From: James Kreul (email suppressed)
Date: Sun Oct 16 2005 - 10:48:19 PDT
On 10/16/05 11:01 AM, "Sam Wells" <email suppressed> wrote:
> Somehow the hand made "ray o grams" don't seem "slick" to me -
> elaborate in a way but not slick. Maybe it's tempting to think this
> being the results are 35mm scope ?
I think the scale of 35mm scope has something to do with it. But there's
also a lack of "messiness" that I associate with some cameraless films; with
Outer Space I get a sense of precision. I don't mean that as an insult to
cameraless films, often the energy comes from that kind of messiness. With
that lack of messiness, Outer Space has a different kind of energy.
Looking at a bit of L'Arrive, as a point of comparison, even just the
opening of L'Arrive is a bit messier than the other two films in the
trilogy, in terms of frame registration, image grain, and so forth.
>> It seems to have a much more simple pattern of repetition and
>> variation leading
>> into the eventual first breakdown of the image, a regroup, and another
>> breakdown.
> ...this I think might almost be worth considering as a model for how
> narrative in cinema can operate !
Right, good point. But I'm not sure if we have the same kind of cause and
effect relationship in Outer Space that narratives call for. Outer Space
may have three acts, but that doesn't mean it has Three Act Structure.
> The tension it seems to me does hinge on narrative expectations in the
> Perils Of Pauline sense, but the tracks and locomotive are inevitably
> the strips of "celluloid" itself.
Right. And to get back to Jennifer's point about the simplified context
leading to another "woman in danger," I think the Perils of Pauline analogy
is also significant. Just because I'm arguing the film is organized by
graphic principles does not remove the significance of the images themselves
(hopefully it did not seem like I was saying that in the last post). But
even a discussion of the woman's character needs to be a bit more nuanced
than "woman in danger" if we want to go down that road. She is far more
aggressive in the second wave of action, for example, so I personally don't
read her as a passive victim. Does her aggression in the second half
outweigh the "woman in danger" imagery in the first half? Maybe, maybe not.
James Kreul
UNC-Wilmington
email suppressed
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