The below essay is partly a reflective piece on the process of making this K FILM and a discussion of its structural elements that allowed us to build this moving production. It also discusses the films connection with Roland Barthes 'Readerly and Writerly'theories.
Our final K-film entitled ‘An Infinite Promise, Like the Echo of the Second Hand’ is our final K film for Integrated Media 1 at RMIT, Melbourne. Its central theme is centered on 'movement and the infinite promise of time'’, as seen with the movement within and between the clips, the thumbnails and the soundscape. The stillness of the single title, seen in the browser window only offers a contrast to the ongoing movement in the piece.
I will discuss the process of creating this film, its thematic structure and the content within the clips. There will also be correlations made between this film and Roland Barthe's readerly and writerly theories. The essence of the Korsakow application and the production of this K film, is that it now contains 'an infinite promise' to continue through the process of being published and through its allowance for readers to also be the writers of the film. The edits you make, the timing you choose for navigating from one shot to the next and the meanings you generate are all independent of any pre-determined meaning or deconstruction that we could have lugged you with in a 'final' product created in traditional cinematic media. So I hope you enjoy it, I hope you find it interesting, with whatever reasons that may lead to this and I hope you can generate a meaningful connection with the individual clips or the sequences that you generate for yourself.
This film was created through a slightly different pre-production stage than with one of the two options given to us for defining a shooting script prior to commencing production. Through developing concepts for our project with group members and Adrian Miles, it was decided that a different process would allow us to capture footage prior to ascertaining what aesthetic or structural themes would be decided on for the final film. This process allowed us to create the type of film that we wanted to design, with a repeated rule for filming, without predetermining a central meaning or narrative thread.
We decided to capture individual clips first, under closely confined rules and then examine what content was created through this method before making structural or design decisions. Our rules were for three group members to film everyday on the same accessible and easily moveable equipment (our iPhones) and capture what we could see whilst traveling to and from university for a week. Undoubtedly this was going to result in consistent footage of varying traveling shots from the viewpoint of the car, train, tram or feet that was getting us to our destination. We were very unsure of what content this would produce in regards to connections and relations that would present itself in the footage (apart from the obvious mechanical similarities of our transportation vehicles). It was an interesting process to then ascertain what other connections were presenting themselves in the footage. Consistent themes of suburbia/city, morning/night and light/dark presented themselves; however an overall essence of movement was what captured our attention. The movement between morning to night; the different movement found in the modes of travel (physical and cinematic); between traveling to and traveling from; the movement through time from breaking day to dusk to night and back to day again; the movement of days into other days, the movement of the skies into differing colors in the morning sun, cloudy days, sunsets and the changing travel modes contrasted and repeated themselves throughout the footage. We decided on the umbrella theme of ‘movement’ with an essence of elements interconnected with this as our structural focus. As we were already deconstructing our clips into meanings that may or may not be seen by our readers, we decided to focus on a more ‘writerly and readerly’ text and leave the many connections that could be made open to the active individuals that will help produce the final product on their own computer screens.
The lighting in the shots was reliant on natural movements in the environment throughout the day and framing was open to focus on what the camera operator felt to capture in these small movable moments of our travels. Composition was also less defined as a consistent rule for the film maker as technically the camera movement and impossibilities of zooming were constrained by the media we filmed on and we felt a diverse approach to these elements would enhance the content that was captured. However we did naturally compose the shots with a focus on the landscape around us, the transforming skies that passed us by. The movement of the camera was directly correlated to our own movement and how we navigated through our landscapes; where our eyes turned, or where our hand was bumped, the camera followed and moved with our motion and the motion of the transport vehicles. Atmospheric sound was recorded, if possible, in all clips to offer a constantly moving soundtrack throughout the film and to add a layer of motion and a visceral soundscape to the film as a whole. We also decided to not edit any of the clips as an aesthetic and structural choice. In relation to Barthes ‘Readerly and Writerly’ theories[i] it was decided that the edits themselves would be made by the reader and the writer of the text (the active viewer) and that the only edits required were the ones that the viewer decided upon when they chose to switch to a different clip at their own decided point. The connections, relationships and cinematic edits seen in the piece would be created by the reader/writer whilst actively participating in structuring the non-linear film, independently from any pre-determined sequential structure dictated by the creator of the shots. We then also added an ongoing soundtrack to the background of the film as another layer to the piece that could capture the essence of movement and the individual sounds of instruments that traditionally hold their notes for extended times. This works in this piece as it related to the themes of movement and infinite time, which structures the work.
