STUDIO
STUDIO 29 SEM 01 2020
35MM
And the Poetry of Everyday Things
PATERSON
Alice Woods 1019963
SCENES FROM SUNDAY 1
Alice Woods Studio D (Studio 35mm/Studio 29) Melbourne School of Design Master of Architecture CDE Semester 1 2020
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C O N T E N T S:
Film Analysis:
pg 7
Federation Square
pg 77
More Notes and Research
pg 107
Paterson pg 192
Analysis and Early Design
pg 214
Scenes From Sunday Final Project pg 262
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FILM ANALYSIS
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Shooting Technique and Colour Grading Steadicam shots all the way through place the camera in the scene as though floating, giving the film an eerie but evocative character Cold colour grading also helps situate the audience in the environment, collaborating with the clean lines and muted tones of the architecture to convey a strong sense of the Scandinavian winters from it emerges The film also makes frequent use of long takes, immersing the viewing in a more complete sense of the experience of the architecture. Within these takes, movement is used to reveal aspects of the architecture in a POV style, as they would reveal themselves in life. The camera is often driven by the sound, both diegetic and non-diegetic, the volume of which is utilized as a way of informing the viewer’s perspective.
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Frame Balance The framing in the film is carefully balanced, as illustrated in this example where the camera has shifted into a position where the frame is divided almost in half by the roof line of the building. This framing is usually dictated by the lines of the architecture and as such the film is built around those lines and how they are represented. The choice to use a 4:3 aspect ratio is unusual, but in this case seems to serve as a way of framing these lines with even more clarity than could be achieved by a less equilateral ratio
Interior/Exterior Balance The film frequently uses natural light to determine the composition of the shot. Through this technique the film maker is delivering a strong sense of what it is to be present in the architecture which they are trying to represent
BAUTA
Paul Tunge, Egil Haskjold Larsen (2017) 9
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Logical cut sequencing - tunnel to tunnel -transporting the view of the audience in a considered way
Reflections Threshold/Sense of Arrival
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James Newitt (2015)
THE DESIRES OF MUTE THINGS
NARRATION AS NARRATIVE
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The film is highly experimental in its delivery of narrative, stringing together a series of shots which don’t necessarily hold strong visual ties to one another but which are arranged according to a rhythm and the their relationship with the spoken word which serves as an underlying driver for the arrangement and editing of the film.
REAL LIGHTING AND DIEGETIC SOUND The lighting of the film uses the actual lighting of the building which is being documented to drive the atmosphere of the more architectural shots, exhibiting the kind of presence the interiors actually have. Diegetic sound, such as the sound of the fluorescent lights in the example opposite is also employed occasionally to emphasize this atmosphere.
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SELECTIVE FRAMING The film employs unconventional framing techniques for both the interiors and the artworks that are shown throughout. By these means, the film experiments with how the gaze can be drawn, and how - in particular - spaces can be framed in strange or unsettling ways while still exhibiting them in a way that conveys the spatial properties and atmosphere of the museum and its archival spaces.
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EXTREME CLOSE-UP The film employs extreme close-ups which are cut intermittently with medium shots of the museum stores. The extreme close-ups employ both the selective framing mentioned before and also give the film a sense of tactility which in collaboration with the narration works to unsettle the viewer and create the rhythm of the edit.
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Elizabeth Price (2016)
A RESTORATION
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Price uses images to generate textural animation which function alongside a sound work to create a highly rhythmic and illustrative piece of video. The narration voiceover also threads in alongside the work to create a narrative out of the seemingly unrelated set of images. The two dimensional nature of the film transcends its apparent boundaries and through the texture, frame balance and false depth Price makes by layering the images she shapes them into an immersive whole.
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Ash losing his mind alone in the cabin with the demon forces
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INSANE
Camera Orientation
To illustrate his madness the lines of the cabin interior are shot as violently askew. The confined space is also shot with a wide lens, warping the audiences entire spatial perception of the cabin and making it appear to twist and distort around Ash giving it a liveliness that it didn’t have before. This method also warps Ash himself, making him appear more deranged. When he comes back to a sense of reality to camera is immediately righted, and the lens length changes to something more standard, making the cabin appear simply a benign and inanimate backdrop once again.
SANE
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EVIL DEAD II
Sam Raimi (1987)
In Evil Dead II, Raimi uses exaggerated camera techniques to illustrate the deterioration of Ash’s mental state.
THE CABIN IN THE WOODS
Evil Dead/Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn/Ash Vs. Evil Dead
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Dynamic Shot
Fixed Shot 22
High
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“Excuse me, is this the road to the Knowby Cabin?” “There ain’t no road ... What the Hell would you wanna go up there for anyway?”
Laughter Scene: Evil Dead II Plan Breakdown 23
How Sam Raimi Manipulates Space
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45mm Lens Length, Camera Parallell to floor
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28mm Lens Length, Camera Rotated at 10 degrees on Axis
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Fixed Camera Position
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Example from film of shot type A
Example from film of shot type B ‘The Evil Dead’ and ‘Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn’ are possibly the most well-known films in the “bottle horror” genre, but since the entire two films are essentially set in one tiny cabin, Raimi had to adopt creative methods of shooting to establish the desired feel for each shot without the flim falling into a pattern of monotony. A prime example of this is in the infamous “laughing scene” in ‘Evil Dead II’ where the way the camera is used differs wildly from the rest of the film. Specifically, Raimi uses the camera to entirely warp the viewer’s perception of the space occupied by Ash to reflect the deteriation of his mind. For the full three minute scene, in which the is no dialogue only increasingly maniacal laughter from Ash and the inanimate objects in the cabin with him, the camera is tilted somewhere between 10 and 15 degrees in varying directions in every shot. The lens length also widens significantly which makes the cabin feel emptier and more malevolent, whilst simultaneously making Ash appear goofy and insane.
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Theo Angelopoulos (1998)
ETERNITY AND A DAY
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2 Frame Depth Over the course of the film Angelopoulos frequently uses the depth of the frame to emphasize the relationships of characters to each other, and to the scene. In example 1 there are four layers in the frame: from the back the ocean and sky, the beach, the pavilion and the space between the camera lens and the decking. The shot is allowed to play out without interruption as the boy in the frame runs from the position of the camera all the way to the ocean, the most distant layer in the frame.
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In example 2 the boy moves back and forth between layers in the frame, interacting with both Alex and gathering of figures in the background, collecting and delivering words. When he finally leaves it, the scene changes without the need for a cut.
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5 In example 3 the layers at work accentuate the isolation of Alex and his former housekeeper, first they are framed together, then as he leaves, Alex is isolated in the frame. As the camera pulls out and the wedding dance resumes at the front of the frame, his housekeeper is now the one isolated, illustrating the melancholic nature of the scene. In example 4 the separation of Alex and the boy is emphasized by allowing the boy to walk towards the back of the frame without leaving it, drawing out the moment and he walks alone into the dark background and out of the camera’s focal range. In example 5 the bus is framed in many different ways as a cast of characters moves in and out of it. Alex and the boy shift to different layers of the frame, but generally remain the point of focus, or the source of the gaze of the camera, whilst the back of the frame is always anchored in the sleeping protester with his flag, and the bus conductor.
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Rhythm Angelopoulos frequently uses the rhythm of the character dialogue to inform the pacing of the camera’s movement in a scene. This is particularly well illustrated in this example, where the camera pulls back from the figure of the poet as he recites single words at a regular pace. The camera pulls away from him, framing the greater scene as it does so, but maintains a pace which allows the poet to be a similar distance further from the viewer with each word he speaks, regulating the speed at which the scene plays out.
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Movement and Depth to Warp Reality/Change Scenes Throughout the film Angelopolous segues to flashback scenes by use of camera movement instead of obvious cutting, either by shifting through walls or doorways as in the scene documented above, or by hiding cuts in shots of the skies, oceans etc. This movement in and out of reality is usually accompanied by the characters themselves walking directly into the fictitious worlds of memory or stories
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Staging and Movement The staging of interior scenes in the film were carefully crafted to maintain a sense of rhythm and even simulate a sense of montage, again without using any cutting. In this example the camera moves back and forth twice between Alex’s living room and his front door as he talks to his house keeper as she moves to leave the house. The emotion of the scene and of their separation is illustrated by the separation of the two rooms by the wall, which the camera shifts past slowly allowing it to fill the entire frame briefly. After Urania departs, Alex moves back to his lounge room and plays a record in a call and response with his neighbor, at the diegetic of the responding record the camera pans to the windows and pulls in on the neighboring apartment, shifting the scene away from Alex and to the exterior.
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Staging and Lighting In this scene Angelopoulos uses the building and the scene lighting to dictate the framing of the scene, using, in particular the rising of the flame lit for the funeral as a centre point for the emotion of the scene, and lighting the boy as the central figure in the scene.
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Dziga Vertov (1929)
MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA
BREAKING THE FOURTH WALL
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In ‘Man with a Movie Camera’ Vertov frequently breaks the fourth wall, showing the movie camera itself and establishing it as a kind of all seeing presence of which the viewer is frequently reminded over the course of the film.
ASSOCIATIVE MONTAGE By using imagary with either visual or thematic links, Vertov builds up a sense of distinct narrative from apparently random images. This kind of montage was a revolutionary step forward in understanding the potential of cinema, championing matchcuts and dynamic montage in an intutive and inventive way.
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THE OMNIPITENT FILM MAKER The by-product of the frequent fourth wall breakage mentioned on the previous page is the implied presence of an all-seeing film maker. As such the film is shot specifically from the perspective of the film maker, which is an unusual tactic, especially for the time, when film was primarily still shot in the style of proscenium theatre, and as such very much in the eye view of an imagined theatre audience.
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SEQUENTIAL RELATIONSHIPS AND NON-NARRATIVE NARRATIVE Vertov’s film is built around lengthy sequences, all working alongside the associative montage technique to create a sense of intelligent and logical narrative even where the film itself doesn’t necessarily have an actual plot. For example in the montage below, the scenes cut together are variably that of a grieving widow in a cemetary, a couple in a divorce court, a woman giving birth, a wedding and a huge wedding parade. Cut together they tell a kind of complete story of life.
