PARIP 2003

NATIONAL CONFERENCE: 11-14 September

CONTRIBUTORS

FURNHAM: DAVID
lansdown centre for electronic arts
middlesex university
The Cinema of Comic Illusions

© David Furnham, 2003, Lansdown Centre for Electronic Arts, Middlesex University, d.furnham@mdx.ac.uk

ABSTRACT

A mixed-media presentation based on early cinema — its development, techniques, screening strategies, showmanship and the central role of comic absurdist films. The project explores the creative documentary genre when re-sited for the community — outside the confines of broadcast television — using new low cost technologies and echoing the processes and presentational methods of the film pioneers. It is an investigation into film form, questioning narrative concerns, hypothesizing the importance of beats within scenes and audio visual editing patterns. The project investigates the role of the 'historical' evidence and materials for a contemporary audience and how these are used within the production process to have novel and contemporary meaning for audiences today.

The project defines practice and theory as a two-way ongoing relationship for the writer / director. The project is for the wider community and the Academy and has gained from inputs from many different disciplines. The film maker can learn from and utilise ideas from other performance and subject disciplines. Knowledge gained at first hand creates speculation both within a subject and for the film medium. The project produces fresh insights into a subject and enquires into the importance of understanding where, how and why meaning is structured and layered within an audio visual medium and that this understanding is more complex than has been previously defined.

As such, the academic research by practice project is very different from professional practice. But it does involve professional discipline in project realisation and technical standards. My experience has been that cross fertilisation of ideas through practice and creative collaborations around the project theme is highly productive. In The Cinema of Comic Illusions input was received and enjoyed from many subject / archive specialists, a musician, actors, documentary participants, a fine artist or two, a dance choreographer, designers and a technical manager. Film makers need kit and budgets, an understanding context where we are valued and venues for our work within the Academy which may be more than a screen. Having a set of ideas is one thing, how they become expressed by using sounds and images is at the core of the project. The evaluation can be articulated to the Academy through articles and further presentations. But it also and importantly contributes to the energy of a department and professional relationships, and speaks to the wider community. There is a need for a constant flow both ways between theory and practice and the Academy and the world.

PRESENTATION

‘Disponibilité: availability — openness — readiness — acceptance: the precondition of creativity.

‘Disponibilité sums up in a single term the condition improvisors aspire to. It offers a way of describing an almost intangible and nearly undefinable state of being: having at one’s fingertips the capacity to do or say what is appropriate, and to have the confidence to make the choice.’ Frost and Yarrow: 1990:151.

The project consisted of two years’ subject research together with researching through practice solutions to the design and presentation of the project. This was followed by the making of a tape documenting the show as it was, creating a shorter more filmic version, and reflecting and writing of which this paper is a part.

The main presentation of outcomes took place at St. Ann’s Well Gardens for a period of four weeks during June and July 2003. The site being where film pioneer G. A. Smith had his film studio 1900-1903. There were 50 shows with an accompanying exhibition of archive artefacts, photographs and film screenings. The show lasted one hour twenty minutes. It consisted of telling the story of the growth of early cinema through performance, archive comic films and contemporary video. A key concern was that the contemporary video echoed the absurdity found in the archive films. The mixture of live performance and video provided the opportunity for interaction between performance on screen and in the Marquee amongst the audience. This strategy provided a special way for the audience (a) to engage with and understand the material and (b) to understand film as a construction since for a large part of the time sound (piano, sound effects, performance and narration) was separated physically from the image. When sound does play from the screen this enhanced the difference.

There are two main concerns the project set itself.

• To create an original script for community audiences outside of the Academy showing links between the early magician film makers through to the early French then American comics. The link provides insights into the growth of film making into an industry.
• To work through questions of the relationship between process, script, performance and spectator so as to have a particular effect upon the audience.

Background

The project is informed by a reaction to the discourse on the documentary genre. Much of the writing (1) is based on both an historical / technological development. This has lead to a variety of classification systems which always have difficulties in accounting for what might be the most interesting of the documentary output. One early pioneering analysis for example examined the journalist-led The World in Action series with its strong emphasis on narration creating an argument from the evidence offered and working towards a conclusion. Such analysis reveals much but has difficulty in accounting for alternative approaches. Carl Plantinga (2) has provided a more dynamic way of understanding the documentary genre. Plantinga offers concepts such as selection order, openings and closures as conceptual tools of analysis along with relating these concepts to overall considerations of style and voice. As Plantinga says:

It is most useful to think of nonfiction not in terms of unchanging or universal properties, but as a socially constructed category that is fluid and malleable; it changes with history. (1997 : 37)

But the theoretical discourse it seemed to me needed to address questions of the dynamic relationship of text, process and spectator. Each documentary made has a number of specific creative starting points — not least what effect the sound image patterns generated have upon the spectator. Questions of the qualities of performance and viewing condition will also have an effect upon the spectator.

