Thursday, October 20, 2011

Shelly Silver

This Wednesday our speaker was Shelly Silver. She is an experimental filmmaker and on the faculty at Columbia University. Her work has been shown widely around the country including venues such as the Museum of Modern Art.

http://www.shellysilver.com/

Shelly showed excerpts from four projects:

1. 37 Stories About Leaving Home. Benshi excerpt
2. What I'm Looking For
3. In Complete World -Does Equal Opportunity Exist in the United States
4. 5 Lessons and 9 Answers About Chinatown

Select one of the works. Describe what you saw. How does this film use unconventional techniques in telling the story? Or what are the techniques that the filmmaker uses to get the central idea of the project across to the audience?

20 comments:

  1. The short film 'What I'm looking for' used unconventional techniques to portray the artist's complete control over the moving image. Shelly Silver took many pictures of people she found on an online dating site and asked them to reveal something about themselves. She photographed them all throughout New York City, trying to find what she was looking for. She would speed up the frames per second, or draw out certain frames. She would make time flow forwards and backwards like liquid. She used these varying techniques to describe her adventure in finding what she was looking for.

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  2. 5 Lessons and 9 Answers About Chinatown doesn't have a real narrator. It hardly even has a logical story. It's more like a train of thought, where the mechanical voice-over reads out questions about identity, sometimes from the point of view of one who would live in Chinatown, and sometimes from the point of view of an outsider. She shows historical images and film clips that she shot to try and show the whole personality of Chinatown, from the beginning to the current. The most unconventional aspect of the film is just the lack of a plotline, and instead having just exploratory ideas. It feels very natural, rather than scripted.

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  3. 2. What I'm Looking For

    What I'm looking for used unconventional techniques in finding people to film. Shelly put an add on craigslist and strangers then met at Starbucks to be filmed. She got the central idea of her conclusion that photography was not enough to convey a idea in many different ways. One way was by cutting and repeating different still images, leaving gaps and a sense that something was missing. Another way was also having to turn the project from just still images into video because the narration was needed to follow the Japanese man's story. I liked that she didn't have to come right out and say that she was using these techniques to accomplish her concept but rather the concept became evident through the use of her techniques.

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  4. Shelby Silver used creative expression through all of her pieces. She exemplified taking risks and having them essentially work towards her point. Her piece, "What I'm Looking For" was what stood out to me the post. I thought it was interesting how she found the actors of this piece on Craigs List, and made me second guess just how safe, that actually was. I found it completely bizarre how one man wanted her to capture his armpit, while another man was taking somewhat naked pictures. I had looked down for a second, and when I looked up, I was blinded by the image of a mans underpants staring at me. Shelly used still images to get the central idea of the project across to her audience. I believe she did this effectively because without sound it would have been difficult to decipher what was actually occurring. Shelly Silver was extremely interesting and I really enjoyed viewing her work. The way she presented all her pieces was easy to understand and all her points were very unusual which kept me intrigued.

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  5. "What I'm Looking For" used stop motion as a technique to share her story of anonymity and her connection with strangers and intimacy in New York City. She posted an ad on an online dating site, and received people's response of where they wanted to be photographed. That in addition to stills around the area, she takes shots of motions, busy streets, movement, and the people. By using a couple of shots to chop up a scene and using photography instead of moving image, you try to understand the scene a bit more, by visualizing the sounds how their motion looked like as a whole. In addition, Shelley Silver also used a computer voice to narrate her piece, again pointing out how she didn't know the people she was photographing, but again did not know exactly what would happen with each shoot.

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  6. 3. In this piece Shelly Silver interviewed several people on the streets of New York on the question, 'is there equal opportunity'? The documenting style she used was pretty conventional, but extremely effective. I enjoyed this piece the most because it was easy to relate to, and showed many different voices. By making short cuts between the various people, the audiences attention is held very easily. The style and voices chosen really created a feel of personality, and truly captured what the person was saying and their own unique voice.

