PART 4
AESTHETICS AND AUTHORSHIP
Part 4 (Chapters 12 through 16) examines the aspects of form that must be brought under control because a film is not just content, but form, too. This often-neglected area embraces how the film will look, how its story will be told, and why. The chapters consider point of view, authorial purpose, genre options, the place of conflict in drama, and the ethics of representation.
A book on narrative I have found inspiring and challenging is Michael Roemer's Telling Stories: Postmodernism and the Invalidation of Traditional Narrative (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 1995). Chapter 1 begins:
Every story is over before it is begun. The novel lies bound in my hands, the actors know all their lines before the curtain rises, and the finished film has been threaded onto the projector when the houselights dim.
Stories appear to move into an open, uncertain future that the figures try to influence, but in fact report a completed past they cannot alter. Their journey into the future—to which we gladly lend ourselves—is an illusion.
Behind these illusory figures in their enchanted hinterland stands the invisible and little-understood role of the cinematic storyteller. Part 4 examines the aesthetic choices that flow from taking on this role and facing fundamental dramatic considerations: the relationships among plot, structure, and time in a film; the significance of space and environment; and their relationship to the characters, whether presented naturalistically or non-naturalistically. Part 4 concludes with an overview of visual and sound design and the varying relationships with the audience a film strikes when it uses either a short- or long-take style of filming.
Be sure to make use of the checklist at the end of Part 4 during the preproduction and production cycles of your films. In a brief, prescriptive form it summarizes much useful advice for any developing work you have in hand. Appendix 2 includes a Form and Aesthetics Questionnaire. It will help you set out the basic properties of any film you have in mind.
Types of Narrative and Narrative Tension
Main Character's Implied Point of View
Main Character(s') or Controlling Point of View
Subsidiary Characters' Points of View
Authorial or Storyteller's Point of View
CHAPTER 13
Genre, Conflict, and Dialectics
Making the Visible Significant
How Outlook Affects Vision: Determinism or Free Will?
Drama, Propaganda, and Dialectics
Building a World Around the Concerned Observer
CHAPTER 14
Structure, Plot, and Time
Nonlinear Time and the Conditional Tense
CHAPTER 15
Space, Stylized Environments, and Performances
The Stylized Performance: Flat and Round Characters
Brechtian Distancing and Audience Identification