Lacan

Jacques Lacan was a major figure in twentieth century Parisian intellectual life and often referred to as "The French Freud". He is a highly significant figure in the history of psychoanalysis.

Lacan proposed that the mirror stage was part of an infant's development from 6 to 18 months.

The account of the mirror stage is feasibly Lacan's most famous theoretical contribution. Initially developed in the 1930s, it involves a number of interrelated ingredients. Lacan offers the narrative of this stage as an explanation for the functions of the Freudian psychical agency of the ego.

By early 1950s, Lacan's concept of the mirror stage had evolved: he no longer considered the mirror stage as a moment in the life of the infant, but as representing a permanent structure of subjectivity, or as the paradigm of "imaginary order".

One of the psychoanalytic and philosophical upshots of the mirror stage, a crucial one in Lacan's eyes, is that the ego is an object rather than a subject. In other words, the ego, despite conscious senses to the contrary, is not a locus of autonomous agency, the seat of a free, true “I” determining its own fate. This portrait of the ego-as-object is at the heart of Lacan's lifelong critical polemics against Anglo-American ego psychology, with the ego psychologists seeking to strengthen their patients' egos by appealing to supposed autonomous and “conflict-free” sides of these psychical agencies. Against this, Lacan views the ego as thoroughly compromised and inherently neurotic to its very core, as a passionate defence of a constitutive ignorance of the unconscious.

Related the idea of "lack" and that it caused desires to arise.

"Desire is a relation to being to lack. The lack is the lack of being properly speaking. It is not the lack of this or that, but the lack of being whereby the being exists."

Similar to the Freudian approach of id acting on the hedonistic lifestyle where was the Superego act on the moral principles and what "lack" related to is the Ego which is in between. From a Freudian approach, the "lack" of hedonistic features strive us to act on moral principles and vice versa. Can never fulfil the "lack", desires have to be unreasonable.

Mulvey

Laura Mulvey's 1975 essay "Visual Pleasures and Narrative Cinema", coined the term 'male gaze' which became a well known and discussed theory.

In film, the male gaze is when the audience put in the perspective of a straight man, for example, a scene may focus on a woman's body and its curves, showing the scene from a males point of view. It is only the male gaze if the curves are emphasised with specific conventions like slow motion, cut aways or deliberate camera movements.

The male gaze theory denies women of their own identity, showing them as subordinate to men and as objects of admiration of physical appearance. The male gaze is very prominent in James Bond films
The female characters in film is key; she often has little importance herself, she is there more to make the male feel more important and needed.

Mulvey states that the female character in a narrative has two functions:

As an erotic object for the characters within the narrative to view
As an erotic object for the audience within the cinema (or wherever viewing) to view.

Female objectification is related to the male gaze, that when the persons gazed at are objectified, treated as an object whose sole value is to be enjoyed by those viewing. Characters that are objectified are often devalued and their humanity and personal identity is removed.

taken from Laura Mulvey,
Visual Pleasures and Narrative Cinema

Mulvey posits that gender power asymmetry is a controlling force in cinema and constructed for the pleasure of the male viewer, which is deeply rooted in patriarchal ideologies and discourses. The concept has subsequently been prominent in feminist film theory, media studies, as well as communications and cultural studies. This term can also be linked to models of scopophilia, and narcissism.

The man emerges as the dominant power within the created film fantasy. The woman is passive to the active gaze from the man. This adds an element of "patriarchal" order. Mulvey argues that, in mainstream cinema, the male gaze typically takes precedence over the female gaze, reflecting an underlying power asymmetry.

This inequality can be attributed to patriarchy which has been defined as a social ideology embedded in the belief systems of Western culture and in patriarchal societies. It is either masculine individuals or institutions created by these individuals that exert the power to determine what is considered "natural".

These constructed beliefs begin to seem "normal" because they are common and carry out unchallenged, thus arguing that Western culture has a hierarchical ideology which sets masculinity in binary opposition to femininity thus creating levels of inferiority.

Mulvey describes its two central forms that are based in Freud’s concept of scopophilia, as: "pleasure that is linked to sexual attraction (voyeurism in extremis) and scopophilic pleasure that is linked to narcissistic identification (the introjection of ideal egos)", in order to show how women have historically been forced to view film through the "male gaze".

