Look on the Call of Cthulhu DVD and you'll find a pdf file of a newspaper prop used in the film sitting there right next to the VOB files. The creators of the film are proud of the research they did to ensure the historical accuracy of this prop (above). The director even designed the historically accurate fonts! [download] Compare this to the noise film notebook designs that have no historical reference and are highly stylized. The difference between the two got me thinking.
I sometimes suspect that traditional film interpretation is unwittingly based on the old discrimination between primary and secondary qualities. I got this idea from the media blitz surrounding James Cameron's Titanic. There was a lot written about how Cameron was a stickler for accuracy in representing ship life and the vessel itself. It's almost as if Cameron wanted to ensure that the primary qualities of the vessel were correct. Then upon this framework, he used secondary qualities such as lighting (e.g., cinematography) to help tell the story.
Feature 1 Transforming primary and other qualities
One of the features of the film approach I am trying to describe is that there is not this strong emphasis on using only secondary qualities for expressive purposes. Instead, the filmmaker/artist considers transforming the "primary qualities" themselves. So the very design of the sets themselves might be altered to suit the film. The expressionistic Caligari, of course, is the perfect example. But let's think about noise film which is shot within conventional rooms. Is there any sense in which the "primary qualities" are altered? Yes— consider some of my recent experiments with post-production. It's very likely that one of the spinner shots will be slightly rearranged in post, shifted to the side with a light bulb added at the left side. Here, post-production enables us to transform the set for expressive reasons.
Feature 2 Performance orientation
I think one of the main problems with many artist-films is their misunderstanding about what it means to perform. It is almost as if visual artists tend to create films that function like landscapes. A landscape painting might be engaging to look at. But it holds interest on screen for just a few moments and it won't carry a film. I think that is the problem of both Heaven's Gate and Mirror Mask. Both of these films are beautiful but because they function as cinematic landscapes, there is not enough to sustain intereset.
I stumbled upon this idea about "carrying a production" when I worked on Shim Ch'ong, the multimedia theater piece for which I did video projections. I remember thinking it was easy to do the projections since they were mostly backgrounds or added visual and thematic layering. For the most part, the projections were simply supporting players. However, there was one brief segment where a cell phone appeared to interrupt the performance. And during this 30 seconds, my projection had to help carry the production. So I intuitively treated that segment differently using video, sync sound, motion, etc. The distinction between carrying and not carrying the piece was really intriguing to me. It made me realize that visual artists are trained to carry the entirety of an aesthetic experience in a certain way. This leads to two caveats. First, visual artistry need not always carry the film. Sometimes, just sometimes, you might want to consider using the actors. Second, typical visual arts engagement is not the same as a performance. Sure Imaginary Forces makes great titles, but try watching their work over and over like I do in class. Beautiful stuff, but those titles seem to go on forever; narratively, they simply put the film on the shelf for a few minutes.
Feature 3 Shifting performance
A third feature of our film approach is that the location of the performance shifts. In a traditional film, it's the actors that carry the film. What I'm trying to do is to have different media/characters carry the film at different times. Sometimes it's Ben. Sometimes it's the audio. The shrine, as a character, carries the film for a short amount of screen time as does the spinner. As we progress through the film, more and more of the film is carried through the art-media, resolving in the final codex video exposition. The codex video is like Hercules Poirot summing up the loose plot ends in an Agatha Christie book. Probably this is why Ben feels like I'm never asking him to act. It's because he doesn't have to carry the film by himself; a lot of times, it's the other characters' turn.
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