Fields and Frames Research

Stan Brakhage

Brakhage was a key influence in my ideas development. His piece 'Eye Myth' was a favourite of mine. I used Brakhage as a reference because of the nature of his work. It was really similar to the sort of thing I had in mind for my own work, and he really inspired me with the way he worked into the film so much, really testing the limits of how far he could go.
What I liked about his piece Eye Myth was the way that it was different to his other work. In this piece you could make out the outlines of people and characters moving around the frame which I loved. He had worked into it so much you could barely see what was going on but then every now and then you'd see someone moving in the frame and then they'd be gone again. I really liked that part of his work.



I really love his use of colour in the film, it really brings another tone into play. It brings the film to life and adds depth, making it more engaging to observe and get involved with.
Brakhage was really experimental with his work and I really liked that there weren't a lot of other filmmakers like him out there at the time, other experimental film workers mostly just made scratch films etc. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what he used on his film to get the effects that he did as I knew that I wanted to try to do something similar with my own piece.
The intensity of the piece is something else I admired, its so erratic and chaotic which is another aspect that drew me to his work.



This is another example of his work that I enjoyed, although not as much. I mostly really liked the techniques he used to work into the film and take away different layers show the figures as silhouettes. I also thought that the way he edited it was clever, with the jumpy cuts and transitions and I thought that may be useful in my piece. I don't like the grainy quality of the film, it gives me a bit of a headache and I find it unpleasant to keep watching. I do appreciate the variety of the different film clips and how experimental he has made the piece but I'm not sure it's something I will draw on too heavily.


Feeling My Way from Jonathan Hodgson on Vimeo.

This was the first piece I found that inspired my work, it was shown to me by an animation student friend. I loved the way he drew over the his outline in the shadow and thought that it had a really interesting effect. The way this man looks at the world makes it much more interesting and imaginative which is something that would link to ADD and ADHD and the way that people who have either one, look at the world and get distracted by thoughts processes like this. The handheld quality adds to the perspective quality of the film. The sound design is also quite interesting, adding in the sounds of the objects the character walks past with the added continuous sound of hie footsteps.