2. I think it means that the structural film is the absolute genre of Avant Garde that represents the human mind. While all of the other genres, trance, lyrical, mythopeoic, were all aiming for Sitney's main argument, structural films are the only ones, in Sitney's opinion who do just that completely.
3. I do not think Sitney comes out and says this question but these are the reasons from the reading why I think Warhol was to Sitney the precursor to the Structural film. Warhol used three of the structuralist techniques in his first few films. He used the fixed frame as well as a loop of film and a freeze frame, which Sitney compares to rephotography, in Sleep. Sitney then goes to say that Warhol was the first filmmaker to make films in which the film would outlast the viewers initial state of perspective. By just waiting on the film to be over the viewer would alter their state of perception. Warhol challenged the viewers ability to endure sameness. So Sitney goes on to say that the challenge of Structural films was how to permit the wandering attention that triggered ontological awareness while watching Warhol films. So I believe Structural films are basically a different kind of Warhol film, it has the same basic meaning behind it, wanting the viewer to create their own individual experience by watching the same thing for a long period of time.
4. A. I'm not sure but I think it is because Warhol was trying to show how Romantic and similar other avant garde films were. So by doing this he was trying to make people aware of every process that went into making a film I suppose.
4B. I guess because Warhol stopped making films the way he did in his early career and started to do in the camera editing, which I guess is not part of the structural film. Sitney says that Snow and Gehr used the fixed camera in a mystical contemplation of a portion of space. So I believe because Warhol began to try new things he separated himself from other structural filmmakers.
4C. I think that it means ever sense Warhol began making his type of films there has been a new way of looking or viewing films. It is not about the story anymore it is about being a in a theater and viewing a film, and what the film makes us do in our minds to get through watching the same thing over and over for a long period of time.
4D. I think Sitney says that Structural films came out of Lyrical, trance and so one because they were in fact the films preceding the Structural film. Perhaps the Structural film would not exist if these other films were not made first. I also think that because of Warhol films, structural films were born. I believe Structural films are the response to Warhol's attack because they take elements of his film and mix it up to make something similar but different.
5. I have no clue but I think it is that Wavelength is a film made in a way to make people aware of their consciousness after they have seen the film. Our minds take over and we create our own vision of the film. The film represents our conscious.
6. I think it is when the critic interprets the film as presenting itself to the direct perception of the viewer, so the film is interpreted as the embodiment of some fundamental feature of conscious. So I guess that means that the film is trying to to get into the conscious of the viewer on some level and whoever is writing about the film is aware of this. Its all very confusing. One critic analyzed Snows work and before she did this she or he said that some films explore the nature of consciousness. The critic believed that Snows work was a link between cinema and consciousness. I guess another way to read this schemata is to see that cinema is a form of consciousness which I don't really get. I guess it means we have a different type of view of a cinematic adventure than we do in the real world. The critic goes on to say that the process of watching a film is acknowledging the production and reproduction of the film. I don't know if that is what you wanted but I'm confused.
7. The Art-process schemata is when the filmmaker blurs the line between the "art" and "life". The person who came up with this also said that any material organized in any way could have aesthetic value, and traditional aesthetic forms needlessly restrict the range of options open to the artist, the production of an innovative film is seen as a demonstration of the conventional process of filmmaking. While all this is well and good I was still very confused the following examples helped me out. Paul Arthur explained that the experience e of film viewing had been radically changed after Warhol. He also wrote about Mothlight and said having a meaning in commercial narrative mode, or in a metaphorical associative mode of the earlier avant-garde which draws the viewer away from the screen and to the attention of the projector as a physical object. So I think this is trying to say that you don't really pay attention to the film as much as how you are seeing the film.
8. Okay the person who came up with this said, usually the "point" of the film, its relevance to the viewing community, is established through another interpretative schema, while direct perception is brought in to the account for the "pleasure" of the film by speaking in terms of its "sensuous qualities", or it's being "perceptually engaging". In Gehr's Wait, the filmmakers method emphasized that the film is actually composed of individual frames with only the illusion of movement". Cornwell said it demonstrates the true nature of the cinema, which is concealed by "normal" film. So I believe this one is where you look at the aesthetics of the film actually being screened, we don't watch the film for narrative but for how it was brought to the viewer. I might have screwed that all up but I hope I got some of it right.
3. I would modify that slightly and say that the techniques are similar in Warhol and structural films, but that the function those techniques serve are different. They borrow those techniques from Warhol for different purposes.
ReplyDelete6. Yeah, it's tricky. We'll go over in class...be sure to ask questions when we do.
Good.