Aaron Wong - Graduate Thesis

7/31/2019 Aaron Wong - Graduate Thesis

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Accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of Master of Fine Arts

at

The Savannah College of Art and Design

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Committee Chair: Annette Haywood-Carter Date

________________________________________________________________________

Topic Consultant: Paul Bear Brown Date

________________________________________________________________________

Editor: Michael Nolin Date


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Necessary Non-essentials: Realism and Reality in the Filmmaking Process

An Artistic Statement for the filmPACIFICSubmitted to the Faculty of the Film and

Television Department in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Masters

of Fine Arts

at

The Savannah College of Art and Design

by

Aaron C. Wong

Memphis, Tennessee

November, 2006


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Thesis Abstract:

Various filmmakers have responded to the concept of realism through their creative

processes, each as unique as each ones experiences and beliefs. To find some common

ground where subjectivity and objectivity meet in the form of art, these directors search for

ways that the logistics and the limitations of a medium/media can still allow personal

communication. A study of some of these artists such as Charles Burnett, Robert Bresson,

John Cassavetes, Mike Leigh, Ken Loach, and Terrence Malick via various literary and

web-based resources examines concurrences and divisions in methodology and

understandings, particularly as they inform the short thesis filmPACIFIC.


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For the real does not wait... Lacan (Lacan 50)

Style is life. We begin prior (ignorance/innocence), make the choice for something,

of our own making (the first movement), and do or do not arrive at our chosen destination;

style, the how, acts as the passage from here to there. But even in the event of

predestination, style, to deconstruct it for what it is, represents the path of the infinite shade

of constant choices - conscious, subconscious, and unconscious. Style is how we walk this

path as a person; it is character. Self-evident in the persistent discourse invoking means

and ends, style contains an ethical component. Certainly, content, the story we give

ourselves, drives style, but in the McCluhan tradition of medium is the message the path

can equally change the destination; and thus the question propagates - should it, should we

learn and adapt or do we become wayward? And while often subsumed to a place below

content/meaning, style on some levels cannot be separated from content. Particularly in the

medium of film, style and content intertwine to a degree demanding ethical examination,

especially in light of the mediums contemporary pervasiveness. Quite literally a window, a

frame, onto a world of its own making, choosing what to show and what to hide, film is a

point of view. The making of a film (i.e., writing, directing, acting, cinematography) is

built around mechanically capturing a moment in front of the lens that is then broken down

in editing and then rebuilt to be shown in real time. The choice of how to (re)present reality

is filmic style; in a sense style acts as a justification of our point of view. But it is this

mechanical nature of the medium, the lack of the necessity of human intervention in the

process that gives film the erroneous sense of being less manipulated and more real:

[film] affects us like a phenomenon in nature, like a flower or a snowflake whose


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vegetable or earthly origins are an inseparable part of their beauty (Bazin 13). And so

while one can choose to present something akin to Godard promoting a deliberate fictive

consciousness ("cinema is not the reflection of reality, but the reality of the reflection"

(Landy 9)), the relationship between the audience and the said window, with its sensory

enthrallment, provides little room for pause, for contemplation of self, of other

perspectives, or even other realities. Thus, film has a ready capacity for manipulation. If

one chooses to take an ethical stance on ones filmic creation, one must take a stance on his

or her style - to entertain is to have an entertaining style, one is not exclusive of another

because these are the experiences that the filmmaker puts the audience member through,

style and meaning/purpose wholly intertwined. And while the judgment remains as to what

a film should do, what a good film does, and in fact should art have a purpose or whereby

is that the very definition of art, film contains the capacity to inform a point of view. But

even the choice for non-style, to say that we will film what is before the lens without

influence or (re)creation, an apparent alternative, still does not excuse one from ethical

dilemma. Inherently such a choice puts forth the argument that reality is closer to truth, and

such stylistic projects come with their own baggage (ex., the inescapable social concerns of

Italian neorealism). Among media/mediums film most mirrors our perceptions, our

memories of the world, but with the emphasis on experience rather than interaction and in

this passivity the filmmakers point of view dominates. With this discourse in mind, within

the work on my thesis, I felt an ethical apprehension informing and guiding my efforts.

