Advanced Production Update 19/02/23

 Advanced Production Update                                                                                                   19/02/23

Figure 1: Film editor at work: https://adferoafferro.wordpress.com/tag/film-editing/

After reflecting on the current state of my film project, I have begun to consider trimming down the film to something around about three minutes.  Not only would this reduce the workload that I have going forward but it would also give the film a chance to develop a better rhythm and pace.  In retrospect, the idea of having a 12-minute cut of a film was far too much, and my narrative style doesn't have nearly enough substance to fill that runtime.  The new final cut, or at least the new rough cut to fill the quota for Advanced Production, will mainly focus on the animated segments of the film, and after that, I will see how much more footage, animation or live-action, will be required.  

The influences for the film will also extend to silent film, since I have always intended the protagonist to be a mute character who does not have any interaction with the world around him.  This is largely influenced by the types of narratives I studided during my first degree in Plymouth, and it can allow us to make sense of the people who pass through the environment we share with us as well as the aura of what is happening.  

"Stories impose a formal coherence on what is otherwise a flowing soup. They gather strands of experience into a plot that produces an outcome and such sequence is the source of sense" - (Karl Weick, 1995)

 Whilst the flaneur narrative has been traditionally represented in literature, it is relevant to my film because of how it usually is a metaphor for the urban culture of the time.  Modern examples of where this type of story would take place include airports, train stations and city centres where people would pass through certain areas.  The flanuer narrative has also been represented in the work of Richard Linklater, whose work contains the themes of a single, ongoing present moment, and the pursuit of meaningful, elusive connections.  The theme of flanerie allows us to make sense of how the common metropolis evolves over time.

Between Sunrise and Sunless from Rob Stone on Vimeo.

Figure 2: City environment: https://liminalnarratives.com/2017/04/29/flaneur/

 The topic of the flaneur is mainly intended to give new meaning to the streets of the city that he inhabits, and I intend to provide a similar meaning to the streets of Dundee that I have filmed my project in.  The animations I have provided in my film are intended to give a dreamlike aura to the viewer because of how they are integrated into environments but are clearly not real.  This is to highlight the disconnection between the protagonist and the environment that transcends until the final shot of the film.

 

Grant, C. (2014) “The Flâneur on Film: On films by Richard Linklater and others,” Film Studies for Free. Blogger, 25 February. Available at: https://filmstudiesforfree.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-flaneur-on-film-on-films-by-richard.html (Accessed: February 19, 2023).

Lakatos, A. (2004) The Flaneur and the detective: Patterns of Urban Identity in american fiction, The flaneur and the detective: Patterns of urban identity in American fiction . thesis. University of Glasgow. Available at: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/71440/.

Weick, K.E. (1995). Sense making in Organisations. Sage.