The Hypothesis

The Documentary genre as experienced on television places the spectator in a subordinate position of consumer. The normative assumption is that in the competitive viewing state, the spectator, in order to keep viewing must be offered either a strong sensational story-line or positioned with a gaze of superiority upon observed participants. The challenge this project seeks to examine and test is to find alternative sound image patterns that might enable the creation of a more loitering attitude to the documentary genre, particular to me as a maker, but nevertheless transferable and maybe useful to others. As a starting point I drew on knowledge gained from my previous research PhD entitled Documentary Practice, by the subsequent research by practice project on Jacques Tati, Tati – A Chance to Whistle (3), and from ideas drawn from an interview I undertook on video with John Wright when discussing Physical Theatre. All point to the primacy of a certain kind of sound image patterns which values equally all sound image elements and to understanding script development as a dynamic process. All the ideas generated also pointed to the need to develop a greater understanding of performance and, possible ways of constructing the viewing situation. In this sense the project gives the opportunity to reflect on the documentary genre and its effect upon the spectator. How we communicate both fact and feeling and how we give space to the spectator to engage with the material are important ethical issues.

What began this questioning arose in the making of a documentary The Artist, the Farmer and the Landscape (4) as part of my PhD submission. When screening to Breton farmers and their wives, in a farm kitchen, people arrived late and the tape was restarted. Then someone stopped the tape and rewound to see someone they knew and people began to talk, sometimes there was laughter, sometimes a more serious register amongst the audience and the screening moved forward in this fashion. What was important was the appropriation of the tape by the spectators. They were less concerned with story as to ‘mulling over’ what they saw, high-lighting certain scenes, muttering agreement now and then on the sentiments expressed by the narrator who offered quotations from the writer André Gorz (5). They recognised themselves and their lives.

How knowledge is constructed and ‘mulled over’ was explored further in the exhibition Tati – A Chance to Whistle. Here visitors to the exhibition could view three documentaries and an interactive CD-ROM seated within ‘sets’ representing Tati’s first four feature films. The exhibition took place at the De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill. The unique 1930s art deco building with its seaside setting extended the Tati idea beyond the exhibition rooms and was enhanced by an actor playing Tati-esque characters interacting with the visitors. Both the documentaries and the exhibition design / layout created space for the spectator to engage with the material.

Such engagement acknowledges the relativity of knowledge. Bill Nichols notes in Representing Reality (6)

Who are we that we may know something? Of what does knowledge consist? What we know, and how we use the knowledge we have are matters of social and ideological significance. (1991:31)

In the Tati – A Chance to Whistle exhibition the spectator as visitor was free to roam the rooms with their tapes, artefacts, props from the original films, photographs, games and interactive CD-ROM to piece together an individual knowledge and understanding of Tati and his films.

The aim of The Cinema of Comic Illusions project is to explore the relationship between process, the outcome and the spectator more rigorously. There are many ways to understand early cinema — as entertainment, as social and cultural sets of rituals or as economic and political developments. There are also many ideas to register — on being absurd, obsession, chaos and movement, on being in control and controlling, the passion for creative invention and being a showman / film-maker, magic as appearance and disappearance, and, on time and how we use it. For me, Documentary has to react to this complexity. The final patterns of sound image construction will result from attitudes we develop about the multiplicity of what McKee (7) calls the controlling idea which for documentary seeking multiplicity and complexity is better expressed as a cluster of interrelated ideas or themes around a single main one.

My emerging definition of documentary is that this complexity is there for the spectator to surface each scene, each shot seeking out meanings and relationship as a as an end in itself. The story-like dialogue becomes another component of this activity but it is no longer dominant. Meaning is there to be picked-up, made sense of and related to the makers overall set of ideas — a game to play and enjoy. But there is also the point that some ideas ‘wash over’ the spectator — which adds a different but significant pleasure. These add to the overall impression of the show. Martin Esslin (8) makes the following points about the Theatre of the Absurd:

The audience may ask what is going to happen next? But anything may happen next, so that the answer to this question cannot be worked out according to the rules of ordinary probability based on motives and characterisations that will remain constant throughout the play. The relevant question here is not so much what is going to happen next but what is happening? (Esslin: 416).

And…

The total action of the play … gradually builds up the complex pattern of the poetic image. The spectator’s suspense consists in waiting for the gradual completion of this pattern which will enable him to see the image as a whole. And only when that image is assembled can the spectator begin to explore, not so much its meaning as its structure, texture and impact (Esslin: 416).

Whilst wanting to maintain a narrative the development of The Cinema of Comic Illusions script, rehearsals and performance can be imbued with these ideas. As Chion (9) says:

If we want to receive a message, we must not above all acknowledge it nor show we have picked it up, for when that happens, mysteriously enough — but that is how it is — communication breaks down (1987:146).

One way to communicate Chion argues is to continually chop up the elements, so the audience continues being involved in terms of working out the overall intent. This provides a modus operandi for the construction of The Cinema of Comic Illusions both regarding structure but also process and performance.

To more practical matters. The whole question of the quality of spectator engagement underpinned The Cinema of Comic Illusions. As all people associated with the period are dead the key resources are the films themselves together with other archive materials, biographies and an academic literature of the period and subject. This gave a special starting point since performance normally delivered as on screen broadcast enactment could be re-assessed for a mixed media presentation — both live in the Marquee and on the screen.

The literature was also helpful in a number of ways:

• Offering veracity to the narrative — the story of the development of the film industry and the importance of comic films in that development.
• In examining the presentational strategies of the early period — notably the role of presenter, sound effects and pianist
• In the attitude of early film-makers towards the creative use of technology for developing comic effects.

