Experimental Film

Some filmmakers set out to create films that challenge orthodox notions of what a movie can show and how it can show it. These films are traditionally outside of the studio system, these filmmakers work independently. The films are hard to classify, but usually they are called experimental or avant-garde. An experimental film is often defined by what the filmmaker hoped to achieve with the film, perhaps to explore the possibilities of the medium, express an alternative viewpoint, and/or convey a mood or physical quality, the filmmaker doesn't want to tell a story, but would rather create collages, reveries, or other artistic film styles. Alternatively, the filmmaker may create a fictional story, but it usually challenges the viewer in some way. Does it all need a meaning? Some filmmakers simply are exploring the visual possibilities of the filmmaking process.

Experimental film typically challenges traditional ideas of what a film can show and how it can show it. Made for many reasons, they are usually made independently of any studio system. Some are narrative, but many are not. Also called avant-garde, experimental film is recognized by its efforts at self-expression or experimentation outside mainstream cinema. Avant-garde films fall into two forms: abstract and associational. Abstract films convey their messages through the formal, visual elements of the images themselves. Associational films
create meaning through the juxtaposition of otherwise unrelated images. One filmmaker applied pickling agents to negative film and then handprinted the blotchy abstractions onto positive stock. Another scratched the negative film before developing it. Color can also be added to the film stock or to footage. Before 1930, filmmakers often used tinting and toning to add color to film. Tinting is done by dipping the already developed film in a bath of dye. The effect is coloration in the light portions of the film, but no real change to the darker areas. Toning is done by adding dye earlier, during the developing of the positive print, resulting in coloration of darker areas, while lighter portions of the frame remain white. Now you can manipulate the look of your film digitally by adding filters in an editing program. Any sort of footage may be used for an avant-garde film: Found-footage a method of compiling films partly or entirely of footage which has not been created by the filmmaker, and changing its meaning by placing it in a new context. The term refers to the "found object" (objet trouv) of art history. Types of Form in Experimental Films Abstract Form organizes the film around colors, shapes, sizes, and movements in the images paying less attention, if any, to a story or argument. It is a type of filmic organization in which the parts relate to one another through repetition and variation of such visual qualities. Abstract films are often organized in a style, derived from the musical term theme and variations.

Associational Form is a type of organization in which the films parts are juxtaposed to suggest similarities, contrasts, concepts, emotions, and expressive qualities. Alternatives to Continuity Editing Sometimes, instead of joining shots on a basis of the spatial or temporal relations to present a story, some filmmakers choose to join shots based purely on their graphic or rhythmic qualitiesindependent of the story time and space they represent. Editing can work to link two different spaces through the use of crosscutting to create spatial continuity, but filmmakers can also use editing to create spatial and temporal discontinuities, including: nondiegetic inserts - A shot or series of shots cut into a sequence, showing objects that are represented as being outside the space of the narrative jump cuts - An elliptical cut that appears to be an interruption of a single shot. Either the figures seem to change instantly against a constant background, or the background changes instantly while the figures remain constant. And changes in color tone, matches on action and eye-line matches that defy spatial relations. Filmmakers have found creative ways to rework the most basic tenet of the continuity system. Some films use the same editing techniques we talked about last semester, but in very different ways. In Daisies we see the use of match-on-action (suggests that time continues across the cut) and eye-line match (shows a character looking at something off-screen, then shows a shot of what the character was looking at) but for very different effects. The smooth match-on-action implies that the action is continuous, yet the change of setting contradicts this impression. And an eye-line match is supposed to suggest that the character and the object being looked at exist in the same space, but here there is no attempt to suggest that.