A reoccurring question of this class has been, “why study film theory?” Although the easy answer is, “because it’s a requirement,” the harder answer may have been answered for me by making this film.
I went into the editing room with the intention of disproving a majority of the theories we’ve studied. I planned to refute Munsterberg and Arnheim by making a work that needed normal diegetic sound that match the action. I planned to challenge Eisenstein by using long takes to convey emotion and having one shot be able to communicate meaning without being juxtaposed by another. I planned to disagree with Balazs by having every shot be “as real” as possible without any kind of distortion.
I “planned” this instead of “did it” because the plan I had in my head for this film ended up being a total disaster when I actually started editing it together. I took the same footage with which I intended to disprove our theorists and instead, supported them.
I began by chopping up the long shots for Eisenstein. I moved sound from its original visuals (the visuals I ended up taking out altogether) and repeated it by using it in different ways for Arnheim. I distorted reality by moving this sound as well as put images on top of others and played with color to make clear this was not a true reproduction to agree with Balazs idea of “cinematic world” and the fact that film cannot grasp reality. In his words, to “de-familiarize the world with techniques but still be able to recognize it.” Almost all of the footage or audio was recorded pre-this assignment which only proves the importance of editing which we’ve touched upon many times.
For those who have ever seen any other videos I’ve made, you’ll know this is nothing like the rest. I’m a strong believer in dialogue and narration being the dominant communicator. This is why this film surprised me. What I thought would be much more difficult, wasn’t and actually worked out (in my opinon) much better than if I had tried to convey the same social drama by using dialogue, actors, etc which would probably seem overdramatic, and rely too much on acting (which many of us know if not too easy to find in Nashville.)
Although it may seem so, nothing in this film is completely random. In regards to the notion that we create meaning when we watch a film, I wonder if the meanings I intended are the ones that you create.
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