Week 8: Reading Essay
The week 8 reading is entitled “Focalisation in Film Narrative”, written by Celestino Deleyto of the University of Zaragoza. To be upfront this read was a bit difficult for me at the beginning considering that a lot of it is in Spanish, but overall, the reading is about how to focus your films narrative through focalisation, so it is not so confusing to your viewer. The first concept talked about throughout the reading is the concept of Focalisation. This term was first used by Gerard Genette and he described it as “the selection of narrative information must not be confused with the activity of narration”. This has been interpreted many different ways since by people like Mieke Bal concept of focalisation is that there is a relationship between the vision the storyteller has and what is seen. The book tells us examples of this concept but only through the lens of a novel. In terms of Film Narrative, I think that focalisation is only one aspect of making a cohesive and comprehensive film narrative.
The next big topic discussed in the reading is Narratology. This is the study of narrative texts in general and not only novels. But with Bal’s definition we would need text, or a narrator to make a film a narrative. So, does film need a narrator or text to be a narrative? The text seems to answer this and then take the statement back many times. It first uses Branigan answer that in film a narrator is a symbolic activity. It then discusses Branigans concept of camera, and that the camera is the narrator. I found both ideas to be interesting, specifically the idea of the camera being the narrator. The audience watching the film unfold is in a sense like the narrator telling a story, at least I feel like it is. These ideas relate to the term mise-en-scene, which is the staging of events in front of a camera. After looking at all these different forms of narrating in film, the reading says that film uses a mixture of narration and representation but some still do not believe in this theory. Jost says that this theory is unnecessary since both terms mean a lot of the same thing. Personally, I do not think the theory is unnecessary but other theories may be acceptable. Overall, the reading concludes that film is mixture of narration and representation, meaning that in film focalisation (as previously mentioned) and narration exist simultaneously in the film making Bal’s definition of focalisation only good for novels.
The next big topic discussed in this reading is subjectivity. Although, the reading does not give subjectivity an exact definition, I believe it is talking about how different shots in film are subjective to the viewer or the way the camera is place suggest something to the viewer. In the reading it talks about different taxonomies of subjective images given by Mitry, Kawin, and Branigan. But they all have problems with them. Their theories are all have a narrow point of view. After reading about each i think if they broadened their horizons, and maybe borrowed a little from each other, their theories might work out. Subjective shots in film can be set up through camera movements that can express focalisation in film.
The reading then goes to talk about focalisation in film a little more and how it can be both internal and external. From what I could gather, internal focalisers help express a characters mind while external focaliser are the actions and movement of the camera. It also talks about focalised which I believe is the character focaliser or who is telling the story. The relationship between the internal and external focaliser and the focalised is established through editing, framing, and mis-en-scene.
Along with the reading, there was also a video to watch entitled “66 scenes from America”. My initial reaction was that this video was one of the most mind-numbing videos I have ever watched. It consisted of many shots to resemble postcards that you might see across America, as well as short little interviews of American people. I tried watching it multiple times in small increments and honestly, I still do not know what I was supposed to take away from this video. I think what I was supposed to take away from this is how to set up shots to take videos and make your image more visually interesting. However, the biggest take away I have from this video is watching a bartender make three different kinds of drinks and watching Andy Warhol eat a Burger King hamburger for two minutes and he did not even finish it. I know that this is not what it was for and it was trying to demonstrate something but i obviously did not see it.
