Influences for Experimental Film

Finding influences for a film that can be about as much or little as you like is more difficult than it sounds, and in the case of this film I have found it increasingly difficult to find influences for our 'motion' based film as the experimental genre to me seems almost alien and I find it hard to draw on films of that genre to influence what I do. That being said I have drawn on several films and in some instances just clips to help the project.



"Man with a Movie Camera" (1921) was revolutionary when it was first released, created by Dziga Vertov the film tells the story of a day in the Soviet Union using seemingly unrelated shots of static objects, people and daily life. At a time where realist filmmakers who believed editing was corrupting and filmmakers pioneering montage were in heated debates about cinema's future. Vertov disliked the idea of a conventional story, instead shooting this film in the style of a newsreel, this early example of Cinéma vérité is the influence for the non-continual editing style that our film has.



Seeing things happen in slow motion has always fascinated me, where something at normal speed may be mundane and something nobody would look twice at, it almost takes on another dimension and becomes interesting to watch (at least for me), whether a slowed down shot is to show an action in great detail, to let the audience marvel at the complex movement or to empathise an emotion slow motion makes almost anything seem like it has a rhythm to it, and make things that in normal motion are too quick or insignificant to register look all the more impressive.

One way of seeing movement that we'll probably never see without the help of editing software are things going in reverse; everything we do has a different look and style when going in reverse; water, smoke, eating and most notably breaking stuff, seeing objects repair themselves or someone throwing up the food in such a way is facsinating and is garenteed to make the audience react.
For example:




Fernand Leger - Ballet mecanique (1924)
Ballet-Mecanique has been the primary experimental influence on our film, as it features non-continual editing, a variety of different shots with the imagary ranging from conventional to just bizarre, the audeince never know what shot's coming next, if it's one they've seen before or whether it'll be a new one.