Watch: “The Other Side” Bill
Brown on vimeo. 200 word response.
Is
this a structural film? What rules does this film follow, if any? How does the disjointed sound and image
approach work to support the
meaning of the film. Do you think the film is overly subjective or objective? Is it clear?Does the non-synch sound editing techniques distance you as a viewer?
The Other Side by Bill Brown is a structural film: here the film maker is using a documentary style footage, exploring the immigration problems between the United states and Mexico, and the help that people give to people who try to cross the border, also the goal of criticizing the physical border between the two countries. By observing how the camera moves in a circle, from a fixed point on a tripod, the subject matter in the film is being conveyed, and enhanced with the technicality of the camera angles in a structural film, and the way structural films is shot to present and idea or criticize an issue. The desert, the shots of the landscapes in the film with its vastness is used to create a sense of the hopelessness feel of some who try daily to cross the border, and how they are treated as criminals by the American Government. The film could have an objective approach if we think that the film is based on facts, as it is, a visual facts that we see and hear about from the narrator, but then we also see its subjectivity when we think of the subject matter and our emotional involvement in its subject as humans.
ReplyDeleteThe Other Side by Bill Brown reminds me that On the Road By Jack Kerouac as conceptually. The Other Side doe not show any dramatic moments like documentary films at all. Bill Brown narrative leads the audience into the typical teenagers’ ordinary thoughts and slowly represents political issues at that time. His geographic videos make imagines for the audience how immigrants were came from and also show spirituality into the concepts. However we do not see immigrant people at all in the film but we still can build up the story and provide us political problems through his narration and cultural images.
ReplyDeleteThe Other Side by Bill Brown is a structural film: here the film maker is using a documentary style footage, with his voice throughout the entire film narrating, with a vast knowledge in the subject matter, through researches in the field of the topic, all this combined give a depth to idea of the film, by exploring the immigration problems between the United states and Mexico, and the help that people give to people who try to cross the border, also the goal of criticizing the physical border between the two countries. By observing how the camera moves in a circle, from a fixed point on a tripod, the subject matter in the film is being conveyed, and enhanced with the technicality of the camera angles in a structural film, and the way structural films is shot to present an idea, or criticize an issue. The desert, the shots of the landscapes in the film with its vastness is used to create a sense of the hopelessness feel of some who try daily to cross the border, and how they are treated as criminals by the American Government. The film could have an objective approach if we think that the film is based on facts, as it is, a visual facts that we see and hear about from the narrator, but then we also see its subjectivity when we think of the subject matter and our emotional involvement in its subject as humans.
ReplyDeleteI would call "The Other Side" a hybrid structural film since the content in a number of shots is quite important and there are even times that the content of the shots and the voice over work in an emotional way (I am thinking of the house burning on the Mexican side of the border and the migrant camps) that feels quite like a narrative film. I think that the disjointed sound and image creates a liminal space that mirrors the space of the migrants in the film but also gives the director another tool to sculpt time and emotion with. The disjointedness of the space in the film allowed me to drift in and out of different types of awareness and follow the words of the voice over as if they were the dreams of NAFTA truck drivers that it talks about.
ReplyDeleteThe reason this is a structural film is because of the generally still framing of the shots which are disconnected from the sound and voice over (in most instances except when broken). I also think that the way in which the director moves sound and image around gives a focus to the skeleton of the piece in a way that paints it like the drifting dreams and lives it narrates. In a way the structure of the film allows it to float away and carry all of the content with it so that, for me, there is a purely formal imprint that remains very strong in one part of my awareness while the content and narrative devices fade.