After further discussions with Adrian Miles, our group was advised that we did not have to include written typographical text if it was not going to add to the thematic or aesthetic structure of the project as a whole. This is in line with the films connection with Barthes theories and the notion that our producers’ role was in creating the clips and refining rules to display them within an umbrella theme that informs the piece on ‘movement’. The meanings derived by the reader/writer would be constructed by the addition of text and could lead to the viewer being confused, baby stepped through our meaning of the film or for viewers unfamiliar with Korsakow it could lead them to assume that the meaning they create (which could be travel or trains or city or anything else) is the ‘incorrect’ meaning if their interpretation does not fit the text. This would also lead the viewer to pause in contemplation of the text and prevent them from a continuous flow of thought whilst watching and writing the film. Whether the text related to what we thought the focus of the clips or film as a whole was or if it was abstract; it would still connect it to the film and pre-determine a meaning, mood or theme and label it as a signifier to the singular clip; as the theme of the project is ‘movement’ and the continuity and “infinite promise” of time, place and natural landscapes in the sky. A cognitive reflection on the text would disconnect the viewer from their ‘writerly’ position and force them into a solely ‘readerly’ position. This would create a disjointed experience of movement in thought and time whilst watching and reading the pre-determined product, rather than reading and writing the infinite production itself. There is a visual theme created within the clips themselves and the film as a whole and this does not require further textual expression as it would have been a stagnant element in this particular piece. As Roland Barthes states “doesn't a sentence, whatever meaning it releases, subsequent to its utterance, it would seem, appear to be telling us something simple, literal, primitive: something true, in relation to which all the rest (which comes afterwards on top') is literature.”[ii] And with our attempts to not tell the viewers anything directly in relation to truths and literal meanings we felt it was enough what we had already pre-determined by structuring the clips in relation to movement and time. The remaining signifiers and resulting signified would have to be determined through the process of reading and writing the text. At whichever point the reader edits the K film (moves to another clip) the meaning generated will inevitably be different. To add text based on either our pre-determined meaning for the film or the entirety of the single clip or as a purely abstract addition to the film would not correlate with the theme of continuous movement that we were exploring.
This rule regarding text is not to say it cannot be a thematic and visual element to a K Film, it simply does not fit this particular project and its theme of movement. Movement is explored in a number of ways in the film’s programming in Korsakow. The clips, as discussed are all filmed from a moving person’s perspective, the thumbnails are moving (at a slower rate of 2 fps) to introduce snippets of the clips and to add another layer of sound into the project. The soundtrack is ongoing and travels itself through time, with long notes and continuous sounds. The infinite nature of the landscapes in the clips (the skies, the roads, the train tracks, the city, the country) and the ‘never-ending’ structure of the film all contribute to the moving essence of the film.
The actual structure of the K Film was challenging to create in the beginning, but I finally worked out how the clips could be ‘SNUified’ so that the morning and the night could interconnect with themselves and each other, through the linking of the two different groups of dusk films. At first it was structured very tightly to have one search for dusk1, 6 searches for itself (morning or night) and an additional search for dusk2. However, this very ordered approach meant the second dusk film always came up in the same spot, which was too regimented for our approach and in some cases the 8th search did not fill up at all– despite all clips having infinite lives, random links turned on (and off to test this) and having 8 ‘out’ searches for every clip. After checking each of the 60 clips several times, I decided to loosen the searches up to include an infinite search for its own keyword, which seemed to worked well and ensure that 8 thumbnails were offered each time a film played. With the dusk clips (which are the physical and semantic link between morning and night) we adjusted the exposure and coloring slightly to enhance the aesthetic elements of the work and to highlight the difference in the timing of these shots. It was already quite clear in most of the films but aesthetically it seemed to work quite well, particularly in the night screenings. In terms of other design elements on the page, we tried to leave as much black space around the clips as possible and we choose 8 thumbnails to be displayed as this worked neatly in the grid of the interface and allowed us to come up with easily organized programming elements for the SNUifying stage. With 24 clips each for morning and night, 6 Dusk1 clips (connecting out to Morning) and 6 Dusk2 clips (connecting out to Night) I could easily work out a system for organising the interface and programming requirements. After the minor delay in problem solving the missing 8th clip in some searches, this system worked quite well strategically and aesthetically. Even with knowing myself how to travel through to other times of the day (via the Dusk thumbnails) it is easily navigated through by an unknown viewer who will see the stark contrast between the lightness and darkness of the clips that a ‘dusk’ click will result in. Or perhaps if they don’t want to travel this way, they may stick to one of the settings for morning or night, depending on if they are a morning person or a night owl! There are endless ways to read and write the film.
