Unit 4: Externally Set Assignment

Theme: Passions & Obsessions

Unit 4

Unit 4 (Like Unit 2) is an externally set assignment.

Through a series of lectures, discussions, visits and workshops you will develop ideas, experiment with techniques/resources, Record your work and discoveries and finally present your final outcome/s through the creation of a moving image work and supporting materials (sketchbook).

Assessment Objectives

Develop your ideas through sustained and focused investigations informed by contextual and other sources, demonstrating analytical and critical understanding.

Experiment with and select appropriate resources, media, materials, techniques and processes, reviewing and refining your ideas as your work develops.

Assessment Objectives

Record in visual and/or other forms ideas, observations and insights relevant to your intentions, demonstrating an ability to reflect on your work and progress

Present a personal, informed and meaningful response demonstrating critical understanding, realising intentions and, where appropriate, making connections between visual, oral or other elements.

Preparatory Studies

As before your preparatory studies will be your pre-production materials and Film tasks/experiments. (sketchbook & Portfolio DVD).

Preparatory Studies

Your sketchbook should show Your development of your personal response to the theme

(Passions & Obsessions) The continued development and progression of your ideas Test shots or photographs of techniques of filming or conceptual

ideas Critical review and reflection, recording your thoughts, decisions

and development of ideas Wide and thorough research into appropriate sources (artists,

artworks, films, photographers, etc) Visual and written analyses rather than descriptive writing or

copying.

Exam

Your preparatory studies will be used to produce an outcome/s under exam conditions.

This will take the form of a 12 hour editing and post-production exam.

Examinations will commence from 03/05/10 ALL FILMING SHOULD BE COMPLETED

BY 30TH APRIL

Passion or Obsession?

The Theme: Passions and Obsessions People, projects, objects or places can all become

focal points of obsession or passion. The driving force behind every artist stems from

their own personal passion or fixation. The strength of this motivation is impressive and sometimes results in the most incredible works. These can be vast edifices or tiny miniatures and are often financed by the artists themselves demonstrating their personal commitment.

The galleries of any museum or public collection display a bewildering assortment of personal objects that represent past or present human obsessions.

Obsession has been a common topos in much classic literature of the nineteenth century; for example, Frankenstein, Moby Dick, and The Picture of Dorian Gray. Of course, there are stories of obsession from earlier times, such as Shakespeare's Hamlet, who was obsessed with revenge, and Macbeth, obsessed with his quest for power. Macbeth presents a multi-faceted picture of obsession. After hearing of the witches' predictions that Macbeth will be granted the title of Thane of Cawdor and one day will become king, Lady Macbeth later urges her husband to kill Duncan and she grows obsessed with frightening thoughts of all the bloodshed her husband has been causing. Then, obsessed with feelings of guilt over what she and Macbeth have wrought, she compulsively washes her hands to try to remove the blood she imagines covers them. The desires in these stories become obsessions or compulsions when the character is willing to risk anything to fulfill the desire. Not surprisingly, all of these stories end tragically.

Obsession and film

Several narrative films with the word "obsession" in the title have been made, the most famous of which are perhaps Douglas Sirk's 1954 comedy Magnificent Obsession, which was a remake of a 1935 film of the same name, and Brian de Palma's 1976 thriller Obsession.

Obsession Brian De Palma 1976 http://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=QCAt6E4wBEk

Twisted Nerve

Bernard Hermann

Obsession was scored by composer Bernard Herrmann, who wrote music for many films in which the main characters can be said to be obsessed in some way: Citizen Kane, Cape Fear, Taxi Driver, and the Hitchcock films Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, and The Birds, where there is no music per se, but rather electronically imitated bird noises.

Presumably Herrmann's compositional style appealed to directors aiming to achieve an intense psychological impression of obsession, paranoia, or psychopathy.

Theme to Twisted Nerve (1968 Dir. Roy Boulting) by Bernard Herman http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jm0tssXTkJc

Listen to the music and write down what the effect of the music is. How does Herman achieve this effect? Does he use particular instruments? Does the music sound different to a traditional score?

Obsessive Musical Techniques? In general, Herrmann went against Hollywood's traditional orchestration, removing emphasis from

the string section and relying most heavily on woodwinds, and brass and percussion . A study of this list of instruments demonstrates Herrmann's signature sound, using non-standard

instrumentation compared to the normal Hollywood score. Herrmann made use of electronic violins and bass and treble theremins in some of his scores,

which lend them an eerie and unsettling quality. Herman attempts to create the effect of the irrational or of obsession through focusing on "darker"

orchestral colors. Throughout all of his scores, Herrmann relies heavily on clarinets and particularly bass clarinets,

which are the darkest-sounding instruments of the orchestra. Herrmann also uses the darker-sounding bassoon and contrabassoon quite heavily.

