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Freya Black

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  1. Freya Black
    Thanks to everyone who has argued in this thread and discussed this for me. I'm short on 'leccy right now so can't post much about the idea myself but everyone here has been doing a great job at covering all kinds of ground. So that's really useful. Not sure how I feel about the attempts to marry me off in order to get into Hollywood tho but there we are! ;) Made me smile which is always a good thing. Freya
  2. Freya Black
    Okay, I can see where you are coming from in the sense that images are the medium through which illusions are expressed rather than the illusions themselves or something. I don't have issue with this and I also believe it's possible to have images that are seemingly devoid of ideas, narrative and ideology. It's in the context of narrative film etc that I feel that you can't really avoid expressing ideology. I would also argue that you might not want to avoid expressing ideology. Derek Jarman does a good enough job with it and I personally felt he was on the right path. I actually feel that the ideas that Peter Gidal expoused are kinda sticking your head in the sand. Especially in the context of the so called "Avant Garde" experimental film scene which now has a long tradition of being backward and exclusionary. At the same time I understand and respect where he was coming from. Freya
  3. Freya Black
    I didn't say his work was automatically in the grip of ideology by virtue of being a narrative. I'm not sure I understood the rest of what you wrote probably because it is in the context of something I didn't say? I suggested that the whole point of Derek Jarmans films was to put across a certain ideology which they do a good job of. I really like Derek Jarmans movies and don't have issue with what they express. As I said before, others may feel differently. Freya
  4. Freya Black
    Wavelength is maybe a good example but I'm not sure I would call it a narrative film. I don't agree that the movements constitute a narrative really although I can see where you are coming from. Nor for that matter the work of Phil Solomon. Peter Gidal has some similar films himself like this I think. One with a window springs to mind. I have only seen a few of his films however so can't comment too much in that direction. Freya
  5. Freya Black
    I would have said 10-12 but I guess it depends how you define a narrative feature! He has done some diverse work. Freya
  6. Freya Black
    Carl, my questions weren't rhetorical like yours. I really was asking if you can name a single non-abstract narrative film that is free from ideology. The example of Magritte and his pipe not being a representation of a pipe doesn't work as he is clearly keying into the idea of a pipe and writing text in contrast to that. Thus he is using a representation of a pipe. I'm not arguing with the idea that the images are illusions. In fact that is the problem with it. These illusions also carry the ideology. People like Peter Gidal were trying to get away from that. I can't really see how you can in the context of non abstact narrative cinema and that you have to accept that as a given. So far you havn't explained how you can have non abstract narrative cinema without ideology, just that it is a false idea. Thought without ideas. Well yes that might be possible. I have a feeling you will have a very hard time pulling it off. Perhaps through the use of meditation. I don't see how you can then translate these non-idea thoughts into a narrative film without bringing ideas into the process. Tell me how it can be done? The more we discuss this the more you seem to be taking Peter Gidal's position on it all! Freya
  7. Freya Black
    I love Derek Jarmans work too but I think it's rather crazy to suggest it isn't in the grip of ideology because that is the whole point of it. I've also met queer people who are not keen on Derek Jarman's stuff because it does reproduce socio-political norms. (Personally I think that's a bit unfair, I think it's fine for what it is).
  8. Freya Black
    Engineering is definitely a lot better as it is applied science rather than in the abstract. Having said that here in the UK we don't have loads of industry so I'm not sure how helpful even that would be this side of the pond. Wouldn't like to say tho as it's not something I have direct experience of. I met someone on an unemployment course once who had a doctorate in fluid mechanics!
  9. Freya Black
    I worked on lots of things. A software development tool for writing workflow software but also EPOS, encrypted mail communications,and a few web front ends to stuff. I also spent a few years doing telephone support to software developers too. This was some time ago so Object Pascal/Delphi mostly but also CSS/Javascript/HTML/DHTML/XSLT tiny bits of x86 assembly sometimes. These days the nearest I get to anything like that is AE expressions and maybe re-writing some stuff in Python so that it does what I want it to! I'm hoping it all might come in useful again someday but who knows.
  10. Freya Black
    Well Phil, I was talking about software development really not just stuff that involves software a bit.
