REFERENCES LIST:
- MacCabe.1980. Godard. images, sounds, politics
-Godard, Jean Luc, 1996. Introduction à une véritable histoire du cinéma
-Cerisuelo, Marc. 1993. Jean-Luc Godard : au-delà de l'image
-Godard, Jean Luc. 1984. A bout de souffle Breathless
-Brecht, Bertolt.1967. Short description of a new technique of acting which produces an alienation effect
-Willett, John.1977. The theatre of Bertolt Brecht : a study from eight aspects.
SITE LINKS :
-http://www.greencine.com/static/primers/fnwave1.jsp
-http://www.moviemaker.com/directing/article/the_french_new_wave_revisited_3366/
-http://filmsdefrance.com/Best_Nouvelle_Vague.html
-http://www.artandculture.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/ACLive.woa/wa/movement?id=392
-http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Stephen_Nottingham/cintxt/.htm
Friday, May 30, 2008
essay about the French New Wave
The term French New Wave or La Nouvelle Vague emerged with the creation of a group of French film-makers between the years 1958 to 1964 which played a big part in the artistic French revolution of the 60’s. Together they created the Dziga Vertov Group composed of the 5 main film-directors of the French New Wave period: François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette and Eric Rohmer. Before creating the Dziga Vertov Group the members were all film critics for the magazine Cahiers du Cinéma which give them high qualifications and experiences in the film industry.
The Dziga Vertov Group changed the notion of how a film could be made and were driven by a desire of artistic and cinematographic revolution. These directors were considered as auteurs because of the characteristic themes that could be detected through their work. The French New Wave directors were collaborating and assisting each other and so developed a distinct and common use of form, style and narrative, which make their work immediately recognizable. The way films were made reflected an interest in questioning cinema itself, by drawing attention to the conventions used in film-making. In this reflection, the French New Wave directors were seeking to present an alternative to the cinema from Hollywood, by breaking its conventions. The French New Wave directors took advantage of the new technology that was available to them in the late 1950s, their films were shot quickly and cheaply with the use of new equipment, which permitted experimentation and improvisation (www.moviemaker.com), and generally gave the directors more artistic freedom over their work and more especially Jean-Luc Godard; he was the most criticised director of the French New Wave. Godard was seeking a social and artistic revolution, he rejected the conventions and rules adopted by the cinema “bourgeois”, and he wanted the audience to participate fully in the film by letting them think about the scenes. The audience was going from passive viewers to active viewers. His films are highly inspired by the German writer and director Brecht. Like Brecht and his epic theatre, Godard and the director from the French New Wave wanted to go against the conventions of the commercial cinema and had a high desire to break illusion and destroy romantism. Using Brecht’s techniques, the editing often drew attention by being irregular, reminding the audience that they were watching a film, for example by using jump cuts or new editing techniques for the montage.(Nottingham.S) The films were usually composed of improvised dialogue, with many unpredictable elements, jump cuts, digressions, quotes and addresses to the viewers; by doing that, the film-makers wanted to challenge the viewers in order to disturb and maybe seduce them.(MacCabe) Their approach to the audience or viewers was to confront them with a new reality, a reality that they haven’t experience by watching a movie before, they wanted the audience to participate fully in the film by letting them think about the scenes and let their imagination fill the missing bits of the scene. The directors wanted to show and demonstrate a more personal cinema; they were searching for human stories and exploring real life issues. Comparing to the Brecht’s theatre rules, the French New Wave directors were influenced in many other way: Brecht’s theatre demonstrates attitude rather than feeling it. He developed a new way of working with and for the actors; it was really common for them to play all characters, but without putting any feeling in them and just using a demonstrative way. His approach to the audience was also different; he wanted the audience to think rather that to feel, he considered the viewers as scientist observers. Brecht was seeking the theatrical truth by using these techniques and by implementing commentary to encourage the audience’s own reflection. (Willett.J) The main idea was to transform the society by transforming the theatre, and, in the French cinematographic revolution, by transforming the cinema.
