“I…I feel it slipping…” (A Story of my Past and Future).

Many, many, years ago I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder. This was during my teenage years, and for the most part it seemed we had things under control, I was very confident in myself, brash at times… but during that time I never lost sight of doing what I wanted to do, which was to make film. After High School, in the Summer, I went to the New York Film Academy and truly shined, with many people thinking I made some of the best cinema of the class that Summer year. That was the final flash of hope I could recall in what would become a battle that would last a decade, (and truly for the rest of my life), with Bipolar I/Schizoaffective.

During this decade I can only utter little words as insights, it felt as if my memories became little bubbles of information during this time, nothing whole or linear:

A drive down to see a doctor in oxnard, sometimes daily and surly weekly. Dreams which I didn’t want to wake up from, nor could I either, sleeping away my life. Cutting open my face with a comb, finally entering a mental hospital. Feeling anxious that I was going to lose everyone. Entering the mental hospital again…

… and then, by some miracle, it seemed I snapped into some sort of mentality where I thought I had to work harder to stay healthy. So I opened up to my doctors more, they found a medication that works for me. I created structure for myself, and for my doctors to look carefully into to keep me on the right track. I quit smoking, meanwhile lost 40 pounds in the process due to picking up exercise, I even got of my diabetic insulin as a result. From now on I wanted to win, but the battle I fought had a reality to it…

…This last month I went into a mania, there is no need to describe all the gory details that resulted from it, but something interesting occurred during the exiting of it all…

…When I quit smoking, lost weight, and got off insulin, I noticed my confidence didn’t return to me, even though I thought I had Bipolar I/Schizoaffective beat at the time as well. Sadly, that last issue is not going away, but unlike before, when I had this most recent trouble, I never lost sense of myself. I instead knew something was wrong and did something about it. So I called my doctor everyday if I had to, and beat this issue into the ground on the home front, not even having to go to the hospital again. Suddenly, in realizing this, and with a bit more medication adjustments, the person who I thought I lost a long time ago had returned… Full Force!

Now that I’m back, I have a lot of catching up to do, and part of that is not just making film theories/experiments/ideas I “HOPE” to film one day. No, now I actually can make my hopes and dreams a reality. I used to be so afraid of falling on my ass or failing that I didn’t even try at times, mainly because I felt then, that film was my only hope. It was the only thing I could cling on to during my “Blurred Decade”, that if I tried then and failed, I wouldn’t even like to see the result of what might partake after. I couldn’t handle the film or myself as a result. But now that I’m on more stable ground, I feel I have the liberty to fail and the liberty to try again. Because ultimately what I am after IS “Film Science/Film Experimentation”, and I will fail, many times, but with the confidence in who I am now, I am actually able to pick myself up.

…I, for the first time in many years, see a future… and it’s a future worth fighting for!

The “Multi-Film” Experiment.

A sequence using dialectical montage operates as such:

Sequence = Thesis + Anti-Thesis = Synthesis/New Thesis

But what if we play with this sequence, remove the Anti-Thesis from the equation and create some mystery to the sequence so that  sequence equates to this:

Sequence = Thesis + “X” =Synthesis/New Thesis

So take this in terms of a written scenario:

“A man is walking down the street, when someone from a passing alley mugs and murders this individual, this man falls to his death and the culprit runs away.”

(Note the written format: 1,2,1). Now take out (2):

“A man is walking down the street, this man falls to his death (someone either criminal? or spectator?) runs away.”

By taking out actions in film and having reactions being the point of all action, it leads to the beginnings of the audience having multiple interpretations of a single film… but this is only “part” of a bigger equation to solve. To truly create the “Multi-Film” one must push the use of intercutting to the extreme. So:

Sequence 1 = Interpretation on Sequence, which leads to a possible Sequence 2 & 3.

Interpretations on 2 & 3, intercutted, lead to possible Sequence 4 & 5 & 6 & 7.

Interpretations on 4 & 5 & 6 & 7, intercutted, lead to possible Sequence 8 & 9 & 10 & 11 & 12 & 13 & 14 & 15…

…and continue on this process as long as it can sustain itself.

I believe this is a possible way to achieve this type of film. Though I’ll have to experiment with it…

Beyond the Outer Limits of Restricted and Omniscient Narration.

Let’s define “Restricted” and “Omniscient” Narration:

“Restricted Narration” in film occurs when the film itself is filtered through the eyes of a character.

“Omniscient Narration” in film has the aesthetics of many characters and/or no characters but an “auteur’s” vision.