While I believe that in some ways art operates outside of ethics in that an ethical system

will organically arise out of a work that approaches truth, during preparation for the film a

quote by the Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami haunted me: life is more important than


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art (Aufderheide 31). For someone who has dedicated his life to making films to say this

intimated to me that for all our creative toils, they cannot compare to that which surrounds

them: life. And thus to find some ethical justification for the point of view afforded to film,

some reconciliation between the world of ideas and the world of action, some meaning

outside of myself, I endeavored to make the work as much a part of the world as possible.

Making it look and feel like the world we know, working with things beyond itself,

attempting to be honest in what it says and does, these are all things for which artists before

me have strived and in hopes of learning from them I have studied and reflected upon the

thoughts and processes of a few with which I felt most identification, as this discourse will

convey.

Filmmaking always entails some amount of manipulation, some amount of

judgment in its reductionism and thus for my film to be closer to a point of view not from

but of life, I felt I needed to rid myself of the desires for the work to be anything so as to

limit my own intrusions. While I had had a vision of what I wanted, I believed I had to let

this go and embrace the process. Returning to the premise that style is life, that the how we

do things becomes inseparable from the why we do things, by desiring to do some justice

to life, with its surprises, flaws, joys, and complications, I had to let life take over, not in a

rejection of choice but in the attempt to work in the moment, to work honestly. In a kind of

paradoxical feedback loop, I attempted to make life my style, my aesthetics. Of course, all

filmmaking must deal with life, but instead of struggling against reality to achieve my

vision, I sought to work organically, openly, in a process of discovery, learning, and

appreciation. Consequently, my answer to the question of should the path affect the

destination was my attempt to make them the same. While by no means a judgment on my


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own work or a prescription for others, the film was an experiment whereby I sought to

throw my ideas out into the world, see what stuck, and share what happened, believing this

not only the best path for myself but also the way to make best film from the material and

circumstances. Whether true or not remains conditional and like the process of making the

film the only way I know how to express it is through a process dialectic, describing the

choices made, with context both conceptual and circumstantial, and that with which we

came away.

But for all this discourse about making my work about life, it is important to

acknowledge that reality does not necessarily mean truth. Slippery among concepts are

such words as life, reality, the real, truth, the adjustments of each varying under semantics.

Perhaps since Plato, who argued that, betrayed by our senses, the idea is more real than the

thing itself, truth and reality have found themselves befuddled, a notion only further

hampered by the seeming disappearance of truth in modernity - as something relative. For

clarity within this discourse, reality is prescribed as our knowledge, the truth as the divine,

and life as the process between the two. In other words, only in crisis, reaching the borders

of our reality, our knowledge, do we approach truth (Salas). The question then occurs that

if reality and truth are separate, why strive for realism? Why try to reproduce reality in art

when in fact it already exits as the world around us? In fact Derrida asks: is [the] imitative

supplement not dangerous to the integrity of what is represented and to the original purity

of nature (Brunette). But if in efforts to imitate reality (mimesis) we find we must recreate

the specific and the particular, things that by definition are non-essential, then there must

be something to reality that we are missing that makes these non-essential things essential

to reality. This crisis suggests that things exist beyond our understanding. Thus, if reality is


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what we know, the world around us, then realism in art paradoxically points toward what

we do not know. Film especially, again simply due to its mechanics, represents this

movement in that in recreating reality, finding a point of view, we enter a state of crisis.

Truth can be approached through other routes, but in realism when we (re)present reality

we are presenting not a view of the world but its crisis of view, a process which this

dissertation is calling life.

