Reflections on the Utilisation of the Generative Structure of A Day in your Life

The story of the film is very simple: the character wakes up, goes to work and returns. However, throughout the day, the character revisits memories, opening a different level of the storyline. We learn that the character had a close relationship with her grandmother whose death has left her alone and vulnerable. The character is trapped repeating her daily routine. The film leaves the audience with a bitter aftertaste, it does not offer a different path for the character, she stays locked into her daily routine, to be repeated until her death. The moments of her day that are described are seemingly insignificant, minor, details of her life. For example, she realises she is late and so she runs, her legs are stiff and so she moves. At the beginning it is difficult for the viewer to relate to the faceless woman, there is no dialogue, she interacts with no one, and personal details are few. But as the day continues, an emotional life emerges. This is because the character’s story is interspersed with interview footage that communicates verbal reflections on various emotions; insights into the inner lives of participants which are transposed onto the character by way of the sequencing of the segments. Further the character also communicates

memories of her own; the fact of which itself implies a communication of content that is worth remembering. The last memory is as follows: “I remember the sand, the smell of salt and I felt incredibly calm and secure. I remember that I wished I could stay there forever and never had to go back.” These lines, full of feelings and personal thoughts, reveal the real character behind the façade of her daily routine: the happy and calm character is in their desired environment of the past, dreading to go back to the daily routine, where the character is lonely and isolated.

However, while the story is simple, combining the three elements of a fictional narrative set in the past, a fictional narrative set in the present, and non-fictional interviews, it did not come without problems. The first problem was to create a structure that would incorporate all three elements without one part becoming overpowering. The use of the linguistic constraints helped me to assign roughly the same amount of footage to the past and the present of the character, however the interviewees were exempt from such constraints and so were not restricted in terms of duration. Further, the participants did not prepare for the interviews as the intention was to capture spontaneous answers, which in turn meant that their contributions could be extended by rambling, backtracking, and other verbal discontinuities. This meant that, in post-production, I selected an appropriate amount of the interview footage, cutting some of the participants answers to create a balance between interview and fictional footage. I did not use a constraint to determine which parts of the interviews to use. When watching an interview with one person, the audience expects the focus to be on this person’s face, but not only is this denied by way of the constrained camera lens, but also the simultaneous presentation of several parts of different faces. As I did not comply to the expectations of the audience, I had to ensure that I selected sections of the interviews that were long enough for the audience to adjust to the images and voices.

Another problem that I faced related to how I would differentiate the footage of memories from the footage of the past, on a visual level rather than simply resting on the voice-over narration. This problem was solved by applying a variable constraint on the colour grading of the two types of fictional segment. All shots showing the fictional character’s feet, which are designated as the segments set in the present, are in black and white. The footage depicting memories remains in colour and is graded towards yellow. I used this effect to evoke the look of an old colour photograph that has aged over the years; such a photograph both depicts a memory and is an object of the past itself. A feeling of time discrepancy is thus created, with the viewer of the segment being given the impression that they are looking into the past of the character.

Such colour grading also speaks to the integration of the fictional segments with the interview footage. Through bringing the two sides of the project together meant a unification of very different material: the black and white shaky fast paced shots of feet stand opposed to the warmly lit static and stable images of the seated participants, the contrast works to create an integration of the footage into an overall tone for the film. This tone is one of instability which, as mentioned earlier, is also emphasised by the interchangeability and anonymity of the obscured figures that feature across all segments of the work. This instability that is invoked by the experimental nature of the film also speaks to the instability of the character in the story that is being told. As such, this film demonstrates how conflicting elements can work together to provide a unified meaning.

Tales and Tellers

Tales and Tellers is the third film of my project to enact and exemplify my conception of CFM

practice. It consists of several short films, with a duration of one or two minutes each, that are shown together as a larger film that takes the stated title. Each section consists of a story written and read by a different person. Asked to respond to the topic of fairy tales, the tales told by the narrators range from fantasy stories to autobiographical anecdotes. My task was to create visuals that would correspond to these pre-recorded voice-overs and impact upon how the viewer receives the stories being told. As such, while Project Cube showed that a screenwriter can write an intriguing storyline for any visual material that they are given, this idea is reversed for my third film project. Here it is demonstrated that a constraint filmmaker can produce great visual material for any storyline they are given.

A diagram displaying the constraints used in Tales and Tellers, in accordance with the phases of the CFM process, can be found in the Appendix, as Figure 5. The same non-variable constraints are used for all five stories, however different variable constraints are used for each story. I created a diagram that takes one of the stories as an example and outlines the constraints, both non-variable and variable, that were used. This diagram can also be found in the Appendix, as Figure 5.1.