Janis notes on the storyboard
Summary
Currently I am interested to work with personal, family related memories and archives. My inspiration comes from the rare visits of my grandparents and the fact that I am distanced from my family and home. Thinking about my instinctive actions of image making in the last couple of years and looking into what is in my archive right now, I would claim that most interesting things for me are related to my personal observations of my relatives, documentations of them and their environment. I see these images as notes about subjects that I find interesting. There are situations that confuse me or make me wonder and appreciate. For example, objects that represent repetition and obsession with something, like my grandmother's passion about cactuses or my uncle's collection of horns and hunting trophies. These issues serve as part of my observations and registration material. This is my hidden obsession of collecting data. At the moment I am digitizing these different approaches of archival material, in a visual way. Recently, I started to scan my grandfather's photo archive. I got really excited about the images that I found there. I made some selections. They serve as the source material for my ideas and reveal some of his passions and archival principles. To develop an idea and dig into relevant issues, I started to select images from my own documentations. I am interested in writing down memories and building up narratives related to my theoretical insights. The most relevant issues that I can recognize in my practical investigations so far are kind of abstract metaphors to the theory about how archives are functioning regarding our personal memories. Memories can be raised up from our back of the head by images, stories, objects, feelings, etc., for example, I discovered different approaches of how me and my relatives are archiving things, interpret memories, construct self systematized methods and observations about relevant issues. For me it is interesting to investigate some of the obsessions about creating collections, organize and archive data, etc. The field of interest is the incongruity of things. I am discovering mix-match of controversial situations and when I record those as images or video material, it becomes my interpretation of the reality, part of my obsession. Out there I am looking for innocence and purity of the daily life, the occupations, passions and obsessions are the major research directions, personal stuff which can keep us busy for a whole life time. By exploring memories and stories, ways of archiving things it will help me to continue to build up my own archive. It is the archival practice it self, the data is building up the context. Structuring and visualizing the memories and creating personalized "data banks". These are one of the main interests in my research, the observations of how things are interpreted in distinct ways, how our memories are constructed - based on stories and images, and how our life is affected by them. Finding the romanticism out there.
Last year in one of my essays I was asking to my self: In my practice I find references of things that are influencing my perception and way of thinking. For me, it is important to understand where the images and ideas are coming from? How do I filter them? What kind of ideas become relevant to execute and archive in my memory/database/hard drive? How do the influences appear in my work, are they recognizable, are they conscious or subconscious? What is my added value for my experiments and reproductions?
Photography is both: a catalyst for memory, as well as an object that you can try to either destroy, or highlight, thus affecting people's opinions.
Outline
In the thesis I will continue my investigations, describe my practical point of view and combine it with relevant theories from my reading list.
+ research of archival methods;
+ how passions, obsessions and collections are constructing identity;
+ the human need to investigate and save information;
+ memory, interpretation of information, appropriation;
+ descriptions of my subjects and writing my story;
+ my personal insights;
In the text Archive and Aspiration, Arjun Appadurai is discussing about different kind of archives, about their functionality, the "prestige of past", spirituality, cultural collectivity, and why do people create archives. How archives can be constructed, designed and what is the use of one? What is the capacity to aspire, especially for migrants, people who are changing their location?
It is the archival practice it self, the data is building the context and structuring my ideas of the actual methodologies of observations: archiving, collecting things, mixing information and creating personalized "data banks". This is one of the main interests in my research, the observations of how things are interpreted in dramatical ways, how our memories are constructed from images and stories, and how our life is affected by it. Last year in one of my essays I was asking to my self: In my practice I find references of things that are influencing my perception and way of thinking. For me it is important to understand where the images and ideas are coming from? And how do I filter them, what are actually my criteria to save things in my memory/archive/database, and wether consciously or unconsciously, how they appear in my work, are the influences recognizable? What is my added value for my experiments and reproductions?
Robert McKee about storytelling
We take in and tell stories because they are an equipment for living, for to gain an emotional experience.
The authors are still caring about the essential values. The values of great confusion. Fresh insides into human society, in-depth knowledge of my characters, passion for perfection and the discipline to peruse it, and put things together as no one else used to dream about. I am creating a conspiracy of interest between myself and the audience. The harmony in the work is creating between an instinct and an idea. It is an playful dance between my subconscious and conscious state of mind.
Failed screenplay:
A personal story. Protagonist with a problem. It may be a good story but the art is to tell it and structure so it remains good. Empty exhibitionism is boring. Overcomplicated things which don't have any connection with real life is not thrilling. Truth falling within the spectacle is important, story is metaphor to life, it is important to keep the balance. Story must abstract from life and keep the essences. The art is to lift audiences beyond the imaginative level from what is to what could it be.
Selecting few moments and giving a lifetime. The writer is reducing the whole lifetime to something structured and chosen. Fictional roles are all about making choices. The writer seeks for events. Structure means event choices. Seek the events of life, It takes place in a setting, generating image, producing action, emotion and mood in both in the character and the spectator. To make change meaningful, the writer must express an value - universal quality of human experience that shifts around, creating opposite, controversial qualities. For a film writer typical is choosing at least 40-60 story events - values or scenes. rethinking scenes it is good to remember and ask what value is the scene talking about, -/+ What changes in the overview of value if I go to the next scene? If there are no changes than the scene has no value.. and I need to trash it..
