Futile Fight

The Director’s Bag of Tricks

J. Y. Gao

My visit to the new film installation at the State Gallery had been pushed forward, and what I had planned to be a quiet reflective viewing next to Sydney’s most senior retirees and odd middle-aged artists had become a struggle for peace among chattering cocoons of art nerds too eager to demonstrate their new-found understanding of Jungian symbols and Marxist readings. “Oh, how Jungian. I really feel my subconscious engaging with the colours,” is one of the too many comments I overheard. They fought like gladiators under the imperial ear of the teacher, battling with relative clauses and adverbial phrases to earn a look of recognition, a thumbs-up for their unique insight. Although, unlike gladiators, they never fought for honour or freedom, instead their childish poly-syllabic bickerings were no more than a fight for attention, a way to elevate above the rest, to become the quirky but intensely intellectual one of the group. 

One shot, in particular, caught the attention of several discussion groups. “I really felt the post-colonialist semi-feminist approach to framing the protagonist’s gaze as a way of exploring heritage within the rigid capitalist infrastructure of the contemporary Australian economy.” An adjacent hand was raised with clear intent, “I personally found the eyes to be a semi-abstract non-idealist representation of meta-space and the ability to…”. He was cut off by another student. The conversation continued, navigating its way through a myriad of interpretations and understandings. 

The eyes of the character didn’t represent the economy or the meta-space. I liked the shot, it played its part in the film – it gave the audience a necessary tug, but they were never mentioned in dialogue and appeared for a total screen time of three seconds. And yet everyone noticed them, the change, everyone understood the internal dialogue that had occurred, and, even under the cluster of the abstract and metaphysical bickering, everyone felt the emotional weight behind it. 

Eyes have been exploited by filmmakers since the beginning of the moving picture, and form a fraction of the elaborate network of techniques and law-like conventions used in film to control the audience. They establish empathy between the audience and the character, they efficiently communicate the wants and needs of the character, and they subconsciously inform the emotional reaction, sustain the engagement, and direct the attention of the audience. Though ultimately, these conventions turn disjointed segments of impersonal, third person, 2D footage so unlike our visual experience of the world into an immersive and cohesive experience that is shared and understood by even the most bohemian group of art students. Had James Cameron decided not to include his 13-second aerial swing shot after Rose exclaims “I’m flying, Jack” in Titanic, the signature flying pose would never have reached its global acclaim, and the statement a symbolic statement too insignificant to the plot to remember.

The director’s toolbox, within which they house the myriad of possible configurations of cinema’s various elements, apparently contained a distinctly separate bag of tricks saved purely for audience engagement. ‘Eye candy’ was one such trick: vertical lines like railings, trees or telephone poles are included in the frame solely for their ability to tempt your eyes as they move across the frame. An incongruent cut between two unrelated settings may seem a threat to the seamless immersiveness of the film-watching experience, and yet a simple sound effect that is appropriate for the latter setting, like a train honk for a train station or a car beep for a busy street, hides the fragmented visual stimulus under a veil of normality. 

None of this is noticed by the fast-turning cogs of teenage art critics. They’re concerned with the intellectual side of things, the sophistication of themes and motifs and concepts and intertextual references. Seemingly far more complicated, powerful and resonant, the perfect playground for a dictionary battle of the ages, a field with the potential to grow a thousand different types of fruits and vegetables, each glistening with individuality under the warm rays of academia. Except, of course, each seed is sewn by the same machine, watered within the fences of the field, and driven to grow and ripen under the same mechanical beat of the earth. 

Hope for freedom, or perhaps an assumption of freedom, had entrapped the students that day. Under the guise of creativity, individuality and academia, the youthful fight for attention was no more than a public demonstration of control, homogenisation and myopia. Although, most ironically, I find myself on most days precisely where they were, among the crowd, arguing, straining my neck for the absolute glory of a thumbs-up and beaming a smile far too wide.