Jean-Paul Sartre’s philosophy was also a major influence to the New Wave. His notion of individual and existentialism, the absence of any rational thinking and actions and the absurdity and non-realism in human life were explored. For example, the film-makers were fighting against the predictable roles dictated by society. Their characters were often representing young and marginalised anti-heroes with no family ties who often immorally and against authority. (Nottingham.S)
To conclude I would say that the French New Wave film-makers and more particularly Jean-Luc Godard introduced a new way of filming by breaking with the conventions of traditional filmmaking. They used a new kind of storytelling with the use of jump cuts, digressions, quotes and addresses to the viewer. In a statement about Godard, Georges de Beauregard, the producer of Breathless, says, "French cinema was suffocated by conformity. Films were made according to a fixed routine." Godard wanted to make "the sort of film where anything goes.(Cerisuelo.M) I think that this statement applies to all film-makers of the French New Wave, they were fighting against the traditional and commercial cinema with the will to transform the society by creating artistic and social changes. Those directors revolutionised the cinematographic rules of editing. Although the films represented a radical change from the traditional cinema and have been highly criticised at the time, many of them are now recognised as classic films and many of their techniques are now used by directors in the editing and shooting of their movies.
The Dziga Vertov Group changed the notion of how a film could be made and were driven by a desire of artistic and cinematographic revolution. These directors were considered as auteurs because of the characteristic themes that could be detected through their work. The French New Wave directors were collaborating and assisting each other and so developed a distinct and common use of form, style and narrative, which make their work immediately recognizable. The way films were made reflected an interest in questioning cinema itself, by drawing attention to the conventions used in film-making. In this reflection, the French New Wave directors were seeking to present an alternative to the cinema from Hollywood, by breaking its conventions. The French New Wave directors took advantage of the new technology that was available to them in the late 1950s, their films were shot quickly and cheaply with the use of new equipment, which permitted experimentation and improvisation (www.moviemaker.com), and generally gave the directors more artistic freedom over their work and more especially Jean-Luc Godard; he was the most criticised director of the French New Wave. Godard was seeking a social and artistic revolution, he rejected the conventions and rules adopted by the cinema “bourgeois”, and he wanted the audience to participate fully in the film by letting them think about the scenes. The audience was going from passive viewers to active viewers. His films are highly inspired by the German writer and director Brecht. Like Brecht and his epic theatre, Godard and the director from the French New Wave wanted to go against the conventions of the commercial cinema and had a high desire to break illusion and destroy romantism. Using Brecht’s techniques, the editing often drew attention by being irregular, reminding the audience that they were watching a film, for example by using jump cuts or new editing techniques for the montage.(Nottingham.S) The films were usually composed of improvised dialogue, with many unpredictable elements, jump cuts, digressions, quotes and addresses to the viewers; by doing that, the film-makers wanted to challenge the viewers in order to disturb and maybe seduce them.(MacCabe) Their approach to the audience or viewers was to confront them with a new reality, a reality that they haven’t experience by watching a movie before, they wanted the audience to participate fully in the film by letting them think about the scenes and let their imagination fill the missing bits of the scene. The directors wanted to show and demonstrate a more personal cinema; they were searching for human stories and exploring real life issues. Comparing to the Brecht’s theatre rules, the French New Wave directors were influenced in many other way: Brecht’s theatre demonstrates attitude rather than feeling it. He developed a new way of working with and for the actors; it was really common for them to play all characters, but without putting any feeling in them and just using a demonstrative way. His approach to the audience was also different; he wanted the audience to think rather that to feel, he considered the viewers as scientist observers. Brecht was seeking the theatrical truth by using these techniques and by implementing commentary to encourage the audience’s own reflection. (Willett.J) The main idea was to transform the society by transforming the theatre, and, in the French cinematographic revolution, by transforming the cinema.
Jean-Paul Sartre’s philosophy was also a major influence to the New Wave. His notion of individual and existentialism, the absence of any rational thinking and actions and the absurdity and non-realism in human life were explored. For example, the film-makers were fighting against the predictable roles dictated by society. Their characters were often representing young and marginalised anti-heroes with no family ties who often immorally and against authority. (Nottingham.S)
To conclude I would say that the French New Wave film-makers and more particularly Jean-Luc Godard introduced a new way of filming by breaking with the conventions of traditional filmmaking. They used a new kind of storytelling with the use of jump cuts, digressions, quotes and addresses to the viewer. In a statement about Godard, Georges de Beauregard, the producer of Breathless, says, "French cinema was suffocated by conformity. Films were made according to a fixed routine." Godard wanted to make "the sort of film where anything goes.(Cerisuelo.M) I think that this statement applies to all film-makers of the French New Wave, they were fighting against the traditional and commercial cinema with the will to transform the society by creating artistic and social changes. Those directors revolutionised the cinematographic rules of editing. Although the films represented a radical change from the traditional cinema and have been highly criticised at the time, many of them are now recognised as classic films and many of their techniques are now used by directors in the editing and shooting of their movies.
week 9
Lecture: Cyber Punk
In this week’s lecture we spent time trying to define and undersdand the multiple different aspect of Cyberpunk.Cyberpunk can be seen as a science fiction genre of the society. It relates to topics like computers, genetics, body modification and corporate developments. Cyberpunk is define as a drastic evolution of technology in a futuristic perspective of our society. Authors of Cyberpunk want to implant a rebellion against authority and the ones who have the power and control the world or in minimal dimesion the ones who control our society.