Realism in art begins through context, verisimilitude, in that it readily resembles

something familiar to the audience whether in terms of specific outward reference or

something with which the audience can identify. To my understanding three methods exist

toward showing life as it really is, toward making a created work look and feel real. One is

seamlessness, which is the disguising of the fact that the work was created. This deals

mainly with craftsmanship, knowing the nature of the medium and how it is perceived, its

language, shaping it to match our own perceptions of the world. Film theory calls this

suturing, applying techniques such as eye-line matches and crosscutting to ensure that no

breaks, no disconcerting unexplained transitions in time and space, disrupt the viewers

engagement (Vaughn). This kind of realism masks its own presence beneath the established

language of film but a fine line exists before audiences become aware of the usage of such

language. Too much reliance on such work produces a reliance on tropes, genres, and

films own ontology, creating stagnation in creativity or too ready reception - an audience

comfortable in its ideas. The second method is naturalism, a component of the other two

methods, which entails recreating what the audience member knows of his or her reality

from experience. Qualities such as a setting lifelike, contemporary subject matter, dialogue

that sounds like the things a person would actually say or hear, and actors that inhabit the


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personas of their characters rather than representations of them all exhibit this aspect. But

again, a concern arises - how much of these qualities rely on tropes we have come to accept

out of usage? The third method, in some ways a kind of antithesis of seamlessness,

attempts to use the camera in an [apparently] non-manipulative fashion and considers the

purpose of realism in its ability to convey a reading of reality, or several readings even

(Brunette). Thus, for neutrality, it employs shots taken from vantage points that in their

impartiality hope to counter the manipulation of the image (ex., long shots, deep-focus,

eye-level shots, 90-degree angled shots) and/or devices to prevent the controlling effects of

editing (ex., long takes). Taken to the radical level would be cinma-vrit, which is

unstaged, non-dramatized, non-narrative cinema. (Lapsley and Westlake 158) Or this

method can employ techniques that indicate that the action filmed is real by emphasizing

the fact that it is being filmed as such (ex., handheld camera work, low-quality video, bad

lighting, in other words, documentary-esque). Either technique uses film in such a way

that, although it does not draw attention to itself, it none the less provides the spectator

with space to read the text for herself or himself (Salas). Within work on my own thesis, I

attempted to apply elements of all three of these methods. The film deals with six young

men playing a pickup game of basketball on a neighborhood court. They notice an older

man watching them, taking careful notes. They deem him to be a college scout and as the

game and day progresses, it becomes a competition to impress him. The naturalism comes

from the nature of the subject matter, setting, characters, and action all of which are

intended to have a contemporary but also somewhat timeless sense. The seamlessness and

the intent to give audiences space for a reading somewhat play off each other in that there

is no direct attempt to hide the fact that the action is being filmed (ex., handheld camera


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movement, focus buzzes), but there is also an equal attempt to use film grammar as

unobtrusively as possible. In this balance, these methods represent the most obvious ways

toward the process of realism in cinema, even if at times methods may run contrary to each

other.

But beyond and yet also including this physicality and its techniques of rendering, a

psychological/narrative component exists to realism in accordance with something else

inherent to life, a kind of randomness, an inexplicability. Ethically less manipulative,

applying inexplicability references that which we do not know, that which is beyond our

comprehension. For example, using elements of the actual as in, for instance, the technique

of method acting produces results both unplanned yet also sought that could not have been

attained through other means. The foundations of Italian Neorealism are usually attributed

to Rossellinis Open City, which applied actual locations, bad and various film stock, and

non-actors, all as a consequence of a lack of financial resources (Salas). Here, actual

circumstances affected the creation of the art to a point where the artist lost some amount

of control, producing something both real and realistic, again content and form

intermingling. Rossellini enhanced this result through dogmatic choices such as the refusal

of editorial manipulation (montage) and pre-established scripts, both attempts to get what is

actually there, a more real recreation. In essence, this represents a kind of realism that

cannot be planned, something psychologically deeper and more intrinsic, where flaws

make it more true to the processes of life

Incorporating this kind of unexpectedness results in a psychological/narrative

realism that can only be achieved by a dismissal of intention: a complexity of tone. It is a

simplifying process for the real is simple; it simply is. And yet, as this description of the


