La Jetée by Chris Marker is a 1962 science-fiction film that experiments with the concept of time travel and memories. This essay will discuss the use of narrative style in La Jetée by Chris Marker, in relation to the techniques used and their effects, and evaluate its effectiveness in conveying theme and concept, and argue that it was successful to a large extent.
Firstly, Marker uses narration to carry the plot of his film forward. Although La Jetée is a verbal and visual construct, the narration serves as the spine of the narrative. He connects the careful succession of images with a voice-over narration which further gives the impression of a narrative moving forward even if the images are not. “This is the story of a man marked by an
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As more obvious and gradual transitions than a cut, dissolves, fade-ins, and fade-outs suggest longer time lapse. La Jetee repeatedly uses dissolves in order to create the feeling of elapsed time in an otherwise still visual atmosphere. The succession of images connected in quick sequence seems to signal the mind’s inherent ability to perceive the succession of single images as movement itself. Thus, despite the spatial and temporal disruptions and the stillness of the images, the sequence preserves the illusion of movement and time elapse. The flow of frames is reassembled by the viewer’s mind due to the perceptual process of “persistence of vision” which creates the illusion of autonomous motion. However, by breaking the narrative down into a series of discontinuous stills, each held at some length, Marker reminds the viewer that the filmic illusion of motion is always composed of a series of still images. In presenting the viewer with a series of frozen images, Marker dramatizes the breakdown of the progression of time into a succession of visible moments, and drag out the viewer’s experience of time. The pauses between each image seems to be representative of the fragility of memory and replicates gaps in recollection. Memories are not recounted in its entirety with every minute detail in a comprehensive, linear or chronological succession of events, but are often fragmented, removed of context or manipulated by other interfering memories or wishful thinking, determined by heavy emotion rather than associated with context or a full understanding of the circumstances. Just like the characters in La Jetee are trapped in time, the audience of La Jetee is trapped in the stillness of the images. Therefore, Marker use of photo sequencing is largely
Interestingly, visual techniques are also effective in portraying the theme of free will versus determinism to question the responder who and what controls our lives. The tripartite storytelling structure incorporating three wholly, self-contained alternate versions of events is an unconventional filming technique reinforcing the postmodernist perception of having minimal control over life. As Lola rushes past minor characters in the film, flash forwards offer alternate glimpses of the possible outcome of their future, suggesting that fee-will alone is not a sole determination of the outcome of life. In each run, Lola’s encounter with these minor characters varies, showing that even the slightest change can become a significant impact to life. An extreme close-up
Film exists in layers of physical existence and reality. You have the layer the audience views of the film’s world - setting, characters, and plot - and then you have the layer the film production workers view of the film’s world - actors, the set, and the story. Like photography, film is able to establish a physical existence. However, unlike photography, film uses two very unique and different techniques in order to establish its physical existence. According to Siegfried Kracauer, film establishes its physical existence through representation of reality as it evolves through time and with the help of techniques and devices exclusive to cinema cameras (Kracauer 187). All the world is a stage for film, however Kracauer lists specific techniques of film he refers to as cinematic due to how these techniques are read on the cinematic medium. Although Kracauer wrote his theory on Establishment of Physical Existence in 1960, the 2015 movie Tangerine contains a fair amount of content that can be serviced as examples in order to support Kracauer’s theory. Using the 2010’s movie Tangerine directed by Sean S. Baker, modern cinema examples from various scenes of the film can be provided for examples on Siegfried Kracauer’s theory of Establishment of Physical Existence through cinema’s recording functions of nascent motion, cinema’s revealing function of transients, and cinema’s revealing function of blind spots of the
Almost every piece of cinema seeks to give the viewer an understanding by intricately assembling shots in a coherent, and a sometimes muddled, manner; the techniques used in editing places various shots in purposeful sequences, to emphasize certain relationships between shots. The shots can be arranged smoothly and logically, or shift abruptly from shot to shot; different methods of the aforementioned arrangement of shots are utilized in either discontinuous or continuous editing. Sherlock Jr. and The War on Drug’s music video “Holding On”, are two motion pictures that offer spatial relations, by applying techniques of both continuous and discontinuous editing.