But there was a strong desire to include the absurdities of observed ‘Bexhill’ into a comparison with those of the films. Further capitalist growth then, which had disastrous consequences for the magician filmmakers, seemed as contradictory as the corporate world today with its specialised activities and language aiming for total efficiency (10). I wanted both perceptions to be placed within the emerging script. Other starting points came from the circumstances of screening — in a Marquee on the site of G. A. Smith’s first studio (11). It provided an ideal testing ground for my documentary ideas and attitudes to the film communication process.

Firstly, we, the makers and performers, were placed in the same set of circumstances as the pioneers. We had to give life and meaning to the films to an audience today — anyone who might arrive at the Marquee — and through using new low cost digital video technologies.

Secondly, the intimacy of the Marquee could help develop a special relationship between text, performance and the spectators. It would not be inappropriate to the context to think of the script rather like a music hall bill which would help the aim of not making the narrative the only consideration.

Thirdly, the ideas of circulation, displacement, interaction and constant performed movements between screen and within Marquee would be offer a key strategy both as a way of referencing historical presentational strategies but also as way of offering a constant stream of sounds and images for the spectator to choose from.

These were the starting points. The next issue is how the process can effect the outcome.

Process of Production

As a research project the project had the time to work through a range of subject material. Some of the shooting took place one year, six months and one month respectively in advance of the final presentation. Actors had an involvement in advance of this shooting contributing to the script ideas. I was viewing and assessing films alongside subject reading, visiting museum collections, discussions with specialists and the aforesaid shooting. I was as interested in objects like projectors, props or costumes and sound effect objects as story development as all these would effect the final outcome. This activity increased as I got nearer the final rehearsals and presentation. For the show I ended up with a finished tape with most of the sound track held in my head. This led to a daily reassessment / re-edit during the first week of the run to tighten pace and sharpen the juxtapositions of scenes.

The process of production was very dynamic. To allow for complexity everything is taken as a possibility for inclusion to be constantly assessed as more and more information and material becomes known and legally useable. Different kinds of knowledge, and permissions to use or not, are received over time and their evaluation interacts with each other. What gets included into the script changes during the whole of the project. This state of flux maybe disconcerting but not when you know that the controlling ideas centre on the absurd with a cluster of other considerations such as economic development, showmanship and technology. Getting off the professional ideal model with tight deadlines, schedules and role taking gives greater scope for the research to be intrinsic to the practice from start to finish.

A Way of Working All Subject Resources

The mode of developing the script was to create a democratic approach enabling and acknowledging specialist expertise and drawing upon that knowledge — often detailed knowledge — into the script. Potentially all knowledge is of interest. However the dis-regarding and selection of material rests on the narrative and its core underlying themes. But both of these — narrative and theme — only become fully known during the actual research. Furthermore final assessment of all materials rests on the effect each element is likely to have for the spectators.

Working with a limited number of people who are seen on more than one occasion became a valuable strategy. Academics who know of my interests can be trusted to point out the relevant (12). Curators with knowledge and enthusiasm for the collections were equally trusted (13). The brief is wide. Early cinema groups focus on technology, the cultural and social milieu of the period to include individuals, social setting as diverse as cabarets, fairgrounds and Town Halls. It includes antecedents that gave rise to the medium — pantomime, diorama performance and lantern culture. Of the many sources key items were selected that generated action and a feeling or atmosphere. For example, Reynaud’s Theatre Optique (14) was assessed important not only for its innovative technology but also for the quality of both image and sound accompaniment and its enchanting stories told.

Part of the research strategy was to investigate objects (archive and contemporary) which would add to the presence of absurdity. Costumes and props were as important to the research as seeking out the narrative. There were many inspired moments on the way. The Gaumont archivist helped find a specialist shop supplying waiters’ outfits. A well-known magician was visited several times and gave a direct understanding to the magician’s persona. Observations around Brighton linked to the actresses input developed the Mary Jane ‘modern’ character, whilst a visit to a mannikin shop gave unexpected and cheap solution to the Mary Jane body. These activities are happening one after another — it is a continual process of discovery. It is note-worthy that they interact with the script ideas and ideas being received from the actors, since as previously noted, some shooting and meetings happened a year before the actual event took place. The script came together through this process of osmosis but it needs the preparedness for this to happen and that within time everything is possible for a resolved script to emerge.

The performers contributed greatly to the research finding creative solutions from prepared starting points. This way of working linked to the shooting method of ‘let’s do it!’ produces the sort for acting style needed for the modern characters. ‘Lines of characterisation’ rather than ‘real’ characters — more ‘hyper real’ than real. The window cleaner and photographer are examples where they compare to the filmed observed public one way and to the charged absurd characters of the visiting Bexhill show people in the other. A few examples might get to the point.