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filmmaker Sayajit Ray informs, from simplicity comes the process of life:

Although Ray continued to experiment with subject matterand style more than most directors, he always held true to

his original conviction that the finest cinema uses strong,

simple themes containing hundreds of little, apparentlyirrelevant details, which only help to intensify the illusion of

actuality better. These themes cannot come from the passing

fashions of the period; they must be drawn from permanentvalues (Goritsas).

This attention to the details of life brings about both a focus and an ambiguity to the work

that lessens the notion that the film was created, employing both seamlessness and space

for the spectator. Charles Burnett, filmmaker ofKiller of Sheep and To Sleep with Anger,

breaks free from both narrative and tonal tendentiousness(Kim) by allowing details to

arise seemingly organically and allowing them to dictate his tone. Killer of Sheep relates

the story of a family in Watts, California in anecdotal and episodic situations from daily

life. The events flow without plot-points, without even seemingly much meaning - loose,

leisurely, seemingly improvised (but actually tightly scripted and storyboarded) (Carney

124). A narrative choice, not so much out of ambiguity, but of simplicity affects the

audience psychologically:

It is a wonderful artistic place to be brought to: a place thatmomentarily stuns our powers of analysis; a place beyond all

of the black and white valuations and snap judgments of

morality; a place almost beyond knowledge, in which the

tremulations of emotion are the only form of understandingfast enough to keep up with the experience (Carney 123).

Like Burnett, I attempted to leave out qualifications of tone, allowing, for instance, scenes

to be serious and comedic at the same time if so needed but always keeping the concerns

local, specific to the characters. I deliberately set out with a simple story but one with

inherent conflict, action, and improvisation: a basketball game. In fact there is something to


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be said for intentionally playing against expectations, even our own, to allow for surprises

and indulgences. For example, the Frayser Public Housing Project served as our location

for the thesis film, where numerous neighborhood children wanted to be a part of the

project. Rather than clearing the set for continuity, we often tried to include as many as

possible. Whether this made for a better film matters not so much as our following the

guiding belief that dwelling on inessentials amounts to a type of lyricism, a passion for life.

In simplicity like Burnetts, showing rather than telling, the audience is forced to watch,

study, and think.

Burnetts tonal work represents one aspect toward this project of making life the

style of the piece, while a slightly different and more controversial approach entails

something akin to the work of Ken Loach who attempts to include elements of the real for

effects in reality. It begins with casting for Loach who chooses provincial, unprofessional

actors in order to attain "a sense of space around the performances" (Filmmakers on

Film). He takes his time interviewing potential actors, searching for those who not only

look and sound like genuine members of the community in which his stories are set, but

also those whose actual experiences and personalities relate well to their characters. This is

a strategy that we emulated in the casting of our film: we went to ball courts, high schools,

community centers, and basketball games to find our actors. The ones we choose exhibited

a quality inherent within themselves that they shared with their particular characters or we

altered his or her character to something more appropriate to the actor. None of our actors

had had experience on a film before and we actually used two young men who lived in the

neighborhood where we filmed. Once he has his actors, Loach makes the process as real

for them as possible. Resisting filmmaking conventions, he chooses to film strictly in


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sequence and issues the script to the performers on a day-to-day (need-to-know) basis

(Nicholls). He also does not conduct extensive rehearsals, allows for improvisation, adds

scenes that are inspired by events happening around the set, films scenes that he does not

use at all, and applies further techniques such as these in order to attain something genuine

in the performance:

In his 1991 film Riff-Raff (for which, Loach required that

the actors should have had, at some point in their life,

experience of the building trade), the character of Larry(Ricky Tomlinson) decides to take a bath in the show-flat.