Settings for Your story:
Time1: It is the present;
Time2: How much time the story does spend with Your characters? Years, days, decades?
Location: the 1st dimension of space, what is the specific geography, what is the space like?
2nd dimension of space: Levels of conflict, political, biological, sociological, psychological, all other forces of society shape events as much as period, landscape or costume;
From the subconscious mind to the space travel in reality it is important to set the part of the stories setting;
Period and time, location and space, duration trough time and levels of conflict.. square the story and the setting, it defines what is possible to tell.
What would I create outside the clichés, what are my strength for originality and innovation?
A small world does not mean a trivial world. Than smaller it is than greater the choices are within the details and decisions resulting in a fully original story.
Type and genre:
The love story, substitutes friendship for romantic, passion
War genre is specifically about combat, love can be implemented;
The art film can begin with any genre, the story it self should be unconventional, mini-plotted or anti-plotted..
Writer must understand what is his genre.. research its governing practices. Conventional value changes at climax such as the down-ending of the delusional plot. Conventional settings are important such as the genre, events,
roles, because the audience is looking for some kind of setting fulfillment.
The difference between any Hollywood film and art film:
Language is other than english, the internal conventions of the art film are:
+++ celebration of the surrebrul ?, in-flavoring the intellect by smoldering a strong emotion under a blanket of mood while trough enigma, symbolism and under resolved tensions it invites interpretation and analysis in post- film virtue of caffe criticism.
+++ story design is based on one convention = unconventionality (not based on or conforming to what is generally done or believed)
+++ unconventionality in a really minimal way is the art films distinguishing convention.
+++ the genres are mixed with a richness being innovative, there are simply too many ways to look at the world.
+++ screenplay is the best resource for to investigate the economy of language, main suggestion for writing is being honest with the things that You as an author like so try to stick with one subject and see it from different sides while creating variations for it;
structure = character and character = structure
+ true character is expressed in choices under pressure.. repetition of actions are approving the character.
+ aesthetic emotion harmonizes what we know with what we feel and it gives us a high awareness and en-sureness of our place in the reality;
+ a story well told gives us the very thing that we rarely get from life meaningful emotional experience;
TIPS:
Inspiration and control over the idea and desire to tell a story is important… a premise is an open-ended question, what would happen if..? and than comes the control mechanism which is ensuring the centered meaning of the story it helps to shape the strategic choices for the teller.. it is important not to overwhelm the ideas for a film because it can collapse and say nothing in the end. Than more You shape Your work around one clear idea than more meanings the audience will discover from it as they will take the idea and fallow the aspects mirroring it to their lives. A controlling idea is a single sentence statement, describing how? and why? life undergoes change.. it has two components: value + cause, it identifies the positive charge of a stories critical value and it states the main reason why this value has changed to it's final state.. By examining climax of the last act You can find the stories value. The story tells You it's meaning, the writer is not dictating the meaning to the story. The controlling idea can come any time, it is important to grasp it and finalize it. Looking at ending of the story line I must be able to see what value has been exposed from my characters. What is the chief cause or force that brings this value into the world? there should be clear to see the controlling idea by combining these two answers from my story. You don't design actions to fit Your preconceived ideas, You are finding value and couse by asking questions.
Before taking it super serious, I should ask myself, if is this truth and do I believe in my story? if Yes, than it is the green light!
Cause:
+ a person or thing that gives rise to an action, phenomenon, or condition;
+ reasonable grounds for doing, thinking, or feeling something;
+ a principle, aim, or movement that, because of a deep commitment, one is prepared to defend or advocate;
Ironic idea and possible value and couse of my story..
Love is both: pleasure and pain, but without it life has no meaning! Idealism and pessimism are at the extreme of the experience, both sides are important. Irony still remains. Ironic climax is a single action that makes both a positive and negative statement, how to express both in one action? How to say both clearly? Irony does not mean ambiguity. Ambiguity is a blur, one thing can not be distinguished from another. Irony is a clear double declaration of whats gained and whats lost side by side. But irony is not coincidence, a true irony is honestly motivated, stories that end by a random chance, doubly charged or not, they are meaningless and not ironic.
The story is about a life lived in it's most instates, it is not about the middle ground.. Hyperrealism is giving us the most emotions, after seeing the Sound of Silence theatre play by a latvian director Alvis Hermanis I understood the meaning of the extreme emotional wave because only trough it spectator can grasp the values and ideas in total. It should be very concentrated. The story teller should bring the audience more and more deeper where the audience keeps wondering and can not imagine the source. Emphaty is a more pre-foundable, it expresses things more clearly and focused. Emphatetic protagonist gives more pressure to the spectator to mirror the experiences and raise associations.
The irony of my story is that the tough protagonist is the symbol for cactus.