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SCALES OF OBSERVATION Vertov moves between different scales across the film. Sometimes his obsevational tactic reduces human activity to an insect-like scale, whilst some have an intimiate focus showing the routines of a single person. The diversity of scale gives the film its rhythm, and also its sense of scope.
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CONSTRUCTED REALITY VS. PURE OBSERVATION The film deals in two realities, documentary obsevation (still constructed to a degree, normally to fit the agenda of the film maker) and purely ficticious constructed realties. These levels of virtuality were new tools with which film makers had found themselves, and Vertov explored both in a methodical way to help build up the cinematic reality he crafted across the film.
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Shadows in composition and sense of arrival In the opening scenes Antonioni uses the shadow of the figure aligning with the shadow of the architecture of the church to create the sense of arrival of the character in the scene and also to dictate the composition of the shots.
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LO SGUARDO DI MICHAELANGELO
Michaelangelo Antonioni (2004)
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Gaze, Light and Shadow Antonioni continues to use shadow to dictate his compositions for the rest of the film. The shadow is utiilised as a device for hemming in the central focus of the frame, primarily the eyes of the sculptures and of the man, which are moved between at different distances to create the sense of timing and of returned gaze which the film is constructed around.
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Scale as relational indicator Antonioni uses the camera and the sense of scale to determine the relationship between his character and the sculptures in the church. The sculptures are framed in such a way that they are made to seem even larger than their true size, and the figure of the man in relation to them appears dimunuitive. He is also framed low in the shots compared to the sculptures and it is by way of these devices that a sense of awe and worship is established between the film maker and the absent artist.
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Shot Sequencing and Match Dissolves Working again with shadows Antonioni creates a rhythmic sequence of close-ups which dissolve neatly into eachother through a sequence of match dissolves arranged by similar shapes created by shadows in the folds of the sculpture.
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Light and The Sense of An Ending At the end of the film Antonioni uses a reversal of his original method of staging the arrival of the character in the space by framing his shadow alongside the shadows of the church’s interior by using light to dictate the composition of the frame instead. The character now moves into the light to exit the frame.
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STRONG
VULNERABLE
John Carpenter (1978)
HALLOWEEN
Power framing
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In Halloween, Carpenter utilises exaggerated framing techniques to convey the sense of fear and power or of vulnerability depending on which character he is framing. Michael is frequently framed from low angles with a wide lens, positioning the viewer beneath him and placing him on the high-ground, bestowing him with an inherent sense advantage or power. Linda however, is framed from a high angle, and to one side of the frame, making her appear small, weak and exposed. Through these techniques Carpenter accentuates the tension of the final scenes with Michael by making him seem more formidable and Linda seem more vulnerable, especially in relation to one another.
Claustrophobic Montage Romero uses a mixture of close and medium shots to build tension in Dawn of the Dead by using the close ups to create a sense of claustrophobia and the medium shots to show the enchroaching threat. By framing the characters through the glass in this scene Romero flattens the close shots of the characters and gives the camera no breathing room. By threading these two kinds of shots together Romero makes the viewer feel the apprach of the threat, by placing them first in the physical position of the character, and then switching to their point of view.
DAWN OF THE DEAD
George A. Romero (1978)
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Spike Lee (1989)
DO THE RIGHT THING
Background/Foreground Spike Lee makes full use of the back of his frames all the way through the film whether to foreshadow a change of scene (left), for comedic or dramatic effect (above) or to show a progression of background stories involving more minor characters. It is this attention to detail which brings the film to life. Each of the minor and major characters actvities are choregraphed and intertwined throughout the events of the film, giving a weight and realism to the block on which the events of the film take place, eventually resulting in a final violent collision of every character seen throughout out the front of Sal’s at the end of the film.
Portrait framing The ensemble element of the film is further pursued in the framing devices used in scenes featuring direct interactions between characters. People are framed against their environment in a way that resembes portrait photography, often as they deliver monologue. This device feels both theatrical and helps to frame the characters in a more philosophical sense for the audience.
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Rhythmic montage In this famous scene, Hitchcock uses rhythmic fixed reversal shots to show a flock of birds gathering menacingly behind the unsuspecting heroin as she smokes a cigarette while waiting for the school teacher. The shots simply flick at a farily constant pace between her and an ever growing flock of birds behind her, before finally tracking with her gaze to watch a bird in the sky, and following it to its perch with the other crows.
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Tracking Switchback: Following the Gaze By using a switchback, Hitchcock builds tension in the scene and also utilises it as a method of reveal. In this particular scene the characters try to walk carefully past the flock of crows who are now dormant after attacking the school. As the characters move foward, we see them watch the crows and are shown what they see tracking past, as their gaze moves from the birds to the front porch of the school teacher, the camera tracks past the fence and reveals that she has been killed in the attack.
THE BIRDS
Alfred Hitchcock (1963)
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Jordan Belson (1952)
BOPSCOTCH
TEXTURE AND BEAT Belson constructed the film out of still images of textures from his immediate urban environment, making visually dynamic imagery simply through his arrangements and compostions that he dervied from walls, to pavements, to manholes. As the film progresses he utilises more expressive experimental techniques including double exposures to build up these textures in a curated and precise way. The film is driven by a soundtrack of long-form improvised jazz that forms the structural undercurrent for the rhythm of the editing. Together, these elements create a visually compelling piece of video that pushed at the boundaries of what was expected and possible from time-based media in the early 1950s.
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Noah Baumbach (2019)
MARRIAGE STORY
RHYTHM AND SHOT SYMMETRY The curious and perhaps most powerful aspect of this scene is that its primary subjects barely deliver any dialogue. Instead they sit silently while their respective lawyers pick the other apart. Baumbach stages the scene by focusing his shots primarily on Charlie and Nicole as they listen to the increasingly malicious arguments. The style of shooting is almost perfectly symmetrical, with each shot corresponding to another on either Charlie or Nicole’s side of the room. This builds the both a sense of connection and emphasizes the physical distance between the characters as well as creating a strong rhythm in the scene. The shooting style plays too with depth of field, particularly in shot type 2, switching the lens focus from Charlie to Nicole or vice versa without employing a cut, and in doing so - emphasizing both the physical and emotional distance between them.
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THE COURT ROOM Marriage Story
NICOLE
Shot Type 1
Shot Type 2
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“So - I thought we should talk...”
CHARLIE
Shot Type 3
Shot Type 4
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Factory 15 (2011)
MEGALOMANIA
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This short film shows a dystopian London which has decended into the state of a barely inhabitable endless building site is interesting for it’s employment of basically only two kinds of shot. A ground level, naturalistic, shaky-cam POV shot (examples 1 and 2), and a high, wide-angle fixed landscape shot (examples 3 and 4).
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SLOW ACTION
Bela Tarr (2007)
THE MAN FROM LONDON
Tarr builds his scenes incredibly slowly allowing for slow reveals and the ability to build a kind of meditative tension. In ‘The Man from London’ this first scene is a prime example of this tactic, showing the slow observation of the light house keeper as he witnesses a murder, leaves the light house and finds a suit case full of money in real time over 20 minutes or so. It gives the film a lulling, ultra realistic effect which is accentuated by the fact that he rarely makes cuts.
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EXTREME LONG TAKE By extension of the previous tactic, Tarr institutes extreme long takes elevating his slow building action to a hyper-realistic realm. Often his cuts last for twenty minutes or so, which allows action to play out not just slowly, but actually in real time. By way of this method Tarr’s films become ultra immersive, placing the viewer as a silent observer, overseeing everything playing out before them in a way that is almost unsettling in its own right.
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CENTRE FRAME Tarr often brings his wandering camera to a halt to settle with important figures framed perfectly in the centre of the frame. This creates highlighted moments for the viewer, grounding them in what can otherwise feel like a swimming sense of shifting reality.
VISUAL AND EMOTIONAL DISCORDANCE Tarr’s films often work with muted, slow shooting styles, the kind of shooting style often associated with quiet or calm scene building. The subject matter of his films however tend to be extremely emotionally charged. This discordance makes the scenes in which he implements it extremely unnerving for the viewer, partly because the camera feels utterly impartial to what is playing out on screen, putting the viewer into the stead of a disconnected observer to traumatic situations.
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THE SHADOW AND THE LIGHT Tarr’s film makes strong use of natural light. using both full light and methods of blocking it to establish mood and scene changes. In the example below the simple act of the main character’s wife entering the room and closing the blinds carries an emotional resonance brought on by the stark contrasts created by the light.
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SOUND AND MONOTONOUS RHYTHM The film often lingers from extremely long stints on frames with no obvious action. Often in these cases sound plays the primary role in continuing with a sense of cinematic rhythm. The sound of ticking clocks, footsteps, or in the case of the scene above, a butcher hacking at meat with a cleaver. The stubborn monotonous rhythm often allows the camera to dwell on tableau like scenes while not only maintaining interest but also creating a building discomfort for the viewer.
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TRAVERSE/REVERSE In addition to lengthy cuts ‘The Man From London’ frequently employs a reversal of action. This builds up to the sense of realness Tarr imbues in his film by showing people undertake an action, often taking them away from the lens and then reversing their actions bringing them back to the camera. In the example to the left, after following the main character along a long track to a small locked shed. The viewer watches him walk inside and is left outside for a time while the camera lingers on the door. eventually he re-emerges, relocks the shed and begins to walk back along the path he came on and the viewer is left to infer what it was he discovered inside.
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Wong Kar-Wai (1994)
CHUNGKING EXPRESS
SEE THROUGH An unusual element of the shooting style of Chungking Express is that the film, more often or not is shot through or from behind objects. Stylistically, this frames the actors with a hazy surrounding of unfocused blur, drawing attention to particular movement or action, it also contributes to the film’s painting-like aesthetic. Nothing feels quite real, or grounded because it is constantly interrupted by painted strokes of soft-focus shape and colour. With this technique, Wong Kar-Wai builds an indistinct, dream like impression of Hong Kong, which matches the love-sick poetic drifting of the on-screen characters and the frequently absurd dialogue.
