As I was preparing for my classes today, I decided to go online and search for some video material to open our discussions. Spurred by an article I saw on Rappler.com about the 180 Microcinema, I thought about searching for more of those movies, as well as a couple my sister shot for a competition in 2007 titled the Nokia Cinemaiksi.
I found the films all right, and while waiting for them to load so that I could review them, my mind wandered around the Web, remembering I wanted to learn how to make photo collages in a snap. I found a good resource and as I read, hopping back and forth between the videos I was watching/waiting to load/downloading, I realized that depictions of life were now squarely done with the use of montages.
Notice how, in this how-to guide about creating collages for a blog's header, the images are all about "everyday" things -- clothespins, weeds, bowls of vegetables, pencils. The images are supposed to sum up how one person wishes to be identified. These "make her up." How many times have we tried to put together albums based on snapshots of an event? The more "experienced" include the occasional still of a beer bottle, or an ashtray perhaps. There is also the ubiquitous plate of food or coffee cup. These create a mood or provide a context of events and activities, and no one really has to know the chronology. There is simply feeling, and affect.
Meanwhile, in the videos of Cinemaiksi, where the challenge is to shoot and tell a story in one minute, the narratives are pieced together with cutaways and jump shots. Check them out here, and here. The storytelling is peppered with juxtapositions of images that try to heighten the trope of 1) real life, and (2 ordinariness that ironically attempt to underscore larger issues of identity and purpose in individual living. The grand prize winner in 2007 in fact decided to forego any semblance of narrative and instead created a stylized view of life.
The "cracks" in between the shots and images are readily filled in by the viewers (or I assume they are) and the creators seem to know that the audiences know what they should think about to connect the images. One question on my mind is, did the creators take their audiences into account, or did they just assume anyone who saw the short knew what they were talking about?
A good place to start would be the images themselves. What representations are being used? In "I Wish You Well," it is quite obvious that the tropes are very middle- to upper-middle class, what with the jewelry being focused on in the story. Another point for discussion is the narrative itself -- whose narratives are these? Do these belong to everyman or to certain level in society alone?
Perhaps it is presumptuous of me to assume that the creators did expect everyman to understand. Maybe they didn't, and it just so happened that their stories resonated. As we experience the acceleration (at least in the urban centers) of daily living, thanks to the barrage of information and the apparent expectation to act on that information, we have to make do with the bits of what we know and put them together in a montage or collage that can represent what we know at the moment, or where we think we want to go, or achieve. Is it a coping mechanism, or is it a new strategy for learning and knowing? Is this associative thinking? Or are we drowning in too much information that we just have to put what we have out there, and leave others to construct us the way they find most convenient?