Taking a dry text as source and shaping that into a performance becomes part of the research since it informs and has to sit within the whole. Working with actors Jonathan Cecil and Anna Sharkey reveals how the process functions for the search clarity of idea working within the eccentric line of characterisation. Jonathan playing the eccentric showman. Mélies speech is interesting but when contextualised around Anna as side-kick dancer and the improvised seedy seaside photographer becomes enchanting. Talking the original script through led to a tighter idea. When on location for the shoot, Anna now in costume built on the La Strada character creates an absurd dance to camera. Meanwhile Jonathan performs to the photographer in a madly eccentric way ands the scene concludes as the photographer walks off in disbelief leaving the union jack flying in the distance. A totally resolved scene created out of improvisation both working with the script and the actors in a kitchen and during the shooting. Kitchens are ‘warm’ places in so many ways!

On the same shoot out of necessity we were forced to find an instant solution to the finale scene. Looking towards the bandstand and the setting sun, replaying an old 78 record and with some rehearsal the actors developed ’the waiters dance’. This was totally in keeping to the original script but much simpler and more effective as a result. It would later be cut with observed contemporary ‘absurd’ footage. This approach became a way of working which had enormous effect upon the finished show. It instilled in the actors a way of working to which they were not accustomed which found resonance in the live performance one year later.

I have gone into some considerable detail because I think it important to show that process and attitudes towards performance and research impinge on the results in quite profound ways.

The Construction of the Script to produce simplicity and complexity

The key consideration in arriving at the script was to seek a balance of live performance, archive films and recorded contemporary film.

The structure was built around three parts: (1) Laying out the premise and engaging with some historical antecedents, (2) The magician / filmmaker period including the fairground showmen and (3) juxtaposing the absurdities of Bexhill with archive films. In this sense there was progression. Such an approach could allow for repetition and variation of ideas and define presentation strategies.

Performance could be viewed from differing trajectories. Firstly, the actor as the presenter / sound effects person linking to music accompaniment. Secondly, specific live re-invented performances. Thirdly from definite historical characterisation and fourthly from invented contemporary lines of characterisation. Of course the archive films provided another main source of performance.

The flow was consistent between screen and Marquee, and between changes to performance mode. This was achieved through the live narration.

The important point is that this strategy enabled both the history to be told with clarity whilst meeting the aim for complexity. Also the action of the films interacted with the actions of the actors. The spectator was lured into the screen action of the films whilst surrounded by live action. Choice of meaning was there in different ways as the show proceeded, as was the separation of sound from image which came and went throughout which had a powerful effect the audiences reaction. As the show entered the third part so the audience had to work more with the unexpected relationships between ‘the then’ and ‘the now.’

Two examples illustrate the effect. Firstly the movement through the Magician scenes (see: Vectors of Movement below), and secondly an analysis of movement between Bexhill scenes, early cinema and live action (see: Juxtaposition of then and now below). But first it is worth noting the idea improvisation, which brings a quality to the performance and script.

Improvisation

The Cinema of Comic Illusions has involved improvisation — see Frost and Yarrow in Improvisation in Drama. Improvisation in the research process, improvisation in developing the script and through performance. It applies to the researcher / maker, the artist (in this case actors and pianist), the documentary ‘found’ and recorded actions and to the spectator.

Two relevant concepts belonging to improvisation are: free association and re-incorporation, developed by Keith Johnstone and discussed by Frost and Yarrow (15) as.

It (free association) means ‘going with whatever has been offered ‘ and again ‘letting one idea generate without to force it into shape: without trying to make it mean something (it undoubtedly will mean something)…. Free association takes care of invention and development.’

Reincorporation concentrates on structure … the idea of reincorporation means ‘ making use of what has already been introduced’.

‘The improviser has to be like a man walking backwards. He sees where he has been, but pays no attention to the future. His story can take him anywhere, but he must still ‘balance’ it, and give it shape, by remembering incidents that have been shelved and reincorporating them’.

At the level of spectator response the spectators congratulate themselves that they understood the reincorporation. Ah! Now it makes sense! Which is followed by What will happen next? (135)

Such definitions of improvisation seem to me to apply across all aspects of the project. The script develops out of this sense of openness, the performance does so directly as to the way the audience are placed to work out the structural juxtapositions. Often meaning has been changed by accident. The meetings with the magician, the Pere Lachaise became important, the finding of a type of mannikin changed scene possibilities. Openness in The Cinema of Comic Illusions compliments the closed nature of narrative.

Vectors of Movement

In Tati — A Chance to Whistle I had created vectors both within the documentary tape of the same name and for the spectator who could circulate at will through the exhibition galleries and sets. In The Cinema of Comic Illusions the spectator could move from an exhibition space directly into the theatre area where the actors constantly changed character and moved physically between screen and Marquee and around the Marquee. In this way I aimed to create a total world for the spectator who had to make sense of the juxtapositions created within the screen scenes and their relationship with the performance in the Marquee. Accordingly everything was in a state of flux. It would make possible the realisation of the complex pattern referred to earlier of the establishment of ‘ the poetic image’.

