User:Janis/draft 2

Introduction

My photographical work is related to the subject of dreams. I want to use digital compositing technique and create images that are representing my interpretation of the stage between reality and dreams. I would like to work with two or more suggestive images related on the theme of dreams and composite them in one frame. As the final outcome I am looking to collect a series of fixed, ambiguous transition based images that display the composited content between spaces and objects. I am interested how the shift between reality and dreams is visualized, how the interpretation of dreams is represented in photographs and moving images and what techniques are used to let the spectator think that it is a dream.

References in photography and my work

On this matter, I started my research of photographers and I am truly inspired by Duane Michals innovative use of photo-sequences. He avoids the conventional photographical language and system of signs, therefore constructing his own visual language with own grammar of visual tricks such as shutter blur, compositing, dodging, overlying and adding text to photos that examine philosophy and emotions. He composites images sequentially as a comic in fixed order, making up short storylines about love, fears, disappointment, homo sexuality, death and also dreams. His work is photography but can be viewed with a cinematic eye. Barthes argues, “ In photography something has posed in front of the camera and stays there forever, and in cinema something passes in front of the camera, the pose is swept away and denied by the continuous series of images...” (3) My theme was representation of dreams, but still I was looking for something specific in the content that I could speak about in my photographs because the theme can be really subjective and broad. At first, I made a sequence of single photos that created a narrative, how a person is falling asleep into a dream. The result of it looked too obvious with a linear story line and it missed the suggestive part for the viewer. Inspired by the possibilities of multiple exposure photography, I started to simulate the effect from analog technique and create some digital double exposures by compositing images. In analog photography the trick is, for example, to open the shutter more than once on the same frame, or shooting the whole film, rewinding it, loading and shooting again. Double exposure method was used a lot by Duane Michals and also by my second influence photographer Harry Callahan, who also worked in a similar way. Most of his photography was deeply personal response to his own life with subjects like his wife, Eleanor, daughter Barbara, streets and local cityscape, showing a strong sense of light, darkness, lines and forms. He relished the idea that, “the flux and indeterminacy of the universe could not necessarily be contained in a single image.” He argued, that double exposure is able to dematerialize fixed notions of time, space and identity and to reconfigure them in a new reality.” Thinking about this quote, I decided to experiment with digital compositing techniques, trying to explore the possibilities and visualize my interpretation by creating a series of images. I chose to work with models as subjects and landscapes as space. Models are able to show different kind of positions and emotions that describe happiness, satisfaction, excitement, self-confidence and confusion. Landscapes were mainly shot when it was foggy or dark because fog creates emptiness and absorbs details in the same way as darkness. In the images I was looking for suggestible content, interesting spaces, compositions and color that could be composited. The third composited image was becoming interesting if with in the composition natural objects were changing the proportions, interaction of lights appear or foreground - background mixed together. The separate images absorbed details one from each other and created ambiguous, suggestive space physically or psychologically, depending on content. These practical conclusions induced me to think more about provisional photographs that I would like to create and which would fit with the subject and inquire into the technical solutions used in photography and moving images. Currently I am working on a series of photographs, my future plans imply creating a short video on the same subject. Therefore, I am interested to explore the vocabulary of visual tricks that are used in moving images to make somebody believe that they are looking into a dream.

Representation of dreams in moving images

Cinema can be seen as a visual language that shapes our perception of reality and fantasy, everything what is around us and also inside of us. However, film only presents the illusion of the reality. Dreams are also partly an illusion of reality that is constructed by our sub consciousness appearing as detailed memory reflections during the sleep; hence representations of dreams in cinema can be regarded as illusions within illusions. The shift between reality and a dream can be interpreted very differently but representation of it is more or less limited by possibilities of compositing and cinematographic tools, it is therefore important to know these tools of visual story telling in order to represent stories and ideas. All the techniques and methods of filmmaking are adding layers of meanings to moving image content. (1) Against this backdrop, the purpose of this essay is to get some insights, influences for my photographical work and explore how the representation of the shift between reality and dreams, and the content of dreams in moving images are displayed. And, how it has changed over time, with respect to technical and technological solutions. In order to discuss this question I have chosen separate sequences from several moving images each representing a different time period. These films include Un Chien Andalou (Bunuel, Dali, 1928), Spellbound (Hitchcock, 1945), Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958) and Inception (Nolan, 2010). Un Chien Andalou (1928) is a bizarre and surreal moving image sequence that has mostly no explanations. The script was made by two men: Bunuel and Dali dreams, and written as surreal as possible. Seductively scenes are composited according to associations, where objects from one shot before reappear in the upcoming, it occurs a process of associations within the short narrative illusion. As Dali explained, the intention of the film was, “To disrupt the mental anxiety of the spectator,” and one of the easiest ways to do this is to thwart the viewer’s ability to logically interpret proceedings. (5) In this film is an obvious dislocation of time and space the same as in dreams. The disruption of time mainly occurs through cuts and the use of the titles that are displayed between several transitions. The dislocation of space happens occasionally, referencing to a dream representation, there is no beginning or end of a scene. It is interesting how, occasionally, there are used long transitions that combine the scenes and create the flow between different subjects and locations. Successive scenes are composed with the graphic match technique that creates metaphorical associations. Similar compositional elements are creating continuity between frames.