He performed three takes of his getting into the bath, with a

technician coming in after each to say "were going for

another one", the fourth time he is, literally, surprised bythree young Arab ladies (Ryan and Porton 23)

Again, we followed several of Loachs approaches as our project allowed: we filmed in

sequence for the most part with the exception of certain scenes due to their technical

requirements (the need for magic hour light); we allowed for improvisation, sticking to

story of the script but not necessarily to the dialogue or action; and, while the actors were

given the script prior to shooting and rehearsals were conducted, the emphasis was always

upon work in the moment, with even direction being given as the camera was running.

These filmmaking methods represent not only an attempt toward making a more realistic

art form, but also have another social, ethical purpose. Intentions aside, in the pursuit of

authenticity, realism, is by its nature a choice among isms of (re)creation and thus will

never be reality (Lapsley and Westlake 157). Consequently, a division will always exist

between filmmaker and subject, even if they begin as the same; the film will always be the

Other. Striving to be true to ones subject remains complex as the question arises Who is

the film being made for? Whether for oneself, ones subjects, or some outside audience,

even the most talented filmmakers commitment to a certain kind of realism can leave him


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precariously perched between sympathy and pity, social engagement and smug

condescension (Wisniewski). Loach chooses to place his concerns on the social,

addressing within his work the struggle of the British working class to achieve life's basic

needs ... the significant impact of public institutions upon personal lives. By invoking

these situations and people in a manner as genuine as possible he intends to recognize some

of the facts of his subjects lives, as summarized here, something I equally believe:

Like his thematic forbearer George Orwell, Loach points outthat a lack of economic opportunity not only causes financial

hardship, but also psychological effects, including

depression and wastefulness. If you can't put food on the

table or a roof over your head, falling in love or enjoyingrecreational pleasure soon feels unattainable. Loach's

characters struggle to achieve life's basic needs, but they alsolong for simple pleasures, such as playing football or

meeting friends in a pub (Robins).

There is a safety of the camera, of the lens, that separates filmmaker from filmed, forcing

judgment if only on what to film. But to get out there, to be with your subjects, to leave

behind preconceptions, and to find the work again, this became an ideal of our film for as

Loach explains, The way you make a film is an important way of validating the ideas in

it (Fuller 114). Our intentions were a continuation of Loach and also such work as in the

filmsDark Days and Born into Brothels. In the former, filmmaker Marc Singer becomes

more than an objective observer as he documents several people living underground in

New York City. He enters this world, living with them in a kind of ethnographic

filmmaking, having them become his crew, using their unique skills to tap into the

electricity and build a dolly (Storyville). And through the direct involvement of his work,

several of the people involved found jobs and apartments. Zana Briski, filmmaker ofBorn

into Brothels, teaches several children photography in a red-light district in India,


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articulating that she believes in the power of art to transform lives (Heumann and

Murray). The work that we did forPACIFICconcerned not so much direct social change

but rather the endeavor to bring people together that usually does not meet and to create

something collectively, sharing in the creative process and the experiences. Practical results

such as the political concerns of Loach and the personal concerns of Singer certainly, even

if unintentionally, were a component (ex., teaching filmmaking to those involved with the

films making), but, by invoking reality in the process of attempting realism, the projects

concerns were more toward connections in order to produce something coming out of the

processes of life.

