Manipulations

How special effects and video manipulation contribute to the video content?  Be able to tell what the video concept is the first step to find the right answer. 

Stan Brakhage made his work Dog Star Man from the first person perspective, letting the audience to see the action of seeing with the subject's own eye. The whole video is in a very fast speed of transitions. Everything is blurry and changing. Viewers can hardly see clearly anything but still feel the story. The person's perspective is very low in position, just like the view from a dog. With special effects, like multiply layers, shadows on sides, dark night views, the video can manipulate the seeing world of a dog or a dog-man. By using lots of mixed images, and digital flash effects, the artist created great tension and some fiction feelings in this video. Like those images that mixed with pictures of moon, skin, blood, and some microscope views, they are suggesting the plots of werewolf.  Another interesting effect is the use of red filter. There're many scenes that were edited into a dominated color of red. With showing some abstract patterns and lines in a quick motion, the red scenes can be interpreted as fire, energy, passion, blood, violence and tension, which are all connected to the later images of female body and woman's face, suggesting the possible sex, desire and violence even murder. 

Jonas Mekas's work, Walden (1969), is an example of his dairy form of film-making. The film is a honest portrait of the artist and his life in New York City. The use of texts or titles in his film is important. They work good as transitions for different scenes, and they certainly made the point of the poetic of this dairy film. There's no conversations and talking. Moving imagery plus beautiful written words make the film more peaceful and poetic. As a film diary, the footages recorded the artist direct reaction to the immediate reality, and his daily activities like having dinner, talking in Central Park. Some special effects were used in presenting the footages. For examples, some scenes were made into a faster speed and some shuts had blue or yellow filters. All these effects made the ordinary everyday life not boring but beautiful as memories. This poetic personal diary documented many life scenes, the changes of seasons, friendships and many normal but wonderful things happened in the artist world. All these poetic expression were just celebrating the joy of life, the simple and innocent moments of living, the beauty of nature and friendship.

Peter Kubelka's video about Schwechater beer  is nothing like traditional commercials. The rapid cuts and abstract shadows of negative like images made views very hard to see what exactly going on in that video. The repeated use of color filters and unexpected jump increased the "coolness" of this video and then made this commercial very innovatory. What it looks like to open a beer bottle and drink with friends is commonsense for everyone. Based on abstract shadows and certain movements, views can complete the beer images by themselves. The details of drinking Schwechater is not important. What matter is the coolness of doing so. 

"Crossings and Meetings", (1974), explores the visual and audio spaces in people's action of walking. In this video, Emshwiller implied many special effects to expand and enlarge the world of the images and sound in a simple movement. For example, fast-forward and rewind an action, multiple layers and keying in one frame, and also the heavy manipulation of audio. With all these effects, Emshwiller deconstructed the action of walking, and made the spaces between crossings and meetings infinite. There're complex elements, and numerous micro-movements, and lots of energies in those enlarged spaces and uncounted time periods. 

From Stage to Camera

Consider how an actor might perceive the value of his work in a film or video environment as opposed to live stage. A personalized experience?  A unique performance?  How does the actor estimates his relationship to the not present audience, when playing only to other actors, the simulated environment of the sound stage, mechanical devices that record the performance and the, technicians necessary to the apparatus?  How do these mediated spaces affect the perception of our own experience of reality?

Compared to a live performer on a stage, the screen actor, which is presented by a camera, has many different things need to notice when he perceive the value of his work in a film or a video.

First of all, instead of facing live audience, or say real people, a screen actor is performing in front of a camera lens. Despite the first strangeness or weirdness facing the camera, the “film actor lacks the opportunity of the stage actor to adjust to the audience during his performance”. However, the screen actor is facing the real public eventually, so he has to response to real human emotions when he’s doing performance. On the hand, the extant of “acting” is kind of tricky in contemporary film criteria, since in today’s film industry “the greatest effects are almost always obtained by acting as little as possible”.

Secondly, compared of doing a linear and continued performance on stage, a screen actor’s work can be several separated shootings that may take hours inside a studio, which provides various lighting conditions and fancy effects. Now in a film or a video, what audiences see are the reflected images that become separable and transportable.

Another thing that is very different from doing live performance is that “the camera that presents the performance of the film actor to the public need not respect the performance as an integral whole”. Compared with a stage actor that has fully control of his body and play, the imagery or performance of a screen actor is controlled by cameraman. By giving a different camera position and another angle, a film actor can be manipulated by a certain expressing reason. So besides thinking about how to estimate his relationship to the not present audience when playing, the screen actor also need to response to the cameramen, to other actors, to the simulated environment, as well as to the mechanical devices that record the performance.

Moreover, with the improving mechanical reproducibility and other fancy techniques, it is very easy for modern cameras to capture the smallest facial movements or little noise made by the screen actor or other objects in a film or a video. The mediated images about time and spaces definitely affect the perception of our own experience of reality. “By close-up of the things around us, by focusing on hidden details of familiar objects, by exploring commonplace milieus under the ingenious guidance of the camera, the film, on the other hand, extends our comprehension of the necessities which rule our lives; on the other hand, it manages to assure us of an immense and unexpected field of action”. Therefore, a screen actor must be aware of that capacity brought by modern technology and make adjustments to that. “Hence, the performance of the actor is subjected to a series of optical tests”.