Mothlight
Question A:
Stan Brakhage’s Mothlight articulates the structure and limits of no-camera psychedelic, experimental film by demonstrating a clear, simple gimmick presented simply and without comment. The handwritten title, jumping around in the frame because it was carved onto every frame of film, establishes a homespun nature to the short film that sets it apart from most conventional film. Furthermore, the use of crushed objects on mylar film, playing them at high speed, illustrates the desires of experimental film to innovatively establish atmosphere and tone. The goal of Mothlight is to intrigue and unsettle, demonstrating that, while this type of film is limited to the kinds of things that you can press between strips of mylar film, that alone is enough to create an intriguing sensory experience.
Question B:
The experimental no-camera style in Mothlight illuminates the kind of outside-the-box thinking that Brakhage was known for – by creating a short film without even using a camera, Brakhage challenges our ideas of how films are made, as well as the requirements of story, plot, character and narrative. Instead of a normal film with human beings involved, Mothlight creates a world made of kaleidoscopic flashes of fly’s wings, dust, insect legs, and more, selling a mood and unsettling atmosphere rather than a concrete story. These cinematic norms are thrown completely out the window with Brakhage’s work, proposing a new norm that says that any type of image projected on a surface constitutes a film – no cameras or actors need even be used.
Lemon
Question A:
Hollis Frampton’s Lemon demonstrates the makeup of this particular type of experimental film that focuses on single-takes and examination of objects. By keeping the one shot on the single lemon, audiences are shown that this lemon constitutes the parameters of the entire world of the film – as such, they are meant to focus on it and to understand its contours and inherent nature. The use of the light to probe it and examine it from different angles also sets a singular goal for the audience that is easy to understand: it is the job of the audience to focus on this lemon and understand it from every single perspective, while also maintaining a static angle on it. The juxtaposition between the static shot and the moving light also demonstrates to the audience that they would not be given a look at all angles of the lemon itself.
Question B:
Lemon innovates and challenges cinematic norms in a number of ways. Firstly, the one-take, one-shot nature of the film demonstrates that films do not have to utilize the methods of montage or editing to constitute a film. Instead, a single, one-shot presentation of an object can be sufficient to give the audience a specific viewpoint into the makeup, appearance and impression of that object and its world. Secondly, the use of lighting challenges conventional wisdom by slowly fading in and out on the lemon, occasionally making it look ominous, then bright, then sinister again. The moving of the light around the lemon, eventually leading to an eclipse, showcases the different ways in which light can be manipulated to make the most innocuous objects have grand significance.
Television Delivers People
Question A:
Richard Serra and Carlota Fay Solomon’s Television Delivers People uses a number of techniques to get its message across. The short film minces no words about television being a tool of mass media to socially control people and use them to facilitate capitalist and corporate ends. Serra and Solomon frequently utilize plain scrolling text to establish their thesis, which is done from the beginning: “The Product of Television, Commercial Television, is the Audience.” The entire diegesis of the world is through this highly polemic text talking about the all-consuming nature of the mass media on the consumer themselves. With the Muzak playing in the background, the overall effect is to demonstrate an ironic lack of presentationalism or nuance, while also ironically presenting these harsh, damning arguments in a pleasing, ad-like way.
Question B:
The primary norm this short film challenges is the need for film to tell a story visually – while there is method to the madness of presenting the filmmakers’ arguments in white against a blue background, the overall lack of visual stimulus is intended to act as a counterweight to all the sensory overload advertisers and television mass media producers foist upon the audience. By keeping things simple and plain, Serra and Solomon support their assertion that it is precisely that visual medium that has an addictive, controlling effect on the audience, offering this plain text as a balm. At the same time, the pointed use of the commercial clip at the beginning – a shot of a remote control while a woman says, “To get into TV. It seemed like a good way to get his attention” – is a wonderful editing trick to remove the ad’s images from its original context and re-contextualize it in such a horrific and unsettling way. These things and more make Television Delivers People an innovative exercise in non-visual filmic storytelling.