These narratives have been mixed, Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest is an example, but the “mix” comes in “Narrative Gear Shifts” from 1) Restricted, then to 2) to Omniscient, then back to 1) Restricted, etc. What I’m proposing is developing a “Third Narrative Gear” whereby the spectator experiences both narratives simultaneously.  But how is this achieved?

The answer is in the division of “Visual” and “Audio” tracks. Or [V+A].

Say for example we are “Visually” experiencing a “Omniscient Narrative”, [V]. What we juxtapose it with is a “Restricted Narrative” auditory track, separated, but still relevant to the “Visual Track”, or [A]. The results are something uniquely cinematic. We may be “Visually Experiencing” a world through no ones eyes, but out ears tell us something entirely different, that of the mind of a character, perhaps in the visual world of the film, or perhaps outside of it entirely. Of course, this idea is not wholly “new” there is of course “The God’s Perspective” seen in many documentary films, but I think it should be adapted more in the realms of fiction.

The key here, is that since cinema works with both visual and auditory tracks, I think the art of it, what makes it cinema unique, lies mostly in it’s division of “perceptions”, rather than it’s symbiosis. Or perhaps something that exists in flux…

“The Multi-Film”.

A Premise

 

The image above, taken at glance, can be interpreted two ways. We can see a Young Woman in her prime, or an Old Lady past it. But the image above provides a unique premise if we look past what we take at initial value and more in a perspective of the “possibilities” of “how” we can perceive. Is it so that given the right circumstances of illustration and set up that a film’s very mise-en-scene can provide such a multiple perspective? I believe it can be done. Is it also so that given the right circumstances of editing that the very edit itself can also provide multiple interpretations, as with the mise-en-scene? To this too, I say I believe it can be done. But what would be the resulting film if conceived correctly? Imagine this if you will: You’ll watch a film which can be interpreted as an action film, a drama, a romance, a comedy, a combination of all or some, or something mutually exclusive. It would all depend on how the viewer chooses the view the film. One person may say, “It was a romantic comedy”, while another person getting out of it at the same time would say, “It was a action-packed suspense film”. And these very same people, maybe viewing it again on a later date, would change their opinions entirely. This is what I call, “The Multi-Film”, because it is an chameleon, it changes as the viewers perspective changes.

The “Dot and Line” Film.

Imagine this if you will. Say you have ten random shots or sequences, that when added together one way produces a singular film of a singular meaning or impact; but when added together another way the entire definition of it changes and it is wholly different from the singular film before, with entirely different meanings or impacts. So at once, added together this film could be a romance, in the next, a comedy, in the next, an action film. How can this be done? The idea came to me over the course of plotting down dotted points on a piece of paper, and at glance, it became apparent one could create a multiple amount of interpretations drawing a line from one point to the next. Think of these “dotted points” as shots/sequences, the “lines” between them are their editing values that could produce a multitude of films from the “dots” plotted down before you. What needs to happen, in order for this to work, is for the filmmaker to give each “dot” slack, then tighten the “line” in the editing process. As I feel an experiment doesn’t work unless people are able to “understand” and more importantly “feel” the work.

The Element of Fire, (Fire Montage).

I wanted to express the concept of fire, the nature of it, through editing principals. Much of which I realized through the work of Stan Brakhage. In it, the image doesn’t take much precedent, but rather the editing concepts which take a firmer forefront. The mise-en-scene provides an image for a 1/10 a second, and the editing, dissolves, link these images together with more influence than it’s mise-en-scene counterpart. The results of which become a “Fire Montage”, because the images, (cropped from a single fire image), edited together this way give the viewer an illusion of “Fire” when there isn’t any “Fire” to speak of being filmed.

In this realization, I’ve begun to think that perhaps that many concepts can be edited this way, and that perhaps this “Illusion of Fire” is one step in a much larger direction. That perhaps all a film can be, or consist of, is a series of cinematic illusions giving the impression that you are seeing what you are seeing, when in fact you are not seeing what your eyes are perceiving at all. It’s just an illusion of optics through the use of cinematic principals.

Understanding How to Write the Cinematic Language.

I’ve been contemplating how to go about how to write the “Cinematic Language” for some time, and it seems to boil down to a few principals.

I want to work with two elements that stand out the most:

The Mise-en-Scene, what this is, in it’s very essence, is a Manipulation of Visual Spatial Time Frame. What I mean by this, is say you are given a Visual Variable, let’s call it “x”. This “x” is given a spatial time value, say “x” is 2 minutes long, (or I should say 2880 frames, because 24 frames per second times 120 seconds equals 2880). It could translate to something which is x(2880), (2880 because frame rate can illustrate grander points down the road, you’ll see why.)

