Notes for a Film: Week 1
Jed Smith – Mediaworks 2006
One of the most striking things about Su Friedrich’s work is her stylistic innovation of separating the semantic and visual components of her films in the creation of meaning. This characteristic is common to all of her films which I have seen, though it is accomplished in different ways as her filmic style evolved. The effect on the viewer of this style is constant however, in that it allows audience to engage with the film text more subjectively and personally than would otherwise be possible. The separation of the two components that create meaning for the viewer is a very interesting idea, and is something I would like to experiment with in my own work, possibly in new ways.
In the earliest Su Friedrich film that I saw, Gently Down the Stream, concrete meaning is conveyed entirely through the medium of text scratched onto the film. The visual images being scratched on often have little or no relation to the text. According to my traditional conception, images and text (or sound) must be explicitly related to create apparent meaning. Having this disjunction between visual data and semantic data allows the meaning of the film to be more fluid, and places a postmodern confidence in the viewer to take an active stance in the personal creation of meaning from what is present in the film. This approach allows for more varied subjective interpretations of the film, and a corresponding broader appeal to viewers. (Although in Gently Down the Stream, the surrealistic interpretive nature of the text itself functions also towards this end).
Gently Down the Stream is a silent film, so there is only the singular dimension of semantic meaning conveyed in the scratched text. In her next film that I saw, The Ties that Bind, there is the added element of voice over. This audio element functions primarily in the same fashion as the scratch text in Gently Down the Stream in that the meaning holds only tangential relationship to the visual images presented. Instead of working in tandem, the images and semantic components work individually and separately to convey meaning, and the responsibility of relating and combining the two is left to the viewer. An interesting thing about The Ties that Bind is Friedrich’s use of scratch text. Here it serves the purpose of representing Su Friedrich personally as she interviews her mother and uncovers her relationship with her past. Though the scratched text represents Su personally, it remains impersonal enough so that the audience can more easily identify themselves with her position. The sense of anonymity is one of the major components of Su Friedrich’s films, though this is conjured in different ways in her other work.
In her most recent work that I’ve seen, Sink or Swim, the function of the scratched text as an impersonal method of intimate autobiographical communication in order to engage the audience more thoroughly is replaced by voiceover narration. While different in form than direct animation text, the narration serves a similar purpose. It is conducted by what sounds like a young girl, who at the beginning of the film we associate with the person’s life being described. As the life of the person being described evolves, however, and the narrators voice does not change, we realize that the narrator and the experiences she is describing have the possibility of being understood as generic of any child growing up. Thusly the audience is allowed to identify with the film more personally than would be possible if Friedrich elected to conduct the narration herself.
This style of narration tells the story of a girl’s childhood and relationship with her father that is aided by, but not dependent on, the visual image component of the film. Associations between the narration or text and the images comes and goes, like the varying focus of a lens being randomly adjusted. Sometimes as a viewer I watched wondering what the relationship between what I was seeing and what I was hearing was, and then suddenly it all made sense. One example is in Sink or Swim, when the narration is addressing the traumatic event of the sudden departure of the father. On screen, images of a mental hospital are being shown, and I am wondering what relationship these two things have beyond obvious common issues of emotional pain. Then suddenly and simultaneously, the narrator mentions her mother going to the window to shout at her Dad, and the camera pans from the hospital bed to the window of the room, and the sound and images suddenly fuse together in my brain (Sink or Swim).
This process of searching for connections and discovering them in moments of glee is characteristic of the film as a whole. It is a very liberating idea that the image and sound or text does not have to be linked directly, but can be connected together through ambiguity, symbolism, or metaphor, and I think this idea possesses great creative potential in my future work.
Works Cited:
Gently Down the Stream. Dir. Su Friedrich. 1981. 16mm B&W, silent.
The Ties that Bind. Dir. Su Friedrich. 1984. 16mm B&W, sound.
Sink or Swim. Dir. Su Friedrich. 1990. 16mm B&W, sound.
