500 Day of Summer

Circular narrative -  The film opens with the two main characters, being Summer and Tom sat on a bench over looking the city. This scene is the same scene that is shown at the en of the film, so the story loops back round full circle within 95 minutes, ending at the same point it started.

The film starts on day 488, then goes back to day 1, by the time the film ends  it loops back round to day 488, where the film started.

The film jumps from day to day throughout but I noticed that the days didn't go in order, they sometimes jumped like 200 days and then went back nearly the same amount in the next scene, there was no consistency. I noticed that it tended to jump from happy to sad quite often though.

The story tells us of how the two of them met, the happiness and the heartbreak that happens. I really like the way the film is put together. It has kept me interested and drawn in every time I have watched it. The way it jumps days keeps you interested and you want to know what has happened previously (as it has jumped a certain amount of days) to see how they have come to the point you are seeing. Its like seeing the future before the past or present.

Inception

Inception has a circular narrative where the first scene in the film starts the story off - being a dream and then by the end of the film you see the same scene again where it is again a dream only this time its more explanatory.

After watching inception I was just as confused as I was at the beginning, the film is so so deep with loads of different layers. It's a dream within a dream within a dream, and I was never really 100% sure what was happening and it something was in fact reality or just a dream.


Maroon 5 - Payphone music video

The music video for pay phone by maroon 5 has a circular narrative, the video starts with the lead singer and main character in the video (Adam Levine) stood in a payphone in the middle of no where, a story is then told about how he got to that payphone and the events that took place to bring him there, the video then goes full circle and ends at that same payphone where the video started.

Eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind

This film has a pretty strange concept. Its constantly jumping from present day to the past, it actually confused me a little bit at some points as I was too sure what time period I was watching, but at the end of the film everything came together and made complete sense. This film has a circular narrative and it starts at the same point we wind up at seeing at the end of the film.

Gregory Crewsdon 

Gregory Crewsdon's photographs  always tell a story to the viewer, his photographs are made with the intention of keeping the viewer interested and asking questions as to what is actually happening, he wants to grab their attention and keep it, as all his images have a story to tell.

"I have been interested in taking that limitation and trying to find the strength in it - like a story that is forever frozen in between moments, before and after always left as a kind of unresolved question." -  Gregory Crewsdon (Art Photography Now, Susan Bright).

Crewsdon takes areas around the city and makes them places of strange, bizarre and sometimes unexplainable happenings. His intention is to show the odd things that you would think about happening as it starts to go dark - twilight. Us as the viewers of his photographs are made to feel a bit shocked about what is happening within his photographs.

"It is as if the lid has been lifted to expose the fantasies and anxieties of those living there" - Art Photographs Now, Susan Bright.

Bright wrote that Crewsdon is seen as 'The sinister and seething underbelly of suburbia' for artists.

"I'm very interested in the uncanny and a way of looking terrible within everyday life" -  Gregory Crewsdon.

"lights are being rigged, props are being positioned and actors are taking their places. It looks like a movie, sounds like a movie and smells like a movie, but it isn't. All of this activity is to make a single photograph, by Gregory Crewdson"- http://www.bbc.co.uk/photography/genius/gallery/crewdson.shtml

His images take a lot of planning and setting up, nothing happens quickly and lots of time has been taken to make sure everything is correct before he captures the images he needs. Even after the photographs have been taken Crewsdon still has work to do through post production, simply to ensure that everything is perfect and the message he wants the viewer to see is visible.

Circular narrative

One of the two assignments within this module is on circular narrative, for this assignment I have been given and image of an exit sigh, which is shown below -

I have to use this image at both the first and last image' within my circular narrative sequence. At this moment in time I am not entirely sure what my intentions are, I have a few ideas but nothing solid enough to work with yet.

I feel that doing some more research will help influence my decisions at this point, helping me gain a bit more direction with what I want my narrative to be about.

Circular narrative -

Above is an example of circular narrative within a comic strip that I came across, it starts and ends with the same scene, the first scene shows the situation that the character is in, with the next seven scenes showing how he has come to be in that situation, and then the final scene goes back and creates that link for the circular narrative. This is somewhat like what I want to do, but like I said above I'm still not too sure how to go about it.

