Tangerine [2015] - Sean Baker

In our group meeting, Matt suggested us to watch Tangerine by Sean Baker when thinking about ways of shooting our film as none of our group take cinematography.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqsJq5qK3jE

Tangerine is entirely shot on iPhone. There is always a lot of emphasis and snobbery inside and outside the film school on equipment and how you need the best equipment to make a film which is feature worthy. This film disproves that. Linking to ideas for my experimental film and the destruction I wish to cause on the conventional protocols on filmmaking, I think like Baker I'd like to experiment and question cinematography by using supposedly lower quality ways of filming a film. I believe I could achieve this by using iPhone footage and old VHS tape footage I and my group have.

Frustration

It is interesting how frustrated we've become daily in the modern world. Long gone is the idea of patience as now we greedily tap away at our various devices connected to the overflowing source of information that is the internet.

But what if we were to mess with this idea? Subject people to the most inhumane torture these days. which would seem to be the buffering of the video as your face is reflected back to you in the ominous depths of the black screen.

This was something I wanted to discover, how far could you push an audience until they become frustrated by the film. Would it still be enjoyable? What would or could it provoke?

So I begin to question the rules of film itself. The basic structures a film must have: a start and an end and the end result must be a usually satisfying ending for the audience where there is a general sense among the spectators of completion. But what if an audience was denied that?

Another argument a film must be aesthetically pleasing but what would happen if I was to change the aspect ratios between shots, or to film everything in perfect symmetry without any action. Would it still be interesting? Would people's attention spans still remain intact?

Our tutor Matt Boyle spoke about a film he saw which was made up entirely of production company opening credits. He expressed that although initially he was frustrated by the film, this soon turned to amusement at the hilarity of how easily he had allowed the film to wind him up. This made our group think back to the time the tutors had struggled with the WiFi in Hyde Park Picture House and were greeted with the rainbow spinning loading wheel.

Reflecting on my last posts of the lack of a distinctive youth movement like the 70s owned the punks and the skaters of the 90s. Our generation seems to be a collage of this past longing for nostalgia, without creating a definitive subculture of our own generation. What is there to define our generation apart from perhaps a frustration towards the lack of care previous generations have for the planet, the frustration of lack of jobs and affordable housing and the constant harping from older generations of that we are lazy and addicted to technology. What if we were to put this across in the message of our film?

Linking back to the idea of taking apart the rules of film, it made me think towards the films of Jean-Luc Godard an influential French New Wave director. Notably, his film A Woman is a Woman and how he uses various filming techniques to remind the spectator they are watching a film and practically destroys the model of the three-act structure as depicted here:

If we look towards spectator theory, we know an audience watches a film to detach themselves from their lives and to focus on the story within the film. If this is disrupted and we are reminded we do not exist within the realms of the characters on screen where does this leave us but with the dissatisfaction, frustration and stress of our own lives prior to watching the film?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-BK0XiXfPU

Skateboard Films

When watching previous years BA2 experimental films, I gathered a lot of inspiration for my own ideas about what my film could be. One film that stood out, in particular, was a film I mentioned in my last post called 'Would You Lean on Me If I Was Sideways?', this film featured a lot of footage of skateparks with a poetry narration as accompaniment. As I liked this idea in the short film I decided to research more into skateboarding films.

Although the skate revolution came about in the 70s it wasn't truly popularised in my opinion until around the mid-90s. Where home video equipment became accessible to the masses. Films such as Welcome to Hell [1996] feature footage shot on VHS with popular songs usually rock n roll music played over the footage. Similar to the Captain Zip videos, I like how the films have no budget and all feature an authenticity to the image.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tx2Q9pNxPc