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PAINTERLY COMPOSTION Wong Kar-Wai composes his film in a way that feels reminiscent of renaissance paintings. Along with the colouration and the blurred effects from the lens this lends his film an interesting painted quality. Through this method the film’s romantic sensilbilities about the reasonably ordinary lives of its protaganists are amplified for the viewer.
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EXTREME CLOSE-UP Occasionally the film utilises extreme close-up to draw attention to specific details in the scene. Usually these are objects with which the characters have some emotional connection, or to which they have imbued a poetic property which aids the prosaic lyrical effect of the film’s dialogue. This particular method is an excellent example of a director working very closely with his scripts and crafting his visual to them for a strong emotional impact on the viewer.
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Cinematic Analysis
FED SQUARE
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FRAMING THE SQUARE 78
Textures and Materiality Fed Square Visit #1 4/03/20 79
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The Gaze of the Art Object Invisible Lines in Space 82
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The Built Form as Framing Device
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OCCUPIED/VACANT Body//Nobody
Sculpture’s Gaze/Human Gaze
Textures, fast flashes, material, physical, visceral, trodden on, spray painted, cleaned, dirtied, seagulls, movement through space, sitting, running, eating, waiting, sleeping DAY Slow, soft, dark, vacant, lost, unintended, cold, hidden, rattle NIGHT Occupation as PERFORMANCE Fast/Slow/Anim/Real/Abrupt/Sound/Soft/Jagged Sound Informing Cuts
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TEXTURES OF DECAY Fed Square Visit #2
Examining the textures at detail level of Federation Square. Many of the curated textural elements of the square have been interrupted, attacked and deconstructed by the accidental intrusions resulting from the of the state of being occupied. There are painterly spills, half cleaned graffiti, fingerprints, footprints, tape, spiderweb, algae, leaking taps and building work which make new patterns of their own - interwoven with those that are designed.
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Federation Square Shoot
FILMING EXERCISE
SHOT 1 The first shot shows the layered glass facade of the ‘Edge’ performance space, looking through the steel framework and double layered glass into the space, and then beyond it out to the other side.
SHOT 2 As the first shot travels along the glass of the facade, eventually it meets some of the steel framing, and as the lens travels over it the view is obscured entirely. In these breaks purely textural shots of other parts of the building’s materiality are introduced. They are intercut at these moments of obstruction, and maintain the directional flow of the first shot, extending significantly the breaks in the first shot.
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SHOT 3 This break is used as an oppurtunity too for scene changes and footage of other parts of the square is cut into the transitory period. These shots too showcase the texture of the square’s material properties.
SHOT 2.1 More textural imagery is then cut back in as a transition back to the ‘Edge’
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SHOT 1.1 Returning to a continuation of the first shot scraping, rustling sounds are now introduced as a textural overlay to the imagery, connecting the smooth glass with the more erratic textures exhibited in shot 2.
SHOT 2.2 Using the obstruction of the lens as a cutting point once again, the textural shot is reintroduced, still following shot 1’s flow of movement.
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SHOT 4 This time, instead of another smooth shot, another kind of textural shot is intercut before transitioning back to shot 1. At this stage, another sound texture is also introduced.
SHOT 1.2 Shot 1 is shown a final time, this time a series of reflected figures pass across the glass, their reflections jumping between the different layers and mirroring subtly the erratic nature of the textural shots.
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SHOT 5 The final shot begins in the under croft leading to the car park, with the compositional focus on the texture of the light box, which has functioned as the primary source of the textural shots positioned on the right hand side of the frame, being introduced now as a tangible object. The crackling sound becomes muted as the viewer moves under ground and at the beginning of the shot most of what is visible are the fluorescent lit objects in the space.
SHOT 5.1 As the shot carries on, it moves into the sunlight, and also reveals its position in the carpark.
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SHOT 5.2 In its final frames, the shot travels out of the building but remains on a platform, overlooking the park surrounding the square on the Yarra River side.
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METRO CONSTRUCTION SITE
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YARRA BUILDING
ZINC
TRANSPORT BAR/TAXI RIVER TERRACE
Shot 1
Shot 3
Shot 2
Shot 4
Shot 5
Fed Square Shooting Plan 1:2000
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Storyboarding using Battleship Potemkin: In ‘Architecture of the Screen: Essays in Cinematographic Space’ Graham Cairns suggests as an exercise using the mutiny scene from Battleship Potemkin as a template for designing the storyboard for an architectural film to get a better understanding of the space with which you are dealing. I have attempted this exercise on the following pages.
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Referenced Portion of the Mutiny Scene
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MORE NOTES AND RESEARCH
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NOTES ON “THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE SCREEN” Essays in Cinematographic Space Graham Cairns PT II: APPLYING FILM TO ARCHITECTURE
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VIDEO INSTALLATION
PRESENT CONTINUOUS PAST(S): Dan Graham •Active but out of sync document of itself •Use of reflectivity and projection •Creating non-spaces using representative media •Plays on our perception of temporarily and space
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JANE AND LOUISE WILSON
Stasi City (1997), Installation Views
Jane and Louise Wilson make projected works at a large scale to create the optical perception of inhabitable space. The work is performative, inherently requiring the presence and movement of its viewers. It is these elements that lead them to describe their works as ‘Filmic Arenas’ - creating films that engage with architecture, presenting the viewer with curated perceptions of space that play with their understanding of real and filmic or virtual realms.
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HYBRID ARTWORKS •Using film and video projection as a ‘constructor of space’, and by these meas ’defamiliarising’ the usual understanding of space. •Utilising the intrinsic link between physical and cinematographic characteristics of spatial environments. •Site Specific film and performance overlays •”Incidental legacy” •Script , space, filmed material: overlayed to create a blurring of truth and reality
“An ambiguous phenomenon in which the difference between physical space and projected image blurs.” Incidental Legacy (1998), installation view
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THE PHYSICAL EXPERIENCE OF SPACE AND THE SENSORIAL PERCEPTION OF IMAGE The layers of Hybrid Artwork’s ‘Incidental Legacy’ Pt I: Shadows •Space Divided, performers, projected rehearsal, live seated audience Pt II: Memories •Performers (restricted in the space), Projected performance of ‘Shadows’ (shot from two persepectives), free moving audience, original rehearsal films. •The performances (live, rehearsals, and recorded ‘Shadows’) become a “Visual tapestry of [their] own history”, a symbolic representation of the complexity of memory. Pt III: Echoes •No performers, installation entirely made of collated past performances •The temporal aspect of the installation shifts, no longer an event but an artworks which people can experience as any other gallery work, the audience now simply filters in and out.
The work relies primarily on the careful positioning of screens, projectors, performers, audience and cameras in the space, altered to suit each stage of the artwork. In this way the artists create a close-knit dialogue between the film’s compostition and the physcial gallery spaces, and later also establishing a compositional relationship between the image and the space in which it resides. Through these methods the filmmakers generate a complexity in their spatial layering which allows for their conceptual framework to be utilised in the performance itself. For example, by projecting space onto itself they open the door for actors to interact with their projected counterpart in the virtual realm.
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Over the course of its stages ‘Incidental Legacy’ moves from the realm of theatre, to performance art, and finally to pure video installation. The layering creates a state of repetition and contradiction, and the work becomes less specific in time by the last stage, by stepping away from physical performance its audience transition from a participating, and present party, to a stream of gallery patrons witnessing the record of a past event. Once it reaches a pure video form, the work becomes also pure ‘constructed space’ and the gallery and its patrons become passive participants in its presentation.
Still from recorded rehearsal, eventually to be projected back into the room
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THE PHYSICAL EXPERIENCE OF IMAGE AND THE SENSORIAL PERCEPTION OF SPACE DILLER AND SCOFIDIO
‘Jump Cuts’ installation view
•Diller and Scofidio’s engagement in this realm stems from an interest in the impact of media on contemporary culture •CCTV •An inversion of the sense of place through media
PARA-SITE and JUMP CUTS •Experimental projection works in which the exterior of a building is simultaneously filmed and projected onto the interior (Para-Site) or vice versa (Jump Cuts) These works aimed to utilise new media to upset the understanding of architectural space, in this instance by ‘turning the building inside out’.
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SLOW HOUSE •A design addressing the issue of the ‘picture postcard view’, criticsing that desire and the degree of separation imposed by the window by separating the viewer from the view •In Slow House, this degree of separation is interrogated by placing a screen in place of the real view onto which a live feed of the view behind it is played. •This idea actually boils down to a comparison between architectural and cinematographic framing devices and techniques. • A containment or ‘standardisation’ of reality
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CINEMATOGRAPHIC ARCHITECTURE: EXERCISES IN THEORY AND PRACTICE •Interrogate the use of architecture in film as more than just a physical setting •Stylisation •Physical Characteristics •How they are shot How do these create a deliberate manipulation of physical reality? How are they used to assist the narrative? •What do film makers do to manipulate the reading of architecture to their own ends?
FROM THE CONTRADICTIONS OF FILM TO THE CREATIVITY OF ARCHITECTURE: Design Workshop Exercises Stage I: Analysis of Spatial Construction in Film Stage II: A Formalistic Filming of Architectural Space Stage III: Re-creating a Storyboard in the Context of a Design/Project Stage IV: Creating a Storyboard Specifically to Showcase the Project Stage V: Adopting a Cinematic Understanding of Space to Inform a Design Proposal
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CINEMATOGRAPHIC SPACE: A STUDY OF CITIZEN KANE How Orson Welles treats: •The Physical Space (The real environment) •The Cinematographic Space (A mediated spatial perception of these environments as curated by the director) •The Cinematographic construction (The placement of people and objects to dictate their compositional relationship with the camera, take duration and dynamism, edit style etc) •Spatial Vision (Aesthetic factors, compositional and choreographic factors, filming style) 117
SCENE I:
The Senior Kane’s at Home
•To reflect the character relationship the set is very large and looming, reflecting the distant, cold dynamic of their relationship. There is no intimacy in the scene - the space, despite being a home, is utterly impersonal. •This aspect of the set design is further exaggerated with the use of a wide lens •The scene is shot from a high angle to accentuate the distance between the characters. •The actors are spotlit so the space between them can remain dim and shadowy, introducing another element of separation.