Therefore the structure aided the programming of the film more than pre-determining a single meaning for the reader/writer. I believe we achieved our project goals, having fulfilled the assessment criteria and more importantly having completed a functioning (no dead ends, no repetitive ‘traps’) K Film. Our structural, aesthetic and theoretical decisions express an interesting nonlinear film and the theme of movement and infinite time can be read or written by the viewer. I feel that this film achieves our intentions, as discussed above, very effectively.
Roland Barthes theory on the ‘Readerly and the Writerly can be discussed with reference to our K film. As the Korsakow application achieves in its own form, we focused on producing a K film which does not constrain itself to what Barthes describes as “the pitiless divorce which the literary institution maintains between the producer of the text and its user, between its owner and its customer, between its author and its reader.”[iii] When this separation is mandated (by a single set path through the K Film or a pre-determined meaning already generated and imprisoned in the work), the reader is refused “access to the magic of the signifier, to the pleasure of writing, he is left with no more than the poor freedom either to accept or reject the text; reading is nothing more than a referendum.”[iv] In reflection of this theory, our K-film has a number of considerations that attempts to allow the reader to also be the writer and play an active role in the film. The omission of written text was a significant step in attempting to not weigh down the experience of the film by placing signifiers on each clip, which directed the viewer to either “accept or reject the text” and the meaning we had generated for the clip. The openness of being able to edit the clip at any time and selecting any of the 8 available thumbnails, which led to 8 more in an endless rhythm meant the viewer could create the product they chose, not read the product we chose for them. We intentionally did not want the viewer to either agree or disagree with a linear sequence, text (as a sentence of ‘truth’ or as an abstract notion somehow connected with the clip) or through an ending that was pre-determined and somehow signified that this clip, this navigation is the most meaningful way to read this pre-written text.
After reading Barthes definitions of the writerly and the readerly, it is evident that through the aesthetic choices in the interface, the connected, interconnected and disconnected elements in the clips and the infinite pathways that are available for the reader to write the finished product, this K Film can be described through the following text from Barthes:
The writerly text is a perpetual present, upon which no consequent
language (which would inevitably make it past) can be superimposed;
The writerly text is ourselves writing, before the infinite
play of the world (the world as function) is traversed,
intersected, stopped, plasticized by some singular system (Ideology,
Genus, Criticism) which reduces the plurality of entrances,
the opening of networks, the infinity of languages.
The writerly is the novelistic without the novel, poetry without
the poem, the essay without the dissertation, writing without
style, production without product, structuration without
structure. But the readerly texts? They are products (and not
productions), they make up the enormous mass of our literature.[v]
To conclude, it is stated that our K Film ‘The Infinite Promise, Like The Echo of The Second Hand’ denotes and connotates itself as being a K Film and as such is an unfinished product which has “structuation without structure”, through its keywords and connections made between the clips which allow it to play from clip to clip with the only edits being those decided or not decided by the viewer. It can be viewed as the “poetry without the poem” in as far as the lines of the poem are drawn and linked to the next line, but the words (the clips) are still awaiting to be placed in their chosen position by the writerly participant. It then becomes an infinite production that will soon become a temporary product in the eyes of the viewer alone, before the “play of the world” brings a sudden end to their momentary glimpse into the “infinity of languages”.
By Clare Peterson
RMIT, MEDIA
clare.peterson@student.rmit.edu.au
[i] Barthes, Roland. Writerly and Readerly, Extract pp.3-16. S/Z. Trans. Richard Miller, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1974.
[ii] Op.cit. p5
[iii] Op.cit.p5
[iv] Op.cit. p5
[v] Op. cit. p5
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