From Ken Loachs invoking of the real in his subjects and methods, Mike Leigh

represents another extension to this filmmaking process: avoiding manipulation by

involving his collaborators even more directly in the creative process. Leigh begins with a

basic premise, which he develops with his actors through months of improvisation and

rehearsal. He explores the actors own experiences and knowledge to realize a complete

character, as closely as possible reenacting histories and relationships between and among

his actors as if they were the characters. He purposefully tries to limit the knowledge that

the actor has so that the actor and character have the same consciousness. Scenes are then

improvised until a story takes shape. And when the camera actually rolls, the material has

been finalized to a point where improvisation is no longer needed on the actual set

(Holocombe). Thus, in way Leigh has not only mixed reality with realism, but has

organically formed a new creative reality. This was my original intention toPACIFIC, to

create a story that was as much mine as my collaborators, but unfortunately due to the

process, to life, it did not entirely turn out as such. Finding reliable performers became


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difficult, we had to replace our cinematographer who needed to leave the project, and the

day before we were to begin photography one of our cast members injured his knee,

forcing us to find a last-minute replacement. But these were not setbacks but rather, as

Leigh demonstrates, an opportunity to work organically to the point where the story is not

known. Filmmaker Wong Kar Wai alludes to this when he states that he often changes his

script as he films, sometimes shooting multiple movies (Short). During preproduction I

debated whether to write a script beyond notes and an outline; however, my thesis chair

required it, allowing me to an opportunity to collect my thoughts. The preparation became

not so much a matter of preconception but a matter of knowing what I wanted, which I

believe bears different than holding to what one wants. The entire inspiration for this

project came from one image, the final night shot with the character Hamlet looking back

at what he thought was the Scout, something that haunted me for years, almost like a taste

in my mouth, a smell. But beyond this, while I had other images and ideas, it was more

important for me to work through the process, to, as I learned from acting and directing

classes, be listening. In this world of abundant information and options, our focus, our

attention becomes an ethical choice and thus the choice was to try my best to be where I

was, to be in that creative, living moment. I did script breakdowns, a shotlist, storyboards

prior to filming but once on set these were destroyed by the rain, sun, wind and more often

than not I found them unnecessary, instead changing things as we went, planning out the

next day the night before. On the first day of shooting, we had intended to start at

beginning of the story but because an actor could not be found we had to film a different

scene with the people who were there. In the middle of production, one of our actors

unexpectedly became a father. We were shut down by the city due to contractual


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disagreements and we had to adjust accordingly, changing the entire middle of the film in

order to make up time. These examples, not necessarily unusual, indicate how life affected

the production of the film; however, inspired by the process of Leigh, we choose to

capitalize on these setbacks and recreate the story as we went.

With the logistics of filmmaking encumbering cinematic control and thus vision,

the filmmaker Robert Bresson takes this notion further to suggest that cinema itself

impedes knowledge. Film, with its modern prevalence, threatens to replace the actual set

of surrounding appearances with a set of never-changing images:

Knowledge is always involved in a process in which it isconstantly confronted and modified by the consequences of

the encounter between human action and appearances.Therefore, appearances' most important characteristic is

change, because change forces the ever-learning person to

the searching process that could allow him/her to reach thelimits of knowledge. In an environment that doesn't change,

human knowledge would never be confronted because the

information received from the community would not need to

be processed any further (MacCabe).

The process of knowledge leads to the access to truth and thus film, in its singular

perspective, in its stagnation, limits the processes of reality. What Bresson does is to

remake film into his own unique process using, in contradiction, ambiguity and simplicity.

Again, in his own attempts to capture reality, like Burnett looking at the mechanical

process, he believes in presenting things as they really are:

There are so many things our eyes don't see. But the camera

sees everything. We are too clever, and our cleverness playsus false. We should trust mainly our feelings and those

senses that never lie to us. Our intelligence disturbs our

proper vision of things (Samuels).

