Wavelength
By Matej Jancar
Wavelength (1967) is a continuous forty-five minute zoom from its widest field to its smallest and final field which rests on the photograph of ocean on the wall. The camera is motionless and is facing far side of eighty foot New York loft with windows. There are four human events: two workmen with a woman move a book shelf against the wall, two women spend their coffee break there, a man dies on the floor and is discovered by a woman towards the end of the film. Brief dialogue and other sync-sound on these occasions include radio playing Beatles � Strawberry Fields Forever(1967). Simultaneously, an electronic sine wave begins at its lowest 50 cycles/second and gradually ...
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According to Youngblood (1970,p.122), �it is the first post-Warhol, post-Minimal movie, one of few films to engage those higher conceptual orders that occupy modern painting, and sculpture.� It was the forerunner of structuralist school of cinema.
Structural/materialist film, which developed from structural film in UK in 1970�s attempts to be non-ilusionistic. While dominant cinema is built around narrative, where set of actions is constructed to create an illusion of story, avant-garde films work on deconstruction of these elements, mainly on demystification of the medium of film. It is film about film, where form becomes content. Filmic production, process of film making is not hidden and camouflaged within the work, it becomes its crucial element, however, it is not a documentation of film procedure. Documentation involves set of actions � narrative. Narrative is an illusionistic, manipulatory and repressive procedure. It creates an illusion of space and time by editing and ...
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the whole space and ends with extreme close up of the photograph on the wall. It has a beginning and the end. The fact that the camera is motionless, and the only change in framing is done by zooming makes the end predictable. As soon as the viewer discovers that the camera is zooming, guessing the final framing is easy. However, there are many misleading clues to what the narrative might be. Two men and a woman moving the book shelf at the beginning or two women on a coffee break might produce a range of expectations in an ordinary movie-goer. Even one of the most often used narrative constructions - that of a murder or a death, does not interrupt the continuous zoom. Passionate ...
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Wavelength. (2011, April 24). Retrieved November 28, 2024, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Wavelength/98372
"Wavelength." Essayworld.com. Essayworld.com, 24 Apr. 2011. Web. 28 Nov. 2024. <http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Wavelength/98372>
"Wavelength." Essayworld.com. April 24, 2011. Accessed November 28, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Wavelength/98372.
"Wavelength." Essayworld.com. April 24, 2011. Accessed November 28, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Wavelength/98372.
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