MY WINNIPEG (2007)

My Winnipeg is a real inspiration to me and I thought best to stay clear of it for a while so as to not be influenced too much but actually sat down and watched it again today for inspiration. It is a crazy free-wheeling and intriguing performative and poetic documentary of the filmmakers formative years growing up in Winnipeg. Re-enactments from actors and his eccentric mother of key life defining moments are recorded in his old family home set dressed to replicate it as it was freely crossing the boundaries of fiction and non-fiction. This is combined with archive footage, photos, a poetic narration from Maddin himself and dreamlike camera-work create a compelling and beguiling docu-fantasia or what Werner Hertzog terms “ecstatic truth”.

From further research in and around the film I found an interview with Madin speaking about the way some documentaries have evolved around the millenium stated “movies haven’t even really concerned themselves with the pains over what packaging the truth comes to them in. If a movie feels honest, ecstatically or literally, people can kind of feel it… The more manipulated things are, the less likely people are to be misled, to take everything said with a grain of salt, and to sort out dynamics of things that are true and untrue in their lives. I always liked that.”

There are lots of ideas that I can take from the film and avenues to pursue for the "Poetic Love" documentary idea I am working on. I love the idea of using re-enactments to create a docu-drama element to some scenes from my participants. The idea of stitching in archive footage to show topics being covered in the documentary is a good idea and through fair usage I may be able to use film clips to demonstrate these too. The poetical nature of the voice over also works really well and adds a romantic, nostalgic and ironic sensibility to the film that I may be able yo use my recorded sound to re-create. the idea of a very personal rememberances and subjectivity are also ideas I will look to put a spin on.

THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE (2002)

Starting to write my research proposal I wanted to-revisit some texts that really inspired me and one of these was The Kid Stays in the Picture a documentary Nanette Burstein & Brett Morgan. (2002). The film is an award winning documentary based on the autobiography of the infamous Paramount studio head Robert Evans.

The obvious “talking head” documentary is side-stepped using only a voice over from the great raconteur Evans’ himself throughout. This is accompanied visually by clever use of a range of archive materials from digitally layered and superimposed moving photos and film clips and news footage as well as stylistic newly shot footage from the locations mentioned. It is also very playful with the idea of objectivity and subjectivity from the very start.

 Reviewing the film Maitland McDonagh sums it up thus “The result is a snazzy kick that's never less than hugely entertaining and should in no way be mistaken for an unbiased account. But then, Evans is the quintessential Hollywood character, and what's more Hollywood than crafting your own legend”. This is summed up by Evans’ quote “There are three sides to every story: your side, my side, and the truth. And no one is lying. Memories shared serve each differently”. Morgan himself in interview also defended the subjectivity of the film and it being only Evans’ side of the story by dubbing it “cinema mythologica”.

 The film was an influence for all of the above. I love the shameless subjectiveness as the whole story is purely from Evans viewpoint and perspective and is shameless about this. It is almost as though you have pulled up a chair next to him in a bar and he is telling you the story. Who cares if the facts are not all objective and Evans I am sure bends and stretches these. The other technique I like that apart from a couple of archive interview clips you never see Evans. Clever use of the images mentioned earlier and especially animation of old photographs are a real triumph. Lots of food for thought and possible ideas and techniques to develop in my own work.

WERNER HERZOG'S "ECSTATIC TRUTH"

Exploring the notion of "truth" in documentary and the thoughts of other practitioners I came across the text from a lecture given by a filmmaker I greatly admire Werner Herzog. Herzog works in both fiction and documentary films following a screening of his film “Lessons in darkness” in Milan in 1992 addressed the issues of reality in factual films well.

“Our entire sense of reality has been called into question. But I do not want to dwell on this fact any longer, since what moves me has never been reality, but a question that lies behind it [beyond; dahinter]: the question of truth. Sometimes facts so exceed our expectations—have such an unusual, bizarre power—that they seem unbelievable. But in the fine arts, in music, literature, and cinema, it is possible to reach a deeper stratum of truth—a poetic, ecstatic truth, which is mysterious and can only be grasped with effort; one attains it through vision, style, and craft.”

This "ecstatic truth" is an area I want to explore in my own work and it draws lots of my aims and aspirations. I agree with his thoughts of a deeper intuitive version of the truth existing and the filmmaker intrinsically knowing the content well and creating his or her version of the reality and aim to follow this path.

POETIC LOVE AUDIO

This project has been put a little on the back-burner as my main focus has been with the Siblings piece but I have been carrying out primary interviews with my grandmother to see what directions the piece could take me.

SIBLINGS: LIP-SYNCH AUDIO TECHNICAL ISSUES

Working on the first practice run of the project one of the key areas that was tricky to get right was the lip synch audio. It was a process of trial and error to get it to work correctly and I have outlined the stages of development it went through to try and get it to work. The boys audio of them saying things was not an issue as it was recorded live but some of the other elements and the lip synch were trickier to get right..


The evolution of process for recording the audio for the contributors voices who were also commenting on the boys psychologists, parents etc is outlined below.