He instructed his actors, as he calls them models, with intense precision as far as

blocking but also with the direction to not "think of what [they] are saying or doing


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(Pavelin). By doing this, he attempted to capture something inherent, without forcing

meaning, and hence the ambiguity and simplicity, what is there. Bresson would do upward

of twenty, thirty, forty takes in order to achieve a point to which the performer no longer

had any emotional investment in the act and thus the act, in getting through the models

consciousness to be something, became real: the automatism imposed on models allowed

unconscious states of soul to be revealed (Pavelin). Like Loach, Bresson prefers that his

actors know as little about the filmmaking methodology as possible, choosing only non-

professionals who had never acted before, never reusing the same actors, and never

allowing them to see any of the work in progress until the final piece. Again, this was to rid

his performers of self-awareness, of desire, in the effort to capture them as they simply are,

and to find the spirituality inherent in simply just being: I try to catch and to convey the

idea that we have a soul and that the soul is in contact with God. That's the first thing I

want to get in my filmsthat we are living souls (Hayman). In a sense the significance of

any script or preplanning became de-emphasized as his models' unconscious states of soul

could not be predetermined. Bresson, in order to get past the obstacle of the stagnation of

cinema was not recreating reality but showing what is actually there, for realism in cinema

is reality, and thus in simplicity and ambiguity, the audience must do work, overcoming

said stagnation: film is something that must be constantly reborn (Hayman). While I did

not adhere to many of Bresson technical dogmas (i.e., numerous takes, diffused lighting,

always 50mm lens)(Burnett), I did gather from him a spiritual sense to the work, to

simplify, to de-emphasize the technical process for the performers. With the actors on the

set ofPACIFIC, I tried to never use character names or talk about camera angles or really

what I sought, limiting the direction to blocking as much as I could. From Bresson I


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learned to give the production of the film space, especially in terms of performances, that

meaning and its processes stand inherent to the human, and to allow for ambiguity and

simplicity innate in reality to overcome the limitations of film.

The filmmaker John Cassavetes provides counterpoint to this idea that film itself

stands in the way of reality by working under the premise that cinema is actually an

extension of real life. Cassavetes operates under the same practices as some of the former

artists: like Leigh, he likes to work out the characters and story through improvisations and

rehearsals; like Burnett, he creates complicated tones. His dialogue, narratives, and

performances violate many film conventions such that characters seem to make up their

statements as they move through and confront life. And yet with this kind of real realism,

the notion that art can be both highly real and highly contrived, Cassavetes captures an

artistic quality to real life (Berliner 4). His work suggests that to improvise is to actually

include the real for we ourselves improvise in our daily lives; we act and play characters in

our parts within this world. In other words, his films exploit the resonances between the

systems of representation within both drama and reality (Lee). When describing how he

chose and directed his performers he stated that theres no such thing as a good actor ...

how youre capable of performing in your life, thats how youre capable of performing on

the screen (Berliner 3). By combining actor and role, art and reality, Cassavetes

intentionally broke down the distinction between the two. And moreover, Cassavetes

represents someone who abided by what he taught, leading something equivalent to a

philosophical life, living for the act of creation. Ray Carney, an authority on Cassavetes,

describes some qualities of the filmmaker: he made films his own way, not imitating

others; he used only his own money; the only person he tried to please was himself; he took


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immense risks, artistically, financially, and personally (Carney). This mixing of art and life

reduces the argument as to how to achieve realism as the two memes become one, and yet,

at the same time, raises the question whether such confusion could be dangerous. As a

filmmaker/person one faces numerous demands (i.e., art, life, love, family, society,

economics, beliefs, etc.) and it becomes necessary to find a balance. This is what I

understood from Cassavetes, to bring everything that we are to both life and art, and such

experimentation to find a balance continues until our death. It remains better to try and in

trying there is the movement, the doing, back and forth; inPACIFICI like to think that we

really did share our lives in what we made together. How we made the film, the choices we

made, became important as they were a part of each others lives. By treating life like art,

bringing it into his work, Cassavetes implies that living your life makes for better art; they

are not opposing forces.

