PRACTICAL DV FILMMAKING

Practical DV FilmMaking

• Overview
• Inside video
• Films and how they work
• Pre-production
• Production tools
• Production aesthetics
• Post-production tools
• Post-production aesthetics
• Careers and distribution
• Mapping the industry
• Glossary of film and video terms

sensing the strict taboo on this subject in the suburban world she inhabits, can only con­fide in her black gardener, thereby breaking other taboos. In this movie, a series of ideas about whether the 1950s really were the golden age they appeared to be are revealed, colliding with others about the sup­posed tranquillity of the suburbs, which are portrayed as avenues of taboo and fear. Haynes then crosses all this with suggestions about film and TV itself, using cliches such as 1950s music and colour design to imply that we have continued to live in the world of I Love Lucy rather than the real one ever since.

In this level of understanding a movie, themes themselves often draw from the next level down in order to add complexity and - to a certain extent - interactivity.

Connotations: cultural and cinematic

This layer is the first to come from the audience rather than the filmmakers. Films can trigger refer­ences to parts of culture that we know already, that we bring with us to the theatre. This is like tapping into a grid of energy that can give the film extra life, where audiences hold reserves of interest in parts of culture that can be recognized in the film.

For several years, most audiences have been so sophisticated in their viewing habits and with their knowledge of films that it is now possible for a film to correspond less with the real world they inhabit

60 Practical DV Filmmaking

than with the fictional world which other films have inhabited. The use of this has soared in recent years, perhaps more as a way of adding faux-depth to a film by alluding to a shared knowledge of cul­ture, a safer bet in box-office terms than alluding to uncomfortable social truths. In some films this is more successful - Tarantino's subtler allusions to French New Wave films in Pulp Fiction places an unlikely waif-like refugee from films like Jules et Jim or Breathless in a modern LA setting. This later developed into the use of Asian-style references in Kill Bill, not just in the use of local star actors and storylines, but also in the use of the retro opening credits sequence, where the words 'Feature Presentation' are placed in scratched and gaudy tones, mimicking a faulty projector in a downtown Hong Kong theatre. The point of all this is that we, the audience, can relate to these references. It flat­ters us and also dislocates the world of the film in a way which we used to describe as post-modern -like seeing a character from one soap enter another. Two worlds collide and it's both amusing and unsettling.