How does the personal interests construct our character? Is my grandfather the main cactus of my grandmothers collection? Am I a small cactus?
The story line of past and the present, it sketches both.. when the memories are twisting and mixing with illusions and the realness.
Subconscious, experimental story telling
By exploring my roots I am finding answers to my personal questions about my identity. The stories and images are helping me to understand some of my ideas and thoughts that I have in the back of my head. It is drawing portraits that I was ignoring before or not paying enough attention. Most of those are values, really important lessons to learn. For me it is interesting to see how memories are reflecting to a documental materialistic evidence and vice versa, they are subjective, kind of illusions that we have in our heads, but when there is the evidence these illusions are reenacting in our mind. There can be things that we forget about and a documental proof can kind of rebuild the memory. Seeing my grandparents while they are observing different materials and remembering about things that they experienced ages ago, it is interesting to look at the track of the memories. Some of those memories are left behind. We are experiencing events, observing and collecting information, personal experiences, emotions, stories and it has been always important to save some kind of evidence.. as letters, photography or video documentation of things.. for not to forget about it. What is this drive inside us, inside me, that I am willing to dedicate so much time for it? What do I learn from it? Is it another experience and lesson in a way for self fulfillment? Within the obsession of collecting something and spending so much time on it, I can loose the real experience of live events or maybe it is the other way around that I experience even more in this process of investigation and observation? Am I expressing my own identity trough my field of interests? If I am representing my roots and their collections and field of interest how does it reflect back to my personality and things that I've been doing?
POSSIBLE SYSTEMATIZATION OPTIONS:
+ After seeing couple of Woody Allan movies,
there are typically several different stories going on at the same time, the most interesting moments are those, when a new character has been introduced and unexpectedly it builds a bridge in-between situations or other characters; Or the predictions of the story that are proposed suddenly changes dramatically; I must look forward for to find these kind of story lines/memories in my family project and construct images that would question the ambiguity and absurdism of the character or situation;
+ The field of interests is incongruity of things, mix-match of controversial situations. Provoking second thoughts. Innocence and purity of the daily life and the occupations. Exploring memories and stories, ways of archiving things, and creating my own archive;
+ The Beginners I pretty much enjoyed the way how memories were working together with reality and kind of realistic illusion. There is an story teller commenting on his life, telling it to the spectator, and at the same time, he was observed and kind of documented.
There was a mix of memories, from early past and from childhood(late past). The transitions were still images and illustrative descriptions about the time, feeling and atmosphere of the memories and so on. I made a parallel also with an theatre play that I saw in Riga, it is called The Sound of Silence, the scenario is pretty much about memories and about the reenactment of those, how people are displayed nevi and full of hopes but at the same time the spectator knows how it will end, because there is the history that tells it, if this is a real documental story. Similar to this, I found a reference in the movie A Dangerous Method, which seemed to be an autobiographical movie based on true stories, the thing is, as a spectator I can just believe it or ignore it.
Different approach has Quentin Tarantino, who is slightly twisting the expected scenario of well known things and lately with the two bestsellers Inglorious Bastards and Django Unchained he is showing his own interpretation of history, basically more or less the opposite of what happened, he reconstructs his own version.
A kind of similarity I observed in Kubrick's movie The Space Odyssey, for the time when it was made, it was a total science fiction, with predictable scenes which were approved at the time.
Bibliography
David Joselit, What to do with Pictures, October 138 about Digital Arts;
De Mul, J. (2009). The work of art in the age of digital recombination. Digital Material. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. 95-106.
Kessler, F. (2009). What you get is what you see: Digital images and the claim on the real. Digital Material. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. 187-197.
Sekula, A. (1983). Reading an Archive. Photography between labour and capital. In: L. Wells, ed. 2002. The Photography Reader. London: Routledge, pp.443–452.
Quaranta, D. (2011) The Artists as Archivist in the Internet Age. In: D. Quaranta, ed. 2011. Collect the WWWorld.
Appadurai, A. (2003) 'Archive and Aspiration'.
Derrida, J. (1995) 'Archive Fever. A Freudian Impression'. Diacritics, 25 (2), 6-63.
David Campany. (2008) Photography and Cinema.
Concepts in Film Theory (Galaxy Books) (J. Dudley Andrew) http://bookre.org/reader?file=1037561&pg=14
Directing the Documentary (Michael Rabiger) http://bookre.org/reader?file=820246&pg=122
Rober McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting (1997)
More references:
Alec Soth
Images are describing the area and stories about the people who live there. http://alecsoth.com/photography/projects/sleeping-by-the-mississippi/
Two video artists Pim and Karen: http://members.chello.nl/a.p.komen/OTHER.html
Video archive: http://www.smartvideoserver.org/qt_player.php?moId=1312&meId=755
About the hunting subject: Studying hunting and showing the differences, the reality of it, finding aesthetics in the environment. http://www.isabellarozendaal.com/page/2/
http://www.hasselbladfoundation.org/hasselbladspristagare-2013/en/ Hasselblad prices winner
Kutlug Ataman Journey to the Moon 2009