Landscape: made of 0's and 1's?

This post follows up my new hub post in which I articulate 3 new areas of exploration, with this post focusing on how the analogy of landscape might be applicable in the digital context.

My classmate, Ben, and my professor, Dr. Burton, commented on my new hub post with the appropriateness of "landscape" as an analogy, and suggested another film term to consider: Mise-en-scene.

The appropriateness of "mise-en-scene"

"Mise-en-scene" has been called film's "grand undefined term," because of different opinions about its scope, but a quick, narrow definition of mise-en-scene follows: "everything that appears before the camera and its arrangement - set, props, actors, costumes, lighting." In other words, in its narrow definition, it refers to things that are arranged by the film-maker, to give a certain mood, tone, or look to a scene.

Dr. Burton suggested the appropriateness of "mise-en scene" for the digital realm because it is "artificially composed." I like that, but I have a few things to say about landscape that might still justify the comparison.

The appropriateness of "landscape"

According to Martin Lefebvre, "landscape" can be contrasted to "nature" in the sense that it is man's "interaction with nature and environment that produces the landscape." In other words, the "landscape view" is one that directs an intentional gaze at nature, transforming it at least in part by the very eyes that behold it.

So how could "landscape" still be more useful than "mise-en-scene" as an analogy? Mise-en-scene implies that a film-maker put things in the frame for a specific purpose, whereas having a "landscape view" considers a broad vista which is much larger than oneself, and transforms it by looking at it in a certain way. Despite the artificiality of the internet, for instance, it was certainly not created by Al Gore nor any other single person, or even by a finite group of people. For any individual considering the scope and complexity of the data streams coursing through servers and individual computers, the internet may as well be a thing as vast, sublime (see my classmates Andrew, Chris and Katherine's thoughts on the sublime in new media) and removed from a single individual's influence as "nature." But, a single individual can choose to consider the complexity of the internet in a certain way - to begin to organize it conceptually by applying the "landscape gaze" to it - which is what search engines and other data organizers do.

Another way of thinking about a way that the internet may be considered using the "landscape view" is that the internet, by definition, connects information that would otherwise sit isolated in a location somewhere. But by applying an intentional "view" of connectedness, the internet transformed all of that isolated information into a broad vista of information, and provided tools with which to craft it into forms useful for mankind, much as "landscape" does with "nature."

Tom Gunning: Setting me straight

My "Writing About Literature" professor, Dr. Burton, asked that we extend our research process beyond our own isolated bubble, so that we could better take part in a larger conversation about our research topics, and learn to make connections that will allow us to grow through collaboration. So, I decided to send an e-mail to the superstar of silent film scholarship, Tom Gunning.

Tom Gunning is the Chair for the Department of Cinema and Media Studies at The University of Chicago, and is "famous" for creating a new way of looking at pre-feature silent films, which he terms "the cinema of attractions." The following is an excerpt from his Bio on UChicago's faculty page (along with a great Bio pic):

His published work (approximately one hundred publications) has concentrated on early cinema (from its origins to the WW I) as well as on the culture of modernity from which cinema arose (relating it to still photography, stage melodrama, magic lantern shows, as well as wider cultural concerns such as the tracking of criminals, the World Expositions, and Spiritualism). His concept of the "cinema of attractions" has tried to relate the development of cinema to other forces than storytelling, such as new experiences of space and time in modernity, and an emerging modern visual culture.

I decided to send Dr. Gunning an e-mail with a question that I had been researching but could not find an answer for. Here is the e-mail:

Dr. Gunning,

I am a double Film and English Major at Brigham Young University. I don't presume that you respond to e-mails from anonymous students; but as I'm working on a project in your area of expertise, I finally decided that it was worth giving it a shot.

I have spent some time following the work you have done, especially in early silent film. About a year ago I found Martin Lefebvre's volume "Landscape and Film," which you contributed to, and have since learned about your work with what you term the "cinema of attractions." It was an exciting experience to realize that there is still a fairly current and evolving discussion about film, even in its classic stage, and it is a dream of mine to contribute to it myself.

My specific interest is in landscape and film, and I know that you have spent time looking at D.W. Griffith and landscape in particular. I am currently revising a paper I hope to find publication for about Victor Sjostrom and the "landscape view," as I was sharply struck by Sjostrom's use of landscape (seascape) in Terje Vigen (A Man There Was - 1917), and The Outlaw and his Wife(1918). I am formulating a paper that suggests that these two films of Sjostrom's may form a model that we might benefit from today.