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  7. In the Benshi excerpt of 37 stories about leaving home, Shelly silver conducts an interview with a japanese Benshi (narrator of films), and continually cuts away to footage of the movies she narrates and movies or people she likes. there is not so much unconventional about the filming of this piece as is the subject matter, as japanese women are often considered very reserved, and this one in particular expressed strange desires to be a man. This concept is solidified when silver cuts away to some of the movies, which show the woman voicing men, in essence living vicariously through them.

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  8. In the film What I'm Looking For, we saw a movie made completely of still photographs. Sliver put out an add on dating websites to find subjects. Which was the first unconventional thing she did in her film. Another was creating a film that was made entirely of stills. She didn't use a video camera, she just used a SLR. Because she used still photography, there was no sound recordings, so she had to narrate what we were seeing. Hearing her speak about what was happening helped a lot in understanding the significance of certain people and places. Like we wouldn't have know the man from Chinas story if she didn't narrate the film.

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  9. In Shelly Silvers, In Complete World, she is interviewing New Yorkers and asking them if equal opportunity exists in America. Some people say no, so people say yes, and some people have mixed feelings about it. This film is composed in such a way so that it is very relatable to the audience. Shelly uses diverse techniques in her video composition as well as her shots to create a piece that makes an impact. Her interviews with the people of New York vary in all aspects which truly gets the idea of the project across to the viewer. I also feel as though Shelly cut and compiled the clips in a perfect way!

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  10. Shelly's piece "37 Stories About Leaving Home" was where she interviewed Japanese women. In the small piece that we saw, she interviewed a Benshi- or someone who narrates silent films in Japan. I thought It was incredibly interesting, because the woman was so eccentric about her job. She said that she had always wanted to be a man- not really a "man" but just one of those brave men with the swords who fought for what they wanted and would take it by force if they had to. This was an incredibly bold statement for her to make- something that I definitely was not expecting to hear from a Japanese woman. Shelly used clips from the plays/films that the woman referenced, and used B-role of her actually performing her job.

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  11. Shelly silver's 'In complete world' uses conventional panning and zoom techniques during her interviews. She interviews a wide range of people of the streets of NYC and asks them if they believe there is equal opportunity in our country. Just about all of them say no there isn't such thing. She seems to connect with the people she is interviewing. All of them are very comfortable speaking to her which I believe is the reason the film is so warm and welcoming to watch.

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  12. In Shelly Silver's "5 Lessons and 9 Answers About Chinatown", she wanted to tell a story about the place she has lived in for so many years. When she began filming she said she was able to see Chinatown from a completely different viewpoint. As she began filming, she would film outside of places such as laundromats while people laughed in discomfort inside and she would also film the food being produced very vividly, such as the fish being cut and swimming around with no water.

    In this story, there is a lot of imagery and text being used to convey the story and allow the chinese people to connect even more. Chinese words were used to translate the english ones, and photos of chinese people were used as well. I really enjoyed seeing the chinese words with voiceovers in the background both in chinese and english, because even though i know that the words were correct in chinese, there is a feeling of mystery because i do not know chinese and would have no idea what she was really putting up in the video. Shelly Silver was able to make me feel as if i was in Chinatown and had spent a view days there just from her short film. There was ample information in the film to really get the feeling across of what it was like to live there. For example, the amount of buildings she captured with for sale signs upset me because living in Chinatown did not look like an unenjoyable experience. I think that after watching this film, i am definitely going to want to incorporate some type of text and imagery into my short film.

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  13. 4. In this piece, Shelly used an AT&T voice automator to produce the commentary for the film. The voices did not narrate or tell a cohesive story, rather spoke words and phrases throughout. One of the unconventional aspects of the voices was the fact that Shelly used voices speaking in English and Mandarin, in no particular order. They were often paired with Chinese characters and would be either preceded or followed by a shot of related subject matter. There were shots of ordinary things in China Town, a restaurant, a laundromat.

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  14. In Shelly Silver's video piece "5 Lessons and 9 Answers About Chinatown", Silver was able to show life in Chinatown abstractly with political messages. She seems to be trying to show us some of the injustices happening in Chinatown as well as simple, everyday life. Much of the video was just a black screen with Chinese words spoken by computer generated voices in English. The most important words were spoken in dialects of Chinese. I think the almost monotone computer voices were a great choice for this project. While the voices themselves were emotionless, what they were saying was not.

