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

Whether this will work in much later years, when our store of cultural references has moved on (who's Kylie?), remains the only weak point in this method.

Weblink

http://www.davidlynch.com/ News and information on David Lynch.

Connotations: political and social

This stratum of a film is a fascinating one for the filmmaker to tap into. The Zeitgeist - or spirit of the time - is a powerful pool of fears, prejudices and hopes. As we will see in Chapter 9:2, the Zeitgeist can be used to add depth and resonance to a film, by building in references to world events. This layer of meaning acts in the same way as lighting a set - it changes what we see by revealing it in dif­ferent ways. Just as a room can be transformed by lighting it differently, so a situation can take on dramatic new meaning when placed in the context of world events. In this sense we literally see it in a new light.

In the same way, the zeitgeist can throw light on a seemingly innocent story and some of the most intriguing of these are ones where the director has not obviously set out to tap into our current fears.

62 Practical DV Filmmaking

For instance, Shyamalan's The Village (2004) is a spooky tale in the best tradition of Ray Bradbury. Looked at 20 years ago, or perhaps 20 years from now, and that is all it is. But when you factor in the Zeitgeist it takes on a wholly different complexion. The film's story concerns a group of people who fear the deadly creatures that are said to lie beyond its village borders, but which we later find out is a fiction to keep the inhabitants subject to its laws. The elders of the village have good reason to create the myth but find that it is ultimately impossible to maintain. On its release, it found an America in a similar state of fear - rightly or wrongly - of what lies 'out there'. Similar questions were also being raised of its elders' ways of keeping order in this climate of fear, albeit understandable after the tragedies of 9/11.

Weblinks

http://www.raybradbury.com/ More about the renowned sci-fi author. http://www.futuremovies.co.uk/filmmaking.asp?ID=84 Interview with M. Night Shyamalan.

In this way, a film with prosaic genre starting points - and not especially original ones - became important for a time. In a more conscious attempt, Phillip Noyce's Rabbit-Proof Fence touched a nerve in Australia's soul-searching surrounding its treatments of Aborigines in the last century.