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•The scene is fragmented by cutting, and deliberately breaking the 180 degree rule, placing characters to obscure the scene in the establishing shot and separating characters using scene layers. •Graphic dislocation is created by shifting characters and cameras while cutting between dialogue.
SCENE II:
The Tribune Dinner Party
•The arrival of new players (a troupe of dancers) is used to reorganise the entire composition of the scene halfway through, deconstructing and resetting the scene’s visual structure. •Constantly breaking and rearranging around the line of action also breaks down the viewer’s ability to orient themselves in the scene. Welles however, only shoots at medium and long scale using the shot length to provide the viewer with the life line of visual reference at back of shot, no matter the angle. This allows the scene to play out fluidly in spite of its erratic construction.
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•Aspects of the scene are once again obscured by the presence of a character in the establishing shot, in this case another character. The movement of this character shortly into the scene reveals both Kane in the background and another character in the middle ground of the shot. By this method Welles has actually unveiled the scene fully without using a cut.
Kane In Defeat
SCENE III:
•All the characters are positioned so that dialogue can carry on throughout the scene without employing a cut. All three are visible and there is a layered hierarchy which holds symbolic meaning in relation to the characters and their relationships as well as narrative theme.
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SCENE IV:
•Once the camera stops the characters are also in their final positions in relation to the camera, and the architectural elements of the frame, creating a clear compositional hierarchy.
Kane As a Child
•The camera tracks backward through a window, progressively revealing all the characters as it tracks the characters follow and the boy is still visible through the window.
•Whilst the child is oblivious in the background, framed by the window, his father stands in the middle ground, separated from the others by a partition wall. •The mother and Thatcher are in the foreground, occupying he same room as the camera and finalising Kane’s imminent departure to Chicago, separating him from his parents. •This movement and framing allows the camera to use the building as a visual framework for the power hierarchy between characters.
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NOTES ON “CINEMATIC AIDED DESIGN” An Everyday Approach to Architecture Francois Penz PT I: An Everyday Approach to Architecture
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“Over the last 120 years, filmmakers have archived characterized, interpreted and portrayed hundreds of thousands of buildings. Folded away and preserved in celluloid film is a comprehensive encyclopedia of architectural spaces and building elements and how to use them; doors and windows were opened and closed, stairs were descended, corridors were strolled along, lobbies were entered, walls were bumped into, cellars were visited attics were inhabited, bedrooms were slept in.”
A house falls on Buster Keaton in “Steamboat Bill Jr”
What does architecture become post-occupancy? In what way can film be utilised as a resource for architects to better understand this? What does inhabitation mean for Architecture with a capital ‘A’. Is the potential for ‘misuse’, or simply for wear on ‘perfect’ structures, or even design principles create problems for the architecture itself, or simply for the architects sense of control? How does architecture behave under entropy?
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As Found Movement: Peter and Alison Smithson What is the value of ordinary things? How can design learn from banality and everyday things?
The ordinary and banal: The objective of architecture is the works of art that are lived in. The city is the largest and at present the worst of such works of art. Functionalism [to speak roughly of the heroic period of modern architecture] was a new dream exploiting a new source of geometric and organizational procedures, not a change of objective. […] That the architecture of the next step is in pursuit of the ordinary and the banal does not mean that it has lost sight of its objective. Ordinariness and banality are the art source for the new situation. The kinds of repetition and control that are now offered to building by industry can be edged towards a kind of dreaming neutrality – an urban equivalent of the Alsace of Jules and Jim. Anything that is conventionally considered unfitting, banal or not worthy of mention can now be seen as entirely different: as fitting, fascinating and substantial […] As Found has to do with attentiveness, with concern for that which exists, with a passion for the task of making something from something. It is a technique of reaction […] Only the perception of reality launches the activities of designing or producing.
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Upper Lawn Pavillion The ‘As Found Home’ The Upper Lawn House (or Solar House) was Alison and Peter Smithson’s weekend house in Wiltshire. The design encompassed their research on alternatives to suburban housing, of combining existing structures with new buildings made from contemporary materials and how dwellings can encourage or fit in with their concepts on the “art of living” The building was simplistic, and anchored around a chimney salvaged from the original building on the site - an old worker’s cottage. The street elevation utilised an existing cobblestone wall. The plans were simple and allowed for an engagement with the outdoors.
‘In the late forties and early fifties when we first started thinking about housing, lack of identity, lack of any pattern of association, we used to talk of objects as found and anything and everything can be raised by association to become the poetry of the ordinary’.
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Nigel Henderson Photography East End London
Nigel Henderson, a street photographer in the 1950s and 60s had a profound influence on the ‘as found’ movement. A pioneer of documetary photogrpahy, he framed the working class neighbourhoods of East London in dynamic and fascinating ways, framing the mundane activities of the streets and their occupants and bringing attention to their worth, and their inhenrent beauty. That these neighbourhoods should eb seen as fitting of such thorough documentation was revolutionary and important to emerging movements in art, film and architecture relating to the celebration of the everyday.
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Stephen Shore and “Teaching America to See”
Stephen Shore is often credited - perhaps a little floridly - with ‘teaching America to see” a self-taught photographer who cut his teeth taking documentary photos for the likes of Andy Warhol, Shore found ways to photograph the ‘unseen’ side of American culture, refering perhaps more accurately to the unnoticed, the banal, and the everyday aspects of the urban and visual landscape - especially of California. Shore took great care with the things that are supposedly not worth seeing and captured real beauty in them - controversially - in colour (unheard of in fine art photography at the time).
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The space of our life is neither continuous, nor infinite, neither homogeneous, nor isotropic. But do we really know where it shatters, where it curves, and where it assembles itself? We feel a confused sensation of cracks, hiatus, points of friction, sometimes we have the vague impression that it is getting jammed somewhere, or that it is bursting, or colliding. We rarely try to know more about it and more often than not go from one place to another, from one space to another without trying to measure, to grasp, to consider these gaps in space. The issue is not to invent space, and even less to re-invent it, but to interrogate it, or to just read it; because what we call everydayness is not evidence but opacity: a form of blindness, a mode of anaesthesia. -Georges Perec, Species of Spaces
THE CASE FOR EVERYDAYNESS ‘How can everyday life be defined? It surrounds us, it besieges us, on all sides and from all directions’ -Lefebvre, Critique de la vie quotidienne
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The case for everydayness to my mind is to underline the beauty in imperfection, or perhaps accidental perfection, it is in the charm of ordinary things. It is a worship of objects, but not a covetous one, rather an appreciative approach for the objects that fall to us, and what they come to represent that can be well summed up in Ron Padgett’s poem Love Poem written for Pateson and read by Adam Driver in the film
“We have plenty of matches in our house We keep them on hand always Currently our favourite brand Is Ohio Blue Tip Though we used to prefer Diamond Brand That was before we discovered Ohio Blue Tip matches They are excellently packaged Sturdy little boxes With dark and light blue and white labels With words lettered In the shape of a megaphone As if to say even louder to the world “Here is the most beautiful match in the world!” It’s one-and-a-half-inch soft pine stem Capped by a grainy dark purple head So sober and furious and stubbornly ready To burst into flame Lighting, perhaps the cigarette of the woman you love For the first time And it was never really the same after that”
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MESSY VITALITY
Venturi Scott Brown and the “Learning From Las Vegas” effect
In ‘Learning From Las Vegas’ Denise Scott-Brown and Robert Venturi broke down the barrier that existed in architectural theory between Architecture with a captial A and the architecture of the every day. The architecture that in truth constitues the largest part of the built landscape. This book was a significant waymarker in the progression from the rigidity of modernism into the looser theoretical framework proposed under post-modernism. ‘Learning From Las Vegas’ is certainly amongst the most famous examples of this shift in the school of architectural thought specifically, though this appreciation for landscapes on the ground were also the driver behind other cultural movements especially in fine art including pop art and neo-impressionism.
Relevant References: Signs of Life, Symbols in the American City 132
“Architects can no longer afford to be intimidated by the puritanically moral language of orthodox modern architecture... I am for messy vitality over obvious unity� -Robert Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture
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Ed Ruscha:
Simple Poetry and Visual Prowess under ‘pop art’ and the newfound appreciation for everydayness. Ed Ruscha’s works combined text and vibrant painted visuals which framed a simplistic, but visceral and deeply felt portrait of America, the sardonic text overlaid with grand landscapes are both critical and dripping with irony, and yet his imagery also clearly illustrates an unexpected- maybe even reluctant - delight in the simple linear forms of the low Los Angeles skyline against the backdrop of the Californian desert.
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Eduardo Paolozzi:
The joy of ordinary aesthetics
Eduardo Paolozzi was a pioneer of the pop art movement in the UK and also a part of the same thought school developed by the Smithsons which resulted in the ‘As Found’ and later the ‘Kitchen Sink’ fields of theory in art, architecture and cinema. His works show a clear delight in the aesthetics of advertisements, and the resulting dreamy visual language that was developed around household items. His artworks were a compendium of found objects, arranged and repurposed into vibrant visual tapestries conveying new ideas as well as a kind of unique visual poetry.
“Another characteristic of As Found as a method of working is that it relies on the second glance. As Found is an approach that first neutralizes and then starts anew.” -Lichtenstein and Schrenberger on the ‘As Found’ group
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THE FREE CINEMA GROUP
Documenting a working class Britain Grimy, strange and deceptively complex, ‘O Dreamland’ is a portrait of a day in the Dreamland amusement park in Margate, Kent in 1953. As the camera switches its focus from a ticket seller to the litter of stubs underfoot, or from the curious faces of children to mannequins reenacting historical violence it comments silently and without judgement on the culture of a country still limping from the effects of WWII. For Britain’s working class it was a time of uncertainty that would only escalate in the decades to come, whether the film maker’s curiosity in relation specifically to the park arose from the spectrum of attendees or the ‘bread and circuses’ undercurrent that seems to be at play - it was simply the act of documenting the place at all that makes the film significant.
