Monday, April 20, 2015

Project No. 2 - "The Slow Cascade"

It would have been easy to imagine that I would do another short film for our latest project, and that is because I personally find film to be the most expressive medium that vividly captures those ultimate artistic intents that are harder to replicate with any other medium, whether it be still photography, music, painting, drawing, or live performance art. So is the case with my latest short film, "The Slow Cascade," again starring Ben Meunier, who thankfully agreed to be on board again with my usual antics, although how many other number of times he would be willing to do it after this is unknown. "The Slow Cascade" takes advantage of the prompt of considering and using space by using time to push that space to evoke a particular emotion, that being of looming fear and dread, although that may not be apparent at first. Things appear calm at first, but also immediately, through the slowing of time, the eery music, and provocative images of rushing water, an empty bench, and a creeping goose, one can only assume that something terrible yet unexplained has occurred and one can only guess what may have happened. The main character appears to be meditating at first, but could he be pre-meditatively considering doing some terrible deed or simply reminiscing having done it already? Clearly that person is actually at that place he is thinking about at that very moment, so what significance does it hold to him? For the short amount of time it runs, this film has no clear narrative and instead asks questions about what happened, considering what the images, the alteration of the film's speed, and music communicate to the viewers. Certeau says that stories "...organize the play of changing relationships between places and spaces," a place being where "...objects...are...reducible to...being there..." and a space being where "...operations..." are being made." Ben's character is in one place behaving how one might consider inactive while there is are things going on around him that he is clearly not paying any attention to, but on the other hand he is thinking about another place where something happened that he probably took part in. The bridge between place and space is made here because he is simply in one place and thinking about another location where some operation was in order.

"The Slow Cascade"

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