Final Review of Contraction by Chris Hewitt & James Cambourne

Film Link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/filmnetwork/A55119864

This is the final film that I will review. The film itself is again very short. It shows a man laying down on the ground dead, and then a woman coming and doing a mouth to mouth, the woman then tries the resussitation method, as she is doing this, the ground is cracking underneath them. At the end of the film the man wakes up and the woman asks him "Where did you go". The man looks very confused. The main idea of the film is about rebirth. It was made to put questions into peoples heads about what might have happened before. Personally, I think that the man had fallen from the building becuase they film from the top of what looks like the top of a building. The backing sounds behind are very echoey. This makes it feel as if the man and the woman are both alone and no one else is around to help them. The man looking confused at the end could mean that he is reborn with a babies mind, and is completely new to the world again. I think this film is very thought provoking and effective.

Review of Eulogy for things left unsaid By Rob Chiu

Film Link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/filmnetwork/A46701650

Euology for things left unsaid is an extremely emotional film. The backing track is room music peice composed by Olafur Arnalds. It is a very short peice but is very effective. The backing track really sets the scene for the movie and moves you, and the peices that he films are widescreen landcapes. The film is based on the theme of lonelyness. I think that the feilds he films represent a place to escape becuase every person that is lonely dreams of escaping to the countryside. It shows a boy wandering through a path, I think this bit is ment to put questions into our head like "Is the boy walking relflecting about the lonely times spent at home?" or "Is he content with his life and is just enjoying a nice peicefull walk in the countryside". The film itself isn't a very long film, running just over 120 seconds, but in my opinion it is very effective and powerfull for what it is.

Review of Landing Lights By Graham Young

Video Link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/filmnetwork/A34265270

This video is an animated video of a plane going straight through a building. Unfortunately I didn't get to watch it all the way through due to buffering problems but I got the general idea of it. I think that it is about the haunting memories of our past, for example the twin towers, where haunting memories like that repeat in our minds over and over again. The video itself repeats over and over again. The film is extremely dark and gloomy as the colours are. They depict that this film is a depressing one, not a happy and colourfull one. Personally I think that it has a very eiry feel to it and it is kind of weird. But alot of experimentals are like this. It could be thought of as a modern interpretation of Koyaanisquatsi, with the plane going through the building, and it could be about the destructiveness of human nature.

Chapter 3

Most experimental movies will have the conventional beggining and end but in a much differnent way to your usual movies. On your usual films you've got the beggining being something about some sort of broken family for example, and middle being something happens to bring that family closer together, and the end being that the family realised that they love one another very much and everything is all happy and hunky dory. This is only your typical Box Office movie as I said. Experimental films are very radically the film will make them ask more questions as will the end. In other words, the beggining middle and end needs to provoke alot of thought otherwise trhe artist will not have made the impact that they wanted to make. The ending could be extremely vague, leaving the audience to make their mind up about what the ending actually means. I do not think that it is important for experimental films to have a beggining and end because art galleries are not like cinemas. With cinemas people will watch all the way through right till the very end. With art galleries however, once people get the general idea of the movie they will walk away because the whole point of experimental movie is for people to get the idea of it.

Chapter 2

In this chapter I will discuss how the use of technology differs within the videos. In Koyaanisqatsi the video was vastly different from anything ever done at the time. Most people who saw it were in awe with the wide screen shots that graces most of the film. Also the soundtrack was very unusual, even though synthesizers were used in music alot at that time, most people have never heard synthesizers in the way they are used in Koyaanisqatsi. Nowadays the people that watch the video are less awestruck by it. What they don't seem to realise is that Koyaanisqatsi was the first video of it's kind to do that kind of shooting. Most documentaries nowadays are inspired off of Koyaanisqatsi and I think that we take this for granted most of the time. Doll Face on the other hand is very much modern and up to date. It is an animated movie and the soundtrack that is played sounds like it could be used in a Radiohead album or a downbeat electronic album similar to something Radiohead would do. The technology used is up do date animation software, possibly Blender. Even though this is used, it doesn't have the same impact that Koyaanisquatsi had when it was released. This is because there were already very many animated films created before Doll Face so people were not as over whelmed with Doll Face as they were with Koyaanisquatsi. However it does have the same meaning and pollitical impact as Koyaanisquatsi did, just on a smaller scale.

Chapter 1

In Doll Face by Andy Huang, it all seems computer animated, high tech and modern. There is a woman that looks like a robot and sees something on TV, the TV eventually goes away from her and she crashed down to the floor. This is basically saying that the Modern generation need to stop copying what they see on the TV because eventually they will all rot away. No one can ever copy anyone because everybody is different. This means that nothing has changed since the video the girl chewing gum, which is basically trying to make the same point. He films a street with people walking along the road and he pretends to direct it, he eventually reveals that he isn't directing what the people are doing and he is infact in a feild 20 miles away from the place that he is filming. Also the video Koyannisquatsi made by a russian director says something to people along those lines. These three videos are vastly different and each of them were filmed in 3 different areas. They all mean the same thing but show it in different ways. Koyaanisquatsi was very differnet for it's time and radically changed the way people watched videos and movies. It wanted to be different and really push the boundaries. Each of the three different videos are like this, they all push the boundries in a unique way. Doll Face is the only animated video of the three and the most up to date, Girl chewing gum is the oldest video out of the three. Koyannisquatsi is 2 hours long and has an operatic sound track, Doll Face also has a soundtrack which adds more of an emotional effect on the film than The Girl Chewing Gum does. The Girl Chewing gum is the least emotionally effective of the three, yes it is effective and thought provoking, but in a different way.

Chapter 6

Art can be interpreted by the audience in many different ways. There are alot of different things that are used to make the audence think differently. For example it could be the use of space. Space means different things to different people. Some people are claustrophobic or agrophobic, therefore they view space in a negative way. Whereas others are neither of the two therefore they view space in a positive way and may not even feel anything when they go into a certain space. These people however may not even look at the video through the means of what the space is like, for example if the central heating is on full blast then they could feel relaxed, or some people could feel too hot therefore they will see this in a negative way. On the other hand the air con could be on too cold, therefore they could feel prettey awkward, or they could see the cold in a positive way. Also meanings could be interpreted in a different way. For example on Koyannisquatsi, people could see this video as an anti pollution video, but the video could also mean human life evolving and eventually decomposing. Or people could not view the video in a meaningful way at all, they could just see it as a bunch of random overview shots of the city and stuff.

Review of Gisele Kerozene dir. Jan Kounen

The video we watched today is of 2 men trying to grab some orb thing, then another man coming along and taking it. The main scene was a chase with broomsticks. At the end of the movie a man gets shot but the bad guy hands the orb thing to him. This could be interpreted in many ways. Personally I found it to be quite a humerous video and I had to try and stop myself from giggling at on point when the guy was on the wheelchair and he fell off. I think that people could interperate this video in many different ways, people could say that it has a meaning to it and that meaning could be that when you want something you may not always get it. I personally thought that the movie was very well crafted as it was filmed using stop motion. Personally I think that it is more craft driven then concept because it's not as deep and thought provoking as the other movies are.