The Edit, what this is, in it’s very essence, is the Manipulation between Visual Spatial Time Frames. What I mean by this is the singular act of cutting between Visual Variable “x” and Visual Variable “y”.  There are a multitude of ways to edit, but it remains that the edit itself is cinema’s equivalent of “cutting between time”.

So how does this work in combination? Let’s take a “loose” example of a scene from the Abel Gance’s La Roue:

In La Roue, there the a sequence at which there is a juxtaposition between “Visual Variables”, the length of these “Visual Variables”, and the cuts, their manipulations, between them. So here’s how it works, let’s just use three “Visual Variables”:

“x”=2880

“y”=2880

“z”=2880

This is added (+) to a new “Visual Variable Sequence”:

“x”=1440

“y”=1440

“z”=1440

This is added (+), yet again, to a new “Visual Variable Sequence”:

“x”=720

“y”=720

“z”=720

This is added (+), yet again, to a new “Visual Variable Sequence”:

“x”=360

“y”=360

“z”=360

This is added (+), yet again, to a new “Visual Variable Sequence”:

“x”=180

“y”=180

“z”=180

Etc.

The point in illustrating this concept is say for example, (like this one in La Roue), there is a train about to speed out of control. The Manipulation of Visual Spatial Time, lies not only in the Mise-en-Scene, but the Edited Manipulation between these time frames. So This “Visual Variable Sequence” provided starts out relatively calm, then crescendos to a heightened climax based on the film’s Mise-en-Scene duration value, and Editing values.

I now pose a question, what do you think this sequence would look like in it’s inverse?

“The Slingshot Principal”

In the film “Band of Outsiders” a teacher writes on the board. Classical = Modern. To understand this principal in anything, classical ideas are melded and formed into more contemporary ones which then become modern. Now the question then becomes almost like a sling shot in time and evolution. If we go back say a decade, (represented as D), or a century, (represented as C), or a millennium, (represented as M), and apply classical principals to these modern the outcome becomes this:

D Classical=D Modern
C Classical=C Modern
M Classical=M Modern

D having the least impact on art, and M having the most. Through the Scientific Method in which I’m studying at the moment, I’m eager to test this hypothesis.

Alternatives to “The Rashomon Effect Dilemma”.

The matter is an alternative idea to the Rashomon Effect, should we create an objectivity from a subjectivity? If so, we work with variables:

y+z=a

Formula’s “y+z” utilizes juxtapositions in shots and/or sequences the result “a”, taken by itself, is subjective.

However, when juxtaposed to this formula:

c+b=a

Formula’s “c+b” utilizes juxtapositions in shots and/or sequences the result “a”, taken by itself, is subjective.

But we now have to key things at our disposal two “a’s” that resulted from different variables.

When we contrast these “a’s” they equal one thing.

A=A, we’ve created a objective understanding of our subjective understanding.

Math wise, plug in some numbers into the equation to see if it fits:

3+12=15
which could also mean:
7+8=15
different numbers but the results stand that:
15=15

Next is to write in scenarios instead of numbers into the variables. I will be very interested in discovering its aftermath.

Relativity and Quantum Mechanics: Or Realism and Formalism

Much like Relativity and Quantum Mechanics working in empirical models of evidence, and while they do not directly contradict one another theoretically, they are in fact resistant to cohesive models; such could be said the same for Cinematic Realism and Formalism.

Let’s think of it this way:

Relativity/Realism: Relativity deals with the bigger models of the universe where things stabilize, think of this as Cinematic Realism whereby the mise-en-scene provides stability to the image. Use of long takes and deep focus provide this stability. In theory, this modus operandi of film making works in many cinematic models of evidence. Yet we have another form of film style to explore.

Quantum Mechanics/Formalism: Quantum Mechanics deals with the smaller levels of the universe, and in these lower levels of the universe, things begin to destabilize. Time for example, can not only go forward, but backward, all at the same time. Think of it’s allegory equivalent in film to be that of Cinematic Formalism. In Formalism, the mise-en-scene becomes irrelevant, where meaning derives is solely the edit. This theory, too, provides a working modus operandi and can be seen in many cinematic models.

The Conflict:

Much like the conflict between Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, Cinematic Realism and Cinematic Formalism are on two ends of the spectrum in which both have merit, but are resistant to cohesive models of construction. What then is the answer to this problem. As I write this, I regret to say I have none, but I do have some idea. I feel it is important to understand mathematics to create a new language for cinema. One which will hopefully bridge these ends together and form a synthesis which will hopefully expand a new type of cinema.