Film Premise: VHS tapes in a local video store (operated by Jack Black & Mos Def) have all been magnetically zapped and the stars of the film must remake the movies (starring themselves) to satisfy their customers (I haven’t actually seen the movie, but this seems to be more or less the plot). This film touches on many of the dimensions of remediation that we’ve talked about in class–particularly in terms of the reflexive (and postmodern) notions of hyperimmediacy and, more broadly, intertexutality. Following this line, trailers have popped up on YouTube that reinterpret the actual Be Kind Rewind trailer. Take a look for yourself..
The original trailer
The amateur produced YouTube trailer
The official website for the film takes remediation one step further by applying the theme of the movie to the Internet itself (effectively erasing the Internet), allowing users to submit sites they’ve remixed (or “sweded” as they say in the film). The definition of “sweding” offered on the site is aptly similar to the notion of remediation itself.
Hi, everyone. I wrote a post on my blog that, after I finished it, thought it might be appropriate here, since it’s (kind of) about the design process. I also thought some of you might be interested in, as it relates to some things we discussed in Marty’s class last semester. Check it out if you’re so inclined:
I was reading a book on film theory, French Cinema: A Student’s Guide (Powrie & Reader, Oxford University Press, 2002; currently out of print in the USA), and I found a chapter that I really wish I had assigned to this class (there is always next fall, right?).
The chapter contains a very handy description with some examples of a technique known as “sequence analysis,” which is a structuralist-inspired meat-and-potatoes analysis of a film sequence (usually 7-12 minutes, comprising a single narrative unit). One of the reasons I wish you had all seen it is because, though clearly inspired by structuralism (particularly the notion of syntagmatic analysis), it doesn’t wallow in theory and fancy words, but actually gets very serious and specific about analyzing units of film in a way that anyone can understand and emulate.
I’d like to thank all members of the class for participating in this blog during our class. As I mentioned, I intend to keep it alive going into the new year, and you are welcome to continue contributing (and I hope people will!). I wanted to close with a few random notes and announcements.
I was pleased overall with the final exams and papers, and I hope all of you will consider sending your paper to Tyler for "publication" in the top secret, draft-only collection he is assembling.
If you would like feedback on your paper and/or you wish to discuss moving it forward for submission to a conference, please schedule a half hour to meet with me.
The real reason for this post is that I got tired of seeing "Drunk Women on Facebook" heading up our site for over a week. Sheesh! Can’t we be a little more artsy?
Speaking of artsy, I watched some lovely films earlier this week. One is My Life as a Dog, a Swedish film from about 20 years ago or so. Not only was it poignant and moving in its own right, but it also contributed immensely to my understanding of the cultural logic underlying the phenomenon known as Erik Stolterman. The other is The Double Life of Veronique, which was made by Krzysztof Kieslowski, who also directed Trois Couleurs: Bleu, which I showed a bit of in class (the car crash sequence). Veronique was a dreamy film that didn’t make a lot of logical sense, and yet somehow felt right. Plus it was beautifully shot and scored, of course, being a Kieslowski film.
As previously discussed (I & II), change or movement in time plays an important role in making interaction design ‘alive’.
Over the holidays, my brother pointed out a chat website called paltalk (www.paltalk.com). It is an interesting concept because in addition to live streaming chat rooms, many users have a webcam showing their live faces and voice online during the chat. My brother expressed excitement about chatting on a public chat room in paltalk and I wondered what made the chat part of it so exciting. Looking at this based on what we know about time, why should someone be inclined to visit websites to talk about random topics in public chat rooms?
I’ve hardly watched any TV for the past couple years because I haven’t had the time for it. I do remember one motive that gets people hooked on TV though. Sometimes people will watch TV because we feel like we might miss the opportunity to watch a show that might only be airing once. The TV becomes alive for viewers and TV viewers create a relationship with the broadcasted information such that they want to ‘be there’ when ‘it happens’. As always, design is not only what we put in, but what we leave out, and the inability for people to record programs contributed to influencing addictive behavior with broadcast television. That trend is changing with so many people recording programs and watching them online now, but it’s still important to ‘be there when it happens’ for events such as the Superbowl because the live experience cannot be reproduced.
Similarly, with paltalk, the live environment is such that being there during a discussion to talk to and see interesting people cannot be replicated exactly. Here, the ability to constantly have unrecoverable live interactive discussions contributes to enhancing the design because it serves as a motive to continue interacting addictively in fear of missing out. That’s even why some college students addictively log into facebook.
