I’ve already talked about the Loop film watched in class but I thought I’d examine a couple more we’ve seen.
Meshes of the Afternoon:
I’ll admit that this film was a little strange, I’ve seen quite a few old classics during my intro to film class and I always give them a chance but usually end up only partially impressed. This film was actually quite enjoyable. The various aspects worked well together and the universe established was filled with suprizes. It reminded me a little bit of Un Chien Andalou, the french surrealist film that mimics the state of dreaming. This film made good use of the audio by including eerie music chords and rhythmic clunking that synced up with the action on screen.
The world established in the film consisted of disorientation and spinning, repetitive sequences and a series of symbols that remained consistant throughout the film like the mirror, key, flower, record plaver and telephone. The most interesting part of using this everyday objects was how they all became interchangable with the power to swap places with eachother through the film. They almost become characters themselves.
I know when I am enjoying a film when I say to myself, “hey that’s really cool, I wish I thought of that.” or, “wow that’s really interesting, how can I express something similar”. At this point, it’s safe to determine something I’ve seen has got me interested and most likely has made me want to get creative myself.
Two parts of the film that come to mind that demonstrate this was the way the audience does not see the woman’s face for quite a long time in the beginning and this was really well done. The story still worked fine without any facial queues. The reveal wasn’t too involved, but the lead up was enjoyable for me. The other part I felt was really well done was the way the woman looks out the window and sees herself going through the actions that have already taken place, like a time loop. This comes across nicely through the use of the same scene shown from a completely different angle. I thought it was really well done, especially for an old film.
She Puppet:
This film was a lot different than the narrative story telling I’m used to watching. It had an interesting juxtaposition with the audio and visuals but I felt that the film overall could have been done more effectively. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m somewhat of a gamer and watching the death sequence over and over frustrated me at least a small amount. I found the repetitiveness of the different sequences in general to be longer than they needed to be.
The film wasn’t bad, I thought it was an interested method to pursue. I wonder in what other ways video game characters can be used as actors. Something else that might have been bothering me about this one was it brought the question up in of “what is considered a film?” This is one of those old debates of the art world. What exactly classifies as art? Anyway it might have been just the way content was taken from an existing source to create a large portion of the film. I’m sure the film took countless hours to assemble and get just right, so there is a lot of intervention, I know there’s a lot of work there.
I found myself, mostly due to the repetition in the film, examine the programming and animations put in by the video game developers but I’m not sure if this was the film’s intention. It may just be my background in video games, the graphics are quite dated but have a certain charm to them. So overall I’m glad I had the chance to watch the film because it certainly is a different take on what I’m used to and it created enough of a reaction in me to write this reflection so I guess it did accomplishing reaching me as a viewer.
