Casting shorts with no dialogue?

[Alex_W]

well it matters because Deleuze developed an approach which stays clear of any psychoanalytical yadayada. In fact, he was one of the heroes of the '68 movement with his book 'Anti-Oeudipus', which he wrote together with Felix Guattari. He seems to reject the idea of image as representation, instead seeing it as very real. He sees images as contraction and [the opposite of this word, i forgot] of energy. Because of this he's also being used more and more in theories about virtual reality.
Most of his ideas about movement and duration and images are based on the philosophy of Bergson, so besides taking a course in semiotics i think it would also be helpful to know a little about where his influences come from. Anyway, he's really strange i think, but there are some useful things about his theory. For me the best thing is that he analyses different shots and their effect on the spectator, and doesn't resort to things like the oeudipus-complex, voyeurism and festishism etc.
Like i said, i don't really understand it myself. I guess one of the best reasons for readings these books would be the fact that then you would've actually read them, contrary to all the bs-artists who use his name without knowing what they're talking about, like myself ;)

[steve hyde]

These are interesting insights into the work of Gille Deleuze. Since this thread is about casting shorts without dialouge, perhaps it would be productive for us to discuss theories of visual communication and the work of Deleuze and Guattari and also Bergson might be good starting points.

I have read Guattari's "Three Ecologies" and was inspired by it. Right now I'm reading Rolland Barthes "Camera Lucida" and "Music Image Text". These might also be worthy of discussing here....

Steve

[npcoombs]

This may seem obvious but the very point fo all of Deleuze's work is to escape from prescribed narratives, jargon, epistemologies and ontologies and look at things from a completely non-circumscribed perspective. If Foucault laid down the premises of the limits of discourse in the 'Archeology of Knowledge' then Deleuze is his archeologist. All the ways of thinking that Foucault said a rational domineering culture had obliterated, Deleuze actually tries to put them in practice!

His interpretation of the image harks back to ancient Chinese philosphy: the I-Ching. That the image is as powerful and real as the object is the bedrock of ancient wisdom. They believed that this relationship was reciprocal, therefore the arrangement of characters lietrally represnted the earth's elements and knowledge about the universe could be deciphered through the re-arrangement of these characters, without any scientific refferents. The circle of the I-Ching embodied a mathematical logic that Western mathematics only approached by the 17th century - all this without a system. The implications are profound, that our symbolic constructions actually affect the construction and logic of the universe. These relationships are not out there just to be found (or discovered) as in Western scientific epistemology.

Going back to cinema. This logic transferred creates an entire different framewoek for looking at the image. Rather than simply capturing a representation, that representation then re-structures the ordering of the universe. Western scientific ontology would reduce this to a restructuring of subjectivities within a prescibed materialist universe, Deleuze and the ancients would claim otherwise. It is the old Platonic/Aristotle face-off in a different guise.

[steve hyde]

....lots of ologies being tossed about here. Not really sure I really follow your interpretation of these theorists. I'm sure this is because I haven't read Deleuze - although I can see how one might speculate that the image is just as powerful, if not more powerful, in some cases, than the object/subject that is photographed.

Images are discourse producing. Today in the United States (sadly) we had another one of our famous - white cop beating the shit out of a black man - videos that produce a very particular and powerful kind of discourse. The images are powerful enough on their own out of context, but what makes the images really powerful is the ways that viewers put the images into context. This is where Foucault's historical analysis of discourse can be used. We can start tracing how we know what we know about the image and can come to some understandings of how the image takes on specific meanings. In this case a racist meaning. Since racism has such a powerful historical legacy, the image is viewed through an historical window that is framed by narratives of racism. The image cannot be viewd without that frame - unless of course, one is completely ignorant of this historical legacy (like a small child for example)

He seems to reject the idea of image as representation, instead seeing it as very real. He sees images as contraction and [the opposite of this word, i forgot] of energy.

Going back to cinema. This logic transferred creates an entire different framewoek for looking at the image. Rather than simply capturing a representation, that representation then re-structures the ordering of the universe.

So we can talk about the ways that images restructure the universe.
or we can talk about the ways that images re-structure human consciousness. I suppose its the same thing when you think about it. The image of police brutality in todays news media did a lot of discursive work. When people see the images they have an emotional response and that response reshapes human consciousness. So in this sense I can see why someone like Deleuze (if I understand correctly) might argue that images are not merely representations. They are representations and they are also real. Not in the sense that they present something real - but that the presence of images has very real effects that move through space from house hold to house hold producing discourse.

As students of the cinema arts - that is the language we are learning right?
Using images to evoke an emotional response, writing archetypal characters that transcend imagined geographies, reshaping popular discourses in ways that might remind people that history is really no different than the present moment - that living in Amsterdam is really no different than living in Bath or Seattle - that connections between human beings in time and space are always more significant than differences.
We want to use images to communicate in the universal languge that is cinema and there is much to learn about that language all around us - particularly in photojournalism and advertising oddly enough...