    Silver used a very interesting form of cropping to evoke emotion from the viewer. In a wide shot of people in a park or on the street, Silver would crop the screen to one person. It made you see the one being cropped on a more personal level.

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  15. The piece that stood out to me was "In Complete World" where she asked numerous people if they thought that equal opportunity existed in the US today. In general this piece consisted of fast paced switches between short clips of each person. This quick pace was engaging, but it was also amazing how honest the subjects seemed to be about their feelings. Through the piece you also began to realize that many of them felt the same way, that money was the main influence, and that there is certainly opportunity, yet it is not equal. She started with just showing one word answers, and then gradually allowed them to elaborate. The quick pace used throughout also worked to draw emphasis to the few clips that she chose to show for longer. I felt that this piece was easy to relate to, and most of all it made us as the viewer think.

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  16. In Shelly Silver's film, What I'm Looking For, she created a film composed entirely of photographs and used them in several different ways. One example would be her technique of repeating some of the photographs in the film in order to emphasize certain idea. Another example would be when she cropped the photos of her subjects in unconventional ways and would then return to the full picture. These techniques are a bit jarring at first--clearly unconventional--but they work for the project because of the many different kinds of people who responded to her Craig's List ad and participated in the work. The narration in this piece was also very helpful since she was using photographs instead of film.

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  17. What I'm looking for was an interesting film as it seemed to be a challenging task as Shelly Silver had to meet up with strangers in order to get her project done. It seemed to be somewhat of a frightening task yet very exciting. She said that she had to narrate throughout the film or else the audience would not have a clue about what these people are looking for/ doing. For example, she had to narrate about the Japanese stranger and how he was wondering about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The repetition of certain images such as the bird intrigued me and made me look into the film more deeply. Also, the way the Shelly captured some images were interesting. While following the strangers she met, she seemed to take images of them as part of a crowd and carefully focused on them looking at the camera. There were some very random yet funny pictures such as the guy who wanted her to take a picture of his shaved armpit. Shelly captured images/videos of these strangers very well- we might not know much about them but it was interesting to create what they might be thinking in our heads.

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  18. What I'm Looking For is short film that features strangers who answered Silver's ad on craigslist to photograph a part of them, be it physical or not. Because Silver intended the project as a series of photographic portraits in the beginning, the film evolved to be a sort of stop motion video portraits of her subjects in the final product. Although she only cropped the photos with the conventional rectangular crop box, it highly contrasted with the movements of her subjects on the streets or doing small actions, forcing the viewers' eyes to focus on the physical body parts of personality she or her subject wished to stand out. The stop motion quality of the video as well forces the viewers to focus on these momentary snapshots of her subjects and to appreciate the essence of each portraiture, rather than taking motion (body language and facial expressions) for granted.

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  19. What I'm Looking For was a film about New Yorkers discussing the things controversial issues in politics. Something I thought was a little unconventional about her film is that not all of the scenes were necessarily flatter to the person in them. The camera was usually very close to the person and they were the center of the frame. I thought of it as various portraits of people throughout New York. The camera also teetered back and forth and there were sounds playing in the background which sometimes interfered with what people said. However, all that being said, I think she uses this to make each seen raw and realistic. It didn't seem scripted or conventional or corny. I think by this way, she was able to make it seem that these are real people's opinions rather than some cliche film with music playing in the background.

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  20. In Complete World by Shelly Silver was the most interesting work of her. In the film, she deals with the topic of equal opportunity in the United States. Does equal opportunity exist? She employed many people's thoughts and voice. There were an old aged man, a student, a Caucasian and African American. Mostly, people said that equal opportunity does not exist. Some people said that more opportunity goes to rich people. Certainly there are opportunities in the United States; however, not everyone can obtain same opportunity. It was very interesting to see how collective group can deliver strong messages. First it started with brief word respond and it ended with strong meaning. It was also amazing that so many people are willing to participate into this and sign the release form.

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