The woodwinds are grouped by threes, yet the clarinets are fivefold, including two bass clarinets. This creates an imbalance in the woodwind section, going against traditional orchestration.

Within the strings, he avoided the use of violins whenever possible, emphasizing celli, bass and harp.

The normal orchestra with a wind section this size would have at least forty and perhaps as many as sixty string players. Herrmann uses only thirty-two, and the lower strings almost equal the violins (although part of his choice was undoubtedly due to budgetary concerns).

Another aspect of Herrmann's scores is the extensive use of ostinato. In music, an ostinato (derived from Italian: "stubborn", compare English: obstinate) is a motif or phrase which is persistently repeated in the same musical voice. a musical representation of obsession.

Manipulation of the viewer

In your own project you might like to think consciously how not only sound/music can reflect passions or obsessions but also how visual techniques can manipulate the viewer.

Here is a clip from the film http://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=1JsaNjEMdA4 Your concept or narrative maybe about

Obsession or Passion, but how is this reflected visually and sonically?

Alfred Hitchcock.

One of the key narrative Directors that deals with obsession is of course Alfred Hitchcock.

In his film Vertigo (1958) (Again scored by Herman) Hitchcock reflects on his own Passions and Obsessions (Voyeurism, Longing, identity, female victimisation, feminine ideal, manipulation, cool blond heroines), through a tale of a macabre doomed romance – a desperate love for an illusion.

James Stewart plays Scottie a retired San Francisco police detective who suffers from acrophobia. A wealthy shipbuilder who is an acquaintance from college days approaches Scottie and asks him to follow his beautiful wife, Madeleine. He fears she is going insane, maybe even contemplating suicide, because she believes she is possessed by a dead ancestor. Scottie quickly becomes obsessed with mysterious Madeleine. When Madeleine appears to fall to death, it is revealed that she was a shop clerk named Judy hired by the shipbuilder to cover over the real Madeleine’s murder. Scottie then manipulates and remakes Judy into the image of Madeleine in order to conjure back the image he thinks he has lost.

In this scene from Vertigo we see Scottie forcing Judy to be re-made as Madeleine.

As you watch note down the effects Hitchcock uses to manipulate the experience of the viewer

Do we see from a particular character’s POV?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPXpKurnO4c

Vertigo

Vanishing

In Vertigo shots seem to often be unreal or unstable. Hitchcock attempts to reflect on the transience of

love, experience and life itself through the subject matter and images that seem undermined by effects in focus, framing and colour.

The images of Judy/Madeleine are both sensuously present and hauntingly absent. She always seems in danger of vanishing (Like the unfixed presence of (Madeleine or obsessive love itself).

Douglas Gordon 1966

Obsessed with Hitchcock

The artist Douglas Gordon is perhaps most famous for his video works Zidane and 24 Hour Psycho.

Both these works reveal Gordon’s obsession with memory, the moving image and our perception of time.

His work often overturns traditional uses of video by playing with time elements and employing multiple monitors.

24 Hour Psycho (1993) slows down Alfred Hitchcock's film Psycho so that it lasts twenty four hours.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1jkoMfPa40

Feature Film (1999) is a projection of Gordon's own film of James Conlon conducting Bernard Herrmann's score to Vertigo, thus drawing attention to the film score and the emotional responses it creates in the viewer. In one installation, this was placed at the top of a tall building, referencing one of the film's main plot points.

Here are some links to more of his works http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJNPDlzF4Wg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ephbru4vIEo

Think about these three images by Warhol

Andy Warhol 1928 –1987

Andy Warhol was one of the founding members of the new art movement that began in the mid to late fifties, which was most commonly referred to as “Pop Art.”

“Pop Art” takes its subject matter from popular culture such as comic strips, motion pictures, and advertising, as well as ordinary everyday objects, which are portrayed by using various artistic technologies.

Warhol made over fifty films in his career.

Quote from Warhol

‘What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coca Cola, Liz Taylor drinks Coca Cola, and just think, you can drink Coca Cola, too. A coke is a coke and no amount of money can get you a better coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the cokes are the same and all the cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it’.

Task

Task – Look at the work and career of Andy Warhol and write-down two examples of how his work could be seen as passionate or obsessive.

Consider how Warhol’s films revealed these obsessions. Complete the analysis for homework and add it to the notes

section at the back of your new Unit 4 sketchbook.

Link to Documentary on Warhol. http://www.jonbehrensfilms.com/documentary001.html

Mind mapping

Is Passion a positive force? Is Obsession a negative force? Think how you want to address the theme

and begin to create a mind map around your ideas

Have a look at the link below for inspiration on creating interesting mind maps.

http://www.mindmapinspiration.com/top-10/