Detachement and Locked Rooms

In discussion with my experimental group. We discussed an idea of the audience being distant from the action on the screen. Much like how I discussed in a previous blog post about Godard and his ideas of distancing the audience through the use of audio and breaking of the fourth wall. A way we felt we could achieve this was through using a tv screen which in post we would mask parts of the film onto. We would also have people sat in front of said tv screen constantly changing the channels to further distance the audience from the action, hopefully leading to ideas of frustration.

Thinking of television we then discussed what we commonly saw on tv and how we could interfere with it in our film. Cartoons such as Tom and Jerry are usually short and satisfying to the audience as the reach a conclusion within a few moments without much need for concentration on the plot, an idea we then had was to cut the action so it would be difficult for the audience to watch and the climax would be missed therefore making the action frustrating. On the other hand, adverts are also usually present on tv and they are rather annoying so what if we were to mix the audio to irritate the audience and make the viewing of the film uncomfortable?

I also introduced ideas of illustration or animation, partially due to my own love of the medium and from a music video by the band The Maccabees called "No Kind Words"

In the video, it depicts two people unable to communicate although facing each either. I feel the animation present in the video accurately depicts the character's frustration at their miscommunication.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=605fY2RqTkI

When looking at initial ideas of frustration I was pointed in the direction of The Locked Room experiment by our tutor Matt. The experiment took place between 1969 to 1973 at Central St Martins School of Art, a group of sculpture students were locked in a white room each weekday between 10 am to 4:30 pm and banned from speaking to anyone. The reaction varied within the students from silent protests, to rebellion and dropping out.

I then looked to where this could apply to my experimental film. Each student was presented with material and forced to use it without full creative control or guidance. I think I wanted to imply this lack of control to the audience during my film, that they were forced to watch something and take influence from it without being allowed the satisfaction they expect to receive of an ending, beginning or climax.