  11. Freya Black
    Probably a clever feature. Like defusing a bomb in the movies. Now do I cut the green wire or the green wire or maybe the green wire.
  12. Freya Black
    I don't think whether you are good at it or not has much to do with the matter. Certainly didn't help me. I didn't know you had ever worked in software development Phil? What caused you to leave? Freya
  13. Freya Black
    er yeah... I meant work wise. Physicists do incredible things for sure. Science generally has done many great things for the world. It's just that there aren't a lot of vacancies requiring a degree in physics.
  14. Freya Black
    These days I'm not sure how useful computer programming would be. In the early 80's I'm sure it was fantastic but I would have still been in school then. By the 90's the internet was starting to shake things up and work started to be outsourced to other places and these days in the UK there is not that much demand for software developers anymore. What work there is doesn't seem to be especially well paid. Maybe it is different in the states. Obviously female software developers are especially unwelcome these days which doesn't help my personal situation! In fact lately I've even run into women who were driven out of post production jobs and can't talk about the experience without bursting into tears. Anything involving a computer is bad news as guys consider it their territory these days. A big change from the days when there were a lot of female computer programmers because it was that thing in the corner with the keyboard! ;) Anyway the thing is that for anyone making choices it's really hard to know what the world is going to be like by the time you leave university because things keep changing. I imagine business and marketing stuff might hold up well but honestly who knows. A lot of advice that young people get is from people whose experience is very out of date, even worse from people in academia who don't really know much about the real world. School leavers getting advice on the world of work from people who never left school! ;)
  15. Freya Black
    That's very vague! What kind of science? My brother has a degree in Physics. Absolutely fr***** useless. I mean what are you supposed to do with Physics? Work in the military? The nuclear power industry maybe? He got a lot of bad advice growing up from people who told him that science would bring him a good future! lol! Freya
  16. Freya Black
    Lots of questions there Carl! Setting aside Peters view on things and the whole structuralist outlook on these things for that matter, lets look at narrative film itself and ideology. Can you name any narrative films, any at all that don't have a particular outlook or ideology behind them? It seems to me that it would be impossible to produce such a work. I think Kenneth Anger put it best when he suggested that film was inherently evil. I actually much prefer movies because there is something of an honesty about them in the sense that they are up front that they are going to lie to you for a couple of hours or something. This is nicer than documentaries and so called "reality" programmes that have the pretence that they are showing you the way things really are or something. Narrative film is obviously representational I would say. This is kind of the point of it. The only obvious way to escape from this representational aspect would be to make films that are abstract. Once you have representational film then the temptation is there to tell stories with it. Once you have established a narrative then it will carry the ideology of those people making it. I don't see a way to escape this, and in the past people have gone to great lengths to try and minimise this aspect without too much success. It's fundamental to the way it is. It's far better to be more honest and to say up front that you are going to lie to people in the way that narrative cinema and television does. Carl I find your questions hard to answer because you put the agency behind all this in some strange outside force. Something that is taking control of narrative film. A strange force that has stolen narrative film from the people but it is those involved in the creation of the work and the narrative that put all those ideas into it. Those ideas come from their minds and the ideas in their minds probably in turn come from the world outside and the society they grew up in. Your questions are really strange and the nearest I can make sense of them would be something like "how do you free your mind from ideology?" You stop thinking maybe? I think the basic answer is "you don't" which is at the heart of the problem. Freya
  17. Freya Black
    It really looks like a good movie! One of the first that has had me excited in a long time. However I really don't like the look of it. Maybe it works when you see it all in context but I suspect I just don't like this kind of look and other people are okay with it. I've never been able to get my head around that but I've had discussions about it with people and can only conclude that it is a problem with my personal taste as plenty of other people have no issue with this kind of look. On the upside I saw High Rise and liked the way it looked and really enjoyed the movie too in spite of the fact it turned out to be a lot like I was worried it might be, only about 1000 times more full on. Actually the full on from start to finish part of it helped the movie I felt. So that was also good news on the cinema front. :) Anyway...