Two differing examples mark this condition. In the first, we begin with the actress and actor as characters Mr and Mrs Smith the early film pioneer, at the podium, as they watch their own films and talk enthusiastically about their times in the Park (using sources local newspapers / advertisements for their shows). They leave walking in front of the screen as Smith’s last film Mary Jane’s Mishap is playing. All the time there is piano accompaniment. The film ends as Mary Jane is blown up into the air in bits which is not the finish of the original film. The Smith screen transforms into a modern day version of Mary Jane. Mary Jane descends as a visual effect and as the voice over says: ‘Mary Jane descends - the modern Ms of Kensington Gardens’. Here the three actors emerge carrying Mary Jane’s body parts. The actors are in white overalls. The two male actors assemble the parts, allowing the actress to hide behind them and so reappear in the same costume as Mary Jane’s body parts — complete and alive. This is a re-invention and inversion of black art magic. But now all things are white — the screen and costumes. The action has been played as humorous since the actors are by no means invisible and the dialogue acknowledges this fact. Hence we have established — an echo of the original humour of the film, tied the past to the now, and moved from screen to ‘stage’, and located and extended the meaning of cinema from tone of its antecedents — the black art magic of theatrical presentation.

But the flow of consequence does not stop there. Mary Jane as modern miss goes to the local laundrette only to be blown up a second time one hundred years after the original film was released. The question is where next and why? The answer is Pére Lachaise Cemetery on screen and the actress re-appearing as eccentric cemetery guide placing the audience as her party of visitors. The character was derived from a guide I originally met in a Moscow museum. Redefined for Paris by the actress — she became a guide without self pity who, with fox wrap, commanded the attention of the audience with her sad / humour and intensity of vision. A continuous flow between screen and audience ensues as what the guide says ‘magically’ (i.e. the actress doesn’t refer to the screen but nevertheless knows where she is located and makes comments to that effect).

For both the films and live performance the eccentric behaviour is consistently drawn and registered. The scene can be enlarged upon since the reason for being there is to view two graves, namely Robertson and Méliès. Robertson’s early lantern work can be explored both through archive photographs depicting his original set up which can be added to by dint of the actors falling to their knees as incantation of the past. The second actor emerges frightening a member of audience which causes laughter because of the surprise and use of close up sound. This is a cue to go to Roy Hudd as Roberston’s Ghost on screen. Modern post-production techniques were used to make Hudd move through the graves of the cemetery before being seen as music hall ghost with Pére Lachaise as back-cloth and then by using a kaleidoscope effect within Avid 3.5 to create a humorous interpretation of the well known actor as disembodied.

The result is that the spectator’s have been placed in the state of not knowing what is coming next, in the situation of having to engage with and follow both the substance of the material, its visualisation and be open to receive the differing moods and images on offer.Juxtaposition of then and now

In the third part of the show I unexpectedly cut to ‘Bexhill’ and the arrival of the eccentric show couple (Jonathan Cecil and Anna Sharkey) who visit the De La Warr Pavilion with the smallest cinema show. This affords the cutting of films from ‘their’ show with characters drawn from previously recorded documentary images and from previous observations testing what I call Tati’s lines of characterisation. These are easily recognised people marked by their special actions.

The first cut to Bexhill marks an act of faith for the audience that all will be well in this virtual world. The dialogue heard clearly but coming from a Smartcar interior seen in long shot softens the leap. The order of scenes is certainly not what might be anticipated. The couple sing two verses from a bizarre early Fields film which is placed over the window cleaner (already known to us from being seen earlier on screen and in the Marquee). This is followed by a sequence of observed images of Sunday morning at Bexhill — each image chosen to depict eccentricity including a child taking her first steps, unknown actors rehearsing something, an old man in a deckchair etc. warm images not without a gentle humour and eccentric state. Meaning has deviated somewhat but hopefully has increased the spectator’s sense of the absurd. Having set up the location for the small cinema and introduced the waiters who were first seen live welcoming the audience to the Marquee, the structure can now accommodate eccentrics who come into contact with the show people. The conversations each have with them refer to historical moments or provide an audience for the show people’s cinema which also becomes the films for our audience in the Marquee. In this way the film locates differing acting styles. There are:

(a) The gestures, movements and looks of observed people

(b) The lines of characterisation, for example of the window-cleaner, Bexhill Man and the waiters

(c) The eccentric performances with their lived in feeling from the show people including that of Roy Hudd

(d) The actors live in the Marquee as presenters and characters

(e) The performance emanating from the archive films.

Each style blending one with the other which enriches the vectors of movement within the screen and within the Marquee.

There are times when the actions and scenes developed on location at Bexhill stand as comparison to events portrayed in the films and through narration. The first is when the narration set against archive photographs and Linder’s film accounting for his own entry into the industry is cut with the show woman’s activities with the life skills class. This takes place in front of mirrors. The dialogue is an improvisation from an article on power coaching techniques. The second example is when a photographer arrives with councillors who have saved the arts which leads into the photographer meeting the eccentric showman who rants on quoting Méliès speech of 1909. Politics now set against politics then.

In both cases it is for the spectator to feel each scene’s texture and contemplate the scene structure and value its impact since no explanation for the juxtaposition is given

The Opening and Final Resolution

Openings and closings are important considerations for the documentary genre. How you start informs all responses and how you bring the tape to a close having held on to the idea of complexity gives that final resonance of satisfaction for the audience.

The opening of The Cinema of Comic Illusions was concerned with drawing the audience into the show. It started with the actors as waiters greeting the audience in the exhibition area then leading then into the seating area. The waiters amused the audience walking around them and engaging them in simple illusions and singing an appropriate period song. The waiters transformed themselves in front of the audience into presenters.

