Week 3 – Representing Reality

Monday was a bank holiday so this week started with another editing assessment. Here we were given the whole day in which to cut together a rough edit of the other groups film from last term. So I was working on Melissa’s Mail and I quite enjoyed the experience. Editing is perhaps the most instantly gratifying form of storytelling and perhaps the most crucial one in the whole filmmaking process.

Paradise Now was quite a surprise. The characters and plot were interesting and engaging and overall I thought it was a well-written, well-executed film. It was not particularly entertaining and I found the subject matter a little hard to relate to but it did get me thinking about the representation of real-life situations. As Andy has often said, film is not reality. It is fiction, or, as Robert McKee puts it “Story is metaphor for life”. So when we start shaping a story around real people, or a real place, or real situations we have to say more than just the facts, or it wouldn’t be a story. We have to comment on the facts, give emotional significance to the facts, in order to make a point. However the audience isn’t necessarily aware that they are being influenced in this way and therefore representation is very important. We can of course take it too far so that we lose all sense of story. Ridley Scott’s film Kingdom of Heaven, I think, had this problem. It makes such a supreme effort to remain faithful to the facts but keep the representation of the Christians and the Saracens completely neutral that it ended up making absolutely no point at all. I would say the safest method is simply to avoid setting the story in the real world. This doesn’t necessarily mean setting it in a fantasy land or far-away galaxy but rather in a hyper-realism or a copy of our world where life can be commented on freely. There are some great stories that say something about real life without having to be set in the real world; the ultimate, and my favourite, would have to be the Narnia series.

On Wednesday afternoon we had a chat from Michelle Cotter from FilmG telling us about the competition this year. I am definitely planning to enter, with more than one film if I can. Last year it was just a bit of fun and now all of a sudden it seems all big and serious… maybe it’s just Adam’s influence!

We finished our look at representation on Thursday morning with Andy, discussing how Muslims are represented, then had another Mobile and Web-based Content class with Adam in the afternoon. We are now coming up with ideas for a web drama; as well as premises for Richard, Corrie ideas for Kim and Gaelic ideas for FilmG… I feel a touch creatively drained!

On Friday morning we watched two documentaries, the first being Left of Frame. This was an interesting and informative look at the political power of television to finish up from the previous session. The second was about the history of Channel Four which I was not entirely prepared for and which depressed me quite significantly. I had not realised just how distasteful some of its programmes were and how lawlessly, even childishly, this channel had acted. It may have done a lot to provide competition and alternative programming (and I do enjoy a bit of Father Ted!) but in my opinion it is an example of television as little more than “wires and lights in a box”.

Lastly I had a brief tutorial with Abigail where we discussed my scene breakdown and strip board. All seemed well and I was able to stuff another awesome week of learning into my pocket of experience.