Aha!

I'm a bit behind of the video project in the sense that I don't really have a particular direction in which I specifically want to head in so to get a bit of inspiration I decided to look around the internet to see what types of experimental film is out there and how it came about. I found a website called nofilmschool and two articles one 'Experimental Film For Dummies' (Pretty fitting in this case) and 'A (Very Brief) History of Experimental Cinema', I have to say it was the latter than intrigued me most. In all honesty Experimental Film has never been my forte simply because I've never understood it I'm quite a systematic thinker so experimental films go against what my mind wants to do.

The first thing I looked at was actually a credit sequence ( Gasper Noe, 2009, 'Enter the Void' rather than an entire film, what I noticed straight away was that it was quite hard to follow, the eye is constantly moving trying to register what is on screen and read the text but the font and size is constantly changing making you strain a bit to understand the words. But even with all that I became more interested in the credits of film than I have done in a long time.

Thorsten Fleisch's Energie, this is a big one for me because it's watching and reading about this one that I (rather stupidly and a bit late to game) realised what experimental film is, an experiment. This is a man who was just fascinated by electricity so he created a way for more people to understand his fascination, he did this by conducting an experiment and simply filming it. It is raw and intriguing, the context in which is was created is fascinating in itself and whilst it's hard to watch at times that's countered by the soothing music.



I also looked at 'The Kuleshov Effect - Lev Kuleshov' and 'Hunger - Steve McQueen'. The first of which was really interesting to watch especially since this was made entirely in the edit, and then to understand the audiences reaction to it. Hunger on the other hand was fascinating - whilst I only watched the trailer and read a bit about it seemed like the perfect mash up of narrative cinema and experimental cinema, it was dramatic and immersive.

Finally I watched 'Emak Bakia - Man Ray (1926)' what I found interesting and yet annoying about this film is that it seems to have a narrative that I just can't figure out, even though since it is 'Pure Cinema' it shouldn't, in theory, have one. It has a lot of sporadic camera movements which keeps the eye moving keeping the audience entertained, it almost creates an optical illusion at some points making the mind go in to overdrive almost trying to make sense of what's going on. But the thing that stood out for me in this film is actually the soundtrack, it has a string orchestra play throughout something that I believe effects the mind more than a full orchestra due to it's shrill, piercing sound - it's also something most people associate with danger (think Jaws).



So that's my research, whist I still don't have a definite idea of what my proposal is going to be I do have more of an idea of experimental film consists of and I think that gives me a lot more freedom when it comes to brainstorming in the next week.