The closure was more complicated. It begins after the spectacle of the live dance of La Pia. The show people befriend at last the window cleaner who reveals himself to them to be a know-all, something we already knew. We next see a Laurel and Hardy gag which leads into the waiters eccentric dance set to an old tune played on a wind-up gramophone which is super-imposed upon the ceiling of the bandstand where the waiters are seen dancing. Inter-cut are shots of masked performers who happened to be in Bexhill — a state of total absurdity is created and is followed by characters leaving the De La Warr Pavilion on screen. First Bexhill man who hiccups from having too many brandies. As he leaves with bike so the actors come into the Marquee still dancing their waiters dance we have just seen. The show couple leave and wave goodbye and the waiters now at the podium wave back. The world of eccentricity is almost complete, leaving final space to acknowledge that Chaplin observed and interpreted life with his mother’s help. Then to a final extract of Laurel and Hardy seen as both baby-sitters and children. The ending fulfils the mission — absurdity then and now, and, on and off screen as the actors in waiter’s costume enter live dancing. Finally the actors take their bow live leaving themselves on screen as a final image waving to us as they go into the distance on the Volk’s railway Brighton.

Understanding Comic Performance

The films researched or used in The Cinema of Comic Illusions offer ways of thinking about technology, film narrative and film performance.

The films researched fell into several types: the magician’s trick film, the chase, the parody and the totally absurd.

They all used technological effects creatively. That is to say, the effect used gave substance to the story idea or situation. In M. Smith Fait L’Overature for example, the jump cut revolves around insanity as a huntsman sees and shoots hares everywhere. The crescendo to the film is when he shoots dead three people thinking they are hares. The only solution as the inter-title declares is suicide. Unfortunately the man does so and with water pouring out of the many knife holes he learns that he in actual fact killed three robbers and was being praised by the police. The absurd is taken to a dark conclusion in 1914.

The films also show the property of action. In the dialogue culture of narrative film meaning in these films is generated within the action and brought to the attention of the spectator by use of the narrator or sound effect. In his essay, Wasted Words (Chion, Chapter 5), Chion makes the point:

The world is in motion and in chiaroscuro. We always see one side of things, always moving, always changing. And our attention is also in chiaroscuro. It comes and goes from one object to another, and focuses successively on the details and on the whole. (page 104)

Speech in the silent chase film is the least important item. We may happen to see people’s mouths say an expletive on screen but the chase film demonstrates the power of Chion’s implied cinema — a cinema of action and chaos. The Pumpkin Race is a good example. In the film pumpkins run away from their cart and in the ensuing chase by the owner, onlookers and an unfortunate donkey, the pumpkins run people over in the street, move against gravity up hills, jump over fencing, visit a bourgeois house then the sewers. Finally the pumpkins come to rest back on the cart from which they strayed. In the mad dash through time nothing has happened! A remarkable absurd film animated not only by film effects but also by the quality of piano playing brought to bear upon the piece. The variation of the social situations chosen, the improbability of the actions and the depiction of a world of perpetual motion without meaning produce a result which is truly remarkable.

Calino Fireman, takes the same situation of chase but replaces stop frame / jump cut with slow and fast motion. The result gives far more scope to isolate sounds through both presenters speech and sound effects. Both in rehearsal and during the show different ideas where explored. What became clear was the most satisfactory result came when the use of the minimum of dialogue balanced with the correct sound effects so that the spectator was given freedom to roam the image but also freedom to make connections on screen to what was being said off screen, plus musical interpretation plus spot sound effects — in this case a bugle being blown. The perfect example of the power of cinema — a rich and meaningful orchestration of beats and spaces which gives full involvement by the spectator.

The point is explored by Chion. In discussing Tati’s use of sound he notes that Tati is not wanting the sound of for example a bell that reverberates through space.

Tati hooks sound onto things, restricting it to the little bit of cause and effect it may have. He confines sound to its little bit of place. Sound in a Tati film is material and materialistic, nonetheless it does not ‘express’ the particular substances of things.

And here is the point:

Sound reveals a world where everything is reduced to one matter alone: the matter. (Chion: Jacques Tati: 129)

The solution of sound effects applied to Calino’s Fireman fully realise this statement. The sound of the bugle created by the actor is specific to the action — one of the many — whilst the two dialogues add to the film in differing ways. Firstly, one relates to a specific character. The speech is very audible — ‘Hey lad, I think you have the wrong house’. It is something that relates to the speech seen but not heard on screen. The other dialogue refers to the interpretation of and an anticipation of the action. The female presenter says: ‘faster, faster’. It is less audible than the previous dialogue playing against the fast pace of the music. Yet adds to the piece precisely because of this. A layering of what Chion calls ‘emination speech’ bringing home the sense of chaos seen on screen echoing that not all speech would be heard distinctly given the blustering of the fireman.

One film stands out as exceptional example of performance as action — a series of looks and gestures and body movements — the Big Boots Act by Little Tich. This ‘eccentric’ comic genius performed in Paris and London for over forty years. The film in question sums up the essence of what a film scene is. It also gives us insight into documentary character. Character is not ‘real’ — exact, rather a line of characterisation which is distinct and unusual. It is the capturing of the sigh capturing past moments lived, the moment of a mischievous grin flowing effortlessly into the camera or the glint of laughter multiplying meaning within a few frames and in much less than a second.

