Morgan Bailey Photobook Professor Caldwell 2/4/13 Reading Response 3 The movie La Jetee was created by using many single photographs in a row to show the viewer what was going on. Narration was used for the sound. Using photos instead of video took the movie down to its bear essence. Film is just thousands of still photos moving very fast, La Jetee has maybe a photo every second or two. It pulled you into specific moments in time and let you appreciate the narration and message of the movie without having your eyes and brain keep up with fast paced motion. The movie itself even though it used still images still felt like a movie. I think this is because of the age and time the film was shot at. The old school cinema feel of film gives the still images a sense of movement and life already. If this was shot recently I feel it would have more of a presentation feel or that of a power point. Another thing that struck me about the movie was that it took a while to figure out that the photos that were used were taken for the movie and not found photos. I had a completely different sense about the movie until I realized that the photos were taken on purpose. I am conflicted about how I feel about the narration. In one sense it was nice to know what was going on and having the film explained to me. But at the same time I wish I could have just stared at the images without narration and tried to tie it all together in my head. The sequencing of images was what it had to be. It guided
the viewer along the movie. I think I learned more about narration from viewing this movie than I did with the sequencing of the images. The sequencing was still bound together by the laws of film in that it had to make sense with the plot and narration. If the movie was silent then the images would be much more focused on and their sequence would have a much larger affect on the movie.