astillnessthatmoves-blog

[astillnessthatmoves-blog]

End Credits (for the beginning of a new chapter)

10 things I learned about myself, my goals, and my priorities going forward from my past 3 years of grad school in Los Angeles: 1. Work is not the most important thing. 2. Strive for a work/life balance that prioritizes relationships.  3. Autonomy is more valuable than fame. 4. Balance privacy + sharing: approach to sharing should be rooted in caring. 5. Practice a kinder, slower, more thankful perspective toward life.  6. Let yourself experience things with more of the feeling + spiritual parts of your being. 7. Do more of what inspires you (i.e. spend time in nature, photograph, write). 8. Practice digital minimalism. 9. Find ways to create less waste. 10. Just because you’re not animating doesn’t mean you’re not an animator. Animation will always be there as a tool for communication when you need it.

[astillnessthatmoves-blog]

Beginning Sounds

In 3 days, I begin my 3rd and final year of graduate school where I will be creating my thesis film. The phrase that I’ve carried with me to define the kind of film I’d like to make is “a stillness that moves” (borrowed from Rothko Chapel, “a stillness that moves; a quiet disruption”). What I want to do is create something that gives people a break from the stress of life, something (perhaps a moment of calm) that gives them permission to slow down and reflect upon their experiences and emotions. I’ve been somewhat stuck on how to give this idea a structure and skin; it’s so broad that the infinite possibilities it brings have been noisy in my head. I need to simplify. So, I have found a few smaller “sounds” that really resonate with me and relate to one another that I would like to echo through my film. Here they are.

1. My starting point: Photography’s indecisive moment

essentially the opposite of Cartier-Bresson’s decisive moment

compositional perfection is not central to meaning-making + perfection may feel inauthentic

images that ask questions

allows space for not knowing; introspection

it’s not about which moments matter, but what gives moments meaning

the indecisive moment is dependent upon reflection and introspection for the creation of meaning found in the punctum (coined Barthes’, the punctum is the invisible force that ignites a momentary spark within an individual when they make sense of something symbolically that resonates with their experience, allowing the for the making of meaning)

in the turbulence of time, photographs create calm (stillness)

photographers + filmmakers as the curators of moments

a push beyond realism where the artist’s hand is evident

Reflection: Indecisive moments are in the spirit of giving the audience content that will inspire reflection. The challenge will be to make sure these moments don’t feel cold or inauthentic, but offer points of connection or familiarity where we feel the bittersweetness of humanity.

Reference: My research essay, “The Indecisive Moment”

2. Death Cab for Cutie’s album, “Thank You for Today”, which explores themes of:

impermanence + transience

reckoning with the passage of time

connecting memories + meaning with geography 

leaving old selves behind / can’t be expected to stay the same forever

things existing in a state of constant flux + change

the hope that at least some change can be for the better

Ben Gibbard wanted to write songs that were “introspective and that feel separate from the political world...I want to give people a break.” In addition, the band says of their album, “In making a record that reflects upon + asks questions of the past, we’ve really made a record that turns its gaze to the present moment...What have you learned? What would you have done differently? Where will you go from here?...Its also a record about the future. Looking forwards + backwards simultaneously from summer to autumn.”

Reflection: I want to make a piece that gives people a break from the stress of life. Something that encourages them to slow down and reflect upon their experiences + emotions. To look backwards + forwards in order to get the most out of the present. References:  “Death Cab For Cutie’s Ben Gibbard: On new album 'Thank You For Today'” https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/death-cab-for-cutie-interview-ben-gibbard-thank-you-for-today-album-release-date-a8480881.html Listen to ‘Thank You For Today’ here: https://www.npr.org/2018/08/13/636053290/first-listen-death-cab-for-cutie-thank-you-for-today

3. National Geographic’s story on Katie Stubblefield (and the significance of the human face). Katie’s story (told with great care by Nat Geo) stood out to me for quite a few reasons:

the significance of the human face as a point of connection, identity, and state of being (This got me thinking about James Elkins’, What is a Face?)

the attitude of hope + positivity Katie and her family have had moving forward through their pain

how a split-second decision can alter the course of lives in unimaginable ways

when the transplanted face was suspended in space between bodies (between lives)

the contrast between Katie’s and Adrea’s (the donor) lives

Katie’s identity(ies) with her different faces

Katie’s parents’ searching for their daughter in Katie’s new face

the reminder her story gives me to be thankful and make the most of my life

In his book, The Object Stares Back, James Elkins wrote a thoughtful chapter (What is a Face?) that I couldn’t help but be reminded of reading Katie’s story. His following ideas really resonated with me:

a face is in between a person + an absence / neither still nor absent

a face is power + subtle 

a face transfixes + terrifies

a face is a place where looking + feeling are closely allied

a face that communicates a mind and also an illness (or tragedy)

hang together vs fragment

a face is something that is incomplete: a work in progress that stands in continuous need of being seen or touched or written upon / faces are not finished images

a face is a place where the coherent mind becomes an image

“When she is away, all I have is this odd, shifting thing that we have to call a memory but that is really the memory of the feeling of seeing, together with momentary rememberances of color or warmth...How fragmentary the memory of a face is - at one moment, a mouth is redness, and at another it is a sweetness or a rounded shape.”

“When we are separated from someone we love, what is it that remains with us? And when someone we love dies, what is it that we keep with us, that fades a little each year but never entirely disappears? Or does it really fade? Perhaps it changes, coming together into something simpler and farther away, like a smaller face or an outline of a face, until finally when we are old and the person has been dead many years, it becomes nothing more than a little sketch.”

“If I read a close description of a face and attend to it very carefully and try to reconstruct it in my mind, I end up with something monstrous.”

“It’s a beautiful kind of knowledge, since it brings us closer to each other, and as the years go by, her face says more and more to me. When I first met her, it was almost a mask, and I saw only its main lines. Now it almost never stops speaking to me, even when she is asleep.”

Reflection: Much like Ben Gibbard in “Thank You for Today”, Katie’s family struggles with longing for something that no longer exists; something that they loved that has drastically changed and they can never fully return to. Something that they can only experience again in fragments of memories and photographs forever recolored by trauma. Katie is still Katie, but she is a different Katie - her speech is garbled and her face completely new, almost like a mask. The family will get to know Katie’s new face over time and it will speak to them intimately. In a way, the disappearance of Katie’s old face and her transition into a new one has done as much to grow an intimate connection between the family as it has to erase their old relationship. I suppose that is where they find their hope; they project it onto Katie’s new face. References: “How a Transplanted Face Transformed Katie Stubblefield’s Life” -Nat Geo   https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/09/face-transplant-katie-stubblefield-story-identity-surgery-science/ The Object Stares Back (Chapter 5, What is a Face?) -James Elkins