When we were thinking of examples of a pair of things that we normally don’t necessarily associate with each other that we could apply cultural logic to, as defined as
-a broad pattern, set of practices, or set of rules that crosses many levels of a culture
I thought of the comparison of the two things (in this case in order to make a statement about society and the corporation) in the book The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, and its corresponding film The Corporation. Essentially the authors take the practices and characteristics of a psychopath as defined by some standard, accredited source (I cannot remember if it was an international/American medical or psychology foundation or something like that) and applies that checklist (set of rules, patterns, and practices) to a corporation, coming to the conclusion that a corporation is by definition of its practices and views logically the same as a psychopathic person. Below is the trailer for the film:
I think the interesting notion is that a corporation, though comprised of a group of people, is like a person, an accountable entity unto itself, in the legal system, but does that imply then that a corporation itself has a morality and responsibility? That in removing one individual from the legal accountability of the corporation gives fodder in supporting the argument that one can then remove (individual) morality, responsibility, and accountability? That is, can “good” people be leaders of “evil” corporations?
Mingxian posted an excellent question late last week about the problem of intention. If we look at camera angles in Bleu or La Strada, and we perceive that they relate fortuitously to narrative themes (etc.), and we attribute that coherence to the “director’s intention,” are we leaving structuralism/semiotics and heading back to phenomenology?
My answer to her was no. I’m afraid the post got buried, so see the exchange for yourself here.
I had a couple of ideas when we were talking in class about how the director of La Strada chose to give the mother so little screen time even though she was dominating the dialogue and was so emotional.
As Jeff pointed out this was the ’50’s and one of the golden rules (at least in the US) was that children should be seen and not heard, they should speak only when spoken to, therefore, it is natural the mother should dominate the conversation.
And I don’t feel as if the mother was a bad person, despite the fact she’s sold not one, but two children. I think the over-exaggerated emotion is attempting to push the viewer in this direction-to not despise and write the mother off as some evil, greedy so-and-so. Also I suppose one could say that the mother is playing to a stereotype-the stereotypical, emotional, exaggerated Italian.
A more interesting idea and one that incorporates a theory of why the mother received so little screen time is that our attention would naturally(instinctively) be drawn to the “head of the household”, which is often the parents and in this case the mother because there is no father present. So where we talked about how movies play to our instincts using formal characteristics, they also must take into consideration how to use formal characteristics to negate our instincts if necessary. That is, if there had been a “flat” shot of everyone on the screen and no one particular person in focus, we would probably have naturally focused on the mother, so the director chose to remove the mother from the screen hence we are forced to concentrate on other characters/things.
Bleu
One comment that really stuck with me was Jordan’s comment about the boy playing the game-after showing several failed attempts, when the boy finally successfully brought the ball and stick together Jordan realized there was about to be a major change (and specifically he sensed a “bad” change/the car crash). Then I realized that this is almost immediate, literal foreshadowing. Think of the ball and stick game itself in abstract terms, the coming together of two objects in quite a crude way, in much the same way a crash between say a car and tree is the coming together of two objects in quite a crude way. Maybe then that is why we sense the crash coming (also combined with the knowledge picked up earlier with the dripping brakeline, etc) when finally the boy is successful with the ball and stick game.
Ethics & Values in Film
At the end of class we asked what ethics/values these movies deal with and why all of this (using formal characteristics to force viewers into specific perceptions) was significant. From the very small clips of each movie we saw, I believe both of these movies deal with the value of human life and its significance. La Strada with the selling of a person(Gelsimina), the worth of a person based on mental capacity or perhaps their output/contribution, and Bleu grappling with the value of human life and its effects by having someone struggling with the loss of human life.
So why is that all significant? Well, if movies can control our perception and reasoning regarding values (like human life) then it can be said that they can strongly influence what we define as right and wrong or what is good and bad (how about taking the example of war propaganda). Therefore, as a result film can heavily influence the shifts in the value system of an entire particular, broader society. Certainly then shaping individuals’ and societal views is a powerful role to have and thus comes the issue of responsibility. What responsibilities do those involved with the making of a film and the film itself have?
As Designers
So what can we as designers take from this discussion about films and their role? Well, simply stated our designs also are for a certain user in a particular role. While interacting with our design the user is forced into positions and perceptions, meaning we have just as much control over the perception of a user using our design as a film has over a viewer watching the movie; therefore, we need to recognize the powerful role our designs have as well and consider what responsibilities we as designers and our designs have over people, their values, and their development.
I know that today we were trying to find the code how to interpret those movies. We were talking about one detail give us clues about what would happen later, and the camera positions tell us blablabla. However, David mentioned that the director forced us to see the focuses and the next screen, we have no choice as an audience. Then I found I was trying to guess the directors intentions about why they put some certain background things into the stage, and how the directors put those clothes onto the actors’ body in order to express the roles’ personality. My question is that do I come back to phenomenology from structuralism when I tried to guess and explain the directors’ intentions? Or I am using the structuralism method as far as I still decompose the movie into cloth, camera position and other aspects.
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