Experimental Narrative

Last Year in Marianbad, from what I was able to gather, is about a guy remembering his time at a hotel with a woman who doesn't remember it. There's another guy there too and he likes to play this game where you pick up objects that are arranged in a triangle. The first guy keeps telling his story over and over again. Sometimes he adds new details but usually he just slowly repeats himself. Despite repeating himself his story keeps changing and very few of the details remain consistent. At one point he claims he shot the woman which is strange because it's her to whom he is telling the story. Seems like a bit of a plot hole in his narrative. Speaking of holes in narrative, this movie is a sieve. Trying to find a narrative in this movie is like trying to carry water in a bucket of straw. The convoluted story barely has time to get out a plot point before it has doubled back on itself or taken a wandering tangent through the corridors of the giant mansion or hotel or palace ...

I recently watched the film Solaris ( Andrei Tarkovsky  1972) I didn't originally intend to make a blog post about it but after watching it I felt it fit the theme of experimental narrative too well not to talk about it here. The film presents itself as a sci-fi. It takes place mostly on a scientific station orbiting the planet Solaris. The people stationed on the station to study the planet have sent strange reports to earth and seem to have grown mentally unstable. Upon arriving at the station, Kris Kelvin discovers that one of the scientists is dead and the other two are not very helpful when questioned. Kris Kelvin finds his long dead ex-wife on the station and must emotionally contend with her, himself, the scientists, and his mission, none of which he is particularly effective at. The pacing throughout the film is slow and very little of what happens is expounded upon directly. The film regularly switches between black and white and color without any apparent reasoning y...

Hungry Ghost Did this last minute in one night. A ghost wants some guy's pasta. Why does the ghost want pasta? It's anybody's guess.

The first thing I would think about when creating an experimental narrative is chronology. Or perhaps that’s getting ahead of myself. The first thing you should think about when making anything is why you are making it in this way or that way. There must be justification behind your stylization. Assuming you’ve already done that and have decided that yes, you have a story that is best told as an experimental narrative, the first thing I would think about is the chronology. Shifting around the chronology of scenes can’t be done at random. It must have a reason behind it. Every scene should be considered in relation to the story as a whole. If the viewer is seeing the scenes in a non chronological order, the story needs to develop in a rational arc despite the scenes being out of order. The story is revealed to the audience in a different order than to the characters in the film and this must be taken into account. The premise of the characters on screen knowing things that the audience...

I had only seen one David Lynch film before watching Mulholland Drive. I'm glad I at least had watched one to prepare myself for watching this film. I'm not a fan of Lynch's style. Even the most mundane things become a nightmare scape in his films. You can never be sure what is supposed to be real and what is a dream or hallucination. How many characters are there in this film? Are some characters in fact the same person split into different aspects of their personality? What must happen, or more likely fail to happen, in these characters' heads for them to do what they do. Why was a monster looking thing hiding behind the Winkies? What happened to that plot line? Will it come back before the end of the movie? The film leaves me with more questions than answers but to be completely honest I don't want to know the answers to most of the questions Mulholland Drive wants us to ask. I don't need to know everything, you know. I can be content to let the characters o...

Link This version of my screen test leaves out the music in favor of snippets of dialogue. I never meant to use audio for this video so the quality is not superb. My direction for this piece was meant to be indirect. I was looking for subtle emotions and expressions. I am not sure whether or not they can be seen more easily with their context. I am afraid that what you gain with context you lose as your attention is decided between what you are hearing and seeing whereas without the dialogue you only have visuals to analyze so you look more closely. I will leave that up to the viewer, however.

Link In this screen-test my goal was to capture genuine emotions during a conversation. I also wanted to practice lighting techniques. I excluded shots from the final video because I was unsatisfied with the lighting. Since my goal was genuine emotion and I was using a non-actor I gave her no prompt or direction, choosing instead to film for a long enough time to make her comfortable in front of the camera and simply have a conversation.