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O DREAMLAND
Lindsay Anderson
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Karel Reisz
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Another document of working class Britain in the 1950s, ‘Momma Don’t Allow’ is a portrait of a night in the Wood Green Jazz Club in North London. After a brief period of establishment, showing a series of young Londoners clocking off work, and the Jazz band performing warmups, the film shifts into the club at full swing. The camera shifts frenetically between revellers, lovers, musicians, and dancers. There is an air of hedonism and also relief from a work routine and the pressures of post-war existence. The rhythm is based largely on the transitions between the documentary style shots which usually rally on a theme before moving onto a new subject, the feeling of this simple night of dancing is made palpable by the simple abstract ‘narrative’ technique and the atmosphere of the club is brought to the forefront of the audience focus, painting a virant and tangible portrait of this intagible thing ‘atmosphere’.
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‘‘[question our] bricks, concrete, glass, our eating habits, our ustensils, our tools” “It matters little to me that these questions should be fragmentary, barely indicative of a method, at most of a project. It matters a lot to me that they should seem trivial and futile: it’s precisely what makes them just as essential, if not more, than many other questions through which we have tried in vain to capture our truth.”
Following on from the investigations of the ‘Free Cinema Group’ - especially those present in Momma Don’t Allow how can architecture address this notion of atmosphere generated, in particular by occupation? How can architecture encourage or even simply anticipate the immaterial, incidental atmospheres of living, occupation and observation? Is Highmore’s (opposite) idea (in response to Perec’s (above) pleading for the interrogation of our envinronment) of an architecture which interupts the usual passive methods of day to day observation or commodification valid? Or is it simply a tongue-in-cheek theoretical folly which in practice would do nothing for users of the space for whose needs these notions of considering every day is trying to anticipate and enrich?
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(on designing with atmosphere) ‘How do people design things with such a beautiful natural presence, things that move me every single time. -Zumthor
‘The everyday might also require dwelling on as well as dwelling in. It might require a form of attention that can register the unremarkable, make noticeable the unnoticed... [an] architectural practice that is capable of responding to this intellectual tradition might not be one that merely attempts to fulfill the demands of the buildings’ inhabitants, but one that can interrupt the logic that renders the everyday void. It might be a practice that allows the sensual and stubborn passions of the daily to be directed purposefully against the ideology of ‘tradition’. A house of material memory opposed to the constructed memory of nation, for instance. It might be a practice that works to disrupt the commodification of time and space, or else makes such commodification unliveable. What would an architecture be like that would allow you to ‘question your teaspoons’ or ask ‘what is there under your wallpaper’. -Highmore, 2000 Daidalos 143
SHUSAKU ARAKAWA + MADELEINE GINS Reversible Destiny/Architecture Against Death
The homes designed by the artistic duo Shusaku Arakawa and Madeleine Gins can be seen as both a step away from the appraisal of ‘everydayness’ in architecture, or as an honest and unique embracement of it. The houses, the designs of which were riddled with uneven floors, unpreditable walls and playful inbuilt furniture aimed to prolong human life indefintely by altering the attitude towards everyday spaces and turning them into a constant source of mental, viusal and physical stimulation for their occupants. Although it could be said these design principles are turning their back on ordinary things by making them unusual and possibly simply impractical, I would argue that in fact their designs are a celebration of domestic spaces. By designing them to cater to their own philosophies about a better lifestyle, they were in fact asking for the joy of the everyday to be appreciated in full, rather than swallowed in a sense of monotony. This system of thinking seems to have arisen out of the kind of investigations of daily life which Perec is calling for and perhaps the kind of responses put forward by Highmore.
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“Their homes, with slopes and uneven floors, would make it difficult to stand up without great care, thus challenging the natural boredom that may arise out of a repetitive style of everydayness.�
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The Minor Event Pitted Against the Grand Narrative
“It is the everyday of sunlight, of the periphery, of the unnoticed […] at which time seems to slow down, daily concerns dissipate, and our senses become receptive to sight and sound.” - Peter Halley
In this brief interval I would like to talk about the notion of highlighting invisible things in cinema. On our way through daily life we notice, but don’t acutally see the majority of our surroundings. Familiar environments become invisible to us in a sense. In film, the framing of reality becomes like a parlour trick, pulling back the shroud, and shrugging off the visual filters we emply day to day. By these methods, suddenly ordinary things feel rich and worthy of our attention. Often drawing our attention in this way does not actually do much to further the narrative but rather define an atmosphere or create an emotional assocation with a particular space. The example on the opposite page is of interest to me because it deals in this principle to the effect of deep and powerful emotional resonance. This shot, taken from David Lowery’s ‘A Ghost Story’ is notoriously lengthy and was among the more discussed scenes from the film. Formally, the character is placed on the floor, dwarfed by the furniture, which is dark. The floor is wooden. The room looks cold, large and overwhelming, mirroring the emotional state of a character processing profound grief. The content of the scene, literally just Rooney Mara aggressively eating a pie for four and half minutes brings the focus in to just this one thing. We are engulfed in usually unnoticed detail. The sound of a fork against a plate, of chewing, the feel of floor beneath feet, the colour of cabinets, the way the light falls in room behind, the wood grain where the light hits the drawers. The audience is allowed to spend a long time here and the effect is in my opinon one of the most accurate portrayals of grief I have ever seen on screen.
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Pie Scene, ‘A Ghost Story’, David Lowery
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‘Everydayness’ for Grounding, Comedy, or Character Motivation Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse - A Very Brief Case Study Superhero films are a problem in Hollywood at the moment for a myriad of reasons and yet despite all low expectations ‘Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse’ managed to upend many of the criticisms surrounding the genre and assert itself as not only the best superhero film since Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, but also one of the best animated studio films released in the last 15 years. The reason, I would argue, that this film is so much more effective than anything produced within the MCU for example is because almost all the emotional impact of the film is grounded firmly in everyday circumstance. The narrative plot about super-powers and the multi-verse is actually much of the time, a back drop to a film that at its core is about addressing who you are, and who you want to be in a world which can often make those questions difficult to answer. The character origin of Peter Parker is possibly one of the best known comic book origin stories there is but for the sake of this text the only important aspect is this: Peter Parker is a quiet, nerdy teenager, with few friends, and a financially challenged but loving home life who is navigating growing up in a rough New York neighbourhood. Miles Morales, the core character in ‘Into the Spiderverse’ has a similar back story, though he is perhaps more traditionally ‘cool’ than Peter. Throughout the film, Miles’ motivations mostly revolve around living up to the expectations of his parents and friends while understanding his changing sense of identity, while Peter B. Parker’s plotline is about re-addressing these same issues at middle age. By pairing these characters alongside one another, the film builds its emotional core. It contrasts the challenges of building an identity in your teens, and maintaining a sense of self once you are an adult and faced with navigating the real world. The film packs emotional resonance because these real and relatable issues are at the core of the drama playing out on screen. Unlike Marvel, whose emotional scenes always hinge on something outside of it’s audiences experiences (“all your friends and family turn into dust suddenly because a giant purple alien activated some magic stones”), ‘Into the Spiderverse’ chooses its moments carefully. Miles’ primary moment of growth hinges on a moment of outward approval from his father, who he suspects will hate him for embracing who he is, and for Peter B. Parker it is the realisation through Miles that he is worth looking up to, and therefore worthy of fatherhood.
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The film builds ‘everyday’ groundwork by dedicating significant screen time to Miles’ routine at a new school.
Peter B. Parker’s character is established by placing him in costume in mundane, soul-draining envinronments, signalling a loss of motivation and identity.
Juxtaposition of the ‘everyday’ and the comic book aspects of the film are also used for comedic effect as well as emotional resonance.
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Re-Enter Paterson “We knew what lasts, what becomes memory or archive […] but not the gestures, not the untouched time immortalized in what is most fluid and inconsistent: what would have left no trace, which one would never remember: a man who wiggles while imitating an orchestra conductor; a woman who adjusts a mayonnaise; two men who light a cigarette; a day by the sea, a beautiful day when it was hot.” - Perec
What is important What do we forget? What gestures or moments are destined to become a blur in the tapestry of our own personal histories? Paterson revels in the forgettable things, little incidental conversations, thoughts or observations. Even the poetry schools the film heralds are those that sought to memorialise these moments, crystalise them, and in the same way, so does the film itself. “Filmic everydayness is most prevalent in the home” says Penz, and in Paterson the home is the beating heart of every action, the redemption and validation of everyday gestures.
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This is Just to Say I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold -William Carlos Williams
“[Interrogate] the banal, the everyday, the obvious, the common, the ordinary, the infra-ordinary, the background noise, the usual [...] Describe your street. Describe another […] Interrogate your small spoons. What is underneath your wallpaper?.” - Perec
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Applying ‘Rhythmanalysis’ to ‘Paterson’ The rhythmanalytical study […] integrates itself into that of everyday life. It even deepens certain aspects of it. Everyday life is modeled on abstract, quantitative time, the time of watches and clocks […] everyday life remains shot through and traversed by great cosmic and vital rhythms: day and night, the months and the seasons, and still more precisely biological rhythms. In the everyday, this results in the perpetual interaction of these rhythms with repetitive processes linked to homogeneous time. -Lefebvre In summary: thinking of ‘everyday’ as both cyclical and linear, and through this mode of thinking, grouping time and space together as a tangible whole. Cyclical/cosmic: Day/Night, Seasons etc Linear: The repetition of a daily routine A process rooted in observation. Determining patterns from chaos, crowds, the never-ending stream of daily movement, human flow, conversation. We become most acutely aware of these rhythms when they are interrupted, when our daily movements, are altered or inconvenienced. BASIC FUNCTIONS UNDER ROUTINE (as stipulated by Lefebvre): - Eating -Sleeping -Working (addition for the ‘Paterson’ routine) HIGHER FUNCTIONS: -Reading -Writing -Judging/Appreciating -Conceiving -Managing How are these functions distributed in the average routine? How are they distributed in ‘Paterson’?