Here is another example of circular narrative, however it is one where it is just a continuous cycle and no images are the same;

but the cycle is forever continuous and once it ends, it just starts over again with the writing the letter, posting the letter, receiving and opening it.


"Popular cinema of the ’90s saw some radical and fascinating experiments with conventional notions of narrative time and logic. Beginnings revealed themselves later to be endings; narratives followed circular routes; multiple narrative paths, independent of each other, crossed, entwined, merged and diverged; characters did not develop in any “conventional” way, they appeared then disappeared, dying in one scene and then alive in another." - http://sensesofcinema.com/2000/feature-articles/circular/

Rut Blees Luxemburg

Rut Blees Luxemburg is a photographer whom I really like, last year I emulated her work for an assignment, the concept behind her images is really interesting. Luxemburg captures images of areas around London where she lives in the dead of night, looking for areas/ things that would tend to go unnoticed during the day amongst the everyday hustle and bustle of the city, however in the dead of night they are very apparent and noticeable against their surroundings. The fact that her images have that eerie feeling is really interesting. Luxemburg only light source is from street lights and lights that are on inside buildings in the surrounding area.  

The thing that I like the most about the photographs that Rut Blees Luxemburg takes is the horrible eerie feeling that you are left with. having been so used to always seeing my city, as well as its surrounding areas so busy and full of people, to thinking about and sometimes seeing the city so empty and motionless due to the time of day it is. During the day the streets are bursting with people, but as soon as it hits a certain time, they slowly start to empty.

"Most of Rut Blees Luxemburg’s pictures are night views of enormous buildings and abandoned urban spaces. The city and civilisation are laid bare in their infrastructures, in their nooks and crannies, as if we were backstage in a theatre. No human figures are to be found here, but this is no icy report on today’s inhumanity, either: on the contrary these images are imbued with some vital force, like fragments of dreams where intensely contrasting sensations—fear and desire, madness and rationality—coalesce in an irresistible personal vision.

David Barriet, David Benassayag, Béatrice Didier" - http://www.rencontres-arles.com/A11/C.aspx?VP3=CMS3&VF=ARL_3_VForm&FRM=Frame:ARL_32&LANGSWI=1&LANG=English

Erwin Wurm

Erwin Wurm's work is all about showing peoples darker sides, how we sometimes do totally outrageous and obscured things that you would never ever think about, and he wants to get into as many peoples minds as possible and make them think about that.

“I am interested in how people see themselves compared to the greater world as a whole.” Erwin Wurm.

The four photographs above are from a set titles 'Instructions on How to Be Politically Incorrect'. from my point of view what is happening within these photographs is totally strange and not even something I would ever think about doing, nor have I ever seen. But this is why he captures these photographs. I guess his intention it to grab you and make you think about what you are seeing. Not only is just what is happening within the images that is odd, but it is also the location of them, why would you have your head or arm down another persons trousers in the middle of the street!? why would you have your head down a womens jumper in a restaurant?! I'm totally taken aback with what I am seeing, however at the same time I cant stop looking at them because of the meaning behind them.

David Levinthal

Levinthal is a photographer whom uses vintage Barbie dolls and sports figurines within his images, he makes the come to life by placing them so they act out scenes from graphic novels, war stories and highly charged political moments that have taken place. Some of Levinthal's subjects have included things such as WWII battle scenes, baseball heroes and cultural icons. He reenacted scenes that he remembered from when he was a child and he would watch television and films using these figurines.

Toys are, by definition, objects of play. In the hands of photographer David Levinthal, however, these objects of play play with our objectivity. He turns the innocence of toys upside down, using tiny figurines to create lurid scenes, some of which are vaguely menacing, some of which are painfully touching, some of which are horrific, some of which are deeply disturbing." http://www.davidlevinthal.com/article_ut.html

 
Here is a quote from David Levinthal;

