Translating the Essay into Film and Installation - Speech or Presentation Example

Presentation Script Slide number 2: The main purpose of the presentation that I am holding today is to understand the translation of essay into film and other mediums. In order to undertake an easy to understand assessment of the essay film, I have carefully analyzed the address on the subject by Nora M. Alter. It should be noted that the basis of this presentation is the address of Nora because she has evaluated essay film genre from a historical point of view. The development as observed in this genre is magnificent. At the same time it asks for theoretical contribution to understand the characteristics of essay film genre. Slide Number 3: Another main objective behind conducting this presentation is that many people are unable to differentiate between documentary and essay film. Therefore, this presentation will allow everyone to gain understanding regarding the characteristics of essay film genre. Narratives also come next in the discussion. We need to understand the strategy that is used in order make use of fiction-based narratives within the essay film. Slide Number 4: The most important thing to expect from this presentation is the vicissitudes of the essay film genre. The major part of the address made by Nora in her article is regarding vicissitudes of the essay film genre. Layer after layer, there was gradual advancement or development in this genre. To make it much easier to understand, the definition of the expression ‘To Essay’, as explained by Nora, must be understood. The definition of this expression is to experiment. In other words, it can be said that the expression notes to keep a boundary-less ground for expression. The critique by Nora in her address regarding the free expression through essay –film is that the subjectivity of a person narrows down the description. Slide Number 5: It is important to note here that the contributors who have made this genre enriched with amazing work should also be understood. Later, in the presentation, we will also come across a number of essay filmmakers. In this way, distinctive qualities of their work can easily be pin-pointed. Slide number 6: In this slide, I have covered all the objectives that I have just covered. This is to give you a path to understand the subject of essay film without any barriers. Herein, you will notice that the flow of this presentation goes top to bottom i.e. defining essay-film, its characteristics, vicissitudes and finally the master pieces that have been contributing a great deal in this genre. Slide Number 8: It is evident that a number of filmmakers and documentary specialist started to practice essay film in the absence of its standardized mode. Therefore, a couple of different names were given to the genre. Followed by Cinematic essay, this genre is famously termed as essay film. The author Nora M. Alter in her research paper has critically demonstrated that essay-film, is a mode of audio and visual production. A lot of people might confuse essay-film to documentary as the translation of essay into three-dimensional medium may use captions for each chapter separately. However, in real terms, it is a hybrid of documentary and fiction. Slide Number 9: For most of the people, essay film is seemingly a newer genre of film as advancement of technology allowed many budding filmmakers to discuss their individual philosophy through 2D and 3D mediums. But the fact remains that the origin of this genre is as old as the history of filmmaking. This genre has been in practice since past 80 years. However, there is very little theoretical framework found regarding this genre. The official consideration to this form as a genre was given during the 20th century. The prominence to this form of filmmaking as a genre was gained when filmmaker Hans Richter wrote his philosophical address namely manifesto-like text ‘Der Filmessay: Eine neue Form des Dokumentarfilms’. Slide Number 10: As a characteristic, narration has an imperative value in the execution of essay film. Just like literature, where text is written, essay film has narratives. From the evolution of essay film, it was noted that the narratives were reflective of the filmmaker’s experience. It may have been posed as a self-reflexology of the filmmaker to allow critique. However, the fact remains that narratives are not delivered within a given framework. In other words, it can be said that narratives have no standard in essay film. Like the expression ‘to essay’, the narratives are wide and should be open for explanation. The narratives of the essay may be subjectively presented by the filmmaker. To make it simpler for understanding, the filmmaker might use more images and fewer narratives to let the audiences understand the message of the film. Slide Number 11: Tone or presentation of narratives should also be understood carefully. When text or written essay is translated into different mediums, there is a possibility that the presentation will include more intense tone. The aspect of tone is very imperative and has been discussed by Nora as well in her article. She mentions that the aspect of tone under the tag of evaluative search. The tone of the narrator in this genre of film is questioning or searching. The gray notes in an essay film keep it from fitting in either fiction or documentary. Gray notes mean that the subjective philosophy narrows down the message in the film in such a manner that it does not allow audiences to build one perspective of message. They may think that it is a documented life of a person while on the other hand they may think that it’s a created-fiction. By questioning and searching, it means that film essay narrator would think about different dimensions of experiences. There will be dialogues that are supposed to be different from the previous ones. Slide Number 12: Now we are about witness an essay film which has been shot by a budding essay filmmaker. The duration of this video is 3 minutes and 28 seconds. The aspects or characteristics that we studied just now can easily be noted in the film. So when you will be watching this video, you need to keep few things in mind. Firstly, you need to note the style in which the narratives are being balanced out. Secondly, the representation of the narrator has been done with the usage of first tone. And finally, tone of the narrator to question and explain his philosophy. Slide number 14: The ultimate reason behind the implication of this genre is technological advancement. It was noted that with the advanced technology, it was easier to note that access to camera and other audio-visual mediums by the general public. It is an evident fact that in the 20th century, more and more people were getting technologically advanced by purchasing gadgets. These provided them with the opportunity to film anything they wanted to. It is due to this reason that less theory and increased number of essay film pieces have been noted in the past. However, in the current era, researchers have started to gain information regarding this subject matter. Slide Number 16: Nora M. Alter has carefully taken our attention to the pioneers of the genre. She has explained that Montaigne allowed the essay filmmakers to think in such a way that it would not halt them to practice the genre. He stated that the term essay itself tells the person to experiment as much as possible. However, a person may confine himself to discuss the peculiarity of the subject. The beginning of this genre becomes evident when Montaigne stated that essay is a word that allows thinking process to be limitless. These assertions by Montaigne greatly affected the critics including Marquis de Sade, Giacomo Leopardi and Ralph Waldo Emerson etc. Slide Number 17, 18 and 19: Nora Alter has discussed a number of variations in her article regarding essay film. She has explained that an essay film is basically multi-layered. This means there must be a number of features that an essay film may have for instance, a track of different images, few sound tracks, and formal headings of each chapter depending upon the length. More creative ways to present narratives would be writing on the celluloid as explained by Nora. The basis of analysis done by Nora is German. This means that German essay film have included variations of different layers depending upon the mediums used for the purpose of projecting essay film. Slide Number 20: Finally, let us now look at the contributors in the essay film genre. Harun Farocki, as mentioned in the article of Nora, has translated his essays into essay film and other dimensions. He has made use of galleries and various exhibitions to allow audiences to retract to creative filmmaking. It will not be incorrect to state that Harun has used essay film as audio-visual projects. It can also be said that the differentiation between documentary and feature film has been greatly chalked down by Harun. He has planned the translation of essay film into various subjects because he wanted to tell the audiences that you cannot confine explanation in few standardized templates. Filmmaking is an art that needs to be carried out with free expressions. Slide Number 21 and 22: The modern development of translation of essay film into different mediums is visible from Harun’s exhibition of his film as a 3d installation. Harun used split screen to present his Eye/Machine project. He has used a variety of cameras to make sure that the image track is in loop effect of satellite. In such a way the audiences have to work the image tracking by observing carefully. Hence, there is no point to detach from the video. This way of projecting a film is basically considered as soft montage. This is not possible without undertaking juxtaposing the two images. Slide Number 23: Let us now carefully look at the modern contributors. The slide will explain that all easily. Each filmmaker has used different mediums and camera fitting for essay film. End Note: I hope that the presentation helped in allowing better understanding about essay film. Overall the purpose of the presentation has been met. If you have any questions, you can ask me now. Read More