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Basic Functions
Higher Functions
Sleeping
Walking
Eating
Writing
Working
Conversation
Pub
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Basic Functions
Higher Functions
Sleeping
Walking
Eating
Writing
Working
Conversation Pub
7 6 5
Minutes of screen time
4 3 2 1
Monday
Tuesday
ANALYSIS OF PATERSON’S WEEKLY ROUTINE
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Wednesday
A number of things become apparent in these diagrams. Two in particular are notable. Firstly, the variant events at the end of the week are made abundantly apparent, beginning with no screen time given to Paterson eating on the Friday, followed by an extreme variation of routine on the weekend that is presumably abbarent, and brought on by the stresses of the Friday and also the destruction of Paterson’s notebook on Saturday night (Sunday for example is the only day Paterson is not shown sleeping, and this variation from the rhythm of the rest of the film acts as an implication that he did not do so at all). Secondly, the amount of time dedicated to eating, sleeping and also to conversation also correlate largely with use of specific rooms in the house (dining room, bedroom and lounge room) and so the graphs also give an idea of how Paterson and Laura tend to occupy their home.
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
Higher Functions (%) Basic Functions (%)
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What of the Space Between the Frames?
Does space simply wait to be filled? What life do empty spaces have in between moments of occupation? Is the behavior of an empty room important? What exists in the space between frames? Between cuts? What are these cracks in the cinematic biosphere of the film? How deliberate can they be, and what significance do they hold? If a film exists inside a virtual biosphere then what parts of it are edited out? Where does the ambiguity lie, and is it necessary or simply circumstantial?
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‘Each movie generates its own little biosphere and has its own little ecology and its climate, and you’re attuned to that more than anything else’ -Cronenberg
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The Oneiric House ‘A fictional house of many cinematic parts’
‘[a] home is not the same as a house […] Does a home need to be anything built at all, any fabric? I think not’ 158
‘It is a home made of dreams, illusions, nightmares and memories. It is about what the idea of home may mean to any one of us, irrespective of whether we live in a terraced house, a bungalow or a tower block.’ -Penz
The concept of the ‘Oneiric House’ originally developed by Gaston Bachelard in his book ‘The Poetics of Space’ refers to the house that exists inside the mind. A collaged collection of memories of space, the Oneiric house is built - at least in part - from the unique and fluctuating impressions we develop of domestic spaces based on our own experiences. From the the rug in front of the TV in the house you lived in when your were four, to your best friend’s kitchen table when you were nineteen, to a series of grungy bedrooms and couches you fell onto for only weeks at a time when you first left your home town, the oneiric house is a personal and distinctly changeable quilt of countless spaces which have resonated with us and in one way or another formed into one blurred idea of domesticity. This mental, dreamlike Ikea showroom which winds through the life of an individual is by nature a little bit tricky, doors may go nowhere, rooms may shift or relocate. The oneiric house is difficult to pin down, while in some corners it is comfortable, in others it can be crammed with bad association. A dream, a nightmare, an impressionistic painting of ordinary life. The oneiric house and the film house share a lot of similarity. Parts may be omitted in aid of clarity, pieces may be forgetten about or skimmed over, the spaces are embedded with emotion and used to illustrate it. The filmed house is too a collage stitched together to form an impression of a whole thing.
Lived space is always a combination of external space and inner mental space, actuality and mental projection. In experiencing lived space, memory and dream, fear and desire, value and meaning, fuse with the actual perception…The modes of experiencing architecture and cinema become identical in this mental space, which meanders without fixed boundaries. - Juhani Pallasmaa 159
What does it mean, to live in a room? Is to live in a place to take possession of it? What does taking possession of a place mean? As from when does somewhere become truly yours? Is it when you’ve put your three pairs of socks to soak in a pink plastic bowl? Is it when you’ve heated up your spaghetti over a camping-gaz? Is it when you’ve used up all the non-matching hangers in the cupboard? Is it when you’ve drawing-pinned to the wall an old postcard showing Carpaccio’s ‘Dream of St Ursula’? Is it when you’ve experienced there the throes of anticipation, or the exaltations of passion, or the torments of a toothache? Is it when you’ve hung suitable curtains up on the windows, and put up the wallpaper, and sanded the parquet flooring? Perec
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In search of the ‘Magic of the Real’, Zumthor too marvels at an everyday life scene in a café: ‘Café at a students’ hostel, a thirties picture by Baumgartner. Men just sitting around – and they’re enjoying themselves too. And I ask myself: can I achieve that as an architect – an atmosphere like that, its intensity, its mood’ (Zumthor, 2006, p.19). In his quest for atmosphere, Zumthor is marvelling at a photograph, but later he also refers to film: ‘A place of great learning for me in this respect is the cinema. Of course the camera team and directors assemble sequences in the same way. I try that out in my buildings’ (Zumthor, 2006, p.45). Architecture generates spatial atmospheres that are linked to the notion of situations: ‘An atmosphere is the expressive force through which a situation that has been engendered by architecture seizes us in affective terms all at once and as a totality’
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Permutations of Everydayness in Cinema:
Everyday Life, Everyday Environment
Frances Ha, Noah Baumbach, 2013
Noah Baumbach’s films all explore ordinary life in one way or another, whether through the eyes of confused twenty-somethings, estranged siblings, or divorcing parents, he finds ways of making each situation carry a certain resonance by finding the ordinary interesting and translating that onto the screen.
Non-Everyday Life, Everyday Environment
Shaun of the Dead, Edgar Wright, 2004
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Edgar Wright specialises in setting bizarre genre-centered plots in mundane environments. Each film in the Blood and Ice-cream trilogy played with this idea, beginning with ‘Shaun of The Dead’ in 2004 which set a zombie apocalypse in suburban North London
Everyday Life, Non-Everyday Environment War films in general fulfil the criteria for this category. The depiction of war-time living is still a depiction of what was for the people involved ‘everyday life’, simply under extreme and out of the ordinary circumstances.
Platoon, Oliver Stone, 1987
Non-Everyday Life, Non-Everyday Environment
Blade Runner: 2049, Dennis Villenueve, 2017
The extreme, but believable nature of the Blade Runner universe is used to question how far humanity might stray from morality with the development of new technology. This separation from everyday reality is the lens through which the film asks questions, but at its heart it maintains a humanist core that is centred on people and their behaviour.
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Theatre in the round
Theatre in the Round is a form of stage presentation wherein the audience surrounds the set and performers from all sides. Theatre in this form is generally considered more immersive than tradition proscenium style theatrical performance because the actors are now performing in three dimesions as it were, instead of against a flat plane. Sets, blocking and stage cheats all become more difficult in this format because the audience can see almost everything, and cumbersome set pieces may block the view from certain angles. These challenges however, also present creative oppurtunities for manipulating the space, the audience perception of it, and the events transpiting within it. Perhaps certain parts of the stage could be obscured from certain angles, allowing different parts of the audience to be privy tio variations of information. My interest is in whether or not this method could be applied to the architectural redesign of a domestic space, each room becoming a sort of ‘stage for living in’, and the house itself a set to be viewed in three hundred an sixty five degrees, partially obscured in places but presenting life from the outside in.
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The ‘Stages’:
Kitchen
Bedroom
Dining Room
Lounge Room
Basement By these means I think the house could be designed to highlight its occupants, and the objects within its walls, a house designed around pre-existing characters and objects, much the way a theatre set is derived, rather than a pre-deisgned house modified by its occupants to suit their taste and lifestyle
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A Doll’s House National Theatre Set Design: Ian MacNeil
“We don’t live our whole lives in one room ... it’s contrived to have people keep entering this room and this room alone. If you have a mate over, you don’t just sit in the front room with them you go to the dining room table and have a cup of tea there, or they go into the kitchen with you while you make a cup of tea. That’s what we were trying to do,”
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Ian MacNeill’s set design for National Theatre’s 2012 production of ‘A Doll’s House’ was not quite theatre in the round, rather it was a fairly unique rotating set of a house which allowed the actors to move fluidly from room to room while they performed and still be in full view of the audience. The set did an incredible job of adding to the voyeuristic nature of the play, as well as creating a unique spatial experience for the audience highlighting the domestic routines happening within the walls of the house whilst the veneers of domestic bliss fray at their edges.
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Architecture, Abstracted 168
Finding ways to abstract the architectural form into a more pure intuitive form. Zaha Hadid’s concept paintings were masterful examples of this technique for design process. I am interested in abstracting form into lines which have a base in emotion instead of more standard methodical design techniques. Zaha Hadid Concept Paintings
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The Mellow Pad, 1945-51
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Owh! in San Pao, 1951
Stuart Davis
Jazz painting: Colour and Rhythm in Space
I want to find a way to create similar evocations to those found in these sorts of images - which I believe already have a lot in common with the sorts of conceptual architectural images pictured on the previous pages - in my own design work and drawings. These paintings, which draw inspiration not only from jazz music, but also from the culture and theory that surrounds it is relevent I think not only to the narrative context of Paterson, but also to Jim Jarmusch’s film making style. His films often have a rhythmic offbeat feel that evokes the kind of cultural shifts that occured in the second half of the 20th century which resulted in the shift toward post-modernism in all artforms. This new, more open and more experimental approach to art, design and music allowed for a broader scope on which artists could focus, and this is where the idea of everydayness comes back into play. PoMo allowed its gaze to drift onto ordinary things rather than just the puritaical ideals that came hand in hand with modernism. There are so many parallels and points of interest here and I am excited to find a way to explore them through visualisations of new types of form.
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Line, form, rhythm The fomal arrangements in these paintings, inspired by music and especially jazz and the beat movement have a particularly dynamic and and vibrant property which evokes a kind of movement or gestural action. Jazz paintings are intesting in particular for their visual rhythm properties which in show across the board a property which exists too, in jazz music itself. Namely a sense of contrast between moments of chaos and moments of clarity in the linework. I am interested in finding a way to imbue this tactic into my design work.
George Condo, Colllusion, 2017
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John Lurie, Sky Is Falling and I am Learning to Live With It
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Jack Kerouac
Prose and Performance
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Kerouac’s writing style had an influence on the poetry school which inspired to poetic undertones of ‘Paterson’. His descriptions of city life and of ordinary people existing in whatever ways formed their everyday life were part of a shift in temperament in poetry styles which led to a generation of poetics working in a field of focus and romanticisation on ordinary life - though in Kerouac’s case depicting especially the types of musicians and artists with which he was associated.
