The Internet and Althea Thauberger

In her article Experimentalism is Dead. Long Live the Internet, Emily Vey Duke compares Althea Thauberger's video works to the internet. I think this is a worthy comparison since a lot of the characteristics of Thauberger's videos that we watched in class can also be found in the many forms of work existing on the internet. The four videos of the female musicians followed a format very similar to a countless number of YouTube videos. All anyone needs to make a video like this is a camera and a soundtrack. Most of the videos consist of a YouTube member and his/her instrument either doing an origional work, or a cover of some known song. Some people do a choreographed dance, or a just sing. In any case, the person is getting their work out there for others to see. For the YouTubers, their medium is the internet, for the four female musicians it was Thauberger. Just as the YouTube participants have free reign over the creative aspects of their video such as the setting and how they will present their performance, Thauberger allowed her subjects to be very much a part of the decision making process. In class, she mentioned that she consulted them on the location of the shoot, and Duke wrote in the article that the musicians were free to move around the frame as they pleased and were left to make their own decisions concering appearance- hair, make-up, dress, etc. The subjects of Thauberger's videos also resembled YouTube posters in that they seemed like ordinary people. They each had talent, but were not extroardinary musicians or incredibly beautiful people either. Without the internet and Thauberger, these qualities would have kept these people from recieveing the exposure they enjoy. In both cases, in both cases, the subject simply had to be filmed, and then their work was on its way to be viewed by audiences.

A Memory Lasts Forever also embodies some of the characteristics of the internet. The story is told from different points of view as each girl sings her own prayer. In this way, even the concept of what a prayer is changes from character to character. The internet behaves in the same way as it allows for anyone to voice their opinion on anything; to sing it out into the night and have it be heard. Surfers can take their pick from blogging, profiling, or participating in chat rooms in order to tell their story and find a voice.

Simply Effective Motion Picture Tricks

In the article by Maya Deren that we read, she stresses that filmmakers should avoid limiting themselves by attempting to adhere to the conventions of still photography. She has two reasons for this advice. First, she claims it is a misconception that film and still photography are similar art forms. Besides each involving a lens and exposible film, she says, they are completely different mediums. Because they posses different properties, they should not be created using the same techniques. Second, a large part of how film is experienced has to do with the perception of time that all film creates. Deren encourages filmmakers to imploy their creativity in order to manipulate this aspect of film. She gives several examples of such cinematic trickery in films that she has been a part of . In class we had a chance to see some of these very examples in her film At Land, and in other films as well. Much of the fun of the film Great Pumpkin Race is based on these manipulations. The first trick of the film was met with surprised laughter as the run-away pumpkins reached the bottom of the hill and jumped, one by one, over the fence at the end of the street. Film tricks such as this are funny for a couple of reasons. It is a bit like seeing a magic show, watching realistic looking objects (well, the pumpkins looked a bit like tires in this case) in realistic setting behaving in unexpected ways. Some of the fun comes from trying to figure out how the director accomplished the illusion, also not unlike a magic show. It's enjoyable to discover the cleverness at work that makes the trick a success. In some cases, the simpler the trick, the more enjoyable its effect is. Frampton and Weiland pretend to be literally shooting each other in A and B in Ontario by matching up footage of them wielding their cameras like firearms with loud audio of the film stock. The effect is a mock machine gun battle. It's encouraging to know that in an age of expensive, complicated computer-generated special effects, the medium of the motion picture allows for dramatic effects to be achieved simply through camera movement and simple editing.