[Evan Kubota]

The gist of Deleuze/Guattari's theory is fairly straightforward from what I understand... divorce the image from the psychoanalytic theories and interpretations to which it is usually subjected. Nothing can be associated with the image - the image is just an image.

I haven't actually read Deleuze either, only a sort of tangential explanation in an interesting paper on Lem's Solaris and a schizophrenic interpretation.

[steve hyde]

... divorce the image from the psychoanalytic theories and interpretations to which it is usually subjected. Nothing can be associated with the image - the image is just an image.

...don't know what this means: "nothing can be associated with the image". I would argue an image can only be interpreted by associations. What I mean is: the way that a photograph is read depends on the cultural equipment of the beholder. I don't understand how Deleuze divorces images from psychoaanalytic theories, especially since he and Guattari are psychoanalysts!!

To me that is like someone saying: I'm a trained pilot, but watch me fly this plane without any preconceived notions of the principles of flight. I'm going to divorce myself from my education and venture into uncharted territory..... :roll:

I guess I need to read the book.

Steve

Steve

[Alex_W]

... divorce the image from the psychoanalytic theories and interpretations to which it is usually subjected. Nothing can be associated with the image - the image is just an image.

...don't know what this means: "nothing can be associated with the image". I would argue an image can only be interpreted by associations. What I mean is: the way that a photograph is read depends on the cultural equipment of the beholder. I don't understand how Deleuze divorces images from psychoaanalytic theories, especially since he and Guattari are psychoanalysts!!

To me that is like someone saying: I'm a trained pilot, but watch me fly this plane without any preconceived notions of the principles of flight. I'm going to divorce myself from my education and venture into uncharted territory..... :roll:

I guess I need to read the book.

Steve

Steve

Well, an important part of psychoanalytic film theory is based on the concept of 'lack', the lacking of a perfect wholeness which fuels the desire for and fear of the mother which, according to Laura Mulvey will be dealt with by voyeurism, like James Stewart in Rear Window, or fetishism, like showing a close-up of a leg, thereby objectivying the woman, rendering her harmless.
According to Deleuze, desire is not based on a lack, but on a positive wish to live, on a wish to connect with those things that make us happy and increase our power to act.

[Evan Kubota]

The unconscious poses no problem of meaning, solely problems of use. The question posed by desire is not "What does it mean?" but rather "How does it work?" How do these machines, these desiring-machines, work—yours and mine? With what sort of breakdowns as a part of their functioning? How do they pass from one body to another? How are they attached to the body without organs? What occurs when their mode of operation confronts the social machines? A tractable gear is greased, or on the contrary an infernal machine is made ready. What are the connections, what are the disjunctions, the conjunctions, what use is made of the syntheses? It represents nothing, but it produces. It means nothing, but it works. Desire makes its entry with the general collapse of the question "What does it mean?" (Ibid. 109)

It had been a few weeks since I read the paper. I somehow substituted "image" for "the unconscious". It seems to me like their statement is not so much separating the oedipalizing meanings from the unconscious (although the paper explicitly says this - it seems to be impossible or extremely difficult, as you pointed out) as they are ignoring it, since meaning is less important than function. In that sense they do de-emphasize meaning - the application of the argument to Solaris makes more sense than it does in isolation, I think, especially since the novel argues for the kind of "otherness" where meaning is left alone that Deleuze seems to imply.

This is Manfred Geier's article that I took the quotation from.

http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/57/geier57art.htm

[richard p. t.]

Have you done your auditions yet? Don't waste your time having them read. Its like asking them to juggle, when you want them to water ski! You have a great oportunity to use non-actors here. Not all, but there is a tendancy that people who are or want to be actors look like actors too much. Find some interesting looking people, and then see if you are able to get them to do what you want. It all depends what you want the characters to do in your film. If they have to look still and formal (a la Dreyer perhaps) see if they can. If they have to look engaged by what is supposed to be going on but isn't actually (ie if they have to pretend) see if they can. The best thing is to video them in as close an aproximation to what you will be doing as possible. This gives you the oportunity to see how they look/move/feel with your direction, and with the overall aesthetic you are going for. Then you have to consider how they work together. Remember, these actors inhabit the same world of your film - they have to look like they belong there together.

[Evan Kubota]

Not only did I cast the film, it's now in the can and was just processed... I should have it early next week, hopefully.

I ended up casting the same guy who I used in my previous short, "Survival Record." I agree about non-actors; if they appear plausible in real life, they won't have to play a "role" in front of the camera and authenticity will arise without very much effort.

[mattias]

but there is a tendancy that people who are or want to be actors look like actors too much.

yes, but the biggest difference is between people who really can act and people who just say they are actors or just want to act. i like people who really can act the best, followed by amateurs. bad actors should always be avoided even if the part is "easy" or if there's no dialogue. i know because i lived and worked in new york for a while. jesus christ how many people with such a skewed self image can there be? (i haven't been to la lately so i guess i should disclaim myself from having to answer that?) ;-)

/matt