Glen's Experimental Film Blog

In my recent viewing of experimental films I came across Stan Brakhage’s Window Water Baby Moving. I found this film to be enthralling due to the obviously deep personal connection the director had with the film, showing his heavily pregnant wife and the simplicity of its content. The film very much felt like I was watching a touching private moment rather than a film. I now wonder if I could inject some kind of sentimentality into my own work, and while I currently have nothing planned in a similar vein, I will continue to weigh up my options and may be influenced by this film in the future.

In my investigation into experimental film I felt that I had narrowed my scope by looking at artists from around the same time period of the early 20th century. To combat this I wanted to look for something technologically daring from later in the development of film as a creative medium. This is when I discovered Manfred Mohr, one of the very first film makers that experimented with computer generated film. One of his earliest films, Square Roots, stood out to me in particular as it presents the technological cutting edge he was working with while still being early in his personal development as an artist. Mohr states that he created this film by programming it into a FORTRAN IV and run on a CDC 6400 computer before using a DATAGRAPHIX 4460 microfilm camera to render the data onto a roll of 16mm film. Mohr himself was not happy with the film as he felt it was too narrative in structure and began producing more abstract works in response, I however felt that the film was dazzling. I am uncertain of my ability to achieve something as technically daring as this must have been at the time, but I may have to consider using new technology in the future when I am more comfortable with experimental filmmaking.

While Come and see is by no means an experimental film as it has a clear narrative focus, there is one scene in particular that I would like to emulate within my film. In the climax of Come and see there is a montage of Adolf Hitler’s life played in reverse intercut with a violent outburst from our main character who only halts his outburst when we see a picture of Hitler as a baby. I think a similar montage may work within my own film as seeing pictures throughout my life may show my existentialist message that experiences and outlook rather than appearances are the true makings of a person.

In my research on experimental film I watched Man Ray’s Emak-Bakia and felt that mania of the techniques employed would work well with my concept for my own film. Man Ray’s usage of a partial narrative reflects what I want to achieve with my own film as I also want to present an identifiable through line that can help connect and give meaning to the at times confusing images I am wanting to present. I found the usage of double exposure very visually interesting in this film and should I choose to shoot my piece on physical film rather than digital I may experiment with this technique.

While researching experimental filmmaking I viewed the Len Lye animation Tusalava and found it had quite an impact on me. I was dazzled by the animation and found myself wondering how certain visual effects were achieved at such an early stage in the development of film as an expressive medium. I also felt that the film was a working example of exactly what I am trying to achieve within my own film. Looking at Len Lye on a purely visual stance, it would be impossible to grasp his strong attraction to indigenous Pacific cultures and as a result his image does not provide an accurate assessment of him as a person. This film has made me want to incorporate some form of animation or stop-motion into my own experimental piece.

Above is a still from Silent Hill 2. I find this so visually striking as the ambiguity within the image regarding the subjects expression leaves his motives, mindset and emotion leaves it completely up to viewer interpretation. The face of our subject may be hidden, but our trigue is drawn to less surface level characteristics than simply his appearance. In my experimental film I want to examine ways to break down the audience’s view of a face as representative of a person and bring more attention to theactual person within the film

This blog is to be tied to my practice within the Experimental Film Module I am currently studying. It will act as an insight into my creative process and a way to track my reaction to experimental films I have watched throughout my time working on my own film. While I have several themes and techniques I would like to experiment with for the final film I will aim to cut these down as time goes on to gain a clear focus of what I want to present as the finished article. By the next post I intend to at least have decided on the theme that ,y film will be examining but I will have to consume more films to gain a clear understanding of the techniques that have resonated with me during my study.