Attempt 1:
The aim of this was to use the boys voices but to simply put an effect on them. This would make the workflow easy as simply exporting the boys voices sound files then dropping and effect on their voices them would change them and the timings and everything else would be the same so they could be dropped straight back into Premiere Pro. As a test I used the psychologists statement and wanted to get the boys audio to sound more overbearing, official and statement like to create a representation of them. In this first instance I tried out a lot of effects to deepen the boys voices and ended up putting a computer sounding effect on it in the final trial version. This worked as it still lip synched with the boys but was too heavy handed. the effects distorted the boys voices too much and sounded far too unnatural. I really wanted to use real voices of those involved or others to voice their words to make it feel more real.


Attempt 2:
I got down the words of the parents about what they wanted to say about the boys and recorded it. Then I tried to get the boys to lip synch to it whilst the audio was being played back to them. This was a bit of a disaster and far too difficult for the boys. Timing, inclination, phrasing and tempo as well as cueing them in bang on was far too tricky and simply did not work.


Attempt 3:
This time I used the words of the parents about what they wanted to say about the boys and recorded the boys saying it. The process that worked was this.

• Recorded the boys in-vision doing saying the parents lines
• Take the clips and put them in a timeline on Adobe Premiere Pro.
• Cueing them up to exact points on the timeline. So the boys audio to start on 1:00 minute.
• Using the play-head in Adobe Premiere Pro and also the waveform as a guide to the start.
• Also the picture of the boys on display and their version of the statement.
• The above: timing, play-head, boys in vision and waveform it all act as a guide for parents.
• Play the clip through so the parents can get the boys timing, inclination, phrasing and tempo.
• Then keep recording on a TASCAM digital recorder the audio until they got it bang on.
• Then the audio files of the parents audio that were recorded are imported into Premiere Pro.
• The audio files are then synched up to replace the boys saying the lines.
• Minor alterations in timing, starting and spacing are added to get the lip-synch to look right.
• The boys are in the clip with their lips moving and the sound from the parents coming out.

This is a complicated and time consuming process BUT it does work and it was the easiest way to do it

SIBLINGS: DEEPER RESEARCH AND THEORY 1

Following on from my initial research and findings into Siblings and birth order I decided I need to delve further. I had looked at lots of lighter research and articles but wanted to spread my net a little further. This was to make sure that this research help good and by and large it did. I just wanted it corroborated by some more solid theoretical findings and to tri-angulate it.


The forefather of sibling theory was the Austrian doctor and psychotherapist Dr Alfred Adler. He proposed that birth order is an important factor in shaping one’s personality, psychological makeup and lifestyle. He was the founder of the school of individual psychology and the importance of feelings of inferiority (inferiority complex) as an isolating role in personality development. In siblings the age difference, physicality, attributes and personality as well as the competition attributed to this. Adler emphasized the importance of equality in preventing various forms of psychopathology, and espoused the development of social interest and democratic family structures for raising children.

THE BELOW IS ABRIDGED INFORMATION AND RESEARCH
Adler often emphasized one's birth order as having an influence on the style of life and the strengths and weaknesses in one's psychological make up. Birth Order referred to the placement of siblings within the family. Adler believed that the firstborn child would be in a favorable position, enjoying the full attention of the eager new parents until the arrival of a second child. This second child would cause the first born to suffer feelings of dethronement, no longer being the center of attention. Adler (1908) believed that in a three-child family, the oldest child would be the most likely to suffer from neuroticism and substance addiction which he reasoned was a compensation for the feelings of excessive responsibility "the weight of the world on one's shoulders" (e.g. having to look after the younger ones) and the melancholic loss of that once supremely pampered position. As a result, he predicted that this child was the most likely to end up in jail or an asylum. Youngest children would tend to be overindulged, leading to poor social empathy. Consequently, the middle child, who would experience neither dethronement nor overindulgence, was most likely to develop into a successful individual yet also most likely to be a rebel and to feel squeezed-out. Adler himself was the second in a family of six children.


Adler never produced any scientific support for his interpretations on birth order roles, nor did he feel the need to. Yet the value of the hypothesis was to extend the importance of siblings in marking the psychology of the individual beyond Freud's more limited emphasis on the mother and father. Hence, Adlerians spend time therapeutically mapping the influence that siblings (or lack thereof) had on the psychology of their clients. The idiographic approach entails an excavation of the phenomenology of one's birth order position for likely influence on the subject's Style of Life. In sum, the subjective experiences of sibling positionality and inter-relations are psychodynamically important for Adlerian therapists and personality theorists, not the cookbook predictions that may or may not have been objectively true in Adler's time.


For Adler, birth order answered the question, "Why do children, who are raised in the same family, grow up with very different personalities?" While a geneticist would claim the differences are caused by subtle variations in the individuals' genetics, Adler showed through his birth order theory that children do not grow up in the same family, but the oldest child grows up in a family where they have younger siblings, the middle child with older and younger siblings, and the youngest with older siblings. The position in the family constellation, Adler said, is the reason for these differences in personality and not genetics.


