Written Response to Artist Screening (Nex)

The first video I watched was Mulholland Drive Dinner Scene, and I thought this was a really interesting way to shoot and frame this. I watch a lot of horror and thriller movies so I'm used to the way that directors tend to build suspense in their shots. When the character was talking about his dream he was looking over the shoulder of the other man. When the camera cut back to him it hovered over the other man's shoulder slightly as if there was something to be seen in the peripheral of the shot. That the character was seeing something that we couldn't. I also noticed that they never did a shot that contained both of them sitting at the table from an outside point of view. They were always separated by the framing up until the end. One of my favorite shots in this scene was the tilt down to the unfinished food on the table driving home the fact that something is very wrong. 

Personally, from a narrative point of view, I would have preferred if the person behind the diner was faceless. Because the man with the dream put such emphasis on his face, I think it would have been a lot more visually impactful if we didn't see that face maybe the shot was cut off at his shoulders, or it was a silhouette. 

I also watched both the Tenenbaums and Coen Brothers videographic essays. I watch a lot of videos like this in my free time and I found these really interesting. In the Tenenbaums video, the in-depth analysis of the framing of the shot was really interesting from the eye line to physical things in their environment that separated the characters. Coen Brothers Lydia was also very interesting to me because I completely agree that shock like that should be taken from within the conversation. It becomes a lot more personal and invasive to be put in that position. It's a lot like the difference between limited third-person and first-person perspectives in writing. 

I love listening to two people breaking down art and creators talking about their process. My favorite podcast right now has a show where they talk about how they thought of ideas for the episode and what they're thinking in the future. It's really interesting, and I'm blowing through it just as fast as I went through the main podcast.