Combo of Lacan and Freud

Film fascinates us (engages our emotions), through images and spectacle

Mulvey uses psychoanalysis 'to discover where and how the fascination of film is reinforced by pre-existing patterns of fascination already at work within the individual subject' (= spectator)
She says she is using psychoanalytic theory 'as a political weapon'

Hollywood/mainstream/narrative cinema manipulates visual pleasure
It 'codes the erotic into the language of the dominant patriarchal order'
Scopophilia = pleasure in looking (Freud)
Examples of the private and curious gaze: children's voyeurism, cinematic looking
The most pleasurable looking = looking at the human form and the human face, figural looking (corresponds to psychic patterns)

'Woman as image, man as bearer of the look'

Pleasure in looking split between active/male and passive/female
women connote "to-be-looked-at-ness'
The visual presence of women 'works against the development of a stortyline, freezes the flow of action in moments of erotic contemplation.'
The woman functions as both erotic object for the characters within the screen story and erotic object for the spectator within the auditorium (object of fantasy)
The spectator is led to identify with the main male protagonist.
'The power of the male protagonist as he controls events coincides with the active power of the erotic look.'

The male gaze and fetishistic scopophilia in 'Le Mepris/Vivre Sa Vie'

Scopophilia is the force driving the movements and positioning of the camera.

The gaze is male, and the spectator is led to identify with this male gaze.
The cinematic apparatus is not gender-neutral (in later readings, camera can also register differences of sexuality)

Health and Safety

Health and Safety of location shoots:

The health and safety of any crew and members of the public must be taken into consideration before any filming happens. If health and safety procedures weren't taken and someone was injured the filming would be delayed or cancelled altogether. If filming out in a public area the weather is a significant aspect that can affect the health and safety of cant crew or public; for instance, if it had been raining the floor would be slippery and someone could fall and injure themselves. Also any equipment used when on location could been seen as a hazard, all equipment should be watched over to ensure it is safe to those using it as well as those who may be passing by.

Health and Safety in the studio:

When working in the studio you need to ensure that all cables are tidy and not a tangled mess on the floor that someone could trip over especially if the studio is dark during a shoot. Also the movement of lights, the lights must be cool to touch before manoeuvring them to avoid burning yourself on them as they get very hot. When work in the studio is complete make sure all lights are off properly so they don't overheat or blow out. If using a tripod it needs to be set up correctly so that it is secure so that it doesn't fall and break any equipment or injure any member of the crew.

ISO

ISO measure the sensitivity of the image sensor. A lower ISO setting has smaller grain meaning the image will be a better quality, whereas a higher ISO setting has a higher grain meaning the image will be a poorer quality. 



This clips shows demonstrations of ISO 100 and 200, because of the low ISO setting the image is a clear high quality with a small amount of grain; if it was a higher ISO setting there would be a higher grain making the image quality poor and there's also a chance it may have been overexposed if I'd have left all other settings the same for a low ISO.

Biblography

tvtropes

Wikipedia

The Film Experience (book)

Easy Riders, Raging Bulls (book)

Wikipedia - Taxi Driver

SparkNotes - Taxi Driver

Filmsite - The Graduate

MTV - The Graduate

Wikipedia - Bonnie and Clyde

Girls Do Film - Bonnie and Clyde

Sense of Cinema - Bonnie and Clyde

IMDb - Bonnie and Clyde

Aperture

The space through which light passes through the lens on the camera. The change in aperture can provide more than one dimension into a photograph.
Aperture is measured in f-stops; the higher the f-stop the smaller the hole for light to be let in, and the lower the f-stop the larger the hole for the light.



This video is an example of a low f-stop (f2.8) using a 60mm lens. The focus of this shot is the wooden stump in the left of the screen, with the foreground and background not in focus. If I was to redo this I would aim to have the duck in focus rather than the wooden stump; but at the same time I think this example works well in displaying the aperture setting f2.8.

 

This video displays the aperture setting f8 using a standard lens. Using this f-stop and lens the whole shot should be in focus, however I am unsure that this is correct; so if I was to reshoot this setting I would make sure the entire shot is in focus and chose a setting that shows that the shot is in focus.

 

Shutter Speed

Shutter speed is the amount of time in which the camera is exposed to light. 



This clip is shot at 1/30 in 24fps and captures the movement in each frame, this a blurred effect to the shot as the camera catches more motion in each frame.




This video is shot at 1/50 which is best for 24fps as it is double the frame rate which gives a clearer image.




 The shutter speed of this clips is over 1/50th with 24fps, but I am unsure of the exact number, however as it over double of the frame rate it has given a crisp image and reduced the amount of motion caught by the camera unlike the first clip of 1/30th.