The Hand - Midterm video project

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VH1XZAhPsc

My initial ideas for this work came out of the readings and classes on Munsterberg and Arnheim. The most interesting facet of both theorists for me was the importance they placed on the viewer's mind in the entire cinematic process. Munsterberg, in particular, went so far as to call the mind the raw material of cinema, which struck me as leaning towards a solipsist view of reality in some way. The central tradition over which these theorists developed their ideas is, of course, Gestalt Psychology.

The two main ideas that I have tried to examine in this film are:

1- The mind creates reality by organizing it along expected lines.

To paraphrase Andrews on the Gestaltists, they hold that "every experience is a relation between a part and whole..." and "the mind creates the world we live in by organizing it". When we see something on the screen, we immediately provide it with order, we subconsciously place it somewhere in our reality based on our experiences in life. In my belief, we do this primarily for an evolutionary purpose - as individual animals we need to keep a firm grasp on reality in order to survive. But does such order exist? Is this a 'sick need'?

2- A film's reality can be different from expected reality.

Just because a filmmaker honors reality's rules, doesn't mean he is bound by them. In fact, perhaps Balazs would argue that changing reality (to an extent) is precisely what films should aim towards, as merely recreating reality is not art. By doing this, I also try to follow Arnheim's injunction of keeping the medium alive. As viewers, we know that what we see can only be seen through a camera.

Oh, and this is my first film, and editing was tough, tiring work! I needed to do a better job on the audio mixing, though, because it appears that some lines are not clearly audible over the music.