Some themes of Cyberpunk are technology and mythology, utopia and distopia, Cities as machines, technological change and modernism to post modernism.
The second part of the lecture was dedicated to the projection of a French New Wave’s genre movie: La Jetee. This movie represents and uses all the techniques of the directors of the French New Wave time. The editing and montage of the film shows the will to show another reality through the camera.
Readings:
Burning Chrome by William Gibson:
This story is about a fictional world being exclusively controlled by computer. in this story hackers become a big threat as they have the control and try to steal everything they can using their abilities and knowledges of computers. I hav to admit that this text hasn’t been really easy to read and i did not understand everything.
Allegory of the cave by Plato :
This text is primarly talking about the human ablity to handle and perceive the truth and how it can be influenced and conditioned.. Plato’s in his text uses the example of people being kept as prisoners in a cave and only with a fire and shadows they create another reality. The mtaphore of this story is that we, humans, are prisoners and things that we perceive are the shadows projected on the wall,
Tutorial:
Time dedicated to the essay:
I chose to do my essay on the French New Wave and the revolution that happened between 1958 and 1964 for the Arts in general but i will focus more particularly on the cinema and the techniques used by directors( like Jean Luc Godard) to change a commercial industry and show a different reality to the audience. I will ,in overall, talk about the motivations behing the use of all these new techniques of filming and editing.
In this week’s lecture we spent time trying to define and undersdand the multiple different aspect of Cyberpunk.Cyberpunk can be seen as a science fiction genre of the society. It relates to topics like computers, genetics, body modification and corporate developments. Cyberpunk is define as a drastic evolution of technology in a futuristic perspective of our society. Authors of Cyberpunk want to implant a rebellion against authority and the ones who have the power and control the world or in minimal dimesion the ones who control our society.
Some themes of Cyberpunk are technology and mythology, utopia and distopia, Cities as machines, technological change and modernism to post modernism.
The second part of the lecture was dedicated to the projection of a French New Wave’s genre movie: La Jetee. This movie represents and uses all the techniques of the directors of the French New Wave time. The editing and montage of the film shows the will to show another reality through the camera.
Readings:
Burning Chrome by William Gibson:
This story is about a fictional world being exclusively controlled by computer. in this story hackers become a big threat as they have the control and try to steal everything they can using their abilities and knowledges of computers. I hav to admit that this text hasn’t been really easy to read and i did not understand everything.
Allegory of the cave by Plato :
This text is primarly talking about the human ablity to handle and perceive the truth and how it can be influenced and conditioned.. Plato’s in his text uses the example of people being kept as prisoners in a cave and only with a fire and shadows they create another reality. The mtaphore of this story is that we, humans, are prisoners and things that we perceive are the shadows projected on the wall,
Tutorial:
Time dedicated to the essay:
I chose to do my essay on the French New Wave and the revolution that happened between 1958 and 1964 for the Arts in general but i will focus more particularly on the cinema and the techniques used by directors( like Jean Luc Godard) to change a commercial industry and show a different reality to the audience. I will ,in overall, talk about the motivations behing the use of all these new techniques of filming and editing.
week 8
Lecture: Is gaming a waste of time?
The lecture today was split into two parts, the first part was presented by Stephen and the second by Adam. The main focus of the lecture was to discuss the relevance of video games and more particularly, to discuss the importance of computer games in our society. We talked about the research that has been done on computer games and all different approach used to study their impact on people and their notion of reality. We looked at different aspect of the games and at the long term effects that computer games have on players including the persistence of the effects. We studied the games as a growing cultural practise of our society. In the last recent years, games have become social experience and a universal language has been developed in order for players to communicate and understand the ‘gaming’ language.
In this lecture we also discussed the differences between Narratology and Ludology. What appeared is that, Narratology is the study of video games from a literary perspective, using story-telling, it is almost studied like text and Ludology is different in that it does not approach the game as a story telling but more as an entertainement.