Obviously these theories can be applied directly to my own work. as Adler was recognised as the forefather of the importance of sibling birth order in the make up of personalities of siblings.




Freud

CRITIQUE FEEDBACK

Today I screened a first version of my "Siblings" work to some of my class. It was great to see the work in front of an audience and there was some great feedback, a lot of it was issues I had noticed myself and some of it bringing other issues into focus. It was a really constructive process though and all of the comments have helped shape up areas that were working, possible changes and avenues to possibly pursue moving forward.

The following comments were made based on the screening of today and the discussion that followed.

• Why animation and pixelated b/w elements? A bit clunky and could be dealt with in a ore subtle way.
• As the viewer we are different to the artist especially in relationships to the boys and being able to tell them apart.
• Is it too confusing? Is this a bad thing? We discussed this and also in response to the above point could it be more interesting to have the boys on screen the whole time rather than the animations & b/w.
• It would definitely be better on 3 screens as an immersive experience rather than the one screen. Sound coming from screen son talking on and making audience turn around to interact with the piece.
• The boys have a charm and their personalities do shine through and even though the interactions were staged as it was shot one camera the interplay and humour reinforced their relationships. The deadpan parents and robot voice took away the charm though.
• How much were their comments guided by me? An interesting question and the boys own thoughts were not scripted but were discussed and responses and pecking orders established before filming. make sure this naturalness of the boys does not get lost!

The following comments were all noted as potential avenues to consider and explore.

• Keep simplistic as would be more powerful. Less is more!
• Talk to others who have relationships or opinions of the boys. Teachers etc.
• 3 monitors and installation on a larger scale. Suzanne Hiler?
• A coupe of people had issues with boys appearing to be naked and was it necessary and started raising whole different debates and readings. Most really liked it and seeing the fact that they were physically young and their different physiques. We discussed the fragility of being nude and laid bare too and most liked this idea.
• Possibly play around with the order so not always fist, second and third born left to right. Keep the audience guessing and make them work harder. Liked that two boys look the same. Would make the audience have to get to know them their selves and pay attention.
• Try with additional archive or GV footage BUT most liked the simplicity that the idea could have and thought this was possibly unnecessary.
• Could the boys ask each other questions? This could possibly be about themselves. For instance " what do you like about me"?
• The bits where the boys were not talking and simply existing naturally (well as naturally as you can in front of a camera) were as interesting as the talking bits. posture, body language, relationship with the camera and interviewer etc.
• They all spotted the similarities to some of Bill Violas work.

SIBLINGS TEST 1: OWN REFLECTIONS

I have completed a first version of my "Siblings" piece for the critique this Thursday. It will not be able to be screened as it will finally be on three large screens due to time factors but does give a flavour of what I am aiming to achieve. There are real concerns over some aspects of it though and my overall feeling is that it is a little too obvious and ham-fisted in trying to get my point across due to some of the techniques used.

I will attempt to outline what I feel are the the positives and the negatives below before I get some tutor and peer feedback on Thursday. I am going to not make any changes until then as I am really interested to see what others will find of my work though and if our pros and cons tally...

• The footage of my sons I feel is working and the interplay between the three screens and sense of fun, humour personalities and individual identity of their elements is working.
• The breaking of the 4th wall and subversion of the typical documentary talking head seems to work especially with the boys bouncing off of each other.
• The mise-en-scene of a plain background and simple 3 point lighting is good as it does not detract from the main subjects. My wife had concerns about the boys appearing to be naked but i quite liked the way you could see physically how they were different. T shirts could be considered though either plain white or their favourite colours orange, blue & green.
• The comments by parents is simply not working. I think I was trying too hard to show off a range of skills by incorporating the prototype animation and it is not needed. It was a way to be able to avoid tricky ADR and lip synch with the boys and did get around this but I feel that this is necessary. The aim was to show them as a sort of vibrant cartoon and as an almost Pop Art representation of them put together by both parents but it does not quite work!
• The comments by psychologists is even more heavy handed. The computer voice and pixelated b/w image stuffing the clinical points down the audience throats. MUST be more deft and subtle.
• Could possibly include more opinions of the boys from other sources. Add grandparents, teachers, aunts/uncles etc.
• Could include clips to illustrate what they are talking about, either archive or GV's. May really step out of the mood and tone created but could be playfully included to subvert traditional documentary codes and conventions.
• Could possibly move the boys around in the screens to be more playful with the audience so they do not each have a screen and only appear on that but move about re-ordering.
• The transitions between the statements could be re-considered and possible dissolves to blend the boys through each other.. The lack of editing does seem to work and I guess titles and on screen captions could be considered in between the  
• Moving forward in my opinion the parents and psychologists thoughts do need to be lip synched to the boys lips moving so it is their faces but NOT their voices. This will mean removing the animation and pixelated aspects and the shots all looking the same. This will also add a sense of the uncanny and possibly disturbing and confusing audiences a little.