  18. Freya Black
    You keep saying it's all about you Landon. Even back when a lot of people were talking about Canadian immigration and how wonderful South Africa is. It's mostly you and Tyler having an extended discussion. You talked about a bunch of stuff such as making your movie outside of LA and people (well mostly Tyler) engaged with you on that. It's not exactly magic. There is no mystery to this and no unknown reason. You continue to post about this stuff and people continue to reply, It's straightforward and it's quite usual for threads to drift off all over the place, like how hard it is to get into Canada and if you would actually want to and if it is too cold and expensive and full of bears or whatever. It's no big deal.
  19. Freya Black
    Best advice so far, and you learn a lot by doing things. You can learn a lot from books and forums but actually doing things is the best way of learning of all. Just do it. Freya
  20. Freya Black
    This really isn't true. I don't have time enough to get into this right now as I'm on 3G and have a bunch of end of year tax stuff to attend to but.... There are fundamental arguments against narrative cinema itself that were especially popular during the 70's. The London Co-Op filmmaker Peter Gidal wrote quite a bit about this if you can get hold of his books. I think "Materialism" is one of his books that talks about this. There are issues with narrative cinema and anything with a narrative basis for that matter. I also wouldn't describe the opposition to narrative as a fad. It very much wasn't and still isn't and is something that has run through the history of experimental film to some extent. I have an issue with the hostility that is given to narrative work in the context of experimental film however as there has always been some work such as Maya Deren or even Kenneth Anger that was quite far into the narrative camp and it saddens me that narrative is used as such a dirty word in that context and approached with such hostility. Freya
  21. Freya Black
    Two different traditions that were historically very different. Experimental film was traditionally shot on film and there is a lot of work that deals with the film material itself such as Stan Brackhage or those films were they leave film in the sea wrapped in sea weed or something. Video art was historically based around the smaller screen, so crt monitors or in more modern times lcd panels, but now video projection is also common. Video art tended to be centered around the idea of the video installation. Typically this might be something like a 2 hour shot of someones foot or something played on a screen. I never liked this stuff much and at one point I started work on a series of video installation cliches. where I tried to make something more interesting within the limitations of whatever the cliche was. There were of course really great Video artists like Nam June Paik and the Vaskulas but it was rare that you would see something even close to anything that good when walking into a gallery. it's true, the changes in technology seem to be really revitalising video art in all kinds of ways.
  22. Freya Black
    I really want to see this movie do well. That house in the trailer reminds me of the one in Ti Wests "House of the devil".
  23. Freya Black
    It's completely normal for one festival to really like something and another not to be interested. For starters different people like different things. People talk a bit about movies as if there is some standard we can agree as to what is good and what is bad but different people have different tastes and this comes into play even more with festivals where there are limited slots. Sometimes it can even come down to the length of the short because it might slot in easily somewhere where something else doesn't. Freya
  24. Freya Black
    This is true. Talent is useful. Making a good movie can really help. It's not that major factor tho. The more important factor is your ability to sell it and get it out there. Of course this is a major kind of talent too but not the kind that people tend to be focused on. This is true in many things. So many amazing DP's for example, struggling to get by, and so many doing poor work and raking it in.
  25. Freya Black
    Tyler, I think you might be in fantasy land with that $50k figure, especially with a very small DVD distributor. Maybe 10 years ago...? I started to say before but thought better of it... but go on. I know someone who made a low budget horror movie a few years ago and sold it to a very large studio who buys a lot of low budget horror movies. I'm sure you know the one I am talking about. Oh go on then it rhymes with "Village Fete" or maybe "Ryans Date" I dunno. I'm sure you know which one I mean. Anyway he sold his movie to them and they paid $20K. Now think about that. It probably cost 2 years to make. So that's about $10K per year. Probably something like £6000 over here, which is less than minimum wage. ...and don't forget you have all the cost of deliverables on top of that and a ton of paperwork. This is why the low budget stuff is coming apart and people are looking to make web series or find something else they might be able to make work. Of course a lot of people sell their movies to DVD distribs for almost nothing, or sometimes actually nothing, because they think it will be their calling card or some nonsense but having something out on DVD doesn't count for very much at all these days. On the other hand, it's good if you have made something and have something to show whether it gets distribution or not.
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