This leads into the last filmmaker for discussion, Terrence Malick, who, rather than

equating life and art, finds a certain reverence to the work, not placing it above life but as

something equally beside with its own unique footing, revealing the real. Critics

acknowledge Malick most immediately for the primacy and beauty and poetry of [his]

imagery (Lee). But these images stand not as something to be understood or interpreted

but rather to be apprehended, presenting unmediated, uninterrupted reality. Roland Barthes

relates a comparable notion when he describes the punctum in that there is something in

a photograph or film, something captured mechanically from reality, that will strike him

uniquely, unintentionally, simply because it is there and it is true. Whether a facial

expression or a detail out of place, it is unmanipulated, individual to his observance,

personality, and experience, yet also universal because it is there for all. The images


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Malick presents, often of nature and people in nature, do not reduce nor augment a given

phenomena into something psychological, sociological, or otherwise symbolic by passing

judgment on what they capture. Rather, with Malick cinema gains a sense of physicality

that elicits awe and wonder before any impulse to understand and interpret it in terms of

its meaning (Lee) and thus he shares some of the spirituality of Cassavetes and Bresson.

In contrast to this, modernity believes that truth/meaning exists as something outside or

beyond the world around us, as something to be mastered. Within his processes and also

his narratives, Malick insists that human action cannot be attributed to motivations of

justification nor of randomness; actions are based on neither unshakable foundations nor

arbitrary consensus but that humans act out of forces beyond their own comprehension

(Lee) And yet Malick presents this without judgment but also not without morality,

promoting the idea that our world and values sometimes cannot deal with certain human

possibilities, that our cultural paradigms are more fragile than we think. Thus, from Malick,

one of my tenets while filming was to capture as much as possible, always being open to

everything. We originally planned to have a main camera unit and a second camera unit for

capturing second angles, cutaways, b-roll, things that the main unit would miss.

Unfortunately, due to tight crew needs and time constraints the second unit could only get

so much. But even so, by working rather limited, wherein we used very little lighting or

lighting control, there was no need for art direction resets, our crew was kept small, and we

always came back to the same location, the space and the process became more vital, more

alive. Filming in July in Savannah, Georgia, the heat, the sweat, the rains, the clouds, the

fading light made us work quickly and such physicality added to the presence of the film

for actors and for the filmmaking process. In some ways, the work felt comparable to that


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of a nature photographer or a National Geographic journalist, mixing fiction and non-

fiction under some amount of intuition. I believe to present things just as they are without

any purpose beyond connection allows pause to consider the power of the image, becoming

something almost prescriptive: a celebration of life, of what we are given. For Malick,

realism comes from doing justice to realitys awesome, humbling nature through the

(re)presentation of unadulterated beauty.

While their approaches vary on specifics - some used professional actors, some

deliberately chose stripped-down cinematography, some worked dogmatically only on

contemporary narratives - all of the former filmmakers, and many more like them, try in

their own ways to capture the real in their own forms of realism. And despite the

contradictions between, among, and within them, all focused on a process toward finding a

way to come to terms with this inexplicability of life that separates it from art through its

essential non-essentials. Each filmmaker brings something unique that influenced my own

thinking during work on my thesisPACIFICas I tried to make life the style of the piece.

But in this process of trial and error, it remains necessary to remind oneself not to

overthink and stay focused on what is truly important. Everyone has a story, a voice, and

everyones is unique. I do not know if every voice deserves to be heard, or even if my own

should be, but I do know the act of being heard can change things. To be heard, to be

listened to, perhaps makes what is being said change, perhaps for the better. And by

speaking and listening, I sought to use these singular/collective/collaborative voices to

make a film that did justice to life. Pursuing an appropriate process became the only way to

do this, as it is the process that connects what we believe, do, and are with what the

audience will see - the film itself. Thus, no matter the judgment of this work, ethically, we


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wrote our own story, our own history together making something real for us. Because it

was film, it was a choice among manipulations, a style; but the only way not to manipulate

is to not have any intention even if your intention remains honesty/life. And what is death

but an end of choices.

Documents

Aaron Wong - Graduate Thesis