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