Re: cliches

From: Santiago Vernetti (email suppressed)
Date: Wed Jul 23 2008 - 23:37:54 PDT


Sure,

but doesn't cliche suggest a moment so familiar and attached to particular
meaning that it reveals itself, its intentions, its craftedness? I'm not
arguing that cliche subjects can't be revitalized in form and meaning, but
there might be something to the cliche that separetes it from the
"grammatical."

We begin on a shot of an alarm clock a minute before the hour, it buzzes and
a hand smashes upon it.

I would certainy include the above scene in the cliche bin of
student filmmaking, and it's certainly often used (during my last four years
as an undergrad at Ithaca College I have seen that shot at least a dozen
times). The scene is a phrase, part of a language we have come to learn.
The cliche sets the anticipation of a hand just outside the frame, and in
that anticipation is the potential for subversion. But that potential, like
any, can be spent in endless parody and the subversion itself can also
become cliche. Or, the cliche is to be "subverted" by another already
established cliche.

A piano is raised by pully serveral stories high on a busy city street.
The rope snaps and the piano heads straight for the character! It misses
and the piano crashes to the ground, the character regains his
composure only to be the victim of a flower pot that smashes over his head,
leaving soil and flower intact.

It's a difficult dance to avoid, the dealing in and "subversion" of cliche.
But when it is avoided, and we are asked to learn seeing again, well, that's
something wonderful.

"...the rose is a symbolic figure so rich in meanings that by now it hardly
has any meaning left"
~Eco

(maybe)
~Santi

On Wed, Jul 23, 2008 at 9:28 PM, Brook Hinton <email suppressed> wrote:

> Yes!
>
> > Yes, and number of the other "student film cliches" can be found in great
> > films by Stan Brakhage.
> >
> > The larger point is that ANY subject can be beautifully and meaningfully
> > used in a film. It all depends on the context and the form.
> >
> > As Gertrude Strein said of her "Rose is a rose is a rose" line, "I think
> > that in that line the rose is red for the first time in English poetry
> for a
> > hundred years."
> >
> > Fred Camper
> > Chicago
> >
> >
> > __________________________________________________________________
> > For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.
> >
>
>
>
> --
> _______________________________________________________
> Brook Hinton
> film/video/audio art
> www.brookhinton.com
> studio vlog/blog: www.brookhinton.com/temporalab
>
>
> __________________________________________________________________
> For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.
>

-- 
www.perpetualmotionjellyjam.com
"I sometimes think that good readers are poets as singular, and as awesome,
as great authors themselves." ~ J.L.B tr A.H.
__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.