Su Friedrich: Subjective Diegesis Through Disjunct Images and Text
Notes for a Film: Week 1
Jed Smith – Mediaworks 2006
One of the most striking things about Su Friedrich’s work is her stylistic innovation of separating the semantic and visual components of her films in the creation of meaning. This characteristic is common to all of her films which I have seen, though it is accomplished in different ways as her filmic style evolved. The effect on the viewer of this style is constant however, in that it allows audience to engage with the film text more subjectively and personally than would otherwise be possible. The separation of the two components that create meaning for the viewer is a very interesting idea, and is something I would like to experiment with in my own work, possibly in new ways.
In the earliest Su Friedrich film that I saw, Gently Down the Stream, concrete meaning is conveyed entirely through the medium of text scratched onto the film. The visual images being scratched on often have little or no relation to the text. According to my traditional conception, images and text (or sound) must be explicitly related to create apparent meaning. Having this disjunction between visual data and semantic data allows the meaning of the film to be more fluid, and places a postmodern confidence in the viewer to take an active stance in the personal creation of meaning from what is present in the film. This approach allows for more varied subjective interpretations of the film, and a corresponding broader appeal to viewers. (Although in Gently Down the Stream, the surrealistic interpretive nature of the text itself functions also towards this end).
Gently Down the Stream is a silent film, so there is only the singular dimension of semantic meaning conveyed in the scratched text. In her next film that I saw, The Ties that Bind, there is the added element of voice over. This audio element functions primarily in the same fashion as the scratch text in Gently Down the Stream in that the meaning holds only tangential relationship to the visual images presented. Instead of working in tandem, the images and semantic components work individually and separately to convey meaning, and the responsibility of relating and combining the two is left to the viewer. An interesting thing about The Ties that Bind is Friedrich’s use of scratch text. Here it serves the purpose of representing Su Friedrich personally as she interviews her mother and uncovers her relationship with her past. Though the scratched text represents Su personally, it remains impersonal enough so that the audience can more easily identify themselves with her position. The sense of anonymity is one of the major components of Su Friedrich’s films, though this is conjured in different ways in her other work.
In her most recent work that I’ve seen, Sink or Swim, the function of the scratched text as an impersonal method of intimate autobiographical communication in order to engage the audience more thoroughly is replaced by voiceover narration. While different in form than direct animation text, the narration serves a similar purpose. It is conducted by what sounds like a young girl, who at the beginning of the film we associate with the person’s life being described. As the life of the person being described evolves, however, and the narrators voice does not change, we realize that the narrator and the experiences she is describing have the possibility of being understood as generic of any child growing up. Thusly the audience is allowed to identify with the film more personally than would be possible if Friedrich elected to conduct the narration herself.
This style of narration tells the story of a girl’s childhood and relationship with her father that is aided by, but not dependent on, the visual image component of the film. Associations between the narration or text and the images comes and goes, like the varying focus of a lens being randomly adjusted. Sometimes as a viewer I watched wondering what the relationship between what I was seeing and what I was hearing was, and then suddenly it all made sense. One example is in Sink or Swim, when the narration is addressing the traumatic event of the sudden departure of the father. On screen, images of a mental hospital are being shown, and I am wondering what relationship these two things have beyond obvious common issues of emotional pain. Then suddenly and simultaneously, the narrator mentions her mother going to the window to shout at her Dad, and the camera pans from the hospital bed to the window of the room, and the sound and images suddenly fuse together in my brain (Sink or Swim).
This process of searching for connections and discovering them in moments of glee is characteristic of the film as a whole. It is a very liberating idea that the image and sound or text does not have to be linked directly, but can be connected together through ambiguity, symbolism, or metaphor, and I think this idea possesses great creative potential in my future work.
Works Cited:
Gently Down the Stream. Dir. Su Friedrich. 1981. 16mm B&W, silent.
The Ties that Bind. Dir. Su Friedrich. 1984. 16mm B&W, sound.
Sink or Swim. Dir. Su Friedrich. 1990. 16mm B&W, sound.