Now it’s jazz, the place is roaring, all beautiful girls in there, One mad brunette at the bar drunk with her boys. One strange chick I remember from somewhere, wearing a simple skirt with pockets, her hands in there, short haircut, slouched, talking to everybody. Up and down the stairs they come. The bartenders are the regular band of Jack, And the heavenly drummer who looks up in the sky with blue eyes, With a beard, is wailing beer-caps of bottles and jamming on the cash register and everything is going to the beat. It’s the beat generation, it’s beat, it’s the beat to keep, it’s the beat of the heart, i T’s being beat and down in the world and like oldtime lowdown And like in ancient civilizations the slave boatmen rowing galleys to a beat And servants spinning pottery to a beat.
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To warm up into utilising these methods into my design technique I made attempts at intuitive line drawings whilst listening to Kerouac’s beat generation album allowing the rhythm of both the poetry and the underlying instrumentals to guide the types of linework I was drawing. 176
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Mario Bellini, 412 CAB CHAIR I am interested in collecting and analysing particularly expressive objects. that hold something on their own agency. The materialisation of a personality is a very interesting thing with which objects can be imbued, and I want to find a way to do so in my own designs of both objects and architecture. The goal is to use the expressive potential of lines, and apply it to objects or spaces, endowing them with personality, aura, or character which helps to inform their presence and function in the space.
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Ettore Sottsass, Carlton Room Divider
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(Quote Unrelated to image, but useful) Ever since the time of Louis Philippe, the bourgeois has shown a tendency to compensate for the absence of any trace of private life in the big city. He tries to do this within the four walls of his apartment. It is as if he made it a point of honour not to allow the traces of his everyday objects and accessories to get lost. Indefatigably, he takes the impression of a host of objects; for his slippers and his watches, his blankets and his umbrellas, he devises coverlets and cases. He has a marked preference for velour and plush, which preserve the imprint of all contact. In the style characteristic of the second empire, the apartment becomes a sort of cockpit. The traces of its inhabitant are moulded into the interior. Here is the origin of the detective story, which inquires into these traces and follows these tracks. -Walter Benjamin
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Jim Jarmusch’s earlier film ‘Stranger than Paradise’ chronicles a spill over from ordinary existence into something somewhat absurd as the characters break away from their mundane routines to undertake a fairly pointless roadtrip to Florida. The film is deeply imbued with jazz and by extension other music, from featuring John Lurie and Richard Edson in lead roles to championing the beat sensibility in the wandering vagabond lifestyle it depicts
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Chaos/Freneticism The attributes of chaos and clarity which I identified earlier as strong attributes of Jazz music and painting are also present in Paterson, though rather than chaos being the primary factor in Paterson most of the film is calm and clear leading up to a monumental disruption of the routine of life in the last portion of the film. The frame introducing the moment, pictured to the left is possibly amongst the most chaotic in the entire film, resembling almost the jazz painting pictured in previous pages, with frenetic energy spread across the entire field of view in the form of the torn notebook containing years of Paterson’s poetry.
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Clarity/Lull A moment to process information - re-group
The chaos from the previous scene is however allowed to settle back into the sense of clear calm that carried throughout the rest of the film. After the original notebook of poetry is destroyed, Paterson takes a day to regroup, and whilst out walking is offered a fresh notebook by another poet who passes by, allowing him to start fresh with. The film allows this to act as a final act in the rhythmic cycle of the week and finalises almost musical build to crescendo before the calm and fade.
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John Brack John Brack was an Australian painter active in the second half of the 20th century. He spent his time as an artist painstakingly documenting his surroundings. Cars, breakfast tables, his wife, his daughters. His paintings found a way to express Australian life in the 50s, 60s and 70s through highly expressive form. Possibly the most evocative aspect of his work was the ordinary scenes he depicted in his work which he made into strange emotive and interesting works of art.
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Gregory Crewdson Gregory Crewdson’s photographs are particularly cinematic. Highly crafted and staged they pay a very close attention to detail. The unsettling mood he evokes with them is down to this careful crafting of detail which is brought about through the set dressing and the compiling, placing and arranging of, objects furniture and figures in the frame.
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Casa Malaparte
Casa Malaparte in Italy is a strong architectural example of the pursuit of image as the primary goal of built form. Specifically the design of Malaparte is designed to lead the occupant from the front door to cliff top vista, framed almost painting-like by the impressive picture window at the far end of the house. 190
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PATERSON ‘In the late forties and early fifties when we first started thinking about housing, lack of identity, lack of any pattern of association, we used to talk of objects as found and anything and everything can be raised by association to become the poetry of the ordinary’.’ Alison Smithson
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The Beauty of Incidental Objects In Paterson
Objects are important to both the aesthetics and also the philosphy of ‘Paterson’. There is an interesting kind of object worship in the film - it is not however a covetous or materialistic kind of worship, but rather one stemming from an appreciation of one’s surroundings. The care given to the representations of the daily detritus surrounding Paterson and Laura is very much in line with the poems of William Carlos Williams, which focused very much on capturing ordinary moments, and ordinary interactions between people and also things. This kind of appreciation becomes something quite special and unique, a meditative observation of the beauty of things that simply happen to be there.
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Positioning Paterson in space
Using information available in the film I tried to put together a rough spatial understanding of the house as it appears in the film. There is a surprising degree of ambiguity, as mediating spaces are given little focus, and thus fall aside as sort of non-spaces in the cinematic version of the house. The relationship between the kitchen, dining and lounge rooms in the most clearly illustrated as an open living arrangement, with only a partial wall between the dining and lounge. The position of the bedroom is unclear, though by progression of events is likely to sit off the hall that can be seen a few times in the film. Paterson’s study in the basement is also difficult to place, presumably it is situated next to the garage, but where it is accessed from the house is somewhat difficult to place with the information available.
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Bedroom
Hall/Mediating Space
Basement
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Lounge
Dining Room
Primary Spaces in the Film
Front Elevation
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Using Google Street view, I explored and ‘photographed’ Paterson, NJ. By this method I hoped to gain some understanding of the urban fabric of the city with which the film is so deeply and intrinsically linked.
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Exploring Paterson New Jersey
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Frank O Hara and the New York Poetry School A strong inspiration for the poetry in Paterson was Frank O’Hara who wrote poems about observations he made, often as he was taking lunch on the streets of New York
It’s my lunch hour, so I go for a walk among the hum-colored cabs. First, down the sidewalk where laborers feed their dirty glistening torsos sandwiches and Coca-Cola, with yellow helmets on. They protect them from falling bricks, I guess. Then onto the avenue where skirts are flipping above heels and blow up over grates. The sun is hot, but the cabs stir up the air. I look at bargains in wristwatches. There are cats playing in sawdust. On to Times Square, where the sign blows smoke over my head, and higher the waterfall pours lightly. A Negro stands in a doorway with a toothpick, languorously agitating. A blonde chorus girl clicks: he smiles and rubs his chin. Everything suddenly honks: it is 12:40 of a Thursday.
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Neon in daylight is a great pleasure, as Edwin Denby would write, as are light bulbs in daylight. I stop for a cheeseburger at JULIET’S CORNER. Giulietta Masina, wife of Federico Fellini, è bell’ attrice. And chocolate malted. A lady in foxes on such a day puts her poodle in a cab. There are several Puerto Ricans on the avenue today, which makes it beautiful and warm. First Bunny died, then John Latouche, then Jackson Pollock. But is the earth as full as life was full, of them? And one has eaten and one walks, past the magazines with nudes and the posters for BULLFIGHT and the Manhattan Storage Warehouse, which they’ll soon tear down. I used to think they had the Armory Show there. A glass of papaya juice and back to work. My heart is in my pocket, it is Poems by Pierre Reverdy.
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William Carlos Williams the draw of inbetween moments
so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens.
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William Carlos Williams is the primary poetic inspiration behind Paterson, not only being from Paterson, NJ where the film is set but also serving as the artistic hero of the main character. His poems which were inspired by his direct surroundings and the ordinary aspects of his day. Unlike Paterson himself, Williams led a fairly eventful life working as a doctor, but documented only the softer in between moments in his poems, perhaps as a kind of catharsis from his work.
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ANALYSIS AND EARLY DESIGN
Oneiric House Diagram
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Section of the house as it appears in Paterson
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Plan of the house as it appears in Paterson
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Plan of the garage as it appears in Paterson
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Enlarged Kitchen Plan as seen in film 0 222
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THE KITCHEN
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The frequent reaching for the water glass provides subtle comedy in the scene as Paterson pretends to enjoy - but struggles to eat - Laura’s pie
Paterson’s interactions are measured and deliberate
Secret Pie Scene Diagram Movement Mapped Out For Individual Characters
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Laura is more energetic, frequently standing and moving around the kitchen as her trains of thought lead her into various actions and movement in the space
Laura also takes on a caring role in the scene, moving to the kitchen bench to bring more food and water over to the table for Paterson and herself
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Breakfast scene overlayed with poetry scene showing character movement and interaction.
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Schedule of objects present in the kitchen in mapped scenes 228
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Paterson is primarily depicted as an observer, and often this is the driver for his poetry. In this scene, a box of matches which he picks up in the kitchen whilst eating his breakfast before work lead him to work on a poem for the rest of the day.
Domestic Clutter, focused upon in detail.
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We have plenty of matches in our house We keep them on hand always Currently our favourite brand Is Ohio Blue Tip Though we used to prefer Diamond Brand That was before we discovered Ohio Blue Tip matches They are excellently packaged Sturdy little boxes With dark and light blue and white labels With words lettered In the shape of a megaphone As if to say even louder to the world Here is the most beautiful match in the world It’s one-and-a-half-inch soft pine stem Capped by a grainy dark purple head So sober and furious and stubbornly ready To burst into flame Lighting, perhaps the cigarette of the woman you love For the first time And it was never really the same after that
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Paterson
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Laura
Enlarged bedroom plan as seen in film
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Schedule of objects present in the bedroom in mapped scene
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Mapping of morning routine over the course of the week 236
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Objects a s a centre f or routine.