One specific question I have is whether Sjostrom was diverging from common practice by shooting such striking, poignant scenes out in nature, as opposed to in the studio. I have extrapolated that most producers would choose to shoot big-budget films on a set in a studio because it would be cheaper than moving a whole film crew to a natural location...and that the studio system was really coming into its own during just this period...but have not found definitive proof for this in the research that I have conducted.

Whether you find the opportunity to respond to this e-mail or not, I wanted to express my admiration for the work that you have done.

Best,

Neal Call

About an hour later, I realized that I'd made a mistake in my e-mail (aw suck!), and sent Dr. Gunning a second e-mail apologizing:

As I was looking at Martin Lefebvre's book again, I realized that it was Jean Mottet who wrote an article about landscape in D.W. Griffith. It doesn't alter my interest in your work, but I apologize for misrepresenting. I just knew that you had done work with the early American film and D.W. Griffith.

Despite my silly mistake, Dr. Gunning responded almost immediately with an answer that probably saved me 5-10 extra hours of research trying to find evidence for something that didn't exist (and I'd spent that much time already trying to find it). Here is his response e-mail:

Dear Neal

A quick answer. In the teens when Sjostrom was working, shooting in a big studio for landscape scenes was not necessarily cheaper, so it was not unusual for directors of the teens to shoot landscape scene sin nature (Griffith, prodcuer Tomas Ince and the various directors who worked under him) Maurice Tourneur, all did great work in landscapes, However I would agree Sjostrom was perhaps more powerful than any of the others, not because he was the only one shoorting in landscape, but because he has such an extraordinary sense of the way environment interpenetrated his character and his narrative. Outlaw is perhaps the masterpiece in this regard, but most of his films show this great sensibility. It may partly be a cultural sensibility, since I feel the strongest rival to his talent in this regard is his fellow Swede Maurice Stiller, especially Song of the Scarlet Flower and (available on DVD) Sir Arne's Treasure I have an essay on Sjostorm, but it is not on one of his landscape films: “‘A Dangerous Pledge’: Victor Sjöström’s Unknown Masterpiece Mästerman” in Nordic Explorations: Film Before 1930 ed. John Fullerton and Jan Olsson (Sydney: John Libbey and Co., 1999).

yours

Tom Gunning

And Dr. Gunning's response to my flub of attributing his work:

Dear Neal

I did wonder, but if you look at my Griffith book you will find pleanty on Landscape...

yours

TRG

You'll note that Dr. Gunning directly refutes much of what I wrote in my second post on landscape in film, but I am overjoyed that he did, because I knew that I was making a leap without enough proof. Now I can revise it to make it accurate. Even better, though, was that he corroborated my sense that Sjostrom did something special that other film-makers were not doing - he in essence justified my paper, even if he offered a concrete counter to a sub-argument. All things considered, it was an excellent exchange, and if I can come up with another good, concise question to ask, I hope Dr. Gunning might offer me another pearl or two.

Landscape in Film: Where'd it come from?

This is the second post in series about landscape and film, through the lens of early silent films by Victor Sjostrom. Click here for the Head Post.

The first 20 years in the life of the motion picture marked fascinating developments from a “cinema of attractions” to narrative films. Tom Gunning posits that the “cinema of attractions” dominated the cinema until about 1906-7, and that it was an “exhibitionist cinema,” as opposed to the “voyeuristic aspect of narrative cinema” (56). With the “cinema of attractions” came travel films, such as those put on by Hales Tours in the first few years of the 1900s, the “largest chain of theatres exclusively showing films before 1906" (Gunning 58). Natural locations, in these early films, were a popular subject. They were not just films statically showing nature, as we would imagine in landscape paintings; they were often moving films, filmed from trains, mimicking a sense of “travel” that was extremely popular (Gunning 58). For the example of one of Thomas Edison's films on a train from 1900, see my "Head" post.

As narrative films came into their own, nature took a backseat to story. More and more films were shot in studios to take advantage of lower shooting costs and greater control. In 1915, when D.W. Griffith released Birth of a Nation, the narrative reached dominance with the feature film. Thereafter, features ruled the screen.

On the other side of the ocean in Sweden, Victor Sjostrom made films during the same exciting period. He cut his teeth on fairly uninspired films during the early teens, but like D.W Griffith, made the most of his developing powers as filmmaker in the later teens, crafting magnificent, singular feature films. Where nature took a dominant position in some of the earlier “attraction” films, it was demoted in many later narratives; Sjostrom promoted it again in his great work Terje Vigen, which also laid the groundwork for The Outlaw and His Wife, which would follow shortly.