Reading: Trigger Happy
This week’s reading was called “trigger happy” written by Stephen Pool. This text investigates the effects of video games in our society and on people. It talked about how game designers create voluntary a virtual environement but make their game as real as possible to challenge the player’s mind and make their game well known and popular. The games are made as a representation of our reality in order to immerse the player and project him in a space where everything is possible and where the impossible can happen. The logic is not taken into account and games are created in the most realistic way.
Tutorial:
For the tutorial this week we had to go through some tasks on how to use miscrosoft word an excel.The First Tasks on word were easy for me as i had already used it for university and daily life purposes for example how to open the document, type and save or when we were asked to put some of the words in bold or in italic, all of the first tasks of the tutorial were easy to do and quite automatic. But as we went along the task became more complicated and especially when we had to do tasks on excel, as i am not really familiar with excel, those tasks were, for me, more difficult and took more time to be done. This exercise was at first quite boring as i thought we would only have to do things i already knew, but it appeared to be more useful than i thought it would be. I don’t know if I would ever use all we have done for this tutorial task but it is still useful to know how to use those programs.
The lecture today was split into two parts, the first part was presented by Stephen and the second by Adam. The main focus of the lecture was to discuss the relevance of video games and more particularly, to discuss the importance of computer games in our society. We talked about the research that has been done on computer games and all different approach used to study their impact on people and their notion of reality. We looked at different aspect of the games and at the long term effects that computer games have on players including the persistence of the effects. We studied the games as a growing cultural practise of our society. In the last recent years, games have become social experience and a universal language has been developed in order for players to communicate and understand the ‘gaming’ language.
In this lecture we also discussed the differences between Narratology and Ludology. What appeared is that, Narratology is the study of video games from a literary perspective, using story-telling, it is almost studied like text and Ludology is different in that it does not approach the game as a story telling but more as an entertainement.
Reading: Trigger Happy
This week’s reading was called “trigger happy” written by Stephen Pool. This text investigates the effects of video games in our society and on people. It talked about how game designers create voluntary a virtual environement but make their game as real as possible to challenge the player’s mind and make their game well known and popular. The games are made as a representation of our reality in order to immerse the player and project him in a space where everything is possible and where the impossible can happen. The logic is not taken into account and games are created in the most realistic way.
Tutorial:
For the tutorial this week we had to go through some tasks on how to use miscrosoft word an excel.The First Tasks on word were easy for me as i had already used it for university and daily life purposes for example how to open the document, type and save or when we were asked to put some of the words in bold or in italic, all of the first tasks of the tutorial were easy to do and quite automatic. But as we went along the task became more complicated and especially when we had to do tasks on excel, as i am not really familiar with excel, those tasks were, for me, more difficult and took more time to be done. This exercise was at first quite boring as i thought we would only have to do things i already knew, but it appeared to be more useful than i thought it would be. I don’t know if I would ever use all we have done for this tutorial task but it is still useful to know how to use those programs.
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Week 7: Cronenberg –Cinema and Technology
Reading: The Military-Entertainment Complex
This paper discusses war and the use of propaganda in America. It shows how they use the media to manipulate and misinform the population about military decision for the war by giving false justifications. Manipulation of information is the key to divulgate the ‘truth’. By changing the information, new perspectives can be created to achieve a specific objective. It is said in the paper that it is common that military use directors or screenwriters to write fictional terrorist scenarios to ‘prepare’ them to any eventual attack. The use of media is also discussed as an ‘entertaining way’ of keeping the population interested in militaries operations. . It gives evidence on how military and entertainment have always been interlinked. The overall theme of this paper for me is how the media controls and manipulates the population in showing them what they should or should not believe through TV, Radio etc…
Lecture:
In this week’s lecture we watched eXistenZ, directed by David Cronenberg made in 1999. The film is about Allegra Geller, a passionate and really talented video game designer. Allegra has designed a new game called eXsitenZ. As they are about to play, she is taken away with her game. After some time Ted (a man who appears like her bodyguard in the film) and Allegra finally get to play to her new designed game for the first time. This let them experience some really intense things, from terribly bad to terribly good. This movie looks at the idea of a virtual reality. This let us think about where the line is between real and virtual?
No tutorial this week.