Gestural Diagrams showing interaction with key object.
In each bedroom scene Paterson is shown checking the time and putting on his watch, this action initiates the daily routine from Monday through to Friday.
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Your magic watch didn’t wake you this morning?
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The Lounge room acts a s a centre f or t he house, w ith t he camera following P atersons gaze, snippets of the dining and kitchen a reas a re r evealed, a s well as t he hallway t o the bedroom. The house is almost compressed by these views, giving it a closer, more comfortable feel
Lounge Room Plan
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Often the camera will follow Paterson’s gaze instead of the conversation or action as can be seen in the scene shown above. 245
View to Kitchen/Dining
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View to Bedroom/Hall
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Plan Diagram showing how the camera follows Paterson’s gaze throughout the space
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Secondary diagram, illustrating further the plan diagram on the previous page
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“Do you t hink having s uch wonderful feet helps you being a bus driver?”
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Relationships a re reflected i n the film with interactions with objects
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Applying cinematic techniques in early iterations of the project redesign. 253
Final Mid-Semester Plan for cinematic redesign
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“This is just to say, I have eaten the plums that in the ice box, and which you were probably saving for breakfast�
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Perspective section showing new version of poetry scene in kitchen
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Plan showing new version of poetry scene in kitchen
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Pre-Mid Sem Comments Film Plan: -Notate how and why each iteration is different -More sections as well as plans Analyse own work in the same manner with which I analyse the film
Feedback and Steps Forward
Layer Redesigns over originals? Give a sense of dynamic shifting of spatial properties. -Spatial activiation
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References to look into: DINGGEDICHT or “Object Poem”: The German word descirbing poetry which centres on material objects Poets: Ezra Pound “Everyday: Poems from Mundanity” Mid-Semester Review More emotional designs, for now it is too much just designing an ordinary domestic space. Play with the shifting of feeling throughout the film in the designs. Maybe design different rooms for each scene to exaggerate the emotions specific to that moment. Perhaps design to objects to correspond with this as well. References to look into: “Every Frame a Painting”: Fincher video Post-Review Feedback Annotate drawings more cleary with observational comments, make even the analytical material uniquely your own. - do more zoomed drawings focusing on specific details -focus in particular on the tactility of the movie, how do hands and bodies interact with objects in the film? Map it. separate the drawings like the sleep drawings. Use 3 Primary scales -ARCHITECTURAL -HUMAN -OBJECT Organise your pages around these scales. The current mode of representation is restrictive for design experimentation. Try using looser drawing types - more abstract.
Work with the projection of images in iso/axo -How can you draw the idea of the motion picture 2D frame represent ing a 3-Dimensional space. Abstract the process of drawing while still illustrating ideas. Would be good to have drawings which represent the sense of touch and tactility in relation to the objects in the film. References to look into: Forensic architecture: Projections serg.layout instagram Zaha Hadid - abstract concept drawings Hans Schauron/Hugo Haring Floor Plans Industrial design (particularly Italian) -Michele de Lecchi -Mondini -Memphis Movement
I am interested in moving forward with a more playful approach, tying together the different artistic threads and the emotional resonance of the film with a more experimental approach to the architecutre. I want to utilise the products of other artforms, which i think carry a similar resonance to the film, The National album, Boxer for example. The poems featured in the film, and books on the shelves also hold a similar theme and feeling, with authors and poets cropping up on screen including William Carlos Williams (of Paterson NJ), Frank O’Hara, David Foster Wallace, Kenneth Koch and Sy Montgomery The film has a beat feel, intertwined as it is with rhythm and verse. Hip hop features in its tapestry alongside poetry, and the grimyness of the civic centre nestles in alongside. The incidental soundtrack too, is steeped in jazz and rhythm and blues. I want to find a way to tie all these threads, and create a project with a jazz approach that evokes both the rhythm and the emotional resonance of the film. 261
Final Design Project
SCENES FROM SUNDAY 262
The project is an attempt to frame the emotional resonance of the scenes utilising the ordinary environment - an environment which, through the intervention of living, is able to speak volumes about its occupants. The spaces and the scenes that take place in them are crafted around that principle as well as cinematic principles which function as the vehicle for the communcation of this idea.
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Paterson Bus Driver/Poet
Laura Full Time Hobbyist/Creative Visionary
Marvin Dog/Dog
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The project works with the three primary characters and sets up scenes based in the three spaces which I explored in the analytical section: The Kitchen, The Lounge Room and the Bedroom.
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Visual Centre of House
Second Stage (Comfortable) 1
Natural Centre for movement/action
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Third Stage (Contemplative)
First Stage (Chaotic)
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Scene Movement
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Shaping and Populating the Space
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Subjects
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Domestic spaces envisioned as theatrical stages. A canvas onto which viewers can place their own ideas of domesiticity
Organising Around Moments
Form Directing Gaze
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Guiding the eye. Allowing for the opportunity to focus in on small details - gesture, objects etc
Modulation/Stark But Logical Shifts Related to information distribution but more concerned with facilitating the shifts or transitions between moments. Using transitory moments to introduce interest and allow for change.
Distribution of Form/Information Intense chaotic bursts of action intercut with moments of relief. Creates a sense of but should be tied together by the introduction of these moments of clarity.
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Cinematic Fluidity
Strong Sight Lines
Combining Both Agendas
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Early set of design iterations maintaining a relatively standard
Longer transitional spaces, create a longer build to moments of reveal
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Pace and Distance
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Architectural framing device
Subject of gaze
Threshold
Directing viewer attention to the less noticed the background incidental.
Viewer
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gesture informing logical shift CUT Scale 2
Gesture can be used to inform both opportunity to pull the scale down
Character Gesture (Virtual Framing)
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Stage 1 Scene entrys and exits are subject to repetition through the inclusion of the circulation spaces as an integral part of the cinematic structure.
Stage 3
Dictated Camera Path Ranging from the architectural scale down to the scale of objects, the house is
Form
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Physical divisions imposed by objects Optimising the best arrangement of set dressing. Arrangements have a direct relationship with visual thresholds.
Arrangement
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The initial long lead-in from the entry is an opportunity for the cultivation of cinematic spatial interventions, the distance to the end of the room (the image) can be made compressed or expanded, and the timing can be controlled with shot pacing and character movement. Separation of the bedroom by the hallway creates a sense of traversal in the circulation space, giving some extra weight to the intermediatary architecture which can be used to emphasise mood. Lounge (Stage 1 - Primary) Kitchen (Stage 2) Bedroom (Stage 3) Back Hall (Intermediary Space) Visual Thresholds
‘Slow House’ 1991
Central Point for arrangement
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‘Casa Malaparte’ Adalberto Libera 1937
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Timing examples showing the temporal opportunities provided by spaces. Frame Sight Line From Entry
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Suitcase Burnt Matches Scale Train Engine Paterson’s Watch Portrait of Dog
Keys in Crystal Ashtray
Novel
Bedside Lamp
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Dirty Paintbrushes
William Carlos Williams Poetry Jar of Pennies
Bedside Alarm Clock Laura’s Cupcake
Ernesto Harlequin Guitar
Paterson’s Pen Wall Mirror
Curating Objects to populate the scene, set mood, tone and character trait.
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Slow Pan, shot pivots on origin point
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3 God’s Eye Close Shot
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Mid-shot: Level with characters crouching Low Angle Shot Level with Marvin
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Tracking shot, characters move into frame and camera holds them at at medium scale as they traverse the space.
High Angle close up replicating POV
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The progression of scene has a direct relationship with the guided movement through the space.
A three-dimesional scene breakdown showing how the Lounge Room scene is shot, and explaining the cinematic tactics used in greater depth.
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A plan breakdown to further illustrate the 3-D diagram on the previous page.
Saturday Evening
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Pan
Push In Camera Follows as Characters move into and deeper in frame
Object of view
Objects as Staging Devices Organising the Space
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Masking Elements
Paterson stands, leaves frame, camera holds on Laura
Camera Moves In
Object fully revealed
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Key Image
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Point of Focus
Camera Follows Gaze
Long Lead in - temporality of movement Path to an Image
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Movement and dimensions of space informing cinematic pacing “It’s your notebook”
“It’s what?”
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First Stage: Plan 0
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Physically walling in a
Creating a clear sense of duality with the arrangement of space and contents.
and emotion of the scene
Populating each side with
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Slow Pull
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Biographical Objects
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Paterson leaves frame. Hold on door
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Paterson
Moving out of frame gives the rest of the house a sense of separation
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Camera halts. Paterson leaves frame.
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Steadicam Tracking shot, following behind Paterso
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Width of h to characte of enclosur
Second Stage: Plan 286
is spatially Laura’s side is more open but also its depth contributes to a sense of physical distance
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Staging very reliant on gesture
Exaggerating the divisions between the characters and their spaces
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Instituting Cinematic Layers
Using layers to establish hierachy in the frame and also establishing Paterson as the source of viewer perspective
Foreground - Primary Action
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Section CC
Mid-Ground, separated from primary action by partition wall
Background - setting a spatial parameter and also a sense of distance and depth in the space
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Action centred around a restricted tunnel vision through to other spaces
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Slow track. Centred on Paterson
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Laura’s movement in the scene accentuates Paterson’s stillness
Partition wall represents a division between Paterson and the goings on around him
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Third Stage: Plan
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In summary, the project came from an exploration of how domestic environments and material culture have been explored on screen and in architecture as well as research into relevant art and music. The design itself was inspired by the kinds of interactions the characters in the film have with each other and with the domestic debris of their home as well as the kinds of visual forms that came from the art and music which I researched. The new house utilises this research to re-make the primary domestic spaces of the film, re-crafting them to emphasise the emotional resonance of the film and well as its influences and create new versions of a curated set of scenes from the film.
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Alice Woods Studio D (Studio 35mm/Studio 29) Melbourne School of Design Master of Architecture CDE Semester 1 2020
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