Moving Images

The technique of moving images is used to challenge the conventional mainstream film to make it a success. But in order for this to happen, you would need to understand the concept of space esthetically. We were shown a short clip of a movie named ‘Man with a movie camera’ produced by Dziga Vertov. His aim for this short film was to grasp the audience to understand and to realize that even if a film isn’t ‘Hollywood’ material or isn’t that standard with a perfect story line or ending, it can still be recognized as inventive and creative. He wanted to bring to the world a new form of universal cinema which shows the world it’s true form and to see the truth meaning and definition behind the film instead of only seeing what’s infront of you. This film is about Vertov filming a man setting up his camera on top of another one. But how is this possible? That’s the question Vertov wanted everyone to ask themselves while watching this film because he had a new way of thinking and presenting his work through visual art. Another strong example of this would be a short film called ‘Ghost story’ by WiIllie Doherty. This showed confusion in the fact that this film consisted of a shadowy figure of the end of a road and the camera shooting this figure gradually getting closer and closer and then falling back to the start. This kind of clip gets everybody thinking and wondering about the real story behind it which most of the class were doing during this lecture as we were asked about our thoughts and outlook on the matter. The story that Doherty was trying to portray was based back in the troubles of Ireland, the road which was an old country road, was blocked off by police, which lead to a lot of people wondering about the shadowy figures significance of whether it described it as is being the people who dies during the troubles? Another Moving image artist would be Bill Viola. This particular clip that we watched in class was called ‘Emotions’ and was based on several people’s reactions to the 9/11 incident but in slow motion. This clip was somehow intriguing to say the least. Using emotions was his main tool for creating this short film because that’s where he wanted to inspire people. His short film ‘The Passing’ which was quite an intense clip of his mother in hospital before she passed away and then showed her lying in her coffin peacefully. This showed symbolism through him shooting this clip in black and white and by using water. Even though this film must have been very personal to Viola, he still kept in mind that by shooting this, is would help connect to the audiences emotions which helped them have a major reality check into life and where it ends. Finally, we were shown how a water printer would display information. This brought up the discussion of different ways technology can display this kind of information. At a train station in Osaka, Japan, their water printer acts as a screen to show the time which I found fascinating and brilliant. This just shows that technology will never cease to amaze society and it will never stop developing.