This paper discusses war and the use of propaganda in America. It shows how they use the media to manipulate and misinform the population about military decision for the war by giving false justifications. Manipulation of information is the key to divulgate the ‘truth’. By changing the information, new perspectives can be created to achieve a specific objective. It is said in the paper that it is common that military use directors or screenwriters to write fictional terrorist scenarios to ‘prepare’ them to any eventual attack. The use of media is also discussed as an ‘entertaining way’ of keeping the population interested in militaries operations. . It gives evidence on how military and entertainment have always been interlinked. The overall theme of this paper for me is how the media controls and manipulates the population in showing them what they should or should not believe through TV, Radio etc…
Lecture:
In this week’s lecture we watched eXistenZ, directed by David Cronenberg made in 1999. The film is about Allegra Geller, a passionate and really talented video game designer. Allegra has designed a new game called eXsitenZ. As they are about to play, she is taken away with her game. After some time Ted (a man who appears like her bodyguard in the film) and Allegra finally get to play to her new designed game for the first time. This let them experience some really intense things, from terribly bad to terribly good. This movie looks at the idea of a virtual reality. This let us think about where the line is between real and virtual?
No tutorial this week.
WEEK 6: a brief history of the computer and internet
Reading:
This week’s reading was called: “What's new about 'new media'?” From the article I found out that the new media is always changing. There are always improvements on technology even though it is called new media is it in fact always in improvement and reevaluate. The most predominant example of ‘new’ media is the internet. When we consider the implication of the World Wide Web, the internet has developed and created new media stream. This shows the evolution of the media. The internet has taken a dramatic change and has grown massively over the decades. The improvement of the internet has permitted new ways of communication to merge, like computing and new media telecommunication or new media; all of these are considered as one unique stream of communication.
Lecture:
This week’s lecture was about the history of the computer and the Internet. The first basic form of a computer was the Abacus, used c 3000BC. In the 19th century Charles Babbage created the ‘Difference Engine’ which allowed engineers to calculate and print mathematical tables. Alan Turing made the first working computer to break German codes in World War Two. The first PC was released in 1975. Bill Gates developed a ‘computer language’ for people to understand the computing process. We then had a discussion about the internet during the lecture; the internet is a network of networks and the Web is a component of the internet. It is only a feature of it.
Tutorial:
Choose an article on Wikipedia and show its accuracy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Caledonia
At first I went to read the article and found that it was quite accurate for everything that it says about New-Caledonia. I decided to read it another time to make sure everything was right. While reading I was taking to my friend from New-Caledonia telling her about what I was doing, we arrived to the geographical part of the article and that is when we read that the Island was 350 kilometers long whereas New-Caledonia is about 500 kilometers from south to north. It was a great example of how Wikipedia can be a bad reference. It was not the first time that I was using Wikipedia but it was the first time I was looking for inaccurate information and I am very surprised on how easy it is to get false references.
This week’s reading was called: “What's new about 'new media'?” From the article I found out that the new media is always changing. There are always improvements on technology even though it is called new media is it in fact always in improvement and reevaluate. The most predominant example of ‘new’ media is the internet. When we consider the implication of the World Wide Web, the internet has developed and created new media stream. This shows the evolution of the media. The internet has taken a dramatic change and has grown massively over the decades. The improvement of the internet has permitted new ways of communication to merge, like computing and new media telecommunication or new media; all of these are considered as one unique stream of communication.
Lecture:
This week’s lecture was about the history of the computer and the Internet. The first basic form of a computer was the Abacus, used c 3000BC. In the 19th century Charles Babbage created the ‘Difference Engine’ which allowed engineers to calculate and print mathematical tables. Alan Turing made the first working computer to break German codes in World War Two. The first PC was released in 1975. Bill Gates developed a ‘computer language’ for people to understand the computing process. We then had a discussion about the internet during the lecture; the internet is a network of networks and the Web is a component of the internet. It is only a feature of it.
Tutorial:
Choose an article on Wikipedia and show its accuracy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Caledonia
At first I went to read the article and found that it was quite accurate for everything that it says about New-Caledonia. I decided to read it another time to make sure everything was right. While reading I was taking to my friend from New-Caledonia telling her about what I was doing, we arrived to the geographical part of the article and that is when we read that the Island was 350 kilometers long whereas New-Caledonia is about 500 kilometers from south to north. It was a great example of how Wikipedia can be a bad reference. It was not the first time that I was using Wikipedia but it was the first time I was looking for inaccurate information and I am very surprised on how easy it is to get false references.
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