FREQUENCY/ ALIENATION

Jack approaches Wendy as she back climbs the main staircase, while Wendy tries to protect herself with a baseball bat. “I’m not going to hurt you” teases Jack, as she starts to cry in horror.
We experience this scene, as seen by Jack, Wendy, behind Wendy, and behind Jack. Through this repetition of action from different angles and different perspectives, we find refreshing emphasis.

Most films do not encourage a direct awareness of the passage of time. It alienates the viewer from involvement, an emotional depth of field of narrative. This technique of alienation makes the films self-reflexive, distancing the narrative from its performance.

“When nothing moves, time does”, (Mani Kaul)

An immobile object, filmed by an immobile camera. Awareness of time passing becomes crystal clear. Time can be almost forcedly noticed by killing the visual. In such cases, the viewers become restless and lose the emotional engagement. Prolonged takes, where movement is very constant or very slow are some of the examples. Shorter durations, appear to maintain the excitement, but grows into a series of distractions at climax rather than grow into a mature attention.

There is a very long shot of a drive through a Japanese city in the film ‘Solaris’. It is a very long continuous shot, where the actual movements become less significant and the movement beyond, perhaps mind or time, arises in the mind. This awareness of time alienates the viewers. The drive becomes a mirror to the unconsciousness.

The ‘Shining’ and ‘Zoo’ uses shorter duration of each shot as the plot builds on tension. The actual duration of time that is handled in each shot also decreases. The experienced time is almost unnoticed, visuals now fully focused. The suspense grows.

In ‘Paris Je Taime’, the concluding scene represents the city of Paris, looked through the different segments of Parisian life, different interpretation and experiences that are conceived as one. It is like a still-object and moving camera condition.