Emulating Arnheim through Film

For my midterm, I tried to demonstrate the beliefs that Rudolf Arnheim had about film. I don’t have a great deal of production experience, and I’ve never made a film all on my own before. But I thought it would be fun (it was) and it seemed like more of an adventure than writing an essay. So, I tried to use what little knowledge I have to emulate his guiding principles.

Arnheim thought that sound and color detracted from the beauty of film, because the medium could never be a perfect representation of reality. I took the diegetic sound and the color out of my film, and tried to use lighting and the costuming of my actors to exaggerate the effect. I even used title cards instead of having my actors open their mouths. However, I did put nondiegetic music over the film, because I think it sets the tone and provided a rhythm for me to edit to.

Arnheim wanted the viewer to be active in shaping film into something that holds meaning. To do this, I tried took a leaf out of Eisenstein’s book and used montage, juxtaposing images that seemed unrelated to create a new meaning. I tried to use elements of costuming and props to create dichotomies. Some of my actors wore formal clothes, others were dressed more like children. I tried to incorporate elements that were evocative of childhood—like bubblegum and paper snowflakes that the viewers could make connections between and then contrast with other elements of the film.

As I was filming, I realized that I really relied on the tripod and was kind of afraid of handheld. Arnheim wanted to call attention to the medium through framing and other devices. He never wanted the viewer to forge that they were watching a film which was not the “real world”. I experimented with including handheld camera motion, and point of view shots to do so. I tried to use transitions that wouldn’t necessarily distract the viewer from the motion of the film, but also reminded them that they were watching a two-dimensional film. Using offscreen space seemed like an effective way to create this effect. I used close-ups to withhold information from the viewer that I later revealed through longer shots. I also tried putting a flimsy paper matte on the camera to create the temporary effect that the viewer was looking through a tunnel or a spyglass, only to have my actor physically take off the matte and put it on a string of paper snowflakes. In addition to these elements, I played with the space-time continuum by slowing down and speeding up certain shots and physically placing shots of separate actions next to each other to make it seem as if they were happening simultaneously.