In The Cinema of Comic Illusions the film plays against the piano accompaniment. What is interesting is the subtlety of relationship which emerged between the two. Tich’s actions provided a complete story told through his body movements and facial gestures. Every second counts, every movement perfected so that we enter his state of well being which concludes as he becomes at one with his big boots dancing and when he stands up with them on his hat tamed and where it should be — on his head. He is now seven foot tall and feeling good and so are we. I say we since his looks to us beyond camera make the film as alive as it was then. The music has to deal sympathetically with different timings and moods and with spot moments and changes. When music illuminates in this way come together the effect is to spellbind all the audience.

Applied more generally we can begin to appreciate the individuality of creative endeavour using a time based medium leading to solutions which work at the level of a clearly defined idea being applied through a succession of moments, what might be termed beats, and spaces — the time between beats. This approach gives equal importance to the variety of sounds available, a processing of image through the latest technology. It also places location and prop as essential to the creative desire to focus on action. It is the location and prop that will play an essential part in defining the beats (moments of meaning), together with giving overall effect of mood.

The Viewing Context / Spectator Reactions

The Marquee in a Park is a leap into the unknown as to who will actually form the audience. I attended most performances as part of the research in observing and understanding people’s reactions.

A wide variety of people came to the event. There were school children, children with special needs, a local drama group, the eccentric, the middle class, young people and older people plus many with a special interest — people from cinema history, magicians, Lantern Society members, academics and museum curators.

There were two reactions noted to the show. One was an intense viewing — an act of concentration. The second was a freer reaction with much laughter and spontaneous applause. Both were valid. The reaction as noted in a comment book was in total praise of the event. The kind of statements taken with the observed reaction indicated that audiences did receive what was intended. They often referred to how much they learnt and how much they enjoyed the experience.

My own observation was how successfully the idea of three dimensionality worked. The idea of continuous character change did not cause frustration nor confusion but did have the desired effect of offering complexity.

The second consequence, the effect of separating sound and image, did demonstrate the power of cinema and that it is a construction to the audience. This was realised by having the piano on the opposite side to the presenters’ podium.

Thirdly, the circulation idea so that the whole on screen and off screen as a public space did register.

Fourthly, the way the films interacted with the presenters’ dialogue, the generated sound effects and the piano accompaniment all add to the magic of the show. Comments received pointed that many were incredulous as to how all the sounds ‘fitted’ the actions’.

In dividing the elements into distinct islands — the mesmerist's act, the La Pia Dance, the modern Mary Jane sketch etc. — I was putting into practice the idea expounded by Chion when discussing audience for Tati’s films.

In Tati films, a certain chopping up of elements always aims at preventing the break in communication.

Tati likes subgroups within his audience:

That way there are fewer chances that a too general reaction from the public will come and break the communication.

These are important ideas in creating work for spectator’s with differing reasons for walking into a Marquee.

The Use of Video Technology

Video gives the same sort of opportunities for us today as film technology did one hundred years ago. Placed in the same situation of working with new technology I was free to play outside of my previous experience, holding attitudes previously held in suspension. It was a novel and liberating experience. First to go, any thoughts of holding back on the use of effects. Why not, the film pioneers after all tried everything they could think of. Transition effects, re-colouring, re-sizing, pictures in pictures, special effects were all used and added to expression of the themes.

Low-cost technology offering a quality novel result inside the Marquee and for a social end is a satisfying undertaking. It provides a whole way forward for video — social site-specific installations for the creative use of sound and images. New collaborations and cross over of ideas which draw on and combine many disciplines!

Conclusion

The films of the early period inform screen performance in a way more profound than at first seems apparent. What they offer is that innocent state of documentary believability. In the long shot held uncut for sometimes in excess of two minutes the characters untutored often are seen to act, over-act for the screen and look outwards beyond the camera to us today.

The project explored creative solutions based on ideas developed within the writings of Esslin, Plantinga, Chion and others and an infusion and incorporation ideas generated by my own work. What has emerged is a clearer theoretical plan, underpinned by a phenomenological set of ideas, and, a way to developing new theorised work. Concepts and models have come together to influence the work as process, as text (the script), as performance (the show) and as context for the spectators relationship with the whole (the communication). And it an ongoing exploration.

Theory and practice come together through the specificity of the project yet the results and new insights suggest a more generalised proposition. One film theory has influenced professional practice for over a decade and that has been an examination of structure of scriptwriting as three act structures. But this project points to other directions, more tangible, and to me more relevant and immediate to expressive individual work happening on media practice courses. It is a concern at one level with detail and linking this concern with the overall themes, with imaginative presentational contexts and with the effect the work has upon the spectator.

This approach has raised questions for me about how and what we teach on film practice programmes. It suggests much more connectivity with other disciplines. Films from my starting points are seen as having a multiplicity of equal choices between sounds and images requiring answers across a spectrum of creative decision-making. These not only encompass the maker’s vision but also demand for a multitude of creative and intellectual inputs. In the case of The Cinema of Comic Illusions expertise ranged from image processing to performance, from music, magic and dance to subject specialists from the humanities and technology. But these elements essential to film making currently exist as separate areas and disciplines within the Academy. It seems imperative to me to find institutional structures like labs so students and researchers alike can create new debates and new creative media artefacts. One can begin to perceive the opportunities for developing work which relates creative endeavour going even closer to the intended audiences, of exploring further the path of thought which finds new presentational ways of locating those fragmentary fleeting sound moments where meaning is generated and of investigating screen performance further.