In the legendary black & white film Spellbound (1945) Hitchcock wanted to break the cliché that dreams in cinema are represented blurry and hazy. His interpretation of the dream sequence was with great visual sharpness and clarity. He invited Salvador Dali to design the dream sequence set because he was the most convenient artist related to theme of dreams. Hitchcock argued that Dali work was very solid, with long converging lines of perspectives and dark black shadows, because this is also how Hitchcock imagined his dream sequence. (2) A man is remembering his dream during a meeting with two doctors, they are asking him to float into the dream and talk about the content. The dream sequence is full of psychoanalytical symbols - eyes, scissors, curtains, playing cards (some of them blank), a man with no face, a man falling off a building, a man hiding behind a chimney dropping a wheel, and wings that are after the dreamer trying to catch him. (2) Sequence is shot inside a studio. Technically the shift between reality and the dream is a long zoom in, which fades from one moving image to another making a long transition. Camera is moving straightforward on a dolly track. The lights are highly contrasted with sharp shadows. In some shots perspective is distorted by using a wide-angle lens. A long zoom out with panning is used to represent the transition between the dream set and portrait of the dreamer. It repeated the beginning scene when dream sequence started just in the opposite way. (2) Camera flies from wide-angle shots to details, long transitions and zooming in or out mostly describe the shift with dreams. During the long transitions images overly and make a suggestion to the viewer that a change of spaces is happening.

Another dream scene from Hitchcock was in Vertigo (1958). Dream-nightmare sequence starts with a portrait of a sleeping person. Light starts to change from moonlight to electro blue and purple. It is pulsing in the same rhythm as the sleeper breathes. The shift between reality and the dream is a transition between the sleeping person and an animation, background color changes, and the animation is displayed. Different short visions from memory are occurring which appear in filtered yellow light. Zoom in and straightforward dolly track has been used in the same style as in Spellbound (1945) dream sequence. A combination in matte shot technique is used in a scene where portrait of the man is composited with an animated background that is changing color and interacting with sound. In the same technique where two photographic images are combined into a single one, the man is falling down from a rooftop. In the falling part is used dolly zoom. The character awakes from the nightmare with a short transition from falling scene back to his bed where he awakes in a shocked condition. (2)

Vertigo effect was a new type of point of view shot that could illustrate distortions of perception. Zooming in and pulling out camera accomplished the effect. It represents ambiguous feelings of attraction and repulsion, which are our feelings towards the characters. It is interesting to explore the cinematic techniques that were innovative and particularly used in films and movies with dream content. The representation of dreams intertwined with reality in the movie Inception (2010). In directors vision it was important that dreams have analogies with reality and dream world reflects the same rules as what is presented as reality. The difference between a dream and reality was achieved with a lot of special sets and effects that are creating the feeling that dreams look as real as waking life. Inception is not rambling, surreal - or even very dreamlike. It is an action movie. There is no establishment or starting point of an institution or activity. Dreams are illusions that are overlying within another dream but their constructed content is as real as reality, sometimes even the main character is curious, he does not know if he is dreaming or not, and also the spectator does not know it, because everything seems real until story shows the difference. Dreamers use symbolic tools like pinwheel as a cinematic device that can check if they are dreaming or not. It is a dream stage if the pinwheel does not stop turning. The actual difference between reality and a dream is that in a dream it is possible to construct reality but depending on which person is dreaming because most of the dreams are collective. Occasionally, when a dream becomes unstable from dreamers subconsciousness the world of the dream starts to destroy it self that was working as a sign for the characters and also sometimes for the viewer demonstrating that it is a dream. If the dreamer is killed in the dream he wakes up. Cinematic tricks and special effects are used for to illustrate the difference between waking life and the dream to achieve the paranormal distortions of reality it self while being in a dream. People are not more capable or endowed with paranormal strength. The complexity is in the story it self and in the edit of scenes. The story starts right in the middle of something and there is not a certain beginning. The movie is manipulating with spectators mind since the beginning.

Conclusion

Finding answer to the questions, how the visual representation of dreams has changed due to new technological possibilities in moving images is quite unclear. Technological possibilities of cinematic tools are developed tremendously. It is not possible to compare the technical possibilities. Nowadays, with the digital technology and power of medium almost nothing is impossible to create and display. Analyzing the scenes it seems that it always depends about the idea, because, actually it does not matter what tricks or technologies are used, what matters is only if they work in the same direction as the concept. Like in the Hitchcock’s movie Vertigo they invented the dolly zoom effect because something special was necessary for the movie. It is good that nowadays technology allow us to imagine and see more than it was possible before, to illustrate unreal things. It definitely shapes our perception. The advantage of nowadays technology is definitely the possibility to display dreams in any aspects, to visualize and represent them as real as possible. Not in all dream sequences the cinematic technique needs to be newly invented or something really special. The dream sequences that were discussed in this essay seemed to be important first of all, because the sequences are from more or less well known moving images that were represented to large auditoriums and might be known very well.

To be continued..

References

1. Literature

1) Brown, B. (2012). Cinematography: theory and practice. Image making for cinematographers and directors. Oxford: Second Edition.

2) Truffaut, F. (1984). Hitchcock. Revised edition. New York: Simon & Shuster.

3) Barthes, Roland. (1993). Camera Lucida. London: Vintage.

4) http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2001/cteq/chien/

5) Aranda, F., Buñuel, L. (1975). A Critical Biography, London: Secker & Warburg, p.64

2. Extracts From Moving Images discussed:

Un Chien Andalou by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali (1929)

Spellbound by Alfred Hitchcock (1945)

Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock (1958)

Inception by Christopher Nolan (2010)