“I first began to work with toys as the subject matter for my artwork in 1972 while I was a graduate student in photography at Yale. Initially I was interested in the toys merely as objects. As I continued working I began to try to re-create the feelings of childhood play by photographing toy soldiers on the floor of my bedroom and using simple painted wood blocks to represent buildings and cities. I quickly found that narrow focus that came from photographing objects less than an inch tall gave the toys more life and a sense of realism that was not inherent in them. Setting up the toy figures is just the beginning. The set itself is just the background. It is a scene. And it is within and from that scene that the images themselves are found.” - http://www.artspace.com/david_levinthal

 

 

Eadweard J Muybridge

Eadweard J Muybridge was known for his motion picture photography, as well as being known for invention the zoopraxiscope which was one of the earlies ways to show motion picture. Muybridge' pieces are made up from sequences, he had numerous images which were placed on a wheel and when the wheel is spun, they look like they are moving hence the term motion picture.

The image here;  

is one that Muybridge is well known for, he wanted to prove that when a horse is galloping all four hooves are off the ground at one time. By putting taking these images and making them into a motion picture he was able to prove that point.

Research

Cindy Sherman

Sherman is a widely recognized and is one other the most influential and important artist within contemporary art. She explored the consturction of identity and the nature of representation and how people are presented, through her images from movies, television and magazines. Sherman was both the model and photographer for her images, she dressed and set the scene portraying the persona of other people.

" To create her photographs, she assumes multiple roles of photographer, model, makeup artist, hairdresser, stylist, and wardrobe mistress. With an arsenal of wigs, costumes, makeup, prosthetics, and props, Sherman has deftly altered her physique and surroundings to create a myriad of intriguing tableaus and characters, from screen siren to clown to aging socialite." - http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1170


"In the “Film Stills,” which you made between 1977 and 1980, you created a cast of women, all played by yourself, who seemed to be playing classic movie roles. How did the series start?
When I moved to New York, in the summer of ’77, I was trying to think of a new way to take pictures and tell a story. David Salle had been working at some sleazy magazine company where they had lots of shots of half-clothed women around, for those photo-novellas, like a cartoon but with photos. Slightly racy. It got me thinking, this cheap, throwaway image—if you just look at one, you make up your own story.
Why use yourself as a model?
I’d been using myself in my work, in costumes and as characters, so it was natural. I took one roll of film, and I had about six different setups of characters that were all supposed to be this one actress at various points in her career. In some she’s meant to look like the ingénue in her first role. In others she’s a little bit more haggard, trying to play a younger part. I purposely developed the film in hotter chemicals to make it crackle because I wanted it to look kind of bad and grainy."  - http://nymag.com/anniversary/40th/culture/45773/

Untitled Film Stills -

"Starting with the game-changing black-and-white “Untitled Film Stills” she created in the late 1970s, Cindy Sherman has shown herself to be the ultimate master of self-morphing, utilizing everything from old-fashioned makeup and prosthetics to digital technology, inventing and portraying extraordinary alter egos and multiple identities that brilliantly reflect our image-saturated culture—and in the process inventing her own genre." - http://www.artnews.com/2012/02/14/the-cindy-sherman-effect/

Sherman used her skills to produce iconic photographs that were like stills from films, she placed herself in the role of another character,  setting the scene to capture an image that shows a previous or present acting experience, even though it may not necessarily be reality.


"In the Untitled Film Stills there are no Cleopatras, no ladies on trains, no women of a certain age. There are, of course, no men. The sixty-nine solitary heroines map a particular constellation of fictional femininity that took hold in postwar America—the period of Sherman's youth, and the ground-zero of our contemporary mythology. In finding a form for her own sensibility, Sherman touched a sensitive nerve in the culture at large."

"Although most of the characters are invented, we sense right away that we already know them. That twinge of instant recognition is what makes the series tick, and it arises from Cindy Sherman's uncanny poise. There is no wink at the viewer, no open irony, no camp. As Warhol said, "She's good enough to be a real actress."  - http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/1997/sherman/

"Modeling in several roles, she reveals gender as an unstable and constructed position, which suggests that there is no innate biological female identity. On the contrary, women adopt several roles and identities depending on their circumstances. Therefore, the roles in the Untitled Film Stills series vary from an immature schoolgirl to an attractive seducer and from a glamour diva to a caring housewife. Importantly, her work encourages self-reflection in the spectator. As Sherman argues, “I’m trying to make other people recognize something of themselves rather than me.”- http://www.webexhibits.org/colorart/sherman.html

Films

All films have a narrative,

Memento
The butterfly effect
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind
500 days of summer
Once upon a time in America
Annie Hall
Kill Bill 1 & 2
Pulp fiction
12 monkeys
The usual suspects
Fight Club

these are the film that were mentioned during a presentation in uni, as research I intend to watch some of these films as well as other films to get a better idea of narrative and how different films have different uses of them.

