Morvern Callar by Lynne Ramsay

Morvern Callar (2002) is a film directed by Scottish filmmaker Lynne Ramsay. The film follows the mourning process of the title character as she copes with the shock of her boyfriend's suicide and her decision to keep it a secret.

In this particular scene, we find Morvern trekking up a Scottish mountainside carrying a backpack carrying her boyfriend's remains. A song plays loudly over the sequence of her climbing. When she begins to dig the grave, she pulls a small Mp3 player from her pocket, presses a button, and the music stops -- the music that we perceived to be the score was actually diegetic. This is a giveaway that the film is subjective to Morvern's point of view.

In a series of shots, the camera pulls back, farther and farther away, showing Morvern as a small part of a beautiful landscape as she digs the grave. This zoom out of shots on the action  rather than zoom in on the action goes against the conventional sequence of events in continuity editing.

The zoomed out shots are then juxtaposed by shots of Morvern closely examining and touching the branches of a dead tree. The music starts up again as she has her headphones in. As she glances downwards, the camera shows a small puddle filled with worms, clearly from her perspective. The music glitches to match the unsettling image of the squirming worms. This disturbing effect gives us insight into Morvern's precarious emotional state after the tragedy of her boyfriend's suicide.

Final Project with Chad Stonehocker

Tea and Passive-Agression from Marilynn Wexler on Vimeo.

A Trip to MoMI

Last week, I took a trip the Museum of the Moving Image with my friend and fellow film student, Trine Fjordholm. After taking our time and gawking at the beautiful array of antique film cameras the museum has exhibited, we finally made our way to the demonstrations on Foley, ADR, stop-motion, and flip-books. We had a field day with these and spent a bit too much time at the stop-motion table.

I had a few epiphanies at the ADR demo. Of course, dubbing my voice over Eddie Murphy's during a scene from Coming to America is going to be ridiculous in any given situation. As the scene images played on the screen in front of me, I listened and  clumsily read aloud the pieces of dialogue that were to replace the original. In this experience, I truly realized the amount of precision and attention to nuance necessary on both the actor's part and the sound editor's part. What primarily seemed like a straightforward task was really quite involved and time-consuming.

It is hoped that the use of ADR goes unnoticed by viewers because its job is to perfectly sync the sound with the images. In the digital age, sound has become one of the main criterium to determining what makes a good film. With the use of Foley, ADR, and sound effects, the sound design of a film carries much more weight than it did in early sound films. Nowadays, the viewer is immersed not only in the images and the narrative, but the sounds that surround them.

We ain't pretendin'.

Codes and Modes Summary

On November 8th, I attended a panel entitled "Building Documentary Cultures With Urban Youth and Their Communities in Neoliberal Times" at the Codes and Modes conference. The panel featured three speakers: Steve Goodman of the Educational Video Center,  Prof. Lora Taub-Pervizpour, and Prof. Nitin Sawhney. Over the course of the panel, each speaker discussed the creative resilience of documentary filmmaking and how it empowers youth as agents of social change.

Steve Goodman explained the documentary culture at the EVC and its methods of teaching counter narrative and bearing witness to social injustices. The goal of the EVC is to inspire counter-culture communities of practice through the solidarity of documentary filmmaking. Over his many years as founder and director of this organization, he has seen the value of youth media in raising awareness for the poverty-stricken communities of New York City. 

Professor Taub-Pervizpour discussed her role in the HYPE program in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Not only does this program teach these children basic technological skills in media and documentary filmmaking, but it connects the underprivileged youth to a possible future in this career and area of study. She also criticized Neoliberalism for the recent domination of coding, gaming, and app development in government-funded after school activities rather than media integration education. Emphasizing that "there's nothing revolutionary in creating a next generation of coders that capitalism rewards," she closed with the necessity of helping learners invent and enact possible selves through digital media making.

Professor Sawhney concluded the panel with a discussion about his work with community youth groups in Gaza and how basic documentary making and journalism skills positively affected the children. He showed a clip from his full-length documentary called Flying Paper, which cross-cut stories of children growing up in war-torn Gaza with them making and flying kites for a festival to show solidarity amongst the youth community. The documentary was made with six production units of the children trained through the programs Sawhney created.

The Rabbit Hole - An Interview with Chad Stonehocker

What I Hear

At 9:30 AM on a Tuesday, it was unusually quiet in the East Village of Manhattan. Perhaps it was the briskness of the fall morning or the off-hour that I decided to wander, but the tone of the village was as silent as I'd ever heard it, occasionally interrupted by the keynote of a siren buzzing down 1st Avenue and the sips I took from my coffee cup. There was a slight breeze as I walked down the shaded streets of the neighborhood. As the wind picked up, leaves danced on the sidewalks and streets with a distinct rustling sound, one that I attribute solely to the overgrown arboreal foliage of 9th between 1st and  A.

I was called to attention by the sound signals of bicyclists speeding by, cutting the breezy silence with an alarming rush of air. The voices of children chimed and echoed down the streets, accompanied by pattering footsteps and an occasional whistle. Shortly thereafter, I heard basketballs bouncing and shrieks of joy -- the all-boys school on St. Marks must be on recess. 

As I walked into Tompkins Square Park, the sounds of the children at play grew louder. The bouncing basketballs became separate and distant from the whipping jump ropes and creaking swing sets. The conversations of the children transformed from the solid mass of sound I'd heard from the previous block into individual conversations. Though the 9:30 AM silence was replaced by the symphony of the park, the ever-present rustling of leaves softly whispered in the background.

Define a Space

Define a Space from Marilynn Wexler on Vimeo.