand movements, etc...
This film follows the relationship between a grandfather and grandson and the different paths that they each follow. Booth has cleverly unfolded the story in a split screen manner. One side of the screen follows the grandson, the other shows the grandfather. This separation into two screens, shows the difference between grandfather and grandson and their separate livelihoods. However, Booth has shown simultaneous shots for each screen, which connect these two characters. For example, one screen would show the grandfather taking medication(drugs) to survive, and in contrast, the other screen would show the grandson with a whole bunch of friends taking drugs to get high. Another example is that in the grandfather would be lying in a bed, not moving, while the grandson was on a train(transportation), where the landscape was changing.
Booth talked about how he wanted to blur the lines between fact and fiction, reality and illusion in this film and I think that he achieved this really well. The film is shot in a documentary style that creates the illusion that the viewer is witnessing an actual event, rather that a staged scene. He deliberately shot the film in a very amateur style using a hand-held camera. This created effects such as jerky movements, sometimes blurred scenes, erratic pans as well as natural sounds. For example, you can hear noises in the train as the grandson travels, footsteps, etc... The use of these techniques all add to the idea of creating an illusion of reality.
One thing I found really interesting was how the camera was used to follow and almost stalk the character. The camera does not interact with the characters at all, it just seems to observe, as if spying on them.
Two names that were mentioned during Booth's talk were Andre Bazin and Raymond Williams.
Andre Bazin was a French film critique, theorist, philosopher and humanist, who endorsed wide shots, ‘shots-in-depth’ and also deep focus. When researching I found that Bazin preferred 'mise en scene' films(films that tell a story) and he termed this story telling ‘true continuity’. He was less fond of experimental editing or ‘fancy’ visual effects and he believed that the interpretation of a film should not be conducted by the director or film maker but should be left to the viewer. He believed in the idea that authentic photography and film represent reality.
Bazin's concepts on the tradition of realism were that abstraction and artiface should be minimum. The materials in reality should be able to speak for themselves. He believed that cinema occupies a unique middle position between the sprawl of raw life and the artificially re-created world of the traditional arts. And lastly, he believed that filmmakers can preserve actual time and space by panning, craning, tilting, or tricking rather than cutting to individual shots. (http://understandingfilm.wetpaint.com/page/4.+Andre+Bazin+and+the+Tradition+of+Realism)
Raymond Williams was a Welsh writer who stated that film within a the realm of realism must have a contemporary setting, must be concerned with human and worldly action, in human terms, and must be socially extended, which means it should deal with the ordinary persons life. (Notes from class, Quote by Booth)
Another work that Booth showed us an excerpt from was the 2006 film "Five Good Reasons". This film is strong in dialogue unlike 'Withdraw' where it is mainly natural background sounds and music. Instead, this film is an interview sequence, which is a type of fictionalized reality. We can see this by the use of montage and cutaway shots that create this false sense of reality, as if pre-staged.
In this film in a consultation with his doctor (psychiatrist), a man seeks validation for his thoughts and observations on society. 'Five Good Reasons' experiments with the format utilised by television current affairs interviews like '2020', or '60 minutes'.
Another film which uses similar techniques as Booth is Gus Van Sant's "Elephant" (2006). This film is loosely based around the school shootings that took place on April 20th 1999 in Denver, Colorado at Columbine High school. Here again, the camera follows the characters around, in such a way that makes the audience feel like we are following and engaging in the simple tasks of their everyday lives.
All of the characters lives and perspectives of what happened that day were shown through reliving the same scenario from different angles and viewings. This film also addresses the idea of fact and fiction as well as reality and illusion through the editing and camera techniques.
Overall, I really enjoyed the session this week. I have learnt a lot about camera angles and my eyes have been opened to how techniques can portray reality or illusion.
Bibliography:
http://www.eldonbooth.com/
http://understandingfilm.wetpaint.com/page/4.+Andre+Bazin+and+the+Tradition+of+Realism
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/documentary+film
Thanks Bonnie, great research here, and very in-depth on all aspects of the lecture and the following film. Good work!
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