Barthes codes

 Action code (Proairetic) - is about something that the viewer knows,however they don't quite understand, therefore further explanation is needed for them to fully understand.

" The proairetic code applies to any action that implies a further narrative action. " - http://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/narratology/modules/barthescodes.html

Enigma code  (Hermeneutic) - is when an element of a story is not fully explained to the audience, keeping it hidden from them to keep them asking questions and raising their curiosity. Holding back details in order to create the biggest possible impact when the full meaning is finally revealed.


"The best example may well be the genre of the detective story. The entire narrative of such a story operates primarily by the hermeneutic code. We witness a murder and the rest of the narrative is devoted to determining the questions that are raised by the initial scene of violence. The detective spends the story reading the clues that, only at the end, reconstructs the story of the murder." - http://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/narratology/modules/barthescodes.html

Semantic code - when what is happening is recognized by the audience through connotation, something is implied to the viewer yet hasn't been revealed directly.

"points to any element in a text that suggests a particular, often additional meaning by way of connotation." - http://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/narratology/modules/barthescodes.html

Symbolic code -  is quite similar to the semantic code, however it differs as the symbolic code has a deeper meaning, it symbolizes a concept.

"this is usually done in the use of antithesis, where new meaning arises out of opposing and conflict ideas." - http://www.slideshare.net/alexdabriel/barthes-codes-theory

Cultural code - where we use our everyday basic knowledge about everyday things that occur within the world.

"physical, physiological, medical, psychological, literary, historical, etc." " The "gnomic" code is one of the cultural codes and refers to those cultural codes that are tied to clichés, proverbs, or popular sayings of various sorts." - http://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/narratology/modules/barthescodes.html

Research

Narrative

-  a story or account of events, experiences, or the like, whether true or fictitious.

- a book, literary work, etc., containing such a story.

(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/narrative)

Linear narrative - is used in films and books amongst other sources. It is where events are portrayed and told in chronological order so that everything flows from the beginning of the story to the end, with everything being in the correct order.

Non linear narrative - where the story doesn't flow in order, such as the end of the film being determined before the middle of the film, the story line is mixed up. Partly by allowing the viewer to have their own decision of how it goes, as well as it being a good way for the audience to understand what is going on.

Circular narrative -  this is where the story goes round in a circle, it starts and ends in the same place, taking the viewer on a journey, and beginning them right back to the point where they started.

I also came across this slide show that explains linear and non linear narrative a bit more http://www.slideshare.net/Dreamer89/nonlinear-narrative-5595473

Structure

 Open structure - where you are being left to wonder and come to your own conclusions as to what has happened as the story has been left wide open.

Closed structure - where the structure of the story is definable straight from the start, knowing what direction it is going in. 

Tableau and Tableau Vivant

 Tableau - is a form of narrative that is constructed and shown within one single image.

Tableau Vivant - French for 'living picture'. It is where a group of people, such as costumed actors or artist models and people who work in theater pose for an image that portrays a strong message and meaning the the viewer, allowing the narrative to be defined through the people within the image.

  

Level 5 - first assignments

Today was my first day as a second year, we've been set two exiting and interesting assignments focusing on narrative!

The first assignment is sort of like a game of Chinese whispers where images are sent from one student to another, giving our own interpretation whether it be our own or another photographers image and then sending it on the the next person, creating an interesting story as it goes from person to person. I wont receive the image from the person who is before me until the 18th of October, when I will have until mid day on the 19th to send my chosen image of the the next person on the list.

For the second assignment I was given an image that was taped to the bottom of my chair in an envelope, with that image I have to produce a circular narrative were that image is both the beginning and end of my narrative.

I've never really been interested in narrative before so I'm quite intrigued to see what direction every things going to go in.