The Moving Man

This week we have been studying formalism and realism. We started off by coming up with definitions:

FORMALISM

Analyzing the structure, form and artistic  techniques, rather then the contents. The idea is to create a very random, completely illogical piece of 'art' that is driven by the structure of the art, rather then the content, and encourages the audience to deconstruct the meaning.

REALISM

The representation in art or literature of objects, actions or social conditions as they actually are, without idealization or presentation in abstract form.

We were then told to create a short (30 second) film so we could experience the genre  further. we were given a choice out of the two to make our film in the style of. We chose formalist, and called our production 'The Moving Man.'

To highlight the difference between formalist and realist more blatantly, we decided that we would make the plot very realist - a man walking a dog - but every other aspect completely formalist.

We were then delegated different roles within the film, such as lighting, camerawork, editing etc.. I chose to take mise-en-scene along with Rebecca and Olivia. Our job was to decide what the man looked like. Our first thought was to have him as a mannequin so it would be very surreal, but we couldn't get hold of one. We then decided just to bring in a range of masks and other items (Such as cloaks) and see what worked best. We ended up with myself in a monster mask from rebecca, a sparkly cloak from me and monster feet from rebecca.

For the dog we used a range of props. firstly, a large chess piece, a small hand made doll and a flipper. the effect was fairly amusing and created the sort of random atmosphere we were going for.

i was very pleased with the rough cuts, although it did drift away from the main idea, because I didn't do very much moving!