To understand Sjostrom’s movement towards his masterpieces (Terje Vigen specifically anticipating others such as The Outlaw and His Wife, the Girl from Marsh Croft, etc.) in the late 1910s, we should first consider the filmic traditions from which he was building. The Lumieres showed their first films to a paying audience in 1895, while the first moving images shown in Scandinavia were in Norway’s capital in April of 1896. For the first few years, most of the films shown in Scandinavia were English and French films (Iversen 94). As much as anything, audiences came simply to see an exciting new technology; Gunning describes the technology itself as an “attraction,” independent of any film shown (58). After a few years, certain types of films developed greater popularity than others and these films formed what Gunning has called the “cinema of attractions” (57). Before native Scandinavians were producing films, foreign filmmakers employed by such companies as Hales Tours had descended on the Scandinavian fjords and mountains to make travel films, primarily for foreign audiences (Sorenssen 103). There was an early sense that the Scandinavian landscape held a special spirit about it, and so-called “Norway films” remained popular into the 1920s and 1930s even as other films of the “cinema of attractions” era faded away (Sorenssen 104).

The travel films offered the most significant group of films that incorporated nature as something for its own sake, independent of any other on-screen action. Earlier films by such filmmakers as the Lumieres had natural elements; we should think particularly of A Boat Leaving Harbour, as its depiction of the men struggling on the sea is later echoed in other Scandinavian films, specifically Strosjom’s Terje Vigen. The sea, for Sjostrom, would be a recurring and deeply personal subject. We can see a similar subject matter in the first Norwegian feature film produced between 1906-1908, entitled Dangers of a Fisherman’s Life – An Ocean Drama, a one-reeler in which a fisherman’s son falls overboard and is lost. This film is significant both in theme and because its photographer, Julius Jaenzon, later became the “master photographer” for both Victor Sjostrom and Mauritz Stiller (Iversen 95). Yet the primary purpose of both of these single-reel films was to show the action of the men in the boat; the ocean was incidental. By contrast, the travel films focused on the land or scenery and no specific action or event.

Post update: 6/5/2010:

After posting this, I had an e-mail exchange with Tom Gunning, the man who got "cinema of attractions" into the silent film lexicon, and he let me know that shooting in natural locations was not in fact as abnormal as I suggest - he points out that Griffith, Thomas Ince, and Maurice Tourneur all frequently shot "landscapes." However, he does corroborate my view that Victor Sjostrom was using landscape in some unique ways that set him apart from other film makers.

The Landscape View

As a way of preparing the kinds of questions I want to include in a poll or survey for the specific film I am looking at (Terje Vigen/A Man There Was), I want to take look at a more modern (and accessible) film of at least equal acclaim. Enter Lawrence of Arabia.

This clip is about 3 minutes long, but you could get by on just watching the first minute and ten seconds. Lawrence of Arabia is acclaimed for its cinematography and beautiful setting. But is that all the natural elements are? Setting? Consider this quote from Martin Lefebvre:

"The birth of landscape should really be understood as the birth of a way of seeing, the birth of a gaze by which what was once in the margin has now come to take its place at the centre."

I argue that narrative prioritizes action and plot while consideration of aesthetics requires a pause, an introversion that steps aside from story. It is on the side of aesthetics that we should place landscapes.

But as you watch this clip from Lawrence of Arabia, does your mind stay aesthetically tuned? Or does it seek out plot as well?

Again, Martin Lefebvre says: "Landscape in narrative film possesses the peculiar ability to appear and disappear before the spectator's very eyes."

So, please watch this clip, and respond as you see fit. Gut responses are fine, because part of what I'm arguing is what landscapes do to us without us realizing it. If you'd like some question prompts, here are a few:

1. What do you think is the meaning of the clip in the first minute?

2. What attracts your attention?

3. Are you more or less engaged in the scene in the first minute, compared to the bits of plot that follow shortly thereafter?

4. What is the difference in your experience of watching the clip before the introduction of plot elements, and after?

5. What do you think about or wonder as you watch the first minute? What do you think about or wonder after the plot elements have been introduced?

6. Does your "view" or "gaze" change over time as the video clip plays?

Here is the video clip:

If you'd like to be able to watch the clip larger, here's the link to the youtube clip "Great Moments of movie music 2." The title obviously suggests I should also be thinking about sound and music...which you can also feel free to comment on.