Literary devices will be a primary source used to compare and contrast the narrative and stylistic choices made in the short story, “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut, and the film 2081 directed by Chandler Tuttle. In the film the director is able to express visuals, sounds, and physical characters, to establish a firm idea of how the characters within the story act and feel based on their surroundings and what is happening around them. However, an Author in a short story is reliant on his words alone to paint the picture for the reader to understand the movement of the plot and its impact on the atmosphere. The literary devices used in creating and shaping pieces of literature will heavily impact the point of view of the
Immigrating to America is a process in which many people all across the world entrust as their one way ticket to a better life. Whether they do so legally or illegally, coming to the United States ensures better opportunities, economically, politically, and so on, to people who would have otherwise been worse off in their countries of origin. Even so, the common understanding of being “better off” can be considered a misconstrued concept when it comes to living in the states. Many families that choose to immigrate to the U.S. fail to realize the cultural hardships that newcomers tend to face once on American soil. Anything from racial discrimination or bias at work, in neighborhoods, at school, etc., can all be challenges that people encounter when making a move to the U.S. Such challenges are described by Richard Rodriquez in his autobiography Hunger of Memory. In this passage, he explains how cultural differences between Mexican and American ways of life have shaped him into the person that he is today. He also chooses to highlights the problems that he faces growing up in a predominately white neighborhood, while attending a predominantly white institution. Much of his writing consists of the cultural differences and pressures he feels to assimilate to Western culture and how this process, in turn, changes him into the person that some may find to be unethical, but nonetheless, someone he is proud of.
Hollywood cinema is primarily subjected to telling stories. The inclination of Hollywood narratives comes not just from good chronicles but from good story telling. The following essay will discuss Hollywood’s commercial aesthetic as applied to storytelling, expand on the characteristics of the “principles of classical film narration” and evaluate alternative modes of narration and other deviations from the classical mode.
Bart Layton built this doc not from one perspective, but from a collection of them. Some stories, like “The Imposter” need a panoptic approach to connect the audience to the film. The themes of manipulation, identity and love are the main themes conveyed by Layton. These themes are communicated through sounds and visual imagery.
Being one of the world’s most popular art forms, it was inevitable that these archetypes would find their way into film as well. In this essay I will argue that the
The directors chosen camera technique, a simple two composition that progresses the scene a steady pace, forces the audience to feel a part of the awkward exchange; obviously, a quality of film that could not be as profoundly achieved through the narrative in the novel.
How can a book and a movie differ if they are telling the same story? Through the analysis of the literary components in the modern selection, the reader concludes the author and producer had much to compare. After evaluating three contemporary selections from Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Katherine Anne Porter, the reader can detect several literary components in the text and the movie to compare and contrast between.
A set of practices concerning the narrative structure compose the classical Hollywood Paradigm. These conventions create a plot centering around a character who undergoes a journey in an attempt to achieve some type of goal (). By giving the
Understanding movies comes from describing and analyzing the cinematic, theatrical, and literary elements that combine to create meaning. These steps create a basic understanding of the artistic and technical elements found in moviemaking. In addition, the major characteristics of different film genres and classic movies will be analyzed. The purpose of this paper is analyzing the Academy Award winning film Chicago. This paper will describe the six steps that a person should think about when watching a movie. These steps include, (1) analysis of the narrative: story, plot and meaning; (2) theatrical elements, (3) cinematography, (4) editing, (5) sound and the (6) complete package.
Photographs are linked with time as a medium as different forms can represent time and progression. De Duve (1978) assert that still images or photos can be used to represent the passing of time presenting a physical record of a short-lived moment that is significant to the viewer. Within this context, De Duve state that photographs represents a frozen cross-section of time; an instance that is considered significant or memorable enough to be recorded and allows viewers to relate to the image and connect it with their own reality. On the other hand, moving images uses active motion to demonstrate time and progression, relying on using a sequence of images to help communicate the desired message brought about by this progression. Films and cinema
The Kuleshov Workshop explored the effects of juxtaposition in film, and how sequential shots convey a
Montage, a name synonymous with Editing, is an original film style with different techniques used by the Soviet filmmakers between 1924 and 1930 to construct a film narrative. Montage is the connection between one shot and the other, a continuous or discontinuous relationship between shots. According to David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson (2012: 478), Soviet directors maintained that, “through editing, two shots give birth to a feeling or idea not present in either one”. This ‘feeling’ or ‘idea’ then guides a viewer into understanding or making a “conceptual connection” of the narrative (Bordwell 1972: 10). Strike (1925) and Mother (1926), directed by Sergei Eisenstein and Vsevolod Pudovkin respectively, are films made in the Soviet Montage era that show a juxtaposition between shots across the film. This essay discusses the different techniques used in these films that show the functions and effects of Montage.