Confusions of Time and Space

Post Modern Ideas continued; In order for me to fully respect the idea of a post modern idea I first have to look at some of the great films of which the directors and editors play around with this conventional idea of chronological time events and then to 'Play' with it creating what appears to be a mess but turns out to be much more effective as a film when compared to a chronological version of the film. A theory to look at when talking about time and space is 'Syuzhet & Fabula', The fabula is "the raw material of a story, and syuzhet, the way a story is organized."

One example to look at is 'Memento'...

This film if not familiar to it literally makes no sense in writing to have this film the way it is edited. The film is split into Black & White sections and Coloured sections, the black and white sections apply traditional conventions of story tell which is to show the very start of the story and plays them in logical order. Now the Coloured sections tell the story backwards with the ending of the story first. Then it gets more confusing, both of the sections do in fact meet up in the 'middle' of the film, at the end of the films time. So in other words the ending of the film is actually the middle of the film. Not only that but also these sections are mixed together making the events completely non chronological and whats seems to be a move that will just annoy the viewer with confusion and frustration. Although this doesn't happen because in actual fact it improves the films impact on the viewer and if understood and seen its 'under-skin', there is actually a great meaning to this film into why it is shot in that way.

You see the main character suffers from short term memory loss and because of this his 'world' is scrambled and confused to how it got there, this is very similar to the films structure.

Another film that you can look at is Pulp Fiction;

This films storyline also follows an unconventional story line where chronological order is completely ignored, this film cuts backward and forward in time and even shows the opening credits and the start of the film.

But why does films like this, Pulp Fiction, do this and somehow make it to the top 10 films of all time?

Simply put, the Uses of Gratification theory explains it, but to put it in a more retrospective look it is because of this Post Modernist idea which we get sucked into, the ideology behind it makes us as the viewer seem more important, we somehow have more control. But how?

Post Modernsim takes the idea of the 'author/director' of whom being the one in control of the media and saying its us, the viewer who has control. For example in 'Inception' the ending is left at a massive cliffhanger of where we as a audience are left uncertain whether it was all a dream or it was reality. This idea could possibly come from Blade Runner and supports this idea of the director not being in control because in the film, for example there is balanced reasons to suggest Deker is or isn't a replicant so naturally the viewer turned to the director Ridley Scott who supported the idea that he is a replicant but then Harrison Ford who plays Deker in Blade Runner said that he isn't a replicant. This leaves the viewer to make the decision about the film; the viewer literally can change and justify the whole meaning and purpose of the film without changing it physically but by perspective. This is a very Post Modern idea that encircles these films, I want to grasp this Idea of how time and space could become such a confusing idea that 'us' the viewer has to decide what the true nature of the film is and to have one preferred meaning that can be viewed in many different ways, which by itself then becomes Post Modern because I will be denying the Grand Narratives of the theory of a piece of media having ONE preferred meaning.

Another example to look at is a slightly different media which is a game trailer, Dead Island, where the whole trailer is played backwards in story and time, this becomes very, very effective because of how it ends. The trailer starts with how the story is meant to end with a little girl dead on the floor outside a hotel, then it reverses up through the hotel sweet where she fights her parents along with other zombies, then switching to her just turning. Throughout this section there is 'Time' flashbacks where she was running away from the zombies. The trailer ends how it should of started which is where the dad runs out to risk his life and grab the daughter, but what makes it effective is that the last shot is not of him going forward to garb her, but him attempting to grab her, but with the reversal of time he is backing away from her. This trailer turned a usually pure horrific scene with zombies destroying a family, into seeing the struggle of a family in such a crisis where they would risk anything for each other.

I would love to achieve something on this level, with having disturbing scenes also filled with elegance but I fear that this would be too hard of a job with the little time I had to produce the film.