Moving outside the broadcast arena, maintaining professional ways of working but not the context and exploring ideas from other areas of performance gives many opportunities for the creative documentary genre to find new ways and new combinations to communicate the complex world of daily existence. The technology has arrived so to do.

Notes

1. See for example, in addition to those specified below: Renov, Michael, Theorizing Documentary, Routledge, London, 1993. Bruzzi, Stella, New Documentary: A Critical Introduction, Routledge, London 2000.

2. Planting, Carl R., Rhetoric Representation in Nonfiction Film, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997.

3. The three documentaries from the Exhibition are: Tati – A Chance to Whistle (rt: 49 minutes), Sand Between the Toes (rt: 18 minutes) and Tales from St. Severe (rt: 18 minutes). There is also an interactive CD-ROM. They include interviews with Sophie Tatischeff, André Pierdel and Michel Chion.

4. The documentary is entitled The Farmer, the Artist and the Landscape, (rt:40 minutes). There are both French and English versions.

5. Gorz, Andre, Critique of Economic Reason, Verso, London, 1987.

6. Nichols, Bill, Representing Reality, Issues and Concepts of Documentary, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1991.

7. McKee, Robert, Story, Methuen, London, 1998.

8. Esslin, Martin, The Theatre of the Absurd, Penquin Books, Harmonsworth, 1984.

9. Chion, Michel, Jacques Tati, Cahiers de Cinema, Paris, 1989.

10. Altman, Rick, Sound Theory Sound Practice, See: Chapter 5: Wasted Words, Michel Chion, Routledge London1992.

11. G. A. Smith married Laura Bailey (actress). They leased St. Ann’s Well

12. Gardens, Hove as a pleasure Garden. Later it became the site of his film studio.

13. For example, Theatre and film historians David Cheshire and Professor Roy Armes.

14. For example, Gaumont Film Archive, The Fairground Archive, the Cinema Projection Trust

15. See replica of Reyaud’s Theatre Optique in Museo Nationale Del Cinema, Turin, Italy.

16. Frost Anthony, and Yarrow, Ralph, Improvisation In Theatre.

Selected Bibliography for The Cinema of Comic Illusions

Abel, Richard, The Ciné Goes to Town – French Cinema 1896-1914, University of California Press, London, 1994.

Barnes, John, The Beginnings of The Cinema in England 1894-1901. Volumes 1-5, University of Exeter Press, Exeter, 1997.

Barnouw, Eric, The Magician and The Cinema, Oxford University Press, New York, 1981

Chion, Michel, Jacques Tati, Cahiers du Cinema, Paris 1987.

Chion, Michel, Audio-Visual: Sound on Screen, Columbia University Press, New York, 1994.

Devant, David, My Magic Life, Hutchinson,1931.

Gaudreault, André and Lacasse, Germain (eds), Iris, A Journal of Theory on Image and Sound, The Moving Picture Lecturer Periodical, No 22, Autumn 1996.

Gordon, Rae Beth, Why the French Love Jerry Lewis, From Cabaret to Early Cinema, Stamford University Press, Stamford, 2001.

Hertz, Carl, A Modern Mystery Merchant: The Trial, Tricks and Travels of Carl Hertz, The Famous American Illusionist, Hutchinson, 1924.

Hopkins, Albert A. (ed) Magic Stage Illusions, Special Effects and Trick Photography, Dover Publications Inc., New York, 1976.

D’Hughes, Philippe and Muller, Dominique, Gaumont – 90 Ans de Cinema, Editions Ramsay, Paris, 1986.

Low, Rachel and Manvell, Roger, The History of the British Film, 1896-1906, Allin and Unwin, London, 1973.

Mannoni, Laurent, The Great Art of Light and Shadow – Archaeology of the Cinema, University of Exeter Press, 2000.

Pathé, Premier Empire du Cinema, Editions Centre Goerge Pompidou, Paris, 1994.

Robinson, David, Chaplin – His Life and Art, Collins, London, 1985.

Toulet, Emmanuelle, Birth of the Motion Picture, Harry N. Abrams Inc. Publishers, New York, 1995.

Selected Films for The Cinema of Comic Illusions

Gaumont Film Archive

Le Bon Invalides et Les Enfants

L’Agent A Le Bras Long

Onesime Horloger

Onesime Champion de Boxe.

Onesime et L’Edudiante

Calino S’endurait La Figure

Les Locataires D’A Coté

Pathe Archive

Les Debuts de Max Linder au Cinematographe

Calino’s Fireman

Mister Smith Fait L’ouverture

Max Hypotisé

Max Illusioniste

Little Tich

La Course Aux Potirons

BFI Collections

Mary Jane’s Mishap

Hanging Out the Washing

Serpentine Dances

Gentlemen of Nerve

Brats

David Furnham Archive

An Acre of Seats in A Garden of Dreams

REPORT